Third Age Total War 3.0 Released (for M2TW)

Remove all ads!

So I've started a game with the Dwarfs because I like strong heavy infantry (I blame Hashashim). So far I've taken Wormcove in a move to try to take over the entire northern ranges and then move down towards Isengard. It's made me realise also how I was utterly meta-gaming M2:TW, because I have no idea where to go.

Buildings are quite expensive for this early in the game, but it's offset by the fact that the building times are also quite long, so on average (expense for a building per turn) it's manageable.

The Dwarfs start with, amongst others, Erebor, which is already a huge city. Population is quite low, though, so it'll probably take a long time before it'll actually start returning a descent profit. So far I'm doing the usual thing in obtaining trade rights and gathering map data, but the AI seems even more stingy than in the vanilla game with their maps and trade rights.

I've also moved against Lunelaith - which is bandit occupied - and have been trying to take it for a while now. The problem is, it seems to crash constantly during the fight. I've tried three times, and three times the game has crashed within minutes of me starting the battle.

/edit
Marceror, you're also posting on the TWC forums under the same nick?

/edit2
It appears to be related to the bug that causes Dwarven Axethrowers to crash the game. Luckily, a fix is available. It appears to work now, though I have to work out how to take Lunelaith without getting totally owned by the javellin men that defend it. They have the AP trait and totally own me, it seems.

---------- Added 2 hours, 55 minutes and 9 seconds later... ----------

Well, I managed to get Lunelaith, but it was a close thing. If it hadn't been for my spy opening the gates, I wouldn't have won at all. Though I suppose it would've been better to just wait out the siege and let the siege reduce their numbers first.

I have another problem now, though, in that my economy seems to be flatlining. I still make enough money to offset my upkeep costs, but not enough to comfortably build extra buildings. I can deal with this in two ways, it seems. Either I seriously cut down on troops, which would really botch any expansion plans, or I expand aggressively. And I mean really aggressively. The problem with that is that most settlements have a decent garrison and I don't really have enough troops to expand as rapidly as I appear to need to.

You may notice a circular reasoning in there - I need more troops to expand rapidly but don't have enough money to recruit troops because I don't have enough income from settlements so I need more settlements. I think I'll try to restart and then expand very aggressively. I think the slow economy is part of the balance the mod makers tried to strike, so I don't think I can avoid it, but perhaps I can reduce the down time until my economy starts gearing up. If it ever will, because I don't think the modmakers intended for it to be.

 

Guilty as charged. I've participated on twcenter since before TATW was originally released in early 2009, actually quite a bit before that I was an avid player of King Kong's original M2 modding project, Stainless Steel, long before TATW was a project.

As I said, economy is difficult in this game. A few quick tips: make sure that you only place "free upkeep" units in settlements that aren't in immediate threat. Get used to using mostly your lower tier units until you have a strong economy. You really aren't meant to be able to build to your hearts content in this mod, at least, probabably not until much, much later. I see this as a good thing, because in vanilla I usually had more money than I knew what to do with from around turn 50 onwards, and could field armies of my best units. It became boring, quickly.

It's really the sense of struggle that keeps the game exciting, for me at least. Happy gaming!

 

Restarted the game with the Dwarfs, expanded a bit more aggressively this time and have taken Wormcove and Dain's Hall at east end of the map and Lunelaith, Nenuial and Pitkaranta at the other side of the map. Fights are more difficult than in the vanilla game, in part because the AI doesn't come rush you head on when you assault a settlement (after which you can round them up as they rout) and in part because the Dwarfs have no cavalry with which I can circle around and attack them in the back.

Dwarf infantry at least can generally be relied upon to stand their ground against most enemies. Except that their armor is often bypassed by the many enemy types that have the AP ammo. I like the wide variety in units the mod has. Not so much in each faction separately, but more in between each faction.

As I suspected, the economy is still going very, very slowly. It's simple calculus, but taking a small rebel settlement will not give you any extra money early on. Without even so much as a barracks - or in some cases even walls - you can't even have free militia in such a town. And of the above mentioned settlements, only Dain's Hall allows me a single unit with free upkeep, so taking these settlements actually costs money at first.

Income is so low that I have to save up the money for several turns to be able to build a single building. It's annoying to be able to progress only this slowly, actually. The fun for me in this game is to watch my empire grow, but here I can only watch it stagnate.

