1712 replies to this topic

[Eärendur]

I'm not saying that the Arnor elite unit should even be an archer/swordsman unit in the first place. What I'm saying is to ether allow you to choose between Fire Arrows or Steelbows for the Arnor Archers, or have two separate archer unit (like the Dwarven Guardians and the Dwarven Guardians with Siege Hammers) one that can get the fire arrows upgrade and one that can get the Steelbows upgrade(triple damage + knockback + reduced accuracy + slow reload time).

And maybe an actual Arnor pikeman unit could be added (I know that this has been repeated before), they could be called Spears of Arthedain (working title), and maybe they could look like this:

Edited by Eärendur, 28 March 2009 - 09:47 PM.

[Captain of Arnor]

I'm not saying make the units identical, but how many options do you have with the MHHs? Really, I think its a good idea to give them switchable weapons if the team opts to implement the Steel Bows into the game, or make them a possible upgrade from the Blacksmith so that just the basic archers can use them. But the cost of upgrading an archer battalion with them should be like, 600 gold / resources / whatever the game currency is.

I know that just because the Elves were the most accurate archers doesn't mean they had the best weapons. A group of Numenoreans trying to traverse Lothlorien would be ripped apart in moments, but an army of Elves charging across a field at an army of Numenoreans wouldn't get half-way there. They have their strong suits and their weak spots. What I'm saying is that the world of Men, Numenorean or not, are best with a sword in their hand. Put a sword in the hands of Men, a bow in the hands of an Elf, and give a Dwarf an axe. Thats just how it goes, really. Sure, its somewhat profiling against the races of Middle-earth, but c'mon. Granted, if you want to get down and dirty, the Numenoreans had Elvish blood in them - which makes them the United States Marine Corp. of the LOTR world, the best of the best. Lol.

I'll just leave with this. It doesn't feel right, Arnor getting a bow-exclusive elite unit. It really should be weapons switchable, for canons (and lores) sake.

[Eärendur]

For an elite Arnor units, how about a Knight/Pikeman (with shields) unit? And they could be called Annuminas Lancers and could look like this:


--EDIT--
Removed idea for Gondor Inn cavalry unit.

Edited by Eärendur, 29 March 2009 - 06:57 PM.

[Dalf32]

simply because the race may specialize in one type of weapon, does not mean that they wouldnt have units specialized in a different one. besides, a steelbow would have such a long range that they would never have any need for a sword, they would be too far away.

[Captain of Arnor]

I love those skins, Earendur. The second one in particular. I'd love to see an Arnor Elite Unit wearing that, charging the armies of Angmar with a reskinned (and awesome) Arveleg at their head. EPIC. Epic, man. Epic.

And if I haven't really gotten the point across yet, about the specific-weapon-hero-units, I don't think I ever will. XD

If anything else, just put it this way - the MHH units need some versatility. They shouldn't be one dimensional. If someone manages to run up on them and attack them, they need swords to defend themselves simply because they cost so damn much and are a pain in the nuts to replace since the units themselves don't heal and regenerate numbers after death: you have to use the Heal power. Cavalry could just bum-rush them to death every time. A bow, especially not a uber-powerful steel bow, wouldn't be much good in close quarters. Its strength would be in distanced fighting, long range bombardment.

Sure, give them steel bows...
But.
They need swords, weather or not they have the bows. Really. 1500 monies (what I'm calling the in-game currency now) MHH archers = a great way to drain your enemies currency. Just slam 'em with a horde of cavalry units and let your enemy recreate them rather than building up an army of basic troops.

And please don't say 'Just have a bunch of other guys defending them.' Because thats a half-assed excuse :(

Edited by Captain of Arnor, 28 March 2009 - 10:47 PM.

[Dalf32]

does that also mean that koda should be able to dismount and carry swords to counter pikemen? because otherwise you could just bombard them with pikemen and drain all the opponent's resources.
with taht frame of mind, we should just make every hero and mhh a toggle because they are just too expensive to lose because they were caught out of their element. that is also a half-assed excuse. certain units were meant to be used a certain way, that would mean that steelbowmen would stand far back and fire away, they should never need to pull out a sword. not everything can, or should, be terribly versatile, that would draw away from the ones that are.

[Captain of Arnor]

Lore is still the big thing for me with the MHH for Arnor. Think about it at least, ponder, consult, consider. You know what I mean. XD

Edited by Captain of Arnor, 29 March 2009 - 02:16 AM.

[Eärendur]

I still think that Arnor's elite unit should a Cavalry/Shield-bearing-pikeman unit. Because unlike Gondor, Arnor had the room for raising large herds of horses, which are a common symbol of Arnor's (not even near as much as Rohan, but still a lot)(which is why I think that maybe replace Arnor's current Gondor clone Heroic Statue with one that looks like a repaired version of this:
.

