New unit for Isengard Early game. (+ ideas)

[Skeeverboy]

You can't really count on them getting level 2 on their own, as they don't last very long once the fighting starts.

My two scouts (multiplyer) getting level 2 by 80% of my 1v1. IdK what you do with your scouts, but when you have the money to buy lurtz or ugluk you can buy the isengard upgrade and have heavy uruks, who are stronger as gondor soldiers.

and then massacring the scouts with archers.

Than attack the archers. It is easy to kill them in EG, when you ignore the gondor soldiers and attack just the archer.

[Elite KryPtik]

Scouts are not the strongest early game infantry, Traitors of Rohan are. A good Rohan player can easily push with a couple of traitors and Gamling, and massacre your scouts.
Gondor Soldier spam with a little bit of hero/archer support also beats them, because of the formation. Gondor can also do a quick cavalry rush, which is extremely effective against Isengard.
Orc spam is free, and used correctly can get any resource building when combined with Tainted Land or Eye of Sauron, and Wildmen stealing resources is not enough to stop the orc spam, Isengard ultimately loses out. Once the Nazgul hit the field, its probably GG for Isengard.
Dwarven Guardians win against scouts easily, especially Iron Hills and Ered Luin. With a little support from Bilbo its no challenge at all to defeat scouts.

Finally, both scouts AND Wildmen are extremely weak to a quick cavalry rush, which has been mentioned earlier. Wargs are not a suitable counter to this, because they can be easily killed by pikes, which all factions but Isengard can get very easily. Wargs also lose to both Gondor Knights and Rohirrim of the Eastfold in a 1 on 1 fight. You are also not taking into account that many players choose to spend most of their starting 1k on Bill Ferny and his level-ups, to give them an advantage in early fights.  This does not leave them with enough money to get the Wildmen Hut, or any Wildmen, and if you choose to go for Wildmen instead of Bill, you are left without your scout hero, and will probably lose your first encounters against the enemy if he got his scout hero. Simply put, Isengard early game is weak against all factions, and especially weak against Rohan and Mordor.

Now, this is not much of a problem against Gondor or Dwarves, but it is a serious problem against Mordor and Rohan. Instead of nerfing them even more, just make the scouts a wee bit cheaper, and weaker, to contend with the early game spam. Same with Wildmen and Wulfgar. Finally, add a cheap Wildmen Pike unit to counter early game cavalry rushes.

All of the things I just listed have been performed either by me or against me, in at least 50+ games on both GameRanger and Tunngle. With the new economy system, Isengard is even weaker then it was before, and something should be done to marginally improve their early game. I understand that they are supposed to be a bit weaker early game, but it is too much currently, and something should be done to give them at least a fighting chance against Rohan and Mordor.

[™Æ¿® Aragorn £ ‡™]

Scouts are not the strongest early game infantry, Traitors of Rohan are. A good Rohan player can easily push with a couple of traitors and Gamling, and massacre your scouts.
Gondor Soldier spam with a little bit of hero/archer support also beats them, because of the formation. Gondor can also do a quick cavalry rush, which is extremely effective against Isengard.
Orc spam is free, and used correctly can get any resource building when combined with Tainted Land or Eye of Sauron, and Wildmen stealing resources is not enough to stop the orc spam, Isengard ultimately loses out. Once the Nazgul hit the field, its probably GG for Isengard.
Dwarven Guardians win against scouts easily, especially Iron Hills and Ered Luin. With a little support from Bilbo its no challenge at all to defeat scouts.

Finally, both scouts AND Wildmen are extremely weak to a quick cavalry rush, which has been mentioned earlier. Wargs are not a suitable counter to this, because they can be easily killed by pikes, which all factions but Isengard can get very easily. Simply put, Isengard early game is weak against all factions, and especially weak against Rohan and Mordor. Now, this is not much of a problem against Gondor or Dwarves, but it is a serious problem against Mordor and Rohan. Instead of nerfing them even more, just make the scouts a wee bit cheaper, and weaker, to contend with the early game spam. Same with Wildmen and Wulfgar. Finally, add a cheap Wildmen Pike unit to counter early game cavalry rushes.

All of the things I just listed have been performed either by me or against me, in at least 50+ games on both GameRanger and Tunngle. With the new economy system, Isengard is even weaker then it was before, and something should be done to marginally improve their early game. I understand that they are supposed to be a bit weaker early game, but it is too much currently.

I agree with everything except making them weaker.

[Elite KryPtik]

You replied before I finished editing my post
If they are kept at their current strength and cost is reduced, then they will be OP. The are the second strongest early game unit, behind the Traitors, therefore getting them at the same cost as say Peasants would unbalance the game badly. If the cost is reduced the unit must be weakened.

[Skeeverboy]

A good Rohan player can easily push with a couple of traitors and Gamling, and massacre your scouts.

Theoden+Gamling cost 1600, so they can't come both in the EG, just one. In the time were you have the two, Isengard have Uruks.
Can someone of you make a Replay, to show how you play with Isengard in EG? Because a evidence is better, so we can see the problem that you have. (Not a test, a real Replay from two good players with the same strength)

[™Æ¿® Aragorn £ ‡™]

A good Rohan player can easily push with a couple of traitors and Gamling, and massacre your scouts.