Found an interesting strategy guide at the TCW forums, actually. Not much that any veteran of the game wouldn't already know, though it's interesting that it suggests that it's a good idea to get alliances with the 'good' factions if you're a good faction, but that in order to do that, you'd either have to donate them a vast sum of money or a settlement. And then it suggests to take one of their settlements, then gift it back to them to get an alliance. That seems kind of backwards. It's kind of like how it was in the vanilla game (not so much as how easy it was in getting an alliance, but more how it seems to be based on moon logic), but it's kind of retarded to implement it like this in this setting.

For instance, in my game, the free people of Eriador just got attacked by the Orcs of Gundaband. I'm in the process of attacking these same orcs, so to me it would seem utterly logical to form an alliance of convenience. Yet, even though the deal was described as being generous, they still refused my every offer that I could make without gifting them a settlement and with my limited funds. Whatever. They can handle any problems themselves as far as I'm concerned. If I'm lucky, they'll lose a few settlements, which means I can take them when I start rolling up the orcs in the misty mountain area without attacking the 'good' factions themselves.

I'm kind of wondering if the good factions will start attacking me unprovoked like all factions love to do in the vanilla game.

I like the cultural system they took from the Britannia campaign. It fits much better than the religious system in the other campaigns and I like the small permanent fortresses they have too, where you can put some units for the free upkeep.

 

One of the changes that I understand to have been implemented in 3.0 is a diplomacy feature called "unbreakable alliances," which supposedly makes it near impossible for an ally to stab you in the back without good reason. So in theory, you won't have your allies turning on you.

That said, in my campaign I noticed that as time went by other good, non-allied factions were starting to dislike me. I am in process of sending my diplomat to request alliances with all good factions, in hopes that good will stick with good throughout the remainder of my game. So far I have all alliances with all good factions except for Dale, and all of these factions were more than happy to forge the alliances (in fact, I think I've received cash from most of them as part of the alliance arrangement).

So far it seems that there is a strong disposition for good factions to remain on good terms with other good factions, and the same goes for evil factions. In fact, there isn't a single good faction in my campaign at war with another good faction, or a single evil faction at war with another evil faction. This is good and proper, as it should be.

 

For what it's worth, Third Age Total War just won second place as Mod of the Year on moddb.com. 2nd isn't bad out of some 15,000 or so mods on that site!

My Gondor campaign is still moving along nicely, currently in turn 100 or so. Actually, its become quite frantic since the Dark Lord of Mordor called an invasion against Umbar -- which I "liberated" from Harad several years ago. I've had 3 full stacks from Mordor sent my way, 3 from Rhun, 3 from Harad, 1 from the Orcs of Misty Mountain, and now Saruman himself is sending a full Isengard stack against me. Fortunately, nearly all of these factions have to send their armies through Gondor's historical territories, so I have been able to intercept most of them in lands where I have access to my best armies.

Mordor is now fielding trolls with disturbing regularity, and worse, I just fought my first battle against a full Mordor stack that included a unit of Olog-Hai: the grand daddy of all trolls, battle hardened and clad in full plate. These guys are just a joy to deal with. The best tactic I've found is to hit them from behind as often as possible with cavalry charges, at least in open field battles. That said, sometimes the trolls bury themselves inside a huge melee, where cavalry charges aren't really possible, and in settlements charging cavalry isn't typically an option. In those cases plan to lose A LOT of infantry. Trolls are just menaces!

It all contributes to the fun though! I'm 100 turns in, and not even close to getting bored, because the challenge level is still very high. The custom settlements are a great new touch. I recently sieged Minas Morgul, and won a very hard victory. The settlement looked fantastic. A very nice touch was that once I reclaimed Minas Morgul (Dark Tower of Sorcery), it was renamed to Minas Ithil, which is what it was originally called by Gondor before the Nazgul conquered it early in the Third Age. By the way, there are tons of in game descriptions and lore in the game, so you can learn a lot about Middle Earth by playing this game. The mod team is extremely focused on and dedicated to the lore.

 

Mine crashes whenever I go into a fight, so I've packed in with it. Besides, I've got Assassins Creed Revelations and Arkham City to crack on with.

 

Bummer BA. It's running smoothly for most, so whatever the problem is, I'm sure it could be sorted out by dropping a post on the message boards I linked in the original post. It may require a clean install of the mod and possibly M2/Kingdoms. But it sounds like you've got plenty of gaming options on your plate as it is.

I received Skyrim for Christmas, but haven't even opened it yet as any gaming time I have is still going toward TATW.

