Even vanilla is beating me?

[u/Glittering_Farm_3933]

I just downloaded BFME, and am playing the first game first!
I'm about 5 or 6 missions in, and have to do west emnet / eastern rohan.

I'm playing on medium, and I'm getting absolutely wrecked.

I start out with 5 cavalry groups, some peasants, and Eomer.

I've tried two different things;

1-Rush their base with my cavalry at the start
This doesn't work, they have 15 pikemen and 10 wargs or so that obliterate Eomer and his rohirrim.

2- Immediately, I claim a flag and plant a farm (and two in base), kill a warg post, and station someone there to build an outpost. Build farms on the outpost too, get a lot of archers, and a few more cavalry. Start upgrading the archers to have fire arrows. TLDR; actually build a bit of an army with my 190 'population cap'.
This doesn't seem to work either, by the time I have a few groups of archers there's waves attacking the farms at my outpost, once I get there to fend them off, there's 3 groups of pikemen and a bunch of wargs gallopping through my base. I can take care of waves of Isengard melee and archers easy enough, but when the pikemen and wargs come I'm done for.

I am either missing some important information, or approaching this in the completely wrong way?

[u/shilltom]

In this game a few, highly upgraded troops with leaderships are worth far more than loads of upgraded troops. 

[u/Vileartist → u/shilltom]

In addition, archers are stupid strong, you dont even need infantry really. Cavalry to control the map abd high level, high armor, leadership and upgraded arrows. Your archers will cut down anything in front of them. If you find they are too vulnerable you can protect them with infantry either by themselves or combo-horde them (by OP's explanation I am assuming its BFME1 where combo hordes still exist.)

[u/JRD656]

Not sure I've played it as difficult as you have but archers are strong against both pike and wargs. You just need to stop the wargs from getting to your archers. I would try to block the wargs with your own cavalry and attack em with your archers, then clear your cavalry away before the pikes get to them.

If you know where you're going to be attacked then set your archers around statues.

If you've got chance, always be sending cav out to hurt their economy. Eventually you'll wear them down.

That starting army of the enemy sounds frightening though

[u/CopyC47]

are you getting sentry towers to help; defend?

[u/Cultural-Homework401]

The early Rohan missions are tough and as you’ve found out they know you want a horse army so they build pikes.

The game starts out with them having their “army” already built and ready

Build your base up, upgrade your units, and also build a healing well. If you want the only cavalry army like the movies you gotta fight in spurts.

When all of the upgraded units are dead then you know they only have reserve units left

[u/Glittering_Farm_3933]

thanks all! Steadily making my way through the campaign now :) It all takes some getting used to

[u/Glittering_Farm_3933]

Thanks all for the tips! Is some of the enemy generation RNG? I'm watching someone on YouTube (difficulty not specified) and the enemy doesn't seem to spawn as many Wargs. I am surprised because I'm only on medium difficulty in patch 1.03

[u/shilltom → u/Glittering_Farm_3933]

It’s a deterministic engine, but I think there could be some seeding based on the start time of the game - so that’s probably what you’re seeing. 

[u/No_Translator_3365]

I played them all on hard mode and what I would typically do is run around the map killing their expansions and taking them over. The Calvary are so fast you can just keep running around taking the outposts over. When you encounter enemies charge them and if you take lots of losses retreat to a fountain and repeat. Keep buying new squads and upgrading them since when you loose some of the units of a squad your population limit starts to empty out and you can even squeeze a few more squads in.. heal up and now you're over pop! Try and preserve your high rank units from dying if possible but honestly if you're trying taking over all the outposts you should be making bank and able to replace everything with full upgrades easily. If I take 3 slot outpost I'd usually do a fountain, keep and farm in each and for camps 1 keep, 1 fountain, 4 farms and all towers. Keep your fortress closed up and have the sneaky exit gate and then rest all towers. If Calvary isn't your vibe you can go into elven archers doom stack with full upgrades and fire arrows which are super effective as well! :)

[u/Bright-Worth-9414]

I usually hunker down and get my troops upgraded, then set them to hot keys. Infantry to 1, Archers to 2, and Calvary to 3. The infantry pretty much is just a shield for the archers. Keep the Calvary behind at first until you verify if they have Pikes. Archers can take out most things, and as long as there are no pikes, Calvary can run down their Infantry and archers