Middle Earth: Battle For Arda - Official Thread

[Shorogyth]

@thedog Hi there, thanks for the reply

I took a look at your version but it has upkeep as a mechanic and I think that is not "fun" to have in a game. Did not like it, when WarCraft3 did it and try to avoid it whenever possible.

Little feedback otherwise:

• The symbols (crown, skull, ...) should only be visible when I buy a unit. They look a bit ugly on the map. Imho. But the idea is good/helpful to learn the rules.

• I could not get the map to work at first. I had to unzip it first. This has not been the case for any other TripleA map (when I first downloaded TripleA eons ago I did unzip my maps but nowadays I don't)

• You might want to edit the "wrong" terrain for the caves north of Goblin Town. This was/is broken in Arda as well.

Other than that: I like what you did with the unit balance and I liked the simplification for the rule (I still like the Arda complexity but yours is a good version as well). All in all, the stuff I saw while testing it looked good. Not for me because of the upkeep but good variant!

[alkexr]

Hi everybody! I see there's been lot's of good discussion above. I've read most of it, and skimmed through the rest. I see there are still a few things that I'll need to address, but for now I'll focus my energy on getting version 3 into a playable state.

The main reason I popped my head in here is that I've reworked territory effects for v3, and there is a new dev diary video where I explain it all.

[alkexr]

@cernel What's the status of the map right now? I was under the impression that triplea_maps.yaml wasn't needed anymore since version 2.5-ish. Or at least I remember reading something to that effect on the forum a few years ago.

[Shorogyth]

@alkexr Thanks for the update and the dev diary in particular. Map looks great!

You might be thinking of this thread concerning the new requirements for the maps:
https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/4177/2-7-system-updates-support-server-nginx-obsoletes-triplea_maps-yml-and-lobby_server-yaml/10

[mortetvie]

@alkexr

If the intent is for each unit to have a certain set of "terrain preferences" apply, and the "tactics" section is to describe how good a unit is in a certain terrain, perhaps the term "proficiency" or "terrain proficiency" would be better suited since that table reflects the proficiency of a particular unit in any type of terrain?

Just my thoughts.

[Shorogyth]

@alkexr

Some thoughts on your "Tactics" table. It is a good approach but I have some simplifications for your math that do not change anything about the balance but make it a lot more digestible/transparent.

First the most important aspect: the table should not have 1 as the standard entry. It absolutely needs to be 0. The value of the unit itself (seen when you purchase it) should be roughly correct and the table should be at 0 instead of 1 for most entries. So all units get +1 for their corresponding baseline stat instead. Then river modifiers change to -1 and the others change to +1 for individual rows.

Almost as important: "Excellent" units get +2 almost everywhere. So their baseline stat(s) should just be increased by +1 and their "Tactics" bonuses reduced by -1 (in comparison to their current state) to +1 and 0 for rivers instead. Which would bring an additional advantage: "Excellent" units would be exactly in line with "Poor" units, eliminating them from the table!

Almost as important as well (because it has the same advantages): "Primitive" is identical with "Good" just shifted down by one. I would reduce the values for "Primitive" units by 1 for their corresponding baseline stat(s) (same reasoning as with excellent). This brings them in line with "good" units, gives them more appropriate baseline stats and eliminates the (most complex) category as well!

These simplifications leave you with three very simple categories: The only modifiers left are:

• Specialized units (formerly "Poor" and "Excellent) get -1 for Rivers
• Average units get +1 for Caves
• Versatile units (formerly "Primitive" and "Good") get +1 for Caves, Plains and Settlements
  This is MUCH easier to digest and creates much better/more appropriate baseline stats for the units. Calling it "specialized" (or "focused" or something like that) and "versatile" eliminates the intuition that "better" units should be the one getting the bonuses.

If I understand correctly, the "tactics" table and the the "terrain preference" table are the same thing just differentiated between common modifiers and uncommon (individual) modifiers. That is fine, of course, but maybe "Tactics (shared modifiers)" would be a clearer headline (this is highly subjective...). The text could reference that there a individual modifiers as well.

