Middle Earth: Battle For Arda - Official Thread
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Awesome work with this map guys me and my friend play it tons, I knew about triplea a while ago and introduced to my friend almost a year ago now and we been playin the shit out of battle for arda him evil me good.
Anyway, we had it balanced our own way on the pervious version at 200% handicaps across the board except freefolk with evil additionally boosted.
Some other minor boosts here and there.
Anyway,
Excited to see how this new version plays out, and we kinda wanna try it with blitz but we're not sure cause that seems crazy but also maybe is interesting.Was interested to see you cant build forts in mountains anymore, that was nice for angmar and orcs, for us atleast.
Probably gonna play straight 200% for everybody this time around if evil has a better start now.
And the reason I always played with 200% because the bigger numbers were fun and didnt seem to break things too much. 100% is good too though, just seems like 200% makes the game faster, but I like playing it slower at 100% too
This game is just so elegantly complex honestly and the lorefulness is so amazing too, atleast to me it feels like a struggle for Middle-Earth.
I cant read so I dont know if the change log says this or not but I'm excited to discover if there have been unit changes or if evil's beast/multi-hp units and spiders have been changed
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We've finished two more games with the new version, evil seems to have a very large advantage. In the third game we gave good a bunch of extra starting stuff (about 7 scattered walls in places that already had some and 64 tuv of units in non-forward positions) and evil still won and got ahead quite readily. Though some of that may be mistakes by good, but even that's not so clear.
The buff to uruk warriors seemed a bit unnecessary, they were already used a fair deal by some nations.
we do always play on ll which does ofc affect balance a little, but not THAT much.
saru is hugely stronger for sure, as expected. They get big and never seem to get beaten down at all, being quite able to maintain their entire territory and threaten to expand outward or support orcs.
The unit price adjustments do feel good and fairer, though they may contribute to the side imbalances felt in our games, since good used to heavily rely on those underpriced units. Still, it's better to have balanced unit costs and then fix any balance issues between the sides by adjusting other details.
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I’ve played a couple games by myself vs hard AI on both sides and the game is much fairer, though obviously any side a human plays is going to be stronger.
I also ran the game on all-AI overnight and one time the good won, and one time evil won.
It seems like good is still overall stronger both games in the hands of the AI - both games they were ahead in both Production and army size.
Good only lost that one game despite being ahead for most of it because so much of its forces was “stuck” sieging Angmar - somehow most of Andor, and most of freefolk forces were all stuck there. Even then, good was still holding until Gondor finally fell.
In the game good won, they took the city and swept the whole map.
Some thoughts from my own games and the AI games
Pony rider is too weak - the cost increase was justified but maybe defense should be boosted 1 by to compensate.
Snagga goblins are too weak - 3/2 with no anti air, while their comparable archers are all 2/4 with anti air. Should be made 3/3 or given anti air (jav can take out ravens and eagles flying down to attack as well as a bow).
It’s odd that Moria is so bad on mountains and caves with most of their goblins unable to enter mountains, and their caves and mountains easily crushed by dwarven infantry, as their units get no bonuses on what you would expect to be Moria’s main terrain.
An overall comment is if there is a major rework coming, if overall terrain bonuses could be made more “logical” because I had to keep consulting the chart:
- why are goblins regular levy? unable to go into mountains, and suck at fighting in caves. In the books they fight evenly against dwarves inside mountains/caves, and prefer them over exposed plains.
- why cavalry is bad on open plains with a river, and yet decent in a marsh where horses should get stuck?
- pikemen should be good on flat plains, rivers, and bad in forests, hills, instead of being relentless or unyielding and ignore terrain.
The units are already very complicated and terrain effects add another layer of complication, where one archer is an ambusher, another is levy, another wilderness, and they all have completely differently roles.
If there was a large rework, I’d like everything fall under
- archer/ambush
- troop (swords, axes, spears of men and orcs)
- pikemen (bonus to flat plains, rivers, caves and cities, and bad on all others).
- open/cav
- air
- mountain dwellers (dwarves, goblins)
- forest dwellers (elves, treemen)
- wilderness (scouts, wild men, beasts)
The concept of unyielding or relentless should be removed, buffed into their stats. They are elite because of higher stats, not because they fight equally on all terrain, and this will reduce confusion as well.
Overall great update, much better balance, and looking forward to what is next!
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After a few more AI games I can conclude evil almost always win at fast AI (hard AI takes too long so I didn’t do any more of them).
It’s not a problem for humans, but for better “AI” behavior the AI needs to learn the value of using siege weapons attacking cities.
The AI will throw away hundreds of PU worth of units into walled cities and all die anyway, and it’s a bigger problem for good because Arnor doesn’t start with siege weapons or high attack units and will throw away 30 units to attack and lose to Carn Dum, repeat 5 turns later. Harad and Mordor units often keep their starting siege and anyway are high enough attack they still win their AI battles against Gonder walls.
