Third Age Total War

[Eldarion Telcontar]

I have come across an incredible looking Lord of the Rings mod for the pc game Medieval 2 Total War: Kingdoms.

The Fall of Hamingdon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CU2dja1EsI

Download:
http://www.moddb.com/mods/third-age-total-war/downloads

[nemo]

Had seen this before and your right it looks absolutly amazing. Thing is though it requires kingdoms which I dont have, and when I tried to download the mod for Rome Total War Alexander, it didnt work for me, so I didnt really want to go out and buy Kingdoms incase it wouldnt work. But Third Age does look amazing, slightly better than Battle for Middle Earth I would say.
Anyone have any experience playing Third Age?

Nemo

[LonelyKnight]

Nice find mate
looks nice, might try it out one of these days
Hope it's better than the old one for Rome I got, that one was kind of weak as far as gameplay goes

Do you know if it's one of those mods that ruins the installation or one of those that installs itself in a way that it's still possible to play kingdoms?

[Eldarion Telcontar]

Sorry, I have no idea. Its just something I came across on Moddb.com (a site for filesharing of PC game mods) and youtube. I don't have M2 TW: Kingdoms, which you apparently need to play Third Age TW, and I once tried downloading the Rome TW version of LoTR but could never get it to work.

[Sire Brenshar]

I didn't like that much, espacially after you get used to using most of the units. It's basiclly just new units and a new map, no special things, also M2TW is my least favorite of all the Total War games.
A mod I really liked though is Fourth age for the RTW game engine. And a major lacking thing in all these games is that their far too easy (and therefore not too fun), especially if you play on very hard campaign difficulty: where you simply get less cash and fight super units, making it both unrealistic and even less fun(and it's still not hard )

[nemo]

Sire Brenshar, what was it about M2TW you didnt like as much as the others? I havent played all of them, just Medieval 1 and Viking Invasion, Rome and all its expansions (not Alexander fully yet). Although the others where fun, they did have indestructible units in them which goes against the realism you were on about. For example you could send your general in a group of Roman Pretorian Cohort into the middle of an enemy celt army and still expect him to come out alive the other side, while in M2TW the general dies far easier, and because of each figure interacting, the elites become less elite.
I do agree though all the ones I have played, any general who knows the very basic tactics that envolve flanking stand a good chance of beating the computer against the odds most of the time (or if you just use light cavalry archers lol).

Nemo

[Eldarion Telcontar]

Yes the AI is a bit thick...but it often compensates by putting together huge armies that couldn't possibly be defeated in a pitched battle.

Personally, Medieval 2 was my favourite of the series, mainly because of the era and the excellent graphics. I tend to play as England EVERY TIME. I have R:TW & Barbarian Invasion, M2:TW, and the Special Forces Edition of E:TW (which I cannot use to its full potential due to my out of date pc )

[Sire Brenshar]

@ Nemo
It's just a matter of taste actually, and when I say it's my least favorite, it still means that I love it
There just somekind of whitness(?) that I don't like in the graphics as well as the slow motion swinging attacks, unlike RTW inwhere a guy jabs and the other guy dies. However the examples I have already given are quite insignificante (meaning that it's just some small thing I notice and don't like but don't really mind either) while my greatest disapointment was that there was a sort of tie between units, this is also in ETW, were every faction has the more or less the same units (In look, not just stats) ETW makes up for this with it's simply awesome new combat and tactical system and with it's Winged Hussars.
Overall, many of these things end up me just not prefering it over the others games.

As for unit overpowerness thats one thing a don't really notice in RTW that I do in the others: in RTW it just seems to make more sense (The further back you go the less accurate you can be) while Longbowmen in MTW are simply super killers (Quite opposite to what they were in real Middle ages, but I won't go into that now) while in ETW the British get way more units and far better units compared to other factions in addition to their gaint empire.
Also I have played RTW for so long that I am quite hostile to newer games.
One more thing i remember about MTW is how un-disciplined the troops are and how sluggish their movement is (This is completely infriating; it often causes my carefully laid battle plan to start collapsing)

(Another RTW mod that I like is Tarrae Expungundae, and indeed one that I prefere over all the other TW games, it does have a few problems but I won't get into that either)


At any rate, I think it's about time that the TW team made it possible to field more units; whenever I create a full army with balanced selection of units there is no opposing army that can beat me, not to mention it's quite annoying that when the AI sends a large army against a small garrison, I am still generally able to destoy such a portion of it that it can't even assult another city without help.
As a side note to any one who wants advice, just play RTW constantly for a year or three and you will almost be able to predict the AI's next move and I can garanty you even further that you shouldn't worry about ever losing another battle unless you are completely outmatched. (and this goes to every TW system)

Good gaming