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Edit: Did I misspell the title? Slaughter these villagers m'lord?   The original LOTR was made in 1994, and the sequel Lords of the Realm 2 was released two years later. This game has drastically improved graphics, smarter AI in battles, a completely revamped castle-attacking method, and an overhauled battle engine. There is no technology tree like the Civ series. No level-ups either. No magic. No nothing, just a good old fashioned strategy with armies fighting each other. The year is 1268AD. The king is dead. Rival factions war for the throne. Pretty standard stuff here. The object is to conquer England and how you do that is up to you. You can take over counties which will provide you with men for armies, cows and grain for food, sheep for wool, and the extra men can mine ore or make weapons for your armies. Keeping the peasants happy is critical. Unhappy peasants revolt and emigrate to other counties which gives your enemies more troops. You can hire mercenaries to help you, but will you have to raise taxes and therefore make the peasants unhappy to afford mercenaries? I will spend the first few updates showing the mechanics of the game as well as combat whenever that happens. Here, watch the Intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDiLapH-oJs  And now I need a name and a shield that will be the banner that I will conquer
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Jul 20, 2015 21:34
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Henry and the purple banner. Once more into conquering England, eh?
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Jul 20, 2015 21:44
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Edmund, black shield I used to play the poo poo out of the demo version of this back in the day. Looking forward to this LP. 
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Jul 20, 2015 22:47
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Comrade Koba posted:Edmund, black shield Good idea! Edmund, Black shield My dad (my real one, not the forumite) got addicted to this game after I bought it for $15 in 1999. He played it until the disc wore out. He usually played as Baldrick.
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Jul 20, 2015 23:26
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Henry II, Red. Unite England? Sounds like we need some Plantagenets in here. 
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Jul 21, 2015 00:36
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Ęthel, Red and unready.
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Jul 21, 2015 00:42
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Edmund Black
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Jul 21, 2015 00:50
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Viola the Mad posted:Henry II, Red. This was entirely my own intention, considering I just saw Henry the IV performed.
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Jul 21, 2015 01:11
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One thing to note: I dont play one session and then wait for 2 weeks before the next. I post daily updates, multiples per day sometimes. I like Edmund as the name; a nod to Jerusalem and the best LP I have ever read. Also the King of England but whatever. Henry can catch Edmund before I play in 15 hours, just have to settle on a shield if that happens.
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Jul 21, 2015 01:11
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I'll throw my vote for Henry.
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Jul 21, 2015 01:33
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Throwing my vote in with Edmund, Black Shield
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Jul 21, 2015 01:43
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The Saurus posted:Edmund Black This sounds good. And I don't mean to get ahead of ourselves, but when the game starts, the very first thing we need to do is Taunt the Knight.
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Jul 21, 2015 02:18
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Comrade Koba posted:Edmund, black shield Bandwagoning this. I remember playing this almost exclusively one summer as a kid but for the life of me can't remember the actual gameplay outside of a couple of blurry concepts. Looking forward to this now, nearly twenty years on.
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Jul 21, 2015 02:57
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Kangra posted:Ęthel, Red and unready. Sounds like a lack of a plan to me!
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Jul 21, 2015 03:15
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At least one post should offer an actual title, and not a name, so: Der Kaiser of the 
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Jul 21, 2015 04:20
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Subbed. I love this game and play it like once every other year for a month or something. Great music.
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Jul 21, 2015 05:55
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Jazzimus Prime posted:This sounds good. 
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Jul 21, 2015 06:19
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Man, I remember playing this so much as a child. Of course, I hex-edited the poo poo out of the savegames to give myself infinite money, but that's neither here nor there.
