Impressions and Suggestions

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

Just a quick note, but something interesting, but when I attacked Mordor (Eriador), the ground is all this dark black stuff, and it seems like everyone gets tired much faster. (Well, my guys do at any rate) It's a nice feature, if it's not just a bug. I do wonder though; does it affect only my guys, or the orcs as well. The bad guys having a "home terrain" advantage like that would be pretty neat.

[Dwarven Berserker]

Just a quick note, but something interesting, but when I attacked Mordor (Eriador), the ground is all this dark black stuff, and it seems like everyone gets tired much faster. (Well, my guys do at any rate) It's a nice feature, if it's not just a bug. I do wonder though; does it affect only my guys, or the orcs as well. The bad guys having a "home terrain" advantage like that would be pretty neat.

This works just the same as in vanilla, actually. In vanilla, when units are fighting in deserst they lose stamina more quickly then on other terrain. In TATW the "black land", which Mordor is made of, is game-technically a desert

I also thought units with a lot of armour are much more heavily affected by fighting in a desert then units with only light/no armor. But nevertheless, both gondorians and orcs are affected by this.

[-Cygnus-]

hey, never think about that, did the orcs get some kind of stamina bonus when they fight in their wastelands??

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

Not that I know of.

On the other hand, I've always thought that to be more in line with the lore, all those orc units that have morale bonuses should have them swapped out for stamina bonuses in general; remember when Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli ran so fast that Eomer was amazed they made it so quickly? Every single one of several hundred orcs were keeping the same pace.

[RuleBritannia]

First time since 2.x that I played this, played a custom battle and couldn't help but to love the feel of sending orc hordes rushing at a last line of Dale defenses, or seeing Elven arches fighting then sadly getting overrun by orcs, only to have Swan Knights cut through hordes of goblins in the next battle. I love this mod.

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

This is really more of a second impression, coming from my victory as Gondor.



1) I want to retract my earlier statement about it being too hard to get routs as opposed to total kill fests. I was able to get some pretty huge routs as Gondor, especially against the Mordor orcs. I think it was just I got a bit overused to the Eriador infantry of puniness, which didn't let me fix them long enough to get those cavalry charges in the rear.

2) Actaully, those gondor militia are AWESOME. They can crush a southern warband, and even take the level 2 haradrim spearman unit. (I never remember which one is the southern warband and which one is the haradrim warband)

3) Early on though, you're in a bit of a tight strategic position. The key, I've found, is to separate Mordor and Harad; you really want to specialize your armies against each. Harad you need heavy inf and heavy cav, whereas Mordor you need a ton of bowmen and a loose cavalry web to keep them from just oozing up to you.

4) But around turn 12, I wanted to really hit Harad, and I ran into a bit of a problem. Even if I could beat them in the field, attacking Harad is like attacking Russia; the place is HUGE, and the more you spread yourself thin in occupation, the more you set yourself up for a counterattack, and I didn't really have the resources to really run them through.

So my original plan was really to keep them off balance until I had secured my borders with Mordor. (Taking Minas Ithil, defending that ford in North Ithilien), by having Imrahil with a very large stack just run around in Harad, besieging towns, and when I took them, sack, destroy all the buildings, and hare off. I did get a bit lucky in that I was able to get Umbar by smashing a stack that strayed too close to the city, but once I did that, the entire western coast was basically paralyzed. The areas would revert to Haradrim control, but without troop buildings, he couldn't hold them, and I eventually broke off my more damaged units (usually they'd
be gondor militia with only like 30 men left) to just hang by the city and sack it again.

I said earlier, this was primarily to raise money and keep Harad off balance, but by about turn 50 or so, I realized I had those teeny garrisons next to a whole ton of cities, and when I shipped in my next wave of reinforcements, I just took (and this time held)
Has Yayb, Kas Shafra, Umbar, Vatavea, Gobel Ancalimon, Amrun, and Hyarmen........ And that was pretty much the end of Harad.


Now, just to qualify, I did have to resort to using bodyguard units as the main strike force, depending on the turn ranging from 1/3 to 1/2 the unit cards, (I'm not so good yet that I can afford to give them up ) but still, it's a brutally effective tactic.

5) Mordor went down pretty easy, especially since I had used all this time to take small forces and starve out Annulond, Gobel Tolfalas, Cair Andros, and Henneth Annun. (Why does Mordor always get to HA before I do? ) and enough money to build up the archery ranges there. Ithilien rangers are amazing.

I took Minas Morgul, and stuffed a huge garrison into it. Then Mordor and I played a little game. I stormed Cirith Ungol, and then abandoned it, putting my stack back in Minas Ithil. He'd march out to re-take it, usually with a force of 1500-2000. (What's the scale supposed to be on these orc units anyway?) I'd then re-besiege it with a force of archers and cavalry, usually one designed for him to sortie out the next turn, and then I'd slaughter them. I didn't really want the settlement, just to keep killing his troops in manageable numbers. We must have done this dance at least a dozen times, I kind of lost track after a while.

Once I got back from Harad (polishing off their last areas in the mainland, but they held Erelond forever before I could get around to stomping it. That "dying faction" script meant they had these two absurdly large stacks on the island that they couldn't get to leave ) I pushed into Mordor. They're not really that strong.

Troll catapults however, are annoying as all hell. ARTILLERY IS SUPPOSED TO GET WEAKER IF YOU RUSH THEM, NOT STRONGER . And I had an enormous amount of trouble getting the Pelargir Marines to fire at trolls in general But I soldiered on, and wound up smashing Mordor before mopping up his stuff in Southern Mirkwood for the victory.


Minor shame though; when I went to assault the Black Gate, I did so from the south, I was really hoping that I'd get to attack it from the "soft" side and just walk up to the square. No such luck.



