Nearly 90% of the factions lack cavalry. And whats up with the ever increasing difficulty?

[Deedlit]

Just read all the faction weakness and strengths and i was shocked to see the over use words of "Lacks caverly" this applies to nearly all of the factions apart from Harad and Rohan. Why is it that the people in the middle earth Seldom caverly that much that its presented as a weakness across the board in the gameplay?

And to my second point. Why is it everysingle version of the mod the gameplay gets harder. If its not a population nerf, its a increase in building cost, if its not that then its corruption increase. Or a nerf to recruiting time before you can buy another of a unit again like waiting 10 turns for a stack of archers to available. Or in 3.0 its a nerf to the overall income each city makes. Yet the AI gets a boost to population in its citties Or its a movement point nerf. Then you give insane bonuses to the AI like the stack spam or the garrison script. And make it so they never run out of money. Its getting beyond a joke really. What was a fun mod is becomming a drain on my personal time. It takes way too long to get any good units, it takes way to long to move around the map. Overall each version of the mod is harder. And im sure it puts some people off. I don't whana be dealing with Full stacks of orcs each turn when i cant even get a half stack in the same amount of time.

Seriously, im having to play this mod on Easy/Medium now in 3.0 because of again the more nerfs the player has got. Back in 2.0 and 1.0 i could get away with playing it on hard without having to resort to cheats. This mod is slowly becomming not fun to play. Its a fake difficulty really, your just handicapping the player rather than giving a fair challenge out. Giving bonus out like Garrison script i can live with, after all who doesn't like big battles on alot of key places? But seriously all these nerfs the player keeps getting is just slowly the overall pace of the game down. And forces you to play a specific way, and its not cool. Easy feels like medium, Medium feels like Hard, And Very hard is like impossible for your average player. I don't like playing games on easy, i like to play them on hard or medium, But if its a choice between having the AI attack you every turn with full stacks and loosing my regions every turn. Or playing and going at my own pace and having the ai attack in normal ways. I'd rather go with playing on easy, quite sad actually, Even in empire total war i can play on Hard and not experience any of this.

[D'yer Maker]

I totally agree. It's said now.

[Jean=A=Luc]

Just read all the faction weakness and strengths and i was shocked to see the over use words of "Lacks caverly" this applies to nearly all of the factions apart from Harad and Rohan. Why is it that the people in the middle earth Seldom caverly that much that its presented as a weakness across the board in the gameplay?

What are on about now Deed? You know which units are in the mod and you know there's plenty of cav as well. Who cares what the "weaknesses" description says. Maybe it's from an old version, maybe it wasn't well thought out, the description doesn't magically cause cavalry units to disappear from the mod.

You people really give me a headache sometimes. :/

[Mhaedros]

Yeah, many factions have two or three cav. units even without the BG. Rohan, Rhun, Harad ofc, but also Gondor, Eriador and Dale have OK cavalry. Even dwaves have cavalry in form of merc

[Ngugi]

Lacks as in not have much of it? Why should they have many such units? Only Mordor (who still have nazguls) have no cavalry unit and Dwarves (but can hire such).

Personally I say the game balance is better then ever On VH/VH I'm 150 turns into a campaign were all factions are still standing unless I managed to take them out, at the same time as the economy makes the game interesting. Cant have to much armies, thus I cant steam roll as in 2.1 but there is still a real challenge as I have to take care of what I got. In 2.1 a campaign past turn 100 was seldom fun any more.
And if the game challenge a person at M now instead of H or VH then they have found their level, while others require higher resistance. Calls that a game for all kinds of players really.
Nerfing challenge would be a bad idea unless as a submod for interested parties (who dont want to play on lower difficulties), so rather bring it up there or why not check out the modding tutorial section yourself? http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=272

[Lord Golog]

The point on difficulty is spot on. Especially as I remember that a lot of the scripts designed to buff the AI also slow down their turn times, making the game take longer in that way as well as the constant stream of enemy armies, even when they don't have anywhere near the income for them.

[Tomxx]

For have fun in not too long time, use cheat, it's not honest but is the shortest way

[Plumo]

I have to agree on 1 thing: medium feels already quite hard :p I'm still in doubt whether I prefer it this way or more easy.

[King Kong]

1. AI doesn't get a population growth bonus
2. AI does get less units per garrison scripts than in 2.1
3. AI gets no more money per script (only building bonuses like in 2.1)
4. The slow recruitment times do also apply to the AI and is one of very few ways to reduce the overall stack spam.
5. cavalry hasn't be reduced or nerfed
6. all the custom settlements (where the walls are fully upgraded) allow you to recruit the best units much faster than in 2.1
7. The barracks event is earlier than in 2.1 and so are the best units
8. In many cases the best units are recruitable in lower barracks than in 2.1
9. Building times and population growth has been reduced so that not all settlements are fully upgraded about turn 150.
10. The slight income change (more income through farms/less through taxes) does also apply to the AI and was done to give factions with low populations less disadvantages

I see a lot of complaints that people feel punished or that the AI would cheat as hell, but actually this became less in 3.0. It was never my intention to make a mod unrealistically hard, but as a reminder, I am and was always a hardcore player and I began modding because all games of nowadays are too easy for me.
Most people seem to confuse a cheating AI with an actually just better AI. If it is too hard for you, play on hard or medium, actually I never stated that this shouldn't be done.

And btw, the main beta tests were made with a friend of mine, who has no experience with Total War games at all.

