Battle for Middle Earth 2 1.06

BFME II will have several very important new depths of strategy. How significant these are (the effect they have on gameplay) will depend solely on how well the maps are designed.

Let me start with a brief example from Dawn of War. A major feature of that game was the ability to use terrain to cover and give your units an armor boost. EVERY map had several cover points. This is how much emphasis they put on the feature. It also provided a noticeable bonus effect. Had they only included cover points in a couple of maps, it would have detracted from the emphasis of this feature.

That being said, BFME II will have more features along this line than DoW had, and from what I've seen, these features will play al large role in the dynamics of an online game. They arent insignificant.

The farm system
This is the BIGGEST part of strategy and also the most map dependant element in the game. I dont know if you've read about this yet, but farms now work in a far different way. They collect money in the same manner, just a handful of cash at a time, but it's not always the same. The size of the area of land you build your farm on directly impacts how much money it gets (yes, there will be an efficiency percentage indicator to let you know how good your placement is). Clustering farms and then surrounding them with a tight wall will not work either. Farms too close to one another will decrease the efficiency signficantly.

But because the resource gathering efficiency directly depends on how much harvestable land area there is available, map size and layout needs to focus primarily on this. It is imperative that maps are open enough to allow for good expansion zones. In terms of strategy, this means map control is very very important. It will promote skirmishing and faster game pace which is good. Expect maps to be fairly large. From what we saw, the farm ;100% efficiency' radius is fairly large

This MIGHT be bad for truely hardcore gaming as it makes turtling early game far too easy. Newbies WILL turtle, whether they get spanked 100203423423 times trying to turtle, they'll keep doing it time after time. So just like in BFME I, it might take a "pro" a disproportionately long time to beat a newbie who just turtles. This is the major reason I stopped playing. I know Im gonna beat a newbie and to me waiting around for ages to afford seige was not fun. I would have had more fun stomping a newbie into the ground in the first 2 minutes than waiting 30 minutes for cash to come in. So hopefully larger map size does not seriously affect the ability to turtle.

Flamable ground
Depending on how much of it they add to each map (if they do add it to every map), this may or may not be a frequently used feature. In otherwords, may or not become a gameplay standard. By this I mean it's one of those things that you simply do, and it's a newbie mistake to not take advantage of it.

Essentially what it means is that you'll have to pick and chose and avoid confrontation in flamable areas whenever possible. Your enemy could use it against you and easily turn the tide in his favor. So map design needs to account for this. It needs to use it subtley and selectively. This will allow smart and clever players to use it discretely. It will also prevent it from being abused. If 80% of the map is flamable, that's just gonna be lame. It will also be lame if you can ruin someone's base jsut by lighting a patch of grass on fire near your own base

Essentially EA will have to carefully place these flamable areas. There are also different levels of flamability which will add to the complexity of map making.

Naval warefare
This obviously adds a whole new dimension to the game. Here are some things to note about ships:
1.) They're very fast
2.) They're lethal
3.) They're responsive

Essentially this means you can micromanage them, and micromanagement of course requires the maps have relatively open battle zones that allow for micromanagement. But because they are fast, it might mean that controlling water ways for quick transport will be essential, as pointed out by VeNg3nCe^ in another topic. Again, more strategy that needs to be built in to maps to accomodate for this new feature.

Build anywhere
Somewhat related to the notion of the way farms behave, is the new ability to build anywhere. In BFME I, you could keep the "base area" somewhat small as a castle was relatively compact. In BFME II, each base's starting area needs to be somewhat open to allow for room to grow and spread out. Restricted building spots might not be such a bad idea though as it will force both players to expand and fight for area to control. This is more true of how much land is available for farms at the starting base rather than the physical space needed to place buildings.

Walls and mountains
Walls can be built into mountains. You can use natural terrain to help you turtle up an area. So while maps DO need to be open, they also need to have bits of terrain that you can use to block yourself in more efficiently. But since I hate walls or the notion of turtling, I hope there wont be much of this. I really dont want to have to take 30 minutes to beat a newbie using walls as a crutch to merely delay the inevitable.

