Ask Your Questions Here!

[CountMRVHS]

If you hover over the relevant trait (which will be something like "Faithless", "Discourteous", "Insolent", "Dubious", "Supportive", "Dutiful", etc. - we call these "OpinionOfLiege" traits, or OoL for short), you should see a tooltip that gives some hints about how to increase your subjects' loyalty. Note that some factors are out of your control (e.g., how closely related the character is to your faction leader), but some things you can impact.

[Thangaror]

I wish to address some issues with character traits.

In general I have to say, that family members suck. Most of them are poor or inept governours/commanders, and I don't see that much improvement over time.
Weird thing, that I think already occured in the open beta, is that a FM might have some command stars in the character scroll, but when actually fighting a battle the stars are much, much less.

Also, I don't quite understand how this Acumen-thing works. It only applies if the governour actually IS in the town he is the governour of, right? Anyway, thanks to their skills, I do make more money when just putting all my characters in some stupid fort.

Agents are still the biggest problem. Rogues are utterly useless, chance to kill a mere Captain are 15%, and neither rogues nor scouts improve at all.
IMHO this is a HUGE issue. I'm aware that you didn't want to make general's as badass as they can be in vanilla, but even a bad general still has his use in battle, if only because of his bodyguard.

[Hazzard]

Handful of rambling questions really.
1) On this page, what's the difference between A New Shadow and Dominion of Men? Is one focused more on evil factions than good?
2) Do I need/should I use any of the music on the addon pages? I noticed they're nearly a decade old and have no idea if I should them.

[Thangaror]

Handful of rambling questions really.
1) On this page, what's the difference between A New Shadow and Dominion of Men? Is one focused more on evil factions than good?
2) Do I need/should I use any of the music on the addon pages? I noticed they're nearly a decade old and have no idea if I should them.

1) The New Shadow is an older built of the mod (quite a lot older), including only six (?) campaigns. Dominion of Men is the latest, and final, release.
2) Nope. AFAIK the music is now implemented in the release.

[Nelduin]

1) Short answer: many more factions, complete map of Middle-earth, custom cities, new features, new environment and such. Now that Dominion of Men is released, the New Shadow is obsolete in my opinion.
2) Nope you don't have to, the actual Dominion of Men release already include music.

[CountMRVHS]

I wish to address some issues with character traits.

In general I have to say, that family members suck. Most of them are poor or inept governours/commanders, and I don't see that much improvement over time.
Weird thing, that I think already occured in the open beta, is that a FM might have some command stars in the character scroll, but when actually fighting a battle the stars are much, much less.

Also, I don't quite understand how this Acumen-thing works. It only applies if the governour actually IS in the town he is the governour of, right? Anyway, thanks to their skills, I do make more money when just putting all my characters in some stupid fort.

Agents are still the biggest problem. Rogues are utterly useless, chance to kill a mere Captain are 15%, and neither rogues nor scouts improve at all.
IMHO this is a HUGE issue. I'm aware that you didn't want to make general's as badass as they can be in vanilla, but even a bad general still has his use in battle, if only because of his bodyguard.

Fair points Thangaror - please note we do have a feedback thread specifically for this sort of thing!

I'm curious in which faction/s you're observing the poor FMs. My recent Rhovanion campaign saw some Inept/Poor governors/commanders; Inept/Poor was probably the most common competency level I saw in that campaign, but there were some FMs who had quite good skills in that regard. On the other hand, as the Elves you'll see much better FMs all around.

"Improvement over time" is somewhat a function of a character's Intelligence, so an Unintelligent character may not improve as quickly or as much as an Intelligent one. I also think governing skill is easier to improve than commander skill. A Poor Governor, given time governing a settlement, may get up to Competent, Adept, or higher. But command skill seems to take a lot longer. That said, I have seen an FM go from Inept or Poor to Expert Commander.

Command stars on the character scroll are different than command stars on the prebattle scroll. On the character scroll, Command just shows the likelihood that a given character will take precedence over another FM if they are both present in the same stack. That's why FLs and heirs have a lot of Command stars in the campaign. The prebattle scroll shows actual Command. (This is all explained in the Command tooltip in-game, btw) However, I will say that there are times I'm not sure whether Command stars are computing correctly in that manner - i.e., an Expert Commander ought to have a certain number of stars, but he has 0 or 1 on the prebattle scroll. (Perhaps related is the ability to fight battles at night - I'm not sure how that ability gets assigned.)

Acumen works similar to Command in that what you see on the campaign map is not always what you will get. Acumen only gets displayed if the character is actually governing a settlement. (Again, explained in the tooltip) Initially yes, you may make more money taking FMs out of settlements. But if you do that, they'll never get better at governing. Also, some poor/inept governors have other traits that may still make them useful as governors, whether by decreasing construction/recruitment costs or offsetting their negative skill by virtue of their heritage or other abilities.

