Suggestions

[FC Groningen]

I'm sure there could be plenty of reasons to counter your suggestions, but at the moment I merely wish to say that no one, or no one should look down on people not playing vh/vh. The general consensus is that it's your game and you should play like you want, including cheats or not. No one should berate you for playing on a lower difficulty level and I doubt anyone here would do that. Yet, consider that very hard, literally means very hard here and thus you should face a challenge that lives up that "title". If you prefer an easier game, go ahead and play on a lower difficulity level; no one will blame you.

[ppetrus]

1. Naval transport movement should be separate, and in addition to, Army movement; i.e. when an army boards ship the ships can still go the full distance of their movement even if army movement has been exhausted. Empire Total War has this modification and I think it is something that would work well in this TATW mod.
Is not that hardcoded in m2tw? Even if not, the way it is now is not that bad. It shows simply the passage of time rather than exhaustion.
2. Garrison events should be one-shot deals, with the garrison appearing when a settlement is sieged, disappearing when the siege ends, and reappearing when a siege occurs again. (Garrisons should not be another “reinforcement” AI cheat.)
There are reasons behind the way it is: if AI allows to siege its important settlement, it means that they could use reinforcements to secure its borders and to balance the odds.
3. Economy should be improved, preferably by reducing unit upkeep costs, possibly by increasing economic building revenues, or maybe a balanced combination of both. Money should never be the principal problem in a “fantasy” war game, Orcs just need “manflesh” and “Orc-draught” after all
And what would one do with more money? First of all, buy more troops. And that is how all the fun of challenge dies. Winning over a whole stack with 4-5 times less troops gives more fantasy feeling than being able to deploy bigger armies than your enemy.
J.
4. Rethink the removal of “squalor” reduction effects for leaders and ancillaries; population growth is already fairly slow, further reduced by constant army raising; and these traits and ancillaries appear rarely enough to merit including their effects in the game.
Developing settlements is not so important as in vanilla m2tw or rtw. The most important recruiting centers are already at their max and why to prioritise growing your smaller cities? Middle Earth does not know rapid development.

Second, my concerns about the “goal” of the game from a non-modder perspective. I think that the stated goal of developing this game to be played on Very Hard level was a disservice to the general gaming population. Granted that there are a number of individuals who are so jaded with games like this that they only feel really challenged when facing impossible odds, but the game should not be just for their enjoyment. Many more people, like myself, wish to grow with a game, so that eventually, if we wish it, we can attempt to play it at the Very Hard level. But I don’t think I am alone in stating that each level should be developed to challenge persons at that level and not make us feel inadequate if we are not playing at the level desired by the Mod team.

There are constant reminders in both the game and this forum that it was designed to play at “Very Hard” and we should all be playing at that level if we want to get anything out of the game. The implication is that unless we play at that level we should shut up and go play something else.

That’s a disservice to both the players and the game. The purpose of a game is for people to enjoy themselves at whatever level of challenge they are capable of. It should be developed with that ideal in mind.

People who ask questions, or make suggestions about improvement should not be met with “It’s meant to play on very hard; too bad if you can’t hack it” kinds of responses. The scripts should be set for differing levels of play with each level having its own set of challenges which allow people to get trained up to playing at Very Hard. So my last suggestion is for the mod team members who think that way to try and take a step back, re-evaluate that ideology, and start considering modifications that take all levels of game play into consideration. We’re not all experts, but we do like to play the game. I think you’ve done a great job over-all, I just had a problem with the stated ideology and thought I’d bring it up.

Thanks
I do agree on this one. The mod should be scripted to deliver varied level of challenge, depending on what a player wants.
HOWEVER, this is not a contest. If you cannot do well at VH/VH, you can play at lower settings. Nobody will blame you for this. Myself, I do not find huge difference between medium and the hardest settings. Morale bonus is a little irritating, though it really serves a player as battles do not end after the first charge and actually last a little to give a feeling of war.

[Eönwë]

I use 2 EDU's, one in the start of the campaign which increases militia's for Dale, Gondor and Rohan and increasing Isengard mid-tier units and the other one is the vanilla...

