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.