Middle Earth: Battle For Arda - Official Thread

alkexr

@cernel Yeah, that's the best quality I could squeeze out of the free slideshow editor I'd just googled. Imagine the worst one

prastle

@alkexr Which here? do I use ? Pokes @Hepps

Cernel

@alkexr not sure what of the following would be more consistent:
Middle Earth: The Battle For Arda
Middle Earth: the Battle for Arda
Middle Earth: the battle for Arda

I would go for the second one, since "The Lord of the Rings" is not written as "The Lord Of The Rings".
Of course, I assume that "Battle" is merely figurative, as I assume that was a war or at least a campaign (with several battles), which is fine, as it is commonly used this way also in WWII (for example, the "Battle of the Atlantic", that is strictly not a battle, but a campaign, with a lot of battles).

Maybe off topic, but @redrum @LaFayette how about to rename the current LOTR game as "Middle Earth: the Lord of the Rings" or "Middle Earth: The Lord Of The Rings" instead of "Lord of the Rings: Middle Earth"?

It would be good if all games set in "Middle Earth" (currently, 2 maps) stay one beside the other, both in game selection and in lobby, like you have the various "World War II etc.".

Opinions?

Frostion

Middle Earth: The Battle For Arda (The F in "For" needs to be lowercase.)
Middle Earth: the Battle for Arda ("the" needs to be uppercase since an : sign is treated as a . (with few exceptions of course))
Middle Earth: the battle for Arda (same problem, as well as the b in "battle". It needs to be uppercase.)

I would recommend the name
"Middle Earth: Battle for Arda" (BFA?)
thereby removing "the" and shortening the title. It seems to me that this word is redundant, just as the titles Lord of the Rings: War in the North and Middle Earth: Shadow of War also can live without it.

I'm looking forward to a release

Cernel

Not sure but:
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/capitalization-after-colons/
In British English, the first letter after a colon is capitalized only if it’s a proper noun or an acronym; in American English, the first word after a colon is sometimes capitalized if it begins a complete sentence.

So, I guess that means the "the" should be capitalized if it is American English, assuming that counts as a "complete sentence".
But, yeah, I didn't know that Americans would (sometimes?) capitalize a "the" after a colon, if what I briefly searched is correct. That feels strange and somewhat arbitrary, since a colon is not a full stop.

Example of British usage from the university of Sussex:
www.sussex.ac.uk/informatics/punctuation/colonandsemi/colon
I recommend Chinnery's book Oak Furniture: the British Tradition.

So, in Denmark you use American English not British English? Anyways, I stand corrected, since I guess @alkexr is using American English. Just never knew about this American usage before.

alkexr

@cernel said in Middle Earth: The Battle For Arda - official thread:

since I guess @alkexr is using American English

Good to know.

"Middle Earth: Battle for Arda" seems to be the simplest solution, though I won't rename the repo or anything, only the displayed title.

redrum

@alkexr FYI, renaming the repo is pretty easy if you want it to align with everything else.

alkexr

@redrum Oh, I found it. I didn't estimate the chance of the repo name being easily modifiable to be large enough to outweigh the inconvenience of being bothered to ask. I hope it won't mess too much with GitHub Desktop though.

redrum

@alkexr Can't remember if you need to delete and reclone the repo to github desktop after renaming it.

TheDog

@alkexr
Hello again, thanks for posting your PU calculations, most hopeful.

I have been playing with the Battle/Odds Calculator and come to the following conclusions;
That the following should be increased in points.
wizard
nazgul
winged_nazgul
balrog
dragon

I am hesitant to say say by how much, as assumptions have to made to value of some of the clever benefits, but these are the units with the most difference.

You will notice most them are from the evil faction.

So maybe review their PU before testing?

alkexr

@thedog It is not entirely impossible that wizards, balrogs and nazgul can be abused with sufficient fodder. In the last rework they were given more raw power relative to their leadership/terror abilities, and I didn't consider this option. It's not obvious how you would do the same with winged nazgul or dragons though, because they are a less cost-effective means to get raw power, and especially because they can be countered by archers quite cost-effectively.

So I'd say I'll tweak those three units a bit. They will be more expensive, and have more terror/leadership at the expense of some raw power.

redrum

@alkexr I actually don't think they are that overpowered and given that they require lots of fodder units to be useful, you end up with kind of a cap on how many you would ever want to build anyways (essentially can't spam them). I think making them a bit overpowered is better than underpowered to ensure they are getting built especially during the balancing phase for the map.

alkexr

@redrum The goal would be to make the dumb "cheapest fodder + balrog" combo not viable, because then all the other units won't get built. The preferred combo is "fodder + stronger units + 1-2 leaders for bonus only".

