Middle Earth: Battle For Arda - Official Thread

alkexr

A quick update on the upcoming version

There is a new player, the Orc Holds of the Misty Mountains (the original Orcs player will go by the name Moria)
River crossings have new unique mechanics
Tharbad is now owned by Arnor

Cernel

Maybe you should leave the current one as it is and make these changes into a second edition, meaning a new map. I think these are more changes than going from WW2 Classic to Revised, and adding Revised didn't cause the Classic map to be overwritten. It may be still good then to remove the first edition from download list.

rsnorunt

Love the new Mirkwood changes! Hopefully the additional distance will give Dol Guldor some time to grow and consolidate before the elves and northmen hem them in. And I think it'll open up some interesting strategic decisions for the Sylvan player about which of the 4 theaters they should devote their forces (Saruman, Moria, Dol Guldor, and Angmar/Gundabad). Not really sure what you mean about the woodland realm being weak. They honestly feel quite strong compared to Dol Guldor in the current edition. This is the turn 1 I've been using recently

Screenshot 2021-10-12 231630.png

Dol guldor has to choose between east mirkwood and the narrows, since they can't hold back the northman counter attack in both places, and that leaves them open to a can-open into west mirkwood. It's hard to see Dol Guldor reaching Eryn Galen or Greenwood the Great before turn 3-4, especially if the Northmen send a raider or two to the Bight and or Anduin Bank/Wilderland every turn. And by then the PU discrepancy seems too great to overcome.

A little worried about the new Moria player losing access to goblins. Gameplaywise it seems difficult to hold territory in Lorien without levy troops on the rivers, and lorewise orcs and goblins are the same (and the movies/other media have goblins in Moria). But I love the change to the Methedras/Nimrodel area, and the 2-space Drimril Dale. It lets Lorien and Fangorn interact much more easily, but it also stops the ents from terrorizing the mountains between moria and isengard as effectively.

I'm a fan to the changes around Dale and Esgaroth, it makes them more distinct as settlements (and makes esgaroth more defensible), but also allows Rhun to potentially unite the forces on either side of the Celduin before they have enough trebuchets to take a city. I'm a little worried about the changes to Ered Mithrin though. I feel like a big part of the early Angmar game is figuring out how to consolidate your dragons without the dwarves killing them. By splitting up the withered heath, this seems harder, though I guess this is offset by erebor no longer bordering the withered heath. I'm also a fan of connecting the grey mountains to west forodwaith rather than the west grey mountains to forodwaith.

Have you looked at Rhun/Rhovanion yet? I feel like an extra settlement for Rhun in the Balchoth lands or southwestern Rhovanion could be cool, and allow Rhun to play much more dynamically on the west bank of the Celduin / the brown lands / can-open more easily for Dol Guldor. Also I definitely feel that the restriction to 8 production hits Rhun much harder than other players, though I could see it happening to Moria or Angmar in the new version.

Also, have you figured out a new turn order? I feel like combining Lorien and the Woodland Realms, adding Gundabad, making Rivendell less useless early game, and giving Tharbad to Arnor all have pretty massive can-opening potential. Most of the theaters of war have multiple players, and many of the players participate in several far-away theatres, so I feel like turn order and map design probably need to happen together.

rsnorunt

So I've been thinking about it, and my proposed turn order is:

Saruman, Angmar, Mordor
Arnor, Gondor, Sylvan
Harad, Dol Guldor, Gundabad
Northmen, Rohan
Moria, Rhun
Freefolk, Rivendell, Dwarves

I feel like this preserves a lot of the dynamics from current version, but gives evil a bit more initiative in turn 1, mostly at the expense of the Northmen and Rivendell. I tried to keep most of the can opens "less optimal" like they currently are (no cracking the walls of Osgiliath and letting the Oliphants trample through), but I might have gotten some wrong, esp with your planned new units. You're the designer and of course you know what's best, so feel free to take or ignore.

The turn order in each theater of war are below. Minor players are in parentheses.

Celduin: (Angmar), (Dol Guldor), Northmen, Rhun, Dwarves

Same order as before, (Rhun still can opens for Dol Guldor against Northmen, and angmar can still potentially breach dwarven cities for Rhun, though this is often not feasible).

Mirkwood: Sylvan, Dol Guldor, Northmen, (Rhun)

Dol Guldor now gains some much needed initiative in turn 1, but it's otherwise the same order

North Mountains: Angmar, Gundabad, Northmen, (Rivendell), Dwarves

Angmar goes directly before gundabad, so can can-open or potentially breach fortresses for them, but at the same time, Carn Dum is pretty far so Angmar probably won't have a ton of troops. Rivendell is far enough from the Dwarves that they probably can't can-open too much, and the northmen don't have enough mountaineers to do too much damage, but this is probably the swingiest front in this turn order.

