Third Age Total War "agony" page!

[BlackViper]

Playing a 1 hour battle and find out my computer doesn't like me anymore and turns off without warning. Then the next day when you finnaly took the time again to win the battle you lose because your general was stupid enough to run into stakes.(I didn't see it coming yes...) After that I tried again, battle loading just fine I start and see that my general is stuck inside a ing tree

[Pleiades]

Most agonizing moments? Plenty of them! I will need about 100 pages of this thread for my novel...

Let's start...

-After 150 turns and 250 battles, my Witch King with 10 stars in every category is dead because he killed himself chasing fleeing enemies and hitting my own stakes which my own archers put before battle. Of course, I do not reload game when I am not satisfied with battle results.

-When one faction is supposed to be dominant according to lore and then some surprising allied faction is much more dominant on campaign map and it's only turn 70. I mean, where are Dwarves and Dale in eastern half of map? Rhun (30 territories) killed them all and already is finishing off S Elves, while Mordor is still east of E Osgiliath with his initial 10 territories. I mean who is The Boss?

-When I discovered that I have over 420 battles and of those 420 battles 200 to 250 battles I played manually and there is still 50 more turns until the end of campaign and I am far from fulfilling victory conditions. And I realized that I could play 2 or 3 full vanilla MTW2 campaigns or find girl of my life or meet some new alien race or live long enough to have grandchildren instead to have unfinished campaign with 420 battles.

-When I discovered that Sauron is Honest in almost every campaign. I mean, sure he is. After all - being Evil is point of view, right? He is not Evil in his own eyes. All others are evil - in his own eyes.

-When large and powerful factions are destroyed by some stupid assassins who killed their last family members. And what assassins are doing in TATW anyway?

-When after 1 hour of epic and carefully played and strategically extremely important battle I have CTD just before end of that battle.

-When after 100 turns Aragorn is Mean or Malevolent Leader and Witch King is Chivalrous or Honorable. I really hate this kind of things when I see them on the map.

Oh, it seems my time is up, so I will continue to share with you my novel of agonizing moments some other time.

[the cooliest]

My agonizing moment, a heroic defence of Edoras against invasion stacks of Rhun, Isengard, Harad and Mordor (all allied) for a long time then find a tiny group of looters sitting in my town square after my cavalry road out and killed the routing enemy, then have my cav within feet of the square when time runs out. Took it back of course but only afetr all my soldiers and citizens were butchered.

[Shocked]

Mine was in my dwarven campaign, I had spent lots of resources in getting to Moria to recruit the Khazad Dum unit, when I finally arrive I sack the settlement the all of the unique buildings are destroyed. I facepalmed hard.

[jbutton]

Having an army of 500 Orc's vs 75 Rohan Cavalry, only fighting to kill their general. My army was led by the Faction heir and led the charge, the Rohan's began to flee but turned and charged my army killing my Heir :'( luckily we fought on and I new general has emerged who has been menacing the Rohan army, so it's not all bad

[3MKA]

Mumakil and siege units give me the most agony in this game over anything else. Mumakil, when fighting against them and siege engines both when fighting against an army with them and also when using them.

Siege engines usually require prayer and blood offerings to the random number god to get them to even hit the target. Occasionally they can get really screwed up by the terrain and the AI doesn't seem to have these limitations. (They might though I've seen the siege engine dance a few times when the AI uses them.) If and when they work properly then its a beautiful thing.

Mumakil usually require siege engines for them to be taken down effectively (javelins too but not all factions have them.) . If the random number god favors you then it'll probably happen as soon as they're in range, if not there is a chance that the mumakil crew can cut your engine crew to pieces with arrow fire. If you do manage to hit them they run amok at which point they are still a danger to you but also to your enemies too at least. Again this is up to the random number god to decide who is more on the recieving end of mumakil stomping.

You also have to kill every single last one of the mumakils otherwise on the next battle they will still have the same number of mumakil but with a reduced crew, (at least it can't shoot at you as much). This also makes them a bit more difficult to panic this time around because of the reduced crew.

This being said at least it keeps some challenge to fighting harad.

[Space Voyager]

Mumakil...

My most agonizing moment was sieging a city with 5 mumakil units for 9 turns just to deplete the damn beasts, than they sally with all beasts alive'n'kicking, my siege eq. not doing a damn and mumakil mince my whole army. That was pretty agonizing.

[monkey_jord]

Most annoying thing ever is when you attack a city that has 1 unit in it, then suddenly the population turn into like 15 enemy units... And as if that wasnt bad enouth, theres suddenly no-one in there so you cant get any money from sacking... =(

This has happened a few times, in a battle that seems i have a fair chance in, i will start winning. Every time im sure i keep a close eye on my flanks, but suddenly BOOM. Magicaly appearing cavalry slam into the side of my formations. WTF?

Having a city with a rather small garrison get seiged by a middleished size army which you think you can beat. Then to have another middleished sized enemy army appear close by. \but then to see a huge enemy army also appear and seem to be on the march to it. There is only one response for times like these..... "hmm.....no..... *quit game**single player**New campaign*"

[Harabec]

Use spies?
Never had enemy units pop out of nowhere and since they don't, you aren't watching the battle closely enough.
Not all settlements get the garrison script, and there are guides on how to remove it.

[loony]

every battle that is easily won if not on autoresolve and absolutely meaningless campaignwise...

[muller227]

Mumakil and siege units give me the most agony in this game over anything else. Mumakil, when fighting against them and siege engines both when fighting against an army with them and also when using them.

