Firstborn Modder!

[confused german]

Welcome! (Modder WANTED for mini-task)!!


In the first time When Third Age was presented, I remember a wide discussion about power&number of the ELVEN UNITS.

Some people stated the Armies of the Firstborn should be lesser in number beeing harder to kill, so it matches lore.

So if you are TOTAL WAR fanatic (like me) and Tolkiens Lore victim (like me) and unlike me know how to modificate this game I WANT YOU to bring the following mini-mod-idea to life.

1.) (Except light archers & light infantry) reduce ALL ELVEN UNITS in number about 50%.
2.) (Except also light archers & light infantry) give em a second hitpoint.

[Yes, youve seen it, its the same principal idea that made the MedievalII Special Units like e.g. Turkish War-Assasins so wonderful. Consider a whole Army of such Experts. Everyone a worthy killer, but all together hopelessly outnumbered, then you get it, where I want to go.)

Maybe one should adittionally even increase the shooting-cadence (right word?) of all elven archery for re-balancing after reducing numbers.

I would be hopelessly pleased if someone shared this idea with me and we could construct such a mini-mod, just to check it out how it feels on the battleground an in an elven campaign.

Thanx a lot,
Mr. German

[Seleukos_I.]

That's not very difficult to do. Open the edu (export_description_unit), search for the Elven units and then cut their numbers to the half.

[NSFW]

As Seleukos said this is actually a very simple piece of modding.
Entries in EDU look like the following, the notes included at the beginning of the file tell you most of what you need to know about what each of the individual statistics mean:

type             Elf Nobel
dictionary       Elf_Nobel      ; Warriors of Mithlond
category         infantry
class            heavy
voice_type       Heavy
banner faction   main_infantry
banner holy      crusade
soldier          Elf_Nobel, 48, 0, 1.2
officer             highel_captain_early_flag
mount_effect     elephant +2
attributes       sea_faring, hide_forest, very_hardy, can_withdraw, free_upkeep_unit
move_speed_mod   1.1
formation        1.2, 1.2, 2.4, 2.4, 4, square
stat_health      1, 3
stat_pri         12, 5, no, 0, 0, melee, melee_blade, piercing, sword, 0, 1
stat_pri_attr    no
stat_sec         0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, melee_simple, blunt, none, 25, 1
stat_sec_attr    no
stat_pri_armour  10, 6, 6, metal
stat_sec_armour  0, 0, flesh
stat_heat        6
stat_ground      1, 0, 2, -1
stat_mental      17, disciplined, highly_trained
stat_charge_dist 15
stat_fire_delay  0
stat_food        60, 300
stat_cost        1, 950, 340, 110, 110, 950, 4, 100
armour_ug_levels 3, 4
armour_ug_models Elf_Nobel, Elf_Nobel_upg
ownership        egypt
era 0            egypt
era 1            egypt
era 2            egypt
recruit_priority_offset    10

The bold sections in the above are the two entries you want to change

This will half the numbers in the unit:

soldier          Elf_Nobel, 24, 0, 1.2

and this gives them 2 hit points:

stat_health      2, 3

As you can see pretty simple, you just need to do that to all the elven units you want to change and you should be good to go.
Just remember to create a back up of EDU before you get started, that way the worst that can happen is you get a crash and need to restore.

However if you do get a crash it's worth checking the log files in the logs folder of the main M2TW directory, it should give you an idea of what the problem is, even down to a line number. If you've got a decent text editor (I use Notepad++ but there are others) it'll give you line numbers which makes mistakes really easy to track down.

Hope that's some help, best of luck!

[Evan MF]

Well that was quick...

[trueblaze]

If you reduce the number though, you might also want to increase the attack power of there arrows and/or increase rate of fire to compensate since there will be fewer arrows flying out they will cause fewer casulties.

[Jacobi19]

Why not just install the RR/RC Submod? Not only are the Elves more lore accurate, but so is every other faction, isn't that just a big bundle of balance for ye?!?

[trueblaze]

I actully do have the RR/RC submod, but I'd still like to see the high end elf units smaller in size and with 2 hp each:p. I think that would work for the dwarves as well seeing how there suposed to be four foot battle tanks .

[The Sixth Wizard]

Second hitpoints are gay, because it takes more than one catapult shot to kill them, and they all die (with more hitpoints) at once instead of bit by bit.

[Lordinquisitor]

Second hitpoints are gay, because it takes more than one catapult shot to kill them, and they all die (with more hitpoints) at once instead of bit by bit.

Excuse me, what do you want to say?

[trueblaze]

Well then dieing quickly in the rare event a catapult actuly manages to hit an infintry unit will just be another weakness they'll have to deal with . Besides I rarely see catapults on the battle field, and even when they are there pretty easy to take down with few or no casulties.

[trueblaze]

I think he's trying to tell us Little Timmy is stuck down the well.

BTW NSFW, Where is that file located that you'd need to change in order to make those changes?

[Seleukos_I.]

It's in your data folder.