Feedback: Dwarves

[caspoi]

For your infomation I have reinstalled Fourth Age Total War for the sake of the bug with the western gate. It seemed to be working: the old dwarven save still reained it but as I started a new one it was free from the problem, temporarily. During the second turn I check Dwarrowdelf and notice that it is making 6000 money less. I check the trade list and see that the place only trade with Caras Galadon.

[MasterOfNone]

I'll look at this again over several turns.

[athanaric]

Dwarven Catapults are extremely inaccurate (I can't prove it, but I think moreso than City Catapults). Maybe that has something to do with their model/skeleton/sprite/whatever it's called? I mean, if anything, their siege engines should be more accurate than anyone else's.

[CountMRVHS]

Yeah, I think MoN noticed that. It's been fixed for the next release - Dwarven artillery will be more accurate than others' (and I believe artillery in general has been made somewhat more accurate).

[nergalsmom]

There has already been a good amount of feedback in this thread, but I'm in a writing mood so here comes another load

The Campiagn
-The music rocks.
-Moving up building tiers in Moria feels like rediscovering the lost secrets of the Fathers. Awesome.
-The early game westwards crusade from Erebor to Gundabad is incredibly thematic and satisfying. "In the snowy foothills of the Grey Mountains, the dwarven expeditionary force came upon yet another abandoned fort of the great empire of their forefathers. Before they could lay siege, a great host of orcs many times their number spilled forth from their holes to do battle. Taking a defensive position on a nearby ridge, the dwarves weathered wave after wave of the filthy beasts, smiting them with hard hearts and cold steel, and threw them back down the mountainside. "Onward!" they cried, "onward to Gundabad!" Great, great stuff
-I think the population mechanic works really well. Having low population growth but not as low as the elves helps differentiate their campaigns. Having to husband your able-bodied population is immersive and challenging, and prevents you from recruiting full stacks of Longaxes or going into tax-fuelled overdrive.

The Battles
-The music! Omg the music.
-As I've come to expect from FATW, the dwarves have a very unique feel to their unit composition, strengths and weaknesses, and mechanics. And best of all, it actually feels pretty balanced. At face value, dwarven units look invincible. And they almost are, if handled correctly. You need to start thinking like a dwarf. You need to be patient and defensive, keep your units in a square and stubbornly refuse to take them out of guard mode until the enemy is utterly tired. If you get impatient and careless however, you'll find that a dwarven unit outflanked, tired and separated from it's allies will actually perish. If there is one thing FATW has always done right it is to make each faction utilise unique and interesting fighting styles, and the Dwarves IMHO, deliver fully on this point. I have an understanding and a great appreciation for all the hard balancing work that went into this, and let me say as a longtime Dwarf fan that you've done very well, indeed

One final point
-Give me four units of Dwarven Longaxes and a place to defend, and I will hold it against the Valar! Seriously, these units have been the bane of everything in my campaign so far. If it weren't for the population limits, I'd recruit nothing else and be completely OP. As it is however, they are the core unit around wich I build my armies. Anyway, that's enough rambling for now I think. I'll be back with more feedback once I've decided wich faction to try next. Cheers!

[MasterOfNone]

Thanks for the kind words. We are glad you like the Dwarves

[CountMRVHS]

Thanks, nergalsmom. Would love to see an AAR for the final release... :

[nergalsmom]

That's not a bad idea. I'm pretty surprised at myself actually how enthusiastic I am about this mod, been a long time since I felt the urge to participate in forums. So no promises, but I do love to write in the analytic/narrative style, so an AAR or a Faction Guide for the final release could well be coming

[Feanaro Curufinwe]

Speaking of that, have there been any Let's Plays of the mod you've found and enjoyed?

[CountMRVHS]

That's not a bad idea. I'm pretty surprised at myself actually how enthusiastic I am about this mod, been a long time since I felt the urge to participate in forums. So no promises, but I do love to write in the analytic/narrative style, so an AAR or a Faction Guide for the final release could well be coming

That would be excellent!

Feanaro, I haven't seen a lot of LPs yet. There's the Wise Coffin's, and one other I found which is in a language I am unfamiliar with.

That could be a good thing, though, in a way... don't want too many LPs/AARs based on the beta version.

[Feanaro Curufinwe]

Well, there can't only be video ones. I'm sure there must be a written one out there.

[disregard this]

[Agrippa19]

First play through as the dwarves and I must say I think a fantastic job has been done.

Pros:

Plenty of income but severely low pop growth meaning maintaining the army is vital.
Roleplaying the different dwarven kingdoms.
General kickass units.
Love the campaign map city models.
I bloody love the 'reopening the western gate' feature in Moria and would welcome any other feature similiar if they are being planned.
I really enjoy the reclusivesness of the dwarves. I could easily go 40 turns without a faction invading me.

