Tulkas' FATW Let's Play!

[webba84]

Much appreciated!

[MasterOfNone]

Thanks, Nelduin

[Tulkasthevaliant]

I've often had the AI attack with five rams or so, none of them get any closer than the previous ones. Rams do absolutely nothing besides get their pushers killed, it was the same way when assaulting epic stone walls in vanilla. Ya'll can look at my first video to see a quite lengthy discussion CountMRVHS and I had on MA- while I do think tuning down the tower fire a bit is probably fair, I think a lot of the problems are intractable. And it's not like ya'll are gonna remove MA from the game, eh! Glad to see my videos are contributing to the discussion, makes an old Vala very proud! Yippie!

[CountMRVHS]

Tulkas, I keep forgetting to comment on YouTube, so I'll put this here -

You should destroy all AI-created buildings that don't give you a benefit (and even some that appear to do so, such as Homeland Dominion, etc.). That means you *should* destroy the military building Adunabar has built in Emyn Arnen (the one with the Adunabar flag in the icon). If you look at the description for that building, you'll note it doesn't allow you to train anything or offer any benefits, but if Adun. retakes the town they'll be able to use it immediately.

[Tulkasthevaliant]

And do those also give Shadow Cult influence? I noticed I had some influence coming from buildings even though none of them were Cultic. I did end up destroying them in Emyn Arnen, I'll have to do that in Fornost too. Thanks!

[CountMRVHS]

Nope, the buildings that influence alignment all display that in their description. The ones that are causing Cultic influence in Emyn Arnen are the 'regional' description buildings - the 'buildings' that actually represent the surrounding area and give you information on the population and terrain and settlements, etc. Those are actually indestructible, meaning you'll need to build up your own Ways of the West buildings (for the Dunedain these are 'town council' type buildings) to counter it - but prepare for unrest if the population is mostly Cultic.

[Tulkasthevaliant]

Aaaaaah right I knew that. Silly me.

[Tulkasthevaliant]

Rejoice! So, sadly, it would seem that I lack the skills of the great CountMRVHS, as, under my errant reign, the Reunited Kingdom of Gondor of Arnor has fallen before the onslaught. Alas. Which makes me feel quite sheepish, as I haven't lost a RTW campaign since my first game ever when I was ten years old. Oh well. But hey, at least I get to experience the new patch, right? Huzzah!

So anyway, I figured it might be neat to let the viewers decide the next faction I play! Hopefully an easier one. Or maybe ya'll are masochists and want me to play Far Harad. Hey, at least it'd make for a shorter series. Anyway, here ya go: http://strawpoll.me/7117873

And here's my final video, in which you may behold my final humiliation and my reasoning behind picking the factions to be included in the poll: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aLgubKiPAs

Also, three days ago my first video in the series became my first video to ever reach 1,000 views, which was a pretty exciting milestone for me. As always, feedback of any kind is welcome- indeed, viewer comments are the only reason I'm planning to continue playing this mod. Not because the mod is bad- it's obviously spectacular- but because I sorta feel like FA:TW is the worst series I've ever uploaded to my channel just because I get so engrossed in its magnificance that my commentary suffers. I'm a bad multitasker, what can I say. But the viewers seem to really enjoy it, and I'd keep playing the mod whether I was recording or not, so might as well continue. Yippie!

[SnuggleBunnies]

Dwarves, should be interesting with the new patch.

[webba84]

So I notice that the poll currently has Harondor in a strong lead. Clearly your viewers like watching you suffer

I would strongly suggest getting some tips from Count before starting, he's the only person I know that has successfully won a Harondor campaign.

[Tulkasthevaliant]

Eh, it's been going back and forth between the Dwarves and Harandor for awhile now. Hopefully it's not someone using some kind of vote bot thing, that tends to be a problem with strawpoll but I didn't really think anyone would care enough to do that. I don't know why Harandor of all factions is so popular- The Dwarves are the faction I want to play as most and Harandor is the faction I want to play as least, but who knows.

Maybe. I've purposely only skimmed his guides because I sorta want to try to figure it all out myself, with the exception of the Reunited Kingdom to try and figure out what went wrong (I think I played much too defensively) and Far Harad, since I figured that to have a ghost of a chance of winning as them I'd have to follow his guide to the letter.

[Wambat]

I just binge-watched the last ten episodes of your RK campaign. I have to say; and I mean no offence; but the schadenfreude was almost terminal. I have not had such good fun since watching EnterElysium muddle his way through Homeworld: Remastered. I was proud of your handling of the siege of Annuminas when you chased off that stack of swordsmen with your bowmen; that’s the sort of thing I would have done.

Do not be discouraged by failures in the field. You are necessarily at a disadvantage having to play out your battles real-time. Moreover the value of your videos is measured by battles won. I can attest that watching your battles has improved my game, and more so from the defeats than the victories.