Theoden+Gamling cost 1600, so they can't come both in the EG, just one. In the time were you have the two, Isengard have Uruks.
Can someone of you make a Replay, to show how you play with Isengard in EG? Because a evidence is better, so we can see the problem that you have. (Not a test, a real Replay from two good players with the same strength)

Plenty of rohan players get Gamling and Theodon in early game.

And if you rush for uruks before your economy is fully up, you are just going to feed his heroes (Too many times I rushed for Heavy uruks, and I just fed his heroes with every battalion that came out)

[Skeeverboy]

Show please a Replay, because Uruks aren't feed. They are the strongest normal Infantry in the game.

[™Æ¿® Aragorn £ ‡™]

Show please a Replay, because Uruks aren't feed. They are the strongest normal Infantry in the game.

Have you used isengard vs dwarves?

They always just rush for dale/lake-town, and any Uruks you send get killed by their heroes.

I was Ered luin today vs isengard in mines of the iron hills.

He got a very large army of Heavy uruks, and rushed to take down Lake-town.

My small army/heroes wiped his army out and got couple levels.

How is that not feeding?

I saved the replay

[Skeeverboy]

Please show a Replay from a 1v1, because the Balance is for 1v1 and not for 2v2. The both Isengard players have just play how beginner's.

Here I have a Replay, from a 1v1 frome Isengard vs Ered Luin. Winner was Isengard. It has win in EG, MG and LG.

[Elite KryPtik]

I very seriously doubt that is a fair match up. Woppader is one of the best players in the mod right now, against this random I have never seen before. Lets see a replay between Woppader and somebody else we know is good, maybe Draco10000 or yourself. I would love to see Woppader as Isengard attempt to beat Draco10000 as Rohan.

[Adrigabbro]

Very interesting debate, but if I may point out something I found shocking...

It won't balance it, because scouts are stronger as the other start infantry.

Dude, I have seen scouts online in mulityplayer, and they are not actually 'stronger'

Gondor players have a habit of putting their gondor soldiers in shield wall, and then massacring the scouts with archers.

The scouts are two units in one, but not until later in the game.

They cost 90 command points, but can only use their bows once you waste 1400 resources on Lurtz. (Cripple doesn't last long enough and he has a  habit of dying randomly)

You can't really count on them getting level 2 on their own, as they don't last very long once the fighting starts.

Perhaps you could add Ugluk's bonus as well once they reach level 2?
And make them level faster?

The point of making them cheaper is so you can buy them without sacrificing how fast you get late-game.

One does not simply say you waste 1400 resources on Lurtz.
He is not as good as he was in 3.8.1 and I'm glad about that because he was massively overpowered back then. Seriously, how long does its Cripple ability last? 10 seconds? Do you really think it is not enough? He has two very strong abilities as early as levels 2 and 3, plus a strong leadership later and a mighty level 10 ability. He can switch weapon and you can hide him very well inside your Uruk army. Combined with Ugluk, there is no better way of "wasting" 2800 resources. 

EDIT: Cripple lasts 15 seconds. 

[Mogat]

The time has come and I feel called to participate in this discussion 

I played a game against skeeverboy (Isen vs. Rohan) as it was indirectly requested some posts ago and I decided to upload this replay.

Things we learn:
1) Lurtz is not a waste
2) scouts do reach level 2, even in the earlygame
3) Uruks never are feed. only if you send them one by one they are

I admit I didn't play perfectly, but this replay serves its purpose.

By the way: Rohans cavallery could have been crucial in this game, if it ran into my archers. But throug good spearmen-positioning this was avoided.

[Elite KryPtik]

I couldn't actually watch this replay to the end. No offense to Skeever, but this is some of the worst Rohan play I've ever seen. To give you an idea Mogat, here's what I would have done. I would have immediately made Théoden and Merry, and been inside your base killing your ONLY starting mineshaft and outer lumber mill within 20 seconds. If you had come to defend it, I would have killed your scouts easily, because you didn't make Bill Ferny, and my units would have Merry and leadership from Théoden. I would then have stole your creeps, and made sure you didn't have any more outer resource buildings. Also would have made and upgraded my first farm a lot faster with cruel taxes on it, and had a couple of groups of peasants out to defend it after 1 minute. Then I would have spammed out a bunch of peasants, gotten Gamling, and that would have been GG for you. He completely failed to harass you in any way, which is the biggest mistake you can make as Rohan. Were you playing as random vs random, or did you know your factions beforehand going in? Not that it matters, with Rohan you go on the offensive immediately, to either harass economy buildings or kill starting units and steal creeps. I guess Rohan is not Skeeverboys strongest faction

Just a final note, I agree that Lurtz is not a waste, but Isengard's early economy is also incredibly weak and vulnerable, and often the opposing player can defeat you before you can get any heroes out.

[Skeeverboy]

Than play again Mogat, and you will see that this not work.

[Adrigabbro]

Even though I agree that Herr Skeever plays Mordor a lot better than Rohan , you KryPtik wouldn't have done anything like that for the only reason you could NOT have known how he started, because Rohan doesn't have any power to scout. But I agree with you on the idea: you have to harass as much as you can when you play Rohan, especially when you are facing Isengard. Skeever did not do it well in this replay. If you want to see Rohan winning Isengard, check one of my last replays in the strategy section (the game was played on Brandywine)