Pirates of Umbar

[Falaffelboy]

Hello dear Third Age folks!!!!!

I have read the thread about Harad and Rhun beeing overpowered. Well I agree, Harad simply has too much territory at the beginning, And can effordless expand towards Gondor since it has no opposition in the east or north of the map. With Rhun it is similar.

My question is :

Would it be possible to add the pirates of Umbar as a faction western of Harad.
That would balance out the match a little, Umbar would be a rather small faction with maybe 4 cities
along the shore but maybe it would be more interesting to add some more minor cities and villages in the southern map for more capabilities for expansion so Umbar is not overrun after 20 turns.

I think it would be nice to give Umbar an big naval fleet from the beginning so as a Gondor player you would be forced to invest more in your own fleet to prevent beeing constantly raded as the game progresses.

P.s I think about 6 months ago there was a poll for further new factions and Umbar was also on the list.

[lolIsuck]

The problem with Umbar is that as it has nowhere to expand and is closed in by Harad. This means a war between the two is inevitable. You could give Umbar all the coastal provinces to stop that but you would get two not very strong factions instead of one strong one.

[Pinkie Pie]

The ai has never really been able to invade via ships so the Corsairs will spend most their time blockading ports and destroying fleets. Their position will also cause them to attack Harads more often than not which would make it too easy for Gondor to maintain a fleet and attack Harad.

Gondor imho should be the most difficult campaign along with Dale so Rhun and Harad are balanced in that respect.

A possibility is to make Harad and Rhun enemies to Mordor and boost Mordor a bit, possibly by giving them Ithilien.

[Spits32]

The ai has never really been able to invade via ships so the Corsairs will spend most their time blockading ports and destroying fleets.

In my Gondor campaign Harad goes after that island settlement with abandon fury.

[brapollo]

The ai has never really been able to invade via ships so the Corsairs will spend most their time blockading ports and destroying fleets. Their position will also cause them to attack Harads more often than not which would make it too easy for Gondor to maintain a fleet and attack Harad.

Gondor imho should be the most difficult campaign along with Dale so Rhun and Harad are balanced in that respect.

A possibility is to make Harad and Rhun enemies to Mordor and boost Mordor a bit, possibly by giving them Ithilien.

That's kind of missing what people have been saying, including myself, about Rhun and Harad. First, Rhun and Harad are both about twice as powerful as Mordor, which is not quite right.

Secondly, between 2.1 and 3.1, there were tweaks made to Harad and Rhun that made them much more powerful than they already were. Basically Rhun/Harad 3.1 is much more powerful than Rhun/Harad 2.1- and already the 2.1 version of the factions were pretty strong.

Third, this imbalance makes the game less fun to play. Playing as Rhun and Harad is basically too easy, even on VH/VH, to be any fun. And to fight against them is to, at best, be battling stack spam.

[Mhaedros]

There's a submod called DaC (link in my sig) and it will divide many faction into loads of new factions Umbar is one of these

[lolIsuck]

Well, isn't blockading ports and destroying ships what corsairs do?

You could use the "prefers naval invasions" in descr_sm_factions but it's not really a "prefers" but more a "uses".

[Pinkie Pie]

I have tried that, it is not really usefull and rarely works.
Having Umbar will more than likely end up with either them beingdestroyed by Harad or them keeping Harad so busy that Gondor destroys both of them.

[Pinkie Pie]

That one settlement, in my experiance the ai only invades via ships if there is no enemy that borders them.
Early on they will attack that but i have found that if they do not take it early on they will leave it alone.

I have seen on several occasions the ai Gondor/Dale defeat the ai Harad/Rhun so they can not be that overpowered.

Perhaps if we gave Mordor some of Rhun and Harads regions or better yet, halved their income.

[Incredible Bulk]

The only problem is how many units can they have? Not many to make it fun or it wil be unrealistic, for example why would thu need pikemen, horsemen or knights? They are pirates

[Mhaedros]

Not really. The people of Umbar was superior to the rest of Harad since many actually descend from Numenor.

[knicolas2]

i also made the experience that harad is extremly powerful... . but if you play gondor very aggressive at the beginning of the game you could handle it . only that stupid garrison script is a problem then. let in my gondor campaign spawning a mordor army with two battailions of olog hai in front of minas tirith.

so why should there be a new umbar faction?

is it possible that they are allied from the beginning, umbar and harad, and will not attack each other?

[Falaffelboy]

Well it would not be boring if you boost Mordor a little with spaming units or more money for the Ai.

And Its a pitty the the Ai is not good in naval invasions!!
The Unit thing is a little problem how about recruiting new mixed units if you expand more east!

Something like a reform in lategame similar to the Arnor reemerging Maybe some Numenorian units in late game?

[Captain Zoran]

Havn't we've already had this discussion in elaborate detail before?

[dannyalex]

Not really. The people of Umbar was superior to the rest of Harad since many actually descend from Numenor.

by the time of the war of the ring they were all dead,from noble families none remain...

[Poosticks7]

by the time of the war of the ring they were all dead,from noble families none remain...

please back that up with a quote.

Like Mhaedros said Dac will have an Umbar faction and it will have an interesting roster. To balance that Dol Amroth will also be a faction.

[Hermes Trismegistos]

Yes, in this thread for example:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...ighlight=Umbar

I don't believe there can be much left on that matter that wasn't said there..

[Jmcd08]

I agree they are very overpowered but thats what makes the game fun.
Maybe you could delete some scripts like money script to make it easier for you less stack spam should give you time to expand and fortify settlements

[Ngugi]

If you want to go through some semi-official Umbar faction-discussions, here, knock yourselve's out http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...ighlight=Umbar
And no, it didn't held for a working vanilla faction.

Sources backing Danny's standing point is found here, from the same thread (very old posts of mine hehe, first with sources I wouldnt use now but are accurate in this case. Actually in this thread I began to gather and work with quotes):
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...00#post9512500 or/and additionaly this later post http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...92#post9519292

Further can be noted that on land Umbar seems to have been unable to challenge Gondor [not without help of Harad] which sugggest their infantry and potential cavalry was inferior while their strenght naturally was on the sea (in not due to their low numbers only, but thats a big weaness as well).

[Wizad]

Poosticks, do you have a map of the starting positions of the factions in DaC? Is the map mostly rebel at the start (like vanilla M2TW), or is it mostly divided already (like vanilla TATW)?