The Campaigns Addon (for LotRTW v3.0+)

[Bardo]

Moved all the discussion about Shield's changes to a new thread.
People who enter here normally wants to read about CapnDan's changes. For Shield's changes, please use this other topic:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...-s-addon/page3

[CapnDan]

So I'm just casually working away on last little changes for V2.7 (which itself is mostly just composed of little bits of polish here and there), and had a couple of thoughts I might like feedback on.

1. Elite Spears Formation Issues:
Most of the elite spear units in the mod have their formation settings reversed (ie. click 'loose' and they tighten up formation). This was done initially to counter cavalry attacks against those units in muliplayer but the major drawbacks are that most players will never figure this out (judging by the several times it has been reported on the forums as a bug) and that the AI will likely never be able to use it properly.

So, my thought here was to just give these elite spear units a slightly closer base formation and a not so loose loose formation. Just to clear up confusion and allow the AI to use these more effectively on a more regular basis


2. Invincible Sauron:
The Campaigns Addon already changes Sauron's battle invincibility from Mordor with 5+ settlements to being based on Dol-Guldur and Minas Morgul. But, I did find this makes it a bit too straightforward to eliminate Sauron and Mordor.

Some of my most interesting/exciting battles have been the ones where I engaged Sauron but forgot to take the required settlements to make him vulnreble, where I fired every arrow I had at him and sacrificed a handful of infantry units before I realized I couldn't beat him. I think I'd like to introduce this level of random chance to the game (and also increase perceived danger of Sauron) by adding in at totally random maybe 25% chance that Sauron be invincible in a battle.

Thoughts?

[Bardo]

Good points. In both cases, one of the problems is that this kind of things are not really documented anywhere in the mod.

1) You are surely right. In that case, I'd vote to just replace the tight formation by a standard loose formation. I'd avoid the idea of a "slightly closer base formation" because that would not be effective against cavalry and it'd be surely worse against infantry too (less chances to flank the soldiers of enemy units).

2) I agree that the rule of 5+ settlements looks a bit arbitrary. I don't remember if battle invincibility can depend on a random chance. If so, maybe the chance can be related to the number of settlements owned by mordor, so the less regions controlled by mordor, the less chances for Sauron to be invulnerable. For example something like:
1 region = 50%, 2 = 60%, 3 = 70%, 4 = 80%, 5 or more regions = 90% invincible

[CapnDan]

Thanks Bardo, for the reply.

For spear formations, I did some testing and there definitely seems to be some advantages to a closer formation in terms of defensive ability and staying power (ability for hold a line for longer), even just vs other infantry. I wonder do you happen to know if there is any hard coded penalty for being in 'loose' formation? Or does the penalty generate dynamically just based on unit interactions with each other? So far based on this I'm inclined to just leave the formations all as is - a small easter egg/quirk for longtime players to discover maybe.

As to Sauron's invinvibility, I've simply done the following in scripts and based on a quick little bit of testing it seems to work out just fine:

monitor_event BattleConflictPhaseCommenced not I_LocalFaction romans_julii
if I_SettlementOwner Dol_Guldur = romans_julii
;and I_SettlementOwner Minas_Morgul = romans_julii
console_command invulnerable_general Sauron
end_if

if not I_SettlementOwner Dol_Guldur = romans_julii
and RandomPercent < 33
console_command invulnerable_general Sauron
end_if
end_monitor

[Bardo]

The script looks good. I'm not sure if this chance of invulnerability is going to discourage rush attacks to try to kill Sauron early in game. But I like the Dol guldur requirement, it might do the job.

I wonder do you happen to know if there is any hard coded penalty for being in 'loose' formation?

As far as I know, it is based on unit interactions as you say, and I didn't test it enough to know if there is an optimal distance.

In my tests, when the formation is too loose, the enemy soldiers can break the first line more easily, soldiers of both sides end mixed, and that is not good for units with defense based on shield or defending skill bonuses. Neither it is good for units with low morale because they might be considered flanked/surrounded.

Tight formations are good to hold the position and stand against enemy charges, but they reduce the width of the unit, and make it easier for the enemy to surround the entire army, that is why I do not like them for AI armies. Another disadvantage is the attacks from monsters with area effect, or with projectiles.

However, if you have tested these elite spear units with closer formations and you noticed an improvement, then your suggestion might work better than the current setting. I like the idea that at least your addon includes this fix, for people who consider it a bug.

[CapnDan]

The script looks good. I'm not sure if this chance of invulnerability is going to discourage rush attacks to try to kill Sauron early in game. But I like the Dol guldur requirement, it might do the job.

Sauron's invincibility dependant on Dol Guldur (with scripted reminders to the player and everything) was one of the first things I'd puzzled on waaay back in the earliest versions of the Addon.

