Third Age - Total War

What happened to Minas Tirith?

Nothing, I quit after that. Look at it this way, I lost Denethor, Faramir and most of my royal family. If that's what victory looks like, I don't want to be defeated.

Started another campaign as Eriador, and so far the most important lesson learned is that Balrogs are very, very nasty.

edited 8th Oct '12 8:42:22 AM by GameChainsaw

...How in the Valar's name did you manage to run into one?

You encounter a unit of them in Moria. They have over 40 attack and defence, seven hitpoints, and can devastate entire armies... literally. I know because I attacked them with ten almost full-strength units, including two heroes and a general, and the balrogs won.

And this was after shooting them for a while. I'm learning the hard way that the kind of extremely aggressive strategy that works so well in Medieval II will get you killed in Third Age.

edited 8th Oct '12 1:20:38 PM by GameChainsaw

Y'know, Samedi's mod makes the game much less punishing on several levels.

How goes Eriador otherwise?

Well I just took Gram so I'd say fairly well.

EDIT: My first real success as Rohan; the Eriador campaign is still going, just on hold. I smashed Isenguard and ultimately destroyed the faction. Didn't even have to mobilise any troops to do it either; did it with my starting army. Current objective is to build up the economy, recruit a large army, and then attack the Orcs of the Misty Mountains and secure an alliance with the Silvan elves, Eriador and the High Elves to secure my northern border, before turning south to smash an isolated Mordor with support from Gondor.

edited 9th Oct '12 8:46:18 AM by GameChainsaw

What difficulty are you playing on?

VH/VH.

Gondor is getting its head kicked in though.

edited 10th Oct '12 11:51:54 AM by GameChainsaw

...Jiminy Christmas, and I thought the NORMAL setting on this game was tough.

I kept hearing complaints about difficulty on their forums too.

I think it's ok, from what I've seen of it. Tougher than normal Medieval II, but not quite as teeth-grindingly frustrating as Shogun II.

The problem is the spawned armies. Every other faction but yours gets massive defending stacks when attacked. It means the player has a massive handicap when launching an offensive.

Also I'm not sure Gondor and Rohan get enough of a qualitative advantage over orc armies. Cavalry, on the other hand, is devastating; I've destroyed armies that should by all rights have destroyed me using cavalry. But then that goes for Medieval II vanilla too.

edited 10th Oct '12 12:51:59 PM by GameChainsaw

What's the hardest place to take been?

Anyone else play this mod, by the way?

Moria, by far, simply because of the Balrog. Tried again and lost again as Rohan; this time the Balrogs (which I did kill this time) wiped out an entire army practically. Yes that was Balrogs in plural. More on that later.

Isengard is surprisingly easy. The Black Gate is a matter of waiting for the siege to run out or winning a sally; the stack that spawns really isn't that formidable.

If you can isolate Moria, so that it can't be reinforced, you can siege them out and after 11 turns, the defending army is a lot weaker (and there are less Balrogs; there are ten of them in this version.

There's a real balance issue here; Mordor needs to be harder to invade, and Moria needs to be easier. I had an easier time storming Minas Morgul, taking Cirith Ungol and seizing Barad-dur and almost defeating Mordor altogether (as you well know I lost it due to; guess what, more spawning armies) than I did taking Moria. Taking Mordor should be almost impossible in the early game; taking east Osgiliath should be next to impossible. The earliest moment you should really be able to march seriously against Mordor should be 3018, because that's when things start happening. It shouldn't be harder to take Moria than it was to take Mordor.

Also, they should set it up so that Moria can be taken without waking the Balrog... initially. And then, after about 15 turns or whenever you upgrade Moria's mine, you should get "the Balrog" event, and then everything in Moria should die.

...and then the settlement should revert to Orcs of the Misty Mountains control or maybe Mordor. Also, there should only be one Balrog. They're deadly enough on their own, ten is just taking the piss.

edited 12th Oct '12 12:07:41 PM by GameChainsaw

Multiple Balrogs: —whimpers—

How the hell did you win in there?

Also, your idea of timed, mine-provoked doom is sound.

