882 replies to this topic

[Pasidon]

Didn't Sauman use orcs just as worthless servants and slaves? You really don't really see any Isengard orcs exept for the warg riders.

[dojob]

Mantlets. Definately Mantlets.

Just reminding you that Isengard really could do with plain old Orcs, and certainly Wildmen Horsemen. Warg Riders are expensive, powerful, do strong damage, have good armor and can be upgraded. Dunland Riders are the complete other end of the spectrum, with weak armor, good attack against resource buildings, speed, and that's about it.

Meh, Warg riders aren't that great they're cheap (500 resources iirc as opposed to 600 for knights) and aren't as good as the other factions' cavalry, so they're not that powerful and to add a cheaper cav unit that's faster and better at raiding would not only make warg riders fairly useless but wildmen as well since a fast raider is much better than a slow one.

Edited by dojob, 21 November 2008 - 07:50 PM.

[Devon]

Warg riders suck. Completely useless for their cost


Just add big shield uruks, and Isen is set...

[Hasfusel]

What I meant was increase Warg Riders to have those statistics, and then fit in the Dunland Cavalry.
What Isengard is missing, however, is light, fast Uruk infantry, like the scouts that took out Boromir and captured Merry and Pippin. Just saying. Shield/Mantlet Uruks are just a secondary concern.

And give Isengard ordinary Orcs.

Edited by Hasfusel, 01 December 2008 - 01:13 PM.

[Dalf32]

aside from the obvious cononical reasons, i fail to see where isengard benefits from the addition of standard orcs. all it would do is fudge the line between them and the other evil factions. they do fine without any especially swift or cheap infantry units and they always have. imo, isengard would do well to just have the addition of the shield-uruks.

[{IRS}Athos]

The Uruks were an elite branch, not the standard infantry. For the standard infantry, SARUMAN HAD ORCS.

[Hasfusel]

The Uruks were an elite branch, not the standard infantry. For the standard infantry, SARUMAN HAD ORCS.

YES

Alright, it doesn't serve too much purpose, but it keeps things lore realistic. You can recruit orcs for 100 resources per horde, with the hordes slightly smaller than the Mordor orc hordes, and non-combineable. These small hordes of orcs can be used for scouting, small diverting raids on farms, or holding the enemy up while crossbowmen take 'em down.

[dojob]

-You wouldn't use them for scouting when you can use crebain or even infantry, which are faster. Or, God forbid anybody uses the palantir power...

-100 resources for crappy, smaller orc hordes is a waste when I can save for better infantry.

-If you need raiding, you use uruks, wargs, or dunlandmen, which are all faster and better for that.

-Orcs aren't as good as uruks as meatshields. If u spam them they could maybe tie up swordsmen or pikes, but if they can't combine with xbows, then a good player will use his archers to concentrate fire on the xbowmen who won't have a meatshield in the same unit to automatically take fire.

Imo, an Isengard Orc unit would be more work, would serve no good gameplay purpose, and would take away from the uniqueness Mordor and Goblins, who are the main orc/goblin spamming factions and would also provide a bit of role confliction with uruk swordsmen, which tbh isn't worth it for lore purposes.

Edited by dojob, 02 December 2008 - 08:06 PM.

[rjorrin28]

I agree with Dojob, orcs would not be of any use in Isengard.
Uruck are better than orcs for about everything but spamming.
Plus, Isen is all about heavy units, giving them more light units for lore reasons would be pointless.

[Dalf32]

aside from the obvious cononical reasons, i fail to see where isengard benefits from the addition of standard orcs. all it would do is fudge the line between them and the other evil factions. they do fine without any especially swift or cheap infantry units and they always have. imo, isengard would do well to just have the addition of the shield-uruks.

ahem ^^

The Uruks were an elite branch, not the standard infantry. For the standard infantry, SARUMAN HAD ORCS.

i realize that it is more lore-accurate to give isengard orcs, but for gameplay reasons, it makes absolutely no sense.
ditto what dojob said:

an Isengard Orc unit would be more work, would serve no good gameplay purpose, and would take away from the uniqueness Mordor and Goblins, who are the main orc/goblin spamming factions and would also provide a bit of role confliction with uruk swordsmen, which tbh isn't worth it for lore purposes.

Edited by Dalf32, 02 December 2008 - 11:43 PM.

[mike_]

Saruman actually didn't use them that much... he preferred Half-Orcs and Uruk-hai for his fighters. This is reflected well in the films where they were used as workers and such - a very few used in raids as they make for good scouts, being able to sniff out enemies (a la de-stealth).

