Middle Earth: Battle For Arda - Official Thread
-
@Dany did you go to Cernel's school of grammar
-
@Captain-Crunch Keep it respectful and on topic.
-
he doth protest too much amiright
-
This game is truly beautiful. My boys and I have been enjoying it while at home during COVID. The territory effects make the game seem realistic and create physical boundaries to angles of attack into certain regions. Very cool. The unit attributes are very important and take a while to learn, but are worth it and add realism to drive strategic and tactical decisions during purchasing. Thanks to the developers for making a very enjoyable, stand-out game.
I agree with some that the evil side has it harder than the good side. The rangers are too powerful at a cost of 6 PUs, in my opinion. Making rangers more expensive could help slow the good side rushing into evil regions, especially through mountain borders. Also, it seems that the dragons and winged nazgul are afraid of any territory with an archer in them. This seems off and hampers the options of the evil side. I suggest the archers be coded as "damageable aa" so that they don't kill dragons and winged nazgul on the first shot, but just damage them. "Damageable aa" can be added as a game option that can be turned off if desired, and including it will increase the strength of the evil side a little bit. "Damageable aa" is not unbalanced in that a winged nazgul still can't feel completely safe attacking solo against an archer. If the archer hits in aa fire and then hits in first round of combat, goodbye winged nazgul. Or a dragon going solo against two archers is still a bit risky. If the archers hit once during aa fire and then both hit during first round of combat, then goodbye dragon.
-
@daneffuller said in Middle Earth: Battle For Arda - Official Thread:
I agree with some that the evil side has it harder than the good side. The rangers are too powerful at a cost of 6 PUs, in my opinion.
Noted in my metaphorical notebook.
I suggest the archers be coded as "damageable aa" so that they don't kill dragons and winged nazgul on the first shot, but just damage them.
The archers are coded as damageable. Maybe there is a bug?
-
@alkexr Thanks for your consideration. I probably remember an older version where archers appeared to shoot down winged nazgul in one shot -- my mistake. If it's coded in, then we are good. BTW, have you thought about a FFA version with diplomacy? A FFA version might be fun to play. Makes me think of the negotiations between dwarves, elves, and men before the battle of the five armies.
-
I've been having fun experimenting with different alliances. Here's the best I came up with. It's a balanced game that makes for way more strategy options, including the Western part of the map. I've been running it with AI on Hard and the teams seem fairly balanced.
Second Darkness: Dol Guldor, Mordor, Angmar, Orcs
Arkenstone Pact: Dwarves, Woodland Realm, Northmen, Freefolk
Voice Oath: Saruman, Rohan, Ruhn, Harad
Last Alliance: High Elves, Lorien, Arnor, GondorI plan to play this set-up over the next few weeks with my sons. I'd like to know what other players have experienced with this or different alliances. (Just go into Edit mode change the alliances and save the game with the new alliances in place.)
BTW, I tried a few alternate alliance concepts with Gondor and Rohan aligned, but it was always very imbalanced. Gondor is very strong and has great geographical advantages. In addition, I found that Rohan was too weak against Gondor if not given a partner to keep it afloat; hence the Voice Oath -- Saruman using his enchanted voice to deceive lesser men to buy into his vision of a new order. Also, In the Northeast, Esgoroth, Erebor, and Elvenking Halls are too weak and in too close a proximity to survive battle against each other -- I believe that they must all three be aligned together for each of them to have a fighting chance and for each to maintain a presence long term.
-
What a phenomenal map! Every faction feels unique. Still getting a feel, but for example that the freefolk lack any trebuchets or catapults (which feels fine lorewise) makes me use them very differently than a sieging faction.
I don't know what the consensus is on balance right now. I dunno if Angmar is supposed to get whomped on quickly, but a very minor tweak that might favor them would be to lower PU in West Angmar, East Angmar, and West Rhudaur, and increase it in West Mountains of Angmar, East Mountains of Angmar, and North Misty Mountains. Or something like that. I'm scratching my head as to why Ettenmoors is worth 3 unless you want to encourage fighting over it?
-
Four alliance update: Played Arkenstone Pact vs Hard AI and Voice Oath vs Hard AI. Currently playing Second Darkness vs Hard AI. Overall, the game is balanced, challenging, and fun. Battle fronts are in continuous flux and shifting often. So far for us, it takes about 20 rounds for one alliance to gain the upper hand.
Where available, the players and AI produce many Rangers and can control large swaths of land with stacks of Rangers, moving as needed from one front to another without hindrance due to mountains — very strong advantage.