This way all factions can get to develop their factions and with the mid and high tier units showing up, the real battles begin...

[Zharkov]

I understand that it is very hard to make a "smart" AI, but much easier to give AI some "advantages". Ultimatly, this leads to the AI playing a different game than the human player. I don't like this, but I have no better idea either.

However, I feel that the way the AI is cheating in Third Age is not providing a challange, but is just annoying. Blatantly churning out troops out of nowhere over and over again doesn't help immersion and only slows down an already slow paced game. It doesn't make the AI harder to beat, it just takes longer. And, it doesn't make the AI look functional, but only highlights its ineptitude. I would very much prefer the AI cheating even more (more obvious and more effective), but less often and more integrated in game immersion.

For example, when Rohan being pressed hard, I'd like to see them calling a great muster resulting in two cavalry only stacks going straight for their enemies capital, and, when being cornered in Helm's Deep, the enemy can't wear them down but has to take them out in one battle (their defenses will be replenished with infantry after each battle they manage to win [because they draft more and more troops from the displaced populace], maybe they even get relieve from their allies). This will be accompanied by a global message with a nice picture a movie fragment to make the proceedings transparent for the human player.

Thus, some cheating could be replaced by unique events (or repeatable events with cool down), battles would become more decisive (the human player or the AI will be seriously [censored and I cannot see why] after this), and the pace of the game will increase, as lots of small battles become obsolete.



Disclaimer: Pls note, that english is not my first language. All things stated above are i.m.h.o. and I am open for discussion (although not in this thread).

[TheBohemian]

WEREWOLVES

I looked into it a little deeper and there is a lot of uncertainty about what werewolves are and if they're still around in the Third Age or if the wargs of the Third Age are the descendents of the werewolves of the First Age or just the same thing. Evidence on the side of werewolves being around in the Third Age and distinct from wargs: Gandalf tells Frodo at Rivendell something to the effect of "...wraiths aren't the only servants of the Dark Lord. There are orcs and trolls, wargs and werewolves, and Men...". However, when the Fellowship is attacked by wolves on their march to Caradhras, Gandalf throws a flaming stick in the air and says, in Quenya or Sindarin, "Fire save us, fire against the werewolves" and clearly uses the elvish word for werewolf. And remember, those wolves that were killed by the Fellowship mysteriously vanished before morning, leaving even Legolas' arrows behind on the ground, undamaged. So, were they wolves of Isengard, hounds of Sauron, ...werewolves? Is a talking warg and a werewolf one and the same?

Thirdly, in some appendix that describes the battles between Dol Guldur and Lorien, the defenders of Dol Guldur are described as Giant Spiders and Orcs riding Werewolves. The original werewolf was Draugluin, who was the spirit of a maia that occupied the body of a wolf. His "descendents" may have actually been his biological descendents, or just other wolves taken over by the spirits (fear) of minor maiar and fallen orcs, but either way, a werewolf is a wolf with fear (that's fee-ar, a soul). Wargs can talk, so maybe warg==werewolf, despite what Gandalf said at Rivendell.

I don't have the answers. But it means my call for a WEREWOLF unit may have been a little inaccurate. This is what I had in mind (using Palantir notation):

Werewolves
Men 30
Cost 800
Upkeep 280
Morale 18∞
Attack1 φ 15 (12)
Attack2 0 (0)
Defence 3♥ 14 (2+12+0)
Dependencies b4, Dol Guldur, Barad-Dur, Black Gates
-or-
Dependencies n/a, Barad-Dur, Black Gates, Dol Guldur

I know what King Kong will say. That unit is functionally redundant with trolls (it's a modification of Isengard Berserkers, which are Isengard's poor man's troll). Alternatively, if we think werewolves==wargs, then Mordor should clearly have some. But that eliminates one of the differences between the orc factions that makes that game interesting. So to be canonical, either Mordor has warg-riders (or riderless wargs?) same as everyone else, or they have this unit I just presented that is kind of a lame troll: really good at guarding the castle but sucks in the open.