 

Since trolls are suckers for artillery, wouldn't it work if you parked a few catapults behind your infantry and have them fire on the trolls? Sure, you'll have some friendly fire once they engage you, but the artillery should take care of them handily. And with a bit of luck make the rest of his army rout.

Didn't get any further in my campaign with the Dwarfs. One of those orc factions that are holed up in the misty mountains and the northern ranges is fielding quite a lot of infantry. And given that I don't have much in the way of an army on that side of my kingdom, it's pretty much all I can do to defend myself and expansion on that side has ground to a halt.

I've found out that using the dwarfs in battles in the open field is generally not a good idea. For instance, I was trying to mop up a fairly big stack of orcs with lots of those javellin men. If I managed to engage them, they were easily dealt with, but in general they would run away and since they run faster than my dwarfen units, I could chase them around the battle field all day long. Even if they rout, because they were faster than my units, they could outrun me, regain their will to fight, then shoot at me again. Very annoying. At least in a siege they've got nowhere to run.

If you're playing with the Dwarfs, I think the patch for Dwarfen throwers should be installed or it will crash as soon as they try to use their ranged attack. I've posted a link to this on the previous page.

 

Technically artillery works very well against trolls... technically. It's a bit more challenging in practice. They are not known to sit and take such abuse, so if you fire on them, they are pretty certainly going to go retaliate, and once they are running at super human speed, good luck targeting them. I guess that would be the point where you'd need to send your "sacrificial lambs" to try to get between your artillery and the trolls. In the battle I played against the Olog-Hai, they ran into the middle of a huge melee where I would have expect my catapult to kill massive numbers of my own men, in hopes of getting the trolls. It might have worked out okay, but it didn't feel right to be the source of the level of carnage against my own troops. In fact, as terrifying as the trolls were, my casualties weren't actually that bad. The Olog-Hai kept getting pissed off by my archers, and would run after them, giving me a chance to charge my infantry into the trolls. I did manage a few cavalry charges, especially once I had decimated most of the orcs, and could actually reach in far enough to get the trolls. A well placed cavalry charge against a group of trolls can actually knock a few of them off their feet, and can be quite devastating. The key is to get out quick, as your cavalry are sitting ducks next to a group of trolls. Get out quick, and hopefully you've got a total of 3 - 4 cavalry units to rotate into the fray. When one group is getting the hell out of dodge, the next one should be running in. I also have found charging in 2 units of cavalry simultaneously from opposite directions can be effective. The real issue with trolls is that they do not route. Period. They won't stop attacking you until you kill them.

I had pretty much the exact same issue as Gondor. I was getting attacked from the south from Harad, and the East from Mordor. Every single turn practically I had attacks from both factions, and typically I could see the "next wave" making its way in for an attack 1 or 2 turns later. It was rather disheartening, as it was all I could do to hold them off.

I HAD to devise a strategy to get out of the rut, so I decided to hold off on ANY construction, trained what few units my meager profits allowed, and pulled any units that could be spared from my empire to create a not-so-daunting offensive force. This act really turned my campaign around in a lot of ways. Now the AI had to make decisions... reclaim lost territories... or keep the heat on greatly desired territories. Usually, it did a little of both. Of course, I gained extra income from the new settlements, but in so doing I also denied that income from my enemy. The best thing I did was sailing a force to Umbar (a huge city), which was earning Harad buckets of money per turn, and also allowing them to field higher tier armyies and navies. Harad has mainly been a pain in my arse since I got it, as I've had to raise the culture up from nothing, and once I finally got it high enough to train some soliders, the replenishment rate in dessert regions is god awful slow. Really, it's like 25 turns just to be able to train a unit of Gondor Militia in a desert region. So I have to boat most of my reinforcements in... which meant I needed a strong navy to take away ownership of the waters from Harad, which meant spending yet more money. Oh, and the invasion on Umbar has really been rough (though fun) as nearly every evil faction continues to send their best armies and generals against me. That said, and even though 95% of my funds go to units and upkeep, I am now managing to push both Mordor and Harad back. Harad, at least, can't train upper tier units (for the moment), although with Mordor they are training almost nothing but Uruks (uber orcs) and trolls it seems, from Dol Guldor and Barad Dur. I would suggest finding some way to get your offensive force together, so you can start turning things around on your foes. Scrape if you have to. Learn how to win battles against tougher odds... but you MUST get out of that rut before you start seeing more elite units coming for you.

I think I would generally try to avoid open field battles as the Dwarfs too. My understanding is that you can hire Dale cavalry as mercenaries, so I would advise you to have some of those in any of your key armies.

