Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[RedKing]

If it's like the old TLD, the traits come after certain achivements in-game. Like killing x thousand enemies while mounted, desecrating an enemy burial mound (if the game still uses those), etc.

I'll have to recheck the turning-troops-back-in thing, could have sworn it didn't work for me in Erebor. If it does, then that totally changes my play strategy.


In any case, I'm not going to be happy until I have an orcish horde breaking upon my armor-clad dwarven shield wall, like Azaghal and his kin of old. 


Alternately, I'm not going to be happy until my Black Numenorean character leads a host of trolls, uruks and evil men (and hopefully darker things?) into a bloody rampage up the terraces of Minas Tirith.

[varnish]

I believe that I was able to turn in troops at Dale, and got resources in exchange.

The start of the game is rather tedious. As a man of Dale, I've spent most of time delivering various things between Dale and Erebor and Thranduil's Hall, and occasionally fighting scouts from Rhun. I'm level 5, and it's day 24. When does the war start?

[RedKing]

It seems that, unlike the old version, there is no 'simmering peace' before the actual war breaks out. All good factions are listed as "At War" with all evil factions already. It's just that the individual commanders start with tiny little parties. My guess is that the strategic AI doesn't start sending them out on campaigns until their party size hits a certain threshhold.

Also, the game starts in roughly May 3018 and according to the canon, the first real "battle" in the War of the Ring (Mordor's assault on Osgiliath) came in late June.

[varnish]

It seems that, unlike the old version, there is no 'simmering peace' before the actual war breaks out. All good factions are listed as "At War" with all evil factions already. It's just that the individual commanders start with tiny little parties. My guess is that the strategic AI doesn't start sending them out on campaigns until their party size hits a certain threshhold.

I hope that's the case. Right now all the leaders are still sitting around in their respective cities. Lots of scouts moving around, and I just had a battle against some warg riders that was a lot of fun. Watching and waiting as I catch occasional glimpses of them through the trees of mirkwood, then suddenly getting charged from the side... Yeah, that was pretty intense.

[RedKing]

I've been happy with the improved combat AI. I had a pack of my dwarves against a pack of warg riders. We formed up into a block and the four archer dwarves started plinking the riders, while the infantry kept redeploying in formation to keep screening the wargs away from our archers. Meanwhile, the wargs stayed at distance and peppered us with javelins. When they finally ran out they charged, but not head-on...tried to circle around and hit our flank. It was a pretty tense skirmish, and it actually gave unmounted infantry a fighting chance.

Cavalry formations I still need practice with. I have a Rohirric character as well (and as you would expect, you get cavalry crazy fast with Rohirrim), but I don't know how to set or change formations. Seems like if you have enough, it defaults to a wedge (which doesn't work so great with light cavalry), and if you issue a Charge order, it breaks formation altogether. Somebody needs to develop some kind of RTS interface where you could group your units and issue drag-click orders a la Total War. The tactical radar in the Backspace window is a nice step in that direction, but I'd still like to be able to order my cavalry to ride *around* the orcish heavy infantry and hit their line of archers, for instance.

[Paul]

I got a bunch of money to buy my first set of good dwarven armor by getting a quest to collect 7 good metal scraps, I got them by helping a Dale army vs a Rhun army, with 100 guys on each side and 20 in my party. I wound up getting knocked out half way through the fight, but the Dale troops won and the loot was 8 good metal scrap and several horses. Turning in 7 of the scraps gave me 3500 resource points (it's 500 per good scrap in that quest).

I followed the Dale forces around helping them against the Rhun forces over and over and ended up with enough rank and influence to get a Bow of Bard (requires rank 10), it's the best bow I've seen yet. It deals pierce instead of cut damage, and requires power draw 5. With it I've been one shotting the armored Rhun riders as they charge my dwarves, and it's fast enough that I can pick off half a dozen or so before they get to us. Really takes the bite out of their cavalry charges.

Now that I can drop the Rhun riders so quickly, the warg riders are more dangerous than the Rhun heavy cavalry. The goblin riders drop easy enough (1 shot), but those wargs are tough to down. They take 2 or 3 arrows each and seem to be more dangerous riderless than with a rider. With a rider they ride in and slow down to hit a target leaving the warg vulnerable to my dwarves' axes, riderless they just barrel back and forth through my lines knocking everyone down until someone manages to kill them, which sometimes takes 3 or 4 passes. Get 10 wargs doing that and my poor dwarves are falling left and right to the wargs. Throw in some goblins rushing in and stabbing them when they're down and it's chaos.

