The Dominion of Men 3.3 - The End of the Beginning patch released!

[Aexodus]

Oh hey welcome to TWC mate enjoy your stay.

Yes FATW’s pretty fun the team especially webba did such a great job for 3.3

[The Wise Coffin]

Great job guys!
My favorite BI mod!

[nergalsmom]

Time for some new adventures in Middle-Earth! As always, my compliments and love to the mod team. The years sure have flown by! And at the end of any road, there is always a new beginning...

[Fahnat]

Congratulations for finishing the mod. Would be interesting to make a review for the mod. If i am to do one i would post it in a thread here and maybe you guys could use it if you want.

[Stark1]

Glory to FATW team! I've somehow missed this release, now I've spent hour and a half getting it to work on Win10 to start my Nth RK campaign

[Fahnat]

Why is it that whend i play with the dwarves, Moria is controlled by the rebels?
In previous version i add Moria with Durin being the general in there, but now he does not exist.

Also, whend i play with another faction, the dwarves actually have Moria, so i am greatly confused.

Edit: I've seen the previous posts, and i understand now why Moria is no longer of the Dwarves.

[nergalsmom]

I'm going to chime in here while we're talking about Moria and confess that I am a little dissapointed that none of the flavor texts are updated. The campaign selection screen says Dwarves reclaimed Moria even though the map is correct. The campaign start popup says the Dwarves reclaimed Moria, and several building descriptions (most notably "Dwarven Lands") says plainly that the Dwarves posses Moria. It's a bit... well, un-immersive, certainly when compared to the standards of excellence set by the rest of this mod in that department.


Then there is also of course the topic of having at least one campaign that's a bit more friendly to casual players, but I guess that's just the Dwarves that go swimming...

[CountMRVHS]

aaack, that's been on my list for ... ever. Never got around to it, obviously.

I'll see what the next couple of weeks bring. Been meaning to get back around to this.

[nergalsmom]

aaack, that's been on my list for ... ever. Never got around to it, obviously. I'll see what the next couple of weeks bring. Been meaning to get back around to this.

No rush, friend. I'm just glad to hear it's on a list

Why is it that whend i play with the dwarves, Moria is controlled by the rebels?In previous version i add Moria with Durin being the general in there, but now he does not exist.Also, whend i play with another faction, the dwarves actually have Moria, so i am greatly confused.Edit: I've seen the previous posts, and i understand now why Moria is no longer of the Dwarves.

Durin and the garrison from Moria are standing just a bit northwest from Erebor. Nice to have a good foundation for a stack so you can go out and cleanse some orc-holds and make yer ancestors proud.

[CountMRVHS]

That's a good time, the march to Moria and reconquest Try to get military access from the Beornings and Elves to make the river crossings easier, but just to be safe, send a Scout or Emissary to make sure you don't get ambushed by the Galadhrim in Lorien.

While you're in the area, pop down toward Isengard and riffle through the old place ...

[Dom9127]

I am a long term fan, I have been playing this mod since the release of "The New Shadow" and now this version for some time. I really appreciate the level of quality and great gameplay this mod provides and of course all of the hard work you have put into delivering this. Sorry for my long and pedantic list of issues, but I appreciate this mod so much . I am posting this here as I don't see a general feedback thread and the bug forum seems to be very quiet. This feedback is from a Gondor campaign on Hard / Medium Battles. If you have any query's feel free to ask, and again thanks for the time and effort put into making this.

Bugs

The Minas ithil map has serious issues. When I destroyed the gatehouse with Catapults, it was still firing after its destruction. The siege towers have a lot of issues discharging attackers, resulting in many battle where the AI is incapable of taking the walls, even though the tower has reached them. Units get boiling oil poured on them out of nowhere on the second level. The ramps are too steep leading to units being exhausted easily, making it very simple to defend and as well as it being almost impossible to reach the square within the time limit. This makes it impossible for the AI to capture, seriously handicapping Adunabar / Gondor. I would also recommend that the capture point be placed on a lower rung, and the angle of the ramps be made much more reasonable, also the rubble / destroyed building texture would boost the aesthetic appearance of the settlement, as of now it looks empty rather than ruined.

Rhun Berserkers have two hitpoints, this puts them on the same level as Elves etc I think this is a legacy issue.

Guards of the Citadel description contains references to shields.

Gondors Harondor Outriders (At least in building browser) and Rebel Harondor Footmen don't have unit cards.

