To ward against the Corrupt Cardinal, you'll have to attract a Saintly cleric (The Prophet/The Martyr). But then the AI keeps using the Corrupt Cardinal against you, reducing your Christianity to nothing.

So if you want the better knights in the early game, you will need to play passively and war as little as you can. This requires that you maintain a lot of churches in your parcels, leaving you quite vulnerable in the early game. For instance, say you want a high Christianity to get you the sweet Knight Hospitaliers and Templars. It's not micromanagement, but it's pure strategy, and it is more elegant than you may think. Attracting the right vassals will win you the game. Some vassals are just useless and some are OP. The brilliance of this game comes much later in the gameplay, and that is the complexity of the vassals. After I got the hang of it, the game was much more fun to play. I remember how happy I was when I could take control of Ireland. This is all part of my own experience: the first times I played LOTR3, all the campaigns seemed virtually impossible to complete.

After a while, you'll realize that the AI is actually very mindless and not very strategic at all. At first you will hate LOTR3 because it's just so damn hard, but after some days, you will learn how to maneuver in order to delay the AI and turn his disadvantages into your advantages. Getting rushed is a part of the newbie experience of the game. You should also always leave some armies behind so that you may fend off the AI if he happens to take your castle. As it is an RTS, you can never predict the actions of the AI in advance, which is why you need to pay constant attention to your lands and watch out for any enemy advances in your territories. But there is an option to play in 'slow' mode (options -> gameplay -> game speed), actually making the game a lot easier.

I'll give a shot at explaining what I think is so utterly brilliant about this game and also try to describe how to play LOTR 3 in order to get a good experience instead of the feeling that you're constantly getting rushed by the AI.įor starters, you obviously can't think in the same way as you can in a turn-based game such as its predecessors. But I think I do understand what you mean when you say that this RTS-dazzling-too-fast-speed-junkey-comatose game is just such a disappointment. However, I haven't played LOTR 1 nor 2, so I can't really see how bad the game is from your angle.

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