Third Age TW - DLViscussion thread...

[Tokus*Maximus]

Hey DLVers,

Like me, you might play the wonderful TATW. Hats off to them! My contribution to KK and team's marvelous Middle Earth mod are the symbols - as enjoyable to do as the DLV set. Third age TW is really immersive. I've been busy on the expanded edition; Divide & Conquer. The next release of DAC is going well but in need of more skilled modders. We are looking for;

- Skilled texturer / modeller
- Weapon switcher
- Another scripter would be nice too. Archaon is waaaaay busy.

Feel free to join our custom forum and get involved... :
http://dacmod.forumotion.com/forum.htm


Hope this finds you well,

Sir Lord Tolkius*Bombadil Pope Swell-guy IIIrd

[Kjertesvein]

That would be silly & malignant. Think of all the the people loosing there jobs.
I have tried the battles, and i'm not impressed. My general died in the first charge... come ON! Cavalry stops right before charge within a secound, and with no animation.
And I know Rohan is a cavalry faction, but it's the same old, same old, steam enginge... and every time I think of DLV.... my precious....

The list goes on...and on... would be pretty cool to have a DLV LOTR, right beside Britannia, Americas,....etc... I bet it would dominate the whole scene.

[Vhaelor]

That would be silly & malignant. Think of all the the people loosing there jobs.
I have tried the battles, and i'm not impressed. My general died in the first charge... come ON! Cavalry stops right before charge within a secound, and with no animation.
And I know Rohan is a cavalry faction, but it's the same old, same old, steam enginge... and every time I think of DLV.... my precious....

Heh, hardly fair to judge TATW on their very first release, and a lot of problems were fixed in a 1.1 patch. DLV has been around for months, TATW for a few weeks. Give it some time

[Ahlerich]

why not. that time hard diplomacy between good and evil at least would make sense. offend the nobility i personally would disable but in general i guess that could be fun

[Xtiaan72]

Finally got it downloaded, trying it out tonight! Awesome idea Tokoid!!!!

[Swiss Halberdier]

Third Age+DLV mechanics/scripts would be really amazing!

DLV has so much which enhances the whole atmosphere of MTW2.

Surely the battles need balancing too.

[Tokus*Maximus]

Wow! that's quite an addict stack! Heh.

I'll do some asking around this month while I rework the faction symbols a bit. Once I post up a Tokus mini- mod with those new symbol set, any of you chaps working on a Difficult Logic Version on TATW; feel free to use that thread for your stuff - we can bind it all together in a single release version and float it on the mini-mod section.

I imagine a lot of goodwill towards DLV would incur - I now play both games happily!

[Agis Tournas]

Anyone up for a DLVesque mini-mod for the marvelous TATW? I'm doing new stuff for it and wonder who also cooking up a TATW mini-mod?

Very nice idea Sir Tokus!

I would be glad to help anyway I can.
Cheers
Agis

[Kjertesvein]

Suggestion for front picture Maybe add some names to the characters.

[ivanhoex]

hi!

i have played a bit of third age this days
(mostly because i just cant play dlv with taijis files quite broken, and vanilla dlv having a very old version without lots of new units...
so i have to wait till a good taiji´s release is up...)

first, i want to let everyone know this, because it is quite groundbreaking, DARTH and POINTBLANK are doing the battle stuff from ground zero!!
go check the minimod section, at the mithrandir edu thread if you cant believe me.

how much time you think those two will lose until a good, well rounded, version is out? i will give them a week just because i guess they are human..
(and right now, you can download a good EDU from mith, plus a fix on cavalry by pajomife, the link is on mith first post
the upgrade is way notorious)



but campaign wise... i found it a bit boring. i am playing harad and the place where i got all my fun is at sea!! not that gondor has shipped troops,
that wont happen, but sea war itself is epic.

but i need the sea war because my ports HAVE to be free. i have no other income from my almost 15 towns...
and i almost cant hold my economy with only two stacks of almost peasantry troops. from turn one i had to
say no to adoptions every turn, just to avoid more upkeep!
my family got decimated by saurons agents (aka inquisitors)... but thanks to that i am not in the red...
even though i have built only ONE building that was not economic related.

anyway, my own problems with harad economics out of the way, i had no need to keep family at cities. they will give almost no bonus to economy except in counted exceptions, and they dont cost me to have them in the battlefield or siegin, so i have to send my governors to work their way as heavy cav.
and they SUCK at heavy cav... lol XD... inquisitors kills them by the unit with a single move...


in the only matter that i didnt miss DLVs scripts was when i started to set all my territory under the light of truth... i mean.. i have planted about 100 post towers... the territory is plain immense. oh, and neither your characters nor boats have moving speed at all.
i believe i had about 10 generals running around my territory planting towers for about 15 turns.
if DLV were on, i would never have got to turn 16..

they just crawl around. 5 turns to go from city A to neightbouring city B that has a rebel stack near...


anyway.. right now, TATW needs a lot of fixing and love at campaign time..







all in all, i believe that DLV´s script in third age should only be true if third age posts a main forum sticky with this version,
if it is included in normal third age edition or if it is stuck to the minimod sections, i would feel ashamed.

tweaking dlv to work ok in third age must be quite hard. (just taking note of the few stuff i mentioned, a lot of economic tweaking,
plus a lot more speed for characters, etc... means a lot of testing!)

since there is no real competition between TATW and DLV, because one aims for realism and the other for fantasy,
i think a merge with both options ought to be incredible, but charging all that merge in the back of repman alone is not fair
if both teams gathered to make it, third age would earn a "very difficult" setting for advanced players, while DLV would get a
"fantasy world" thats also very engaging (and a new world in graphical awesomeness, you have to check out those trolls mowing people around, all covered in blood...)