That's a good point for Barmy Army. Last week the 3.1 patch was released that fixes a number of issues, such as the axethrower crash. I would strongly advise both of you to install that patch.

 

But if you just hold your infantry right in front of your catapults, there's a good chance that the catapults will hit beyond them more than they will hit your infantry itself. Or do trolls have a tendency to tear into your ranks like cavalry when they hit? Then it would be more difficult, I suppose. Interesting that you can knock them over, actually.

I plan on hitting the orcs in the grey and misty mountains hard so they won't have much of a chance to start fielding trolls. Probably this won't succeed because I expect I'll need to take Moria and that's likely going to take a while. In the mean time, I want to plug them up, so I want to take the Goblin Town first so I can fend off any southern attack on just this one settlement, then turn north and mop up all the other settlements.

The orcs near my western settlements are being a pain, though. They don't attack directly, but instead move their armies into the Nenuial area and just park them somewhere. I'd flush them out, but without cavalry that's even more annoying. Why can't my dwarfs run faster like the books say they're able to?

And unfortunately, I can't recruit mercenary cavalry either. At least none of my generals anywhere are able to recruit any mercenaries. I'd simply start attacking Pitkaranta (I lost it once already because my occupying force was enough to take the settlement, but not to fend off the numerous orcs coming after it), but I'm afraid that they'll start attacking Nenuial if I empty it to attack Pitkaranta. Once I have it, though, it should normally become the focal point for any further attacks - which is still not that great, given that it's a village without any walls - but that one army inside the Nenuial territory might still go for that settlement, depending on how much the AI is updated.

That would be my assessment too - I need to get to at least Carn Dum before they start fielding elite units from there. At least, that's the biggest orc settlement around the northern. The next is Moria, but I don't think I can do much against that for now. I just want to get these northern settlements under my control so I have only two fronts - one to Rhun and one to the orcs of the misty mountain.

Thanks for the heads up. Installed it, but haven't had the opportunity to test it much yet. Although I didn't have many stability issues aside from the axe thrower crash.

 

Yeah, trolls tend to pass through my soldiers' ranks like a knife through warm butter. They put themselves literally in the middle of a fray, and spread way out, seeming to fight independently. Knowing the limitations of the M2 game engine, it's actually quite impressive how they managed to get the trolls to act. They seem like... well, trolls.

I haven't played the dwarves yet, but my understanding is that Dale cavalry can only be recruited from a couple of territories in Dale, so you'll need to send your general to Dale's regions (you should have military access) to pick them up.

* * * * *
I decided to check out some other factions after getting my Gondor campaign to around turn 105ish. Honestly, the enemy stack spam started to wear on me after a while. Although I'm doing well in my campaign, it doesn't seem to matter how many enemy stacks I wipe out, the enemy just keeps throwing an endless supply at me. Each turn has been averaging 3 - 5 battles, so it's very slow going.

At any rate, I decided to check out Baron Samedi's mod pack, which can be used to tone a few things down, or up, and adds some additional flavor to the campaign overall... not to mention adds some additional units to a few factions with smaller rosters. This mod pack is cool not only because it's well made, but because each change/component included in it is optional "per campaign." So I can play Mordor with one set of options, Gondor with a different set of options, and Rhun with yet another set of options all under the same installation.

I played Mordor for around 25 turns. They aren't really my style, but I wanted to get a taste of what it's like to spread darkness and chaos from Barad Dur. Now I'm playing the High Elves. This factions is REALLY my style, as I love playing archery based factions and have always preferred have less, higher quality units rather than a huge horde of expendable rabble.

My High Elf campaign includes, among others, the "reduced stack spam" option from Baron Samedi's mod, which results in victories over your enemy feeling more rewarding (because it actually hurts them) and causes them to play a bit more defensively. So far the campaign has been mostly focused on building my economy and taking rebel settlements, but Isengard just declared war on me, I can see that my enemies the Orc of Misty Mountains are beginning to mount some large armies to my eastern flank (that will soon attack, I'm sure), and the Orcs of Gundabad are growing in power to the north. I think the heat is about to rise!

 

I downloaded the mod and tried it out with Eriador... and, well, it's a bit weird. The strong generals are definitely a plus, and though most of the infantry doesn't look too impressive, they seem more than capable of handling the initial orks and the like. I started a war with the Gundabad orks and it looked okay, but then it got a turn for the worse. I am playing normal, but I'm being swamped with units worse than I was when I was playing shogun 2 on hard - and there the computer blatantly cheats with unit price and upkeep. I try to keep fields upgraded, but can't get enough gold to buy stables and the upgraded barracks - it looks like I might have needed to spend my opening gold there instead of building farms and roads.

