theslayer

There are a couple of things that I have noticed through my recent play through of this mod. Mostly on the Men Of the East Faction, but on other subjects as well.

First off the Haradrim Lancers are a very weak unit right now. They may be cheap and may be able to get into massive hordes of up to 4 combined squads but that isnt simply enough to bring them up to speed with the other early game and late game units. All units should have some value throughout the length of a game and the Lancers lack that ability. They can only get banner upgrades and their health may be 250, more than most other units, they dont have the survivability in the middle and late game, and even early game in some cases. Their line of sight is horrible, even at a full horde their line of sight is 4x as worse as a Uruk-hai squad. Their ranged attacks do not go as far as other archer squads so having increased vision wouldn't make their ranged attacks anymore powerful I would assume. And their damage to units is screwed as well. At one point a full horde of them can take down a mountain troll, and then a minute later the entire horde gets killed by two orc archer squads because they do almost no damage to them, while the orc archers are doing full damage. There must be something array in the damage counters, or orc archers have a keen resistance to 6ft tall bladed lances thrown from an overly muscular Haradrim Lancer.

Secondly another thing about the Haradrim Warrior squad. Not the hitpoints or the damage but just the feel of them. They are suppose to be proud, ferocious warriors of the south ready to die for their king. But then they go into battle with the animation of a lazy Rohan peasant?? That not only throws off the feel of the unit but the seriousness and overall look of the army. An animation of the Gondor soldiers MAYBE but the ferocity of the Uruk-hai warriors animations would be a good one to test out.

Third on my list is in the campaign, the Good one of course. It was very cool how it started out with a over the shoulder look on the heros, although it was kinda tricky getting into those side passages. It went really good especially when the hall was completely filled with goblin warriors, was very true to the movie. But then it got the Balrog. I simply wasn't able to kill him because every time I would tell Gandalf to use the lightning blade, he would simply knock him over canceling his attack. His real life size is nice, but it makes it impossible to kill him.

Forth is the War of the Ring mode, while playing as the Men of the East. With this, its simply that you are unable to choose your side, therefore making everything cost 40% more leaving you at a very big disadvantage. Maybe in the War of the Ring mode you could simply choose Harad or Easterlings in the Race selection menu, or maybe have the choice pop up on your capital territory in the beginning.

Fifth, when a ranged unit is attacking another unit from the side, and the other unit is running the ranged attacks seem to simply disappear when they reach their targets usually doing no damage at all. I cant imagine why this is.

Sixth, the goblin warriors have shields now which is really cool I think, however I believe that the shields could have an added feature. In the movie and on the action figure, there is a sharp curved spike, that comes out of the upper right hand side of the shield. This is simply me being nit picky but if it was possible to add in that curved spike, maybe when you upgrade the squad with heavy armor, then it would look very authentic. In case you have no idea what im talking about, check out this link which should lead to Games Workshop Lord of the Rings section on goblins. It shows goblin warriors with shields very similar to what im talking about.
http://www.games-wor...amp;aId=5700003

Another goblin feature that would be very cool is if the Half-Troll swordsman had shields as well. Their animations seem to be free enough to be able to fit some sort of shield in there. Maybe make it an upgrade like the Rohan and Gondorian horseman have at the level 2 stables and instead call it Half-Troll shields or something.

Thats all for now, I will update this when or if I find more.

Great work so far, haven't gone back to regular Rise of the Witch King in years.


Edit #1

Alright so I played a game with goblins again. Some other things I have noticed which are mainly simple model and art suggestions to make the Goblins look more like..well..goblins. First the Goblin Archers should get helmets like in their picture. It always bothered me that the goblin warriors picture had no helmet, but the in-game models did, and the goblin archer picture had a helmet but the in-game models didnt. The Goblin pikemen are on my list as well. Their upgrades are all wacked out. The heavy armor dosnt actually appear on the model until poison blades are given. And then if they dont even have heavy armor upgraded their in-game models still get armor when you give them poison blades. And to make them feel more like goblins and to avoid that stupid Uruk-Hai animation that EA made for some god awful reason, besides kicking their targets and ignoring the giant halberd in their hands, I think the Goblin pikemen should use the Gondorian pikemen animation. When they move their hunched over, just like goblins, and when they attack, they actually use their weapons and are still in a hunched over position. Their idal animation may have them standing up straight but its like that already with the Uruk-Hai animation so there wont be much difference there.