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Jul 21, 2015 06:54
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Comrade Koba posted:Edmund, black shield
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Jul 21, 2015 10:23
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 Lets do this thing.  This is the custom game screen. Here I can change settings, but since I haven't played this in 15 years... well, I'll accept the defaults. Did I forget to tell you all that I haven't played this since I was a kid? I may take a savage beating here.  We start with some tips to make my life less miserable. Out starting county is top right, just above where I started in the Lords of the Realm 1 LP ages ago.  Using the slider bar is much easier now. Before it was "manually move peasants from one industry to another" but now it can automatically do it pretty well. I still will be moving peasants manually, but this will help later in the game when I own a bunch of counties. On the flip side, maybe I'll die before I own many counties.  The consensus last LP was "assloads of cattle" which worked for me because I was unable to figure out the crop rotation schedule. Vote: Will that be the case here? Cows or Grain or Sheep?  First things first: I have no grain. Zero. So if I need to, people will eat the cows. We can't have that because you all haven't voted yet.  Lets see what we can buy at Olde George!  A bit of grain for planting is all we need. We can buy almost anything from him, Ale to boost the people's spirits, weapons to arm them...  That black flag on the town is my city. If someone takes it over, I lose.  I clicked on one of the square fields next to my cattle. I can make it a grain field and start planting grain. I do this to two fields.  And this is something I completely forgot. Eat county has 3 of it's own industries or maybe less or more. The industries are: Wood cutting, quarry, iron mine, blacksmith, castle building. This county has a quarry for stone and a lumber yard for wood cutting. If I want Iron (and I do desperately), then I'll need to conquer a county that has an iron mine in order to mine my own iron. Otherwise I'll be stuck buying it from the hugely inflated prices from the traveling merchants.  A castle boosts tax revenue? Just one of those things I missed as a kid.  My quarry. The giant pit on the map.  And now we explore the town center.  Note the red circle around the grain bottom right, and the black outline of a dude on the grain field. I need more people planting my grain is what that says.  Planting 20 sacks of grain will get me 200 sacks of grain when the harvest comes in.  I click the blacksmith to show you where I can build weapons.   The armory shows zero mercenaries here, and I want some pretty bad. I need to expand quickly, but if I draft 100 peasants with the swords and pikes I start with then my happiness will go way down which is bad mmmmkay?  I can send supplies to other counties. Maybe someone will send me stuff?  This is how much poo poo I have. I didn't realize I start with iron, so time to make some weapons. Maces are a favorite of mine, but they take wood and iron in even amounts to make (4 and 4). Swordsmen take a lot of iron and small quantities of wood to make (10 and 3). Knights are the same (18 and 4). I could make 2 knights with the quantities of iron/wood that I currently have, but I'd rather have 12 maces. I can't start that yet, I need to stabilize my economy for a little before I throw peasants at blacksmithing.  I need taxes. 4% is fair, right?  Castle building screen. I can't do anything yet, no spare peasants and no materials anyway.  And we start by insulting The Knight. Just by the name you probably gather he's a military guy, so he'll probably come over here and curbstomp me with a
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Jul 21, 2015 13:29
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Oh man, custom insults! I can't tell France to eat my baguette in EU4, why are old games so much better? Voting cattle I guess since that was good for you before.
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Jul 21, 2015 14:44
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Update 2: Nothing happens. Seriously.  The Knight responds threateningly.  It's spring. My grain starts to grow.  Mercenaries show up in the next county, I should get some at my door soon!  It's summer, still no mercenaries. The grain is coming along nicely!  We are still able to feed everyone via dairy from the cows, but having grain as a backup and to send to starving counties is necessary.  It's fall. Nothing happens. Harvest time is all.  Harvested the grain, replanting 2 more fields (using 20 grain).  May as well start making some maces, I've got nothing else to do. And no iron. Haven't seen a merchant in 4 turns.  Little bit of wood, little bit of blacksmithing.   Mercenaries! Wooooooo!  They are much more expensive than the first LOTR. And without a merchant, that means I'll be passing on these. Grrr.