 

Yeah, it's not exactly fair in that way. The gameplay tweaks from Baron Samedi that Marceror linked in the post above yours lets you choose whether you'd want the AI to spam these stacks or not.

I just installed it and obviously chose not to have the AI stack spam. A little is ok, but from the sounds of it, this is just too much. I had intended to continue with my current game of the Dwarfs, but installing this mod somehow messed with the traits. Like my spies having the berserker trait and one general the secret love in his retinue. So I decided to restart and at the same time enjoy the benefits of this mod. At least now I'm starting with an alliance with all the good factions, as it should be. Still sticking with the Dwarfs, though, as I don't feel like I'm finished with them yet.

Oh yes, and you were right Marceror, it's possible to select Dale mercenary cavalry when you're in a Dale territory. I haven't yet figured out if I'll be able to retrain them anywhere or if I have to go all the way back to Dale territory to retrain them. There aren't many to recruit, though, only one every so many turns.

 

The Shaman, be warned... King Kong, the mod leader of TATW is what you'd call a hardcore gamer. He wants his game to be HARD, and this is reflected in the gameplay. Any vanilla Total War game is going to be laughably easy compared to Third Age Total War, so if you're finding your Normal difficulty TATW game much, much harder than your Hard difficulty Shogun 2 game, that is not a surprise at all. In fact, I think that's sort of the point. If you're having too much trouble, as henkie suggests, pick up Baron Samedi's modpack, which I included a link to above, and you can tone some things down.

Economy is still going to be slower than you're used to, though. I think the idea was to make a mod that by turn 50 or so, you're not absolutely, completely unbeatable as a faction, as seems to be the case with every vanilla Totalwar game, if you're at least a halfway skilled player. Many would say that TATW goes too far, and that's where lower difficulty levels and Baron Samedi's mod come in. Or, if you want to mess with your data files you can tweak things up as you see fit. If you're a skilled TW player, I think you'd be fine running a normal/normal campaign with stack spam turned off/reduced and perhaps even shutting off the garrison script (the garrison script allows the AI to recruit soldiers from local populace to help defend in key settlements).

henkie, I'm glad you were able to locate the cavalry, and that you're giving Samedi's modpack a shot. Hopefully this will result in a somewhat more enjoyable gaming experience. I salute you for sticking with the Dwarf's on your first playthrough, as they are definitely a faction with some challenges to contend with in open fields.

My HE campaign is moving along very well. I'm concerned, perhaps a bit too well. My economy pretty much sucks. It's gotten a lot better by turn 40ish, but still isn't strong. I don't have large armies at all due to finances, and even if I had the money, the replenishment rates are the slowest in the game of any faction. This is meant to reflect that Elves were scarce in Middle Earth during this time, and it's accurate to the lore. That said, the Elves that I do have are essentially power houses. My archers, even my tier 1 archers, are D-E-A-D-L-Y. In the early turns of the game when your enemies don't have much, if any, cavalry, you can turn skirmish mode on and go to town. Another HUGE benefit that nearly all Elves have is very good stamina. It takes them a long time to tire, so they remain a peak combat effectiveness far longer than most of their enemies. I may have to take on armies that are 3 or 4 times larger than my own (oh and Elves have the smallest unit size in the game too), but with a bit of skill, this means that I get a lot of heroic victories.

The other thing that is VERY different from my Gondor campaign is that my enemies, Orcs of Misty Mountain and Isengard, are surrounded by foes. OoMM have to contend with High Elves, Silvan Elves and Dwarves. Isengard has to content with High Elves, Rohan and Eriador. In contrast, as Gondor I had the FULL attention of Harad and all the Orcs of Mordor (I realize that Mordor had other threats up north near Dol Guldor, but they had settlements in those areas to deal with those... the black lands of Mordor were reserved almost entirely for assaulting Gondor. It was VERY difficult to field offensive armies, and even though many enemy settlements were lightly defended, I couldn't get to them. So the Gondor campaign was VERY slow, and I hadn't accomplished all that much by turn 100.

By contrast, I have done more with the High Elves in 40 turns than I was able to accomplish in my Gondor campaign. I now have a connected empire between my western settlements of Harlond, Forlond, and Mithlond all the way to Rivendell. I am about to take Isengard's final settlement, sieging the Orthanc tower itself. I am also starting to make a dent on the Orcs of the Misty Mountain, as I'm sieging their best settlement of Moria. You get quite a surprise when you attack that settlement, by the way! Read the spoiler if you want to know what it is.