It may be as simple as removing their support on attack (because they realistically aren’t archers) and instead make the terrain bonus “siege weapons” get + 6 attack, +2 defense in cities, -4 attack/defense in forests, caves, and give them a base stat of 2/2 for catapults, 4/4 for treb.
This also makes flanking better, as you can only flank outside of cities and previously siege weapons did nothing there anyway. A siege weapon across a river or on a mountain/hill is a powerful defensive and offensive tool.
The AI does take terrain bonus into account and will likely build and use them as a result for these improved stats.
Other bugs/balance issues
- Rhun is too strong and this is partly due to war wagons being only 15PU for wall effects, 3 move, 2HP, and fortification terrain (which are all buffs). Should be 16-17PU and changed to OPEN terrain so it’s not longer so good in hills caves and forests.
Goblin shooter are quite good for being 4 cost and ambusher boosting its stats beyond a 5 cost archer in many scenarios.
Relentless on a cheap unit is very strong, and orc marauder is slightly too good due to being relentless. make it levy instead.
Free folk should get a siege. Probably catapult? Pony riders need to be 2/2 or 3/1, their cost increase to 5 make them very poor balanced against other 5 cost units.
Finally, elite good knights die too easily to cheap spearmen. They have only 1 HP, and cost 12 (swan knight) or 11 (kings company). Sure its party bad AI, but its weird even as a human player you have that an army attacking a single orc marauder, somehow 1/4 of the time it can just kill an elite knight. Knights attacking pikes like in the movie is pure suicide (but worked in the movie), and yet it’s also unavoidable in large battles between stacks in game.
Ideally, armor power should apply to formation rolls, so 6 swan knights charging 2 orc mauraders will completely negate their formation roll with the -18 armor power.
In my view though knights aren’t shielding the rest of the army and shouldn’t be providing -18 armor power in the first place, but instead elite knights should have 2 HP. -
@hao-zhou I would say that I agree with some of these. I think having range units counter formations negates the effect. Hell maybe make it be also siege weapons since there are situations where they could be used as artillery against large formations.
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@hao-zhou The AI is significantly better at playing good than evil, and I'm not sure how fixable it is. The hard AI is really good at calculating can-opens, which good uses much more than evil. On the other hand, it's terrible with ships, siege, and strafing with multihit units, all of which evil does more.
The classifications of orcs/goblins/uruks are def a bit weird. In the books, goblins and orcs are the same thing. Canonically the rank and file orcs were similar to the peasant troops of other nations (ie levies) and I don't think they were particularly suited to caves. Eg the interior of mordor was mostly plains. In the movies we have the orcish bowmen in Moria, which seem equivalent to the goblin archers, which have ambush and are great in caves (at least on defense). The regular orcs feel weirder. Canonically, they had terrible morale/organization, so relentless seems wrong for them, unless they're some larger/superior breed of orcs, like the black orcs. But those are (mordor) uruks. The snaga scouts I'm also not sure about. Snaga means slave so they might be enslaved men from the wildlands? Uruks being strong and relentless makes sense, though having the pikemen be unyielding seems a lil weird, since again they canonically had terrible morale.
Digressing from that though, the goblin spearmen are probably the best infantry in the game, since they're really cheap and levy, and have reasonable formation. I also think that the goblins/orcs are gonna be changed a bit in the new version.
In the new version, cavalry are going to get the full benefit on plains with a river, and penalized on marshes.
Most pikemen/spearmen are levy. Unyielding are in theory the really elite defensive troops (who excel unusually in rivers/cities, and are less bad on open plains than everyone else). Note that pikes would be terrible weapons in caves, but pretty reasonable weapons in hills. Agree they wouldn't do great in forests.
I think slightly reworking the terrain things makes sense, but I think there's a definite sense that some troops should be better at taking cities, and others better at defending them, and the relentless / levy / unyielding spectrum reflects that.
Other:
- pony riders are a little weak. Before they were ridiculous, but the debuff hurt a bit too much
- Snagas are meant to be weak. Mordor's chaff is strictly worse than gondor's and it's purposeful.
- Moria orcs aren't bred for mountains or anything afaik. They just live there since they're drawn to the balrog's corruption / the forces of light are absent.
- The war wagon is great, but not game-breaking, since as fortifications they're targeted by siege. If you build too many, your opponent just buys catapults
- Goblin shooters are great, though only on the defense. They're probably the best defensive troops in the game (for hills, forests, and caves). This is mitigated a bit by them not being good at attack or at defending cities. Goblin spearmen are probably better overall
- I wish orc marauders were levy (Actually I wish snagas were levy. A 6 cost levy is a bit too much). Mordor really suffers from not having a unit that can defend plains, and I think this is intentional.
