The Dominion of Men 3.2 - Cities of Middle-earth Patch Released!

[webba84]

The Dominion of Men 3.2 - Cities of Middle-earth

Patch 3.2 - Cities of Middle-earth for Fourth Age Total War: The Dominion of Men is here! The second in a series of addons that aims to bring lore accurate, fully functional, and beautiful custom settlements to The Dominion of Men full conversion mod.

This patch requires The Dominion of Men v3.0 or v3.1. It is NOT savegame compatible.

Download FATW: The Dominion of Men v3.0 Full Release here:

Installation Instructions
1. Unzip the 3.2_Cities_of_Middle-earth.rar file to a location of your choice.
2. Copy the data folder inside into your .../bi/fatw folder.
3. When promted, choose to overwrite all existing files and folders.
4. Start FATW: DoM in your usual way and enjoy!

Major Changes
The intimidating Minas Ithil joins the list of custom settlements in Dominion of Men. At the start of the mod it lies in ruins, but after the Tower of the Moon is reconstructed it may thrive once again as, and be known far and wide as a symbol of Dúnedanic power and skill.

The rebuilt Tower of the Moon, a reminder that the Dúnedain are still mighty builders and craftsmen.


The rebuilt city of Minas Ithil, in all it's glory.

There have been some other significant changes in patch 3.2, not least the addition of a new unit, courtesy of Arsaces II.

The Rhovanion Rangers have a very interesting history and appear both as an elite AOR unit for Rhovanion and as mercenaries in and around Southern Greenwood.

Also in the above screenshot you might notice the excellent new UI, courtesy of Bercor. Both the Northman and the Dunedain factions now have new, much improved UI interfaces.

Finally, there were some significant changes to the Dorwinion roster, to help that faction develop it's own unique appearance and play-style.

We have also included many minor changes, additions, and bug fixes. For a full list please see the patch notes included in the download.


Other News
Work has already begun on the third patch in the series, 'Cities of Middle-earth'. The next release will feature the Middle-earth famous settlement of Bree. Under the rule of the King once again, Bree thrived in the early years of the Fourth Age, becoming one of the most important cities in Arnor.

If you have any questions about installation or any other part of the mod then the FAQs thread here, should be your first stop.

Finally, if you are enjoying the mod and would like to support us a quick review or rating over on moddb would be very much appreciated. And if you know other Tolkien fans, or Total War fans, who you think would enjoy the mod please do spread the word around, we want as many people to enjoy it as possible!

[Arsaces II]

Congratulations, on the new release!

[webba84]

Thanks mate!

[Beorn]

Great, Webba!

[webba84]

Cheers Beorn!

[Tulkasthevaliant]

Would it be relatively trivial to downgrade from 3.2 to 3.1? I sorta wanna make a video detailing the changes in the two patches, but I really really really really really don't want to lose my Dwarven Kingdom LP. Incredible work as always Webba, huzzah!

[webba84]

Hmmm, it's not complicated, per se, but it will take time and a bit of space from your computer. If you've already installed 3.2 I'd suggest doing the following -

1. Go to your bi folder and rename the fatw folder to something like 'fatw32'.
2. Reinstall fatw 3.0, then patch to 3.1.
3. Copy back any 3.1 saves you want to keep from fatw32/saves to fatw/saves (or just copy the whole save folder, since a fresh install won't have one yet).
4. Now you have both 3.1 and 3.2 installed on your rtw copy. You can switch between them by just changing the path in the shortcut/steam launch options (eg. '/bi/fatw' to '/bi/fatw32' and vice versa).

[Tulkasthevaliant]

Yeah, that's beyond me. I'm a technologically-inept Classics major, what can I say. Thanks anyway, though! Much Webbalove from Tulky-tulk.

[webba84]

[demagogos nicator]

Thanks for a great update, downloading now

[Wambat]

Just loaded up the new patch to start my Dwarven campaign. The graphic upgrades are apparent right away and greatly enhance the experience. Great job!

[webba84]

Thanks Wambat!

[Tulkasthevaliant]

Lol, Wambat is so annoyed by my ineptitude that he just has to go and beat the Dwarven campaign in 20 turns, just to show me how it's done. Wambat I love you so so much. <3<3<3

[Wambat]

I am never annoyed by your LP; always entertained. Lets just see if I have to eat my own advice; this will be my first try at a Dwarven campaign. Also I rearly concern myself with "victory conditions". My own victory condition is: own/control whole map. Not one I have yet achieved in FATW: DOM. I am sure this is an indication the mod team has done a good job :-)

[The Sloth]

So I finally, finally, finally managed to get my hands on this. I'm loving it, and I'm looking forward to tell you everything about my elven campaign in the Campaign Report thread. The map and units are beautiful, everything hits the Tolkien-mood, and even the settlements have been reworked. I could continue to list the stuff I like, but I'll still be typing tomorrow. Instead, I'll list the minor issues I'm having. Maybe some of them can be addressed in the future with some submods.

