Campaign rebalance for v2.1

[Bardo]

We have not made new previews because we have already shown most of the visual stuff: the new cities, the new environments, and the new units, in several topics, we just keep working to debug it all... with some rest from time to time

Since the previous beta, the main changes from my side have been some adjustments to campaign that were planned for long time:

- Diplomats recruitable for human players
- Updated trade system with resources relocated to fit the lotr lore
- Readjusted Population growth to be higher at native regions
- Rebalanced the bonuses given by buildings
- Redesigned the Areas of Recruitment of most units
- Added extra military buildings to get weapon and armor upgrades

The gameplay is going to be similar to previous versions, and similar to RTW, do not expect a new strategic game, this mod is focused on battles more than city managment, and always will. I just hope that the new campaign feels more balanced when it comes to compare the construction costs, times and bonuses of different buildings, the type of income earned by each city, the population growth and income at native or non-native regions, the units and buildings available at foreign regions...

Areas of Recruitment

The Areas of Recruitment have been extended. Each region contains one of these hidden resources: elves (Woods), dwarves/goblins (Mountains), orcs (Mordor), men (the rest of regions).

- Easterlings and Harads: they can recruit militia units every where (even Mordor, Mountains and Woods); they need the resource "men" to build their core units; they need native regions for special units (stalkers, red dragons...).
- Dale, Rohan: they need the resource "men" to build their units; they need native regions for special units (knights, bardian archers...). They can recruit militia units from each other (for example, Dale can recruit rohan militia in rohan regions).
- Gondor is the more complex system, that varies from region to region. They basically can recruit the units at lower city levels at "gondor" regions, the same units at higher levels in other "men" regions, and only militia at the rest of regions (mountains, woods, mordor).
- Dwarves: they can recruit dwarven core units only at native regions; they can recruit only Hireling mercenaries at regions with "men" resource. They can recruit light dwarven units at rest of regions (miners, axemen, hurlers). It is the only faction that can not upgrade the gobernor building (nor grow the city level) at non native regions.
- Elves: they can recruit the light/generic units (archers, spears, swordmen) at any region; they need native regions to recruit heavy units (sentinels, cavalry...). The pop growth is lower than the rest of factions and so it is hard to recruit out of the initial regions.
- Mordor/Isengard: they can recruit most units everywhere, except wargs, cavalry and trolls. Similar to previous versions.
- Goblins/Dunland: they can recruit light units every where; They need enemy forges to recruit their heavy units.

Popultion Growth

The main change is that every conquered settlement will be automatically reduced to the minimum 400, for every faction. The population will represent the people of your same race, i.e. if the elves conquer Dol Guldur it will appear with pop 400, so the elves can not recruit units there until they let it grow. The Pop growth represents the migration to the new city, and it is faster in native regions, while it is slower for races like elves and dwarves.

The base farm level of each region and the pop growth bonuses have been designed so the population growth is always a bit faster at initial regions. And a bit slower at large cities.
In this mod, most cities will stop growing around pop 20.000, less for dwarves and elves, so squalor should not be a big issue. The "Huge city" level is reserved for unique cities, and it is not really important to reach "Large city" size because most buildings are available at "City level".

Men can build Farms to grow faster, while orcs can build Orc-Pits to increase the pop growth, or Slavery if there are farms already built. Mainly important in order to grow Towns (pop 400) to Large Towns (pop 2000), where you can recruit most of the available units.
Some mods use special buildings with long construction times to represent the "romanization" of a new region, we simply use the population system.

Income and Costs

The overal income is similar for every faction, but the exact source is a bit different. It is the cost and upkeep of the units that makes the difference:
- Men earn a lot of money from Farms and Trade, as well as Taxes. But units are the most expensive in cost (x1 to x3/2) and they need at least 2 turns to be recruited.
- Evil men start with less or worse regions (low base farm), and their units are also expensive (x1 to x4/3), but faster to recruit.
- Dwarves earn more money from Mines and less from population (Taxes). The units are expensive in time, but cheap in upkeep (x2/3). It is the population that limits the recruitment the most.
- Orcs hardly earn from Trade or Farming (only if slavery developed). The main income comes from Taxes... the more orcs in the cities, the more money available. They can recruit most units in 1 turn and with low upkeep costs (x1/2)

In the long run, the evil factions use to overun the good factions because of the low recruitment times and unit costs, while good factions should try to take advantage of their better units, and high income at developed cities.

[Agent007]

Good, for my part I like these ideas.

[ExtremeBG]

So if the AI takes over a settlement it will also be reduced to 400 population ?And,for example, if one of your cities rebels,when you take it over it will be with 400 population again?

[Hopit]

So if the AI takes over a settlement it will also be reduced to 400 population ?And,for example, if one of your cities rebels,when you take it over it will be with 400 population again?

I think it's only when a different culture has owned it ( I think)

[Bardo]

So if the AI takes over a settlement it will also be reduced to 400 population ?And,for example, if one of your cities rebels,when you take it over it will be with 400 population again?

Emmm... I admit I didn't take into account the recapture of rebel cities. I'll see if we can keep the population in this case.
When the IA conquers new cities, the pop do is reduced. But AI do not use to conquer many cities compared to the human player. This rule mainly makes it harder for the human player.

Income from taxes in a city with pop 4000 is aproximately the double than the taxes in a city with 400, so this rule doesn't affect the income too much. The main effect of this rule is to limit the recruitment of unis out of your initial regions. In this new version you can recruit/retrain your core units in conquered settlements, but you are sort of people to recruit until you let grow the settlement.