This is a more specific proposal for a Galadriel siege unit:

Galadriel
Men 2(24)
Cost 950
Upkeep 270
Morale 13
Attack1 7 (crew)
Attack2 200 (330) (no flaming ammo ability)
Defence 8 (2+6+0)
Dependencies n/a, Caras Galadhon

Anyway, King Kong, if you think they're lame, scrap 'em. I tried.

[mondpeiler]

concerning difficulty and garrison script:

because it came up to discussion here once in a while, some ideas:
perhaps you could script a conection between difficulty and the garrison script...

on...
low difficulty: no stack-spawn, no garrison-script [so, absolutely no extra troops for the AI at all!]
mid difficulty: no stack spawn | but garrison-script
high difficulty: stack spawn (small, not full) & garrison-script
highest difficulty: [full] stack spawn & garrison-script

perhaps as an alternative, if someone is abled to script the disbanding off garrison-units:

on...
low difficulty: no stack-spawn, no garrison-script [so, absolutely no extra troops for the AI at all!]
mid difficulty: no stack spawn | but garrison-script with garrison-units disbanding after siege is over
high difficulty: stack spawn (small, not full) & garrison-script with garrison-units disbanding after siege is over
highest difficulty: [full] stack spawn & garrison-script with garrison-units not disbanding after siege is over

[ppetrus]

Great idea. Let us hope it is possible.

But I would like to add something:

On the high and highest difficulty it would be nice to have some/all AI bonuses/cheats (scripts and those from edb file) TAKEN from all the factions of the same allignment as the player (potential allies, that is).

[TheBohemian]

Didn't realize they already made Dain's Halls. They look awesome. So do Esgaroth, Carn Dum, Dol Amroth, Dunharrow and the Gates of Argonath tile. Some I'm guessing Thranduil's Halls and Goblintown are in the queue, now that they've perfected the are of the cave settlement.

[lolIsuck]

WEREWOLVES

I looked into it a little deeper and there is a lot of uncertainty about what werewolves are and if they're still around in the Third Age or if the wargs of the Third Age are the descendents of the werewolves of the First Age or just the same thing. Evidence on the side of werewolves being around in the Third Age and distinct from wargs: Gandalf tells Frodo at Rivendell something to the effect of "...wraiths aren't the only servants of the Dark Lord. There are orcs and trolls, wargs and werewolves, and Men...". However, when the Fellowship is attacked by wolves on their march to Caradhras, Gandalf throws a flaming stick in the air and says, in Quenya or Sindarin, "Fire save us, fire against the werewolves" and clearly uses the elvish word for werewolf. And remember, those wolves that were killed by the Fellowship mysteriously vanished before morning, leaving even Legolas' arrows behind on the ground, undamaged. So, were they wolves of Isengard, hounds of Sauron, ...werewolves? Is a talking warg and a werewolf one and the same?

Thirdly, in some appendix that describes the battles between Dol Guldur and Lorien, the defenders of Dol Guldur are described as Giant Spiders and Orcs riding Werewolves. The original werewolf was Draugluin, who was the spirit of a maia that occupied the body of a wolf. His "descendents" may have actually been his biological descendents, or just other wolves taken over by the spirits (fear) of minor maiar and fallen orcs, but either way, a werewolf is a wolf with fear (that's fee-ar, a soul). Wargs can talk, so maybe warg==werewolf, despite what Gandalf said at Rivendell.

I don't have the answers. But it means my call for a WEREWOLF unit may have been a little inaccurate. This is what I had in mind (using Palantir notation):

Werewolves
Men 30
Cost 800
Upkeep 280
Morale 18∞
Attack1 φ 15 (12)
Attack2 0 (0)
Defence 3♥ 14 (2+12+0)
Dependencies b4, Dol Guldur, Barad-Dur, Black Gates
-or-
Dependencies n/a, Barad-Dur, Black Gates, Dol Guldur

I know what King Kong will say. That unit is functionally redundant with trolls (it's a modification of Isengard Berserkers, which are Isengard's poor man's troll). Alternatively, if we think werewolves==wargs, then Mordor should clearly have some. But that eliminates one of the differences between the orc factions that makes that game interesting. So to be canonical, either Mordor has warg-riders (or riderless wargs?) same as everyone else, or they have this unit I just presented that is kind of a lame troll: really good at guarding the castle but sucks in the open.


