Ask Your Questions Here!

[Cinuz]

Ah, I see...would at least be possible to use one or two of their units (like one melee unit and one ranged unit) with AoR if you conquer their lands?

[Aradan]

That's the way we had it (before Shire became a faction of its own), but there are issues: what happens if you conquer one of their settlements and you're at war with them? There's a chance you'd see Hobbits vs Hobbits, which would be highly inappropriate. There is a trick to allow a Hobbit unit only if all their provinces have been taken, but certain factions (Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves) have the ability to survive without any settlements, as long as they have even a unit left, so they may be alive even without settlement; which means there's no way for us to make sure you won't see Hobbits fighting against Hobbits.

And finally, assume you have a settlement with 2000 Hobbits; that would give you the ability to recruit 1600 Hobbits, which is way more than you should, since Hobbits sent a mere 100 archers in the most important battle for the survival of Arthedain.


I'm open to ideas though.

[MasterOfNone]

CBs

[Thangaror]

I think you're right. Hobbits should only be present in the Shire faction and as rebels. On the other hand: Who would train an army of Hobbits?

RTR has found a way to limit the use of elite units like spartan hoplites or the Sacred Band by setting the recruitment time to sth lilke 40 turns.
I guess it can't be done without a script, but if the player captures the whole Shire, then a unit of Hobbits is added to his army?

But as long as there is a Battle of Greenfield I'm ok.

[Aradan]

Adding a unit through script when the settlements are taken can be done without a script, but as I said above, that doesn't mean the faction is dead. And of course a script is out of the question.

Hm, Battle of Greenfields. Can do, I suppose.

[Stark1]

I really like this feeling that Dominion of Men will come out highly polished and ready, which can't be said for most of games made by paid developers.

[TheDarkKnight]

...You do realize that every passing day without DoM feels like an eternity...Right Aradan?

[Aradan]

More so when you spend it creating the thing.

[MasterOfNone]

[luke11]

I think you're right. Hobbits should only be present in the Shire faction and as rebels. On the other hand: Who would train an army of Hobbits?

I would...

[Themea]

And of course a script is out of the question. .

This is my favorite part of the mod

[marksheen5858]

Im new to Total war so sorry I don't know this but if I download this mod( or any of the mods on the total war site), is it like a game of itself or does it turn rome, BI, or Alexander into it?

[Bull3pr00f de Bodemloze]

Welcome to TWC!

RTW's mods, with a few exceptions, are safely contained in a thing we call modfolders, which basically means it's a game on its own that requires the RTW engine to run. A bit like an oversized expansion pack, if you will.

[The_Valiant]

If you want to figure out about which games are mod-foldered or not, go here:
http://www.twcenter.net/wiki/Released_Mods

[The Sloth]

Some unrelated questions:

How will recruitment of regional units work in DOM? It seems that many areas with unique units have been given their own faction slot. So let's say, will Rhun have to conquer Khand in order to recruit their horse-archers?

Similar question: how will the economy work? With all those smaller factions, especially good-aligned factions will have less room for expansion if they don't want to kill friendly woodmen, hobbits etc. Will their starting settlements, coupled with some conquests, be enough to fund good infrastructures and armies?

How about a 'bandit' unit? It could be used to garrison some neutral settlements in Eriador and around Mirkwood. That way, if good-aligned factions take that settlement, they would 'liberate' the settlement rather than oppressing friendly woodmen, beornings etc.

Will there be brigands in DOM? The occasional marauding orc army to help governors relieve their boredom?

Have you thought of just dropping the 'stable' buildings and having mounted units recruitable in the usual barracks? That would get rid of one kind of building that suddenly grows useless after conquering a settlement.

[Aradan]

How will recruitment of regional units work in DOM? It seems that many areas with unique units have been given their own faction slot. So let's say, will Rhun have to conquer Khand in order to recruit their horse-archers?

Yes, of course, Variag soldiers won't be available outside Khand for any faction other than Khand.

Similar question: how will the economy work? With all those smaller factions, especially good-aligned factions will have less room for expansion if they don't want to kill friendly woodmen, hobbits etc. Will their starting settlements, coupled with some conquests, be enough to fund good infrastructures and armies?

Depends. As a general rule though, a faction with 5 provinces will need to expand itself if it wants to take a stand against one with 15 without being constantly on the defence. if we make factions able to sustain strog militaries with 5 provinces, what happens when the player takes another 10? The exact balance of those things will be decided during campaign balance, which I've not yet started on.

How about a 'bandit' unit? It could be used to garrison some neutral settlements in Eriador and around Mirkwood. That way, if good-aligned factions take that settlement, they would 'liberate' the settlement rather than oppressing friendly woodmen, beornings etc.

We already have region-specific units for all the parts of the map.
I don't think it's realistic to have bandits or whatever being in possession of settlements. Bandits don't really do that, they'd not live in the settlement or presume to control an entire province...
RTW is not very flexible with those things, but when (for example) as Dale you take over a rebel Woodmen province, you can think of it as annexation, rather than going in there and slaughtering everyone. And the rebels are just the portion of the locals that want their independence... We'd like to have an option of 'annexing' the province, sort of bribing, that would depend on how much the people there like you, alas...

Will there be brigands in DOM? The occasional marauding orc army to help governors relieve their boredom?

Not sure. They do offer some excitement during early campaign, but they soon become boring, at least for me; the AI also sucks at dealing with them and for that reason they often hinder its expansion. We'll have to see how that works. As for the unit type, brigands draw from a single unit pool, so we'd have to make them a unit type available throughout the map, and Orcs don't fit the bill, as they wouldn't go very far from their mountains, and certainly not in Harad and Khand.

