Any interest in a Third Age Total War hotseat?

[Zim]

I've been thinking about starting a hotseat using the Third Age: Total War mod. It's a total conversion mod set in Middle Earth and one of those most polished, entertaining MTW2 mods I've played and I think it would be interesting to have a game in a non-historical setting. You can find it here (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=374565). Previous versions played very well as hotseats and according to the FAQ the current version stil works in hotseat mode (something I'll be testing shortly).

Would anyone be interested in a hotseat for that mod? We'd need to work a few things out. The mod team helpfully provides simple directions to remove the garrison script (I could do it myself then upload the file for everyone). I'm thinking it would work best as a team game with maybe the "good" guys having an extra player (Mordor is very powerful).

Anyone else think this would be fun?

Players so far:
Myth
Thanatos Eclipse
Nightbringer
Slysnake
Zim

[Myth]

https://img24.imageshack.us/img24/5605/legolasgold.jpg

Don't remove the garrison script - it triggers only for the AI anyway. Plus it's too bothersome to mod and re-mod all my games whenever i want to play SP alongside a hotseat.

[Zim]

So play factions won't get garrison scripts? I remember way back with the first BC hotseat here the scripts seemed to treat player factions as being AI controlled between turns, so scripted armies meant to help the AI would appear. I didn't know if there was a similar problem for scripted garrisons.

[Thanatos Eclipse]

I'd be up for it :)

[Nightbringer]

I'd give it a try!

[Zim]

Glad to have you guys in. :2thumbsup:

So far I was thinking that once we have enough players we'd split into teams (Mordor and its allies versus the free peoples), attacking player fights the battles, and maybe unique victory conditions. Plus the usual hotseat rules, of course.

I'll be putting in a lot of hours the next couple nights trying the current version out. For those that have played it, how do you find the faction balance? From the version I played I recall the biggest issues are that some factions are very small, and that Mordor has a huge power advantages over any other single faction (both in production and troop types). The former seems pretty likely to fix itself (I assume the major players will be the first to be picked) but the latter could cause some problems. What do you guys think of Team Mordor having a handicap in the form of being a player shorter versus the other side?

Edit: Also, does anyone have a preferred unit size? Been playing a bit and noticed that although my current computer is better in just about every way than the last one I owned the frame rate still dips pretty badly on huge (or even large with some of the units in TATW with very big units of troops, like the Orc factions). If we're going large or huge I might ask to take one of the Elf factions to make things a bit easier for my computer.

[Myth]

I've only played as the elves, the ones closer to the action. They seem to have excellent generals who get to 10 stars in about a couple of battles, plus they get unique ancilliaries. Overall they seem to mop the floor with the orcs, but mainly because the AI doesn't know how to charge at a bunch of archers effectively. Their lands are very defensible, but the biggest problem is money.

I haven't started with any other faction. let alone the evil ones. Unit wise though I'm uncertain they have an advantage.

My PC is good enough to play on whatever size we choose.

[Zim]

My computer should be able to handle games like MTW2 and RTW on the highest settings, but always has some problems in larger battles on huge settings (one reason I may go for an elven faction, unit sizes for them are similar on huge to my favorite Misty Mountains faction on normal...). I'll defrag my computer and try a couple other things but I wonder if some of it is that the older games don't take advantage of the quad core processor...

[Myth]

To check if M2TW is using your processors, run the game, then press ctrl alt del and bring up the task manager. Right click, "set affinity". Each checkbox means one processor.

[Zim]

4 check boxes, but I go down to 10 fps or so on low graphics settings in large battles, while a friend with a similar setup runs everything on the highest setting with no problems.

[Myth]

What's your video card and how much memory does it have?
How much RAM do you have and how fast does it run?
How fast does your motherboard run?
Do you have sufficient ventilation and cooling for your box?

[Zim]

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q8300 @ 2.50GHz
RAM: 8.00 GB
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260
More than adequate ventilation.

The graphics card may be the weak spot, although I would expect it to do ok on older games like MTW2 (amusingly, ETW plays fine on much higher settings than either MTW2 or RTW).

[Nightbringer]

I am pretty sure M2TW can only actually run using one processor, in which case that woyuld be your problem. You have a quad core, which is very powerful, but at 2.5GHZ the single core this game is able to use is not particularly powerful on its own.