Minas Arnor can't build past the 1st level of construction building.

Osgiliath and Amon Hen are marked as WONDER, however they can't be clicked on unlike the other landmarks.

The Sea of Nurn is full of ships, leading to the AI filling each with a full stack but doing nothing, this obviously handicaps the AI. Perhaps a river / coast port building could be added?

A Dwarven army keeps occupying the North west corner of the maps, whilst not a particularly important location in the game it is strange and leaves their settlement vulnerable.

There are Pirates in the bay of Forochel which seems like bad place to practice that profession, especially when Tharbad and Lindon are not too far away.

The AI often builds ladders for cities that cannot be attacked by them.

Many notifications don't seem to trigger for example riots and ports being blockaded.

Some of the agent text is still from vanilla and seems a little out of place.

Adopted generals seem to have very poor and repetitive traits. See the attatched images.

The self maimed trait is very prevalent.

I encountered the Troll CTD which I resolved by setting the sprite view distance to very low.

Finally a bug that has been reported in other mods and Rome total war generally, Fire arrows and Catapult projectiles are invisible with Nvidia cards.


Questions and Suggestions


Would it be possible to port to the mod to the Alex.exe? Whilst its not possible for all features to be ported, it would boost the performance of the AI, makes the diplomacy more reasonable and would allow for immortal Elf and Dwarven generals.

The stats for all Archers need to be revised, all units display the wrong range information in there unit cards. But more specifically was it intended that Blackroot Bowmen, Bowmen of the Shadow and City Longbowmen were meant to have the longest range? For Longbowmen of Dale to have worse range than Barding Longbowmen? And for Bows of the Shadow to have a missile attack of 13 making them the strongest mannish Archer unit? Whilst Royal Rangers, Rangers of the North and Rangers of Ithilien have slightly lesser range than the regular Royal Longbowmen? Also with the the exception of The Serpent Black all horse archers have really poor range and effectiveness.

I feel that Haronodor should have a heavy cavalry unit other than their general. Their land is a flat fertile plain with many horse resources and they are surrounded by factions with several Heavy cavalry units. They need a little more flexibility, as Harad has a much more balanced army and Gondor and Adunabar have stronger units.

I think you need to look again at the value of looting. In my campaign I have struggled to stay in the black, until I started a small period of expansion and then found that I suddenly had more money than I could spend.

Why does Ethring have such a high population?

Was it intended that a General can be Councillor of the King as well as King of Gondor?

Because the AI loves recruiting Levies they are more prone to chain routs, perhaps boosting the morale to 3/4s rather than half?

Would it be possible to have the policy / consultation building be built from Urban policy onwards? As it stands it confuse the first time player and encourages the AI to waste money and time.

Was it intended for the Catapult trajectory to be so limited? It makes attacking in hilly areas very difficult.

Is there a document with a revised Tech tree, to show all the resource buildings and the fort developments?

I am guessing that the frequent riots, are intended to simulate the problems of a large empire? Would it be possible to give the player advice or notification about them?

Why do the Grey Company have worse stats than Rangers? At the moment they are too weak considering that they are meant to be some of the strongest units in middle earth, they have poor range, poor armour and a tiny unit size.

Is there anyway to stop units merging? It would be useful to preserve the unique starting units

Although the export_descr_unit says only mumakils cannot travel by ship. No siege weapons can be transported by ship either

I don't think this was intended, but it seems to me that the wooden walls are the best defensive choice. It's not possible to build ladders or towers to scale them and their low height makes their towers especially lethal.

Is it possible for settlements to have different sizes? For example its difficult to attack any Gondor / Adunabar settlements because of their layout and citadel. Its a little immersion breaking to attack an undeveloped or backwater settlement with 400 population and then to find that its a huge metropolis with strong defences

In general the AI has huge problems with sieges, because of the power of the towers fire arrows and their poor ability at building equipment. They have particular difficulty with Forts, because their tower firing arcs are murderous and their squares are much larger than towns making them very difficult to capture for the AI.

[CountMRVHS]

Wow, this is a lot of feedback - thanks for taking the time to play and report your experience!


I'll address the images first, then see if I can tackle the rest of your points.

Ships in the Sea of Nurn are not preventable I'm afraid, unless we disable ports there.

