Third Age Total War 3.0 Released (for M2TW)

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I guess it is the Beacons of Gondor that I'm thinking of. Just the same, I've never had another army ask me to assist them with a battle (they do occasionally ask me to declare war on another faction through diplomacy), I figured what you explained must have been from a mod.

This is part of Samedi's compliation only at this time. There is also an option to reforge the Kingdom of High Elves and the Kingdom of the Silvan Elves, respectively, but these options are somewhat less impressive as there isn't any morphing of factions that occur... just a few perks to those factions that speak to the Elven Kingdoms in Middle Earth returning to glory, rather than disappearing into the Undying Lands as in the books.

I chose to start as Arnor in my game, which basically meant that I started with nothing but Eriador units and no free upkeep, and had to wait 4 or 5 turns before I could train any of Arnor's units. Doing it this way just made the first handful of turns slightly more challenging, but it wasn't too difficult. That was enough of an exposure to Eriador for my taste, this is just not a faction that floats my boat. Although even in turn 90 or so of my campaign I still have a good handful of Eriador units reinforcing my armies, which I can't retrain. They are relatively cheap, so why not.

Oh, I see. Yeah, TATW has redefined the way cities and castles work a bit, and prevents you from switching your settlements between the two. In general, cities are far more valuable than castles, because they have essentially the same military potential as castle, but so much more in the way of economic potential. For some factions castles allow for higher experience units to be trained, or maybe allow for a particular unit to be trained earlier than in a castle, but otherwise yes, all factions work similarly in this regard.

EDIT - Thanks for the heads up about version 5. I'll have to have a look at that.

 

Even if the Eriador faction was your cup of tea, I can see how it would be annoying to have good, experienced units which you can no longer retrain so they may become better after a while but eventually they will either become useless because their stack is too small to actually accomplish anything, or you'll just lose them all together. I hate that.

I like the idea of being able to upgrade/change your unit roster some way into the game, but the lack of backward compatibility would really put me off. Still, it's pretty cool to reunite them with Gondor, even if the prerequisite number of settlements you'd need for the victory would suddenly become laughably easy.

I mentioned earlier already that I was camped outside of Duneard, which had one nearly full stack standing right next to it, and another maybe 6 units in Duneard itself. I decided to attack the full stack first with my roughly half stack army, because it's easier to make them rout in an open field battle than in a siege battle and if even half of that full stack army had made it to the town square, I wouldn't have been able to win it, simply due to a lack of numbers.

So I attacked them first, let the city garrison reinforce them and then let them attack my infantry until they lost enough men and morale to start routing. In the mean while, my two cavalry units were chasing around their ranged units so they wouldn't do too much damage.

In the end about 0.25 of the 1.25 stack managed to get away, and they got reinforcements from the garrison script too when I attacked the town. I had to cheese it to win that fight, by letting my ranged units just shoot at them from afar and they were just staying in the city square. Usually they don't let me do that, but this time they did and I was grateful for that.

My other army had been marching for Dol Guldur and took it just now. Before I arrived, my spy had infiltrated the settlement and so I could watch the Elfs attacking it without any success. There had been a Mordor army roaming about consisting of just three normal units and about 5 generals. In the turns leading up to the siege, I managed to assassinate 4 of them, and I'm pretty sure that out of the original 5, 3 were Nazgul. Or at least, they have a ring of power in their retinue, look like Nazgul, but are just typical general units on horseback.

Anyway, my army was a full stack and so was their garrison after getting reinforced by the garrison script. I was somewhat surprised, though, that Dol Guldur is marked as a citadel on the map, but only has a single outer wall and apparently no arrow towers at all. Seems like a bit too easy for a citadel, though I suppose the difficulty here was that everything was a steep uphill battle, even inside the citadel walls.

