Middle Men Custom Portraits Preview image - DCI: Last Alliance mod for Medieval II: Total War: Kingdoms
DCI: Last Alliance is a submod for Third Age: Total War, focused on the War of the Last Alliance in the Second Age of Middle-earth.
Middle Men Custom Portraits Preview
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Description
Here's a preview of new middle men portraits that I've created (with contribution from Ngugi in one occasionˇˇ) for DCI: Last Alliance.
Note:
* credit also goes to Ngugi for part of the work on the portrait
Old versions for all portraits have also been created, except for Mogru, Himrim and Zarazir.
The portraits here are blurred to give an approximate idea how they'd look like in the game.
- Araval
Men of the Mountains look more civilized than the others.
Quite so; the Men of the Mountains have a culture in origin shared with the native forest peoples in Enedwaith and Dunland, but that been influenced from first Mordor and later Gondor over centuries, making for a deviant culture of their own.
And while perhaps less 'brute' than the Hill-men of the North, who they resemble in technical proficiency, they are more plentiful, organized and versatile.
Nice :D sad that they betrayed Gondor, because it would be so cool to see them side by side with Gondor, with their armors influenced by the gondorian one (not to much, but some of their heaviest units, that i bet they wont have many)
In DCI, you can play them and decide for yourself ;)
About that, and the units, see Moddb.com
i already knew there would be the option to choose if to help GOndor, help Sauron or help nobody. And i knew there would be a new unit depending of what we chose. But i didn't saw the new units (til now) which i can say, are great! are very good choices and i think the spear unit is the prettiest one they have, still i will choose to help Gondor.
Their units are very colorful, not my favourite kind of clothing for an army, i prefer it simple, 2 colours or only one but with a symbol, something like that, but still, i really like them and i find their story very interesting. And for sure i will do 2 campaigns at the same time being one with the men of the Mountain.
You're an honourable man then, Argeomer ^^
Their design is in line with how warriors in history clad and decorated themselves, more than we usually consider, though in this case we took quite direct inspiration of what Weta imagined, when they created the "Army of the Dead" :)
Imgur.com
so you guys really did a great job! It is exactly like the movie, it is indeed really cool. And the crown, perfectly done. One thing i noticed, is that if the Dead didn't have rusty swords they would have beautiful and good swords. Maybe on a tier between Rohan swords and Gondor swords (being the gondorian ones better, of course)
I have a very interesting question, maybe you have already answered many times. What about Sauron? He should be playable. And the AI should have him. Yes, he is very powerfull and all BUT it must be like the story. What there could be is a script so that he only appears like after turn 40 or maybe a little bit late. Unless you want him to only appear if his enemies enter Mordor, which means, the black gate would have been conquered or Barad-dur besieges but that's not that funny as having to have all your armies running away and plan a very good strategy to avoid Sauron, and destroy his armies and conquer his settlements,before facing him. And while playing as Mordor it would be more balanced because Mordor troops are usually worst than Gondorian ones
He's present, no worry - actually in double form.
One is the "pope" á la TATW. The other is the faction leader general of Mordor - and we done what we may to not cause contradictions; don't expect to be excommnicated as Mordor for example.
And if "Mordor Sauron" is properly destroyed or Ring lost, then "pope Sauron" will disappear etc. It was a huge work for us to design all possible situations concerning that in fact, hehe; kudos to Withwnar for scripting it!
As for the second, "general-Sauron", he is starting in Barad-dûr at campaign start. He can not move out of it however.
First if Mordor does very well, or very bad, he might move out.
To quote Denethor II (LotR) about the former situation, and the Last Alliance war (Silmarillion) about the latter situation:
"He will not come save only to triumph over me when all is won. He uses others as his weapons. So do all great lords, if they are wise..."
"Then Gil-galad and Elendil passed into Mordor and encompassed the stronghold of Sauron; and they laid siege to it for seven years, and suffered grievous loss by fire and by the darts and bolts of the Enemy, and Sauron sent many sorties against them. ... But at the last the siege was so strait that Sauron himself came forth;"
~~~
I do however note that we went away from the elephant-sized gigant solution from TATW for Sauron. In DCI he is of human size.
This because of engine limitations - we did in fact desire to make him large as the trolls, but no single general can differ in size in that way (except through an elephant setting, but then you get the x3 issue and custom elpehant models are prone to cause crashes).
This will provide him a bodyguard, of Boldogs, and is more rather than less true to the lore (Letter 246):
"Sauron should be thought of as very terrible. The form that he took was that of a Man of more than human stature, but not gigantic."
Ok cool! Those are really cool features and lore-friendly. Hmm....you could over-power him even more, may put him in a unit of olog-hais , that way maybe you could have a Sauron the size of a troll while he has trolls with him, i don't know, just an idea.
One thing, what about the One Ring? is there any script about it? Sauron has it so there can't be that information that the One Ring was found in Umbar (for some reason)
That don't work, I'm afraid, a factions generals are of the same size [Sauron "himself" in TATW is actually of human size but invisible, and hidden inside an elephant-mount that is to made to look like Sauron].
So was he given a troll BG it would not change his size, instead the trolls would outrun him due to different animations and probably throw him into the air if he get in their way, hehe.
There's a lot of possible and different Ring interactions. Will see if it goes into the Mordor-video or if it warrant a video of its own.
AHAHAHAHAHA i now really want to see a little Sauron flying up in the air because he is being trampled by trolls! ahahahaha!
Ok, can't wait to see it :)