Siege engines usually require prayer and blood offerings to the random number god to get them to even hit the target. Occasionally they can get really screwed up by the terrain and the AI doesn't seem to have these limitations. (They might though I've seen the siege engine dance a few times when the AI uses them.) If and when they work properly then its a beautiful thing.

Mumakil usually require siege engines for them to be taken down effectively (javelins too but not all factions have them.) . If the random number god favors you then it'll probably happen as soon as they're in range, if not there is a chance that the mumakil crew can cut your engine crew to pieces with arrow fire. If you do manage to hit them they run amok at which point they are still a danger to you but also to your enemies too at least. Again this is up to the random number god to decide who is more on the recieving end of mumakil stomping.

You also have to kill every single last one of the mumakils otherwise on the next battle they will still have the same number of mumakil but with a reduced crew, (at least it can't shoot at you as much). This also makes them a bit more difficult to panic this time around because of the reduced crew.

This being said at least it keeps some challenge to fighting harad.

Have to agree took forever to get down to help Gondor, got Minas Tirith for them everything going well see my first Harad stack with one unit of Mumak. Says afraid of fire so fire arrows it is. Well evidently its a fiery mouse on the end of the arrow thats needed because they walk right through it then open up with what has to be automatic weapons fire. OH WELL!! off to the forums.

Catapults that'll do it, two cat units two Mumak units seems simple off we go, first round 4 of my cats suffer from premature discharge and blow themselves up another inexplicable fires sideways into 8th level Eldar spearmen. entire length of their line 40% casualties. They do work but my armies seem to have a healthy fear of their own catapults. They just seem kinda slow whenever they have to go help them out. Probably not but who could blame them.

[bismarck 1899]

ok i was in battle against ocrs of gunda as the high elves. The orcs came from every direction but my archers kill like they always do but .... then dont know why they stop to follow my orders and shot at what ever they want . i had that in other battles and i REALLY HATE THAT !!! i dont know but if that happens again i will probably suffer a heart attack. has anyone ever seen that ?

[Harabec]

well last night i was playing a custom battle with headphones that wrap around your ears cause my roommate was sleeping
while playing, i spilled my cup of coffee on my leg causing me to jump up
unfortunately, the headphone wire was not long enough and early ripped my ears off
as i yelled in agony, my roommate wakes up and tells me to shut the up as he's trying to sleep

[cezarip]

ok i was in battle against ocrs of gunda as the high elves. The orcs came from every direction but my archers kill like they always do but .... then dont know why they stop to follow my orders and shot at what ever they want . i had that in other battles and i REALLY HATE THAT !!! i dont know but if that happens again i will probably suffer a heart attack. has anyone ever seen that ?

Yeah. Did you group them and give the order to the entire group? It does not work, you have to tell each individual unit where to shoot.

[Harbringe]

Defending a bridge as HE against 2 1/2 full stack Mordor Armies ,holding back my calvary and leaders to do last line of defence charge ,but whats this Gondor is coming to my aid with a full stack army ,ooh may not be good got 2 trebuchets ,oh well hold the line til they get here.Wait wait and wait some more what is up with them what is taking them so long ,don't they see my lines are about to fail ,can't wait any longer charge goes my leaders and calvary ,huh fireballs coming in ,whump whump whump all my leaders and over half my remaining forces turned to ashes and its then Gondor charges in with its forces claiming all the glory ,bastards

[bismarck 1899]

cezarip: yeah posted it in the bug section and got the same answer. thanks anyway.
Harbringe: in my opinion catapults and trebuchets are way to powerful. i really hate them. i always sit there and pray : lord dont let this fireball hit my arrrrrrrrrrrrrrr noooooooooooooooooooooo!!! and again 20 men gone

[monkey_jord]

Never had enemy units pop out of nowhere and since they don't, you aren't watching the battle closely enough.
Not all settlements get the garrison script, and there are guides on how to remove it.

Thats what i was implying, fool.
and thankyou... i did not know that

[glassakias]

i created a thread several months ago about my greasest moment of agony, when both Imrahil and Durven, my 2 best generals in my gondor campaign, where hit by the same balista bolt, which also came from my ballista and killed them right away. another moment of despair was the slow torturing of watching Imladris being attacked by a half stack of medium OOTMM units and, thanks to the garisson scrip, getting a full elven army. then OOTMM continue sieging and ta-daa, 9 turns later Imladris is brown. yes, that foolish AI never sallied, and it's army was starved. guess who must clear up the mess; the SE (me) of course. damn!!

[Daradain]

Ah yes. Conquering both the goblin teams as Arnor, only to be assaulted by three full stacks of Isengard elite units while my armies are disorganized and retraining. Lost five territories in two turns. Pretty hard to recover from that.

Also, while playing as dwarves, finally retake Khazad-Dum and turn my attention to Mordor only to receive this: "Gondor Defeated" "Victory for Mordor" "You Lose". A good 20 hours of play time down the drain.

[enkidu]

for me its when my skirmishers, chargers and marchers all change formation to get from one place to another. When my fresh horse archers are spread out over a half mile and unable to run faster than the exhausted halberdiers in spearwall formation. When 6/150 infantrymen charge foward and the rest drink tea. When my archers claim they are firing arrows, and really aren't. When my dog slinks away with her tail between her legs because I'm yelling at virtual sfi's. I'd sacrifice my generals to the catapult gods every battle for an "act as a unit" toggle button.