Bay 12 Games Forum
Other Projects => Other Games => Topic started by: Vendayn on January 29, 2016, 07:58:07 pm
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Leaving poll up for 3 days, so it will be a short lived poll. My friend voted for Spiders, so that is one vote for them (if I can vote in my own poll, I'm going to put spiders to replicate my friend's personal vote).
Won't be doing a youtube series on this, I am however going to do a story of some type. Think similarly to a written story (with screenshots of course) of games like Europa Universalis or Aurora 4x that people have done that are similar. I don't do videos, but it should be good enough :P People seem to tend to like them when done with Aurora, so should be fine. I'll of course incorporate user choices too, so people can talk about what to do and they can be a general or something (even though pretty sure can't actually rename generals in Medieval 2, they can pretend its actually them doing the commands :P). Though, some of it will still be left up to me. Like not gonna send a single general to take over a city for him to just die :P Unless the general sucks...then it can be like crusader kings 2 style ;)
Also. Spiders, dragons and ent factions aren't in the base mod, but in a submod of Third Age Total War (it also has a ton of other factions, but these are what I narrowed down too)
Thanks :)
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Sorry for the after edit poll option. I missed there was corsairs and outlaws faction which sounds fun, and my friend recommended I put it up (his vote would still be spiders). I made it so you can change your vote if you change your mind of who you voted for.
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This should probably be in Play With your Buddies. As for what faction, I can't really vote when a good chunk of the poll options I don't understand. By spiders I imagine you mean the Mirkwood Elves? Ents I guess mean Rohan? Dragons I guess mean Harad? But that is supposed to be a serpent not a dragon from what I remember. I imagine this is some kind of in-joke, but it seems like a bad idea to use these names for a poll.
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Corsairs and Harad, I always found them really interesting considering how little Tolkien focused on them, their ambiguity made them more intriguing.
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This should probably be in Play With your Buddies. As for what faction, I can't really vote when a good chunk of the poll options I don't understand. By spiders I imagine you mean the Mirkwood Elves? Ents I guess mean Rohan? Dragons I guess mean Harad? But that is supposed to be a serpent not a dragon from what I remember. I imagine this is some kind of in-joke, but it seems like a bad idea to use these names for a poll.
No, literal spiders. The submod lets you play as actual spiders. Ents being the tree guys and dragons are literal dragons. Hence the names lol.
As for play with your buddies, to be honest, it probably does fit there more. I never knew that board existed rofl, even though its a sub board that shows up right on top of the forums. I've only ever gone to "other games" and the masterwork forum. So used to coming here.
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No, literal spiders. The submod lets you play as actual spiders. Ents being the tree guys and dragons are literal dragons. Hence the names lol.
As for play with your buddies, to be honest, it probably does fit there more. I never knew that board existed rofl, even though its a sub board that shows up right on top of the forums. I've only ever gone to "other games" and the masterwork forum. So used to coming here.
Huh well if Gondor, Mordor, Umbar Corsairs and Isengard are my options I guess I'll go with Isengard? I can't really see the other factions being interesting. Spider just sounds like it's doomed to failure and is just kinda weird for the setting. Dragons and ents just sounds like it would get boring since you would pretty much smash everything. Also, I think you can rename generals with a console command but I can't remember it.
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I would assume that spiders are the dudes from The Hobbit that were massacred by an invisible Bilbo. I recall them having some sort of society or something... And, of course, there is the obligatory appearances by Shelob. Really, spiders were a pretty big deal, but they tended to go out of their way to stay out of everyone else's way. They seem more sensible than the dragons which basically never seemed all that organised or common. I am voting for Dragons pretty much just to hear how that would even work...
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Wasn't Smaug the only one even still alive?
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I would assume that spiders are the dudes from The Hobbit that were massacred by an invisible Bilbo. I recall them having some sort of society or something... And, of course, there is the obligatory appearances by Shelob. Really, spiders were a pretty big deal, but they tended to go out of their way to stay out of everyone else's way. They seem more sensible than the dragons which basically never seemed all that organised or common. I am voting for Dragons pretty much just to hear how that would even work...