The win here felt more epic than the one outside Duneard, which was against greater odds - I don't really know why, but even though I technically had the stronger army, it was still a hard fight and if I didn't have quite a few ranged units in my army that I could park on the citadel walls to shoot at them in the town square, it still could have gone wrong. Because they really do like to run uphill, then charge into my units again. Didn't really work in the close spaces, but I suppose it still works somewhat.

Incidentally, one other general found the one ring when I moved him into Duneard, so it's good that I can now march directly north from Dol Guldur, take Thoronburg and then move on to the Black Gate and even Barad Dur, if I wanted to. And destroying Mordor should give me enough settlements to win, I think. If I manage to take them all.

I started marching on the Rhun anyway, just to have something to do, plus I can link up to the Dol Guldur part, which is at the moment completely separated from the rest of my kingdom.

 

Amen to this.

It sounds like you are really kicking some butt in your campaign man. Dol Guldor was a fun settlement to take in my HE campaign, and equally fun to defend. It definitely doesn't fit the usual mold for the vanilla M2 Citadel, but then again, nor does any custom settlement really. The fact that it's a citadel really just gives you a few extra build options, more free upkeep, and I guess it ensures that the custom settlement can't be "upgraded" which would overwrite it's custom look on the campaign map.

I'm currently in turn 105 or so, and have beaten OotMM down to 2 settlements. They have some pretty big stacks running around, so there should be a few fun battles involved with taking them out. They are able to train Trolls from one of their settlements... Goblin Town, I believe, which is a large city. I'm sending a few of my most powerful units, which I can train from Carn Dum now, to join in the fun.

Then things should slow down while I work on the requirements to reunite Arnor/Gondor. All in all, its proving to be an exciting campaign, even if it's a little easy at the moment.

 

I agree with the sentiment. It's a little disappointing that without the stack spawns, the opposition seems to be rather light. It seems to me that the evil factions were actually balanced based on the stack spawns and are quite weak without them.

 

Played a bit more, took Thoronburg and am now marching for the Black Gate. In the mean time also took a few rebel settlements that neither the high elves, Rohan or Eriador had apparently bothered with, even though it was right next to them for the entire game.

Probably it's due to me setting it to easy (if I remember right), but the AI has been really passive so far on the campaign map. I set it to easy because I thought it would make the management of the economy a bit easier, but apparently that's not the case and it just makes the enemy more passive. Guess I'll set it a bit higher next time.

I also got the call to bring my ring bearer to the council, but I didn't look close enough at the actual message at the time, thinking it would appear in the same place as those missions the council likes to give me. Except it didn't. Since I didn't remember where I was actually supposed to bring my ring bearer (this could apparently be either Imladris, Mithlond or Caras Galadhon), I figured I would just march him to mount Doom and just destroy the ring that way. Except that this apparently only works if you went to the council first.

So I just warped that general all over the map, trying to discover which place was the right one to go. And then ending the turn to see if anything would happen. This could definitely use some fine tuning right there. A mission briefing with the settlement, a link to the settlement and the message that you should park your general directly next to the settlement to make it work (took some trial and error) would've been helpful.

Speaking of councils... why does the council constantly give me missions to blockade some harbour or another even though I'm pretty sure that the Dwarfs can't build boats?

 

On lower difficulties the AI factions have less resources available to them, and generally are less agressive. I play on hard personally. I'm not a big fan of very hard, as I feel this goes too far in giving the AI bonuses that are just a bit too far over the top. Hard has been the right setting for me.

Imladris is where you need to go, and wait. You will receive an event that lets you decide whether to destroy the ring, or keep the ring. Once you decide to destroy it, you can make your way to Mordor.

I believe this is hardcoded, and cannot be changed. In vanilla M2 all playable factions could build boats, so as long as you own a port, you may receive these missions.

 

Well, it was in Imladris and I agreed to destroy the ring, so now have to make the long, long trek to mount doom. In the mean time I've been harassing Rhun some more and managed to take the Black Gate without actually getting to see it on the battle map.

