Party composition rebalance

[The Yogi]

As for the turning of "Youths" into recruits, I certainly do not want to over-equip them, but I'm not satisfied with the way they are now either.

For Gondor youths, I'd like some light protection (lightest thing with a white tree I can find) and a buckler. In return, I want to make swords rare and let most have just spears or small axes, and maybe some javelins as well. So a little bit better protection than now but worse offence. Should still be eaten alive by orcs.

Same thing about Harad 1st tier, I think. Will come back to the others as I get the files, I don't have the patience to start game after game just to have a look at equipment.

[Ron Losey]

If you want to differentiate between human nobility and peasant, just split the upgrade tree.  For example, stop Rohan newbies from upgrading to "esquire".  Then, only the relative few who start as esquire can be upgraded as horse, and the peasant levy can never upgrade to knight-level status.

I would have to check the details on the Gondor troop tree, but there must be an easy breaking point or two there as well.

Don't create work for yourself - handle it in the most simple way possible.

[Zenosknight]

Some more 2-handed users for the orcish force? Those are the only units I've learned to fear during melee battles 
Should balance it up a bit 

[The Yogi]

If you want to differentiate between human nobility and peasant, just split the upgrade tree.  For example, stop Rohan newbies from upgrading to "esquire".  Then, only the relative few who start as esquire can be upgraded as horse, and the peasant levy can never upgrade to knight-level status.

I would have to check the details on the Gondor troop tree, but there must be an easy breaking point or two there as well.

Don't create work for yourself - handle it in the most simple way possible.

Good advice. For Rohan, cavalry is the norm so there is no problem there. EDIT: Maybe there is though - even though everybody is mounted, there should definitely be a "noble" path for expensive heavy cavalry and another for more commener-equiped cavalry.

Gondor is trickier because the only recruitable 2nd tier troops (Guardsmen) are on the infantry, not cavalry tree and can only upgrade to infantry and archers, not cavalry. The 2nd Tier cavalry (squires) is not a recruitable troop type. The easiest thing would be to change that, so that it's not Guardsmen but squires which are the recruitable 2nd tier troops, and make Gondor youth upgrade only to Guardsmen. Yeah, that would work, and also make sense.

I'm not going to adress this issue to begin with, just balance out the parties and some minor equipment changes.

[Ron Losey]

The balance problem in Rohan is not that everybody is mounted, but that skirmishers and other "light horse" still have the heaviest armor imaginable.  Since we're not talking about historical European nobility (and since sergeants were often equipped nearly as well as the knights anyway), the whole noble/peasant thing might not really apply to Rohan.

What does apply is that the riders of Rohan should not be the heaviest cav in the game.  (Gondor horse, although less numerous, should actually be "knights" in the sense of "mounted nobility".)  Rohan makes sure everybody has a horse ... that should not mean they have armor of the same grade as what the king wears.  Better than the run-of-the-mill orcs, maybe, but not that good.

Well, that and the fact they start out "elite" and go up to "super-elite" ... but you're on that one already.

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Be sure to check with AW on his new auto-resolve script.  It could change the way you set some things up.

[hayate666]

If the Rohirrim made sure that everybody had an horse, shouldn't there be more troops that are able to use ranged weapons from a horse? When I look at civilizations that were made up of horsemen, most of them were horse archers of some kind. Especially the Eurasian people of the eastern steppes (like the Huns)seem to have used a lot of horses and horsearchers in their armies.

[The Yogi]

If the Rohirrim made sure that everybody had an horse, shouldn't there be more troops that are able to use ranged weapons from a horse? When I look at civilizations that were made up of horsemen, most of them were horse archers of some kind. Especially the Eurasian people of the eastern steppes (like the Huns)seem to have used a lot of horses and horsearchers in their armies.

The Rohirrim do some have missile cav, but I don't think it would be in accordance with Canon to make their combat technique too steppe similar. After all, they're modeled on the anglosaxons, which were very much melee fighters although on foot, not mounted. That's also the way they fight at Pelennor, charging the enemy, not circling around and peppering him with arrows.

What I'm aiming for with Rohan is that the "typical" eorling should be melee cavarly, using spear, axe or sword and thus quite deadly, but not too heavily armoured, ie killable by ordinary orcs. Only the nobility should wear heavy armour.