To let everyone know, I played this mod 3-4 years ago, so I have a basic idea of how things work. It was pretty buggy then, but its supposed to be all fixed up. So if its not, this might end up shortlived. I was kinda hesitant saying what (at least the starts) are like since I kinda didn't want it to influence the poll. And a lot has probably changed anyway, so its outdated stuff from 3-4 years ago. But don't think it matters, help give an idea before its decided on 1st. I'm going to say all this in present tense, but like I said, its old info that may or may not be the same. But I suppose more information makes it a lot better to decide what to play. :)
The spiders you use giant hordes of them, they are pretty weak to be honest (and at the time there was only three types you could ever get) but there is just so many of them in each "squad/horde". Their surrounding area isn't so bad to deal with, but it does get a lot harder once you branch out. They are kinda like a zerg rush kinda thing that use overwhelming numbers.
The ents were interesting. In the ent game I did, I took over isengard and resided over the white tower. That was pretty cool. They are REALLY strong, but...it takes sooooo much time to recruit them. So you replace the speed of recruiting with just pure strength. Kinda OP back then, but with that said, I lost all my ents in one battle (really weak to siege) and just couldn't train enough up in time. So still a challenge in that regard.
Dragons were the most unique to be honest, but more strong than the ents. They died easier to siege than the ents though. You got basic human troops as fodder, but a queen dragon would lay an egg and eventually hatch into a dragon hatchling that eventually grows into an ancient dragon. If you thought ents were slow at making new units (besides the human ones)...dragons two or three times slower. And oh wow were they strong as heck. Once I got past the VERY hard surrounding area (each "cave") that surrounds your starting area is guarded by dragons and its hard as heck to get past them all. Once I did that, it wasn't too bad to sweep through. However, I had both gondor, the freemen, the dwarves, and mordor all declare war on me and I got overran.
The pirates to be honest, had by far the most developed gameplay for minor factions. They had roughly the same amount of buildings and units as gondor, mordor and the other "main" factions had. They played kinda typical to gondor/mordor, so not really too much unique gameplay there. But the mod creator did the most work on them as far as minor factions go. Pirates (for uniqueness) also got elephants by conquering the guys (Harad I think) down south in the desert. That and I was able to do a lot of sea-based raiding on Gondor and go all over the place on the sea.
Isengard wasn't changed from base mod. So, its just Isengard. Not much to say lol.
Gondor and Mordor pretty much fight each other. Being Mordor is fun to take over Minas Tirith, but wow holding onto that city is harder than getting a rocket to the moon rofl. Literally giant stacks of Gondor units nonstop attacking Minas Tirith to retake it, over and over. And opposite of that, Gondor fighting Mordor is just as hard. Gondor and Mordor both got a ton of changes and new events, but I don't remember what those were and don't want to read to look, would rather just see it in-game.
The only problem I have with actually playing Gondor or Mordor, is while I can go on to other objectives, really I just want to fight the other guy. So it gets kinda linear and samey, but if I'm Mordor, I only will ever want to conquer Minas Tirith as my major goal. Every game as Mordor. And after that it opens up to other things. And Gondor I just want to take over Mordor. But that is also partly how its setup to do anyway, but as fun as that particular scenery is, doesn't give any options at the start but one. :P I did add them to the poll though, since they are a lot of fun and they are most developed honestly out of anyone. But the others are just as fun too. Except if Mordor for example, the only goal to start with is to get Minis Tirith :P
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and to follow up on above post. When I played, after 100 or so turns, the mod would just cause crashing all the time. And entering battles with any faction would cause a crash. This was 3-4 years ago, and its supposed to be fixed. Like I said, could be short lived :P But I really want to try it again, so there :P
And with above information, feel free to change vote, or keep it. Doesn't really matter either way, all of them are fun. Only one I didn't really talk about is Isengard, but they have a pretty fun start too.
