Emperor-of-the-East

Frequently Asked Questions?

Yes, because I don't want to need to answer the same questions the same way and provide the same evidence for those being the correct answers incessantly. And yes, this is based on that Sub-mod I am making that gives Age of the Ring's Mordor an Easterling Sub-faction.

Here are the questions I've been asked twice or more.

1. Why are the Easterlings not going to be the twelfth faction in your Sub-mod for Age of the Ring?
   1. Because, as one of the Lead Developers put it in the AotR Discord server, any more factions than eleven and you'll have the AI unable to competently play as it.
2. What exactly is your Sub-faction inspired by?
   1. As I've always proven, I draw my inspiration from J.R.R. Tolkien's books The Lord of the Rings, Unfinished Tales of Middle-earth, and The Peoples of Middle-earth; while also drawing greater inspiration from the Games Workshop and Forge World representations of Rhûn, Khand, the Easterlings, and the Variags.
3. Why don't you make this a Sub-faction of Dol Guldur or Haradwaith?
   1. Because Haradwaith is not available yet, and also because it makes far more sense, logistically, to make the Easterlings in Age of the Ring a Sub-faction of Mordor, seeing as they are already five units from the same building in Mordor.
4. How do you make such great-looking models from scratch?
   1. I don't make them from scratch, for the most part. What I do is known as "kitbashing", I take AotR assets and rearrange them and retexture them in a way that's aptly suited to my vision and I don't use my kitbashes for any other project--only for my AotR Sub-mod. I have done a shield and a quiver from scratch, but I am still looking for something to use those for.
5. Shouldn't you just give up on this idea and move on?
   1. No, absolutely not, and I never will. I was inspired to keep at this Sub-mod idea and to never give up by a Revora Forums user named Námo when he said something I am more in agreement with than ever before: "If you take the time and make the effort, you will come up with outstanding Battle for Middle-earth factions for both the Haradrim and the Easterlings without any use of Non-Tolkien lore."
6. This idea for your Sub-faction is very out of place, shouldn't you discard that idea?
   1. When you provide me evidence from my proven inspiration sources that it is, Yes, you are right, and therefore I will replace it with something that's not out of place.
7. How do you fit the Avari elves and/or Orocarni dwarves in there?
   1. In my writing of fan-invented lore for this faction (which is more necessary for Rhûn than for Harad), the relics that the Avari elves and Orocarni dwarves left behind by fleeing to the West were reforged and repurposed by Easterlings and/or Variags to serve Sauron's cause.
8. Shouldn't you be drawing most of your inspiration from real-world Far-Eastern history to give your Sub-faction its own cultural identity?
   1. Yes, and in fact, not only do I already do that, but JRR Tolkien said to a news magazine in 1966 that he thought of Rhûn as being inspired by, in his own words, "Asia, China, Japan, and all that is seen by Europeans as far away". However, I do tend to sometimes draw from the wrong points in the histories of those places' military technology. So, it's a good thing that I do stuff myself and I seek help with doing a better job of it because then I get the constructive criticism I need to do better with this Sub-mod.
9. When will this Sub-mod be playable to your fellow Mordor-playing AotR fans?
   1. When it's done, when I send it to the Lead Developers to vet it, and if they greenlight publishing it. As for when that process will start and how it will end, please don't ask, for I have no idea.
10. What are the strengths and weaknesses of your Sub-faction?
    1. While my Sub-faction thrives on having plenty of units for plenty of purposes (i.e. Home defense, swarming, final counter-attack, and scouring creep lairs; among other purposes); it also suffers from the early-game, low-cost, low-quality swarming units being the only units that are under 450 per horde. And while it thrives on having plenty of building upgrades for the resource building and walls, it suffers from lacking some buildings that even AotR's Mordor has... like a secondary resource buildings.
11. What is the gameplay style of your Sub-faction?
    1. It's all about outsmarting the enemy with indirect attacks, fake retreats, "bait and bash" moves and other tactical maneuvers.
12. This seems like a full-on Faction to me... is it?
    1. No, and the reason this is only a Sub-faction has everything to do with an AI problem that one of the Lead Devs made clear to everyone on the AotR Discord server.

Closure

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and I look forward to making more progress and being smarter about this Sub-mod as I get more of it done.

~Kyle Perkino~