Thanks for the feedback! The scene related issues should be fixed now.

Balance is a delicate issue. I've recently committed a few changes that address your last two points, but they may not translate to older saves. May I ask when you've started your game?

I started it just a few days ago. So far I remember it was in r2661. But if I had to start a new game again it also wouldn't be too bad.
Edit: But I can't say for sure yet if my current game will also develop this way. Up to now (only about 60 days yet) Gondor didn't conquer any Mordor cities/outposts yet. Well, they conquered back Pelagir. In the games I had before Mordor was already on the ground at this point. My last game when Gondor ended up being too superior happened about 2 weeks ago or so, around r2658 or something.


I had forgotten one bug:
- When I accept a 'destroy scout camp' mission from time to time it happens that the scout camp gets placed to an unreachable region, outside of the accessible map (I assume the same can happen in case of village defend quests too). I already experienced it near 'Woodelf camp', Mirkwood forest south-east of 'Thranduil's halls' and yesterday it happened near 'Rhun northern outpost'.

I just restarted the game in r2668. Started as Gondor commoner and my armour is invisible. When I put on/off my 'battered simple tunic' the message "unable to find mesh generic_tunic_B" appears. I guess in the last update some mesh accidently slipped away :D

edit:
Gondor Levy armour is invisible too
And in the first opening battle a bear appeared on my side. And now after I recruited some Gondor Levys and a Watchman I also have a bear in my army.

Eh, thanks for beta testing, I guess? ;)
The invisible armor is on me, should be fixed. I'll tell Kham about the bear, enjoy it while it lasts. :P

As I said, balance is very delicate, and the AI may fare very differently in different campaigns, also depending on what the player does. In general, Gondor should do a little worse compared to the current steam build, due to the changes I've made. But I'll keep an eye on it. They're supposed to try an reconquer lost settlements, though.

No problem! You are welcome :D I guess I'll just post future experiences on this thread. I hope that's alright.
Yes, I can imagine balancing is very difficult. 1-2 weeks ago I played a game and after about 100 days Gondor was on 6000 strength while Morder fell below 3000 and didn't get up anymore. The war felt like already decided. But in the game of the last days.. lol.. I mean yesterday... it wasn't that extreme. Gondor slowly lost strength and the last message I saw was Linhir got sieged. It was much better balanced.

bears are fixed... thx :D

I forgot to mention one more bug or 'weakness' I always noticed since I played the mod for the first time. I didn't test in 2670, but I guess it didn't get changed yet. Most likely you already know about it anyway:
- Caravans are waiting in cities and can get 'used' to attack enemy armies. Even when a city gets sieged and there's no man left, just attack the enemy army and suddenly several hidden allied caravans will join the fight. This 'bug' can also get used tactically, just lure the enemy to a friendly city and surprise them with well armed caravans which don't travel but join fights. This also happens in case the city already got razed. There are still caravans locked inside the razed city who are just waiting to join any battle.


edit: just continued my game with 2671, joined the next battle to help a group of Rohirrim Scouts and Gondor Ranger Scouts and the bear is back xD. I don't know if it has anything to do with 2671. I loaded the save several times and joined the same battle. The bear didn't appear every time. And when I start a new game there's no bear in the opening battle.
edit2: yes, I tested it and it seems sometimes the bear appears in 2670 too.

That damned bear! I'll look into it.

RE: Caravans: I've seen it happen, yes. They are supposed to get 'cleared' after a few in-game hours. Perhaps I can reduce the amount of time they wait.

EDIT: You don't happen to be wearing the Beorning Reward shield, are you?

No, I started as Gondor and it's day 6. I didn't even meet any Beornings yet.

Cant seem to replicate the bear bug on a new save... maybe the fix requires a new save? not sure. Sorry about that :(

RE: Caravans: they are culled every 8 in-game hours.

Thx for fixing it :D I will just start a new game, and I'll tell in case the bear appears again.

Edit: 40 days in game and I didn't see any gondor bear

I started 3 games and played them pretty far, in 2673, 2674 and started one in 2675.
That's what I've noticed:

- There are still many caravans locked up in cities. Usually at least 1-3 join when the player attacks or is getting attacked. In one game there was a siege battle going on in East Osgiliath, Gondor attacked, I just attacked some smaller orc group nearby and 6 Mordor Supply Trains passed the lines of the siege battle of East Osgiliath and joined the fight outside of the city (r2673).
When I attacked a Rhun army near Dale 11 caravans from Dale and Erebor joined me (r2674).
I tested if the caravans get removed. I loaded a save, it was early morning 7:15, I attacked some tribal orcs and a Gondor Caravan from Calembel joined the fight. I loaded the same save again and pressed space and walked round the city, always checking if any new caravan arrives. After about 12 hours when no caravan had entered or left the city I did a save to check the time. It was 19:49. I attacked another group of tribal orcs and the same caravan joined again (r2675).
Personally I think if they can't get removed after they arrived and/or if they can't leave instantly after they got created it would even be better just to make them smaller and forbit them to join any fights, or maybe it's possible to change the caravans to sth like prisoner trains, I don't know.

- The images of 'woodman staff', 'woodman scout cape', 'woodman padded armor' and 'woodman tunic' didn't look correct, rather like little points in a black square (r2674).