It makes sense that ETW would run better because it is able to utilize more processors.

As for me, I am fine with huge settings.

for faction balance, Mordor has lower quality units, but it is able to produce an ungodly amount of them. Other evil factions have a similar advantage. Nearly all good factions have very little money to work with.

So I think it could be fair to have one less evil side player.

[Myth]

I have an I-7 quad core processor, the latest chipset. The game runs just fine, though my rig is lightyears ahead of what is needed for M2TW. Zim is correct to assume the graphics card is the problem. The motherboard's BUS speed might be a bottleneck as well.

I'd suggest getting an Nvidia GTX 570 and a motheboard from the same manufacturer, one running at 1333 mhz or more. You'll experience a dramatic improvement in performance.

As for TATW I have far too little expereince to be a judge on balance. I just know the Elves are dirt poor at the start.

[Zim]

Just found out the motherboard I have.

IPIEL-LA3 (Eureka3) motherboard
BUS speed:1333/1066/800 MHz

I don't really have the money to buy a new graphics card right now.

[Myth]

1333 is great. 800 is way too low. Wihch one does it run atm? Your BIOS should tell you that. You might even be able to change it.

[Zim]

I may need some directions on doing that. Shall we move it to pm?

[slysnake]

I'm up for this. Also, I'd like 'huge' unit size, but it's not a big deal if we choose to have something lower ^___^

[Nightbringer]

I have an I-7 quad core processor, the latest chipset. The game runs just fine, though my rig is lightyears ahead of what is needed for M2TW. Zim is correct to assume the graphics card is the problem. The motherboard's BUS speed might be a bottleneck as well.

I'd suggest getting an Nvidia GTX 570 and a motheboard from the same manufacturer, one running at 1333 mhz or more. You'll experience a dramatic improvement in performance.

As for TATW I have far too little expereince to be a judge on balance. I just know the Elves are dirt poor at the start.

What is the speed on your processor, in GHZ, I am almost certain M2TW is only able to utilize one processor so it is the speed of the cores that matters.

[Zim]

Welcome. Huge shouldn't be a problem. I'll just go for a lower unit size faction. I even had a Haradrim game some time back that went ok onn huge unit size. It was mostly a problem in battles where both sides had lots of large units (like Snagas). :yes:


I'm up for this. Also, I'd like 'huge' unit size, but it's not a big deal if we choose to have something lower ^___^

[Myth]

My processors are 3.2 each I think. Zim, best google "how can I change my bus speed trough BIOS" or some thing. I do not want to mislead you. Might not even be possible with your particular motherboard.

[Nightbringer]

My processors are 3.2 each I think. Zim, best google "how can I change my bus speed trough BIOS" or some thing. I do not want to mislead you. Might not even be possible with your particular motherboard.

Ya, that is a pretty good speed, and should run M2TW off one core no problem.

[Zim]

Ideally I was thinking of hacing about 6 or 7 players. If we don't get any more takers in the next day or so would a 3 vs 2 (with the 2 including Mordor) be acceptable?

Also, just a little addition to the "Zim's computer" subtopic :clown:, I'm trying out a demo for new new fps game with astounding (to this guy who started with Star Craft all those years ago) graphics. Plays perfectly.

[Myth]

Lol I started with either Warcraft II or Doom II, can't remember. But the demo for Starcraft... that was some epic stuff! I've spent most of my 8th grade hours after school, and sometimes during it, playing 4v4 Starcraft Brood War :D

"GUYS GUYS 30mn. NO RUSH SO I CAN GET CARRIERS!"

btw if we don't get enough players for a TATW game right now, would you guys be willing to test a hotseat with The Last Kingdom (on the new patch)?

[slysnake]

Lol I started with either Warcraft II or Doom II, can't remember. But the demo for Starcraft... that was some epic stuff! I've spent most of my 8th grade hours after school, and sometimes during it, playing 4v4 Starcraft Brood War :D

"GUYS GUYS 30mn. NO RUSH SO I CAN GET CARRIERS!"

btw if we don't get enough players for a TATW game right now, would you guys be willing to test a hotseat with The Last Kingdom (on the new patch)?