They parked an army right in front of it and naturally the garrison came up as reinforcements. It was actually quite a fun battle where my catapults had a field day, as well the four units of Iron crossbowmen that I had in that (full stack) army. There was also a unit of trolls in their army, but since it didn't charge me and rather opted to stay with the rest of the troops, they actually fell easy prey to my crossbowmen. Of the 11 units, only a single one actually managed to reach my lines to engage in melee. The rest routed quite easily and was mopped up by the cavalry.

This left the Black Gate without a garrison so I could take it effortlessly. Unfortunately I didn't get to see the custom settlement because of this. I'm marching that army towards Barad-dur now, which they should be able to take the next turn or so. After that I think I'll sit tight, wait for the ring bearer to arrive and then quickly take all the settlements that will be left after Mordor is destroyed.

Though I rather suspect I'll get bored of the whole thing and either hurry the ring bearer over by console commands or just start taking settlements anyway. After that there's not much left to do as I'll reach the settlement requirement to win when I take Barad-dur already.

I wonder if the mountains in Mordor give me the same recruitment rate as the misty/grey/blue mountains, because Dol Guldur (which is also of the mountain type), gives me the same recruitment rate as any grassland settlement.

I think I'll start another game (at medium/medium difficulty this time), possibly with the Silvan elfs. Do you know what the requirment is to get Ents for the elfs? At least I assume they'll be able to recruit them as they're the only faction with them in a custom battle.

 

I believe that gaining ents involves granting "autonomy" to the ents. At some point, when you hold the appropriate regions around Fangorn, you will receive an event that asks you whether or not you wish to grant them autonomy.

After you grant them autonomy, every so often you will be granted a group of ents to fight for your cause. I've heard that you can only keep them for 30 or so turns, but am not certain about that.

This functions similarly to granting autonomy to Hobbits, which I have done as Eriador. Once this is done I can no longer control what buildings are constructed in the hobbit regions, or the units that are trained (but I can put the settlements on automanage so buildings are still constructed there). I get periodic monetary tributes, I get help building roads (all roads are built immediately! So I click on roads, they are completed, and then I can construct something else in the same turn. This can only be used once per turn). I also periodically receive hobbit warriors, to help me defend my lands.

 

So I started up a game again, this time as the Silvan Elfs. First impression: much easier than the dwarfs. With the dwarfs, everything is a slugfest - no easy picking off troops from a distance or easily routing them with a heavy cavalry charge, just knocking heads together. Granted, the dwarfs are very good at it and they can handle numbers much larger than theirs, but there's still a very defined amount of opponents you can handle.

Silvan elfs on the other hand, can handle almost any odds. I can take a village or a small town or castle by just pelting arrows over the wall and decimating the enemy troops without even endangering any of my own and then the rest can swoop in without being harassed and mop up the rest.

Aside from that, the dwarfs start with their kingdom split in two at two opposite ends of the map and especially the expansion at the western part is very prone to leave you overexposed and vulnerable to OoG attack. The elfs have a fair number of settlements that you can take right from the start without much competition, especially the whole Mirkwood area.

In my game, I've already take all the settlements that I need to have - and a few others besides - which includes Dol Goldur. The fun thing about that settlement is that you can just park your archers on the walls and let them fire at the centre part. Also, the game has seen fit to give me lots of generals, which helps. Next up is Isengard and then I'm hoping to take Moria, which should let me be safe from most of what can be thrown at me.

On the northern side, I'm taking a few settlements as well, and am considering handing them over to the dwarfs once I'm sure that I've got all the high level settlements (Carn Dum, Gundabad). I don't need that many settlements, anyway, and from Baron Samedi's modpack, I've installed the mod that should allow the silvan and high elfs to merge into a single kingdom, which should be interesting.

This time, I've also allowed the stack spawn, so I'll be interested in seeing how this affects the game, because in my game with the dwarfs, the evil factions were kind of push overs, once I got past the initial parts.