I agree that agents are a problem. I wouldn't mind seeing agents' abilities buffed across the board, while preserving the advantage for Haradrim and Elves.

[Apani]

The estimated difficulties for factions are all either "Decidedly Tookish" or "Laughing at Live Dragons". Isn't there anybody you think would fit better under "Home in Time for Tea" or "Bullroaring"?

[Thangaror]

None is "Home in time for tea", but I'm pretty sure there are one or two that ar Bullroaring (Rhûn maybe?).

[webba84]

Rohan, Dale and Harad would all come under "Home in time for tea" imo.

BTW Thangaror, you need to let Governors get the lordship ancillary, and spend some time in their settlement before they get the "attuned governor" trait, which comes with a host of bonuses. If you aren't waiting for that to happen, it would explain why all of them seem rubbish at it. Also, yes, acumen only applies while in a settlement.

[CountMRVHS]

Those estimated difficulties could perhaps be revised. That said, I'm not sure if any factions would genuinely count as "Home in Time for Tea".

[Beorn]

I would count Dorwinion and Beornings as Bullroaring instead of LaLD, agree withDale's assesment too

[athanaric]

None is "Home in time for tea", but I'm pretty sure there are one or two that ar Bullroaring (Rhûn maybe?).

Rhûn definitely (by default, given its open location, but also in gameplay terms). I've suggested changing the description at least twice IIRC, after multiple attempts at playing Rhûn during the latest closed beta as well as the open beta.
I think Harad has the easiest campaign, all things considered.

[CountMRVHS]

That is an interesting question - which (Mannish) faction is the easiest? We've often discussed which ones we think are the hardest. (Excluding Elves & Dwarves here - they're just in a different league)

Of the ones I've played recently, Dale seems the easiest to me. Defensible position, lots of wealth, and a reliable ally and trade partner in the Dwarves.

It's been a few months since I've tried Rohan or Harad, but they seemed to pose their own challenges. Harad tends to fight on multiple fronts, and its eastern border never really feels secure IME. Rohan seems difficult because its primary early opponent, Dunland, is Ways of Darkness, which tends to slow down the conquest, and you also have to worry about Adunabar to the east.

Is Rhun currently classified as Bullroaring? I played them pretty recently (after we buffed Adunabar), and those early years were a challenge. You do have the wherewithal to strike out in many directions, though, once you get that sorted out, and your early neighbors are Ways of Darkness like you.

[webba84]

Rohan I would rate as one of the easiest for two main reasons - rich homelands and a very strong roster. Just a little economic development of your existing provinces will gain you more than enough income, and you can field quite cheap full cavalry armies that will devastate pretty much any mannish faction with ease.

Also, while the central location might seem exposes actually Rohan is very well protected by natural chokepoints. If you take everything south of and including the fort at Isenguard early (not very hard, even the conversion to WotW) then you have hemmed Dunland in and stunted their growth irrevocably, they will be easy to deal with at your leisure. On the other side you can take Calenard from Adunabar and have a very defensible (and wealthy city) from which you can ride to the aid of Gondor. After that the only other frontier is the ford north of Lathron and given how frequently Mid-deeping changes hands you will have plenty of time to prepare a suitable welcome party for whomever eventually comes over the river.

[SnuggleBunnies]

I did get crushed the one time I attempted Rhun. Dale is pretty easy. My only other campaign that I've tried in the full release is RK, which is going pretty well in the early stages. Minas Ithil and Ithilien are under my control, and I've destroyed 2 Adun stacks in Eriador. It's too soon to really see how challenging it is though.

[Nelduin]

I have one question regarding one of features.

Similarly to the subculture system, each faction also has a number of major and minor subfactions (houses/tribes) within it. Those are rarely associated with specific characteristics, but the subfaction a character belongs to plays an important role when it comes to prestige, loyalty, rebellions and succession. Characters born into the faction inherit their fathers' subfaction, while characters adopted/married into the family are assigned to one randomly depending on their subculture, though such characters usually belong to minor, unnamed subfactions. Additionally, children of adopted characters can also inherit the subfaction of their father's benefactor

Is there a way to do that manually? Or all of this is random?

[CountMRVHS]

You can't choose to have an adoptee become a member of a particular subfaction, if that's what you mean - it's all uncontrollable by the player.

[Nelduin]

Yes I know, but will the adopted family member get automatically his father's House, or is this random?

[webba84]

My understanding is that there is a high chance they will, but its not guaranteed.

[athanaric]

Is there a list of which minor faction can use which development building (assuming that the feature was implemented)? I can't find anything in the EDB.
I'm specifically interested in Tharbad's options.