Tulkas' FATW Let's Play!

**Tulkasthevaliant** · January 15, 2016, 10:00 PM

Rejoice! I am Tulkasthevaliant, and this is my Let's Play of the Reunited Kingdom of Gondor and Arnor. Feedback on anything relating to gameplay or my channel overall is of course welcome, although it may take me a bit to put said feedback into action as I've recorded a fair bit in advance.

Also, I just want to mention how incredible the devs here are. Despite the thousands of hours they've already put into making this mod the best it could be, they still manage to engage with the community and solicit feedback and everything. Honestly what I find most impressive isn't the architecture of Minas Anor or the massive unit rosters, but all of the small balance tweaks and gameplay features, with even the smallest feature being given a ton of thought so as to see what gives the best gameplay experience. It honestly feels almost like RTW vanilla is the mod and FATW is the base game. And yes, I am a massive toady.

If the devs here ever decide to overthrow the US Government and establish a dictatorship, then I can be their fawning representative. Ooooh yeah, rake in the money.

And I'd also like to thank the mod that fixes this post of whatever mistakes I've made. Unless I haven't made any mistakes, which would be a pleasant surprise. I remembered the spoiler thingy, but I think I made another error last time... dunno. Guess we'll find out!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

**webba84** · January 15, 2016, 11:13 PM

Welcome back

**MasterOfNone** · January 16, 2016, 05:03 AM

Thank you for the kind words. Glad to see episode 6 up!

Please feel free to give feedback (on the relevant thread) as to how the mod can be improved or features you may have found confusing or annoying. No amount of dev testing, or even beta testing, can catch what thousands of players can catch on a general release, so we do understand things will need correcting.

**webba84** · February 03, 2016, 03:01 AM

Hey Tulkas, hows the lets play going? I haven't had time to watch lately, but I hope we can see some more episodes soon!

**Tulkasthevaliant** · February 03, 2016, 04:03 AM

Decently well, I'm up to episode thirteen now with episodes releasing every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Haven't been able to expand much as Adunabar pulverizes everything, but Minas Anor is sorta op so I've been able to hold the line there, while Annuminas has yet to be targeted. The problem is, the way I like to play games is to turtle up and upgrade all my cities before unleashing giant armies of death upon the world- but that doesn't really make for good video. Kinda like wide vs. tall play in Civ V. Also Harandor and Harad have tried to take Dol Amroth by sea, which rather surprised me since normally the AI doesn't coordinate troop landings very well- I know that in The New Shadow Harad never did anything of the kind. But yeah, the MA battles sorta suck (since as ya'll admitted the emphasis was on aesthetics rather than gameplay) but besides that I've been having fun. At my current rate I might be able to milk this mod for content for a year, so that's fun too.

Thanks! Huzzah!

**CountMRVHS** · February 03, 2016, 05:14 AM

To get out of the MA siege rut, you'll need to expand at least a little bit eastward, into Ithilien. You don't have to necessarily take towns, though.

The AI is a sucker for bridge battles. If you take that big MA army and park it on the bridge at Osgiliath, the AI should throw itself at you in a fit of pique.

Another thing you can do is sally. It may seem like waiting for the assault is the safer option, but you're losing money (and unable to build/train) as long as you're under siege.

Either of those options could break up the stalemate a bit - or at least shift it to different ground.

If you want to hurt Adunabar, go ahead and take Minas Ithil and Calenhad. Taking the latter should help your ally Rohan as well. From there, you can still turtle, and experience the benefits of an un-besieged MA. (Just don't take Emyn Arnen unless you're ready for land attacks by Harondor/Harad)

**Tulkasthevaliant** · February 03, 2016, 05:52 AM

In yet to be released epsiodes I both expand into Ithilien and sally. Namely by taking Emyn Arnen. Which is a decision I instantly regretted.

The problem is that Adunabar is destroying Rohan, so if I try to expand I end up with two full-stack armies coming at me from both directions. Right now my focus is on reclaiming Arnor since Arnor doesn't have MA to protect it, but I suppose I will have to soon honor the Oath of Eorl. Also MA is laggy so sallying provides a subpar viewer experience. Thanks for the tips though! Onward to Osgiliath!

**webba84** · February 03, 2016, 06:30 AM

Id really like to give MA an overhaul to both improve performance and gameplay - its a looot of work though, not sure I can find the time.

