Barbarians & Animals

Barbarians & Animals:

I like the idea. I'm not sure about Giants (AFAIK they're nowhere in Tolkien), we can just have some normal troll units as rare barbarians.

For the animals, again good, IDK about the kraken (again AFAIK it's not in Tolkien) - and why are pirates considered Animals?

Fixed the Pirates issues.

Giants are mentioned in The Hobbit when Bilbo is going over the High Pass. Krakens are mentioned by Gandalf in The Fellowship of the Rings, though not by name. That is the Watcher in the Water.

Ah. Kraken is good, though I seem to remember that passage about Giants as being a metaphor. He could easily be metaphoring with a real thing though.

True. Giants are not something that needs to be in. They can be easily removed.

I thing goblins, Dragons ect musnt attack to Shadow civs. Can we use that with alignments? Like; Ents cant attack "Good" Align. Civs, Goblins, Trolls ect can't attack "Evil" Align. Civs?

I like the list as it looks now. Maybe as heroes for the barbarians you can also put Smaug the Dragon.
I agree that kraken and giants can be in. Also, the idea of not attacking a certain allignment is really cool though we have to see how to implement that. One way is to use the trait of FFH2 called "Barbarian". You start at peace with the barbarians but only hidden nationality units like animals could attack you. That was how they solved it in FFH2. Also, once you became too powerfull the barbarians would break their peace with you but we can also just tweak the trait until we have it how we want.

Sounds good. I have added Smaug to the list.

Huorns and Smaug should probably be animals (Ungoliant as well), (or can they be beasts as well? not too sure) to make it work with the barbarian trait. Otherwise is should also not be too hard to modify the barbarian trait slightly to include another unittype. For Shelob's lair I think we might be able to use the Kuriotates settlements as a starting point. Should probably wait until second release though and have Shelob as regular barb hero in the first release.

Wouldn't add giants personnaly.

I'll take Giants out right now, that isn't a problem. 2 of you have had reservations now, so that is good enough for me. I will also rename the Barbarian Hero Units to Animal Hero Units.

What about hill and cave trolls both as barb units? One more in and around hills, the other more in the mountains.

Two different types of trolls should be good for barbs IMHO.

Sounds good to me. Smaug is also good (something like Acheron in FFH?).

I really like the idea; it is important for Mods to give the 'feel' of playing in that world, that is, that the mod isn't just BtS or FfH with different names and art-work attached to the units.

For some of the killer tough units (especially Ungoliant) you probably need to ensure that the game is far enough along before they can spawn or else they can take down whole civilizations by themselves; both BtS and FfH have such rules so they should be easy to copy, like the rules on spawning Gurid in FfH. I know there is some controversy as to how tough Ungoliant was, weather she was a one-spider army because she was a powerhouse or if the bulk of her power came from absorbing the light of the Trees. Especially for Ungoliant, you may want to consider if she is a 'hero' for Morgoth or Sauron or if whe is better as a barbarian. I like her as a barbarian for immersion but as a hero for more strategy options.

So, I really like the idea, but I think you may want to go futher with some of the super flavor units (Smaug, Ungolant, Carchoroth). The proposed ability of Carcharoth to be more powerful around the silmarils is right on point, this is what makes mods like this 'neat'; indeed maybe it should be more than 25% to be a feature worth using. For Ungoliant we could have that she gets extra HP for destroying good things, however, defined. For example, maybe Carcharoth and or Ungoliant are allowed to get MUCH tougher if a player sacrifices a Silmaril, giveng the player a tough choice between keeping the silmaril or sacrificing it for a hero (this idea only 'works' if the choice is tough, and it doesn't work if they are barbarians unless there is some way to get barbarians on your side like the Clan of Embers world spell in FfH). One neat feature in FfH is that ability to build certain heroes (Halfmorn), maybe Ungoliant is buildable by Morgoth, etc. Smaug maybe should spawn once dragons beome available, etc.

My view is that there could even be an Ungoliant 'strategy' for the Morgoth or other shadow players, in the early aprt of the Silmarillion it appeared that she was a major part of Morgoth's power. And if you play that strategy, the chance she turns can also be a neat feature.

Indeed, I recommend going as far with this as possible. Sorry, I don't remember if you have Umbar, but if you do, maybe the pirates don't attack Umbar, and Umbar can use a tech or a project that increases the pirates. If you have Beorn, then maybe you are immune to bear attacks, etc.

What about humans as barbarians? Even in the third age we have the Woses, I think there would be some justification.

Maybe add werewolves? I think they were in the Silmarillion (iirc in the fight between Sauron and Finrod) and they could also be useful as tough barbarains.

Finally, what about creatures like Old Man Willow and other nasty forest thingies?

Best wishes,

Breunor

Good ideas all around.

Updated the list with the Cave Troll.

@Breunor: Werewolves are a Unique Unit available to Morgoth/Melkor. We don't have Umbar as its own Civ but included with Harad. I agree with the Pirates starting at Peace with Harad and will reflect that in this update. Old Man Willow would be considered a "Huorn" or an Ent. I would say he is more "Huorn", but that is debateable. He also didn't move persay. A lot of other good possibilities for futher on in the releases.

Werewolves are part of the Angband civ, although we haven't decided yet if they will be implemented as werewolves as in FFH or not (making new werewolves 25% chance when defeating a unit).
I agree that we have to have requirements for the barbarians to be able to build certain heroes to make sure they don't completely destroy a civ in the beginning (one of the reasons the dragon in FFH cannot move, which it could in the earlier versions and wipe out numerous civs in the very beginning with 19 strength). I indeed thought that Smaug would work like Acheron (the first time I saw him in FFH I immediatly thought of Smaug ). I like the idea of Old man willow as a barbarian hero in some form or another (maybe roaming through certain forests).
Maybe we can also do some barbarian units which are not helping evil (Mordor and Angband) but help good like Tom Bombadil (only attack evil units but will not move past a certain area). He can start at peace with the good civs (although I'm really not sure how to do this yet). Maybe we can use Treabeard in a similar fashion.
On Ungolianth, we had a discussion earlier if we wanted her as a hero and during this discussion we came to the conclusion that she wasn't really working for Morgoth but more helped him for as long as it suited her. That is I think the reason we have her here in the barbarian section and personnally I would keep her here.

I think we have ideas concerning the Ents and certain Projects.

Also, I believe I worked around the idea of the Animal/Barbarisan Heros destroying Civs by saying that they could not enter Cultural Borders.

Also, regarding how though Smaug will probably be we might want to spawn him later on and not immediatly. If he is that though I would make the promo be +100% vs dragon units. Also, we might consider not having him move into cultural borders and having to be build in a city by the barbarians were than his hord/loot spawns.

Updated Smaugs write up to say that he spawns upong the research of THE THIRD AGE OF THE SUN.

Not sure how implementing your other ideas would work for him.

No I'm also not sure, because if we make them barbarians they attack everyone, even good civs. I also don't want Treabeard of Tom buildable because that takes away the uniqueness and mysterie of these characters that they really didn't side with anyone. For now probably leave them out, I just wanted to name it to get some discussion going. Maybe people have good ideas how we could incorporate them.