Spoiler

A balrog of Moria spawns when you attack Moria. I haven't faced it yet, as I feel the need to bring in some reinforcements before I begin the attack.

So while the campaign is going well, I'm hoping that it doesn't end up getting, well, boring later on. On the other hand, Gondor is getting it's arse handed to them right now. They have lost Minas Tirith to Mordor, and all lands to the east. Harad has crossed the river is taking settlements in Gondor proper also. They may need some help, so perhaps my later campaign will see the High Elves in Mordor/Gondor lands, attempting to ensure that the greatest kingdom of men does not fall to the Dark Lord. That could be fun, even if I do manage to make safe the lands in the northwest. And, well, the Orcs of Gundabad are still very strong in the north, so that's a threat that will need to be faced in due time.

Can't wait to get some game time a little later tonight to see how that fight in Moria goes!

 

Update on my High Elf campaign: I'm now at turn 105 or so. The experience of this campaign is nothing like my previous Gondor campaign. Which is to say, that it is not even close to being the desperate struggle that it was as Gondor, but it's still been extremely fun.

In this campaign I have mostly been on the offensive. I have destroyed Isengard, Orcs of the Misty Mountains, and just a few turns ago, the Orcs of Gundabad. So now there are no evil factions touching my borders, except for Mordor to the very east in Mirkwood. I am allied with all good factions, so hopefully this means I can get by primarily with free upkeep armies and a few generals throughout most of my empire.

I have found the One Ring, and the council of Elrond has just been called in Imladris, so I'm en route there with my general who has the ring. I'm also preparing my best soldiers for an assault on Mordor, and have recently declared war on them. To win the game, Mordor must be destroyed. They are huge, and wildly powerful, so that's not going to be easy. Alternatively, if I can destroy the one ring in Mount Doom, the rest of Mordor will be destroyed, and their settlements will turn rebel. Hmm....

Gondor has been reduced to 3 settlements, Dol Amroth and a couple of small settlements to the west of it! I guess the AI has no chance against both Mordor and Harad. They won't last much longer without help, so I will do what I can. It's probably too late for them though, as Harad and Mordor's armies are endless at this point.

Once I get going against Mordor, I'm really going to have a fight on my hand, and difficulty replacing any lost soldiers. I'm hoping to gather 2 powerful stacks of Elves, with plenty of Eldar units, and use them to destroy the filfth of Mordor. My main concern is Mordor trolls. They are deadly, and will likely produce huge casualties for me.

Now the real fighting begins!

Meanwhile, Skyrim sits on my desk, unopened.

 

It's now like turn 170ish. I have made my way to Mordor, and destroyed the one ring. I am now holding the lands of Mordor, trying to stabilize the area from evil. A number of Orcs and trolls survived, and periodically I'm having to hold off some pretty intimidating stacks of would-be Mordor revivors (scripted events that occur). Harad has taken most of Mordor's territories to the west of the Black Lands (i.e. former Gondor territory), and so, are now all but unstoppable. Gondor still hangs on with with a single region, while Rohan has managed some offensive victories against Harad -- though they haven't amounted to much.

With the destruction of Mordor I have technically "won" the campaign. I'm still going though, as there's still plenty of evil to be put down in Middle Earth. Gondor's lands must ultimately be purged of these evil men.

 

I didn't notice before, but the amount of settlements different factions need to win the campaign differs a lot. The Elfs need only 25 settlements, while Mordor needs as much as 60 settlements. Actually, all of the evil factions have really high settlement number requirements.

Is the one ring something that just randomly appears somewhere, or is it something that can be found in a specific spot?

Didn't get much further with my Dwarfs campaign, don't have too much time to play, though I did manage to get about as far as I did in the previous game. Instead of making for Pitkaranta this time, I made for the settlement to the east of Nenuial, which was owned by Eriador, but which was now owned by the orcs of gundaband. Athilin, it's called, I believe. It gives me a direct line to Carn Dum. Though trying to take Carn Dum will expose Athilin to take over by one of those roaming armies the orcs have running around the area. But it will deprive the orcs of their citadel and that's definitely going to be worth it in the long run.

In the meantime, Isengard has lost... Isengard, and it's leader as well, apparently, presumably Saruman. I wonder who did that, if Rohan was successful or if it was another faction. I'll find out soon enough, my one diplomat is moving in that direction after making a deal with Eriador.

