Middle Earth: Battle For Arda - Official Thread

prastle

zlefin

notes so far:

What does Unseen do? I couldn't find in the game notes what it does. At least not that I remember seeing, it could use its own entry.

In the unit info, some units say stuff like "prefers wilderness" or "prefers open skies", whereas other units it specifies the exact keyword and just say "unyielding". It should really always use the keyword imo, as when you're using the table in the notes to lookup what's going to happen to a unit it's way easier when the keywords matchup.

In Hard AI games, evil seems to always win.

The AI can play the map reasonably, but there's a number of specific parts which cause it to make mistakes, because they're not sufficiently supported by the ai engine yet (and won't be for some time). So AI cannot be used to estimate the map well.

vs the AI I had a game hwerein evil obtained the win condition, but I kept playing and good ultimately won (I was playing the high elves, with all other nations ai, long term eagle spam is brutal).

Air battles are weird: there are times when you'd far rather your units DIDNT fight in the air battle, and just waited for the main battle. but righ tnow it's mandatory they partake in the air battle.

alkexr

@zlefin said in Middle Earth: Battle For Arda - Official Thread:

What does Unseen do? I couldn't find in the game notes what it does. At least not that I remember seeing, it could use its own entry.

The entry for terror mentions that Unseen units are unaffected (units which exist in the Unseen world or "wraith-world"). But you're right, it deserves an entry.

In the unit info, some units say stuff like "prefers wilderness" or "prefers open skies", whereas other units it specifies the exact keyword and just say "unyielding". It should really always use the keyword imo, as when you're using the table in the notes to lookup what's going to happen to a unit it's way easier when the keywords matchup.

Noted.

In Hard AI games, evil seems to always win.
The AI can play the map reasonably, but there's a number of specific parts which cause it to make mistakes, because they're not sufficiently supported by the ai engine yet (and won't be for some time). So AI cannot be used to estimate the map well.

The lack of support for specific parts is the smaller problem. The core issue is the AI's strategy, or rather, the lack of strategy. Like Gondor not even trying to slow down the advance of Mordor + Harad, which would be crucial IMO.

vs the AI I had a game hwerein evil obtained the win condition, but I kept playing and good ultimately won (I was playing the high elves, with all other nations ai, long term eagle spam is brutal).

I don't think you really have the time for eagle spam. A game against a competent opponent will be over in one way or the other long before eagle spam does anything significant. In particular, I don't think you can hold Rivendell with eagles.

But yes, of course, a game vs AI (especially when you only play one faction) is something entirely different. I used to play a lot of games like that too, but they become boring after a while (especially after you start to feel the shortcomings of the AI). You can't really make a map interesting to play with most factions played by AI, except maybe FFA.

Air battles are weird: there are times when you'd far rather your units DIDNT fight in the air battle, and just waited for the main battle. but righ tnow it's mandatory they partake in the air battle.

That is sort of the point. The Nazgul above the battlefield at the Black Gate didn't want to fight the eagles, either.

zlefin

I don't recall your nazgul/black gate point. I go by book canon. I don't recall them fighting in the book.

so that's what unseen does; doesn't seem like a good keyword, in that it's not intuitively obvious what it means ("grokkable") even if it fits the lore.

On ai; both are problems; but core strategy is something that might be one day fixed with some decent lookahead protocols; alot of the other stuff just won't be fixed cuz it's too map specific and hard for the ai to assess. not that it really matters which one is the bigger problem for the ai. I'm pretty sure it is possible in principle to make a map enjoyable with mostly ai nations; iirc one of the newer ones is pretty decent at that, as are some of the classic maps.

You might not have time to spam pure eagles, but they're probably still a good investment, given how the math works out in similar cases on other maps. Mostly though my point was about eagles but about ways in which the victory detection rule might fail. Probably wouldn't apply in human games though, as the ai doesn't know to use siege properly.

it'll be interesting once you have more human play to get proper map results.

edit add:

what does the terrain type "pass" do? it doesn't have its own entry in the table. nor do I see any obvious note nearby that explains what it does.

snaga skirmishers are marked as being ambushers, but their bonuses appear to be the ones for wilderness.