Actually with Isengard, there is a way to create an alliance with someone close by (I think the free men?) or be friends to them and have peace. Don't remember exact details. I know Isengard is a VERY diplomatic/espionage focused game. Going to war is a possibility, but they don't have the troop sizes and what not to do too much of that early on.
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Presumably Isengard would be able to ally with Rohan. I remember that being a big thing that almost sorta happened in the books. The dunlendings (I think that is their name) to the west are also a option, I remember them being on Saramaun's (or whatever) side during the Battle at Helm's Deep. Also, I think there were more dragons in the mountains to the north of Erebor? I vaguely remember that being a reason as to why the dwarves never settled there anymore. But yeah, I forgot that the spiders were actually sentient. I dunno why I would because pretty much every friggin' animal in the books are sentient in some form.
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Presumably Isengard would be able to ally with Rohan. I remember that being a big thing that almost sorta happened in the books. The dunlendings (I think that is their name) to the west are also a option, I remember them being on Saramaun's (or whatever) side during the Battle at Helm's Deep. Also, I think there were more dragons in the mountains to the north of Erebor? I vaguely remember that being a reason as to why the dwarves never settled there anymore. But yeah, I forgot that the spiders were actually sentient. I dunno why I would because pretty much every friggin' animal in the books are sentient in some form.
ah yeah, that was it. They can ally Rohan in-game.
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Also, if there happens to be a tie. I'll be doing a random generator with a list of ones that are tied and it'll pick from there. No idea what a good random generator is, but can't be hard to google since there are so many :P
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random.org is pretty standard
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random.org is pretty standard
Yeah, that is what I figured.
Also, there is supposed to be a release patch for the submod. I don't know when it'll be out, but its been being made for a few months (or maybe longer actually) and it doesn't appear close to release. So, shouldn't affect the sort of let's play. But thought I'd put it out there. I'll be playing the current beta patch though, since it works better.
And finally. There is a console command to change general name? I think I can use ESF editor to change general names inside the save game, but I'd have to look more into that.
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>no Rohan
But how else can we ride for ruin and the world's ending?
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I find that random.org often seems to produce discernible patterns. Now, random number distributions will produce patterns, and if you look hard enough there are a lot of patterns out there, so it is probably all in my head, but I still feel kind of nervous about using random.org if I want something unpredictable...
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>no Rohan
But how else can we ride for ruin and the world's ending?
Rohan is fun actually in the mod. Heavy cavalry focus, which I actually do great at in Total War. Probably cause its OP lol. Slightly off topic, but in Medieval 2 Total War vanilla (this was once everything was patched I should add and they moved on to the next game). I hated this one general cause he had shitty traits. And I knew there was no way I could possibly defend a conquered city I took. So I parked him in the city and an army of 2000 men besieged it. I had my one general plus one newly trained infantry unit (no ranged). I figure this would be a quick defeat. And I should add it was on hardest difficulty.
Infantry high tails and runs off after a quick skirmish. And I play hit and run with my general. Against 2000 guys. The enemy routs for some reason, and I slaughter over 1500 enemy troops, and the enemy generals (there were two generals) while only losing my infantry and only just a few heavy cavalry guys. I only had around 100 troops in total and the infantry pretty much lost right away cause I trained a cheap weak one lol.
Onto Third Age. I was thinking of putting Rohan on, but decided to just leave it as the current choices. Plus its rather late to add it to the poll. And, I'd kinda rather play Rohan on my own time and didn't really feel like playing a cavalry focused faction when I put the poll up. But when I play certain factions in Total War, for some reason I'd rather just play them and maybe take occasional screenshot, not make a Let's Play of it. They are good and a lot of fun though.
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Fair enough. 1 of the 2 times I've played through that mod, it was with Rohan and I remember it being a fun time, but pretty easy until you got up against those huge legions of pikemen.
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poll ends in a capital hours. Thought I'd give a heads up :)
(update:
And Ents are chosen. I'll do spiders and dragons in the future, and then either the corsair guys or Isengard.
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So, I decided I'll be doing the fourth age option that comes with the Dagor Ennor submod of Third Age Total War.
