The Fourth Age: Total War - Forth Eorlingas Released!

[Ciaran S]

I'm going to review RK unit sizes (which will affect or even diminish/remove the unit-size variation feature) and costs. If anyone has any basic guidelines for me (I will be doing it this coming week) then please do share.

I want to get across the feeling that Harad and the Easterlings have a far greater population than the other factions, and RK least of all. I feel RK will have smaller unit sizes than other factions but maybe we can close up the gap so to speak.

I'm all ears - as the Oliphaunt once said after looking in a mirror.

The size of the RK units is fine, combined with their battle stats they´re well balanced. Small units, but very high quality, that´s what the RK is all about and it works perfectly. My gripe is just that the price doesn´t quite reflect the tremendous amount of training and discipline the RK units have.
Seeing the size-variation go would be good, though.

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

Currently playing FE and having great fun (and both kids (6 & 3) are loving it). Cavalry basically riding into the ground anyone who comes near (the AI seems determined that axemen (for the Dunlendings) or Militia (for Gondor) can stand up to cavalry).

Book wise it is a bit weird:

• I (as Rohan) am allied with Umbar and the guys in the East
• I'm at war with Gondor (they made an alliance with Dunland and then invaded me, I kinda wasn't expecting that)
• because Gondor insists on sending huge infantry armies with no cavalry support against me (which get trampled into the grassland), they are getting wiped by the Umbar guys.
• Even though I have so far destroyed 9 armies (kill ratio of about 25:1) Gondor won;t make peace

Anyway, main thing is that those Dunlending scum are getting destroyed by my Western army........

I got a couple of questions (both probably very silly and probably answered elsewhere but please stay with me):

1. What do settlers do? (as opposed to peasants)
2. All the titles and special things (Lord of Westmark, the Horn of thingamy) - do they get passed on if their owner dies? or are they lost forever to the faction?

*sound of money*

And that's another one. CA should support us!

ach, got it cheap off amazon

Nooooooooooo! Delete the end of that sentence! This is a book-only mod!

Maybe you should try reading the Hobbit to him?

tried, he's not quite old enough for it yet, far too much description which bores him - I need a 'hobbit lite'

[Amroth]

I got a couple of questions (both probably very silly and probably answered elsewhere but please stay with me):

1. What do settlers do? (as opposed to peasants)
2. All the titles and special things (Lord of Westmark, the Horn of thingamy) - do they get passed on if their owner dies? or are they lost forever to the faction?

Good to hear that you (and the little 'uns) are enjoying it! The settlers are a way of dispersing population more efficiently - they have a 0 build time, which allows a lot of them to be built at once, and moved to wherever you need them. In CI I used them to populate Mordor (playing as RK), and in FE I'm using them to populate Dunland after I've exterminated their populations (as Rohan).

As to the titles & heirlooms: most of them get reassigned when their owner dies (provided the conditions are met). Lord of Westfold, for instance, is given to any captain (general) that spends a turn in Helm's Deep if there is no captain currently with that ancillary (simulating you granting them lordship). The same is true for all the other 'titles', i.e. they are tied to settlements. The Black Horn is given to any captain with the 'House of Erkenbrand' trait (which is a trait passed on from father to legitimate son), so the only way this will not be reassigned is if that House 'dies'. Most other heirlooms tied to faction leaders/heirs get regenerated with the new king/heir. You can also move ancillaries around manually, if your captains/spies/assassins/emissaries are in the same army/settlement; just open the character scroll, grab and draw the ancillary image over the image of the character you wish to give the ancillary to. This is a good way of giving younger captains a head start by giving them ancillaries from older (and soon to be dead) captains - and also what you want to be doing if you notice that the last of the House of Erkenbrand is son-less.

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

thanks for the quick reply - I'd rep you but apparently I have already done so.....

I really like the idea of the heirlooms and titles and was mainly just checking that the way i was using them (ie. the way you suggested) wasn't 'cheating'. I currently have a load of very old generals (55+) and few young generals so I was getting a bit worried about the titles while I wait for the large number of kids to reach maturity......

Only other comment is that I was sad that I couldn't recruit a nice strong unit of Dwarven Hearthguard in Helms Deep - now that would be fun

[Amroth]

Only other comment is that I was sad that I couldn't recruit a nice strong unit of Dwarven Hearthguard in Helms Deep - now that would be fun

That's being discussed, and may come in the next patch

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

another query - are the Eorlingas overpowered? Or is it just that cavalry vs. infantry battles are just too easy?

