Recruit Balrogs and Ents

[badapple]

First I like to say this is the best total war mod I have ever played! Does any one know how I could make the mod to recruit balrogs and Ents? Has any one made a sub mod for this?

[Earl Dibbles Jr]

MOS (Massive Overhaul Submod) lets you get Ents (They send them to you every 20 turns or so) if you conquer their territory and let them still govern it. If you play as OotMM and Moria is attacked, Balrogs automatically spawn but you can't recruit them.

I don't think there's a mod that lets you recruit these units.

[Veteraan]

MOS (Massive Overhaul Submod) lets you get Ents (They send them to you every 20 turns or so) if you conquer their territory and let them still govern it. If you play as OotMM and Moria is attacked, Balrogs automatically spawn but you can't recruit them.

I don't think there's a mod that lets you recruit these units.

Actually MOS does let you recruit Ents. You have to play as the Woodland realm and restore the ancient Elven Kingdom (this may take a while). One of the rewards is the ability to build Ent Houses where you can recruit Ents.
There might be more submods that use this feature but MOS is the only one I know off.

in the same minute of posting!!

[NejkoPejko]

In MOS you can recruit ents as silvan elves once you have reunited the kingdom.

[ElvenKind]

PCP lets you recruit ALL Middle Earth Units.

[Veteraan]

PCP lets you recruit ALL Middle Earth Units.

This is interesting. Has the PCP crowd found a way to negate the max 500 unit limit?

[ElvenKind]

This is interesting. Has the PCP crowd found a way to negate the max 500 unit limit?

I meant to say, most of units mentioned in LOTR are recruitable in PCP: Dragons, Spiders, Balrogs, Ents, etc..

[LuckyPistol]

You can recruit the Balrog as OotMM after turn 90. DO NOT build the mithril mines before then. After turn 90, build the mithril mines and then you'll awaken the Balrog. I've never had the Balrog summoned because I was attacked, that's only for the AI.

Ents I think can be mercenaries in Vanilla for Silvans

[GhosT-86]

In Vanilla TATW if you play Silvans and capture Farngorn, you will have the option to grant it autonomy, which means you still collect tax revenues but cannot build any buildings or recruit units, in return once in a while unit of Ents will be given to you (500 upkeep, so better make use of it, since they are given to you for a period of time only)

[Gurak]

In Vanilla TATW if you play Silvans and capture Farngorn, you will have the option to grant it autonomy, which means you still collect tax revenues but cannot build any buildings or recruit units, in return once in a while unit of Ents will be given to you (500 upkeep, so better make use of it, since they are given to you for a period of time only)

Well worth it at double the cost.
Those mumbling lumber yards are walking hell for orcs and other baddies! A couple of units of Treebeards mates can basically clean up an army by themselves, they typically rack up 300-400 kills a battle each, and seem to be almost indestructable.

Team them with 10-15 elven archers, and it turns into (literally) a bloody slaughter!
Send in your big woody lads to stomp around and mess up enemy charges, and put your pointy-eared mini-guns on high ground with a good field of fire, and you end up with a scene that quickly looks like the battle of the Somme! Turn a field of thousands into pate and swiss cheese, and take almost no losses!

And the big fellas are dead funny to watch as they play soccer with the tiny mortals!
Admittedly, as GhosT points out, it's not entirely lore friendly, but very enjoyable.

[DrDragun]

Yes, Ents are fun but they are only useful to capture the nearby strong settlements of Isengard and Moria, because they disband after ~15 turns. The Silvan campaign objective is to conquer Mordor and the Ents will usually disband traveling there. Of course the 'Ents go home' script can be easily modified to extend this to a more useful amount of turns

[Macrath]

PCP is great

[badapple]

I tried PCP and it is a great sub mod but it has to many ctd's right now. What I want is just a little sub mod that makes ents and balrogs that you can recruit. There must be someone with the talent to make a mod like this or can tell me how to do it myself.

[GhosT-86]

I tried PCP and it is a great sub mod but it has to many ctd's right now. What I want is just a little sub mod that makes ents and balrogs that you can recruit. There must be someone with the talent to make a mod like this or can tell me how to do it myself.

Personally to me that would affect the balance in the game, and balance is one of the hardest things to achieve, that's actually the reason MOS emerged because Vanilla TATW didn't reflect neither book nor movie in terms of power for main factions: Mordor's economy is weak due to the mountains around it, gondor and rohan are strong and powerful, isengard under command by AI can't do anything to rohan.

That was the balance issue, then it's the issue with lore: Balrog is a single and unique beast which is not even under control by the orcs of Moria, so making it recruitable is nonsense, so are the Ents, they are on their own and don't seem to be able to reproduce themselves alot but also not willing to get involved in the wars on behalf of somebody

[Veteraan]

That was the balance issue, then it's the issue with lore: Balrog is a single and unique beast which is not even under control by the orcs of Moria, so making it recruitable is nonsense, so are the Ents, they are on their own and don't seem to be able to reproduce themselves alot but also not willing to get involved in the wars on behalf of somebody

Your are absolutely right about the lore aspect, although one could argue that the Ents could be used to capture Isengard.

However this very game has to be inherently Lore inaccurate to be playable at all. If it were accurate to lore, Mordor (Sauron) and it's allies would always win.
The best you could hope for is a starting point (turn zero) matching the LOTR lore as close as possible. Also the characteristic strengths and weaknesses should be applied as best as possible throughout the campaign.
But above all else it has to be a good game which is fun and interesting to (re)play. If recruitable Ents an even Balrogs contribute to this for some players, than by all means let's have them. It would be best though that this would be optional, as I know they are in MOS for instance.

[Infidel144]

If you really want Ents, you can edit the descr_mercenaries.txt:

; unit Ents Elephants exp 0 cost 2300 replenish 0.03 - 0.04 max 1 initial 0 religions { orthodox }

remove the semicolon ; (using Notepad++), and you can recruit them as mercenaries from time to time if you are playing one of the Elf factions.

[GhosT-86]

Well even if you don't wanna have lore accuracy you have to consider that a single unit of treebeards once managed to kill a full orcish stack without loss of a single baobab, though it happened at river crossing and was fun to watch how 7 trees meet the compressed orcs at the bridge. They even killed Sauron with no issues what so ever, so personally my opinion having the option to recruit them will make it too easy to roll over any enemy

[Veteraan]

Well even if you don't wanna have lore accuracy you have to consider that a single unit of treebeards once managed to kill a full orcish stack without loss of a single baobab, though it happened at river crossing and was fun to watch how 7 trees meet the compressed orcs at the bridge. They even killed Sauron with no issues what so ever, so personally my opinion having the option to recruit them will make it too easy to roll over any enemy

[LuckyPistol]

Well even if you don't wanna have lore accuracy you have to consider that a single unit of treebeards once managed to kill a full orcish stack without loss of a single baobab, though it happened at river crossing and was fun to watch how 7 trees meet the compressed orcs at the bridge. They even killed Sauron with no issues what so ever, so personally my opinion having the option to recruit them will make it too easy to roll over any enemy

I second Veteraan's motion to second GhosT-89's logic

Ents are not meant to be used as full-time steam rollers for game play reasons. They're just for fun or to turn the tide

[KhalFrodo]

You can't recruit Balgorgs.