- In battles sometimes the troops just don't react and I often have to give the same orders twice.
A few times it happend that I ordered all to charge. Infantry, cavalry and archers disassembled the formation and started charging. Then suddenly the messages appeared "infantry/cavalry forming wedge" and both stopped. This happened several times and I don't think I accidently pressed any wrong key. (r2673/r2674)

- Armour in water: There are amour images swimming in the water, on the campaign map and on battle maps too. But this problem doesn't happen only in TLD. I already saw the same happen in Native too, like on public servers etc.

- Prince Imrahil sieged West Osgiliath which was defended by Khand. I joined the attack. After we had won the battle and I got back on the campaign map the following bug message appeared (r2674):
SCRIPT ERROR ON OPCODE 2281: Invalid Party ID: 3696; LINE NO: 7:
At Script: Order_Best_Besieger_Party_to_Guard_Center.
At Script: Order_Best_Besieger_Party_to_Guard_Center.
SCRIPT ERROR ON OPCODE 2204: Invalid Party ID: 3696; LINE NO: 9:
At Script: Order_Best_Besieger_Party_to_Guard_Center.
At Script: Order_Best_Besieger_Party_to_Guard_Center.

- I think that prisoner trains are too big and too rich. They are easy to beat and they produce too much metal, as if it was a supply train. But that's only my opinion.

- As much as I love the mod I think the balancing is still an issue. When you play for the good side you would rather expect to be in a hopeless situation, but this doesn't always happen and you have to be very lucky for a 'classic' development of the setting of the war. Last year my games had developed a bit tougher. While my last few games were a bit unlucky and the good and the evil side were rather equal and the situation for the good side has never been hopeless in any way. They often were even superior. I always had to restart the game when I noticed too many evil factions are already too weak and won't get back up anymore.
I don't know what kind of balancing is needed. Maybe an 'equal' balancing is necessary to make it possible to play for the evil side too. If that's the case maybe it's possible to add some hardcore start setting for players who wanna play for the good side or sth like this.

edit:
- The nights have been very dark before, maybe it was a bit too dark. But now it's very bright. I know that it can get changed back. But when I experienced an orc + nazgul attack for the first time it happened in the dark and it was very impressive. I guess most new players just use default settings and won't have such an experience anymore. And when you meet an opponent group or army the image still looks very dark and then you get surprised by a bright night. It makes the game less 'scary'. However, it might be only my personal preference.
I guess it's not possible but it would be perfect if the evil side got brighter nights while for players who play for the good side nights would be darker.

Well, tbh I'm not interested in playing for the evil side. It would feel wrong and just wouldn't make sense to me. According to the original story Gondor is struggling, the dwarves aren't so many anymore and the elves are leaving while the enemy attacks with an overwhelming superior force and becomes stronger every day. The good side might be able to delay the enemy but has no chance to win. It's like the end of the world and the situation is absolutely hopeless.
If the good side is the 'easy mode' then there's something really wrong and unlogical.

But sadly, I fear you could be right, cause too many games I played for the good side were in fact too easy. The evil side often was a bit stronger but usually they didn't get strong enough to become a serious problem in the long run. But I also remember a few games which developed much more interesting, especially one when the Woodelves disappeared first, the next ones were the Beornings, Dale was conquered and after a while the Dwarves surrendered too while Gondors cities were burning. Lothlorien got lost but before the last elves left the place they had given Gondor enough time to beat Umbar and there was a little shimmer of hope again. This was an absolutely amazing campaign which I almost lost.
Since that game I'm always hoping for another campaign like that. But ofc if the balancing was done to make both sides equal, or maybe the good side even stronger, it would be rather unlikely that this will ever happen again. But I have hopes and I will see how the balancing of the mod will develop in future.

Please please don't change anything about the helping caravans in the towns!

I find them an interesting addition to the game, which opens up new tactical possibilities. They allow me to take on full enemy armies near towns even with a small and weak warband in early game. They do a lot to make early/middle game interesting. And especially Rhun horse-archer armies are almost unbeatable without a substantial numerical advantage.
And I have always interpreted remaining caravans in razed towns as guerilla hiding in the area.

Originally posted by Makoodzaka:

…. The reason it's easy to play for good is because there's no challenge in destroying your enemies - just grab 20 archers from any faction and shoot them all down. Most evil factions have no heavy cavalry to stop you. ....

I also only play good faction, but that is not what I experience at all.
Most evil faction have elaborated anti-archer tactics. Gundabad f.ex. harasses the archers with wargs, which allows their main body to close in without losses, and before you know you have some trolls ploughing through your ranks.
Other orc factions send snaga-archers ahead. They have the ability that they are hard to hit, so that my precious eleven archers waste all their ammo and then get overrun by orc inf.
Isenguard trackers almost match elven archers, or at least cause heavy losses.
Khand has a special tactic, where they line up their cav into a broad front, then suddenly they all charge frontally into my archers if you Ieave them without protection.
Harad has these almost indestructable Lion Guards with their huge shields. A nightmare for all archer armies.
All these tactics demand a response from me as commander.

Do you play at full difficulty? Do you have AI-battle tactics enabled?


btw. what I always found wrong is that non-elven characters could recruit elves. That should be restricted (maybe depending on relations?)

You can never balance the game for all players.
If you find it too easy, raise the difficulty yourself:

1) ramp up damage settings
2) increase the number of parties on map
3) perhaps make the factions more aggressive from the start (in TLD options and gameplay tweaks)
4) increase battle size a lot, so evil spawns more troops against you