East Osgiliath was easy, if I remember right. Then again, maybe I should try doing more open battles...

I didn't win; I killed the Balrogs. Unfortunately the 200 or so men left in my army by that time couldn't beat the 12 cave trolls and legion of goblins left in the cavern afterwards.

East Osgiliath is easy; the hard part is attacking Cirith Ungol. You can't attack it, meaning Sauron gets to decide what terms and against which odds you fight him.

A tip for when you do fight the Balrogs though; shoot them with as many arrows as possible. It softens them up a bit.

edited 13th Oct '12 3:35:45 AM by GameChainsaw

Have you figured out a way to kill spiders yet, though?

Haven't met any yet. Seen stats for them, they can't be THAT hard.

I remember hearing something about them being glitched.

...how the hell do you kill a Mumak?

Seeing as there are no javelin throwers I suggest fire arrows and a lot of time spent running away from them in various directions.

I just got the One Ring! Had to march from Rohan to central Harad to do it, but I got it!

Not sure what to do with it now I have it though. Keep it out of Mordor's hands and hope it doesn't drive my general insane I guess. Or I suppose I could make a desperate rush for Mount Doom.

edited 19th Oct '12 7:38:06 AM by GameChainsaw

About the Balrog: As far as i understand it, Medieval II doesn't allow you to mod in units with only one singular unit in it. Sauron himself will have multiple units as well because of this.

Sauron doesn't need units. They never fought him, they killed him with the ring. He can be scenery like a church. His death can be an end-of-campaign cutscene like the rewards for winning in Vanilla.

Okay, I just tested it out with version 3.2, and it's only one model for both Sauron and Balrog, at least in the Custom Battles. And yes, they are killable, even if Sauron took down nearly the entire opposing army by himself.

Yeah, you think trolls and Ents and Nazgul and the Balrog are bad, but Sauron is an absolute beat. He really can take on an army by himself... unless it's an army of javelin throwers. Armor piercing is the key to those multiple hit point monsters. Mumakils are best stopped by getting them to run amok, which isn't too hard... hitting one of them with a catapult will do, I've found. But don't chase them after; you'll probably just needlessly lose men.

If you want some more variety, MOS (Massive Overhaul Submod) is a popular submod for 3.2 It makes Dunland and the Elves of Lorien (split from the Silvans) new factions along with bringing about a bunch of other cool scripts (like Baron Samedi you can turn off the garrison scripts... not the stack spam though).

I've played TATW almost as much as Medieval II... Rohan, Dwarves, Mordor, Gondor, High Elves, and Isengard, and Silvan Elves, to varying degrees. I like High Elves and Isengard best, even though I keep losing as Isengard (High Elves on the other hand are monsters). Silvans in MOS are my most recent campaign; just started. I'm hoping to wipe out the Orcs of the Misty Mountains quickly then push south to Mordor.

My favorite campaign so far might be Gondor. My immediate goal was to re-conquer old Gondorian lands to get it to how large it was at its height, which went pretty well. I was able to blitz Mordor and capture all of Ithilien and Minas Morgul quickly, forcing a peace treaty. I then focused on taking Harondor from Harad, which went nicely, especially after Aragorn joined my faction. Around this time Mordor declared war on me again and I had to defend my holdings from both them and Harad. I've lost a few of the Ithilien provinces and have had to pull back to Eastern Osgiliath, while my armies in the south hold the line until I'm able to send reinforcements. Meanwhile Rohan has been all but wiped out by Isengard and I lost my garrison at Dunharrow to them. Now I'm desperately trying to recruit whatever I can in the area and send an elite Minas Tirith army led by Denethor to save Faramir at Western Osgiliath. So far it looks like things might be going a bit south (especially because of Isengard... two front wars are not easy) but it's a blast trying to fight everyone and retake that ground. I've killed three Nazgul so far, including the Witch-king. Loving it.

Does anyone play any other mods? I've also got 1648 (Thirty Years War mod), 1143 (Reconquista), and Stainless Steel, though I don't play any of them nearly as much as Third Age. I also recently bough Empire and am going crazy trying to get it to play successfully.