EDIT: I wouldn't even mind if Rohan had ONLY cavalry, but with the Tactics option to dismount... Ah well, well leave that to future versions.

[Ron Losey]

Yeah, Rohan is not supposed to be the Mongol light horse.  They were supposed to be mostly medium lancers.  One would assume that they would have both javelin and bow skirmishers to scout and guard the flanks, but they were not supposed to be mounted archers.  They counted their numbers in spears, not bows.

I suspect Tolkien did that on purpose, so they would not look too much like any particular historical culture.

[Merlkir]

I believe they used bows on horse. I'm quite sure they have...I would keep some at least..

[The Yogi]

I believe they used bows on horse. I'm quite sure they have...I would keep some at least..

If they had bows (which I bet they did), they'd use them mounted, no question about that. I'm not going to de-missile them, I'm just not turning them into mongols.

EDIT: From all this discussion on changes to troops, you'd think that was the focus of this project. It isn't;equipement changes will be minor and few. The big thing is party composition. There will be no dramatic difference in the loadout of most, if any troop types.

[FleshyStarfish]

Yogi,

One suggestion or change I would like to see is the amount of troops you can get.  While I know (and have adjusted) my file to go from 5 per charisma point to 10, I've noticed something interesting from within the party composition itself.  Many times, troops such as elves and mounted units will take up more slots than regular infantry.  This leads me to be capable to lead about 100 troops, but I can only fill something like 70 slots (because of the combination of mounted and elves).  Any plans on re-doing this?

FS

[The Yogi]

Yogi,

One suggestion or change I would like to see is the amount of troops you can get.  While I know (and have adjusted) my file to go from 5 per charisma point to 10, I've noticed something interesting from within the party composition itself.  Many times, troops such as elves and mounted units will take up more slots than regular infantry.  This leads me to be capable to lead about 100 troops, but I can only fill something like 70 slots (because of the combination of mounted and elves).  Any plans on re-doing this?

FS

I don't know what causes this - I haven't noticed this happening in any of my games. Is this some editable attribute with the troop type?

[Ron Losey]

Yogi,

One suggestion or change I would like to see is the amount of troops you can get.  While I know (and have adjusted) my file to go from 5 per charisma point to 10, I've noticed something interesting from within the party composition itself.  Many times, troops such as elves and mounted units will take up more slots than regular infantry.  This leads me to be capable to lead about 100 troops, but I can only fill something like 70 slots (because of the combination of mounted and elves).  Any plans on re-doing this?

FS

I don't know what causes this - I haven't noticed this happening in any of my games. Is this some editable attribute with the troop type?

It should not happen.

Number of slots and number of troops are different ... you can only have a limited number of troop types, and that can't be set from the .ini file.

But nothing you can do to the troops or party files can change that.  That's part of the M&B engine.

[The Yogi]

Actually, now that the old brain is kicking in, I remember seeing that happen in some other mod I played, I think it was ASLOTW. It was not a question of all the troop slots being full, but of an inability to recruit all the way to your troop capacity.

Having, for example 20 troops, a capacity of 40 and four troop types on the roster, I'd start to hire more of one of the exiting types and the game wouldn't let me recruit past say 38 or 39. The last few positions were mysteriously unavailable.

I think we can put this down to M&B bug.

[FleshyStarfish]

Oddly enough (very rarely) have I been allowed to recruit to my full potential.  Since I'm playing as a Gondorian infantry commander, I usually have a few guys die each engagement.  I'm currently lvl 26 with a charisma level of 7 (allowing me to recruit 99).  I can only fill it till its about 80.  Then, sometimes it won't allow me to upgrade my troops either, because (in red) it says on the troop type that there is no slot available for it (although the soldier is within my army AND I still have something like 15 slots available).  I've tried playing around with this number problem by recruiting after battles (i.e. taking captives), hiring high tier troops and gondor "little children" (as I refer to the cheapest Gondorian recruit).  Usually, after a few days, magically I can fill up until my full potential, but then other times it won't allow it.

I'm still running on the last version of TLD (finishing my game).  Maybe I won't have this problem with 2.4.

FS