Hepps

You should really put the link for the down load in the fist post of the thread. Trying to track down how and where to get the newest version is a bit of a challenge.

alkexr

@hepps You can download it from the game. But having the link in the first post certainly won't hurt anyone.

Hepps

@alkexr Ah yes the name change. Now I got it.

Good to see it back on my screen.

TheDog

@alkexr
Thanks for your method of PU calculation I have modified my own, so consider the following;

Increase the PUs of the following;
uruk_pikeman
olog_hai
wainrider_chieftain
noldorin_warrior

Increase the following by 4+ PU
swan_knight
kings_company

Rhun should not have a trebuchet, too advanced. Maybe they should not even have a catapult?

Consider giving Siege attacks to Wizards, so they can attack Battlements so Woodland Realm and High Elves can take Settlements easier?

Consider giving Siege attacks to Trolls (Angmar, Orcs) and Olog-hai(Mordor) and Bears(Northmen)
Could then remove Catapult from Orc list, too advanced for them,
Perhaps the Balrog could have siege attacks?

Lorien, could have Wizards, as in Galadriel and other Noldor?

Free Folk could have Catapults?

Im liking all the coding and graphical changes, keep up the good work guys!!!

alkexr

@thedog said in Middle Earth: Battle For Arda - Official Thread:

Rhun should not have a trebuchet, too advanced. Maybe they should not even have a catapult?

The Easterlings are not barbarians. It's a common misconception that steppe nomads are brainless savages. (The Mongols for example did have trebuchets, and were quite advanced compared to Feudal Europe.) We know almost nothing about Rhûn, but we know that it consisted of many different kingdoms, tribes and hordes of varying levels of development.

Consider giving Siege attacks to Wizards, so they can attack Battlements so Woodland Realm and High Elves can take Settlements easier?
Consider giving Siege attacks to Trolls (Angmar, Orcs) and Olog-hai(Mordor) and Bears(Northmen)
Perhaps the Balrog could have siege attacks?

A unit can't have multiple targeted attacks. That's a feature the map-maker community suggested multiple times, but it's a lot of work I guess.

Could then remove Catapult from Orc list, too advanced for them,

The Goblins of Goblin Town are explicitly mentioned to be very creative when creating advanced machinery and tools for war and torture and other evil purposes.

Lorien, could have Wizards, as in Galadriel and other Noldor?

Tolkien used the word "Wizard" only to mean the Istari: Gandalf, Saruman, Radagast and the two Blue Wizards. They are Maiar (gods, basically). But the idea is great, Elven magic-users could be added. I'm not sure though, should they give leadership? Or what abilities should they have?

Free Folk could have Catapults?

I guess they could... I just couldn't really visualize how the hobbits decide to start buidling catapults

TheDog

@alkexr
The Free Folk also include humans, men from Bree, so they could man the Catapults, the Edain, Men of the West, or the Rangers of the North could have taught them to build them.

For me most factions should have units that can help take settlements.

The Noldor
Noldor ‘royalty’like Galadriel and Fëanor who made the Silmaril, could be Magicians to differentiate them from Wizards. That way they could have lesser powers than the Istari.

The Noldor elves would have their 1st and 2nd age weaponry that the Orcs would fear and so the noldor_warrior could cause terror.

Galadriel would have many Noldor followers with her in Lorien so I think Lorien could also have noldor_warrior.

A case can be made for giving terror causing or leadership to noldor_warrior as they would be revered for living thousands of years by humans and elves alike.

Hepps

@alkexr I like the way you re-engineered the unit classes and terrain effects. It is a much cleaner system than the previous version.

Cernel

@alkexr said in Middle Earth: Battle For Arda - Official Thread:

The Mongols for example did have trebuchets, and were quite advanced compared to Feudal Europe.

