middle earth
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I am interested in the older middle Earth map. My friend and I have played it off and on for years. We are currently are getting back into it and I wanted to see if there is any good strategy discussion to be had.
It is an older map and part of the fun is figuring out how the turns should go, but if it is horribly imbalanced or there are a few must do moves that seems good to know going in.
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Hey, I played it for a little bit me as evil against fast AI as good what are ur thoughts on it?
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I mean, I have a few thoughts about it, dont know if u agree, but the ranger unit from the elves is too strong, thats why one of my main focus as evil is to suffocate the elves as quick as possible. Just to start things off, my overall view of how each race should play is the following:
Saruman: pretty bad spot to find yourself, little to no money to grab nearby, being pressured by freefolk, rohan and the elves right from the get go. I usually use them as support army for moria, trying to exchange well with freefolk and rohan to reduce the weight on moria's shoulder.
Freefolk: secure the possitions that the elves get, meat up the territory, maybe try to defend gondor from haradrim doing navy, pretty easy spot.
Mordor: key player for evil, as u might imagine, has two main fronts: obliterate gondor and run north agains elves, dale and dwarfs. relies on haradrim to weak gondor otherwise pretty difficult to overcome the defense. Pushing north is a must to relief rhun from dale at least. Abuse from nazgul, flying and tanking all around to weak positions.
Rohan: grab isengard for gods sake, 10 bucks, try to help the elves defending lorien. Attention to gondor's flank, keep preventing expansion from mordor around minas tirith.
Moria: another key player, keep isengard alive, destroy lorien as fast as possible, hold rohan and maybe push rivendell or up north to mirkwood.
Elves: the single most important player in my opinion for good, if thrives, that is make moria bleed and contain dol goldur, can snowball and win "quite fine". The main reason for that is the ranger: 2/3/2 blitz, combined arms for 4 bucks, its just insane. Is the one from the goods that has air presence as well(I might be underestimating zepplins), which might play a big role in harrassing small packs of orcs/orientals.
Haradrim: super important player. Oliphant is the way I think you can handle Elves' rangers as evil, but the problem is to reach that northern front in time before moria and isengard are overrun. Has little to know "direct" enemy, and it might be the one evil that has space for different strategies. I find it most fitting landing in gondor and then running up to attack elves and freefolk. Massing Oliphant is key to have good trades.
Gondor: is isengard from goodies but is way better starting position. Maybe fight water with Haradrim as main focus is the key to restrain its expasion. To do that u might rely heavily on rohan to defend minas tirith. Or ask freefolk to go water instead. Objective is to prevend Haradrim expansion and bitter fight with mordor to prevent too much money being invested in Dol Goldur's army.
Rhun: though spot, squeezed against dwarfs and dale. just try to survive because attacking the dwarfs is only possible later in the game with help from mordor/moria/khand. i think is important to grab the money south from rhun immediately to try to build up.
Dale: i think main focus is just to help elves from moria/mordor to keep their income high.
Khand: mainly support player, is the freefolk from evil. I used them as meat and raid to attack north, considering that they have warwolves and raiderscavalry with high mobility to get up there. Just use them to weaken goodies positions and then attack, Khand is vulnerable when defending and slow to mass.
Dwarfs: such strong army but super low mobility, can easily defend postions, slow to mass too. killing Rhun is a must to pressure dol goldur.
tl;dr: phew thoughts, again, havent played that much, just a noob
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@Lothorn said in middle earth:
I mean, I have a few thoughts about it, dont know if u agree, but the ranger unit from the elves is too strong, thats why one of my main focus as evil is to suffocate the elves as quick as possible.
I identified this as being the main problem for evil as well so Im glad someone else agrees. The stats for the cost is it makes it extremely strong and the elves end up spamming it and this almost always caused me to lose the game with evil.
The other problem I identified was the discrepancy in strength between Gondors units and Mordors unit. Gondors units have more stats then the southern evil factions for the same cost. The southern evil factions also typically have stats heavily skewed towards offense like 2/1 or 3/1, whereas since Gondor have more stats theyre 2/2 or 2/3. This last bit is important since it makes evil almost certainly lose when theyre on the defense.
The last "problem" I guess so to speak, is that the rivers on the map are pretty useless. Theyre not used to strategically seperate areas since every zone can connect to another one across the river. One part this affects is that Isengard cant expand west because theirs to many places to defend from across the river and with the 2 movement units of good in the area.
How my games typically played out were as follows:
- Rhun is stalemated in the north since they cant defeat either Dale or Dwarves and theyre also right next to each other to reinforce.