This is a more specific proposal for a Galadriel siege unit:

Galadriel
Men 2(24)
Cost 950
Upkeep 270
Morale 13
Attack1 7 (crew)
Attack2 200 (330) (no flaming ammo ability)
Defence 8 (2+6+0)
Dependencies n/a, Caras Galadhon

Anyway, King Kong, if you think they're lame, scrap 'em. I tried.

13 morale for Galadriel? I doubt she'd run away for anything and I'm pretty sure she would find some Elves who are willing to give their lives for the Lady.

[tonplan]

Ancillaries: Less of them or make them harder to get or more room for them in the character traits. When I get a new king I want it to get the special ancillaries but the list is already full and their benefits are lost.

AOR units: The Greenway(North/South road) goes from Fornost to Pelargir passing through Edoras, Minas Tirith and Osgiliath. When playing Eriador could we have the greenway guards available in all the settlements along the Greenway? This would make a more interesting late game when your fighting Isengard and Mordor.
I have modded the vanilla game to make all "goodly" factions Aor units available to all the other goodly factions. I find it makes conquering remote settlements more interesting. (Also makes possible the battle of the Five armies.) This or something like it would be great.

Osgiliath: Arnor should be able to rebuild Osgiliath as well. Their basically Gondor in the North.

Eriador: All the factions save Eriador has a large city where most of the best units are recruited early in the game.(Edoras for Rohan, Minas Tirith for Gondor, Imladris, Caras Galadhon, Erebor, Esgaroth, etc...) Perhaps make Annuminas a large "ruined" city so that we can enjoy the heavy units like the other factions.

Thanks for a great Mod.

[LooN3y]

More High Ellf units, or elf units in general there isnt much, and some cool looking armor for the units would be dope too.

[chriskourou]

I think that the latest "thing" with the special powers of the generals (instead of horn) was a greate idea. I'd like to see more of this... although the fact that some basic heroes such as legolas do NOT have any was disappointing maybe an additional "missile" bonus for a specific time, could be a good idea.

[uddhava]

I think that the latest "thing" with the special powers of the generals (instead of horn) was a greate idea. I'd like to see more of this... although the fact that some basic heroes such as legolas do NOT have any was disappointing maybe an additional "missile" bonus for a specific time, could be a good idea.

Add to that Thorin Oakenshield. In general I wonder what was the rationale behind the division of powers among the powers. Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe Eriador only has two characters with a power whereas a lot of factions have three. I also love Haldirs power but it seems broken or at least it's effect seems random but maybe I use it wrong. Finaly what is the reason that some of the evil faction's powers stop some units dead in their tracks? The powers seem not so powerful to warrant this side effect.

[Arǭmēz]

AOR units: The Greenway(North/South road) goes from Fornost to Pelargir passing through Edoras, Minas Tirith and Osgiliath. When playing Eriador could we have the greenway guards available in all the settlements along the Greenway? This would make a more interesting late game when your fighting Isengard and Mordor.

Let me correct you.
> The North Road went from Fornost to Bree, and through Andrath to Tharbad. [this was later known as Greenway]
>From there it went on as the Old South Road that crossed Enedhwaith turning Eastwards at the gap of Rohan [this was almost totally destroyed]
> from there if was known as the Great West Road it followed the northern side of the Ered Nimrais till the crossroads near Minas Anor (inside the later Pelennor) [this was also known as the North-way]
>From the crossroads near Minas Anor began the South Road that ended to Pelargir.

All those were parts of the Great North-South Road.

so no the Greenway untis are rightly available only along the road from Fornost to tharbad...

