Suggestion: Elven Fixes and Rebalances

[James_Northstar]

Getting back into this mod after a considerable time away from it, I am reminded of how broken the Eleven campaign is- making it very difficult for non-immersive reasons.

The main issues:

- The unit sizes for Elven units are too large, considering their very small Elven populations.

- There are too few settlements around the Greenwood. Yes, this is a relatively rural region at campaign start, but it's implied the eaves slowly develop, especially if the Elves recruit/draw in Elf-friends.

- The Elves have too little income at game start. This makes very little sense considering their immense skill as craftsmen, rivalled only by the Dwarves.

These are fairly obvious fixes for all of these, which I am surprised have still not been implemented, even as development of this mod has basically ground to a halt:

- The Elven roster should be enlarged by giving the Elves the ability to recruit alternative, half-sized units with both fewer soldiers and proportionally lower recruit/upkeep costs: in addition to, not as a replacement for, the current unit sizes (and simply adding new copy-pasted units that are smaller to the roster is simple: so, this isn't too much to ask...)

+ Allowing finer control over recruitment is imperative for such a low-population faction early in the game. I would NOT advise eliminating the standard size units altogether, though: as they are still needed for late-game (to consolidate your rare Elves into fewer units, so you can have more Elf-friend/mercenary warriors in a given army including them).

- There should be one or two more settlements scattered around the Greenwood. Possible locations include on the eastern flanks of the Misty Mountains (where the majority of immigration and new development is implied in the game descriptions and related lore to occur early in the Fourth Age), or on the eastern eaves of the Greenwood (rebel settlements that the human factions in the area will snatch up quickly if the Elves don't move fast).

- The Elves should probably have an additional unique building, only buildable in their non-Mannish settlements, that slightly increases trade (or better yet, if possible, tax) income: "Elven Craftsmen" or something similar. This building should be pre-built at campaign start, and only provide a small income bonus. Just enough to bring the faction a little more into balance with lore, fiscally, without having to rebalance all building and unit costs for the faction.


These changes would fit thematically... Especially the extra settlements, which should all have Mannish populations- and would represent Human migrants slowly encroaching on the Greenwood, as is supposed to be happening in the Fourth Age as the Elves slowly depart Middle Earth (the Greenwood itself is presumably slowly being converted into only semi-forested farmland and pastures in some areas).

The smaller units are imperative for allowing proper flanking/diversionary tactics with very small number of elves. And fit lore-wise, as it helps the player get by with smaller number of Elven troops, in smaller units presumably recruited over a longer period of time from more places (the Elves are supposed to be declining in numbers- so numerically larger armies strain credibility... yet are necessary early-game in order to execute proper flanking tactics if the units remain so large)

The Elven Craftsmen "building" would both represent the extreme skill of Elven craftsmen and yet, through only providing a very small bonus, their declining numbers and skill relative to past ages. It certainly doesn't fit thematically for the Elves to be completely broke all the time, anyways, beyond the degree to which this is true due to their very small numbers (the Elves were always relatively prosperous for their tiny numbers, due to their excellent skills in things like crafting and hunting, developed over centuries, in lore...)

[athanaric]

Yeah, the Elven campaign is definitely the weirdest one, for good or bad. That being said though, the official FATW team is tiny and they're all busy working on Wainriders, so patch 3.5 won't come out in the near future, if ever.
For now, the best hope to introduce changes is submods. IIRC there are currently three major ones, with two having seen releases: one being the Extended Tech Trees which aims to be a more complete version of the mod, and the other being Majestic Steerve's mod (might only be available on Discord right now). The latter has much more radical changes to various parts of the game, including traits, rosters, etc. and seems to be becoming its own thing, incorporating designs from other sources as well. There is also apparently a "Warriors of Middle-earth" submod in the making which seeks to change some rosters as far as I understand.