?) As a final note, two things. Firstly, Minas Tirith makes a truly absurd amount of money if you build it up I *still* haven't made all the economic buildings, and we're pushing 3500 gold a turn income from there. Secondly, it takes forever to upgrade Osgiliath. The populations are so low But who knew you could make so much money exporting goods there. I imagine the construction industry is booming

Hoping someone finds all this junk useful,
Corgatha Taldorthar.

[Macilrille]

Upgraded from 2.1 + MOS to 3.1 + B.Samedi's mods yesterday (I will exchange BS' mods with MOS when MOS goes from Beta).

First impression is that it is an improvement; thanks KK + crew. I especially like the new quotes, thank you for ditching the film ones and going lore-ish I also like the new province allocation better.

There seems to still be a problem with the economies. Perpetually in deficit till you conquer the world is not much to my liking. I prefer to start in deficit then conquer some to get a decent economy running or disband armies to get it working. But that seems to not be possible. Nor is the tactic of turtling that most factions followed in the books. Basically you have to conquer or go bust. That is not really "historical"/lore.

Gondor's council asked me to take the Druedain Village as their first request. That settlement should probably be left alone, it seems it ever was.
Edit, according to UT "The Tale of Cirion and Eorl" that region is part of Rohan in any case.

General impression is that the game has improved in the upgrade. I am well-pleased.

[Alien Eel]

Hmmm... First impressions about this mod. Started my campaign as Rhûn, no idea why because Isengard and Dwarves were more intresting. Propably I wanted easier campaign. Currently reaching turn 40 soon. Must say that even on M/M this mod is HARD. I'm at war with Dale and dwarves, and starting to counter attack Dale now. I was lucky when Mordor came to help me against Dale, they took one place and some troops out from Dale. But mod itself looks awesome, worth loading.

[HornburgKeeper]

best game ever..

[KiKiweaky]

Been playing for about 2 days now and I have to say I'm really impressed guys, thank you so much for all your hard work

[ElvenKind]

Great game, great mods, greatest battles.. Love it!!!

[Da_Junka]

This mod should be a game in it's own right, and not have to rely on the crappy total war engine.
As someone has already said, this is the best game in the total war series, and puts CA to shame.

My thanks to Kong and the TA team, you have done wonders.

[Avelon]

Clearly the best lotr game ever made ...

[Raffi]

i just finished the rohan campaign, a campaign that nearly ruined my life. its just that good. classes, work, even my girlfriend all where second to finishing just one more turn of my fledgling rohirim empire.
i truly cant beileve that such a good game had veen made by volunteers and not by a proffesional company.
this is a mod that can stand proud alongside DOTA in the hall of fame of all mods.

Being a grizzled vet of shogun 1, medieval 1 rome (vanilla and RTR) and medieval 2 and always preferring vh/vh here are some of my impressions i wish to share about this terrific mod.

1. the diffuculty of the campagin is staggering (witch is a good thing) offering a true challenge even to expert players i can truly say that for me this was realy the ultimate total war experience.
2. excellent art: almost every unit feels like it has been taken from the LOTR movie or at least from one of the many books. even the land itself looks and feels like middle earth.
3. the evil factions/Saourun and invasion system realy gives you the vibe of fighting against a seamingly endless onslought of ruthless enemies just like in the books or movies.
4. excellent lore. it is clear that the creaters did there homework about the lore of middle earth be it in unit decription or in the lorebooks in every settlement.
5. many other things make this game awesome such as the cool sentences in the loading screen (that seem to be diffrent every time not like in the vanilla), the unit balance, the unique strategy tactic and unit composition of every faction, ther feriocoty of the trolls, the allies that dont seem to betray you for no reason whatsoever (as in the vannila), or the recruitmet system that forces you to constantly shift forces from your production centers and worry about supply lines.

though this truly is a awesome game there are some (comparatively minor) things i had a bit problem with.
1. units fight almost to the last man and almost never rout unless the general is destroyed. though making the game more challenging, i feel it would be better and closer to the sources if not all the units had such high moral.
2. apparently Sauron continues to call invasions even after he is destroyed with the destruction of the one ring.
3. exterminating orcs gives you a bad rep.

anyway very good job dudes.

[Top_Kaiser]

Minas Tirith alone is enough to get me to play this Mod. Its great to see so much work put into the white city. Its a bloody great Mod.

[Gondolin]

It's been 1 year I played Third Age, ans it's by far my prefer game, thank you all of you ♥.♥

[Ngugi]

5. many other things make this game awesome such as the cool sentences in the loading screen (that seem to be diffrent every time not like in the vanilla)

Thanks ^^
Can suggest you update it to get rid of some flaws and get a bunch more quotes, link in my signature

[Rex Anglorvm]

I downloaded the mod about a week ago, I've been an SS fan for ages, and EB for RTW.

But I have to say, this is great, I've been Arnor and Gondor so far and loved every minute of it.

I'm normally a fanboy of the historical mods, so this had to be something special to win me over.

Its won me over

[smoesville]

One of the nice things is that Tolkien wrote a fairly comprehensive history so the world does feel like a real world. Try reading some of the books if you haven't already, imo it enriches your campaigns and for me makes it a more engaging game Also some of the submods like Baron Samedis or MOS are a great addition to gameplay.

[Rex Anglorvm]

One of the nice things is that Tolkien wrote a fairly comprehensive history so the world does feel like a real world. Try reading some of the books if you haven't already, imo it enriches your campaigns and for me makes it a more engaging game Also some of the submods like Baron Samedis or MOS are a great addition to gameplay.

I've read all the rings trilogy and the hobbit, albeit a long time ago, and yes it does help you feel more engaged with the gameplay.