I

[SirEyeball]

Seems like my suggestion might have been overlooked in the debate about garrison script so I'll just post it again for good measure. I would really like a sandbox campaign where all "Lore" alliances + Ring is gone. I would like to play a strategy game where I make the decisions and I start from scratch in this fine world. Also a possible conquer all campaign option would be grand maybe in conjuncture with the first suggestion. For the latter a longer time scale might be needed if possible. Finally a one village start for all factions would be great for a grand campaign as well. One where you would have to claw your way out of squalor.

[mondpeiler]

tonplan s post about the Greenway-Guards inspires me to another suggestion:


1st

Availability of Dúnedain-Units for Eriador/Arnor:
It is fine in the north, but going further south...

Imagine: I (the player) chose Eriador.
In the advancing campaign Harad (and Mordor) is (/are) abled to conquer the Gondorian territory. Now the player (Eriador/Arnor) attacks them and drives them back over the Anduin. He now owns Dúnedain-inhabited Land in the South, but he can only train crappy Militia !?

My question and request:
Wouldn't it be logical to have Dúnedain-Units trainable in all regions which are Dúnedain inhabited?


2nd

AOR-Units for Gondor and Arnor:
Every one of theese factions have their own AOR-Units on their starting Territory.

Couldn't it be given that each faction has access to the units of the other one and vice versa.

So that if Erriador conquers Pelargir, it can recruit Pelargir Marines (for example) and if Gondor conquers Annuminas, it can recruit the Knights of Annuminas.

For me it would make sense, that the Dúnedain would support each other if one of the factions became eliminated. The population would still exist. Even after a conquest through Mordor. The goal of a conqueror (even of Sauron himself) is to gain new territory and gain domination over the population and not (or seldom) whipe them out.

[ppetrus]

tonplan s post about the Greenway-Guards inspires me to another suggestion:
1st
What you say it would be valid if all of the Dunedains are born with a bow and a hood. Rangers and Battle Readies are more the way of fighting than heritage (though heritage as well).
2nd
Not a bad idea but the same could be said about High Elves and Silvan Elves and even about Dwarves and Dale.

[chriskourou]

The most important thing in gaming is realism. In a game based on the Lord of the Rings, adding realism is quite easier than doing so in a random game, due to the fact that almost every single normal guy has watches the LOTR trilogy, or read the book. I mean that the mythology and the backround of the game is already built.

So, I would strongly suggest, more "original" dialogues, videos, special powers depending on the hero, some really really good historical battles. I recently watched a new video from MasterBigAb in which he added voices etc seperately and it was awesome.

[Cybernaut]

How about making Numenorean factions (including Gondor and Arnor) a bit more like what Numenoreans were like according to Tolkien lore? That would mean capitals location has less of an impact on the factions income due to natural lack of corruption. Also, citizens would be less prone to rioting. Bandits and rebels would also appear less often than in other factions. However Numenorean military units could be more expensive and slower to recruit than earlier...or something like that because something will probably have to be implemented to rebalance the Numenorean factions boost. Maybe give evil AI tendency to send more evil factions against them at one time than in earlier patches. Example: Where Gondor in patches until now only has to deal with Mordor and Harad, they should probably also have to face Rhun thus having to deal with three evil factions simultaneously. Numenorean players would get a totally new boost but the tradeoff would be that evil guys would do everything they can to put down the glory of Numenoreans.

[Arǭmēz]

One moment... make even slower and more expensive recruitment for Gondor and sent against them more evil factions?
and that because there won't be any rebels and the people happier? Sorry I fail to see the balance in that... AI gondor most times crumbles under Mordor and Harad, unless I play with Rohan, Dale, Silvan Elves or Lorien, and I attack Mordor or with the High Elves where I tend to attack Harad...
Playing with Gondor I defend against an attack, and before I can recruit 10 units another army has attacked... and it takes 15 turns and two settlements to recruit a full stack of the best units...

lack of corruption? I will only say King's Men and fear of death...
Fewer bandits and rebels? Enedhwaith, Dunlendings, Men of the Mountain, Druedain, Hillmen