Sure, I think those two total-conversion mods are my favorite right now, so to be quite frank, I wouldn't mind which we went with ^^

[phonicsmonkey]

Not to go too far off topic but while my first gaming experiences were on the Atari 2600, I'm pretty sure my first PC game was Dune 2.

[Myth]

Dune 2 was awesome. "Harkonen out" Have you managed to kill a worm?

[phonicsmonkey]

Dune 2 was awesome. "Harkonen out" Have you managed to kill a worm?

I have no idea! It was soooo long ago I can barely remember it.

[Myth]

Anyway, let's get back to TATW and the awesomness that is the mod.

[Nightbringer]

Sure, I think those two total-conversion mods are my favorite right now, so to be quite frank, I wouldn't mind which we went with ^^

I personally would go with the Warcraft 2 total conversion over the Diablo 2 one, but I could live with either.
:tongue2:

[SilverShield]

personally im not really digging this whole fantasy scenario. i only watched one movie once i think it was the second with the towers and i wasnt really feeling it. probably well made but not the kind of stuff im into and the whole time i felt like beating this lil golem rat up. kinda made me aggressive. anyways. how about a new broken crescent game? with fought battles we are rid of the major disadvantage and if we are leaving the rajputs computer ruled it s all pretty balanced. the whole broken crescent scenario is just tight. or how about another wrath of the khan straight away. i said so before that the whole skipping turn thing with that highly advanced world and those high developed settlements and high end armies is cool. so im up for another one there right away. we got a decent pool of players right now


speaking of computer games. any of u guys got the new madden already? there are some pretty good reviews on the webs but lots of corporate affiliates writing this stuff so who knows. im rather going for people s advice i somehow know

[Zim]

I wasn't too fond of the current Broken Crescent recruitment system, although if the older version is still up for downloading I could see playing a hotseat with it.

I just figured a non historical setting might be interesting for a change. Everyone up for 3 vs 2 if we don't get a sixth?

[Myth]

3v2 sounds fine. I'd be up for playing whichever side is regarded as weaker, though I have experience with only one faction. As for Silver's suggetions: Broken Crescent (I DLed the latest version) is so bloody broken... Dirt Roads cost 7000 gold? Why? Some of the units seem overpowered, some - underpowered. Everyone is saying that the ERE is way too strong in this version. The Rajputs are so far away I'm not sure they'd make such a big difference, though I have no experience playing a campaign on the mod.

I suggest going for a The Last Kingdom game. Silver, you'll like it, it's set in the 800s, when vikings were the bane of England and Northern Europe.

[phonicsmonkey]

It's a shame they kept tinkering with Broken Crescent. Version 1.05 is still my favourite mod of M2TW.

[Zim]

That was my favorite version as well. Brings back good memories of the old hotseat here...

Myth, I'm not sure which team would be considered weaker. Team Mordor might still be a little stronger taking into account their "crusades" (I'm thinking we'll allow evil factions to join them but they can't ask for them. From my sp experiences they're pretty rare, although just like in MTW2 it's easy to guess where the first will be).

Another thought that occurred to me is that if people preferred a free for all to team play we could all pick "evil" factions. There are 6 of them and it might be fun playing the group of factions that wouldn't have any trust for eachother.

I'm up for either a team game or a free for all.

[LooseCannon1]

I'd be interested in playing in a Third Age hotseat. You should forget about trying the Last Kingdom until it's fixed. That patch did nothing to resolve the issues that killed our game over at twc. Autoresolve is very unbalanced. In a few PvP battles the attacker would lose very few men. When it's two evenly matched infantry armies but the attacker kills 3X the number of men of the defender (in an open field battle) it raises questions. Even the battle winner didn't like it. Five ship fleets sank on first battle with even numbers.:inquisitive:

As for Broken Cresent, I posted a list of reasons when I dropped out of that one (at twc). Factions are hugely unbalanced. I don't drop out of games, you have to kill me but that one was too frustrating to continue playing.

[Myth]

I told those knuckleheads at the TLC section that AR is imbalanced. "HURR DURR LONGER BATTLES" is all I heard as justification. Screw longer battles! I told them that this, alongside the huge costs for some buildings, the missing bonuses and the vikings were really offputting. At least they fixed the vikings.