North Anduin: (Angmar), (Sylvan), (Dol Guldor), Gundabad, Northmen, Moria, Rivendell

Gundabad can opens for Moria against Rivendell instead of vice versa (I get the sense that Gundabad will be much stronger up here than Moria because of Goblintown), and the Northmen can block. Angmar or Dol Guldor could potentially can-open a bit, but their production centers are pretty far from Rivendell. Rivendell can can-open for Sylvan mountaineers.

Central Misty Mountains: Saruman, Arnor/Tharbad, Sylvan, (Rohan), Moria, (Free Folk), Rivendell

Moria can-opens for Saruman against Sylvans once again. Arnor could can-open for Sylvans, but they probably won't be next to each other too much. Free people can-open for Rivendell and Arnor instead of vice versa so you won't have two high elves suddenly letting 30 ponies through. Rohan no longer can-opens for Sylvans against Moria.

Gap of Rohan: Saruman, Gondor, Sylvan, Rohan

Same as before

South Anduin: Mordor, Gondor, Harad, (Dol Guldor), Rohan

Same as before. Dol Guldor is after harad, so you won't have 2 wargs breaking a screen and letting oliphants hit Rohan's army.

Southern Gondor: Gondor, Harad

Same as before

Eriador: Angmar, Arnor, Gundabad, Freefolk, (Rivendell), (Dwarves)

Gundabad can break Arnor's can-opens before the free folk can seize all the territory. Gundabad can-opens for Angmar, so Arnor can recover from dragon attacks.

zlefin

I'm concerned about merging woodland elves and lorien. Being able to theater-shift expenditures easily makes a big difference, and they seem like places where each theater should have their own issues to focus on. They are of course also separate kingdoms in the lore.

I wish there were an intermediate build, without all the big changes; that just focused on the changes to bug-fix and balance tweak the present version.

zlefin

Ran into a problem again on the existing map: I keep forgetting that Front Porch is a cave instead of a mountain; because the graphics on the map look like a mountain province. I know the area has been reworked for the coming version; I just wanna be sure that provinces terrains are highly visible, since Mountain vs Cave in particular matters an awful lot, as mountain blocks pathing for many units. I'm gonna lose a large stack in my present game because of forgetting.

Most (maybe all) of the other cave provinces also have settlements, which makes them have a visual style quite distinct from that of mountains; but front porch looks almost identical to mountains.

alkexr

@zlefin You should probably ask @Hepps about that (though I haven't seen him online in a while).

zlefin

How is the "all units blitz" option supposed to work exactly? I expected it to work like in World at War, or most typical maps; any unit could walk through capturing an empty territory and keep going if it has movement, no other limits or exceptions. But that's not what happened. Instead for unclear reasons, units could sometimes grab multiple territories, and sometimes they'd be stuck on the first one they captured, and sometimes they could leave the first one they captured, but only to go back to friendly land, they couldn't go onto to another hostile territory. It's possible that the reasons for that related to the terrain of the province they captured or tried to move into afterwards.

I tested this going through several different nations on the first round, and the problem above kept coming up.

zlefin

I noticed recently that once a nation's capital is taken, any territories of its that are taken back by allied nations go to that allied nation rather than the original owner. I'm torn on the topic; in some cases in game I'd rather it go to the original owner, in particular if its a factory that would enable them to produce. On the other hand, if a nation has no factories at all, it's better if they don't get income they can't use.

I have a nation in my current game with a mild income and some cash, but no factories left; it'd be great if a freed factory could revert to them so they could finally spend their money.

zlefin

Please put info on Fortresses in the notes: I just found out that fortresses repair every round during battle. I didn't realize it before. It'd be helpful if that was in the notes. I've always read the notes thoroughly; but that detail isn't in the present version, and I'm not sure if it was in past versions or not.

It also makes for a bit odd gameplay, as siege can still wipe out fortresses entirely in the first strike stage; which makes a huge difference in how the battle turns out.

zlefin

I'm wondering if there's anything we could to do help expedite the next release, some xml work or some such. What remains to be done? We've been playing some games, and getting a strong feeling that good has a significant advantage, and are looking to the next version addressing that somewhat.

zlefin

An uncertainty about the intended rules, on which we'd like clarification, it may've been discussed before but worth bringing up anew.

When a flying unit attacks hostile territory, and then the 'retreat' action is taken, the flying unit can remain over the hostile territory. It then survives since air can now survive hovering land. This means there's a hostile unit contesting that territory, so units friendly to the controller of the territory can't move there in noncombat, though they can move there in combat and engage the flying units directly albeit without the help of other allied forces in that territory; and it also means that any units of the territory's controller (especially walls) will have to attack the flying units on their turn. This matters particularly in terms of dragons, who might attack, but not fully win the battle; then be left hanging over some hostile walls. The way the engine does things now, the walls then attack the dragons on their turn, and cannot retreat.

Is that the intended gameplay? If not, how should it be handled?

zlefin

Some issues related to lowluck: It might be worthwhile to have slightly different unit costs in lowluck than in dice, as the value of some units is somewhat different when one has certainty. In particular, while strafing is always a possibility, lowluck makes multihp unit strafing very safe. Even more particularly, the multihp air units can strafe very safely in a lowluck environment, whereas in dice it takes fewer archers to create a risk of direct killing the attacking air. Similarly with siege, in ll you can have just enough siege that you know you'll 100% kill all the enemy walls, whereas in dice you can't reach that level of surety.