[Captain of Arnor]

But in the lores and histories of Middle-earth, no where does it ever mention Arnors cavalry, there certainly isn't enough there to merit their elite unit being cavalry. I'm all for them having some type of cavalry Knight unit, but not their elites. Besides, cavalry elite units are never any fun, not for me at least. Unless they can dismount, like the Rohirrim MHH.

But the only time I ever remember horses and cavalry being connected to Arnor at all was when Earnur came in and fought Angmar out of Fornost. He brought with him a great company, many hundreds of them, of Knights and horsed soldiers. I don't think Arnor themselves ever maintained a large number of horsemen at any time, really.

I would like to see Steel Bows given to a MHH, like I said earlier, if nobody else would rather see them given to the Blacksmith to upgrade archers with. But I'm pretty much hoping beyond hope that the elites for Arnor get swords. If they're given Steel Bows, being able to switch weapons would really be very cool.

Honestly, I think that should be a feature all humanoid elite units get, is the ability to switch between bow and / or pike and / or sword. And with a certain few, mount / dismount. It would make them more interesting to play. But the elites of each factions get a different buff or attack attack at different levels. And it may make them a bit similar, but there should be some similarities (in my eyes) with the elite units. Thats just my line of thought though.

[Dalf32]

imo, making all of the elites have weapon switches is quite boring. it makes them all too similar to one another, and theres really no reason for it.
each faction should play completely differently, and giving them all, what would basically be the same elite unit, would just reduce the differences in play style. its a poor decision imo.

[Uruk King]

All the same I think Arnor should have cavalry of a sort, just to give them some strategic edge.

[Eärendur]

That has already been discussed and I think that it was also agreed upon that Arnor need both men Pikemen units and men Cavalry units.
I suggest that the pikemen look like this:

And that the knights look like this (note that I removed this picture from as a concept for Gondor Inn cavalry because Gondor units should still look like Gondor units):

Edited by Eärendur, 29 March 2009 - 07:37 PM.

[shadowcreature]

I agree that Arnor should have cavalry. I also agree with Dalf about units getting too boring, so if there's going to be an elite steelbow unit, keep him as an archer.

[dojob]

They already have elf cav, they dont need another kind and I already have gondor, elves, rohan, and the dwarves (love my wagons) for cav rushing and Isen and Angmar can do it too (albeit in a shitty manner), so I don't think we need yet another faction with that capability.

One of the major reasons people ally with the Elves is to get cavalry units that they're lacking and if they got Arnor knights, then elf cav would just become redundant; you could say that Arnor KoDAs already do that, but I never use MHH so idc about them and you can only have 1 horde at a time anyway, so even if u do use Arnor Kodas, u'd want Elf cav to back them up later on and for raiding from many places. You wouldn't need to get elf cav when u can just get Arnor cav without having to upgrade ur fort and buy an elf barracks that do pretty much the same thing.

Pikes don't help the redundancy issue either since Arnor already has 3 of them...

Great games are great because their factions have distinguished characteristics (strengths, weaknesses, and visual/gameplay styles) that make them unique not only from factions in other games, but other factions in the same game.

Atm, Gondor is appealing because it's a sort of jack-of-all-trades faction and it's fairly robust and conventional, making it appealing to people who are new to the mod and the game as a whole, while Arnor is unique because it's a faction that has human units as a base but needs to draw allies to its aid in order to make the faction as a whole complete.

If we were to give human knights and pikemen to Arnor, then that makes it a jack-of-all-trades and not only takes away from Gondor's strengths, but makes Arnor less dependent on its Elf, Hobbit, and Ranger allies. Even if Arnor was very similar to Gondor in the lore, to make them similar in the game would add too much redundancy and make people ask "well why should I play Gondor and not Arnor"?

Too many similar factions and the game gets dull since there's no point in trying a new faction if it's just going to play the same way as another one, and thus the game gets repetetive and boring. In order to make a game that people will enjoy for a long time, its characteristics need to be distinguishable and memorable; people aren't going to remember how great and unique RJ's Arnor faction is if it just plays the same as Gondor and people won't be bothering to play as Gondor if it's just like Arnor but without cool features like alliances.

Edited by dojob, 29 March 2009 - 10:26 PM.

[Dunedain Lord]