So I think it's good like it is.

[shadowcreature]

going to have to go with mike on this one. what makes the main three evil races unique are each one has at least one kind of orc used.

[Hasfusel]

Guess so. It just seems that in other areas you are completely lore-fanatic, so... Ah, nevermind. It was just a suggestion. Maybe one of the Isengard Uruk heroes such as Ugluk could have a Summon Orc Henchmen power, or something. I don't know.

Isengard is otherwise pretty complete, but I think that the Ring system should work in a specific way to Isengard. If, say, Lurtz found the Ring, then it stands to reason that he'd bring it back to Saruman. That's the whole basic idea behind Saruman's personal army.
Then, Saruman would become uber. He's a master of ring lore, and would therefore be able to use the Ring with about the same effectiveness as Sauron himself, having also studied all the other rings, the history of the ring, etc. etc. Being a wizard anyway helps a lot, I guess. Hell, he even had a special little box made to hold the Ring in Orthanc.
If Isengard can bring the Ring to Saruman, it should allow him to achieve this. You'd give him much higher health, armor, speed, and he'd do meta damage in a large range. His power recharge times would decrease, and would become much more powerful (e.g, Fireball power has greater range, blast radius, damage, and leaves behind flames). He'd become, to all purposes, Saruman of Many Colours, giving him a subtle glow effect.
It just makes no sense for Saruman to spend all those centuries trying to find and work out to use the Ring, and finally finding it, he gives it to Wormtoungue or some other lesser minion. This is why the G.E.M mod disgusted me so much; Isengard gives the Ring to Bill Ferny (what were you thinking).

[mike_]

Right... Lore-fanatic? Mate, that's the sole reason that I'm one the Rj team (well.. why I got here in the first place ), lmao.

And er.. personally I think the Ring System is fine as-is/is-going-to-be. The One Ring can only be worn by one hand at a time - any servant that took it in his hand would be unable to give it up, except the Nazgul (as they were directly 'part' of Sauron himself). So if, say, Ugluk got it, Lore-wise he wouldn't be just paw it over to Saruman. He'd try and take it for himself.

[Hasfusel]

That's... awful. For one, an Uruk wouldn't be able to wield the Ring properly anyway. At all. And as if Saruman would allow one of his lesser servants to use the very Ring they were created to find and bring back... After spending practically his whole mortal life searching for it and working out how to use it... Lore-wise, if Ugluk got the Ring, he'd go straight back to Saruman like he was programned to do. He doesn't know or care about the Ring, anyway, he's just aware that there's an Elvish weapon somewhere and he'll get promoted if he finds it. What you said about nobody being able to give up the Ring is quite specific. It doesn't say that anywhere. After awhile, maybe the corruption would make the bearer question whether he should return it or not, but with Uruks, who are fiercly loyal to Saruman anyway... It just doesn't click with the lore, the game or common sense. But hey, I'm not important or anything, so I guess it doesn't matter anyway.

[Zyzzyva]

But, as Gandalf said, no one but Bilbo, in all of the rings history, has given it up willingly, and even with gandalfs considerable help, Bilbo still struggled with it. Deagol owned it for about 1 min, but he still would give it up when Smeagol strangled him.

You might say that the ring has not had many owners, but I think that Saruman would have gone the wrong way about taking it from any Uruk hai and just made them want to give it up less. He would demand it, and maybe then realise his mistake, but I don't think even Saruman's powers of persuation could convince him to give up the ring. It took a relationship of complete and utter trust for Bilbo to give up the ring, and no orc, not even the uruk hai, had a deeper loyalty than "I'll serve him for as long as he's treating me better than I could get elsewhere."

Granted, the uruk hai would have been promtly destroyed and Saruman would end up with the ring anyways, but I agree with mike in that I don't think any creature of the dark would give up the ring willingly.

[Devon]

But Ugluk and Grishnakh knew, and they're heroes in the mod, and only heroes can use the ring, not any old uruk.

[Dalf32]

the way that i see it, the uruks were extremely weak-minded. i mean they were persuaded by saruman to follow him blindly and, not to detract from saruman's powers, but there is almost nothing with more persuasive power than the one ring. i would think that an uruk, whether he had previous knowledge of the ring or not, would have put it on and never taken it off again. they are evil, in fact, so in a sense they are already corrupted and really only look out for themselves, saruman was jsut the highest bidder if you will; the ring would be a higher one imo.