Another issue is that the 'duel' mechanic is VERY dicey. People play lowluck because they want to reduce the impact of luck on the game; however even in lowluck duels make a HUGE difference. Units with duel are all quite powerful, and bring piles of fear or leadership, so that a single death can change the relative number of hits/round by 2-3 quite readily; even moreso since these deaths happen in the targeted attacks first strike phase, so any loss means a dead unit AND a lot of damaged missed that same round.

alkexr

@zlefin

I'm wondering if there's anything we could to do help expedite the next release, some xml work or some such. What remains to be done? We've been playing some games, and getting a strong feeling that good has a significant advantage, and are looking to the next version addressing that somewhat.

Which next release? For v3 there is a lot of work to be done still.
For v2 I'm planning an update that addresses the worst balance issues for those that want to keep playing it, but most of the big issues have no simple fix. That's why an overhaul is needed, and for now, I'm focusing my efforts on making that happen.

If you're curious, all I know is that the v2 update will probably include something like (checks notes):

Oathbreakers defense 2 -> 1
Rangers cost 6 -> 7
Pony riders cost 4 -> 5
Uruk warriors attack 4 -> 5
Eagles cost 24 -> 30
Esgaroth production 6 -> 8
Dale production 4 -> 6
Fornost unit production 5 -> 3
Lond Daer production 4 -> 6
East & West Forochel Coast owner Neutral -> Angmar

But I haven't tested any of this, and most of the balancing will probably happen by adding / removing starting units. Figuring out how many of which units to place where to get better balance is mostly trial and error with a lot of testing, which is time consuming.

How is the "all units blitz" option supposed to work exactly?

Some terrain prevents Blitz.

I noticed recently that once a nation's capital is taken, any territories of its that are taken back by allied nations go to that allied nation rather than the original owner.

It's not intentional, I'm not familiar with the parts of the xml responsible for this.

When a flying unit attacks hostile territory, and then the 'retreat' action is taken, the flying unit can remain over the hostile territory.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the two available options are either this or requiring the units to land in a territory owned at the start of the turn. Neither is great for this map.

Some issues related to lowluck: It might be worthwhile to have slightly different unit costs in lowluck than in dice, as the value of some units is somewhat different when one has certainty.

True. I'm not going to try to balance two different games though, one is plenty of work already.

By the way, I'm sorry I'm not very active, and I appreciate that you and others (like @rsnorunt) are. Writing these comments takes a long time for me. This one took (checks time) almost an hour :anguished_face: , good thing I checked the time, this is ridiculous, this just can't go on like this, I'll have to do something about it. Perfectionism is as much a curse as it is a blessing.

zlefin

@alkexr

The next v2 release is the one I was wondering about, as tweaks that improve the game in its existing form are the ones most available to do.

For me, certain units under or over-performing are the biggest concern. Unit diversity is nice, so the more balanced units with more diverse armies are most fun to me.

Testing can be done by the community feedback fairly well.

It'd be good to have some notes about which terrains affect blitz in the game notes, in case anyone uses the option.

On the air units; those are indeed the only options IF you stick to engine supported options. Sometimes maps use rules not supported by the engine to handle corner cases better. That has its ups and downs.

On lowluck, it's not really balancing two different games; as the set of divergences would be quite consistent. I could probably code the xml myself for ya; though it would be unusual to have a map with unit stats differing for ll vs dice.

Do you generally aim the maps' balance based on dice play, ll play, or a mix?

It's fine not being very active; I know the curse of perfectionism quite well.

and ofc, great work on a fun map.

edit: another minor issue came up in game: the problem of angmar/dol guldur/mordor units having very similar palette. If you have say, orc marauders, it can be hard to tell which nation they belong to visually, and easy to mistakenly think an area is just the expected nation instead of what it actually is; given how powerful can openers are on this map, mis-seeing what nation a unit belongs to can be costly. All the other nation's colors in the game are quite distinctive and the units are highly differentiable.

mortetvie

@alkexr

What would be on my wishlist is a description of terrain type rather than ONLY a picture. So, if you hover over a hill with mouse, it would have the existing picture but underneath would say "hill."

Other than that, maybe consider a limit on certain multi wound unit types?

alkexr

@zlefin

It'd be good to have some notes about which terrains affect blitz in the game notes, in case anyone uses the option.

Or just remove the restriction. I mean, if a player ticked a checkbox because they wanted to blitz, just let them blitz.

Do you generally aim the maps' balance based on dice play, ll play, or a mix?

Dice.

@mortetvie

Other than that, maybe consider a limit on certain multi wound unit types?

So many of you are asking for this, I'll add something to this effect. But I still think this is the wrong solution. If any unit is overused, then that just means it's too cheap; if it isn't, build caps are unnecessary. Out of curiosity, which units do you have in mind?