**SnuggleBunnies** · February 03, 2016, 02:12 PM

If you reduced the ballista towers to arrow towers the ai might be able to reach the walls, if that's a simple fix. Doesn't solve the problem of the timer running down before the ai can reach the square.

**webba84** · February 04, 2016, 01:15 AM

Well, we've moved the capture zone a lot closer to the walls to solve that second problem. As for the ballista towers, if anywhere should get them it really is MA. I'm going to look at slowing their rate of fire down a lot, though.

**demagogos nicator** · February 04, 2016, 03:01 AM

Well, isnt it better idea to disable the timer then moving the capture zone closer to the walls? I mean MA did not have seven tiers of walls just for fun.

**webba84** · February 04, 2016, 03:19 AM

You really want to sit in a battle and wait 40 minutes for the armies to get to the town centre every time?

Anyway, you are right, it didn't have 7 tiers for fun, it had them for defence. But there isn't any real way to use them for defence in the mod (except as a chokepoint and archer platform, and one layer is more than enough for that) because the RTW engine only allows for the one outer set of actual defensive walls and gates, so the 7 tiers are there for lore accuracy and visual effect more than anything else. And the gameplay is an execrable experience if armies have to walk all the way to the top to win.

By all means disable battle timers on your own copy if you want (and have fun when the attacking ai army freezes, a not infrequent bug, and sits there till the end of time with no way out except for you to lose the battle) but I'm not going to inflict that on the majority of users as the default option.

**demagogos nicator** · February 04, 2016, 03:25 AM

Well, I did not know that it took that long untill AI get there, it never got past the walls in my campaign, neither did I when tried to get MA as Adunabar. Also I did not know that AI army freezing is caused by the disabling timer (I have played most mods with it disabled without any issues).

**webba84** · February 04, 2016, 04:50 AM

Yeah, it takes almost 30 minutes for fast cavalry to run to the top, much less any sort of infantry, really just unplayable.

Disabling the timer does not, as far as I know, cause the ai inactivity bug but what it does mean is that you can't wait for the timer to expire and win a low casualty draw (the fairest result in such circumstances) but that you have to quit, and therefore lose the battle and the city, no matter how certain your victory might have been had the ai behaved normally.

RTW is just a bit too buggy to turn that timer off imo.

**SnuggleBunnies** · February 04, 2016, 07:07 PM

I'm glad to hear of the fixes you guys are implementing. Tulkas' videos make the need for them clear. It's really great that you are continuing work on an already great mod. You're a patch or two away from a finished masterpiece.

**Wambat** · February 05, 2016, 12:30 AM

Might it be possible to reinforce the rams so that they have a chance of reaching the walls?

In the alternative, might it be possible to disable siege engine production for the AI when attacking that city when held by the player so that enemies instead try to starve out the garrison, forcing the player to sally?

**MasterOfNone** · February 05, 2016, 04:31 AM

Sadly, the hardcoded issues and limits in this area of modding make such things difficult.

FATW never intended to initially customise cities because the team back then knew it would be something that would take years (as it has and is), so all defensive capability was represented through increasing the firepower of the walls. It seems OP in places, but probably is quite accurate in terms of how hard it would be to breach the walls of MA in terms of loss of life. Of course, the problem is the unintelligent AI.

Moving forward into the enhancement patch the current team are, with customisation more extant, looking to represent that assault difficulty via the layout and structure of the settlement/fortress so that external fire can be toned down (and internal and lateral fire removed where possible).

Anyone who has used the layout of the (say) generic Dunedain settlements will know how powerful that feature can be in defending a city against a much larger force. This thinking now needs to be applied more universally in the enhancement pack.

Thank you, Snugglebunnies, for the kind words. It's been great to see some real valuable feedback on the release of the mod - I do believe the enhancement will indeed make it perfect

**Nelduin** · February 05, 2016, 05:57 AM

Would it be possible to force the AI to build several rams and siege towers instead of just one? Rush has always be a good way taking cities, meanwhile the defense towers destroys one or two rams, the others have time to reach the gates, same with siege towers. I usually fight this way while attacking good-defended cities, and in majority of mods.

The problem is, I think, the IA adapt to the garrison of the city it wants to attack. If Minas Anor has two or three units in garrison, the IA will very often attack with an equivalent force, which is totally insufficient in MA's case. Maybe it could help if you find a way to make the IA overestimate the garrison of the city and then, attack with bigger armies, like more than one stack.

I don't know if the combination of that two elements would help to solve that problem, of course.