This is a sub-mod for the Age of the Ring 8.3.1, a mod for Battle for Middle-Earth 2: Rise of the Witch-King.
Current features:
- Mordor now has a Second Age sub-faction featuring Annatar, the Lord of Gifts (voiced by TrenchDog).
- Rivendell is now called Eriador and has a Lindon sub-faction featuring Gil-galad, the High King (alongside Rivendell).
- Haradwaith is now called Wicked Men and has Rhûn as a sub-faction (alongside Haradwaith).
- Erebor is now called Durin's Folk and has a sub-faction for Thrór, totalling 3 sub-factions (alongside Oakenshield's with its own spellbook and Dain's).
- Misty Mountains now has a Durin's Bane sub-faction, totalling 3 sub-factions (alongside Azog's and Bolg's).
- Woodland Realm is now called Rhovanion and has a Dorwinion sub-faction.
- Gondor is now called Dúnedain and has an Arthedain sub-faction (alongside Gondor).
- Dol Guldur is now called Nazgûl Realms and now has Angmar as a sub-faction (alongside DG). Both AOTR's Angmar and Angmar from Realms in Exile 0.2 are present.
- More Game Rules to choose from (1.5X and Fog of War).
- A lot of balancing was done.
Planned features:
- Expanded spellbook and sub-factions for every faction (long term).
The current version is for Age of the Ring 8.3.1.
Known issues:
- If you are playing in multiplayer and an ally of yours has chosen the same faction as you but a different sub-faction, if he quits you will inherit all of his structures, units and upgrades. This will mess up your game because when you inherit all upgrades you inherit one upgrade that the mod uses to differentiate the subfactions. If someone is leaving, ask him to destroy all his buildings instead, this way he will die and you will not inherit anything.
- War of the Ring is not supported.
- Fortress maps were not tested so they will likely be buggy. If you play on any of them and find anything send a bug report to our official discord:
Discord.gg
Credits
I want to thank and credit the following people for helping me:
- The Age of the Ring Team for creating the main mod and for allowing me to mod it. And also for all the new Adventure Map factions that they have created, many of which I've put in my submod as a full sub-faction.
- The T3A community for helping me to learn how to mod the game.
- Previously unreleased models for Rise of the Witch-king: HD Edition by Mathijs.
- lord_ellessar for allowing me to use his models from The Folk of Middle-Earth in 0.2 and for Glorfindel23 for sending them to me.
- NewErr in name of the Ridder Clan mod team for giving a lot of models to the community, some of which I took some textures from.
- xxxMr. Xxxx for some of Arnor's models (Trebuchet and Cavalry) used in 0.2.
- ChildrenofBodom for Arnor's spearmen used in 0.2.
- Bounding Boxes models by Ea.
- Wullfen for the Illustration on the main screen (version 0.2).
- TrenchDog for voicing Annatar in 0.4.
- CammyFries for teaching me how to use Blender.
Please, if I've forgotten anyone let me know.
Articles
Hello, friends!
Today I will talk a bit about Mordor's new Second Age sub-faction led by Annatar.
If you don't know much about Second Age lore, Annatar is... spoiler alert... Sauron. However, it is Sauron in his fair form. In that Age, Sauron tried to control the Elves by teaching them how to craft Rings of Power so that he could control them through their rings. By controlling the Elves he would control Middle-Earth as they were much more powerful in the Second Age than during the Third Age.
So you can see that his primary plan back then wasn't one of military conquest, but rather using his cunning to manipulate others into doing his bidding. When that plan failed, because the Elves were aware of him when he forged the One, he turned to using hard power instead.
I tried to represent this in his hero form, and I think I can say that I've created an interesting mechanic (although difficult to master). Let's go into that so you can understand what I mean.
The way Annatar levels up is different than other heroes. He has an ability called "The Lord of Gifts" where he spawns a treasure called "Gift of Annatar"; every time he spawns a gift he goes up one level. In his standard "strategy", which is a form of stance (we'll talk more about that in a bit), the gift can cause two different outcomes when an enemy picks it up (and only enemies can pick it up), it can either grant 500 resources or explode causing a lot of damage, with a 50% chance for both. This is to represent his ambiguous personality in this form and will always keep his enemies guessing whether it is worth accepting his gifts.
