My thoughts on a great mod, balance, archers

[Bonapartist]

I have to say I'm pretty damn impressed with this mod, and have enjoyed it more than the other LOTR mod for Rome. Some of the factions appear to need some relatively serious balancing. All that I say here, I say with great respect and admiration for the mod you've created. It's the sort of work which should appear on all of your resume's, and really MEAN something to an employeer.

What's up with the archer-hatred? Archer units cost absurd amounts of money while being half the size of normal units. Come from Europa Barborum and adapting heavily to forcing the enemy's hand by outranging them with missile weapons, this is a real kick in the nuts. I love missile-centric warfare and am disappointed that archery-based units got kicked in the crotch.

Moral seems too high, universally. "Militia" type units regularly fight to 10% unit strength and that's kind of kooky. I can understand that the "morale bar" as it were has been raised in this mod, but I think it is excessively high.

The dwarven clan causes my computer to CTD when I start their compaign, I'm now 3 for 3. Playing through Steam, win XP system.

The Orc rabble are alot of fun, alot of fun, for some reason. They could probably be strengthened a little bit, with greater unit diversity. Either their units need to be strengthened 20% or so or their upkeep needs to go down 20% or so - they're supposed to be 85 pounds wretched little cave-dwelling monsters, like the Moria orcs, and should have lower upkeep. They should be the "human wave" faction, with large numbers of disposable troops with specialized elite troops to augment them (including the trolls). Shouldn't they have wargs too? Maybe they do and I just haven't built, not playing right now.

Isengard is awesome, but overly so, to the point of seeming overpowered. Their low cost, low upkeep (120-140) line troops are extremely dependable and effective. Urukhai spearmen, swordsmen, and the low cost, low upkeep (70/70) Urukhai marauders make up a fighting force which seems excessively good for how low maintenance it is. Warg wait time should be dropped to 2 or 3 turns, imo, crossbowmen should have one turn built time, a full-size unit and a larger recruitment/upkeep cost, imo again.

Gotta love the Rome AI... I just conquered Minas Tirith as Isengard after Mordor was trying and failing for the whole game, and the very turn after I capture it, they launch their full force against the city, breaking the game-long alliance. Great.

I might add some other thoughts as I play more factions. This is a great effort and the mod team should be proud.

[Spike]

missile troops allready have OBSCENE ammounts of damage here compared with numerical armour rate, each shots is almost guaranteed kills against most opponents, even the heaviest armoured one, bar dwarves, certain elves, and gondorian elites (and anyone who had 2HP anyway) but even they won't survive much several volleys and that's from archery units with reduced numbers - compare with EB who had missiles do somewhat little damage against properly armoured troops and remember that "eww" toxotai? - and remember that this mod is supposed to be played on "normal" scale, where missiles reign supreme

[Bardo]

Thanks for the comments, they are always useful, and specially now we try to rebalance a bit the campaign.

I agree what Strategos Lykos said about archers. Archers and cavalry are the easiest way to win against the AI with few casualties, so we try to keep them expensive.

We had an issues with moral in this mod, probably due to high defence and low attack values. For example, when you attack to orcs with dwarves, the orcish AI notices they are hardly killing to anyone, and they tend to rout often, even with high morale values. The AI used to run away at many battles that they could have win, without even fighting, and it was not fun.
We have progressively increased the morale until the current values. Now, armies do not run away spontaneously as before, but it is still possible to cause massive routs if you focus your attack on certain units, or if you charge the flanks or back.
Note there are a lot of modifiers to morale: command of the general, character traits, chevrons, difficulty settings, etc. We have tried to balanced the morale, so it is still challenging to fight against AI armies without general (nor morale bonuses).

We are trying to rebalance the population growth, the money and the recruitment in campaign, we will take your other comments into account.

The dwarven clan causes my computer to CTD when I start their compaign, I'm now 3 for 3

It is a know bug, that will be finally fixed for next patch!
You can fix it if you delete the file: \alexander\lotrtw\preferences\advice, as said in the readme.

Gotta love the Rome AI

Do not get too excited... unfortunately, those attacks are mainly caused by scripted reinforcements to the AI.
We are working to improve AI with economy bonuses better than scripts, for next version.

[wlesmana]

Archers is a tricky thing to balance. Anyone here was around when the Galadhrim Sentinels could kill everything with arrows, even Army of the Dead? That was fun times.

We put the morale higher because we find it too easy to break AI's morale in RTW, making battles into domino effect of routing unit after unit. Basically, we like more dead bodies.

[timpi]

Archers is a tricky thing to balance. Anyone here was around when the Galadhrim Sentinels could kill everything with arrows, even Army of the Dead? That was fun times.

We put the morale higher because we find it too easy to break AI's morale in RTW, making battles into domino effect of routing unit after unit. Basically, we like more dead bodies.

they still own anything.

But I agree that the mod needs some serious rebalancing. I hate it that Gondor has like these really good basic units and has elites that have less numbers and +2 attack and defence. I also agree that playing as Isengard is far to easy for this mod. You own any faction, even Mordor. I must add that Mordor is overpowered as well but I like that because if you play as Mordor, Gondor will be extremely powerful as well. And if you play against Mordor, it's just EPIC.