For one, Fourth Age includes more factions and you can play as the Ents in the Fourth Age option. There are actually two additional factions (not sure what the other additional one is), but Isengard doesn't exist and belongs to the Ents. Poor Isengard :( They are actually pretty fun to play diplomatically. Oh well lol.
But, second. I actually like the Fourth Age option far more. Its the dawn of the fourth age, so Mordor and Gondor (though Gondor is actually reformed and named something else) still exist. However, there is a lot more wars and options for diplomacy to open up as everyone is pretty much doing their own thing. Everyone knows about the Third Age lore more anyway, and the Fourth Age most people know little about as it is. I find it will be far more fun, and leave a lot more randomness and open endedness to the gameplay. Well besides Gondor (reformed kingdom of Arnor I think they are called, not entirely sure, I'd have to check again. I'll just call them Gondor for now lol) and Mordor are still butting heads. Gondor pretty sure has the advantage, since their units are improved now after reforming. But Mordor at this point has a lot more territory than they do in the Third Age start. But on the plus side, Gondor gets an epic Gandalf general :P
Next for some reason the regular Third Age era start, there is no additional spider "city/fort" in one of the passes leading into Mordor itself. Pretty sure I recall it being hard to pass because of spiders living there, or whatever was there. But instead its just completely open. But maybe I'm remembering wrong and thats just how it was. In fourth age, the spiders get their own place right in middle of two of Mordor's forts lol. I did try briefly playing as spiders, and even opening up a line to where I could reinforce that lonely spider fort, I couldn't make any progress against Mordor lol. But in any case, spiders get three "bases" instead of just two. Like wise Ents as I said get the addition of Isengard, which is pretty epic.
However, I find Ents and Spiders would get boring to play as pretty quick. They'd make an okay game early on, but not later and most people would get bored. You don't get many buildings or units. Everything you get is right at the start of the game. Ents get a lot more than spiders though, as you can get bears and eagles lol. I put them up in the poll cause they sounded great, but thinking about it, it wouldn't make for a good long term game. You also don't get any diplomats at all as them, just spies. My friend wanted me to be spiders though, and they are a popular choice. But, they get the least amount of units of any "creature" faction.
Honestly, I thought he'd put in a lot more variety to spiders by now, but ah well.
Dragons would probably stay fun, even if they don't get too many units. They do get regular foot soldiers. But, it be pretty OP as I played them last time and if the entire world didn't hate me and I didn't expand so fast, I'd have just conquered everything. I'd play them as a solo game. Still takes a lot of time to produce dragons, though conquered places can start producing dragons so it speeds up eventually. And spiders would probably still be okay later on, since its mostly just swarming with huge zergs of spiders and its funny imagining middle earth as just one big spider haven. It just be nice if they had more types of spiders lol.
Which leaves Harad (which actually wasn't on the poll, kinda forgot they were included), Corsairs and Mordor/Gondor. Gondor of course gets all the new units from reforming, and Mordor I'm pretty sure gets more units like trolls and stuff. However, for an actual community let's play of a sort. I'm gonna ignore the poll results(which I put for a good reason to see the general census of what people were more inclined to prefer being a part of or read/see pictures of a let's play of), and choose either Harad or Corsairs.
Harad is pretty unknown in Middle Earth lore as it is (some stuff, not really that much), and there isn't much about piracy either. I guess Corsairs and Harad are pretty close in relations though, and team up against Gondor. However, I'm pretty sure if Corsairs take over certain territory from Harad, they actually can get mumakils. I know Harad gets those, but I'm pretty positive Corsairs can too. If so, I'd probably focus on taking over Harad even if in actual "lore" they are friends. If no Mumakils, and I choose Corsairs, I'd probably focus on allying them.