The reason why this worked was that more than 50% of the total combat effect of the units was raw power, and only the smaller part was the bonus, and so they were worth buying even above the soft cap you mentioned, to the extent that they could efficiently provide all the power an army needs, without other "power-units". The change was to make raw power less significant, and so (hopefully) they are only worth buying for the leadership / terror now.

Changes:

wizard: att/def 6 (x2) -> 5 (x2), 12 lead -> 20 lead, cost 14 -> 20
balrog: att/def 7 (x3) -> 6 (x3), 8 lead+terr -> 12 lead+terr, cost 33 -> 40
nazgul: att/def 7 -> 6, 6 lead, 12 terr -> 8 lead, 16 terr, cost 15 -> 18

I don't think they are too expensive, they give around ~1.5 power per PU, compared to ~0.5 power per PU for fodder, or ~1 pppu for average strong units, and they survive many battle rounds. But tell me how much you'd be willing to pay for them.

(Making them stronger overall also has the added benefit of making games with "Unlimited Unique Units" off more interesting.)

redrum

@alkexr I guess I'm not 100% following how that makes "cheapest fodder + balrog" combo not viable? Is the reasoning that you still need more attack/defense power then that would give?

I also worry that since the 'unique units' have AA vs each other that if you make them more expensive that battles will be very random. Essentially come down to whoever loses a 'unique unit' to AA is gonna lose cause of the huge power drop.

alkexr

@redrum said in Middle Earth: The Battle For Arda - official thread:

I guess I'm not 100% following how that makes "cheapest fodder + balrog" combo not viable? Is the reasoning that you still need more attack/defense power then that would give?

The combo was buying a wizard per 6-7 fodder, because one wizard per 12 fodder is not enough power. Now buying a wizard per 6-7 fodder was made less efficient (less raw power, more cost, increase in leadership irrelevant), while buying a wizard per 20 (12) units is at least as efficient as it was (at least that's the intention).

I also worry that since the 'unique units' have AA vs each other that if you make them more expensive that battles will be very random. Essentially come down to whoever loses a 'unique unit' to AA is gonna lose cause of the huge power drop.

I could recite the cached wisdom that a good strategy needs to be prepared for randomness, but that'd probably not be very helpful I don't think it's that big of a problem, because realistically it will only happen if the Orcs send a balrog to Rivendell, or between the Woodland Realm and Dol Guldur. I would be much more worried about siege, it's much more common and can also cause huge swings.

redrum

@alkexr Ok, that's what I thought. I see your point. Given the complexity of the unit set, its really hard to tell without playing some games. Only the battlefield can truly decide!

And don't worry I'm a dice player at heart so I get the preparing for randomness but there is also some point where things are so random that it can really be planned for. Not saying that is necessarily the case here but just wanted to point that out.

TheDog

@alkexr
Against Mordor the Gondor player must spam Rangers. It is easy for Mordor to pick a weak Gondor area low in archers and crush it. The winged nazgul will typically add an extra +6 power to the Atk and remove up to 12 power from the enemy. Then they will fly away to the rear, to do the same again next turn. The Mordor player always has the choice to commit the winged nazgul or not.

The winged nazgul did share similar stats with their land nazgul, perhaps it is worth another look at the winged nazgul?

alkexr

@thedog Against Mordor the Gondor player must spam tower guards and pray that the balance is good enough that West Osgiliath won't fall. Otherwise... well, good luck.

alkexr

BFA is up and downloadable from the official map repository.

@redrum I won't be available for most of the weekend, but otherwise I'm ready to start. Take your time getting familiar with the game, if you'd like. Choose a side and map options. Also choose a pre-release version that's relatively stable, I'll download that one.

redrum

@alkexr Awesome! I'd prefer to try Good out first since I haven't played around with the map much and think its a bit easier to learn the reactive side. I'd say let's do all default settings except do LL. The recent pre-releases should all work fine and I'm gonna go with https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/releases/tag/1.9.0.0.11665.

If you send me your dice email (you need to register an email at https://dice.tripleawarclub.org) then I can set up the forum thread and game. Then we can just play turns as we have time. No big rush or anything.