Is open fields the better terrain for good and excellent units on purpose? As good as a settlement?

IF you are not going with the simplifications layed out above (you should at least try and to tests with it...)

• The original thought is/was "cheaper units should not be scaling as good as expensive units" and that led to the creation of shared modifiers/tactics. I would argue that the name of the table should reflect this logic. A troll does not employ clever "tactics" but it might bring "Versatility" because of its raw strength/power. So "Versatility" or "Versatility (shared modifiers)" would be clearer. Maybe even straight up something like "Units Power Levels".
• The wording is quite good (easy for all the non-native speakers). I do think "primitive" is a bit of an outlier. It does not work with "versatility" at all and it does wrong for "tactics". Primitive tactics are not necesarily wrong, they could potentially be the very best tactic possible. Overpowering an enemy by attacking all-out is often the best course of action (as is running away). Poor tactics are bad and poorly chosen. I would like this scale more: Poor - Simple - Average - Good - Excellent. It takes out the unclear meaning of primitive.
• The order in the tactics table is a bit broken.
• -> Rivers should be first (or last but then everything else would need to switch order as well).
• -> Caves should be last.
• -> Forests and Marshes should be part of the Mountains-and-Hills column.
• -> Open Fields and Settlements should be the same box/column.

[Paolo Carrera]

@shorogyth
Hi all!
I'm playing two nations (Dwarves and Northern) against IA (mixed easy and fast). First 10 turns: could someone tell me why Wood Elves and Harad AI neither purchase nor move any unit?

Tnx.
p.

[TheDog]

@paolo-carrera
I have never used/tried EasyAI but that might your issue?
In short dont use it use Hard or Fast.

[Paolo Carrera]

@thedog
Thanks. I supposed so

[EDIT]:
just confirmed. I have set Fast IA for all, WoodElves and Harad started to play. Other powers set on Easy IA played properly til now.

[Paolo Carrera]

@thedog
[EDIT]: I don't know if this is the right 3d to post this.
I'm playing with all powers on FastIA and it seems Harad totally disregard a sea invasion of Gondor from south hitting Tolfalas and Belfalas for example. That could weaken the significant land forces superiority (imho) of Gondor over Mordor and rebalance that area.
They keep instead from the start of the game the entire fleet at bay without moving or loading units.
There is a in-game specific reason for that? It's only a matter to set an HardIA?
p.s. I'm new of TripleA, I've played in solo only few maps before Battle of Arda, but in my opinion this is a great map (detailed and done by a passionate of JRRT) and scenario of Middle Earth.
Tnx.

[TheDog]

@paolo-carrera
Yes this the correct place to post, map specific issues.

This is not my map so this could be misleading, check you have not changed the map options, its default should be as below

Note the Sea Units ticked.

Having said the above, sometimes the AI decides not to use ships much, this could be one of those occasions.

HardAI does play better than FastAI, but at a cost of a slower turn.

[Paolo Carrera]

@thedog
Ok. Yes, Sea Unit option was already checked.
So it seems only a strategical choice of IA.
I've forced Harad sea attack manually for a couple of turns against the Good (me) :beaming_face_with_smiling_eyes:

[alkexr]

Hi everyone! I forgot to post it here, but there is a new video where I talk about upcoming changes, mostly to unit abilities. Some abilities were removed, some are now affected by territory effects, and there are also some entirely new abilities, too.

[Shorogyth]

Hi @alkexr, thanks for the update!

Hope things are going well for you and you can spend a bit of time on the map

One question on the removal of mechanical variety. You are planning to remove flanking vs ranged but you want to introduce/keep/adapt charge vs. spearwall. This seems a little weird to me. I think I understand where you are coming from but charge is very similar to flanking in that it's mechanically different but not strategically (in your sense of the word).

"Ambush" seems like an interesting idea to add a strategic option. It seems to be delivering what you want to achieve. "Scouting" on the other hand has the problem that there is no upside to it. It is purely a reaction while ambush has no downside. (And please don't buff the elven rangers even more by giving them another ability, they are already arguably the best unit in your map.)