Also as far as why Corsairs. They actually have as many units (which are actually really unique, mostly front line skirmishers though, so a lot of hit and run kinda things since their units aren't really made for hardcore tanking front line like Gondor units would be), buildings and actual upgrades of the "major" factions. Even though Corsairs aren't really a main middle earth faction, they have a TON of stuff and a ton of upgrades they can do. The guy did a lot of work on them. So like Harad, it would make for an interesting short term AND long term game. And I'm pretty positive I saw Corsairs got diplomats, and I'm pretty positive I recall actually conquering Harad in a game ages ago, and actually ALLYING Gondor (or being sort of friends anyway). I'd have to double check, but pretty sure they do. If no diplomats for them, not really a big deal.
So even though poll results were higher for other factions, thinking about it, it wouldn't make for a very fun long term game.
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Harad and Corsairs I think were only "friends" for the War of The Ring. The Umbar Corsairs are made up of black numenoreans in other words evil versions of whass it uhh, Rangers uhh Aragorn can't remember the name. As for 4th age, I'm a bit confused as to why Mordor is still around but whatever. And for the non-humanoid factions, I expected that would be the case as they seem to be like nomads from the vanilla game but with even less going on.
By the way why only Gondor, Mordor, Harad, and the Corsairs? Does the submod not support the elves, dwarves or the free men?
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Harad and Corsairs I think were only "friends" for the War of The Ring. The Umbar Corsairs are made up of black numenoreans in other words evil versions of whass it uhh, Rangers uhh Aragorn can't remember the name. As for 4th age, I'm a bit confused as to why Mordor is still around but whatever. And for the non-humanoid factions, I expected that would be the case as they seem to be like nomads from the vanilla game but with even less going on.
By the way why only Gondor, Mordor, Harad, and the Corsairs? Does the submod not support the elves, dwarves or the free men?
Yeah I noticed fourth age mod for Rome Total War didn't even have Mordor. In the campaign description it said it was the dawn of a fourth age (the name of campaign) and (quote) "begins prior to the fall of Sauron, and the restoration of the reuinited kingdom". So it might not actually officially be the fourth age yet, but in the process (at least in terms of where the campaign chose to start). He has a late fourth age campaign as well he did, but in the description it said it wasn't worth playing yet. Might hop on it just to see lol.
Also, you can play elves, dwarves and free men and a bunch of others. I just didn't list every single faction, because I listed the ones that my friend suggested or sounded interesting. I didn't want a poll that looked like one of those facebook questioneers with a ton of choices lol. I wanted to narrow it down. I also don't personally want to play elves ever, but dwarves are epic. I really enjoy playing Dwarves, especially the ones off in the mountains to I think its in the east...TONS of checkpoints and very easy to defend. Gotta defeat a bunch of dragon rebels though to expand, so its VERY hard to expand. But they get epic dwarven units.
I'm actually planning after either Corsairs or Harad to do a Dwarf campaign of them. They are really awesome.
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Yeah, they are called Orocarni Dwarves in the submod for Third Age mod. They reside way up NE in a bunch of mountains. They even get access to ships. It be a ton of fun to play. I might play them instead, I'll have to think about it. Maybe make a new poll in the proper section with a smaller list of choices and see what people think.
But yeah, tons of choices. I just didn't list them all.
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Yeah I noticed fourth age mod for Rome Total War didn't even have Mordor. In the campaign description it said it was the dawn of a fourth age (the name of campaign) and (quote) "begins prior to the fall of Sauron, and the restoration of the reuinited kingdom". So it might not actually officially be the fourth age yet, but in the process (at least in terms of where the campaign chose to start). He has a late fourth age campaign as well he did, but in the description it said it wasn't worth playing yet. Might hop on it just to see lol.
Also, you can play elves, dwarves and free men and a bunch of others. I just didn't list every single faction, because I listed the ones that my friend suggested or sounded interesting. I didn't want a poll that looked like one of those facebook questioneers with a ton of choices lol. I wanted to narrow it down. I also don't personally want to play elves ever, but dwarves are epic. I really enjoy playing Dwarves, especially the ones off in the mountains to I think its in the east...TONS of checkpoints and very easy to defend. Gotta defeat a bunch of dragon rebels though to expand, so its VERY hard to expand. But they get epic dwarven units.
