Third Age - Total War mod

75 comments by TW_King_Kong on Jun 5th, 2012

A total conversion for the Medieval II Total War - Kingdoms expansion

Main Features

1. The Middle-earth Map

Play on an extensive historically accurate map of Middle-earth as it was in the Third Age, including 115 settlements taken straight from Middle-earth lore and completed with several fictional locations.

Visit the wonders of Middle-earth, like the Three Towers, the Argonath or Durin's tower and see all the unique locations of Middle-earth like Minas Tirith, the Black Gate or Isengard. Battle in the hills of Rohan, the huge forests of the Mirkwood or the dark ash of Mordor.

2. The Factions

Play with all important factions of the Third Age, including Gondor, Rohan, High and Silvan Elves, Dwarves, Eriador, Dale, Isengard, Mordor, Rhun, Harad and the Orcs of the Misty Mountains. Every faction has its own strengths and weaknesses, benefits and disadvantages on the battle as well as the campaign map. Decide if you want to face your enemy with a small, but trained and heavily armored army or if you count on masses of units to overrun your foes. The unit design is based on visual references of the Lord of the rings movie trilogy, completed with fictional units and artwork, all based on the lore of Middle-earth.

3. The Gameplay
The end of the Third Age is a time where good and evil wage a decisive war for the final domination of Middle-earth. Both ways, freeing the good people of Middle earth as well as bringing the world under the shadow will not be an easy task for the player. A new campaign and battle AI will make the player's life much harder and a unit recruitment based on a cultural level and a regional recruitment requires strategically decisions and will slow down your expansion if not properly planned. The AI will also receive certain bonuses like extra money or additional armies if they get in serious trouble to compensate the lack of human intelligence and the lack of income through missions.

4. The Design
In order to reflect the world of Middle-earth as good as possible, there is an almost complete rework of the 2D and 3D design, including settlements, locations, the interface, the symbols and pictures and much more. To create an even deeper atmosphere, all cultures have a unique set of music and unit sounds and voices were completely changed for many factions. Lastly there is a huge amount of new videos, including the intro, the faction intros and many in-game events.

Download Links

### TATW 3.0 (Consists of 2 Parts)
Part1: Moddb.com
Part2: Moddb.com

### TATW 3.1 Patch
Moddb.com

### TATW 3.2 Patch
Moddb.com

Installation

Requirements:
- TATW 3.2 is a stand-alone version and does not require any existing installations of TATW!
- If you have installed a previous version of TATW (2.1 or older), it is recommended to delete the old version before installing TATW 3.2.
(Note that TATW doesn't change any registry settings of your system, so you can also delete the old TATW folder "Third_Age" manually.)
- TATW 3.2 requires the 'Medieval 2 - Kingdoms Expansion' and is compatible with the official patch 1.04 and 1.05. (One installed campaign of the 'Kingdoms Expansion' is enough)

Installation:
- Install
TATW_3.0_Part1of2.exe &
TATW_3.0_Part2of2.exe &
TATW_3.1_Patch.exe &
TATW_3.2_Patch.exe
into the default "Medievall II Total War" directory.
(Normally this is: "Programs/SEGA/Medieval II Total War")
If you have installed Medieval II into another folder, please select the folder manually.
- Start the mod with the 'Third Age - Total War' shortcut on your desktop

Additional installation instructions only for Steam users:
1. Install all parts of the mod as instructed above.
2. Open "Steam/Steamapps/Common/Medieval II Total War/mods". There you will find all your installed Kingdoms campaigns as well as the "Third_Age_3" modfolder.
3. Edit the name of one of the Kingdoms folders (americas, britannia, crusades, teutonic), preferably your least favorite campaign. The new name doesn't have to be anything specific.
4. Change the name of the "Third_Age_3" folder to the former name of the Kingdoms folder you just edited. For example, if you edited the "americas" folder, the "Third_Age_3" folder should be named "americas".
5. Select the appropriate campaign from the steam menu. If you renamed the "Third_Age_3" folder to "americas", select the americas campaign. If you named it "crusades", select the crusades campaign and so on.
6. Steam will now launch the mod.

If you have installed 3.0 or 3.1 and renamed your folders before you have installed the 3.2 Patch:
- If you have already renamed the "Third_Age_3" folder to one of your 'Kingdoms' campaigns (for example to "americas") install the patch normally.
- After the installation, move the files of the newly created "Third_Age_3" folder to the renamed folder manually.
(For example cut the content of the "text" folder from the newly created "Third_Age_3" folder and paste it into the "text" folder of your "americas" folder.)
Note : The "models_missile" folder has to be copied to the normal ".../Medieval II Total War/data" folder!
- The "Third_Age" folder can now be deleted.

Known Issues for version 3.2:

- The Custom Settlements are mainly designed for the campaign map, therefore custom battles with most custom settlements should only be played 1vs1.

For further technical help or problem reports, please see the official bug and technical help forum.