- Occasional crashes after battles, especially during AI turns. Might just be my old laptop, though.
- Some buildings do not seem to have the effects listed in their description. The "rural/minor/(...) province" buildings do not seem to increase income, for instance, and barracks do not seem to reduce income.
- Adunabar's starting military seems hilariously overpowered. In every game I have played, they just flood the map with stacks unless I do something about them, which just isn't possible when I'm playing some factions.
- Adunabar seems to build MotW conversion buildings in provinces that already follow that culture, resulting in mixed cultist-dunedaic armies. Is that indented?
- The trait system has a better structure than any mod out there, just from adding that little - in front of minor traits. Makes me wonder why I never thought of that. Still, the trait system isn't very fleshed out, and characters don't see much development over the campaign. I'd tinker some with this myself over time, but it seems the trait system is linked to other important stuff, and I'm scared of screwing things up. Any hints about what I need to look out for?
- The recruitment of vassal units (retainer swordmen/macemen/etc) seems a bit random. Some factions get access to these units even though they never had much to do with the units' homelands, while other factions don't. (Like Dale getting retainer swordmen, while Harad doesn't) These units are quite formidable, which means the latter factions really miss out.

[CountMRVHS]

Thanks for the kind words! I'll address some of this if I can:

-The AI-turn battle CTD is a vanilla thing. I usually observe it when I am besieging a settlement, am attacked by a relieving AI army (or by a sally from the besieged AI), win the battle, and conquer the town. I *think* it's a memory-related issue.
-The income that is affected by those "X Province" buildings and the barracks do not show up on the settlement details scroll until after the building is constructed. I'm not sure why this is. Also, if you're playing as the Elves, you'll notice that your homelands do not have any Land Tax income to begin with - so you will not see an increase from building "X Province" buildings, nor will you see a decrease from building barracks. But once you expand into other territory, settlements that *do* offer some amount of Land Tax will be affected by these buildings. It's just not something that can be tracked on the Settlement Details scroll until after you've built them.
-Adunabar is a major "theme" of the mod; in earlier versions, they would get wiped out consistently, so we decided to beef them up for most campaigns. This is somewhat dependent upon which faction you play, however. We gave the AI different bonuses depending on which faction you play, so when you're the Elves, Adun. will be really strong, but when you're playing one of Adun's allies, like Dunland, not so much. Which factions do you play where you find them to be too strong?
-The AI is coded to choose somewhat randomly between conversion buildings when it has an option to do so - but yes, if you've seen Adunabar conquer large parts of Gondor, Rohan, and/or other MotW regions, the likelihood seems to be higher that you will see Adunabar "switch" to a non-Cultic army. If their army appears mixed, this is a result of Adun. using leftover Cultic units with the Dunedanic troops that it can currently train. But note that factions can switch back & forth several times, so there can be many shifts of military type within a few years if there has been a fluctuation in territory.
-Trait tinkering is strongly discouraged Well, I'm rather intimidated by it at any rate. You're right that there are many interdependencies; I'm not sure exactly what they all are. Aradan did the traits, but he's retired from the lead position and is quite busy himself lately. I do vaguely remember developer discussions about whether traits should be mostly static or mostly fluctuating, and I think I may have cast my vote for mostly static - on the grounds that players would have enough work to do just keeping track of which FM is good at what, and it would be annoying to have their carefully cultivated general lose some good traits because he had to be a governor for a few years or whatever. Traits do change over time currently, but overall things are rather static.
-Assimilation Units (AUs) were originally intended to be just for Dale, IIRC. It's entirely webba's fault that they are as expansive as they are He could explain it better, but my best shot is that AUs would be a sort of reward for conquering a distant or difficult foe, and they would grant access to different units from what the faction could currently train. (And also, the RK/Adun. don't get AUs, because they have this epic history of military dominance in their Numenorean heritage and wouldn't be eager to pick up tips from the newbies.) In the case of Retainer Swordsmen, Dale gets them arguably because they don't have a strong swordsmen unit, while Harad does - not only the ubiquitous Swords of Harad, but also the Harondor Retainers that it can pick up between the Harnen & the Poros. Harad gets AUs from, IIRC, Rhun and Dunland regions... Axemen and Pikes, I believe, neither of which feature in the Haradrian roster. (Khand has probably the easiest shot at AUs, needing to take territory only from Adun and Rhun - but then Khand is a small faction with not nearly the unit diversity of Harad.)