Admitedly my armies are predominantly Riddermark Spears (I think, the top cavalry anyway) and I tend to have 1 general, 8 cavalry and 4 horse archers in each army, but they are just blowing away any infantry (Dunlending or Gondorian) that they meet.

Could be that both Gondor and Dunlendings are messing around with large basic-unit armies rather than good armies, but it is still very easy.

[Amroth]

They may be a little overpowered, but I think the main problem is that Dunland/Gondor are coming at you with crappy armies. If Dunland, for example, would bring with them more pikemen things would be more difficult, or if Gondor had with them multiple King's Spearmen/Guards of the Citadel units. I came across a Dunlending army with five units of pikemen, once, and I lost a lot of riders that time.

[DaVinci]

I'm going to review RK unit sizes (which will affect or even diminish/remove the unit-size variation feature) and costs. If anyone has any basic guidelines for me (I will be doing it this coming week) then please do share.

I want to get across the feeling that Harad and the Easterlings have a far greater population than the other factions, and RK least of all. I feel RK will have smaller unit sizes than other factions but maybe we can close up the gap so to speak.

I'm all ears - as the Oliphaunt once said after looking in a mirror.

I wouldn't do drastic changes, as mainly the balance is pretty ok and quite good reflected regarding the story behind all.

But Ciaran is right in this regard: RK unit costs. I would just increase very slightly the upkeep of Kings Spearmen, Citadels and MenAtArms (just their main backbone soldiers). You must observe, if the AI won't react to not train them, as we would have a prob, if Gondor only recruits their scum-units after the cost-change.
Overall campaign start: RK should eventually have some less start-holdings, ie. Thoronburg, and the two new regions north of Ithilien to the Rebels. And as well without empire-east building culture and recruitment capabilities for them.
Recruitment: Restrict the recruitment of home-units also only on real home-regions, is my tip, and give only the already enabled AoR units. And, as you have it already partially, home-units only with far later buildings enabled (assimilation).
RK should be a defensive faction in my view (as AI), and well, the player can anyway decide.
And regarding the RK:Rohan war-problem, i actually would test out impassable areas between them. So that ie. only a way around Andrast is possible to access as RK Eorlingas's regions and vice versa.

[MasterOfNone]

But Ciaran is right in this regard: RK unit costs. I would just increase very slightly the upkeep of Kings Spearmen, Citadels and MenAtArms (just their main backbone soldiers). You must observe, if the AI won't react to not train them, as we would have a prob, if Gondor only recruits their scum-units after the cost-change.

OK. Will look into doing that, but the public will be the ones to see how the AI responds

Overall campaign start: RK should eventually have some less start-holdings, ie. Thoronburg, and the two new regions north of Ithilien to the Rebels. And as well without empire-east building culture and recruitment capabilities for them.

This will be changing, but it may not be in the next patch.

Recruitment: Restrict the recruitment of home-units also only on real home-regions, is my tip, and give only the already enabled AoR units. And, as you have it already partially, home-units only with far later buildings enabled (assimilation).

Not sure what you mean by 'real' home regions - just Gondor? The AoR is quite tough enough as it is I think as it adds building time penalties - I think the rest of what yoi suggest already is the way it is.

RK should be a defensive faction in my view (as AI), and well, the player can anyway decide.
And regarding the RK:Rohan war-problem, i actually would test out impassable areas between them. So that ie. only a way around Andrast is possible to access as RK Eorlingas's regions and vice versa.

The problem with messing with that sort of thing is we don't want to stray from map lore - as we add, enhance and tweak hopefully we will find a range of changes that will affect diplomacy AI for the better.

Thank you for your suggestions & your interest in our work. We need more feedback like this.

[Ciaran S]

They may be a little overpowered, but I think the main problem is that Dunland/Gondor are coming at you with crappy armies. If Dunland, for example, would bring with them more pikemen things would be more difficult, or if Gondor had with them multiple King's Spearmen/Guards of the Citadel units. I came across a Dunlending army with five units of pikemen, once, and I lost a lot of riders that time.

