Uh, the elves are a little OPed early game. if you use them for science victory they're insanely good. (You just need the start bias on). I honestly can't think of another UA though, and it's pretty minor. the Gondor civ is OPed early game too. the balance is fine with your other lotr civs, but compared to the original ones they're too strong.

You should add more civs, such as rivendell or dunland. Great idea thinking about getting this.

@yster9. Yeah both of those civs traits are best early game and then the benefit drops off, but they still have the momentum that does help for the rest of the game. Instead of thinking of new UAs for them it would be easier to add a nerf. Like the elves trait stops after industrialization or the Gondor trait doesn't happen until you learn construction. There is probably better solutions than these though. The elf one would result in them starving suddenly which would be terrible, and the Gondor one pretty much ruins the whole benefit of the trait.

Originally posted by SSUyenyang:

@yster9. Yeah both of those civs traits are best early game and then the benefit drops off, but they still have the momentum that does help for the rest of the game. Instead of thinking of new UAs for them it would be easier to add a nerf. Like the elves trait stops after industrialization or the Gondor trait doesn't happen until you learn construction. There is probably better solutions than these though. The elf one would result in them starving suddenly which would be terrible, and the Gondor one pretty much ruins the whole benefit of the trait.

very true. I like the idea of the gondor one though. Instead of construction perhaps mining? I considered the elves and maybe make it 1 culture? It would still be OPed but faith would basically make it the celts and production means they'll be as bad as Egypt early game. culture seems like brazil though. I think changing it wouldn't change how strong it was, and like I said: I can't think of anything different.

The elves seem a bit weak from first glance, I would reccomend letting them use forests as roads like the iroqouis do, it makes actual sense, and makes them not want to chop forests more.

@Balthazar many people have stated that at first glance, but I don't think anyone still believes it after playing them. This is why I stated that you should download and play the mod before making comments about the game balance. Also the UU has a free promotion that gives them +25 attack in forests and double move in forests. The promotion is retained upon upgrading.

Just finishing up my second game with Gondor, first was standard speed and this is marathon. And to all intent and purposes, they seem to be balanced perfectly, as their unit and building get replaced later on, and their bonus just lets them have that little bit of a boost. They seem fine to me. They dont seem to get too far ahead from everyone else though in the end.

Not really a game balance issue, but I found the game a tad more LOTRish when I also loaded the Barbarian Spawn Increase mod. That way, there's usually something lurking in the unsettled lands, usually waves of them, and units get unlimited experience fighting them...assuming they survive.

I find that the Unique Ability for the Dwarves is really good, as is the Unique Building, but the Unique Unit is borderline trash. I would go so far as to say that the base swordsman is better.

The lack of movement speed can make a normal war stretch on for like 15 more turns simply because my units are way too slow. The +15% city attack is negligible at best. It would be a lot more noticable if my units could actually reach cities with their stubby dwarf legs. I would personally increase their movement back to 2, and maybe even buff the city attack to +25%, simply because the unit is far too similar to the Roman Legion, but with less movement.

@kianadarkrose I don't like the idea of removing the one part of the Dwarf UU that makes you actually feel like you're playing a dwarf. The city attack has always been +25%. Sometimes there are weak UUs to balance out strong UAs and/or UBs. For instance the hobbits have the shirriff which is intentionally the worst unit in the game, but they have a really strong UA to hopefully balance it out.

Ah, I understand. But I personally find the concept of making it "Dwarfish" to be... well, a bit silly, especially when considering all other units that are techincally all Dwarves, all have 2 or higher movement.

My main gripe was that it's just as strong as a Roman legion, but with half of the movement, made it feel like a wholely unsuperior unit. If it had a grand amount of strength to back it up, that would be different, but I ended up just biding my time, waiting for Steel to research so the unit could be strong. If you insist of keeping its movement low, I would have to suggest making the unit stonger as a whole. Maybe consider also having its promotion stay when you upgrade the unit.

Hmm your logic about all the units being dwarves is sound, and I'm definately not giving them all -1 movement. So I think I can change it. I'm going to update soon. I will remove the dwarf penalty , change siege hammers to permanent, and keep the 16 stength for now. Try it out and if we feel its overpowered after the changes then we can change the strength back to 14.

Fantastic, thank you for listening. I'll be waiting for the update. :)

@kianadarkrose If you didn't know the update happened yesterday. I just played a game with the new dwarves. Now instead of rushing steel like you had to do, I was encouraged to make a bunch of guardians before researching steel. I won through diplomacy and avoided going to war the whole game though.

Alrighty. I'll play some new games, see if anything else pops up.

Though before I go I will mention that I had actually played the Elves before, and I found them to be pretty weak. Their ability only maintains its luster at like the "very" beginning of the game, where even a civil service farm will have a higher impact, whereas placing a farm over a forest will provide the same benefit. I ended up using the very scant increase in food production at the beginning of the game to just spam cities and enter some early wars.

By the time the Medieval era creeps up, the UA is just about useless. I would personally make it 1F 1P instead of just 1F, or maybe have the food stay even with improvements.