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Jul 21, 2015 15:05
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I could never figure out this game you have my sympathy and anticipation
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Jul 21, 2015 15:23
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Update 3: Yay! Now tell me who to kill. The mercenaries left, annoyed at my lack of money.  And more showed up next turn. God drat these are 1200 gold more than the last ones!  Note that I sold some swords, the maces I made, bows, and all of my pikes to afford them.  Grab your stuff boys, time to go pillage and murder and probably die!  Moving an army is simple, but now my question is where do I go?   There's an iron mine up north (that big wheelish thing up top). There is also an iron mine to the west in Nottinghamshire. Either one of those get my vote, I can also go south and take some crappy areas that have a lumber mill and nothing else. Vote time: What to kill?
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Jul 21, 2015 15:33
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Complement the Baron, Countess, and Bishop to keep them off our backs for the moment, and Insult the Knight again while we take those resources to the north.
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Jul 21, 2015 15:40
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Consolidate the north, murder the bishop imo
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Jul 21, 2015 15:40
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The Bishop is isolated and close by, if you attack him it will be less likely that you get hit from multiple sides and have to split your forces. This was a really fun game back when I was running Windows 95. The production values are pretty impressive, lots of animation and voice acting to make things look nicer. And the combat AI can be a little trickier than you might think, though it's still possible to kite enemy armies without taking any losses with the right setup.
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Jul 21, 2015 16:53
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Go north. Also, raise all the sheep you can! It's good to see this; I just started playing the first game and I was wondering if I should start the next game on LotR 2 or not. Looks like there are fewer provinces (making the game not last so long), and the farm management aspect is streamlined. Or you're just not showing all of that.
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Jul 21, 2015 17:35
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Spermy Smurf posted:The consensus last LP was "assloads of cattle" which worked for me because I was unable to figure out the crop rotation schedule. Cattle are always good because they are just more efficient. Also crop rotation in the first one was handled automatically and just based off how many used vs unused fields you had, as long as you kept the corn meter not withered you are successfully rotating crops.
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Jul 21, 2015 17:49
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Re: Farming. Advanced farming is ludicrously powerful but one bad harvest or infestation is all it takes to bring your county to it's knees. It frees up a ton of labor during the spring and summer seasons to produce iron/weapons/castles. The disadvantage is that since you have to rotate most of your labor every autumn, they lose the skill they had gained working their other task. But it's all about quantity over quality with farming. You'll have so many peasants and tax revenue that you can buy most of what you lack anyways. A useful, if somewhat cheap tactic is to send a small detachment of peasants to raze the enemy's fields before your main attack. Starve them out! Also, take the province with the iron mine ASAP so you can get weapon production rolling. Kibbles n Shits fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Jul 21, 2015 |
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Jul 21, 2015 17:51
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Sloober posted:Cattle are always good because they are just more efficient. Also crop rotation in the first one was handled automatically and just based off how many used vs unused fields you had, as long as you kept the corn meter not withered you are successfully rotating crops. Unlike real life, Cows are indeed OP. At least that much I remember from my days playing this.
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Jul 21, 2015 18:44
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These games convinced me that the average British peasant's diet consisted of 100% cheese all the time. The lactose intolerant are exposed as children.
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Jul 21, 2015 18:45
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Kangra posted:It's good to see this; I just started playing the first game and I was wondering if I should start the next game on LotR 2 or not. Looks like there are fewer provinces (making the game not last so long), and the farm management aspect is streamlined. Or you're just not showing all of that. Farm management is done via the map. You can see the fields in the screenshots, and you click on them there to give cows more pasture or plant grain. It's much easier. The second one is a lot more difficult than I remember it being. Combat basically is more difficult by a huge amount.
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Jul 21, 2015 19:00
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Night10194 posted:These games convinced me that the average British peasant's diet consisted of 100% cheese all the time.