It's funny because a wave of warg riders will come in and my dwarves will throw their throwing axes and kill half the riders - then the wargs themselves do more damage than the riders ever could have. Too bad I can't tell my dwarves to throw the axes at the mounts instead.

Not that I'm complaining, without the wargs the goblins don't really stand a chance. It's frantic and fun when I have riderless wargs dashing through my lines, wargs with riders riding around behind throwing javelins, goblin archers up on a hill hitting my guys in the back when they turn to fight the wargs behind them, and a line of goblin infantry rushing in to stab my poor dwarves when they fall. And all through this I'm running around frantically shooting wargs as they approach and readying my men for a charge when the goblin infantry get in range - only stopping to loot arrows from dead goblins as we advance across the map.

[EuchreJack]

Troops seem to upgrade crazy fast, even without Training skill, which causes me to be unable to afford them. It'd be nice if the game gave you some resource points for turning them back over to the cities, so that you could earn money by training up low-level troops.

You can do that, atleast i can do that when playing elf.
Which, by the way, Is silly easy with only archers.

Well, it is possible to return the troops for resources...
However it is bugged so that if you return troops for resources and troops from another faction are currently present in the city's garrison, you're forced to take the non-native troops with you.  I remember turning in a couple of Umber infantry and getting 10 Black Numenorean renegades and a Black Numenorean Swordsman.  And a rather large debt with the Pirates, because they charge you for the non-native troops as if you actually wanted to recruit them.

[Kivish Zokun]

Just to let you guys know the war starts when you reach level 8. You'll know because theres a cutscene.

Just to reiterate the war starts at level 8. 

In fact theres a fair few cutscenes, so cool! Anyone seen merry or pippin yet?

[Paul]

I present you Ragnar Stonewall, dwarf horse archer.

Spoiler: Confused yet? (click to show/hide)

Ok, so technically it's the pony from Iron Hills Quarry, and I just hopped on it for the picture. But I'd totally ride that sucker into battle if I could buy it. The helm is the top level Dwarven faction reward item, which kind of reminds me of that burger king costume thing... Bow is the top level Dale reward item.

[thepodger]

Few things I've noticed:

*Luevanna in Thranduil's Halls will join you with no faction.
*Starting faction really doesn't matter that much. It will determine your starting skills and stat points and give you a tiny headstart in your rank with that faction, but you can just immediately head off to Gondor or Rohan and start doing the same minor quests you'll be performing for your starting faction. You'll just have to do about three of them to catch up.
*Beornings are worthless and have terrible gear. It isn't worth blowing a fart their direction.
*Rohan, Gondor, and Rivendell gear is very good, but extremely expensive. Wood Elf gear is decent and about 1/5 the price. Since you'll want to go pick up the free companion it is worth grinding a thousand faction or so to get a cheap sumpter horse (~250r) and some wood-elf chain (~900r).
*Dwarves own. After you pick up Luevanna you can head to Erebor. There's a kickass dwarf that will join you after you gain 50 rank. AFAIK that is the second quickest companion.
*Trolls will kill 10 times their number in infantry but are vulnerable to archer kiting.

Has anyone successfully escorted a caravan? I got a mission to escort one from Erebor to Beorning Village in 7 days. I got it there with no events but the caravan won't acknowledge that I arrived. I can't talk to it and I tried talking to the supply master at the village but no one will acknowledge that the quest is complete. Blargh.

[Flare]

They are not bugged for all of my games. What do you mean you can't talk to it?

[Rakonas]

Where's the best place to download the original mount and blade for this? The taleworld servers seem to suck and I apparently never installed the original m&b on this computer.

[KatalDT]

Where's the best place to download the original mount and blade for this? The taleworld servers seem to suck and I apparently never installed the original m&b on this computer.

http://www.gamefront.com/files/20832089

[thepodger]

It asks me whether I want to engage or disengage with the caravan as if I'm at war.   I figured it out though, you just have to engage them and instead of bringing up a battle it will let you talk to them.  Kind of strange.

[Ivefan]

It asks me whether I want to engage or disengage with the caravan as if I'm at war.   I figured it out though, you just have to engage them and instead of bringing up a battle it will let you talk to them.  Kind of strange.

I get that bug when trying to speak with a dwarf army in field near iron hills.
Though doing that gets me stuck in a mountain in mordor.