first of all, only 3 steel bows survived the disaster at gladden fields
if ur so stuck to lore, then go deeper
I might be wrong if they made more of them.......but I highly doubt it
Im pretty tired of this in game w/ all the elves having the same mhh and now arnor too? Hell no
Unless they had extremely less accuracy than the elves, which is pointless. Pointless.
Having what I said ^^ would make their mhh a basic sucky unit unless they had a toggle for swords which is just modeling the elves......again.
I see the mhh unit as a group of heavy spear men like earendur said, but strong. The only mhh pike horde in the game.
It would add more variety to the game, and more style to Arnor, and it would be different than the boring elf mhh units.
I really like the idea, come to think of it, of a pike mhh. One with the same numenorien armor in the picture earendur had.
They should be called, "Guardiens of Numenor" or "Royal Arnor Pikes" or "Guardians of Fornost" or "Numenorien Weaponmasters" or "Numenorien Royal Guard". I suck at names and you guys could decide if you like my idea.
Back on a new topic.........
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I personally think that steelbows should not be in the black smith. As stated above in my reply,3 survived, and im pretty sure none wer emade later.
And if they were, they were most likely not mass produced, and having a huge horde of archers go inside somewhere, and pick up a hundred of them off a rack sounds really stupid and dumb.
I dislike the idea of fire arrows alot. i've wondered about it for a long time, and I want to make a suggestion now. Instead of fire arrows, could there be
an upgrade on arrows called "Steel arrows" or "Iron arrows". Seriously, i know not to trust the movie, but the only arrows there were all completely black or w/e.
With the new idea that came in and that was put in about archers having an accuracy of 40% or 60%....blahblahblah.........
I think the elven archers should have basics at 60% and elites at 80% and mhh at 90/100%. Or lower the other faction archer accuracies, and lower the elven ones I just listed. I know this belongs in the elf section..........but the ideas of elves kinda sprouted in here.
As for arnor cavalry, take them all out. Arnor should be pure infantry except for rivendell riders.
Well, that's all! I hope you took what I said in consideration.

[Captain of Arnor]

Three steelbow MEN didn't survive. Only three people survived at all, one was Isildurs herald, one was Isildus squire and the last was a simple footsoldier. You read that and thought steel bows. No steel bow / steel bow men made it out of the Disaster of the Gladden Fields. But the steel bows were a technology of Numenore, and more could be created at the Arnor blacksmiths, I'm sure. I doubt the skill of making the steel bows would've been lost just because forty of them were lost to the orcs. And its hard for me to split everything else you said up, so I'm not even going to try to comment on that right now. XD

Fact is, there were many steel bowmen in Arnor (most likely. Like I said, the skill to create them was brought over with the Faithful after Numenor was destroyed, as proven in the Disaster of the Gladden Fields - they had forty.) Fire arrows existed - the art of dousing the tip of an arrow into oil then igniting it would be something anyone could master and get the hang of. Elves were super accurate with their bows - every Elven archer unit should have at least 80% accuracy. A Pike horde is seriously a waste. Its only useful against cavalry / monster heavy factions. You need CONSISTENCY, and USEFULNESS, in the unit. It can't be one sided. Thats why I'm so hell bent on them getting the weapon toggle. If they have one weapon, they're one dimensional and will get wasted far too easily by whatever they're weak against. Cavalry > Archers > Swordsmen > Pikemen > Cavalry again ect. ect. ect. But I'm getting tired of this, its seriously redundant. Whatever happens will happen and it will be good, but I hope it comes out with the potential it has.

[Eärendur]

It does seem that we are all going in circles here. But in respect to all that has been said here recently, I think that: Steelbows should be an Archer upgrade for Arnor (the majority of the Arnorians were of purer Numenorian decent than the men of Gondor, therefore, they would be able to use Steelbows), I guess that the idea of Arnor cavalry would make the Elven cavalry redundant, but maybe if we remove the hobbits with Pitchforks in exchange for Arnor Spears (optional. Hobbits could also be modified by allowing them to combine hordes, and receive at least the Forged Blades upgrade and Banner Carrier upgrade* [with an Arnor Soldier Banner Carrier]).

As for the Arnorian MHH, I think that a pikeman MHH would not be redundant or useless. It would make the Arnor MHH unique, and they can be buffed with being efficient against not only cavalry, but also monsters, siege units, and (maybe) also archers. I mean, MHH's are "strong against all normal units", so why would a pikeman MHH be useless? if it is the kind with shields, and along with two powers at different levels, they can toggle between regular formation, shield wall, and wedge formation (that is if there are five per horde). and btw, I think that a good name could be something like "Annuminas Guardians" or maybe "Fornost Royal Guards".







*Could also apply for Hobbit Shirifs.

[Dalf32]

a thought just came to me:
make arnor's mhh be comprised of half spearmen and half swordsmen. then, instead of a weapon toggle, you would toggle which half was in front. give the spearmen half large shields and make the group move slowly when they are in front, and make them much swifter when the swords are in front, but also much more succeptible to damage.
imo, this evades being another weapon-switch mhh because it would be implemented completely differently. would also be a nice way to put those spearmen in as they are growin' on me.

[shadowcreature]

I'm for Dalf's idea.

[mike_]

Just have a 'Host of the West' faction which would be Arnor's last days. The last veteran remnants of Arnor's Soldiers making a strong infantry base with Mithlond pikemen, Rivendell cavalry and Gondorian archery and siege weapons finishing up the layout. Heroes would be Arveleg and Aranarth, Earnur and Glorfindel. Cirdan, Elrond, and Galadriel just sent aid, they didn't actually march to war themselves. Just make some Evenstar powers to represent that - ie, 'Blessings of the Havens: Passive Stat Boost' et cetera.