Retreating heroes might work well. I don't think it will make bringing a mage or a balrog the right move but it can make it less of a bad investement (in particular if the balrog can finally affect the foes it will actually be fighting). If dragons can retreat like submarines, though, they will be way too strong/unkillable imho.

The changes to charge seem a mixed bag. I might be thin ice to comment without having seen/tested the prototyp but ithe new charge seems overly complicated for a mechanic that was very weak and easy to counter in the past (the targeted attack against them meant "charge" was a liability and it was better not to build chargers at all in many circumstances). The new charge is a lot stronger just by not making formation/spearwall a targeted attack (excellent change) but the rest seems very hard to keep in mind/consider when doing some rough calculations. It just does not seem to add much in terms of depth to balance it out.

Siege was/is an excellent ability from a mechanical point of view imho. I would not make it weaker in caves and so on. It just adds complexity without much benefit. It seems this is targeting very niche scenarios or no scenarios at all.

I hope you had a chance to look at my explanation on how to simplify the user interface/nomenclature for terrain effect and "tactic" modifiers without loosing any functionality. Some house keeping would really help on that front.

[mortetvie]

@alkexr I primarily play evil on the map. Currently, it seems to have too much of an advantage because of the multi-hit units and more units than in prior version. I suppose some balance changes are coming?

Also, do ranged units still do a hit on flying units like they used to? If so, I think keeping flank is a must because that is pretty much one of the main strategies for evil to counter massed archers responding to flying nazgul/dragons. Also, having cheap goblin archers in a stack is probably one of evil's best ways to deal with eagle spam.

[alkexr]

@shorogyth Your solution to territory effects is certainly simpler and it would work fine if every territory had exactly one territory effect, but it's important that territories with multiple effects stacked (i.e. Caras Galadhon) should be easier to defend. Also I can't incorporate these bonuses into the baseline stats, because the plains bonus is attack only, while the rest are defense only. A 4/4 unit with excellent tactics acts as a 6/4 on plains and 4/6 on hills, I could technically make it a 5/5 but then the territory effects would need to be +1/-1 and -1/+1 and that's hardly a simplification. Maybe versatility is a better name than tactics though.

I admit the strategic role of charge is not very unique, it's essentially just "very good at attacking on plains, with a twist". But if I see my opponent buy charging units, I'm not worried for my cities, I'm worried that I'll be forced to retreat from open terrain and keep my army behind the lines because exposing them is a death sentence. I know what to be worried about, so my opponent has made a strategic choice.

Dragons can't evade, but the winged nazgul can, and yes, they are very scary.

As for complicated calculations, the battle calculator will do that for you if you need the exact numbers, but most of the time simple heuristics are enough. Charge is very good in plains, less so in hills or if there is a river etc., you don't need to memorize the every single number.

@mortetvie Anti-air attacks are still a thing. The balance obviously went out the window a long time ago, pretty much every unit will need to be rebalanced. There will also be quite a few new units, while some others will be retired. In general, it's too early to worry about balance at this stage.

[Shorogyth]

Edit: it seems, I cannot delete a post so I edit it. My input here was flawed so no need to keep it

[alkexr]

@Shorogyth Cerin Amroth is a forest, hill and settlement, giving a unit with poor tactics +3 defense. With your proposed modification the unit would get +1 base defense, but no further bonus from territory effects, if I understood that correctly.

[Shorogyth]

@alkexr

Ahhh. Sorry, you are correct, this is something that I did not consider! I forgot that stacking bonus were additive. In Cerin Amroth, a poor unit would indeed only receive a +1 to their base stats if they are in a forest+hill+settlement territory if you simplify the matrix by shifting the base values.

I really should have caught that, particularly after you mentioned it in a post! You are correct, my simplification does not work towards your goals. That being said, your voice lines in the video from last year were quite good and doubling down on your ideas the only sensible simplification that is left using my original approach of getting rid of reducing the matrix would be this:

• Buffing stacked territory types (slightly simplified version):
  ** Unit tag “poor tactics”: +1 bonus to defense in caves and settlements +1 attack in plains
  ** Unit tag: “average tactics”: +1 bonus to defense for each territory type except plains in which they get +2 bonus to attack instead
  ** Unit tag: “excellent tactics”: +2 bonus to defense for each territory type except plains in which they get +2 bonus to attack instead

(Green cells are values that are correctly reproduced by the simple explanation. Yellow one are not and would need terrain preferences to work.)

