‘The Lord of the Rings: Rise to War’ Strategy Guide

In any strategy game, the player should make the first three moves in their mind before advancing in the actual game. That is the same in The Lord of the Rings: Rise to War, a geo-strategic war game which greatly emphasises the strategic element of it.

The tips you will find below will walk you through all the important aspects of the game, as well as some of the more advanced tips meant to help you in the long run.

Staring off, you need to make sure that you always expand your territory each chance you get. The tiles you have grant Ring Power, and conquering more will increase the Ring Power production. This will lead to more available tiles to conquer, as well as additional skills to help you through any stage of the game – anything from increasing your Commanders’ Stamina Maximum to your own resource gain.

But Ring Power aside, there are a number of other elements that play a very important role in the game. Let’s check them all out below!

The Commanders are your best units

A Commander is rightfully named so, since they not only command your troops into the battlefield, but also allow you to aim for greater tiles and complete various other game content (such as Tips).

The Commander will have skill and equipment, each playing a key role in their development and assigned formation. As a new player, you should always be mindful of your Commander’s Stamina when exploring a new land (you want to keep the commander as close to the settlement as possible, since closer tiles consume less Stamina) and try to never exhaust the Commander completely.

If you do exhaust the Commander, they will automatically run back to the settlement and if you plan to deploy them near a faraway tile (assuming where they left off), they will consume more Stamina.

Afterwards, you should try to equip your Commanders with the best possible equipment based on your current best troops and the units you want to assign to them in the future. Each gear piece will have a specific trait, so for example you should try to grant Commanders a piece of equipment that boosts the stats of the troops they lead.

As for the skills, you should try to max out the skills that you plan on using for said Commander first. If you have a Commander assigned to Tips only, then max out the skill that boosts that trait – if you have one which increases the Damage of your troops at level 15 and you plan on using that Commander for battle, then that’s the skill to prioritise.

Conscript the best units you have at any given time

The game will often offer some units in the early game which are either Faction limited or in very low numbers, and while you can use them into a team, you need to bear in mind that if you cannot Conscript them (or produce them), chances are you won’t be able to deploy them afterwards so you shouldn’t make a team around them.

You can acquire new units by conquering specific tiles (you can find the available ones by using the Search option in the game, located next to the minimap in the upper left side), but until you get to a point where you can do that, you should stick to the strongest units you can produce and only deploy the special troops in very specific situations where you cannot do without them.

Expand your territory slow and steady

Conquering tiles is easy, but conquering them with a strategy in mind is not. When you first start playing Rise to War, you need to look around your base and think about which direction you want your base to expand to. Set your eyes on a few tiles, and slowly but steadily try to work your way towards them.

The one power tiles will be great for that in the early stages, and you should use them to advance towards any tiles that seem great into the mid to late game. Try to always have all the possible tiles occupied, and 30 minutes before moving on to some better ones, rescind the lower power tiles.