The crusades in TATW happen. Only the Sauron faction can call them, and it has one city that is not accessible at all without console cheats. Unless it has agents or armies one can't ask for a crusade. As the elves it happened evey time. Once it was called on W. Osgiliath and one on Rohan's capital (not Helm's Deep, the other one).

I'm more concerned with how the AI will handle the fragile elven factins. As the elves, I'f I'm leading, I can wipe out 5000 orcs with 1000 elite archers. But if the AI just sits there and allows itself to get flanked and overrun, the elves will be high-on-unplayable.

[LooseCannon1]

I told those knuckleheads at the TLC section that AR is imbalanced. "HURR DURR LONGER BATTLES" is all I heard as justification. Screw longer battles! I told them that this, alongside the huge costs for some buildings, the missing bonuses and the vikings were really offputting. At least they fixed the vikings.So they did just put a little more lipstick on the pig.:bling: Alliances with vikings could have been banned in hot seat rules.


The crusades in TATW happen. Only the Sauron faction can call them, and it has one city that is not accessible at all without console cheats. Unless it has agents or armies one can't ask for a crusade. As the elves it happened evey time. Once it was called on W. Osgiliath and one on Rohan's capital (not Helm's Deep, the other one).

I'm more concerned with how the AI will handle the fragile elven factins. As the elves, I'f I'm leading, I can wipe out 5000 orcs with 1000 elite archers. But if the AI just sits there and allows itself to get flanked and overrun, the elves will be high-on-unplayable.Haven't played with TATW since 1.3 but i believe it now has Germanicu5's Really Bad BAI just like Stainless Steel. Yes, it has a version for TATW.

[Zim]

Welcome LooseCannon1.

I just received another pm from someone who wants to play so we're at 7 players, just about the sweetspot if we're giving the bad guys a one player disadvantage (more balanced than 3 vs 2, I think). I'll put together a rule list tonight. and then we can get to picking factions.

[Zim]

Here's a draft of the rules. let me know if there are any issues or problems.

A couple of things in particular I'm still unsure of:
Unit size. TATW is meant to be played on "huge". I'm fine with this but I need to ask that one of the Elf factions be left open for me so I can fight the battles (or maybe dwarves if their unit sizes are similar). Does anyone else think they might have some problems on this unit size?

Assassins. Only evil factions get them. This is a pretty big advantage. Perhaps they should be limited to use only in sabotage or against other agents?

Spies: I'm not too aware of what kind of siege weapons there are in the mod. I don't remember building any in my Haradrim game. Spies are generally not allowed to open town gates to keep the game from becoming a matter of Agent Wars. On the other hand if siege weapons are rare or nonexistent in the mod then this means players can just hole up in towns and sally to destroy attacking armies in fought battles. If we do allow spies to open gates that adds another wrinkle to the assassin issue, since they'd give team evil a huge advantage. One other possibility might be no sallies, and the attacker can either wait to starve the enemy out risking the siege being relieved from outside or take his chances on the walls.

Victory conditions. I wanted something a little more limited than "destroy the entire other team" but basing it entirely around the main faction on each side may be a problem, especially for the Free Peoples. Hinging things on a single faction also creates other potential problems. For instance, Sauron's crusades. Evil factions are allowed to join them (this is part of the reason for their 1 player handicap) but even with a rule keeping crusader armies from attacking non target cities it would be easy to have a ton of evil armies in the area after going after, say, Edoras. They turn around, blitz Gondor, game over. Maybe something more like Myth's Clash of Gods with different cities needing to be captured and held (For instance, Mordor and Friends might need to capture the capitals of Gondor and Rohan, plus Imladris or something) for so many turns?

Last, and most important, what do we name the game? :laugh4: War of the Ring is easy, but rather on the nose.


Rules set draft:

TATW 2.1
Difficulty VH/VH
Huge unit size
Victory conditions: Free peoples win if they destory Mordor as a faction, Mordor and Friends win if they destroy Gondor as a faction.

-Battles are fought by the attacking player. Battles against rebels or between armies where one has a massive advantage in the number of units can be autoresolved (TATW's makers explicitly state autoresolve is a bit off in their mod still)

- Players shall post a link to the save game in the main game thread and also send a private message to the next player in line to alert them that it is their turn.