As for spear formations, I'll maybe puzzle around with it a bit and see what I can turn up.

[LittleDwarf]

I'm not sure if anyone is willing to still work on this, but I have a suggestion for two new units for the Dwarves. They actually were previewed by the original mod team at some point and I'm not sure why weren't they included. These are:

http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-lord-o...nits9#imagebox

http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-lord-of-the-rings-total-war/images/new-units8#imagebox

Also some special unit only recruitable at Moria would be nice. Maybe some warriors wearing elements of mithril armor? Khazad-dum is an ancestral home of the Dwarves and reclaiming it should give them something substantial.

[Bardo]

You are right about those previewed dwarven units, it is a pitty that they were finally not included in the last release, but I don't really remember the reason.

Sauron's invincibility dependant on Dol Guldur (with scripted reminders to the player and everything) was one of the first things I'd puzzled on waaay back in the earliest versions of the Addon.

I know, I know, but I did not test it to verify if it is enough to prevent rush attacks.
I'm playing now a campaign with this addon. I like most of your changes and I still plan to include it in the next all-in-one pack. I'll try to give you some more feedback when I finish my campaign.

[CapnDan]

I have a suggestion ...for the Dwarves...previewed by the original mod team.

I think the dwarf archers were never added because dwarves already have the hireling archers as well as axe throwers. So adding in the archers would be both kind of redundant in gameplay and kind of contrary to the lore already written into the unit descriptions (and who really want to have to go back through and edit unit descriptions, amiright?!) .

As for the hammer unit, is it possible that they simply became the basis for the new dwarf officer models?

I'll try to give you some more feedback when I finish my campaign.

Great! I'd surely appreciate it!
Are you on the modified main campaign or one of the provincial campaigns?

[Bardo]

Are you on the modified main campaign or one of the provincial campaigns?

The main campaign. I started a VH/VH game with galadrims to see if it is as hard as some player said.
Anyway, I do not plan to make any change to your addon, I prefer to include it as you release it.

[CapnDan]

The main campaign. I started a VH/VH game with galadrims to see if it is as hard as some player said.
Anyway, I do not plan to make any change to your addon, I prefer to include it as you release it.

Yea, Excellent! I'll really look forward to hearing what you think. Especially since I have little inclanation towards VH/VH campaigns.

[Bardo]

I advance slowly because I can't play much lately, but I'm liking this galadrim campaign.

I find the difficulty of this faction similar to vanilla version, as I remember it. It is hard to recover if you make some mistake, or if you lose some important battle, but it is not impossible. Once you get a full stack of elves, there is no AI army that can stop you, even at VH level.

Your changes are very subtle and it is hard to notice them, but I'd say they do improve the playability. I think the galadrim faction is easier to handle, but at same time, the enemy AI seems tougher than I remember. I have read the whole readme, but I still need to check the files to see exactly what you changed.

In my game, I started by building markets and healing houses to maximize income, and I set all taxes to very high when possible. I used the initial forces to conquer 4 rebel settlements (the 2 adjacent to lorien, and the 2 of south deep forest), and then I conquered Dol Guldur by turn 20.
When I had my first full stack, I tried a rush attack to try to kill Sauron, but there were too many enemy armies, and I had to retreat before conquering Moranon.
Isengard conquered Helm's deep and Edoras by turn 15, and I had to help rohan to prevent the fall of other cities. Mordor conquered Osgiliath and Minas Tirith by turn 25, but Gondor is still resisting without my help.
I conquered Moria around turn 40, and now I'm trying to conquer Orthanc before they destroy the weakened rohirrims. Money is no longer problematic, but population is, so I can only recruit units in Lorien. I think I should have kept low taxes in the first settlement that I conquered, in order to upgrade it sooner, but the money is really sort at start (even when you increased it, I think). I'm also curious to know if it is worth to send militia units from my capital to disband them in my smallest cities in order to boost the population in the outer regions.

I created alliances with all the good factions and no one has betrayed me yet, except a fast attack from silvans to dale, but they made peace again a few turns later. I still do not know if the chances of being betrayed are higher or lower at VH difficulty. Something I do not like about VH level is the high casualties when I use autoresolve, that forces me to play every battle, but we never found a workaround for this.

Someone said that there is no strategy in battle because elves armies are full of archers, but I find it really challenging to try to maximize the effect of my arrows and minimize my casualties. I personally use armies with half of infantry to be able to stop the enemy units, and the other half of archers to move them behind the enemy line and shoot them in the back.

I'll open another topic later to comment some issues about campaign balance that affect both our vanilla campaign and your addon, related to pop growth and extermination scripts. And I'll try to talk about specific changes of your addon when I have more time to check them properly. I just wanted to say that overall I'm liking them so far.