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Jul 21, 2015 19:03
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The Knight is usually the first to die. The Bishop is the toughest nut to crack because he has a tendency to build Stone and Royal Castles. I'm 90% sure that advanced farming in LOTR2 just uses your fallow vs. planted fields ratio and you don't actually have to manually rotate them. Just leave 2 fields fallow and watch the grain roll in. The best way to get food is a combo of cows & grain. Use macemen/knight mercenary bands like suicide bombs. Throw them at larger enemy armies to thin their ranks and kill all their archers, then garrison your castles with archers, crossbowmen, and pikemen. Use marauders to pillage all the fields and slaughter all the villagers of an enemy whose land you don't wish to immediately take. You have a brief window at the beginning of every turn to move your troops before the enemy moves theirs. If you move your troops by just one square you can avoid getting attacked by an enemy army and endlessly kite their armies. You need to be a fast clicker for this to work. On the right maps, crossbow mercs will massacre huge enemy armies if you can pile them into a small corner of the map or geographic feature and have them continually firing. Sergg fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Jul 21, 2015 |
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Jul 21, 2015 19:07
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Update 5: There will be blood  Sorry brah. My army is just passing through the north territory. Wink wink.  More mercenaries! Holy poo poo 6000 gold?   Instead I attack the northernmost town.   Their army.   My army. Swords, archers, and a lot of maces.  The enemy uses the terrain to their advantage. Hiding the archers behind the peasants. About now I want to explain how frustrating it is to run a battle: You need to number the units which is no big deal since every game has that. You can't do that unless the battle is unpaused. You need to give orders to multiple different units to move them together into larger units or just to go stand somewhere. You can't do that unless the battle is unpaused. The enemy uses these unpaused times to do everything while you're still numbering units and getting them together to strike a blow. And every time you hit a number to select the units it centers the view on the unit! So if you want to attack multiple targets, good loving luck because the view keeps changing and by the time you center the view back where you want everyone has moved since the battle isn't paused.  Anyway, the battle was over before I could even my fricken archers within striking distance. These dudes run across the map. Full out sprint. I couldn't even keep the screen on them to take screenshots much less get my archers to be useful. I am super excited to siege castles like this.  The land is mine! Time to start mining. But first they need some cattle because they eat a lot of grain.  You can see they only have 8 fields whereas my main county has 16. That means the population will never be able to get big at all. Next up: Take that smallish county below this one and really mine some iron! It looks like I'll have to use one county to feed the others and use the smaller ones to make weapons or vice versa. Will see, I haven't done this in a long time. Spermy Smurf fucked around with this message at 19:35 on Jul 21, 2015 |
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Jul 21, 2015 19:20
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Update 6: Combat gif I move my army south to take the other county along the top. The combat gif is 12MB, so I am linking it and the GIFv too.  A battle is to be fought. http://i.imgur.com/Ards6Fs.gifv - Smaller Gifv http://i.imgur.com/Ards6Fs.gif - original gif The battle is fought.  The battle is decided.  This county doesn't even have enough food to feed themselves. Note Half Rations. Wonderful. At least they are getting a bunch of grain soon!
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Jul 21, 2015 19:44
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Remember, you're not using Advanced Farming, so crop/cattle rotation isn't actually needed; also, natural disasters won't happen. Edit: Cows are great for small counties (like the one you just took), as 2-4 fields can feed several hundred people. More cows are needed for a larger population than this, which eventually comes at the cost of the "off" seasons to work the mines that grain provides, with the added benefit that grain is much easier to replace than cattle if you gently caress up and your population begins to starve. thetruegentleman fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Jul 21, 2015 |
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Jul 21, 2015 20:30
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thetruegentleman posted:Remember, you're not using Advanced Farming, so crop/cattle rotation isn't actually needed. I'm not doing anything with rotation. Just expanding cattle as much as I can so they double in size in a year. I won't have any grain in just a year or two longer. Edit: 2 more posts and I'll do another update. Gotta get to a new page once in a while so I don't have 300 pictures on one page and make phones poo poo themselves. Spermy Smurf fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Jul 21, 2015 |
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Jul 21, 2015 20:31
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I'll get us one post closer to the next page by requesting that you insult the knight again. Seriously, gently caress that guy.
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Jul 21, 2015 21:11
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