There are eight basic unit types, plus an extra speciality' troop for each of the eight ingame nationalities and a full complement of siege weapons. Speaking of which, you've got more than enough metal to make the foreign devils quake in their ill-fitting boots. Some provide extra groats for your bank balance, for example, while others create new armies or provide food for your existing troops. Micromanagement is streamlined through various vassals such as knights, burghers and members of the clergy, who provide advice and keep riff-raff at arm's length.Īs a power-crazed monarch, you have to balance these different classes of underling depending on the needs of your territories. Taking Western Europe from 1066 to about 1430 as its springboard, LOTR III sees you trying to appease the church, feed your subjects and maintain control over your errant knights while playing through scenarios like the Norman Invasion, Barbarossa's campaigns in Italy and the 100 Years War. Feeding TimeĪ recent play revealed a familiar blueprint, yet one smoothed and refined by years of experience.

Putting you charge of managing resources, strategies and tactics of various medieval forces (mainly those with a thirst for k conquest), it blends the diplomacy of Civilization with all the RTS trimmings of cavalries charging, arrows firing and battering rams pounding. Last seen eight years ago in 2D turnbased form, the game is returning with a real-time clock ticking, 3D models environs as well as a ledged multiplayer component.

Boiling oil, spears in faces and large contraptions designed to hurl lumps of masonry into the castles of fat polygamists are guaranteed to wake you up from your pencil-twirling, windowgazing reverie.Īnd so we come to the LOTR franchise (no, the other LOTR franchise). Medieval history, on the other hand - now that's something else. History lessons are usually dull: statistics, figures and an array of pointless people doing inadvisable things.

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