Well, they had trebuchets because the more advanced civilizations they subjected provided them.

epinikion

hey alkexr,

my first evaluation of balance is: evil is way to strong

no problem to take early rihan and arnor city
no problem to take early osgiliath.

so the momentum is clearly on evils side. easy to balance tuv early with better momentum and growing income. i guess you should do something for the good side:
a) give some more units around osgiliath to gondor and some more units to rohan
b) make few good units stronger.

a or b or even c. di somethng for the good

epi

Dr. Stein

Hi, is dale going to be a nation??? or is it going to be under northmen? i understand that it adds some strategic aspect, but its still pretty wierd.
Also, has anybody found a way to stop rhun if its invaiding mirkwood? no way you can defend elevenkings halls + dains halls + erebor + esgaroth + dale...and rhun is perfectly capable creating a strong offensive army that will tame them out one by one...or at least the smaller ones without erebor and maybe one other, but i feel that like this (with a smaller army guarding teritories east of erebor) rhun can efectively cripple mirkwood dwarwes and northmen

unless i just played the good poorly...

alkexr

@dr-stein said in Middle Earth: Battle For Arda - Official Thread:

Hi, is dale going to be a nation??? or is it going to be under northmen? i understand that it adds some strategic aspect, but its still pretty wierd.

The inhabitants of Dale are Northmen. Dale was a sovereign realm, but then so were Lindon, the Shire, Dunland, Fangorn, the Dwarves of Ered Luin, the Goblins of Goblin Town, the Orcs of Gundabad, the Dwarves of Ered Mithrin, the Dragons of Ered Mithrin, the Lands of the Eotheod, the Lands of the Beornings, Lake Town, the Realm of Vidugavia, the Kingdom of Rhovanion, the Balcoth, Dorwinion, the Dwarves of the Iron Hills, Nurn, Khand and Umbar (that I can list off the top of my head). None of them is given a separate player.

Also, has anybody found a way to stop rhun if its invaiding mirkwood? no way you can defend elevenkings halls + dains halls + erebor + esgaroth + dale...and rhun is perfectly capable creating a strong offensive army that will tame them out one by one...or at least the smaller ones without erebor and maybe one other, but i feel that like this (with a smaller army guarding teritories east of erebor) rhun can efectively cripple mirkwood dwarwes and northmen
unless i just played the good poorly...

Depends. If Angmar focuses on the Dwarves (like the AI tends to), then the North is going to have a hard time. In any case, Rhun is very strong on the offense, and on plains - try to fight them in the forest as much as possible, coordinate the 3 players, and don't leave your stacks on the frontline where Rhun can attack them - keep them behind for counterattacks, to force Rhun into defense.

But then I don't know if it's possible to hold out against a well-played Rhun. Balance testing has just begun.

zlefin

While killable fortifications are helpful vs the ai (because the ai doesn't build to counter them); they seem rather weak vs a thoughtful player; they're too easy to work around, often very vulnerable to strafing, and getting to reuse your siege to take out the fortifications in several different places is great.

redrum

So after a PBF game with @alkexr here are my thoughts.

Summary

Map feels like it has lots of flavor, unit sets are diverse, and territory effects are meaningful
Air, multi-HP, mountain, and high movement units are OP
Sea units are UP and feel not very well integrated
Evil significantly stronger than Good

General

Air units are overpowered across the board. This is because they are both too strong for their cost but also because the kamikaze air rules give them even more flexibility than air units on regular maps.
Sea units are way underpowered and pretty much get crushed by air units. They need to either have significantly more defense or be cheaper otherwise they just instant die.
Multi-HP air units are crazy overpowered (dragons, winged nazguls, eagles) especially if you can get a decent stack of them as their is really no counter and no way to block them from strafing enemy units. They also instant heal at the end of the player's turn so no chance to attack weaken multi-HP units.
Some nations not having any siege makes it almost impossible for them to conquer cities with fortifications.
Most mountain units are too cheap. Being able to move on mountains is a very large advantage on the map.
Movement overall seems to be too high and too cheap. This applies to both land and air units. Being able to move 4 on land or 4-6-8 on air is a ton for the size of this map. Unless you have a close objective near a city, its way more effective to build high movement units as they pressure a much larger portion of the map.
Feels like there are too many starting units on the map. End up with giant stacks of units on turn 1. This combined with the high movement makes the map feel very tactical and not very strategic. Mostly about creating a doom stack and marching it around.
Evil is significantly favored over Good as they have significantly better units sets, momentum, and easily get a TUV lead even in round 1. Only thing Good has going is they start with more production and can maybe keep a production lead for a few turns but this is mostly irrelevant because Evil is getting better bang for their buck on unit production anyways.
Mordor and DolGuldur unit colors are way too similar.
Would be nice to tone some of the territory colors down a bit. This would make the map a bit easier on the eyes as well as make units pop out more.
Gondors units are very hard to see.