The Dwarven army in the NW is not something I've noticed before. I'm sure it is RTW AI weirdness. Probably not worth digging into to try to 'fix'. (And anyway, if you move an army into their territory, my guess is that army will move quickly enough! )

AI building ladders when they're not actually usable *is* something I've seen, but I don't know if there is a fix for it. I don't believe it is ever a problem, though.

The trait system for the mod is *very* complex. I'm not sure what you mean by 'repetitive' - is it just the word 'Careless' being used for a couple of traits? Not a big deal IMO, and I assure you it's not a bug As for traits being negative, that is often true, but keep in mind that characters can improve over time, so that 'Competent Governor' may end up being an Expert if you leave him in a city long enough. 'Self-maimed' is one that I do see somewhat regularly; then again, it's not one I see on every character, or most characters. If a trait has even a 1% chance of firing, you're very likely to see it in game at some point.

I'm pretty sure that particular agent text is not vanilla... but I could be wrong. It's been a while since I wrote them. "January" in any case is certainly lore-friendly; Bilbo even rattles off a little poem mentioning the month as the Fellowship departs Rivendell.

I have not noticed random boiling oil strikes in Minas Ithil! That may be worth a second look. I wonder if the game is somehow drawing on the "rebuilt" version of the city. As for the layout, that is outside my area of expertise, but short of outright bug fixes I don't expect the cities will be redesigned. It may be possible to move the capture points.

Berserkers of Rhun may have 2 hp, but their defense stat should be very low - which means they are not at all on the same tier as Elven units. They are very effective when used well, but are vulnerable to cav charges and missile fire.

Guard of the Citadel text does indeed need updating.

I'll check the unit cards for those Harondor units. Sometimes viewing units in the building browser doesn't show the unit cards, IIRC, so it may be an intermittent 'quirk' of how RTW displays things.

What do you mean by Minas Anor not being able to build past the 1st level of construction building? Are you attempting to build one of the construction industry buildings? Some of these need mines to be present, I believe... see if the building descriptions mention that.

Landmarks and Wonders are different - landmarks (the little books you can click on) are for information & flavor, and provide no effects in game.

Pirates in Forochel is another RTW AI thing. RTW is odd with how it uses its boats. We can't fix that AFAIK. (But fortunately it is unlikely to be a big issue for your game)

WRT notifications, I have seen riots/rebellions trigger them, but I don't think port blockades ever did... I think we shut off some of those notifications to cut down on message spam.

We do plan to indicate that fix for the Troll CTD in the next patch ... somewhere in-game.

Do you know of any fixes for that Nvidia issue?


An Alex port is possible, and it has been suggested from time to time ... it would be a good deal of work, I imagine, however. One consideration too is that more people are likely to have RTW:BI than Alex, so it would have limited reach.

I will check the range displays for archers; it may well be that they need to be changed. Blackroot Vale Bowmen are indeed intended to have super long range. As for the rest of your points here, one thing to keep in mind is that units have many different features that are involved during balancing, including melee atk & def, armor, upkeep cost, stamina, range, missile atk, number of men in unit, bonuses in certain terrain, etc. Archers that appear "worse" than other archers are sometimes intended more for a "hybrid" role. Rangers are one of these "good in a specific type of battle" units: you wouldn't want to stand them on the front line and exchange arrows with low-tier enemy archers, but you could use them to set up an ambush, or flank a battle-line through some trees.

Horse archers are actually quite effective, despite their stats. This is because the human player is able to use them very effectively, to attack the unshielded side or rear of units, split up enemy forces, and keep enemy units surrounded or tired while the battle is won elsewhere.

Regarding unit balance overall, my recommendation is to take the unit stats with a grain of salt and see how units perform in actual play - in campaign preferably. Stats don't tell the whole story, nor do 1-v-1 custom battles.

Harondor is one of the most challenging factions (sensibly so, IMO), but they do have some great cavalry options. In a Harondor campaign, you win primarily thanks to your cav.

By "the value of looting" do you mean capturing settlements & destroying buildings? I have a hard time believing that you have *nothing* to spend your cash on! Buildings are expensive in DoM, which means that the cash value of looted buildings is also fairly high... but again, it costs more money to build stuff overall, so it seems to balance out.

Ethring's high pop.... no idea. But it's a Gondorian settlement, probably not a high troop recruitment center...

You're saying the Councillor of the King ancillary can be given to the king? Hmm... probably not intended, no, but I can't remember if we can block characters from being able to receive ancillaries like that. I don't think so.

