So i've been playing a bit of this to keep me going, atleast until i somehow get a copy of Starcraft 2.

The new 2.0 version has just come out, and it's one hell of a mod. Not perfectly polished, but i guess that's what you should expect from M2TW.

Attached are some screenies of a battle I recently had. I was high elves and was fighting against Orcs in the misty mountains. As you can see, this particular army is being led by Elrond. Those eldar spearmen + bowmen are goddamn elite as hell. Expensive and take ages to build, but elite.

Playing as the high elves (or even the sinar elves i suppose) is different gondor / rohan. Units are more expensive, powerful but they take ages to train. Im fine with waiting though if it means having an army full of Eldars.

I wont go into the campaign yet, maybe next time. But basically i've finally gotten round to an attempt at driving the orcs out of the misty mountains. I want to make sure anything hostile north of rivendell is cleared so that i can then simply concentrate on the southern front. I am bankrupt due to the eldars i just trained, so it aint exactly easy. If Isengard decide to attack my western regions, i'm totally fucked.

Defenses...

Cool. Did you also play the for Rome? That one's pretty neat too. There's also a for M2TW. Not yet finished, but still cool.

Nah i didnt catch those mods.

Oh btw, my high elves campaign went a bit gay. Suddenly the dwarves attacked the silvan elves, which is pretty fucked up. I chose to stay allied to the silvan elves and become neutral to the dwarves, and after a while they attacked me too. Kinda gay considering the story is supposed to be about goodies vs baddies. i guess the game still has balancing issues.

I started a new campaign as Eriador, ie, Hobbits and the various surrounding regions. Why? Simply because in the late game, if you obtain a set number of conditions, you suddenly gain control of a new faction, Arnor. You need to:

- grab 3 specific regions which were once part of that kingdom
- Aragorn ( a general you start off with) must stay alive
- build an ultra advanced hall in one specific city
- negotiate an alliance with gondor

So far i only need 1 more city and then build that hall. But frankly, I only care cos the soldiers you get are Numenorians and therefore pretty elite.

To give you some story, Arnor was the kingdom in the north ruled by Numenorians (elite and semi-god like men, like Aragorn, Isildur, yadayadayada) but the kingdom collapsed due to the trouble with the ring and apparent lack of successors. The whole point of getting all these conditions in-game is to basically revive that whole kingdom.



Unfortunately it seems Sauron has caught onto my plan since he's launched a crusade against my capital Bree. I'm not sure if I have the manpower to fight them off, but I think i've got a bloody good shot. Looks like im gonna lose a few peripheral settlements in the affair, but hopefully ill get em back soon.

Bree is your capital? In the books, at least, Bree sounded like a total backwater. For the movie-watching crowd, Bree is the place the hobbits ended up after they first left the shire, the place where they realized you could get pints and first met up with Aragorn.

I don't remember Numenorians showing up in the books. I read about their fall in The Silmarillion. They basically rebelled against the Valor and the whole island was destroyed.

I'm not sure what other settlement could be considered as capital of Eriador. Actually, the game takes one giant leap away from the story in assuming there is such as thing as a united Eriador. My impression is that the whole region at the time was pretty much run down and each region governed itself.

Yeah I remember that bit about the Numenorians too, only their island was drowned (rather than deserted) by the Valor to punish those that tried to sail west. Those that opposed to going west and made it out alive, landed in middle earth and eventually formed the kingdom or Arnor. Then the whole ring business kicked in and the kingdom fell, leaving the remaining few Numenorians as wandering rangers.

I suppose the game makes another giant leap at assuming it's even possible to do some kind of resurrection of the kingdom, because the population simply isn't there anymore. Meh, whatever... as you know, I like to fill in the gaps.

heh, yea, that's fine. This was really testing my memory of LoTR and Silmarillion. I loved LoTR.. Silmarillion not so much, though a lot of the back story is extremely interesting. I guess it was a bit bible dry... blah begat blah who begat blah who was captured by blah and hung by his wrists from the tower of blah... etc etc.