Saruman

Start out with a large stack threatening to take Hornburg early and mountains around them provide a lot of defense against Rohan.
Dunlending wildman - OP as they are cheap but can dominate the mountains
Crebain - OP as they are a cheap air unit with 6 movement, great for attacking ships and in mountains

Angmar

Most overpowered unit set in the game. Great starting terrain with lots of mountains and very fortified cities. Can pressure lots of different areas and level fortifications in cities.
Dragons, dragons, dragons are probably the most OP unit in the game right now. They literally do everything with 3 HP and siege attack. There really is no counter to them and they allow unbelievable TUV trades each turn. It only gets worse if Angmar continues to build 1 each turn.
Snaga skirmisher and Orc marauder are an OP combo as they are relatively cheap, can both enter mountains, and have decent stats when combined. Adding a Nazgul and Dragons just makes it insane.

Morder

Start out too strong compared to Gondor. Can pretty much just walk through Osgiliath and push around Minas Tirith to conquer either a lot of Gondor or Rohan.
Winged Nazguls are OP as multi-HP air units with good stats and 6 movement.

Arnor

Really tough position with Angmar being much stronger. Essentially just try to hold onto their cities and minimize bad TUV trades with Dragons.
Mostly just builds fodder units to try to stack its cities. Walls are useless against Dragons. Not much going for them.

Gondor

Too weak vs Mordor. No air units. Mostly just masses tower guards to try and hold off Mordor.

Northmen

Spread out with different options depending on what Angmar and Rhun do.
Raiders are OP with 4 movement and strong attack especially on plains.

Lorien

Really weak compared to orcs. Need to essentially huddle in their cities and build up. No way to defend Cerin Amroth if Orcs focus on it.
Kind of unique unit set that is strong in the forest.

Orcs

Great position in the mountains and excellent unit set.
Stabber and Shooter are OP combo of cheap fodder units
Scout are OP mountain unit that has 4 movement
Trolls are OP mountain unit that is pretty cheap for 2 HP
Bats are OP air unit that is cheap and has 6 attack

Rhun

Starts with a large stack of high movement units. Pretty much gonna cause havoc for dwarves/northmen/woodland.
3-4 move units just seem too strong/cheap across the board.

HighElves

Eagles are OP as a 2 HP 8 movement air unit
Rest of their unit set is pretty weak as it doesn't really have cheap units and 6-7 PU units are all mediocre
No siege

Woodland

Very weak. Just huddles in its cities and tries to defend. Good units in the forest.
No siege

Harad

Just can opens for Mordor.
Oilphants seem OP as very strong 3 HP land units

DolGuldur

Pressures Woodland
Bats are OP air unit that is cheap and has 6 attack

Freefolk

Mostly support Arnor and try to pressure into Saruman
No siege
Mostly cheap units that fair pretty well especially the 3-4 move units.

Dwarves

Kind of all over the place. Mostly try to pressure Orcs or Angmar in the mountains.
Expensive unit set with low movement.
Ravens are probably their best unit even though they are probably the worst air unit overall

Rohan

Tough position against a stronger Saruman.
Some strong high movement units but not much space to use them
End up having to spam cheaper units to try to build up a stack to slow down Saruman

Cernel

@redrum said in Middle Earth: Battle For Arda - Official Thread:

Would be nice to tone some of the territory colors down a bit. This would make the map a bit easier on the eyes as well as make units pop out more.

I suggest using blends for this (I can post the code, if wanted), keeping them off default, but giving that option (by putting them on).

Frostion

Yes, dimming down the player/territory colors would probably do this map good. As long as there are the distinct territory border color outlines, I think it would work.

@alkexr If you will fiddle with the colors, maybe you should just pick out and dim the strongest ones (player color and the player's units) that stand the most out. And only dim to a degree that then matches the layers/colors that you didn't pick.

Hepps

@alkexr I think @redrum had some good observations. Most importantly is that if the volume of units were reduced at the beginning of the game it might help to slow a bit of the onslaught and give Good some breathing room. Evil can pretty much decimate everything that stands against it with all its multi-hit units at game start. Most of the valuable units for Good are either rendered impotent by the sheer numbers of opponents on turn one or out right destroyed.