- Players have 48 hours to play each turn, with extensions granted at request. The GM will skip a players' turn if the deadline is missed with no communication and a sub allied to the player cannot be found.

- No spies may be used to open the gates of settlements or forts.

- No destroying buildings for cash under any circumstances.

- No fighting losing defensive battles on purpose in a besieged city, just to deny the invader the sacking option.

- If an army is beaten in battle by a faction that is after them in the turn order that army may not move on the following turn. The player that defeated them should post which armies were beaten to make it easier to follow this and the following rule.

- An army which is beaten in battle may not be attacked on the following turn (because it is immobilized either by the game mechanic or by the rule above) by any faction unless it has retreated to a fort or settlement.

-Evil armies may join "crusades" but not call them. Armies that have joined can only attack the target city.

- No exploits, including (but not limited to): no merchant forts, no surround-and-destroy, no reloads, no tribute deals that deliberately put you into debt greater than 10k, no deliberate diplomatic exchange of territories just to get a free garrison, no attacking ships in ports.

[Nightbringer]

I like the idea of eliminating sallies, it is an option I haven't tried before and I think it could be really fun.

As to victory conditions. We could go with something kind of crazy but also unique.

the good side would at the start of the game secretly pick one general from their side. This general would be the ringbearer. They would notify the gm (you) of who this general is. The victory condition for the good side would then be to have the ringbearer begin a turn next to Mount Doom.
If the ringbearer dies for reasons other than defeat in battle, they could then elect a new ringbearer that is nearby the original one and declare it to the game master.

The objective for the evil side would simply be to kill the ringbearer. Or, if that is too easy, to kill them then move their own victorious general who has taken the ring back to mount doom, or to their own capital to claim a personal victory without the other evil factions.

I would support assassins being used only for sabotage, although it might be fun to have them hunting the ringbearer.

It is pretty wild, and is just an idea I had, but it might be an interesting change of pace from most hotseat games, and is very setting appropriate.

[Myth]

I'm going away from Saturday until Monday and I now have to do some banner resizing AFTER I come back from work (it's sort of urgent). I'm so busy I don't know when I'll be abe to fire up TATW and take a closer look at things. The CoG rules are ideal for hotseats with preset teams, though chosing the target cities must be done with care. How easy is it to get to the city and how easy is it to hold it or for it to be relieved/retaken.

[phonicsmonkey]

I hate to rain on your sally-free parade but I don't think banning them will help you, because you can just either put your force in a nearby fort, out of reach of the enemy, and relieve the siege on turn one OR if you can't put a fort out of reach, just split them between the settlement and a number of forts nearby. Either way you'll always get to relieve the siege and activate the army inside.

I think the answer to that conundrum is to allow spies to infiltrate and open the gates, but only with the rule from the WotK2 game where each player only gets one attempt per turn and it has to be the first thing they do. This limits the amount of infiltrating that can be done and also solves the reloading issue, mitigating the whole 'agent wars' scenario.

if you want to allow assassins you can either ban them from killing spies, limit them in a similar way, or limit their numbers, or some combination of the above.

[Zim]

No forts in this mod and not many settlements close enough to eachother for that trick otherwise.

[phonicsmonkey]

No forts in this mod and not many settlements close enough to eachother for that trick otherwise.

ok, no forts might help, but you could still just leave armies within reach of the settlement but not within reach of the enemy.

[Zim]

Of course you could but that takes a bit of effort and players could do it allowed sallies or no. I'm not trying to force siege assaults, just to prevent an "armies hide in settlements during every invasion so they can take advantage of the fought battles in sallies" situation that might occur without spies to open gates or readily available siege engines.

It looks like it might be a fairly moot issue anyway. I checked and all factions have access to at least catapults so as long as trebuchets aren't being required for stone walls we're good.

[phonicsmonkey]

aha. Still, even with siege engines it's an interesting idea to ban sallies. Maybe it should be tried?

[CROPrasec]

Hi..i would like to play ;)

[Nightbringer]

Hi..i would like to play ;)

Fantastic!
and welcome again to the Throne Roon CROPrasec!

[CROPrasec]

Fantastic!
and welcome again to the Throne Roon CROPrasec!
Tnx..when will this hs start??

[Zim]

Soon. I would like to iron out the win goals for each side.

