Mount & Blade: Warband

Mount & Blade: Warband

The Last Days of the Third Age
Scuti 8 Sep, 2024 @ 9:09am
My Orcs And Uruks Review
If anyone is willing to play as orcs or uruks, I'm sharing my experience leading such armies.

War Party:
Overall, your strength comes from numbers. Even at the very beginning of the game, you're easily able to recruit up to 20 units from a single settlement. The +2/3 hiring bonus for each type of orc or uruk allows you to have a 100-unit army early in the game.

Start:
First-tier units are very weak, with very light or no armor at all. However, they have a huge variety of weapons, including clubs, swords, and spears, and sometimes they also carry shields. Gundabad recruits can even have bows. Orcs also have high athletics skills, allowing them to deal with low-tier bandit units quite easily. So, the start is not very hard at all.

Tips And Units Info:
Orcs are the weakest units in the game, while Uruks are mostly average. You'll need a lot of food and plenty of reserve units because you'll always lose a significant number of troops. A 25% unit loss after each battle is quite acceptable. It's recommended to have a high training skill (4+) and pathfinding (5+) to quickly upgrade your units and move large armies at a reasonable pace.
Most of your top units are 4-5 tiers at most, making their upkeep relatively cheap—16-24 for tier 4 units and 33-49 for tier 5 units. This includes warg riders, which are about 50% more expensive than infantry or archers of the same tier.

Gathering Reserves:
First-tier units always cost 1 resource point, second-tier units mostly cost 2, and third-tier units cost 4. So it's easy to keep hundreds of them in reserve. Stationary units only incur half the upkeep, so keeping a hundred low-tier orcs or uruks in reserve would cost you around 200-300 resource points per week.

Additional Info:
To win battles and reduce your casualties, you'll need to master battle strategies and effectively use all three types of units—infantry, archers, and cavalry.


----- MORDOR -----

Enemies:
Your main enemy is Gondor, and occasionally you might encounter Rohan. Gondor is not that difficult to defeat, as they almost never field large numbers of cavalry, which can be very annoying to chase around the battlefield, especially the horse archers. Their main strength lies in their archers and infantry. Their first-tier units (Gondor Levy) are less effective compared to your Snagas. The battlefields around Minas Tirith and Osgiliath can be quite annoying and difficult to navigate, which somewhat gives an advantage to Gondor.

Allies:
You have three evil human allies: Khand, Harad, and the Corsairs. This makes Gondor completely outnumbered at the start of the war. While their top-tier units are mostly one tier lower than Gondor’s, this doesn’t apply to all unit types. They fight Gondor on equal terms.

Playing As Orc Of Mordor:
Highter agility and lower strength compared to Uruks. Mounts are available at level 2 riding. You are only allowed to wear armor suitable for orcs.

Playing As Uruk Of Mordor:
Higher strength and lower agility compared to Orcs. Mounts are available at level 5 riding (faction reward). You’re only allowed to wear armor designed for Uruks or Human/Uruk varieties.

Uruk Units:
Your main units should be Uruks, which are unfortunately less available for recruitment than Orcs. The most desirable unit type is the Fell Uruk of Mordor, a level 19, tier 4 infantry with good enough armors and one-handed weapons, Also they are always equipped with a shield. Uruk Slayers are not recommended; while they may be very effective in easy battles, they are quickly killed by enemy arrows and thrown weapons in serious fights due to their lack of shields.

Orc Units:
They're quite weak, so it's generally recommended to upgrade them to strategic units such as archers or warg riders to support your main Uruk army. Additionally, they can be trained into 'Fell Orcs of Mordor' to complement your Uruk infantry.