Cons:
Not sure if it's being worked on but after seeing Minas Arnor I would have also loved to see cities like Moria and Erebor as a mountain settlement with the beautiful Dwarf gates the team has made at the front. But Moria is just a standard RS2 settlement. I know the team has more work with custom settlements but I'd like to know if these settlements will be mountain settlements upon release or will they be heavily edited 'city models' encircled by a wall?
I think the unit roster is a bit small. I'd like if every city had 1 or 2 exclusive units as now I think the only 'exclusive' units are the iron hills dwarves, but I may be wrong.
Also would like if the mannish population feature was explained better as I accidentally removed the dwarf population from 3 of my cities meaning I had to start again (I've since found out what I did wrong).

I've had Dale break the alliance by the year 365. I bought the the settlement of Hroeth from them for 15000 and 1000 tribute for 10 turns as I wanted to cut them off from going west and taking gundabad and the orc settlements (I want to attack them). The next turn they attacked Hroeth which had 11 units of peasant militia in it. I attacked Dale with my Erebor army, took that city and defeated a total combined of 3 full stacks of Dale, then I force diplomacied to be an overlord of them and they've kept the peace for the last 10 turns now.
(In my first play through of 60 turns they didn't attack but I accidentally removed the dwarf population from 3 important cities so I started again).

Also reading back I would like if Gundabad was more than just a walled fort. I'm not saying a city would be better but could some sort of scalable mountain with a few inaccessible random towers be better?

[CountMRVHS]

Thanks for the feedback!

Webba84 is working on custom Dwarven settlements right now - think I'll let him field those questions, or decide if he wants to keep things quiet until later

The Dwarven unit roster is limited by region to quite an extent. The Dwarves of the Iron Hills are the only unit that is named after and unique to a single province, but in addition there are 3 broad categories of Dwarven regions: Blue Mountains, Misty Mtns, and "the East" (Erebor, Iron Hills, Ered Rhun IIRC). You'll note that some units are only available in one of these regions. So e.g. Dwarven Bows are not available everywhere; Longaxes are limited to one or two settlements, and so on. We're not looking at adding any more units currently.

I've rewritten the text in a few places to explain the Dwarven/Mannish population issue - hopefully it will be more clear!

Dale can break the alliance, though I haven't heard of it happening that quickly - it must be related to the province purchase. I think the AI sometimes feels it *must* have a particular settlement, diplomacy be damned.

[webba84]

Firstly, thanks for the feedback! Its always good to hear how people are going with the open beta.

When you purchase a region its a pretty good idea to have a garrison less then 1 turn away that can move in immediately. Otherwise whatever the ai had in there will end up as an army sitting right next to a (very) lightly defended player owned settlement and they will almost always, always attack those. You have to make the ai think it is a hard fight because the military part of the ai never, ever listens to the diplomatic part.

To answer your question regarding Dwarven settlements all of them are intended to be Mountains, though they will also be fully encircled by a wall. Jarlaxe (who worked on them first) had a very clever concept for it that I am currently in the process of implementing and refining, I think the results will be rather cool. Unique settlements for Erebor, Moria (Gundabad, Helms Deep, Dale etc etc etc) are not planned for the release, because of reasons of time (they take a looooot of work) but I am planning a post release expansion that will add some of them in.

[Stark1]

To answer your question regarding Dwarven settlements all of them are intended to be Mountains, though they will also be fully encircled by a wall. Jarlaxe (who worked on them first) had a very clever concept for it that I am currently in the process of implementing and refining, I think the results will be rather cool. Unique settlements for Erebor, Moria (Gundabad, Helms Deep, Dale etc etc etc) are not planned for the release, because of reasons of time (they take a looooot of work) but I am planning a post release expansion that will add some of them in.

Amazing news Webba

[Agrippa19]

Would also like to add that Dale still held the city of Freimsberg near gundabad, meaning that with me holding Hroeth, I had cut the dale lands in two and they were no longer connected. This might have encouraged them to attack.

[athanaric]

Would also like to add that Dale still held the city of Freimsberg near gundabad, meaning that with me holding Hroeth, I had cut the dale lands in two and they were no longer connected. This might have encouraged them to attack.

Framsburg might be worth bribing or conquering, particularly if you're at war with Dale anyway. Firstly, because it controls access to Gundabad, and secondly, because you should be able to recruit very good auxiliary troops there, including axe-throwers and cavalry (if you build the "Mercenary Halls" development building).

[Wambat]

I just noticed that the agents my Dwarves recruit in mannish settlements are Dwarves. Is it possible to have the racial attribute of an agent be determined by where he is recruited, rather than by whom? I think this should have implications for initial agent skill. A man should generally make a better scout than a Dwarf, but a worse scout than an Elf.

[webba84]

I think it is possible, but again, the trait system is something that we really can't adjust anymore (besides probabilities), because Aradan is the only one who really understands it.

[The Sloth]

Or, to be precise (having taken a look at the trait file): The more you understand it, the more it scares you.

And in this case, you would also have to figure out how RTW selects characters' portraits. If you don't you would end up with human characters that have a very dwarvish portrait, or vice versa.