Awesome mod, great work with unique cities - impressive.
Awesome mod, great work with unique cities - impressive.
My first impression was 'this mod is amazing'. My second impression was 'this is freaking hard'. The it was followed by 'BALROGS, sweet mother help me! HALP ME!'. So great work to everyone involved in the creation and updating of this mod!
Last edited by JusTheory; June 27, 2014 at 03:17 PM.
This mod is great, the team did a great job. I started playing a campaign as Isengard. A mission told me take Fangorn, which I did. It triggered an event that spawned Treebeard near Fangorn. I sent an army to fight him, but when I clicked the fight battle button, the game crashed. I reopened the game, but Treebeard wan't there. I still had Fangorn though. Other than that, everything else ran smoothly.
The mod is awesome and addicting. I love it over all. However, I did question other factions abilities to build their armies/settlements at a rate compared to mine. I played on easy the first time just to test things out. My first encounter with the Woodland elves and the army I met was at 100% full capacity with level 3 experience soldiers of the best units available to that race....???? How could they build up to that requirement so fast ? Also, my army and one of the Woodland Elf's had a settlement under siege at the same time starting the same turn. The woodland army was building 4 battering rams and I was building one.....they attacked the very next round (second turn) and had all 4 rams built and therefore, took the settlement with me as reinforcement......?????? It takes 1 turn per battering ram to build, right ?
Their army was likely the result of a script that gives the AI (non-human factions) extra units.
The speed at which rams are being built depends on the size of the army: a big army can build more stuff in 1 turn than a small army.
A ram costs 50 build points to build. The amount of build points per turn depends on the size of the army.
I've seen armies with 300+ build points, so 4 rams in 1 turn is perfectly possible if the Silvan Elves had a full stack.
One more thing: if the AI is already sieging a settlement when you move your army in to besiege it, the AI's next turn will be earlier that yours, so they can start the siege if they want.
Something to keep in mind when trying to take settlements
In my opinion best mod for Medieval II Total War: Kingdoms.
I have feeling that I don't need to describe my first impression.
Everybody knows this is a awesome mod with new freaking experience of gameplay,
new models of units, new pictures of generals... & many more.
They did a nice & hard job.
Thank you for working on it!
Hey thanks for the reply Greymane. No fair ! I am a non-human faction in that play-through also......where are my "extra" units ?!!!!! ....just kidding....yea I see your point about the build capability of the army besieging and how the AI uses it/them. I thought they might attack first because, as you said, the AI goes first in a turn....I was just hoping to beat them to it...LOL...but I forgot about the points-versus-army size ratio for building rams and such...makes sense.....
It is breathtakingly obvious how much time and energy has gone into making TATW and MOS......people like me are lucky to be able to play these mods and I truly wish I could contribute more to making mods like this happen and thus being more helpful to make them a reality.
most impressive - and with a very fresh perspective, as i've only recently played to 10 years game time
i'm wondering of hobbit militias? i'm sure i'll find out, as i presently play Dale. with Dale in mind, given its violent history with alien army encounters, i gave them, the ability to make more use of their spear militiaby providing an additional armor upgrade option. also, a note about graphics, i very much like them and the multi media, however a story teller's introduction similar to mtw2 would be great. likewise, another note about Dale: we all know the town's building were made of wood, and so i think the thatched, pueblo indian style lower level tech (at least) buildings are out of place relative to the culture. the only other constructive-criticism pertains to the models- i think they're very good, but dsarves need be smaller, etc.
subnote: regarding architecture and culture, specifically i meant Esgaroth
My first impression was just how much deeper TATW is than vanilla M2TW. The factions feel so much further removed from one another than M2TW's, which were not overly similar to begin with. So much has gone into this to keep the game fresh and constantly evolving throughout the campaign. In short, I was blown away.
I fully agree! M2TW just felt well, bland. A King dies there and a prince falls in battle here. What did it really matter. :?
The personality given from both the books and movies to certain characters gives me a big reason to keep them alive.
It's just so hard to watch them die! And Glorfindel.. Oh, he brought glory to the elven race! Even managed to kill Saruman!
I have some general observations on what I think the Campaign game lacks, from the point of view of game design and play balance.
First, without a doubt, the designers and programmers have done an excellent job on this mod and have been very faithful to Tolkien, as much as that is possible in a TW mod.
Yet, it seems that despite all their expertise in things regarding coding and graphics and sound, they have failed to understand some basic principles of gaming, any good game designer knows.
First, there are some things in the game which though implemented are ineffectual on account of the way they are implemented.
The prime example is the appearance of the one Ring. It always appears in towns not controlled by the player, when playing solo against the AI. It should appear in a totally random manner, regardless of who owns the town. That is just fair and fairness in any game system is the prerequisite for playability.