I already took Fangorn as well and gave them independence. So far, I'm not noticing any differences yet. I can still put my armies in the town and they're not generating any units/defense by themselves. Is it supposed to be this way?

Apparently, if I manage to reunite the high and silvan elfs, I should also be able to normally recruite Ents, which would be awesome.

I'm playing at medium/medium, by the way.

 

I started reading the Lord of the Rings again, and it made me want to continue with my Elf game, so I started the game up again. I went back to an older save, though, because the Balrogs that spawned in Moria were owning me.

As it turns out, the silvan elfs are pretty bad at countering high defense units, because they have very few units that have the armour piercing trait. Only one axe wielding infantry. Despite having the best archers in the game, none of them get the ap trait, which was also surprising to me, because I'd have thought that at least the better archery units would get it, similar to the longbowmen in the original M2:TW.

Well either way, I went back a save or two to avoid the already spawned Balrog unit to start walking around. This time around, I managed to wipe out the orcs of the misty mountains before going to Moria, and that made Moria rebel. The bad news of this turn of events was that the army spawned there had 4 troll units, which is more than I've seen outside of Moria in this entire game so far.

Before the OotMM were wiped out, I'd already wiped out Isengard, which always has it pretty rough in this regard. It was the first time I'd actually conquered Isengard myself, as in my previous game with the dwarfs, Rohan got to them first.

I'm currently still rounding up some rebel settlements in the western part of the map, and I've got the orcs of gundaband down to three settlements. I'm thinking to give some of the settlements to Eriador, the high elfs and the dwarfs, as I have a lot of settlements already, and also because quite a few of these north-western settlements are just kind of worthless.

I'm not quite sure how to handle the re-union of the silvan and high elfs, as the description says I should build a forester's guild in Dol Goldur and a dancing hall in Thranduil's halls, but I haven't seen any buildings like this in the building explorer. Unless the Gwaith-I-something is the forester's guild, but then I still haven't seen the dancing halls.

On the other side of the map, I'm now moving against Rhun, which had some quite profitable settlements, as I recall from my game with the dwarfs. Their base unit is some kind of javellin men, though, at they are a pain to deal with, as they pack quite the punch, and will regularly continue throwing their javellins, even if they're already engaged in melee. When I attacked one of their cities, it had 10 of these units in it (and some others for flavour), and they decimated my first unit of Ents. That was an instant reload moment.

 

Continueing my game with the silvan elfs, now only Mordor and Harad are left. And they have lost their capitals as well, by now. I attacked them both through the former territories of Rhun, which actually turned barbarian horde on me after I took their last settlement. But then they just disappeared the next turn anyway, perhaps there was some requirement for them to take a settlement within that turn.

The ring was found by now as well, and after a while I got the summons for the council as well. The description says that ignoring the summons would have consequences, but in retrospect I wonder if I shouldn't have ignored the summons anyway. The ring was found in Rhun territory, near that inland sea. To go from there to gorgoroth would've been pretty close by.

To get to the council in Rivendel I had 25 turns, but with the ring corruption eating up my movement points, I don't think I could have made that without some console commands to help things underway. And with his glacial speed, I might have removed Mordor from the map by the time he makes it to mount doom.

At the very least I'll occupy all of Mordor by that time, though perhaps some of their territories between Mordor and the river will still be theirs.

The re-union thing between the silvan and high elfs hasn't become much clearer. I found a theatre building, which seems plausible to be the mentioned dancing halls. The forester guild would then be the gwaith-i-something. But, I can only build these building in cities, and Dol Guldur is a citadel. For now, I'll try to build the gwaith-i-something in Lothlorien, and the theatre in Thandruil's halls, then we'll see how it goes. Maybe. I'll need at least a large city size to be even able to build the theatre, which may easily take another 100 turns for Thranduil's halls.