It doesn't seem all that strange actually. The Forged Blades would mean the highest quality of weaponry that a faction can make or possesses. We have to remember that this is back in the day when making such high quality stuff took quite a considerable amount of time. The weapons had to be strong and durable, but also somewhat light and function-able meaning they may have all sorts of design qualities you don't get in the average stuff. In addition to that is the fact that the best weapons often required a significant amount of a rare ore. They wouldn't just bring out the good weapons for just anyone or any situation. The battles in the movies and books all recount pretty significant events, but the ones in the game are just mostly skirmishes. They wouldn't ship in or start making the best weapons for what is starting out as a small affair. The regular weapons would be good for fighting, but not what you want in a pretty significant battle.
The fighting skills in fact doesn't make as much sense as you think. You mentioned the peasants earlier and how only they have a significant change in their models when they get drafted. True they get actual weaponry, and that also makes them pretty much the only Good faction units who have little to no training with weapons. All the main fighting units of every Good faction would have had knowledge in warfare if not actual experience. If we recall the movie, both Boromir and Faramir have been leading Gondor's troops to battle just before the Council of Elrond. Also, Eomer and Theodred have been leading the warriors of Rohan against random Orcs, the Men of Dunland(more organized and dangerous in the books), and Saruman's growing forces. The Dwarven troops have experience most recently against Easterlings(small skirmishes), but many are veterans of the Battle of Five Armies and previous wars. The Elves well some of them have been around since The War of the Last Alliance. Furthermore, if you look at Gondor/Rohan very few of the able bodied men are not in the army at some capacity. I'm sure its somewhat similar for Dwarves and Elves as well though they are perhaps not active duty since they aren't as in constant conflict as the other two factions. So "training" doesn't really seem to be necessary as most of them seem to have that part down, but technology would be the issue.
You could go with something called Customized Armaments/Custom Blades. Most weapons are standard issue and are pretty uniform in all ways, but how each person fights is slightly different. Weapons might need slightly different weight, balancing, grip etc to aid the specific wielder. Even for more uniform factions like Gondor two similar looking swords could handle differently. This would work in that it gives an explanation for the difference in damage without making standard weaponry seem worthless as you saw it. Soldiers through experience would find out what their specific needs were the more they fought, and could ask Blacksmiths to make adjustments or forge new weapons to suit them. You could also make the upgrade give more damage as it levels up as better fighting troops would know their specific weapon needs better and be given the priority of better weapons since they are valuable veteran troops.
I do think the idea for making it an upgrade allowable only for ranked units is nice, plus changing the graphic for the upgrade from a glow. I know you suggested adding something to the rank area denoting the upgrade and I got an idea, but it would never work with lvl 1 units though but now since your thinking of changing it to rank 2 or higher I can suggest it. Why not simply change the color of the ranking symbols? The ranking symbols would start out say just plain grey or silver, and then after the upgrade turn gold for Good Factions and Red for Evil Factions. That or the tip of the banner could be the thing upgraded to have some sort of weapon at the top denoting the upgrade. For example the poll of the banner would get a spear tip at the top.
Edited by isledebananas, 01 November 2011 - 03:46 PM.