The policy building hopefully isn't too confusing - the idea is you can start to plan ahead for your settlement. I don't think it hurts the AI too much honestly.

Catapults do have some trouble shooting in certain terrain, especially on the defensive. I'm not sure of a fix for this, but it has been noted in the past.

There is no tech tree doc - it would take a lot of time that has been spent working on the mod proper (or real life stuff ). It *would* be a great idea, and maybe I will muster up the energy (and find the time) to put one together once our *really truly final* patch has been released.

There is some in-game text that mentions rebellions and the various mechanics of the mod. Check the "Fourth Age" building in any of your settlements. Or post here if you have specific questions! In general, though, riots are not too frequent early on, but they become more likely as you expand - *if* you have not build your provincial pacification and the Homeland/Fiefdom/Outland buildings.

I wouldn't say Grey Company are meant to be the strongest unit in Middle-earth - they are horse archers here, so as with other HAs they can be very effective in the player's hands. Also, the GC provide you with a general/governor, so their units auto-replenish, and ... they're HAs!

Unit merging is probably hardcoded.

Good point WRT the siege weapons - I can add a line saying they can't board ships.

Siege towers have been looked at several times over the years. The problem is that the arrows must be some deterrent, otherwise they may as well not be there. The AI is the AI - and is hardcoded. Some wooden walls can be destroyed by rams; the ones that can't are indeed strong, but in most such places stone walls aren't an option anyway.

Settlement layouts can't change with population size. There are some few places on the map where the battle maps can change depending on building options (MI for RK/Adun and Ost-in-Edhil for the Elves), but otherwise the settlement layout is dependent upon culture.

[athanaric]

@ Dom

Berserkers in RTW always have two HP. That includes Uruk Berserkers (which I'm not a great fan of, because they're a slightly toned-down version of a movie unit) as well as the Rhûnnic ones. They're still very vulnerable to arrows (particularly from crossbows and "heavy" archers such as King's Longbowmen), and can be defeated in melee as well. Not OP in my experience.

Regarding archer ranges, the ones displayed in the text are in yards (because of lore reasons) while the actual range in the EDU is in metres. It's unfortunate that Tolkien didn't use civilized measurements, but then again, they're a French invention

Rangers are intended to be ambushers and should avoid protracted missile exchanges with other archers. They're pretty competent flankers though and very good at running down routers, which is great because as RK, you don't usually have a lot of cavalry suited for the task.

Horse archers have significantly lower range because a) that's pretty historical and b) they'd be ludicrously OP otherwise (HA balance is a consistent problem in RTW).

There's a hotfix for the missing portrait of Harondor Riders, IIRC you just need to add a space bar somewhere in their EDU description (you can copy it into the thread and we can tell you where the error is).

Construction industry buildings that involve anything other than wood require mines to be built first. My recommendation (see the guide) is to start building mines in MA on the first turn.


This forum is a bit quiet because the Discord server is sapping some of its traffic. You're welcome to join though (see the Discord thread), there's quite a bit to discuss. Especially if you're interested in porting the mod to another platform..

[CountMRVHS]

Thanks for pointing out the yards/metres thing, Athanaric. I had forgotten about that when I responded. I still might need to fix some of the ranges regardless, but I suspect a lot of the ranges simply *appear* wrong because of the conversion.

[webba84]

Hey Dom, really appreciate the feedback.

Count and Athanaric addressed everything in detail I think, so I'll just respond generally to say that there are definitely some bugs and balance changes that can be made. Because we also have one new pretty big feature that Aradan came back to make specially for the mod, there will be a patch 3.4 so we will work in as many bug fixes as possible for that.

[DontHeckWithSnek]

Putting in a formal request that 3.4 come with a swappable file set for Huge size units. Biggest threat is AI recruiting faster than they can replenish and every city on the planet but yours having 400 pop, but I tested the overpopulation happiness penalty and it caps at 100%, so I guess it's better to overdo it than underdo it.

[webba84]

It will happen, I’m testing it at the moment.

[Fahnat]

A new patch will be up?
That's awesome, i tought the last patch was the last.
What will be the main changes for this next one?

[webba84]

There's a new rebellion mechanic but its mostly bug fixes and balance stuff, plus a separate huge unit size balance patch for those who prefer the biggest units possible.

[Dom9127]

Thanks for responding to my ramblings and pedantry, just want to clarify some of my ideas.

