Not too loopy, Mark. Made sense to me.
I can blame the drugs, rum, or both.
Can I just list rum as a default excuse? Sort of in general? 
I am only going to look at 1650, as this is the only game I will play. Call
it personal perference.
Except for the Easterlings I think it all works in 2950 too.
There are a few nations that could greatly benefit from some changes.
The Northmen are one that needs help
The Woodmen could certainly use a character with a 30 agent skill.
Another perceived punching bag, just adding this little change could give
them a little more leverage when it comes to convincing their allies to help
the Woodmen.
...(the QA) The punching bag of the south, the only
nation really at the total mercy of his neighbors, give him a fighting chance
should the neutrals turn on him early.
I agree
I do not agree with this notion floating around that all elves should
have stealth, or all trolls should have double healing, etc, etc. The elven
nations already are potential powerhouses IF played intelligently. And do we
really need to beef up some of the DS armies?
I did like the idea of a single special troop type for certain nations, but otherwise I agree.
A couple of other changes I would make.
Give the Corsairs a few more warships.
I disagree here. Corsairs are a powerhouse nation, consistantly near the top of the win lists. If they need ships, they can buy them in the 8-10 turns when everyone else is fighting for their lives. Same with Harad. It isn't terrably fair to complain when 3 naval nations (Corsairs, Harad, QA) are outclassed by 5 (SG, NG, Sindar, Noldor, Cardolan). Maybe this is a problem in Grudge games with full teams of good, communicating players, but in a random player game, in which one or more of those 5 are probably new or non-email, the Corsairs and QA can come out just fine.
Give the Easterlings a fortified MT in the north. How many Free write
off the Easterlings as lost to the DS on turn zero? But what if the
Easterlings had a viable option of going Free? Wouldn't that help game
balance?
Maybe if you also weakened their holdings in the south. Easterlings aren't quite as solid as Corsairs on win lists, but only because they are often forced to go Dark regardless of how the war is going. I dont think they need to be strengthened, but maybe redistributed a little...
What about Rhudaur? Talk about someone who needs an extra MT, or Characters, or artifacts, or just about anything to make them worthwhile.
Changing the terrain modifiers would help to balance this. But
care should be used to prevent this from changing the overall game balance.
Rhudaur could become an absolute powerhouse, if all of the sudden it's troops
ruled in rough country.
Yeah, we wouldn't want to overbalance Rhudaur. With most of its pop centers, and most of those of nearby threats, in Mountains, plains or forest what kind of rough advantage are you thinking would make Rhudaur a powerhouse, +200% or more?
Changing the battle system is also an option. ..would be too great a change would have to be tested out in playtesting. But
it might make archers and seige weapons more useful.
I think this might be too much, but a playtest couldn't hurt.
New spells would be nice...
Yes
Forget changing the way armies disband if you lose a challenge. That is
part of the game balance.
I agree that changing this rule would benefit the free in 1650. Still, other rules changes might equal out. Also, if by killing a commander you simply say that the army stops moving, troops begin to desert, and it suffers large penalties in combat, I'm not sure that the balance really is shifted all that much. And it is a relatively simple change which makes SO much sense.
I like the idea of being able to loot enemy armor and weapons. If I have
an army of naked HI, and we just whacked an army in ST, do you really think
we would just ignore all those nice weapons laying around?
One thing we haven't been considering on this one (and my feelings are mixed about it) is that you might do exactly that. Orcs, Dunadain, Dwarves and Elves would all be completely incapable of wearing one anothers armor. Troll warhammers wouldn't help elves much either. Imagine dwarf war-ponies in barding designed for mumakil. Many usable weapons would be destroyed in battle. I think some Salvage might be reasonable, but the percentage should be small, and would represent the actual metals being scavenged and reforged.
DON'T change the caravans to real travel time! The "gain" in added
"realism" certainly isn't worth the pain and suffering
Agreed.
Here comes one that we all have mulled over, changing or randomizing the
encounter tables. Three choices, reset them once, reset them periodically,
or reset them every game. Think long and hard about this. You could really
upset game balance.
The main balance the DS have against the greater economic and recruit
base of the Free is dragons.
1. Harlequin figures show DS beating free 66% of time. There is already an imbalance there. Maybe it is reversed in team games, I dont know.
2. Tolkein literature does not suggest the giant swarms of dragons in dark armies that PBM has. Morgoth used them in armies, but they are never mentioned as military forces in later years.
I think encounters should be changed, once, with at least the general natures of the encounters made public (for the benefit of new/occasional players). I think the same answers should have similar results from game to game (totally random guessing would imho eliminate the feel of encounters). But I think there should be a wider range of possible responses, perhaps also based on character ranks. So if Meek is best with Smaug, it should always give the best chance of recruit or escape, but there should be the chance that he decides to eat the offending character anyway. Encounters should by their nature be mysterious and chancy, not a simple equation of "OK I will go to x and pick up the dragon". GSI did not anticipate the use of the encounter tables to make dragons into DS war machines. Maybe they should GENERALLY be beneficial for the DS, but there should be some changes made.
Changing a few of the NPC's to be recruitable MIGHT be useful. Right
now, Galadriel and Celeborn are really only useful as walking artifact
holders. But if you are going to do this, do it for both sides.
Yes. Having free characters stealing Galadriel's ring is very much not right.
Randomizing pop center placement comes under the heading of changing the
game balance. How would you like to get a set-up that just moved your pop
centers within a one turn move of your enemy? Once again, what actual gain
is this to the game?
As long as major ones are fixed and the others are only semi-random, this might not be that big a problem. The difference from game to game would be exciting.
Winn Keathley
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