Even tough I hate myself for deepen this dicussion and writing this post there are some things I would like to say.
I watched the replay you posted above and took myself some time to observe it carefully. So there are a few things I noticed which actually don't correspond with your describing of this replay being a "perfect demonstration" of your point.
Said in advance: I do not want to offend anyone by my analysis of this game. In fact I personally would be glad if someone spend his time and offered myself such a detailed analysis and critic. But enough of that, lets come to the main part of my comment:
1) Isengart didn't build any ressource-structures in the frist 2-3 minutes. Even though he had always about 500 ress the refused to build any kind building
--> Economy is far behind (btw.: why would you spend money for lutz level-up so early in the game when you don't even use them? You can easily buy it 1 minute later with having at least one ress-building)
2) Why is isen building furnaces? You have to get cheaper uruks and not cheaper upgrades to survive the eg/mg
3) when rohan attacked the base, isen was building a tower at the other side of the base, which couldn't even have protected the furnace.
4) the second tower was useless because it wasn't even protecting the first one
so what is the situation after rohans first attack?
--> no economy because no farms
--> no baracks
--> no troops
--> not even sufficent towers (only one) to protect the base from another runby
5) isen is neither building nor upgrading ress structures after he frist pushed you back
--> how is he supposed to defend with only his beginning troops+his eg-hero?
--> how is he supposed to reach mg with no economy in his main base, only having vulnerable outer ress-buildings?
6) when it came to the fight: Isen could easily have kited the peasents or at least shot at them while they were attacking buildings
All those mistakes I listed were severe and would have led by themselves to a game-loss
I hope my points were rather clear. As I said earlier this post is no offense but only a hint, that this replay isn't any kind of evidence.
I would be happy if anyone could proove in a 1v1 that isengard doesn't have any chance against eg-aggression, because every step we take will bring us nearer to a more balanced mod.
I'll just preface this as Mogat did by saying this response is not intended to be rude or offensive in any way, although it is perhaps a little blunt.
If you noticed, I did state in my post that I am better than Sawman, and that besides that he was very rusty. He does normally play better, and I'm not arguing that an incredibly skilled Isengard player could probably stand a chance early game. However, you also have to realize that most people aren't pro-good as Isen, and the average player would do about as good as Sawman, which is what my replay was meant to demonstrate. Also, this replay does indeed provide evidence that Isengard is weak in early game, because even if he had made towers near to his buildings I could have simply switched targets to kill them, wasting his resources. Also, if an Isen player makes all mineshafts and has super expensive upgrades, its very hard to counter Rohan mid-game spam of peasants with Gamling and captains, so its a tough call to make. If a player makes furnaces and manages to survive, and gets those upgrades fast, it can make a big difference.
To sum it up: Is this replay a perfectly balanced match between equally skilled players? No.
Does that automatically make this provide 0 evidence? Hell no. I demonstrated in my playing style how easily Isengard can be attacked and harassed early game, regardless of him misplacing towers and maybe not getting economy buildings fast enough. This could be considered representative of people who are never going to play this mod as addictively as some of us, and just how hard it is to master the early game of Isengard. Average players make mistakes, such as leveling up Bill Ferny at the incorrect time or misplacing towers, while an average Rohan player has a much easier time of it.
Skeever, I take offence to you saying that Sawman is not a good player. I can assure you he is, he was rusty after not playing for over a week, and Isengard is his worst faction. You shouldn't say people are not good based off of a single match. No harm done though
Final note, I was camping(In real life), which is why it took me a couple days to respond. I'll be happy to play a match against Mogat once I've rested and recovered for a few days, and had time to warm up.