[CapnDan]

Cool, well glad to hear the Addon is holding up to scrutiny so far.

Enemy AI: while I didn't change any of the tactical AI (that I can remember), having played around with the unit stats, recruitment values, scripted armies, and autoresolve values seemed to play a role in having AI field, maintain, and make better use of better balanced armies.

I am particularly pleased to hear the strategic AI is doing so well though.

Probably right to focus on the home regions really, many of the outer regions, even when upgraded, may not actually be able to produce top-level units.

Anyway, glad to hear it's so far so good. Already looking forward to the next update and especially to hearing how the process of trying to hold Dol-Guldur works out for ya.

[Bardo]

I'm around turn 90 now, with isengard and orc rabbles almost defeated. Mordor has just conquered the last Gondor region, so Gondor is now eliminated, even when I killed several full stacks of orcs trying to help them.
I have liked the campaign, very challenging, but I think the scripted reinforcements for Mordor appear too often. Most of my battles with Mordor was against these scripted units that feels repetitive. It is the main thing that I'd suggest, to minimize the script reinforcements, or even to try to remove them, because Mordor looks powerful enough in the later game without them.

The only other thing that I found odd was to recruit lothlorien archers in the markets (even when I know I made something similar in my version of the campaign that I didn't like much either). I'd suggest to allow the 3th level barrack in these cities even without elven resources, and to recruit the lothlorien sentinels there.

I also remember to try to design the units available in the forge and the barracks, so it is not possible to recruit units with heavy armor unless there is at least one forge in the settlement. Even when I admit that your redesign of recruitment trees is an improvement (in general, not only elves), I think you did not take it into account, and I think it could be re-implemented without affecting the balance. I mean, just to give higher barracks the requirement of some forge present in the city.

[CapnDan]

I'm around turn 90 now, with isengard and orc rabbles almost defeated. Mordor has just conquered the last Gondor region, so Gondor is now eliminated, even when I killed several full stacks of orcs trying to help them.
I have liked the campaign, very challenging, but I think the scripted reinforcements for Mordor appear too often. Most of my battles with Mordor was against these scripted units that feels repetitive. It is the main thing that I'd suggest, to minimize the script reinforcements, or even to try to remove them, because Mordor looks powerful enough in the later game without them.

The scripted Easterling and Southron armies after turn 30? If those ones then yea my fault, typo (or actually missing 2nd set of random chance values).
The scripted stacks were Easterlings and Southron units rather than mordor orcs yea?

I also remember to try to design the units available in the forge and the barracks, so it is not possible to recruit units with heavy armor unless there is at least one forge in the settlement. Even when I admit that your redesign of recruitment trees is an improvement (in general, not only elves), I think you did not take it into account, and I think it could be re-implemented without affecting the balance. I mean, just to give higher barracks the requirement of some forge present in the city.

Admittedly it's not perfect. In general the redesign follows the same philosophy but with minor exceptions made here and there for gameplay reasons. For the most part the forges are required for the next level of barracks. Did you have a particular unit (other than sentinels at markest) that seemed out of place?

[Bardo]

The scripted Easterling and Southron armies after turn 30? If those ones then yea my fault, typo (or actually missing 2nd set of random chance values).
The scripted stacks were Easterlings and Southron units rather than mordor orcs yea?

I noticed mainly mordor armies with orc units (and trolls) that appeared near dol goldur, even when it was already conquered. I have not checked the scripts, but I'd say I have seen this kind of army (around 10 units including 1 troll and 1 pit guard) appearing long after turn 30. I have also noticed the mordor armies with easterling units.
I know it's me who included these scripted reinforcements, but I'd prefer if we could reduce them so the same army can not be spawned more than once.

Did you have a particular unit (other than sentinels at markest) that seemed out of place?

Not really, although I only tested the campaign with elves. I have read about the changes to other factions, but I can't say until I play them.

[CapnDan]

I noticed mainly mordor armies with orc units (and trolls) that appeared near dol goldur, even when it was already conquered. I have not checked the scripts, but I'd say I have seen this kind of army (around 10 units including 1 troll and 1 pit guard) appearing long after turn 30. I have also noticed the mordor armies with easterling units.
I know it's me who included these scripted reinforcements, but I'd prefer if we could reduce them so the same army can not be spawned more than once.

Cool, well that's useful feedback and also, now that you've mentioned it I have passingly thought about that same issue before but never motivated to look into it.

So, I've adjusted the odds for the scripted armies (War of the Ring Campaign) after turn 30 and added a specific end turn to them as well. The result should be only a handful of the randomly spawned support armies per campaign. Just enough to give the not always brilliant strategic AI a little boost here and there.