[Samurai Warrior]

It is hard to get arrow damage accuracy, it all depends on the archer anyway, and no archer is the same.

[Seshomaru]

Isengard isn't that easy...try to attack elves...Galadhrim or Noldor and you shall see the real power of archers and your uruk-hai dead ...but yes VS Rohan,Gondor,Mordor,Orcs or Free People they are pretty good

[DiZaster]

what happene to Seshomaru?
From this http://www.123backgrounds.com/freebg/6313.jpg
to this http://www.twcenter.net/forums/custo...tar82120_2.gif


Fukushima 1 effect? x)

[timpi]

If that's a joke, I get it. If it isn't, I don't get it.

But normally, you only start to laugh at peoples missery when its over.

[DiZaster]

it was a joke)

[Seshomaru]

seshomaru was a demon and he trasformed into a preety orc who shall conquer the world of Middle Earth

[timpi]

oooooooooooh, now I really get it.

[Bonapartist]

Some more thoughts.

I just played through as Mordor for a bit, got the ring, Wow, it's alot of fun having Sauron as a superweapon, a nice reward for a campaign. It'd be kind of cool to give him some troll bodyguards, I don't know if that's possible, it's def not necessary for his survival, just would give him more "impact." It was GREAT fun for four or five turns when I spotted Frodo and Sam suddenly popped up at the end of one of my army's turns; they then disappeared the next and I had my whole nation focused on sweeping and hunting through the dense forests they were in. After a few turns I finally found them with a Nazghul led contingent - the Black guard charged and just shredded SamNFrodo like a sheet. It was a very fun couple of turns I got to say. What happens if SamNFrodo reach MountDoom as one of the Allied factions, anyway?

Mumakil are def underpowered. Trolls just annihalate them, or even just units of decent-quality infantry. Trolls might be overpowered universally, if I didn't mention that. Long build time is a definite good balancing aspect though.

Isengard definitely seems a little overpowered - you can grab easy rebel settlement nearby and poorly defending Roharrim (sp?) settlements and have a very powerful economy/troop production going before long, and the smaller elf faction (the forest by Moria) would never stand a chance as a simple fact of numbers and economy - accumulate a large enough army and starve out their 2-5 settlements. Isengard Swordsmen and Spearmen are better than the greater Orc warbands and Greater orc spearmen of Mordor by a wide margin.

I think there's a little too much money about, in general. As Mordor and Isengard, I rarely if ever had to realistically worry about money, I could just ceaselessly churn out wave after wave from all my cities.

Kickass mod.

On the topic of EB archers, there were some infuriating moments, and I can very much believe it's a difficult balance to strike given that no mod I've seen has really gotten it perfect. I remember in EB just having four or five units of quality archers raining down death on High quality hoplites and just getting absurdly, laughably slow kill rates.

Edit: the dwarf faction now works fine!

[wlesmana]

True on the money side, especially for evil factions. We're thinking of increasing their maintenance cost a bit, especially for Uruk-hai.

Also, I got this idea of introducing more "rebellion". Basically a script that checks who controls some regions and spawn rebel armies. For instance, if Isengard holds Edoras, there will be a good chance Rohirrim rebels spawned around the area. This is different than regular rebel/outlaw spawn because it checks who controls the city. This will only be on special regions like dwarven or elven regions, also different on who controls the city. For instance, Noldor holding Caras Galadhon will not spawn elven rebels. But Isengard/Mordor holding it will definitely spawn elven rebels. This will add extra trouble for taking hold of key/important cities that hate your faction. Maybe it will be done only for player faction.

[|Sith|Galvanized Iron]

True on the money side, especially for evil factions. We're thinking of increasing their maintenance cost a bit, especially for Uruk-hai.

Also, I got this idea of introducing more "rebellion". Basically a script that checks who controls some regions and spawn rebel armies. For instance, if Isengard holds Edoras, there will be a good chance Rohirrim rebels spawned around the area. This is different than regular rebel/outlaw spawn because it checks who controls the city. This will only be on special regions like dwarven or elven regions, also different on who controls the city. For instance, Noldor holding Caras Galadhon will not spawn elven rebels. But Isengard/Mordor holding it will definitely spawn elven rebels. This will add extra trouble for taking hold of key/important cities that hate your faction. Maybe it will be done only for player faction.

...but when orcs capture a settlement they annihilate the population, so who would be left to rebel?

[Rougeman]

...but when orcs capture a settlement they annihilate the population, so who would be left to rebel?

the orcs turn into hobbits!

[Spike]

the orcs turn into hobbits!

orcs is initially corrupted elves, corrupted men turned into Uruk Hai, and corrupted Hobbits? ? ?

[Seshomaru]

but if rohan for example is a dead factions there will be no more rebellion right?

[Rougeman]

i think the rebellion will be controlled by outlaws, and it wont be regular rebel spawn which come because of low order in the city

[wlesmana]

Not everyone lives in the city? There are villages all over the place in Middle-earth.