[StealthFox]

3. AI gets no more money per script (only building bonuses like in 2.1)

Are you saying that the AI no longer gets money when they are bankrupt (Money Script)? Or are you saying that the money/script they get is the same as it was in 2.1?

[Dr.Nick]

9. Building times and population growth has been reduced so that not all settlements are fully upgraded about turn 150.
10. The slight income change (more income through farms/less through taxes) does also apply to the AI and was done to give factions with low populations less disadvantages

KK, the population growth was already horrendously too slow in 2.1 and one of the main criticisms people had. I can't begin to fathom why you made it worse! Back playing 2.1 like 200+ turns in and I couldn't even get cities I controlled past the half way point of population unless I had captured them from the enemy.

[Astarte]

Why do you guys need so much population? If I am not entirely wrong, every faction starts with atleast one large city or fortres now?

Currently playing Eriador campaign, battle-ready dunedains were recruitable from 2 settlements almost immediatly, rangers from one. Turn 120, and soon dunedains avaivable in Annuminas too. And I am having tons of fun! Elite units feel like elite ones now, cutting terrible holes to enemy lines. Too bad OoG is dead in few turns now, and Isengard havent expanded at all... OoMM... I hate fighting against those badgers, and they are nicely at their mountains too. Perhaps campaign map is little too balanced? Even Gondor is surviving fine. I have no-one to save! Cant decide, after Isengard, boatrip to Umbar or holocaust for non-humans.

[ajak60]

Cant decide, after Isengard, boatrip to Umbar or holocaust for non-humans.

my votes for the boat trip! would give you a decent challenge there, as your pretty far behind enemy lines, with few reinforcements...also, that puts you closer to Mordor and some of the newer battle maps!

[FarKenal]

Yes I think the game is a real challenge, but I think that most peoples complaints stem from ‘the boring factor’ as you spend too long being able to afford large armies and spend too many turns fighting off enemy assaults.

One thing I think of as the biggest timewaster is that, I take command of every battle as I just know that if I use autoresolve that I’ll lose anywhere from 3 to 20 times more men than if I had of commanded it personally.

So naturally when a campaign becomes harder and the causality toll from every battle becomes so critically important, it means you’ll take command yourself and waste 6-15 minutes. Combined with the more frequent smaller armies floating around and the greater number of turns for a single campaign to pan out and all of a sudden this time you spend fighting pointless little battles that should have no significance becomes very draining.

Is there a way to drastically reduce the amount of men you’d lose in autoresolve battle, because I for one would never use autoresolve if I thought I lose less men than if I took command personally, but I just want to use it for those pissy unimportant skirmishes, and I would like the losses to somewhat reflect what it would be had I commanded the battle.

And I think with such a feature applied in this mod, it would drastically enhance everyone’s enjoyment by drastically reducing the amount of playing time to get to a certain point/turn mark.

[FrightfulBridge]

lol, just reduce corruption to in descr_settlement_mechanics to 0, then it becomes bearable

[Descendent of Kings]

Ya no issues with cavalry for me (though I read the thread on adding orc units and wargs w/ javelins I liked...a lot of good ideas there if you ask me). The only thing I agree with is game pace. For the record I'm no excellent gamer (I cheat...a lot, vast majority is money cheat). And I agree with what someone said about how losing your biggest cities/capitals should seriously hurt you, I just think it takes so long to upgrade cities even to just large towns. I think at that point you can field solid troops, and after that you've upgraded farms and the new livestock buildings enough that growth is fine. It's getting them started that's the issue. I'm currently on about turn 90 in my gondor campaign and I literally just upgraded two of my villages that I've had since almost the beginning and still have one not even close. And I always have low tax rate and upgrade farming immediately. I'm always considering using the population cheat cuz it just takes too damn long. As for difficulty, I agree if you're having issues just lower the setting n quit crying. Personally I play on H/M and only reason is cuz on lower campaign settings I noticed AI didn't really upgrade settlements very far except for a few key cities. Always bugged me that late in a campaign where for example the SE were killing it, but sit there with orc looking settlements. Closing note I also agree that the number of battles is tedious, yes I see mordor your 3/4 stack greatly outnumbers my 3 ithilien ranger units at henneth annun but i'm still going to slaughter you so you don't need to send them every other turn..personally I think if you defeat a full stack or two that should be a major victory. It's killer when you do that just to see two more full stacks on their way. Or you raise a full stack to take on a major settlement and have to fight a full stack just before you get there. You win, but it kills to know you took some good losses likely and know that you'll get there and watch the garrison script kick in...

[tjd123]

I don't see why everyone is complaining. I've had no trouble growing my cities. Yes, it's slower, but I've managed to get some 3% pop growth. I also have a spy moving about and I notice the AI has a pretty small population in a few towns. The game feels very balanced, and I am doing this on VH/VH too.

[sithi]

Fact is, the penalties make certain factions, like Isengard, nigh unplayable because the GOOD factions ALWAYS utterly outnumber you while your economy utterly sucks.

I won't ramble here as that's already been covered in the 3.0 Isengard thread

[zoommooz]

To be honest I liked to hear that the games designer feels modern games are too easy. Other then endless ai spam, I love the game hard, the harder the better. My favourite times that I have played strat type games (hoi2, sins of solar empire, civ4 etc) is when they are modded and there is a good chance that I can lose as a player, meaning victory, if gained, is all the more sweeter. Just an opinion.

Cheers

[King Kong]

which penalties?