Glad to have the comment/reminder, it also reminded me to review and address an issue with greenwood elves recruitment in the Numenor Campaign aswell.

[CapnDan]

Finishing Touches on Campaigns Addon V2.7 - Invitation to thoughts and feedback


1. Numenor Campaign Ending:
I played this faction/campaign through just for fun recently and it was very entertaining right until I reached Mordor and I found myself so sick of the Mordor slog that I just abandoned the campaign. So, I've been thinking for a while on a set of scripted events that might make for a more concise and still suitably epic (initial) ending for the Numenor campaign.

What I've come up with so far:
-Add to campaign description and perhaps an advice popup too a note that the endgame script executes if numenor (with Aragorn in the field nearby) holds both camps outside the black gate for at least two turns. (getting to these camps and holding them should in of itself be an interesting challenge)

-a script checks if both settlements held by Numenor and that is Aragorn nearby: if yes, advisor popup "Scouts report the Black Gates are open and and barely guarded. Surely this must be a trap, will you proceed anyway? A small force of elves has offered to assist us if we do make the attempt. (Form an army with Aragorn and click 'show me how' to proceed through the Black Gates)"

-If the player chooses to take the shortcut Aragorn and his stack are moved to the plains inside Mordor about halfway to Barad-Dur, a small supporting force of elves is spawned, and an impossibly large ambush force of Mordor also
-I'm thinking to make the ambush force composed of a handful of strong stacks near but not touching the two player armies and mostly commanded by generals with the 'static' trait so they don't just run off (for a few turns at least) - then have maybe two other stacks with generals who can move around and do as they please (maybe one commanded by a Sauron clone as long as real Sauron is still without the Ring and contained in his fortress - I will also disable the invincible Sauron scripts in this case)

-My thought here is to have a scripted event that is likely to lead to a truly desperate but not quite impossible battle or series of battles with rapidly diminishing resources that have both a degree of player choice to them and an element of random chance (tough to know that the floating generals will do, and might also make two possible variants of each scripted army just for variety). Also real potential for a Pyrrhic victory and being unable to conquer Barad-Dur after the fact.


So, that's my thought so far. Any thoughts?

[Bardo]

In my galadrim campaign it happened something similar to me. Once isengard and orc rabbles were destroyed (around turn 100), there was a huge amount of mordor armies. I was destroying 1 or 2 full stacks per turn, and I got a bit tired. In this case, I'm glad there is a script that destroys Mordor when Sauron is killed, and I like how you disabled Sauron invulnerability by conquering only Dol Guldur and Minas Morgul. This way there is still a chance to finish the game without conquering every mordor region one by one, and I'm very close to achieve that. Its being a good final for the campaign so far.

I have not played your numenor campaign, and I do not know how much it depends on scripts. If it is heavly scripted like the "fellowship of the ring" campaign, then your suggestion could work. Else, I'd suggest to adjust the existing scripts so it is not that annoying to fight against Mordor in the final stages of the game. In your numenor campaign, why you do not find good enough to kill sauron in a final battle at barad-dur in order to destroy Mordor?
If it is because there are too many armies, you could reduce or remove the scripted reinforcements. If it is too hard to avoid the Sauron invulnerability, you could remove this script too, so there are less battles needed at the end.

In the main campaign, I'm inclined to try to reduce as much as possible the use of scripts. For example, I'm liking the idea to replace the script "return of the noldor" by regular recruitment at buildings that require long construction times, to avoid situations where the script is not triggered because some of the checked factions is dead. I'm also liking the idea to replace the scripts that create special units like trollmen or ents, by regular recruitments on certain buildings (as you did for some units).

[CapnDan]

The numenor campaign is minimally scripted. Minimally scrpted but with a couple of little additions. The Rohan and Gondor games, for example, are timed battles for survival that end around turn 45 (with a scripted battle similar to the one I'm suggesting for the Numenor faction - or rather they will in 2.7 - I don't think the final battles are in 2.6..).

The main reason I'm looking to script a special finale is mostly because I'm just tired of conquering Mordor the usual way since it's a requirement for almost every faction in almost every campaign. So, looking for a way to streamline or change it up, just for variety sake.

Other than that, the story of the Numenor campaign is a desperate final last chance against Mordor. So, Mordor generally conquers a fairly large territory by around turn 40 which makes it relatively easy for a clever player to sneak in close but then end up needing to play a couple defensive battles on Black gates or Minas Morgul, both of which are still slightly buggy despite being cool to look at, so I also wanted to try and avoid more of those too (lose battle due to settlement bug rather than any other reason is frustrating..).


As for "return of noldor" scripts - they have been adjusted slightly in the Campaigns addon and do occur quite reliably now. Otherwise special buildings for special units - I'm all for it - anything that gives the player greater sense of control and strategic flexibility.