[Tulkasthevaliant]

Ahahaha, that's awesome to hear. Any way I can entertain, I suppose- my channel tagline isn't "The Quintessence of Scatterbrained Derpiness" for nothing! I tend to have a reputation for being a bit of a tryhard, which is sadly true at times, but it's good to remember that it isn't about winning, it's about having fun. And I like to remind myself that the average Rome: Total War player these days is likely far above my level, since only the most devoted of players are still playing a ten year old game- especially a relatively obscure mod like FA:TW- and that demographic likely overlaps with that of the most skillful players.

And yeah, I think the battles I fought went really well for me- I managed to defeat similar-sized Dunlending armies six or seven times over. My problem was that I failed to expand early on, expecting the campaign to play out much like The New Shadow where the enemy just fruitlessly battered against the gates of Minas Anor while random cities in Mordor spontaneously revolted to my banner. I could defeat as many armies as I liked on defense, but I allowed my enemies to consolidate and take Rohan, and then it was at the point where I could defend in perpetuity, I just couldn't make any advances towards my victory conditions. And yeah, whenever I've played R:TW games in the past I've always spent more time on the pause screen than in game, just trying to time my attacks perfectly, but that makes for pretty boring footage so I stopped doing that.

But yeah, I've spent the last two weeks in a grouchy funk, annoyed at having my most popular series culminate in a succession of terrible episodes with a lame ending. Except apparently it was amazing content so yippie! I'm a genius and I just don't know it. Neat.

[webba84]

...especially a relatively obscure mod like FA:TW...

[Tulkasthevaliant]

Well, it deserves to be more prominent, but it has a fraction of the profile of TA:TW alone. I know because I've been compulsively searching for FA:TW vids hoping for some gargantuan channel to find it and catapult my own video into relative stardom. Hasn't happened yet, sadly. Have ya'll considered reaching out to Prince of Macedon and his ilk?

[webba84]

Lol, I'm just kidding around. Well aware that you cannot release mods for a 10 year old game and expect huge popularity. Add to that how pervasive the movie visuals are (and they are brilliant designs, even if very inaccurate in many cases) and how we have intentionally rejected them and it's not going to add up to a big following.

But I'll definitely shoot a message over to Prince of Macedon, can't hurt.

[Tulkasthevaliant]

Yeah. I really adore the movies though, better than the books in many ways (as blasphemous as that is to say). Pity that the Hobbit movies weren't nearly as good, alas.

And all the other big total war channels too! People like Lionheartx10 and THFE Productions. I'm not as familiar with the large total war channels as I perhaps should be, but I'm sure there are loads, and it couldn't hurt to send a message- channels of their size get game keys and suchlike on a daily basis, so you're probably more relevant to their channel than most of what they get either. I didn't really mean Prince of Macedon in particular, he's just the channel that I'm most familiar with (and incidentally the only YouTube channel from which I am banned, although I won't go into that here).

[webba84]

I can't agree with you that the movies are better but I am a big fan of them also (in descending order, starting from The Fellowship of the Ring) also - I don't see the need to like one or the other.

Thanks for the recommended channels, I've contacted all of them.

[Tulkasthevaliant]

I mean, don't get me wrong, the Silmarillion is my favorite book of all time. I just feel like LotR lacks the great setpieces and dramatic moments of the Silmarillion, like Feanor speaking before the Noldor in Tirion or the Fall of Fingolfin. Or even Tulkas' hero moment at the start of the Quetna. So much love. I've watched all the behind-the-scenes things in the movies (of which there are many) and the love with which it is made is so obvious. But yeah, they're both good, no need to argue about which is better.

I mean, personally I'd contact every channel above 20,000 subs that's vaguely based around grand strategy games. This mod is almost on par with a standalone game in terms of the effort put into it, that deserves to be recognized. And I bet that if PoM made even one video on the mod then the playerbase would triple overnight. Although maybe that's too ambitious. I'm surprised ya'll haven't done that already. Yeah. But that's enough badgering from me. Me hush now.

Also I just had the thought of including annotations to let people skip the battles. So there's that. Yippie I feel famous standing bathed in splendor! And what happened then? Well, in Whoville they say that Tulkas' small ego grew three sizes that day! Or something. Yeah.

[webba84]

Ah, well if it's the Silmarillion we can agree there - just one of the best things I have ever read. I would, though, put the charge of the Rohirrim and Theoden's final battle right up there with anything Tolkien wrote - not ashamed to admit I always choke up when I read it.

WRT Youtube to be honest it completely slipped my mind to even try and advertise there, which is particularly stupid when I follow so many gaming related youtube channels (though not many Total War ones). To be honest I was so focussed on getting the mod done and dealing with the pressure of trying to get everything finished in good time that it's only really recently I have felt like I had the energy to even look at advertising the mod (self promotion really, really, does not come easily to me).