In the meantime we could actually start picking factions. The main thing is that it'll be three "evil" factions to 4 "good" ones so if one side fills up the following players will need to pick factions on the other end.

[Nightbringer]

So I'm guessing we are going with CoG style victory conditions? Or was there an unseen fervour of support for that weird idea I had or some other one?
I like the CoG system so I would be happy with that.

[deguerra]

I'm tempted. Room for 1 more?

[phonicsmonkey]

hey, deguerra's back! :jumping:

[deguerra]

hey, deguerra's back! :jumping:

:2thumbsup: thanks phonics. I browse the old subforum occasionally, and couldn't give up the opportunity of another TATW hotseat (Zim and I played one once...were you involved?).

What's the latest version of TATW? 2.1? I assume no sub-mods :no: ? :wink:

I'd be tempted to go for an evil faction, just because I've never really played one.

[phonicsmonkey]

I'll have to leave your TATW questions for Zim as I have never played it...not really into the fantasy setting.

But I understand there are 7 players in this one and I think there are more than 7 factions in the mod so on that basis I would say you're in!

Not sure if you have a copy of Shogun 2 but we are starting an RPG in that soon - interested?

[Rougeman]

oooo, Lord of the Rings, mmmmm

could i join this hotseat? never played a TATW hotseat before

[CROPrasec]

I think that we can start this hs finally ???

[Nightbringer]

I'm sure you can join, and yes, I think we can start, we are just waiting on Zim.

[CROPrasec]

I'm looking forward to it :))

[Zim]

Welcome deguerra and Rougeman! Of course there's room for more.

We'll likely be doing something similar to the CoG win conditions. I'll have it together in a new thread for the game within a day or so. In the meantime faction selection is open.

[Thanatos Eclipse]

I guess I'll go for Rhun :)

[deguerra]

Well. Isengard for me, unless someone else is very keen on Saruman.

[Nightbringer]

I'll wait and see what others have picked them just in to try to feel a gap that seems needed. Just as long as I don't have to play dwarves, they have just never really been my style. Way too slow.

[CROPrasec]

I don't know yet..but i'll go with rohan or gondor ;)

[Zim]

Before he left I checked with Myth and he wanted to take one of the Elven factions.

I've actually had some success with Human factions on Huge unit size so I'm going to drop my request to save one of the Elf factions and just fill any gap that seems to be showing up (just please don't let it be a 200+ per basic unit Orc faction :clown:).

I apologize for any delays. Getting back into the swing of things at work since my vacation has been challenging. Turns out I missed some training while away. After tonight my weekend starts and things clear up. We should be able to start pretty much immediately after faction selection finishes, and I'll get the main thread for the game with finalized rules set up. :bow:

[Rougeman]

ill take eriador please :beam:

[Nightbringer]

ok, I'm taking Mordor!
:)

[Myth]

I might change my mind depending on the victory conditions but for now dibs on the High Elves.

[Zim]

Alright 3 vs 3 so far. I guess this puts me on team good. If noone else takes them (Loosecannon?) I'll fill in the other half of the Rohan/Gondor pair so I can be on the front lines while the Elves and a recreated Arnor build up massive empires to wipe out Mordor (of course, Rhun will be doing the same in their corner...). Do you have a preference between the two, CROPrasec?

I've got family stuff coming up, but then I'm free for my weekend. Except a final thread for the game and first save shortly after.

Victory conditions will be some variation on points for capturing and holding key provinces on each side. It would actually be a little simpler than in Clash of Gods. For team evil, for example, win requirements might be to capture and hold for 10+ turns Eriador/Arnor's capital, Edoras, Imladris, and Minas Tirith. For team good it would be Mordor's capital, Rhun's and Isengard. All three would need to be held at the same time for victory to be declared, but the ten turn requirement only has to be fulfilled once (so if Rhun takes Imladris and holds it ten turns then loses it, if they recapture the city it immediately counts towards victory conditions, rather than needing to hold it a new 10 turns.

Too easy? Too hard? Too simple?

[Myth]

Seems fine on writing, though I'd have to look at the actual map to judge the distances.