Have you thought of just dropping the 'stable' buildings and having mounted units recruitable in the usual barracks? That would get rid of one kind of building that suddenly grows useless after conquering a settlement.

What do you mean grows useless? The fact that you can't use another faction's stables? Anyway, no, we haven't. Recruiting and upgrading armies is a large part of RTW's mechanics and having just 1 recruitment-related building tree would be disproportionate to the significance of the mechanic, I think. If there were more complex ways to simulate the reality behind conquering a province, culturally annexing it, getting the supplies required for training certain units etc, then we'd probably do recruitment in a single bldg-tree, but since RTW doesn't support those things, we'll have to create a layer of complexity this way. I hope that makes sense...

[The Sloth]

Depends. As a general rule though, a faction with 5 provinces will need to expand itself if it wants to take a stand against one with 15 without being constantly on the defence. if we make factions able to sustain strog militaries with 5 provinces, what happens when the player takes another 10? The exact balance of those things will be decided during campaign balance, which I've not yet started on.

Basicaly, I was refering to the two main ways of income devellopment. In vanilla and most mods, you start poor and get increasingly wealthy as you conquer. Then, there are mods where most of your income comes from your homeland settlements. You start the game rolling in cash, and only start getting money problems once you go make an empire.

We already have region-specific units for all the parts of the map.
I don't think it's realistic to have bandits or whatever being in possession of settlements. Bandits don't really do that, they'd not live in the settlement or presume to control an entire province...
RTW is not very flexible with those things, but when (for example) as Dale you take over a rebel Woodmen province, you can think of it as annexation, rather than going in there and slaughtering everyone. And the rebels are just the portion of the locals that want their independence... We'd like to have an option of 'annexing' the province, sort of bribing, that would depend on how much the people there like you, alas...

I was thinking of Saruman and his thugs occupying the Shire. Something like that. In my eyes at least, it seems better than Dale or, even worse, elves, suddenly annexing people they have been on good terms with for ages. It's like RK going to war with Rohan, which you said won't happen in DOM anymore. Bandits just happened to be the 'best' way around this I could think of.

Not sure. They do offer some excitement during early campaign, but they soon become boring, at least for me; the AI also sucks at dealing with them and for that reason they often hinder its expansion. We'll have to see how that works. As for the unit type, brigands draw from a single unit pool, so we'd have to make them a unit type available throughout the map, and Orcs don't fit the bill, as they wouldn't go very far from their mountains, and certainly not in Harad and Khand.

Well, if they don't make it into the final release, I won't cry over it. But I know that even in vanilla, barbarian brigands only popped up in barbarian lands, eastern brigands in eastern lands, etc. So there has to be a way to limit the availability of a given type of brigand. Not that I'd know how it works.

[Stark1]

In Europa Barbarorum they also spawn according to region.

I hate them, killing them when you have a large empire feels like a chore. I usually just use FM's and cheats to take them out.

[Aradan]

Is it going to have all the kingdoms? or just the ones seen on the big screen?
"En umbris potestas est."

Not sure which big screen that is, but yes, DoM will have all the factions.

Basicaly, I was refering to the two main ways of income devellopment. In vanilla and most mods, you start poor and get increasingly wealthy as you conquer. Then, there are mods where most of your income comes from your homeland settlements. You start the game rolling in cash, and only start getting money problems once you go make an empire.

Ah, I see. Well, we do have a system in place where the more you conquer, the less profitable each province is, with homelands contributing more towards your economy, fiefdoms less and outlands even less, so I guess we fall into category #2. But the plan is to also make the initial game challenging, so you won't be swimming in cash when the campaign starts. The ideal for me would be for players to need 5-10 turns of development and solidifying their position/defending before even starting to expand and then they'd be ale to slowly expand until the have 20-25 provinces, at which point things would begin to stall and conquest rate would drop.

I was thinking of Saruman and his thugs occupying the Shire. Something like that. In my eyes at least, it seems better than Dale or, even worse, elves, suddenly annexing people they have been on good terms with for ages. It's like RK going to war with Rohan, which you said won't happen in DOM anymore. Bandits just happened to be the 'best' way around this I could think of.

Well, Men don't need much excuse to fight each other, especially during this "age of Men", when the big common enemy is gone and everyone starts expanding. As for Elves, it's not them that are doing the expanding/annexing, it's supposed to be the Elvellyn doing it "in the name of Elves", sort of. And since Elves as AI are passive, the player can decide whom to attack when controlling them and justify it however one wants.
I do understand what you're saying, and things aren't ideal, but having bandits ruling large portions of Middle-earth isn't either. Saruman and Shire was an exception in many ways.

Well, if they don't make it into the final release, I won't cry over it. But I know that even in vanilla, barbarian brigands only popped up in barbarian lands, eastern brigands in eastern lands, etc. So there has to be a way to limit the availability of a given type of brigand. Not that I'd know how it works.

In Europa Barbarorum they also spawn according to region.

I hate them, killing them when you have a large empire feels like a chore. I usually just use FM's and cheats to take them out.

My bad; there "brigand" rebel faction is non-region-specific, so the rebels popping up during campaign must also draw from the local rebel factions. That's solved then. The boredom and AI-messing issues remain though, we'll have to test to see if we can solve those. Or find other ways to make the game interesting for the player within the kingdom.

[The Sloth]

That's that, then. But in the meanwhile, I've come up with some more questions...

With all those mini-factions, will each of them have it's own barracks, stables and monuments? Because is that is so, contested settlements will rapidly run out of visible building slots.

Also, I might have some free time coming up, and could write some new building descriptions. Buildings being more ore less finalised in DOM, I was thinking about rewriting existing ones. The barracks, for instance. Would that be helpful, or any other buildings?