[Gaias]

So TA:TW is very pretty but doesn't have much under the hood you are saying?

[Omar Nelson B.]

It's still in the baby step stages man. No mod is ever perfect the fist go around. Plus, with all of the hype, Im sure that the TATW will let the people settle and then start turning out patches and fixes.

But short answer is, yes, TaTw lacks some of the scripting and muscle that DLV has. There is plenty of potential though and a huge following.

[Gaias]

I suppose I was being a bit unfair with that statement I made. All I was inquiring about if it had more going for it campaign wise compared to vanilla MII:TW?

[ivanhoex]

every one of my 18 generals has a negative income trait, most of them are ignorants of one level or the other... it sucks!!!

and orcish factions are steamrolling all others thanks to autocalc vices

anyway, pb is working really fast and there is a quite ok EDU right now

[Ahlerich]

just consider it a open beta. it is no where close to FATW now i agree. i am pretty sure it will get there. darths cavalry fix, miths edu file, some extra portareaits... all steps into the right direction. this mod is hard in its own way for many factions and i assume if dlv stuff will be put ontop of it it will be unplayable for many factions. i think.

[Tokus*Maximus]

I was up for new events like... the stuff I did with Drakken (and was going to do with Harry for Europa until his old machine died)... When a faction conquers a territory or a faction looses one. New Third age crowns at capitals, territorial crests for each region, etc. Should any of you addicts be thinking of anything along those lines, let me know and I'll combine my Tokus art*patcher I'm beginning to grow on my home game version.

I'm not suggesting we take DLV - lock, stock 'n' smokin' barrels - and force it into TATW. Just create new event thingies and whatnot that have a DLV 'glow' about them.

Oh, M2TW platform has got even more interestin'...!

[ivanhoex]

tokus, harad´s battle UI was made by you? it is quite beautiful.. (it can as well be vainilla, since i have never played vainilla but once, with venetia)




also, according to mith ballancing thread, harad is not a playable faction, which is frustrating, since i have started a harad campaign about 5 times now..

i really wanted to play with those lunatics..




anyway, i am arguing around with them, lets see if i can get them to make the battle actually funnier, because right now is coming from a mess but going to be more of the same
(so disregard my first impulse of being happy about PB´s aportation... he has a wrong point of view about unit ballancing and probably that wont change)

[Taiji]

As a game it really seems to be coming together very nicely, I've had a little bash at a campaign, I'm quite impressed with the art, the map and some of the voice acting.... the very fact that it has voice acting at all is fantastic!

The units look excellent, some really nice texture work there.

The factions are well-thought out and so far it seems they are well implemented.

PB's work on reballancing the units has me sighing with relief, he's really doing an excellent job of it. Plus he's going to implement something like the RR he did for SS, really great work.

Germanicu5 is doing BAI as a submod (as am I) but he seems to be making further progress regarding using scripting to affect the AI, hopefull TA:TW will have a system of randomly alternating AI files. Which means you might have to change tactics battle by battle - which would be awesome.

All in all it really is an excellent game, of course it could do with some of Repman's genius - it lacks DLV's unfathomable depth - but as it stands, it's shaping up very well so far.

[ivanhoex]

as taijis says, PB´s work has gotten better rounded and its more likely playable right now
(with lesser difference between factions that made some factions unplayable before)
plus the new BAIs minimods are a promise to change the vanilla experience into something actually funny (not just eye candy)


but in campaign, it still needs lots of DLV´s caring.

but its huge scale (like for example starting with more or less 14 settlements if you play harad) may force the hand of DLV modders.

i had to plant around 40 towers to enlighten my harad territory. and i am almost always broke.. well maybe i am repeating myself, i should reread my old postings..

anyway, making DLV features merge with TATW means a lot of testing time.

[Ahlerich]

yeah at start you dont have much money as harad on vh/vh. if you focus on building economy first combined with slow advancement north it gets better soon.

on the other hand once i got close to minas morgul i got attacked by mordor. i can only afford 2 good stacks while mordor comes at me with 2 ful stacks and a total of about 10-12 troll units with some olog hai. in other words..5 more rounds and i ll have no army no more and one province less. i assume i ll have to start over on h/vh

harads hunits are beautiful though. the most beautiful ones i have seen so far.

too implement dlf feats really would have to be done carefully as tatw as it is gives you a challange already with some factions( tight economy, trolls, etc) simply adding the field cost script into a otherwise unchanged tatw would probably kill the gameplay. re introduction of merchants or adding many ressources could counterbalance that but yeah..adding dlv feats would create the necessety to balance it out by adding new stuff.