Ships in the Sea of Nurn are not preventable I'm afraid, unless we disable ports there.

Is it not possible to add a hidden resources just like how the larger boats require a province with wood? Alternatively rather than just references to it in trade buildings, a dedicated lake / river port would be a good addition, as most of the factions are reliant on riverine trade or make extensive use of it.

The Dwarven army in the NW is not something I've noticed before. I'm sure it is RTW AI weirdness. Probably not worth digging into to try to 'fix'.

Just a little tweak to the borders, or changing the little patch of terrain to mountainous like the range it is a part of would resolve it.

The trait system for the mod is *very* complex. I'm not sure what you mean by 'repetitive' - is it just the word 'Careless' being used for a couple of traits?

I am appreciative of the complexity of the mod. By repetitive I mean when characters come up for adoption there seems to be a very large chance that his traits are negative, and they seem to be the same "Careless Speaker", "Careless Fighter" "Unwise" etc

What do you mean by Minas Anor not being able to build past the 1st level of construction building?

Sorry this was my mistake, I noted this down before I understood the building system.

Landmarks and Wonders are different - landmarks (the little books you can click on) are for information & flavor, and provide no effects in game.

I am referring to the fact than when I double click on Isengard (which does provide a bonus for the province) it comes up with an information card, when I do the same to Amon Hen it doesn't, it seemed incongruous so I wondered if it was an oversight.

Do you know of any fixes for that Nvidia issue?

No, I only asked here as I know the people who worked on this mod had far greater understanding of the mechanics of RTW than the average user.

An Alex port is possible, and it has been suggested from time to time ... it would be a good deal of work, I imagine, however. One consideration too is that more people are likely to have RTW:BI than Alex, so it would have limited reach.

The comments from these two guides, suggest it is not especially difficult.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...uidelines(WIP)

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/archi...p/t-84221.html

As for your second point, whilst on release there were numerous problems with Alex, with the maturity of digital download services it is simple and cheap to obtain Alex.

Horse archers are actually quite effective, despite their stats.

This is true but Riddermark Bowmen have 115 range Steppe Outriders have 120 whilst Snaga-hunters 125 it just seems a little strange the that they cannot out shoot some of the worst bowmen in Middle Earth.

By "the value of looting" do you mean capturing settlements & destroying buildings? I have a hard time believing that you have *nothing* to spend your cash on! Buildings are expensive in DoM, which means that the cash value of looted buildings is also fairly high... but again, it costs more money to build stuff overall, so it seems to balance out.

I guess it would be best to explain this though narrative. Initially whilst playing as the RK I struggled with staying in budget, whilst fielding two full stacks and initiating one or two buildings every couple of turns. After several punitive expeditions against Harad in Harondor and agianst Dunland in Rohan to protect those factions not to occupy territory, I had more money than I could spend and have now almost fully upgraded all of my starting settlements. It was very jarring to go from struggling, to money being no object, I think the Helms deep settlement is particularly valuable to capture, but in general the value of the looting as shown on the capture card is not the same as the amount you actually receive. I have attached a picture , however as you know the graphs are far from being great.

I wouldn't say Grey Company are meant to be the strongest unit in Middle-earth

From the books I got the impression that they were a very special and elite group, however in the mod they don't seem to justify their expense and build requirements. Due to being horsemen they are vulnerable and not especially well armoured and their small size and range means they are poor HAs. They end up as a jack of all trades, but mediocre at all.

Unit merging is probably hardcoded.

Would it be possible to create "Company of the Guard Platoon I, "Company of the Guard Platoon II" etc This would also help role-play value.

Some wooden walls can be destroyed by rams; the ones that can't are indeed strong, but in most such places stone walls aren't an option anyway.

I am specifically referring to the timber walls with battlements, they can not be scaled, so the ram is the only option and the low height of the gatehouse means its arrows are particularly effective, this makes them easier to defend than stone walls which can be scaled easily. I would recommend that the firing arc of the towers is restricted, so that they can only fire outside the settlement, as the AI does not grasp the significance of capturing or destroying towers.

Settlement layouts can't change with population size.

Is it not possible to tie the settlement layout to the "Province building", or to the Walls? Alternatively to have Dol Amroth, Pelagir and other major military centres have the castle layout as "unique" settlements, whilst smaller settlements have something a little more befitting.

Good points with regards to the beserker units, and Tolkiens use of yards and real world months. Again thanks for responding and for your continued hard work on the mod.