Second, other things, such as Arnor's restoration or the raising of troops. It makes no sense and defeats playability's fairness if the AI can do things the human play cannot, like restore Arnor with Annumias has only 4.5 K people instead of 25k...or raise 18 troops in an instant, when the buildings in the city only allow 2 or 3 a turn. That makes it hard to judge how to take a city, when the AI can invent as many troops as it wants.
On one occasion I saw Gondor, having lost all its provinces except Dol Amroth to Pelagir, acquire 20000 gold and raise 3 armies of 20 units instantly, a thing that any human run faction would take decades to achieve within the system rules, not to mention it being economically impossible on the basis of the buildings' capacities for Gondor.
This, excuse my frankness, points to a lack of proper game design follow up, after play testing. Perhaps that is why it remained only a mod. But unless it is addressed, it speaks badly of the ability of all those involved in the decisions not do solve it or address it.
Other issues are general reality based incongruencies, like ships not being able to move as much in the game in proportion to land troops, as ships can in the real world. I doubt the winds in Middle Earth are any slower than on Earth. Also, ships dont take money to maintain when at sea, as is obvious, that once they leave port they dont have to stop and by supplies from the fish or dolphins. They only need repairs and maintenance when they return. Nor do ship crews take up the size of supply needs a military land units. For these reasons, generally in TW, the ships have not as much effect as in real war, and an improper balance with land units in war. This could be addressed by the costs for ships, lowing maintenance per turn, and increasing costs to construct.
You are exactly right, but this lack of proper game design is not the fault of King Kong or any of the TATW modders. Rather, the MedII TW engine has a lot of limitations (that modding teams may not mess around with). About the ring script, there probably is no other option that to make it appear in enemy cities only, especially since the AI cannot carry the ring back to Mordor or destroy it and if it could, the AI is way too dumb to actually do it. The fact that we have a Ring script at all, shows the amazing abilities of the modders involved in making it.
Regarding the bonusses the AI get's: you can easily remove them in you campaign_script file and you will destroy any fun that there is to be had with this mod in the process. In other words: it will become incredibly easy. Not because of any fault or design on the part of the TATW modders, but simply because the MedII AI cannot be fixed enough (without messing with the core content, which is forbidden, as I said) to give the player a challenge without having the AI 'cheat'. There have been people who modded the battle AI, using the limited resources they can use, and they did as fantastic a job as could be expected of them. No such luck with the campaign AI, so the garrison script, money scripts and help weakened faction scripts will have to do.
The ships were probably a balancing issue mainly and a very minor one at that.
p.s. I don't know if you have played any TW game after MedII, but the AI always cheats. Not so much as in TATW, because the team wanted to give the players some sort of challenge, but they do cheat. It just shows that CA has not been able to make a fully functioning AI yet, even in the more dumbed down (forgive me using that term) games they released later.
p.p.s. I'm not on the team, just using common sense here
+1
actually, there's the memory editing project that might bring some consistent news in the world of M2 modding
edit: 2000 th!
Last edited by Flinn; January 31, 2015 at 12:20 PM.
Under the patronage of Finlander, patron of Lugotorix & Lifthrasir & joerock22 & Socrates1984 & Kilo11 & Vladyvid & Dick Cheney & phazer & Jake Armitage & webba 84 of the Imperial House of Hader
Ah yes, the memory editing project. Kind of forgot about that yesterday.
By the time such detailed things can be adressed though, we will probably all be old and grey men (and women?), but it is something to look forward to.
Congratulations with your 2000th post, by the way, my friend
Thanks Greymore for your realistic reply.
As for the ring, I think they would have done a lot better in trashing the AI script and giving it to Bilbo or Frodo in Hobbiton, as results of a mission of Gandalf going there to find Bilbo. And leaving it up to the Eriador player to make his way to Mt Doom, giving the ring bearer the ability to sneak like a spy unit in and out of cities and forts. The effort to have that, would have made the game far more worthy of a Middle Earth Third Age simulation.
Thanks to the team for a wonderful mod. I did not particularly enjoy MTWII, but this mod (TATW + MOS) is amazing, full of character and interest. Best game I have played in a long time (and a lot better than RTW2, for example).
who knows? it could be that we will read about it shortly ..
TATW has the Fellowship Campaign to simulate (as far as possible) the original plot. The Ring script is one of the most revolutionary things TATW brought in the past years, and many players miss to actually enjoy how trying to destroy or deliver the One might change completely the feeling of a campaign.
Under the patronage of Finlander, patron of Lugotorix & Lifthrasir & joerock22 & Socrates1984 & Kilo11 & Vladyvid & Dick Cheney & phazer & Jake Armitage & webba 84 of the Imperial House of Hader