The Silver Tongue: Emissaries and Neutral Nations

So, you have just received your new Middle Earth game set up. You have spent weeks, perhaps months, dreaming of leading the Witch King to glory in the destruction of Arthedain, or perhaps of reuniting Gondor and Arnor under the leadership of Northern Gondor. You open your game set up and what do you find? You are the proud leader of a neutral nation!

Wait! All is not lost! Perhaps you are dismayed that for each nation you wish to attack, you must first succeed in downgrading diplomatic relations with that nation first. Your armies, which you planned to use to take the nearest enemy towns (thereby decreasing your own maintenance costs), cannot even be sure that when they reach those towns they will be able to persuade the troops that the towns belong to an enemy!

Well, listen to Silvertongue, and learn. Use emissaries to further your ends. So what if you cannot immediately use you armies to reduce you maintenance costs. Those troops are in your way. Dismiss them! The chief reason that they are hard to use is that you (presumably) have not decided which cause to support. So during the time of negotiation, retire your standing troops, and reduce your maintenance costs.

Now the immediate use of emissaries of obvious: create camps. Next, increase the loyalty of you population centers to reduce the loyalty price of the tax increases you will require of your people (after all, these are troubled times). Hire more emissaries, and while you are continuing to negotiate with the Free Peoples and the Dark Servants, gain more experience for your emissaries.

While your emissaries are about planting camps, don't forget to Uncover Secrets. It is well known that some unworthy leaders abandon their people and leave the populace without leadership. Move your emissaries to the population centers of the now uncontrolled nation. Since they are likely to be neutrally disposed toward you, you should find that their populace can be persuaded to join you. Now decide which side to join. Perhaps both sides now mistrust you because have remained uncommitted for so long. What better way to return to their good graces but by eliminating one enemy while you declare allegiance for your new allies.

Just before you declare for the Free Peoples or the Dark Servants, create two companies of emissaries to send to the Capital and back-up capital of the nation you target. Since the target nation very likely will have been trying not to offend you thereby avoiding downgrading diplomatic relations with you, he will likely be neutral toward you as well. If you have sent a large enough contingent to each site, you may well gain two large sources of income and a large enough gift (having eliminated one enemy) to your new allies that they forgive you for delaying so long in choosing when to join them.

Remember the Emissary,

Legate Silvertongue

P.S. Of course, all neutral nations are just as vulnerable to the emissaries of both sides, until diplomatic relations are adjusted.