Anyhow, sorry again for missing the broken stacking bonuses.

[rsnorunt]

Interesting video, and welcome back! I think the changes are interesting.

Regarding tactics I do think that having 5 levels is a lot. I think that @shorogyth 's system seems reasonable. I'd also pull the plains bonus out of the tactics system (call it "defensive tactics") and have a separate plains attack bonus. That way horses can have a bonus there, and rangers won't automatically be good attacking on plains. I know it's a third number, but I think it'll be less confusing than tactics being mostly defense bonuses but also one attack bonus.

Also, can you have more than a +-1bonus on some terrains? I feel like most flying units would need more than a -1 bonus on caves, especially because tactics give them bonuses.

I agree with the relentless issue. I think it's cool for some units to ignore your defensive terrain advantage, but they should be rare and therefore scary. Having basically all orcs be relentless is pretty silly and makes plains better for defense than cities.

Regarding unit abilities, I don't think rock paper scissors is necessarily bad, especially because not all factions are equally strong in each. If each faction has different strengths and weaknesses, it forces factions to collaborate more, and stops things from snowballing as much if one faction falls.

Eg Gondor would spam rangers because they have good defense bonuses and would kill the winged nazgul (thereby denying mordor's leadership), so you could send flanking cavalry from Rhun or harad to eliminate them. Elven archers were much stronger than the spearmen, but fell very quickly to wargs, which forced the elves to diversify more. In particular, Isengard had no ranged units, so Rohan's flank cavalry was especially dangerous since it would directly target the fires of orthanc, and so isengard had to spend a lot of effort screening its siege forces.

I think ranged support feels reasonable. I like all abilities that encourage using a variety of units. Eg the galadhrim archers are one of the most powerful units in the game, but they require you to buy the weaker elven spearmen to unlock their full value.

I like the change to charge, since before formation made those units a liability because you couldn't make them not charge. Eg the warg riders were essentially useless for angmar because of this and rohan suffered hard.

I do like the new ambush mechanic since it encourages more diversity in unit selection. I do think it should be allowed in cities though (that was the whole siege of osgilliath), and the fact that only a certain number of units can ambush will balance it. I'm not sure I like scouting as it is though. If scouting eliminates ambush, then you just need 1-2 units with scouting in your army and you're fine. And if those units are otherwise useful (eg rangers) then it makes ambushers useless. Maybe scouting should be like spearwall? Just decreasing the effectiveness of ambush so it's less good but still useful? So maybe barrow wights would have an ambush of 6, then eg warg scouts could have a scouting of 2, rangers 3, and wizards 6x2 or sth?

I feel like something missing in the game is some notion of hit and run tactics for cavalry. Cavalry is expensive and strong and excels at taking out small groups, but you often can't take advantage of this because if you do it exposes your cavalry to counterattack where they won't make up their PU values. Meanwhile air units can do this which gives angmar and mordor a big advantage. Maybe some cavalry could have an ability wherein they (and only they) can independently retreat after the first round of combat, even if there's a win? This still requires some thought, since if you don't have a win in your first round you have to decide if it's worth leaving your cavalry open to guarantee the win, and cavalry is still worse than flying units since they don't get the whole combat or a noncombat move. But it makes cavalry much more tactically interesting

Also a general thought, but I think rangers need to be a higher tier of ranged unit. They have excellent tactics, mountaineer, high movement, anti-flying, scouting, ambush, support, and maybe more. And given the lore this makes sense, but also in the lore they aren't common at all - the Dunedain are solitary and dying out. So I think buffing them and treating them more like weak creatures than elite infantry would make more sense. And then you could maybe have some weaker version for gondor representing Faramir's rangers which are just elite infantry