 

I think the mod team were trying to be "lore appropriate" regarding the number of settlements required to win. Elves aren't interested in expansion, therefore their expansion requirements are less... but on the other hand, they have to destroy a faction that is nowhere close to where they are located. I now have 42 settlements as the High Elves, and I'm spread across the map like a paint smear. On the other hand, evil factions are seeking to dominate all life, so it follows that they wouldn't be satisfied until a much larger amount of the world fell to their might.

The One Ring pops up randomly in different places. When it is found, you'll get a message that the One Ring has been found, and the location it was found. If you want to capture for yourself, you will need to travel to the appropriate settlement very quickly and kill the general in charge there. At that point you will take the ring from him.

The ring can be stolen from you, and when you get close to Mordor Gollum will try to take the ring. If these things happen you will need to wait until the ring is discovered again.

As an evil faction you can take the ring to the Black Gate, which transfers it to Mordor. Mordor will soon have a very bad arse Sauron added to their faction as a general! If you're good, you can attend the "white council" in Imlradis and agree to either destroy the ring, or keep the ring. I'm not sure what happens if you keep it, as I chose to destroy it. In that case you need to travel to the region of Mount Doom, and simply wait there until the ring is destroyed. If you can, capture Barad Dur and wait in the settlement, as you will have a more defensible position.

I was fortunate when I did this that the resistance in Mordor wasn't too bad. I first had to take the Black Gate to enter Mordor. I sacked it, destroyed all the buildings I could, and abandoned it to a civil revolt. I also had Glorfindel with his own stack attacking Mordor settlements up north, such as Dol Guldor. This distraction served to send many of Mordor's forces north to deal with that threat.

My ring bearer's army was so uber, that few Mordor forces would dare to attack it. It had 11 Eldarine units (archers, swordmen, guardians, spearmen, and cavalry), 2 generals, 2 Imladris riders (mounted archers), some "lesser" archers and some siege units. All but a few Mordor stacks I ran into along the way were like... no thanks, someone else can deal with those guys.

 

Does Gollum trying to steal the ring have a random successrate then? Like spying and assassination? Or possibly more like the spawning location of the Mongols.

Another thing I was wondering about, is about the age of generals. If I remember correctly, Dwarfs would normally become around 250 years old so it should take a seriously long time before my king dies of old age. On the other hand, if they maintain the ages from the vanilla game (don't know how flexible the game engine is on this) my king could die any turn now.

My campaign with the dwarfs is progressing steadily, and if I manage to succesfully ward off the stack they've got marching towards Gundaband and Nenuial, I can finish the remainder off quickly, although Carn Dum will have garrison spawning in if I besiege it.

One of the problems I have is that many of the settlements around here are villages and motte & baileys and I can't build anything that increases culture, can't build roads either, so there seems to be no way for me to increase my culture in these settlements and thus no way for me to produce any troops either. And it gets tiring to have to move the troops from one side of the map to the other over the course of 6-8 turns.

Similarly, it appears I can only retrain Dale cavalry in Eredor, that castle to the west of it with the long and hard to remember name and some Dale areas. Which is sort of a pain in the ass because the only way I can easily win on an open field is with cavalry which can round up routing units. I don't even use them for anything else because I don't want to have to retrain them too often.

There's also the movement of the Silvian elfs, who seem to be moving an army towards Goblin Town, which I believe is also a required settlement for me to take. I'm not really looking forward to having to trade with them in order to get the settlements I need to win the campaign. And attacking seems also rather inelegant. *sigh* vanilla M2:TW is so much easier in this respect. Assassinating them out of existence is also nearly impossible because assassinations became significantly more difficult to pull off. Plus that I only have a single city that can actually produce assassins, so I'm running into the agent limit quite quickly.

On the other side of the map it appears that Isengard is totally getting its ass handed to itself by Rohan. I'm wondering if the evil factions were mostly relying on those stack spawns in order to stay afloat, because they don't seem to be doing too well in this game.

 

I believe there is random chance involved. I got my ring stolen by Gollum. I really wasn’t in the mood to lose the ring, so I went back to a save from the previous turn, and did not have this issue again, and made it all the way to Mount Doom.

The M2 engine limits what can be done with respect to age. It would be awesome to have Elves that never die of old age, Dwarves that die at around 250, humans much earlier, etc. Unfortunately M2 wasn’t created with these sort of fantasy variables, so you can only have one setting that affects all characters in the game the same.