- Free folk def should not get siege. If they had siege, Isengard wouldn't be able to defend Tharbad at all. Though maybe with the nerf it wouldn't be too bad. The free folk horde is only mitigated by their bad siege, so they have to work with Arnor to take cities.
- I think it would be good if armor affected formation, though it might be hard to implement. (Note that each opposing unit can only be affected by 1 armor, so two swan knights against one spearmen will only apply one -3 to it. Similarly two spearmen against one swan night will only attack with one formation attack)
- I also agree with making siege units a little different, since you're right that they can be devastating outside of sieges, especially on defense. I think the siege attack is still useful though, since it cuts the power of walls/fortresses.
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I have noticed that when Isengard is penned in the AI doesn't seem to know how to go around the mountains to attack it from Nan Curunir. It will put mountaineering troops in the mountains but the rest it just stacks in the Dunland hills which will never get a proper opportunity to attack Isengard directly. Rohan also seems completely uninterested in trying to attack Isenguard and instead piles most of its units into Wellinghall, which was great at the start to protect Lorien early from Isenguard, but seems a bit useless at this point. Love the game by the way, I was a bit daunted at first when compared to the other LOTR map but this is a great game even if I haven't really learned the interactions with terrain yet. Hope you guys keep developing. Is there any ETA on a new release?
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Anyone else find Angmar maybe a little too weak/overwhelmed? I loved playing with their mix of units(Dragons!) but it seemed in an AI game I was always fighting against Arnor, Freefolk, Dwarves, and High Elves which meant I could never make any significant progress without some help from another evil faction, which outside of rhun basically never happens until way way late in the game, so you're left basically holding on for most of the game which isnt exactly a fun way to play. I did eventually manage to break through to the east and capture some Northmen/Dwarven/Woodland territory with the help of Rhun and Dol Goldur late in the game but even with a pretty significant increase in manufacturing capacity I found it was extremely difficult to make any headway in the west against arnor and the freefolk, even after Arnor suicided a fairly large force into Carn Dum, they just seem to be able to build out forces quickly. On top of that in the few evil runs I've player, Saruman if he gets backed into Isenguard at some point, which he has in basically every play through I've done, just sits and builds in Isenguard for pretty much the rest of the game, even when he has an opportunity to move out and capture pretty weakly defended territory. I think theres some sort of bug in the way the computer is calculating things around Isenguard with the 3 mountains surrounding it because it took for Mordor to break through and capture the territory in front of Isenguard for the cpu to finally decide to move its 100+ units out from Isenguard and actually do something.
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@alkexr
Hey, love the hell out of your map. Might be my favourite TripleA module to play.I wanted to ask a few things. So firstly since fortresses can spawn a unit. (And Mordor starts with fortresses on mountains). This means you can spawn on mountains units that have neither the mountaineer nor flying traits. Would you consider this an exploit?
Secondly, retreating can be used in such a way so that units without mountaineer or flying can maneuver into mountains. For example, if Gap of Rohan was attacked with Dunlending wildmans from East Methedras and with Halforcs, Uruk Warriors, a Wizard, etc. from Nan Curunir. Then after one round of combat (or however many rounds) Saruman can retreat the whole army into East Methedras, non-mountaineers included. Would you consider this an exploit?
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So something I am curious of in the development of this map is if there was an issue with IPC distribution in the sense that Evil's IPC are too concentrated inside of cities in the previous version a few years ago, why wasn't fanmade cities used? (I know lore accuracy but given this game isn't even accurate to begin with, I say it would have made sense)
Regardless, so personally good has an edge (not a large on but still one) My Gondor didn't even lose a single city and easily pushed Mordor back (ironically non-naval AI Harad was giving me more trouble in the late game). Moria is only a matter of if Lorien can hold an early game, once I was able to make ents it basically was over (maybe an early push to Rivendell can solve this for Moria.). I always felt Saruman was too defensive ngl, like even as a human player, you are basically on defense trying to outpace Rohan though Angmar has it probably the worst in this regard with it's low unit number early on (idk if it's been change or if I'm playing an older version)
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Has anyone played FFA using this map? Even if extremely unbalanced and slow, it's still fun seeing some of the stupid stuff that occurs. My favorite is, "Rohan, everyone's punching bag", "Mordors migration to Southern Gondor lmao", or the "Taiwan" Island of Tolfalas (literally only Gondor or Umbar can reach it so if either die then well
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Hi @rsnorunt
I'm curious about your statement that the Northmen will be radically damaged if they don't build boats in the Celduin on Turn 1. Could you (or anyone else) expound on that?
I'm playing on the old Battle for Arda map and am new to the map and the faction so I may be missing something obvious. But if Northmen just move their Dromund and raft to sz Celduin 2 (see picture), Rhun's 3 boats in sz Celduin 1 only have a 59% chance of victory at 0.8 tuv, which is not great odds. What am I missing?
What would be a good Turn 1 build for Northmen? Any help would be appreciated.
