Hmm, I also installed TLD now, am playing a rohirrim girl on my own PC(battlesize 100 IIRC) and a gondorian guy on my dad's PC here(battlesize 40). I think playing Rohan and Gondor is quite easy and before the war I'm usually searching for enemy parties and think there could be more, having a lot of infantry as Gondor was a bad idea as well wsince all my victims can run away then, switched to cavalry now.
I also tried to make an easterling cataphract but somehow that was very, very hard. First off, none of the cities an evil guy can enter sell horses and in the TLD forum the guy mentions releasing the next patch(which will fix this) in some weeks.
And then there are those evil Ithilien Rangers or what they're called, they usually come in groups of 15-16 men, travel very fast and shoot your infantry to pieces before they kill the rest in melee with their apparently very good melee skills. I'd say they're worse than swadian crossbowmen, but especially without a horse they made me stop trying to develop that easterling. Ok, the veteran rohan riders helped a bit as well after killing my whole party with no losses...let's just say it's hard to get to the start of the war with an "evil" character as it is now.