[CROPrasec]

hmm tough call..ok..i'll take rohan then

[Myth]

BTW can a rule for forced lead battles be employed? There is a warning scren when a campaign has been started, warning against AR. The Elves on paper will probably lose to some lowly orcs but in a lead battle things might be different. It would suck to have the stupid M2TW autocalc screw over great army compositions - imagine I've stacked Imladris with 10 units of HE archers and 10 units of the spearmen that have 21 defense. Assaulting the walls when stacked like that would prove difficult even for 6000-8000 orcs. Especially if I have stone walls.

But 8000 orcs in autocalc (two decent stacks) will win hands down vs the poor 121 men elven ranged units. Can autocalc be disabled (greyed out) similar to ead battles?

[Zim]

Looks like Gondor for me (unless LooseCannon wants them).

As far as distance of capitals Isengard is "easy" for good factions (in terms of being close), Imladris is close if we have an OotMM player (they're regarded as tough to play, though), Rhun and Eriador's capitals are far off from the fronts, everyone else is kind of mediumish (Edoras loses points as a common first Mordor "crusade" target, though).

Autocalc can't be greyed out but I was planning on requiring battles to be fought (with "reasonable" exceptions, like that full stack versus that single horse archer unit).

[Nightbringer]

AI attacks and sallies might be a bit of a suprise result though, so we will have to watch out for that.

[LooseCannon1]

I guess I'll take Harad. From looking over the game, it seems you can't convert cities to castles and vice-versa and the fun units only come from the larger settlements? And that growth will be very slow? So that basically we'll be playing early era SS with those funky LOTR themes. (Fantasy is about the only type of speculative fiction that I really can't stand.:laugh4:) It'll take forever to get those Mastodon-type beasts.

[deguerra]

In vanilla TATW, medium tier units are restricted until turn 30, and high tier until turn 60. Zim has a way around this that he mentioned though, which will be good, because for a hotseat that is just too large a commitment. If you don't really like fantasy, Harad is a good choice. Their units are almost all human and of a realistic variety (plus have very pretty skins), and they mostly tend to fight Gondor, who are the same.

That said, I'd recommend "getting into" the setting as much as you can, IMO it tends to make hotseats more fun. But to each their own of course. I'm an unashamed LOTR fanboy :D

[Myth]

Fantasy is by far the best speculative fiction in existence. It is limited only by the imagination of the author and his/her readers.

[CROPrasec]

I believe that all players have their faction...so we're ready to start :) ??

[Zim]

Yep. Got a working save and am writing up the OP for our main game thread right now.

[Myth]

Zim take a look at this massive submod (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=419958). It includes a lot of stuff. Especially this thing (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=259833). "On the first turn, you will be asked if you want to wait for the barracks events to unlock the advanced units. If you choose no, then all units will be available to you as long as you build sufficiently advanced barracks (thanks to TNZ for code)."

[deguerra]

MOS is a great submod. I believe we've already resolved the barracks event issues. I would love, on the one hand, to use a submod. On the other hand, MOS is about 1.5GB of extra downloads, which is quite a lot, and (at least in theory) has the potential for more compatibility issues.

[Zim]

Do we want all of the stuff that comes with mod? I can't see whether it's compatible with hotseat games and the RPG Missions, for example, could be an issue if they're heavily scripted.

[deguerra]

There is that as well. As I said, while I do like submods (and MOS especially), I'm not certain it will work with hotseats very well. Perhaps let's just go with vanilla TATW for now, and if it works out well we can always try MOS later.

[CROPrasec]

Yes...lets just play

[slysnake]

Which factions are left? I singed up earlier but didn't pick a faction ^^

[Zim]

Sylvan Elves, Dwarves, and Dale on the good side. I can also switch out from Gondor.

[LooseCannon1]

Do we want all of the stuff that comes with mod? I can't see whether it's compatible with hotseat games and the RPG Missions, for example, could be an issue if they're heavily scripted.

It turns out that scripted stuff doesn't work very well in hotseats. Esp. if they are console commands. Please see the link for the discussion.http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?p=10198034#post10198034 I think more work needs to be done on this issue but for now we should just play.

[slysnake]

Does that mean I can take Sylvan Elves then?

[Zim]

Of course.

[deguerra]

Cool. Let's get this show on the road. Zim?

[slysnake]

Then count me in :) Where can I download the necessary files? I have yet to install Third Age on this computer...

[Zim]

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=374565