However, in this form, he is basically a support hero and his attacks are long-range debuffs to enemy troops. But Annatar does not only have many names, he has many forms. And this is represented by his different "strategies".
Strategies are unlocked after you purchase the "Lesser Rings" upgrade in the Fortress. It works the same way as Isengard's Focus System, the difference being that whenever you change a "strategy" it changes Annatar's abilities. The default is called "Cunning" and he is mostly a support hero with abilities to make enemies fight among themselves and to permanently convert units to serve him.
The defensive "strategy" is called "Lore", and it represents Annatar when he was in Eregion teaching the Elves how to forge the Rings of Power. In this form, his gifts always grant enemies resources, he buffs enemy structures and gives experience to enemy heroes, but in tow, he cannot be attacked by his enemies. It's a safe way for him to level up unharmed but if not used correctly can make your enemies too strong. When he is wearing the One Ring, he has the ability to imbue part of his spirit in a structure, making it much more resistant to damage.
This strategy is especially fun in FFAs, where you can walk to your enemies' territory unchallenged and balance the different powers in the way you see fit by giving gifts to the right people. They will love the free gold until they realize that they are only pawns to you...
His aggressive "strategy" is called "Malice", and it represents when he revealed his true colours to the Free Peoples. In this stance he can attack enemies and is quite powerful, however, his gifts always harm enemies and do not level up him. This stance is useful when you want to do harm as he gains experience very little experience in combat.
At level 10, he can also turn into his true form to cause even more damage.
There's a cost to change between strategies so that players don't abuse this system, except if you want to go back to your default strategy.
This is a summary of his abilities and this new mechanic. There are some other abilities but this should give you a good overview of what he is capable of. There are also other heroes to help Annatar on his goals. I won't go into much detail but some of them are pretty famous and infamous...
And here's a look at the spellbook.
I also want to thank TrenchDog for doing the voice acting for Annatar, he sounds awesome! And there are some little easter eggs in his lines, try to see how many you can get.
That's all for today folks, see you when we release 0.4 on the 24th of October.
Realms in Exile, what it was and what it will be
News 11 commentsHow this mod came into being and catching up on how development is going.
Files
Age of the Rings: Realms in Exile - Alpha 0.6
Full Version 16 commentsAge of the Ring: Realms in Exile 0.6 has been released!
Realms in Exile Updater
Script 13 commentsAn updater for Age of the Ring: Realms in Exile that will automatically detects if there are new updates and install them.
Age of the Rings: Realms in Exile - Alpha 0.4
Demo 24 commentsRelease of version 0.4 of Age of the Ring: Realms in Exile
Age of the Rings: Realms in Exile - Alpha 0.2
Demo 45 commentsRealms in Exile Alpha 0.2 released! Angmar and more. Changelog below:
Age of the Rings: Realms in Exile - Alpha 0.1
Demo 13 commentsThis submod works the same way as a patch would work. You simply need to paste the files of the submod over a copy of your Age of the Ring 7.2. You also...
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I'm eager to work with you, I modified some heroes
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The mod is very cool and legacy but some details aren't that good and i expected more heroes and maybe a few other units
which is very interesting why e.g. we always notice the downloaders or the players more than the ones who make and develop the game, it is already clear that there is a lot of work behind it, but I think to myself why don't I make a mod right away that everyone would really like , because I've thought of a few things, such as upgrading the walls, not just catapults or balistas, just adding something else from time to time, it's really sad that the players are more creative than the makers. Man Arnor is for me the best faction and i love it but it will be more then better when Arnor has more heros than now because it is not enough thats my theory Arnor needs the real Heros as Argeleb, Arveleg, carthain, Cardolain, Elendil or Isildur that will be amazing when you put this all in the Mod!
I have a minor thing I dont like about Angmar. The mountain orc lodge seems to clash with the black numenorian units.
The building is also the older version, rather than the newer Misty Mountains. Could we get the misty mountains "mountain orc lodge" units ?
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Great mod but it keeps freezing I wasn't able to finish the game with new factions otherwise it's great and I hope it will be playable in new updates.
when i'm going to create my hero and freeze the game I can do nothing and I’m doing restart the pc
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Yeah me too