- Mirkwood is stalemated because Elf Rangers in either North Mirkwood or High Mirkwood stalemate the whole northern area with their movement range and they simultaneously threaten Rhun, Orcs and Mordor in Dol Goldur.
- The Orcs have to park their army in Eregion because if they dont theyll lose either Moria or North Caves by splitting their forces. But theyll eventually lose to the Elves or Freefolk attacking and then since the flood gates are open, Evil have basically lost
- Gondor front I think was always the weakest part in my game plans when I played but with the comments I said above, I think the only way evil can win it is if Khand or Haradrim are used purely as can openers for Mordor. I did like the naval options but I found that their was never any good pay off.
I did end up making a small mod that changed alot of unit stats and connections between zones but I didnt document the changes and I dont think it played better.
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After I read all I wrote, it is quite long xD sorry!
@Zaroph said in middle earth:
The last "problem" I guess so to speak, is that the rivers on the map are pretty useless. Theyre not used to strategically seperate areas since every zone can connect to another one across the river. One part this affects is that Isengard cant expand west because theirs to many places to defend from across the river and with the 2 movement units of good in the area.
Oh I never thought about that, yep there are loads of connections crossing rivers . I do think they have a role with air movement because staging a patrol of bats in Lorien allows you to raid from Emnet to Carrock which works pretty well in my opinion. Another point is North Dale, which is just obnoxiously important. Just connects everywhere up north really hard to attack Erebor and Lake Town because u literally need to conquer all around otherwise you will get slaughtered.
@Zaroph said in middle earth:
The other problem I identified was the discrepancy in strength between Gondors units and Mordors unit. Gondors units have more stats then the southern evil factions for the same cost. The southern evil factions also typically have stats heavily skewed towards offense like 2/1 or 3/1, whereas since Gondor have more stats theyre 2/2 or 2/3. This last bit is important since it makes evil almost certainly lose when theyre on the defense.
I felt that with Khand certainly, but now realised that in the Gondor-Mordor matchup it is a real thing too.
@Zaroph said in middle earth:
Mirkwood is stalemated because Elf Rangers in either North Mirkwood or High Mirkwood stalemate the whole northern area with their movement range and they simultaneously threaten Rhun, Orcs and Mordor in Dol Goldur.
In the most recent game I played, Rivendell was super passive so I could manage to get Moria helping Dol Goldur going up north. But yeah can totally imagine this scenario. In addition, concerning Dol Goldur, it is pretty hard to mass Mordor's army up there, 4 bucks is nothing. Combined, High Mirkwood, Lake Town, Erebor and Iron Hills have 24 to deploy while Rhund and Dol Goldur have 10 combined, seriously, that is a really difficult start, which forces Moria to come and aid (as if there werent enough tasks for it already).
@Zaroph said in middle earth:
I did end up making a small mod that changed alot of unit stats and connections between zones but I didnt document the changes and I dont think it played better.
Wow nice, would love to take a look in that if I may that is
What are your thoughts on maybe allowing evil to build some sort of encampments that boost the allowed number of troops to be deployed in a certain castle. They could be somewhat cheap(3 bucks to boost 1 is fair?) and whenever the territory is conquered by good they all vanish(0|0|0).
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Another point is North Dale, which is just obnoxiously important. Just connects everywhere up north really hard to attack Erebor and Lake Town because u literally need to conquer all around otherwise you will get slaughtered.
Agreed I think this is the most obnoxious zone in the map and its existence means evil cant really get anything meaningful done up north.
Wow nice, would love to take a look in that if I may that is
Ive sent you details in a pm.
What are your thoughts on maybe allowing evil to build some sort of encampments that boost the allowed number of troops to be deployed in a certain castle. They could be somewhat cheap(3 bucks to boost 1 is fair?) and whenever the territory is conquered by good they all vanish(0|0|0).
I havent played this map in awhile so I cant exactly remember the details, but I think only 3 evil races had issues with this needing more production slots. Orcs for deploying goblin spam in Moria and the South/North Caves, and Haradrim and Khand down south since they cant get any high PU territory to capture and start reinforcing Mordor easier and closer from.
Rather then just affecting a Castle that already produces units, I think it could work better as being a factory itself but has a limit of producing 1 unit. I think maybe also giving it a defense of 1 so that you get alittle more incentive to use them, and also allow them to be made same turn the territory is conquered as a benefit of only being able to make 1 unit. Would also help Haradrim naval landings since they can reinforce on the second turn instead of the third.