[webba84]

Count did a good job answering most of your questions (and again, thank you for the compliments!) so I'll just pop in with a couple of extra points -

- Some buildings do not seem to have the effects listed in their description. The "rural/minor/(...) province" buildings do not seem to increase income, for instance, and barracks do not seem to reduce income.

They do, and you can see it in the settlement info scrolls (its called 'Land Tax'), but Elven and Dwarven homelands don't have any land tax, so no extra income but also no upkeep in those regions.

- Adunabar's starting military seems hilariously overpowered. In every game I have played, they just flood the map with stacks unless I do something about them, which just isn't possible when I'm playing some factions.

They are the big bad of the campaign, but they are a lot stronger in some campaigns than others. In the Elven and RK campaigns, they are at their strongest. Most factions can act to hamper their growth though, no matter how far away or small you are. It's a matter of recognizing key regions on the map and using diplomacy, and raiding outside your own borders, to make sure they stay out of Adunabar hands. (hint: Threeways and Mid-deeping are two of the most important)

- Adunabar seems to build MotW conversion buildings in provinces that already follow that culture, resulting in mixed cultist-dunedaic armies. Is that indented?

No, but we can't control it without introducing more troublesome side effects.

- The trait system has a better structure than any mod out there, just from adding that little - in front of minor traits. Makes me wonder why I never thought of that. Still, the trait system isn't very fleshed out, and characters don't see much development over the campaign. I'd tinker some with this myself over time, but it seems the trait system is linked to other important stuff, and I'm scared of screwing things up. Any hints about what I need to look out for?

Sadly, I can't give you anything useful. Aradan designed the trait system and he is the only one who knows how it works (btw it is a lot more fleshed out that it looks). He is also retired and very hard to get hold of, I don't think he plays computer games anymore, much less mods them. If you have the time and interest to delve into it though, we'd be very happy to see what you come up with.

- The recruitment of vassal units (retainer swordmen/macemen/etc) seems a bit random. Some factions get access to these units even though they never had much to do with the units' homelands, while other factions don't. (Like Dale getting retainer swordmen, while Harad doesn't) These units are quite formidable, which means the latter factions really miss out.

As Count touches on, Assimilation Units are not just based on what factions had interactions or close relationships with each other, there is also a strong element of 'what if' about them. If a faction expands to control a certain area, would they have the ability and interest to adopt some of the fighting styles of that region? So, as an example, the case of Dale getting Retainer Swordsmen is because -

1. Dale and the RK have/had a close relationship at the start of the Fourth Age (the King of Dale recognized Aragorn's overlordship). There would be a certain amount of mutual respect between them due to the same alignment, relatively compatible cultures, and having been on the same side of many wars (in our narrative, most recently against the easterlings).

2. Dale would have an interest in the elite, heavy infantry of the RK, their own heavy infantry selection being rather good but crucially lacking a high quality, versatile, sword and shield unit.

3. Gondorians who found themselves under the rule of the King of Dale would not necessarily be unhappy about it (and given the campaign situation its unlikely Dale and the RK would go to war, most likely Dale would conquer RK lands from a mutual foe), and might be willing to do military service without being levied.

Whereas, in the case of Harad -

1. Harad and the RK genuinely hate each other, and have done for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Their alignments, social and cultural values, and systems of government are in complete opposition.

2. Harad has no respect for the RK, and have their own swordsmen (including the Harondor AOR ones, which are very good). They would not necessarily have any interest in adopting the distinct dress and fighting style of their bitter enemies.

3. In Gondor, the feeling would be very much mutual. No self respecting Gondorian Man at Arms would serve the ruler of Harad, they would either flee or be killed, and lesser men would have to be pressed into service (ie. levies).


In FATW we don't do random .

[Flinn]

It's with great pleasure that the Modding Awards Committee informs you that this mod has been awarded in the recent 2016 Modding Awards, as seen here! Please feel free to stop by and check the list of all the winners.

Also, don't forget to check here for more details about how to promote the victory of your mod.

If any question about please feel free to use the Discussion thread.

Flinn,
On behalf of the Modding Awards Committee

[Aexodus]

Will this patch include the Hornburg or Edoras? If not, are they planned to be included in the future?

[CountMRVHS]

Hornburg was included with patch 3.1 I believe - check it out, it's a fun map! I can't say about the other stuff just yet.