I'm actually planning after either Corsairs or Harad to do a Dwarf campaign of them. They are really awesome.
I can't exactly blame you for not wanting to deal with elves. They are pretty absurd in this universe. For friggs sake they make SENTIENT ROPES, I'm not even joking about that. There is a part in the book where Sam and Frodo go down a mountain with some elf rope and say at the end, "I wish we had that rope for later." and then the rope falls down. Is dumb. Elves dumb.
Dwarves could be fun, but don't they have a stamina bug in this mod? I say we should probably stick to the normal factions (IE not dragons or ents) as they are likely to be the best designed\have most content.
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Yeah I noticed fourth age mod for Rome Total War didn't even have Mordor. In the campaign description it said it was the dawn of a fourth age (the name of campaign) and (quote) "begins prior to the fall of Sauron, and the restoration of the reuinited kingdom". So it might not actually officially be the fourth age yet, but in the process (at least in terms of where the campaign chose to start). He has a late fourth age campaign as well he did, but in the description it said it wasn't worth playing yet. Might hop on it just to see lol.
Also, you can play elves, dwarves and free men and a bunch of others. I just didn't list every single faction, because I listed the ones that my friend suggested or sounded interesting. I didn't want a poll that looked like one of those facebook questioneers with a ton of choices lol. I wanted to narrow it down. I also don't personally want to play elves ever, but dwarves are epic. I really enjoy playing Dwarves, especially the ones off in the mountains to I think its in the east...TONS of checkpoints and very easy to defend. Gotta defeat a bunch of dragon rebels though to expand, so its VERY hard to expand. But they get epic dwarven units.
I'm actually planning after either Corsairs or Harad to do a Dwarf campaign of them. They are really awesome.
I can't exactly blame you for not wanting to deal with elves. They are pretty absurd in this universe. For friggs sake they make SENTIENT ROPES, I'm not even joking about that. There is a part in the book where Sam and Frodo go down a mountain with some elf rope and say at the end, "I wish we had that rope for later." and then the rope falls down. Is dumb. Elves dumb.
Dwarves could be fun, but don't they have a stamina bug in this mod? I say we should probably stick to the normal factions (IE not dragons or ents) as they are likely to be the best designed\have most content.
Ah, yeah dwarves did at one point. Dunno if that got fixee. It'll probably be harad or corsairs then. Or reformed Gondor or mordor. Besides the elves and other main factions, they have best designed content. Gondor and mordor being the most of them all, but corsairs have a lot too.
What's everyone's thoughts?
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I'll be playing Harad. They are in the base Third Age mod as well, so already have a lot of work done on them. And the submod expands them even more. Corsairs would be fun too (of the two I narrowed it down to), but Harad will be just as fun and they are just as developed as the other main factions. And to be honest, I never played Harad, so it will be fun.
I won't be starting till after I get back from the 1 week vacation (I leave end of next week), since I don't want to start and then be gone a week. But, I'll make a thread in play with your buddies and decide on various options/choices that are available at the start and possible things we can do. Probably make one last reply to this with a link. I don't feel like making the thread tonight, too tired. But it'll be up sometime before I go, and probably before the 11th since power is out that day. Decide also to start in regular Third Age mode or try the custom dawn of fourth age campaign. I'm leaning back toward regular third age start, mostly cause see more of the "normal" game and for some reason the evil factions have way more territory and seem way more powerful (like harad and maybe mordor) than in third age campaign. A bit weird, not sure if that is lore accurate or not, I don't think so but I don't know too much about the fourth age and the start (dawn of it is the name) of it. I know in fourth age mod for rome total war there is no mordor or anything like that lol. But we can decide in the thread whenever I make it...or maybe decide here lol. But most of the decisions at least will be in that thread I make.
We'll definitely be doing Harad though. Pretty much set on that. They are relatively unknown in middle earth, and they'll be a lot of fun.
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http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=156111.0
Felt like making it even though tired. This will be my last reply in this topic.