What King Kong decided to do was to set the age limit to the maximum possible in the game, which is 150, I believe. Characters aren’t considered “old” until around 120 years of age (again, IIRC), so no one should die of old age before then. Generally speaking, this means that you really shouldn’t have problems with your generals dying of old age on you over the course of the campaign, except perhaps a few older characters near the very end of the 400 turn period. It doesn’t make total sense, but I think it was a good call. Guys like Denethor (the Steward of Gondor) should be around until the end of the Third Age anyways.

This is also why you will see Gandalf in his 20s… to ensure that this immortal being doesn’t randomly kick the bucket on you.

Glad to hear that you’re making progress again. My HE game, unfortunately ended at turn 205 with a crash to desktop when ending turn. I don’t think I’ve ever played any Total War campaign to turn 205 before, and I was still having a blast. I’m told that most likely it is Baron Samedi’s mod causing the crash, as there are a few crash related issues there. I decided to start a new campaign as the Kingdom of Arnor, rather than sulk over the loss. Baron Samedi’s compilation allows you to start as Arnor, and since I have no real interest in playing Eriador, I chose to take advantage of this option. And why not. Aragorn has been revealed as Isildur’s heir, he’s already the faction leader… all it should really take to reforge the Kingdom of Arnor is the will to do it. We can worry about reclaiming historical lands after the fact. My big "quest" in the later game will be to reunite the kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor under one banner once again. It should be an interesting campaign!

This can be a bit of a downer, I realize. In a way I like the idea of having more variety between settlements, as there is something not quite right about having everything becoming a huge city by turn 100.

That said, here’s some of the ways I dealt with the problem you relate in my High Elven campaign:
I set my taxes to low in ALL “city type” settlements, at least, until they become large cities, then I set them to normal. This may seem like it will cripple you, but it allows for a significant increase in population growth, and that not only gets you to the next settlement level faster, but it gives you more souls to collect taxes from (i.e. more cash in the long run)! Also, if you keep generals in those settlements with low taxes, they will gain respect very quickly (e.g. fair in rule, noble in rule type traits). In TATW 3.x, you don’t get a growth bonus until you reach 7 respect, FYI. That said, I find that you will typically also gain retinue and other traits that reduce squalor, which will increase growth in settlements where squalor is starting to occur (around 4000 citizens give or take, in my experience).

Lastly, once you get those generals with plenty of respect and squalor reduction from sitting in cities with low taxes, you can start shipping some of them over to your castles to improve growth rates there. I’ve also found that leaving your generals in developed castles increases their abilities as commanders (e.g. they can gain traits like military strategist), so letting some of your younger generals govern in cities for a few years, then in castles, can result in a rather effective general. Then take them out into the field and after a handful of wins you have an uber general who is also an excellent governor.

Again, King Kong I believe wanted to reflect that when you capture some small village in a grassland area as the dwarves, you’re not going to see tons of Dwarven armies being trained from that location for quite a long time. And this pretty much means that you will need to plan on shipping in your dwarven troops from your established settlements in the mountains. It makes sense from a roleplaying perspective. It’s not always fun from a gameplay perspective. If it really bothers you it’s not all that hard to mod your game to increase settlement growth rates, or for that matter, replenishment rates for your troops.

This is probably the main reason I haven’t tried playing as the dwarves yet. I realize that they are gods in settlement battles -- attacking and defending, but there are just too many field battles that occur in this game. I’m rather OCD about wanting to mop up every last prisoner I can at the end of a battle. I would really struggle with a faction where cavalry are so scarce, I think.

Hehe, these are just the challenges of the game my friend. Be quicker than the other guy, or be prepared to beg, borrow, or steal later to get what you need. I love that you have so many options to accomplish your goals. It wouldn’t be too out of character for the Dwarves to attack the Elves over a land dispute, I suppose… if that becomes your last resort. Definitely not an elegant solution though. You are right.

As for assassins, I use them sparingly in this game. Assassinating generals, as you point out is far more trouble than it’s worth. I find that sabotage is the best, most practical use of an assassin. Or, if you happen to find an enemy army with its captain standing with a troll unit, picking off a troll a turn through assassination isn’t exactly a waste of their skill. Oh, and taking out enemy spies, assassins, and diplomats is a handy use of their abilities.

Yeah, Isengard has it rough. Eriador/Arnor, Rohan, the Silvan and High Elves are all in close proximity. That’s a lot of good factions for one single, largely isolated evil faction to have to contend with.