Or archers. Until I came around to build pikemen in my Dunland campaign, archers and Axemen on Fire at Will were my main defense, and a good one they were. Especially the lower levels of Rohans cavalry are extremely vulnerable to arrows, I´ve seen a whole unit of Light Spears getting wiped out by my archers before they could reach my lines. Of course, the more heavily armoured cavalry gives the archers a harder time.
Beware also of the Gondor militia, they don´t look like much, but they get a +6 bonus versus cavalry, I always kept my Isenmarch Riders well away from them, and King´s Spears and Citadel Guard will go through any cavalry like the shark through a surfer.

Regarding the unit costs and AI training, I believe the AI tends not to recruit the units that take two or more turns, since in my campaign I mainly came across Militia and Swordsmen, rarely ever Men at Arms, Spearmen and Citadel Guards, so I think it´s more the longer training time than the cost that prohibits the training of the better units by the AI.

As far as diplomacy is concerned, Rohan and Gondor worked very happily together to destroy me. Not that it did them much good, though

[DaVinci]

... haha, yes, Gondor and Rohan people are just the heroes in Middle-Earth, that's correct so

Ok serious: If i would have more time to help, i would love to help to constructing a perfect campaign-battle-balance for FATW FE ... but i'm sure MoN will do it very well as well.

[MasterOfNone]

I will try - but I have so little time to attend to balancing as I am covering a lot of other things and ploughing silly amounts of time to get them right.

[SpartansDon'tDie]

After the bloody download was finally done, I played a while with this mod and I think it's great

There are just two thangs I didn't really like, first off the campaign map.
I think it's too small. When I was in far Harad it felt like I was only in southern Gondor, and Rhovanion should be bigger so that Rhun is far more to the east then it is now. Check it out.

http://www.bjornetjenesten.dk/tekste...earth-film.jpg

There should be more historical battles. Way more.
LOTR is full of great battles so I don't understand why there's only two of 'em.

Allso, I just installed patch 0.7, but in wich building I can recruit Uruks playing as Dunland? I would like to know too where dwarves can be found.

Except for those things, I love this mod and it's in my top-3 RTW mods without a doubt!

[Tittils]

I've based the dimensions of the official map, so Rhun is placed correctly. I/we didn't want to expand Harad more south. The lands they have are already big enough and expanding it would mean very great distances and less action. And also there is a problem with the amount of sea we can include. Including more of the lands in the east would include a lot of dead territory.
But by all means, I respect your points of view.

We've just included two HB because of the lack of time and manpower.

[Arakorn]

But feel free to do some more!

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

But feel free to do some more!

well, if someone could point me in the direction of a tutorial.......

I'd be happy to give it a shot

(though I promise nothing)

[Arakorn]

CA released some editor docs, dunno where they are though. (Deleted them from my computer some time ago).

Here's one though: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=52379

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

thanks

[Amroth]

There are just two thangs I didn't really like, first off the campaign map.
I think it's too small. When I was in far Harad it felt like I was only in southern Gondor, and Rhovanion should be bigger so that Rhun is far more to the east then it is now. Check it out.

http://www.bjornetjenesten.dk/tekste...earth-film.jpg

We've used the official maps (as seen in the books) as a base - that map goes farther south than the official ones.

There should be more historical battles. Way more.
LOTR is full of great battles so I don't understand why there's only two of 'em.

Allso, I just installed patch 0.7, but in wich building I can recruit Uruks playing as Dunland? I would like to know too where dwarves can be found.

Except for those things, I love this mod and it's in my top-3 RTW mods without a doubt!

We would have liked to include more historical battles, but - as Tittils says - we've had more pressing issues to handle with a small team. If someone would like to do any, please do so, and if they're well done (and well researched as far as lore goes) we'll include them in the mod.

Uruks can be recruited in the Uruk-hold in Dunchrioch and Dunhold. Dwarves are not in, but we are looking at the possibilities of making a Dwarven unit recruitable in Aglarond.

Thanks for playing the mod and offering us your feedback - it is much appreciated!

[Ciaran S]

I´ve just started a campaign as Gondor (you did fantastic work on that faction, not that Dunland was done poorly, but Gondor certainly shows your love for the mod) and I´ve got an idea why I so seldomly saw the uptier units in my Dunland campaign - they´re actually cheaper than the militia units.
Judging from my experience playing vanilla I think the AI tries to get the most expensive units because it considers them the best ones (it would explain why I frequently face large stacks of Praetorian or Urban Cohorts in vanilla).