-
Proposed balance adjustments: 1) Nerf Eagle movement to 4 or increase cost. 2) Increase ranger cost by 1. The High Elves - Freefolk snowball is just too strong. 3) Consider decreasing uruk_warrior price by 1.
Or implement all 3.
Have been playing with all three settings: eagle range nerf, ranger +1 cost, and uruk_warrior -1 cost, and it feels much more balanced to us. It really doesn't change the feel much early on, as it doesn't change starting units or unit balance by much (eagles excepted). What these changes do, is make it harder to snowball and encourages more unit diversity.
-
Four alliance update: We've played all four alliances to winning result now. The games are very interesting and the whole map has undulating battlefronts. So far, Voice Oath seems strongest due to protected rear territories, and Second Darkness seems weakest due to fewer defensive options.
Here are a couple of suggestions to consider -- these go along with others that have been made to balance the overall game and strengthen Evil: For Angmar and Dul Guldor, there are few cheap defensive units available to enhance stacking to control key territories and pinch points. This limits strategic options, including attrition battles, strategic retreats, and capital hold-out strategies.
I suggest making the barrow wights cheaper and giving them a movement of 0 or 1. This would create a very unique unit, a very special feel when playing Angmar, and aligns with Middle Earth lore regarding Angmar being a haunted, ruinous realm. I also think it would be interesting to give Dul Guldor "Lesser Spider" instead of the Shelob-like (Mordor-like) Spider unit that it currently has. The lesser spiders could be cheap, defensive units that prefer wilderness or forest to keep with the lore of Middle Earth, specifically The Hobbit.
-
Strategy question (standard 2 alliances): does Saruman normally bag Tharbad early then redeploy against Rohan, holding Tharbad to the degree necessary to be a bottlestop against the Freefolk? Do the Freefolk simply mass against Tharbad or are other strategies common?
-
And do Gondor/Harad naturally have a naval arms race ticking-along in parallel to the Gondor/Mordor face-off?
-
@mattbarnes I haven't seen Saruman take Tharbad, usually they need everything they have vs Rohan. I'm curious how this strategy has worked out for you or your opponent.
I've seen Goblins take Tharbad early and then fortify it (freefolk don't have siege so they can hold ok) however this means less pressure on lorien and high elves. It put goblins into a long-term defensive position but that was ok.
I've seen freefolk mostly go all-in on south (crossing at Tharbad and flooding goblins/saruman), or north to help contain Angmar and then flood over to the other side of the misty mountains. Going south seemed to work better tbh, but if for some reason wood elves or the northmen are doing poorly sending some units across can help counter.
I've not seen a Gondor/Harad naval arms race though I'm sure it could happen. Harad doesn't really have the income for more than a turn or two of ship production anyways if they want to remain a land threat. It's more that Harad can go full land and work with Mordor for an osgiliath crossing or a fords crossing, while using what ships they have to distract gondor units. Or, spend a bit on ships for a turn or two, then gondor has to pick what they want to defend by sea, then harad can land elsewhere. Gondor's sea front is just too large for them to effectively defend by sea. But really the most effective non-lore strat for gondor has been just to send some of their starting units through dunharrow to help rohan.
-
The games are not yet complete but I've attached for info. We had played an older version of this map some time ago, so errors were made in early turns of these games as familiarity returned to us. Nevertheless, Saruman to Tharbad and Harad navy were features of both openings (I am Good in one and Evil in the other). MM2.tsvg MM1.tsvg
-
This Map seems to be unopenable in the latest TripleA version. I've raised a Report through other channels.
-
@mattbarnes I see a github issue https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues/8076 about this. The problem is that the new edition now will look for valid game xml files in other places than map/games/*.xml. And there is an xml file in this map that it thinks is a game file and is trying to load it and failing at it. So the game engine needs to be fixed but if that xml file can be removed from the game zip, then it would also "fix" it.
-
@Trevan @mattbarnes Thanks! If you re-download the map, it should work now.
-
I've started working on the next major update. Watch this video dev diary for some of the upcoming changes.
-
@alkexr Cool. Sounds like a lot of thought is going into the new version.
Hello! It looks like you're interested in this conversation, but you don't have an account yet.
Getting fed up of having to scroll through the same posts each visit? When you register for an account, you'll always come back to exactly where you were before, and choose to be notified of new replies (either via email, or push notification). You'll also be able to save bookmarks and upvote posts to show your appreciation to other community members.
With your input, this post could be even better 💗
Register Login