Yes Agm, I agree with you 100%

I pray to God that Walls aren't abusable and should only be avaible on high level tech trees. I wouldn't want to play against a noob that has walls avaible to him the first second of the game, just so he can use ALL his money purchasing walls and wall defenses while I wonder aimlessly for 30+ minutes. That's just not fun.

Base defenses and walls are a cool feature for every race, butI hope EA doesn't overdo it. Plz make them a tier 3 purchase for every race, and have only select races start with walls and have wall upgrades come in at tier 2 or something. Something to discourage newb camping.

Games should be built on strategy with the armies, not how pretty and strong you can make your base.

For example,

I read things like:

Dwarves


MoTW


I mean honestly.. shouldn't EA know by now that players want ACTION and not Turtling "noobs?" It only takes fun away from the players trying to siege while the player inside is belittled and flamed. Fun games should NOT evolve around walls and shit..

I'm not saying that Gondor's strength and Dwarf strength should be overlooked, I'm just saying give them stronger walls than the enemy, Yes, but give them something to open up their minds and see into some new strategy.

If EA goes along with "We enforce turtle tactics" then a lot of players won't even bother buying the game. As you can see, a lot of players have left already because of this.



This post has been edited by HERO: Aug 18 2005, 00:34 AM

Did you get to go test the game with Darky or are you just making assumptions based on what we already know as a community? Without knowing this I am not sure how to respond to your post.

Sadly, I wasn't there. I'm just assuming from what I read about the game; basically the same stuff you guys are reading.

He's basing it off what he saw in BFME I which is a pretty fair standpoint. BMFE II WILL BE a different game, but unknowningly EA might build the same problems back into the game in their efforts to change it up to remove them.

I think however what they mean is that compared to the other factions, these two will turtle MORE, but not necessarily as much as Gondor did in BFME I. It's like that in Zero Hour. The USSW General is "THE" turtle general compared to the others, but due to the nature of the build time and cost of base defenses, she cannot turtle so effectively that she's impervious to an attack early on in the game (unless the map is HUGE). Turtling doesnt even work in her favor as a DELAY tactic let alone a game winning strategy.

Let's hope walls are like that in BFME II. In fact, myself and the clanwars guy were specifically asking EA to build preset modes into the game. Essentially you can select "competition mode" that the ladder will use and it either disables walls, or as Hero suggests, move them to a higher tech level. Then what Darky suggested is to give each of these modes their own ladder.

The expert ladder would remove the newbie things like wall building (which from what I've seen is the ONLY newbie thing in the game.) The newbie ladder will allow for early wall building to help curb "rushing". IMO this is the best way to cater to both hardcore RTS players and newbies at the exact same time.

Pros wont have to worry about turtling newbies slowing them down when playing on the expert ladder, and newbies dont have to worry about being "rushed" by pros on the newbie ladder. While it seems having different ladders will fracture the community, it will actually help to organize it in such a way that there is less contention between the different mind sets.

And since there is a War of the Ring mode, they could even have a ladder based on that, which would be really cool. Except a single War of the Ring game MIGHT take hours to play

Yeah.. I just don't want games based on walls. If there's going to be walls or retardedly huge battalions, then they should add a custom option for pros. Lessen the amount of units in a battalion and disable walls. Something to make games more rock-paper-scissors and micro happy.

No acctually I was adressing that question to you Agm, where you actually there with Darky or are you just making assumptions based on what we have seen so far?

The truble with walls in bfme 1, was that unlike other games, it was very hard to siege!
Siege weapons did very little damage to buildings !

In bfme 2 they can make it easier to destroy walls!

We already know that goblins can bypass walls with a lot of its cheaper units!

This post has been edited by Knut^Are^M: Aug 18 2005, 06:00 AM

Oh, yes, I was there in LA with Darky. I got to see first hand what it's like and got to play the game a little (I hope I'm allowed to tell you that ). It really is very cool.

too late

OK cool, article added to BfME 2 portal:
http://www.gamereplays.org/bfme2/?nameid=map_design

Good read

i dont directly dislike turtle tactics.

what i do dislike is that siege is so terrible in bfme at taking down buildings!

i mean wouldnt it be better if you could use TG+ TREBUCKETS to stop a gandalf/cavalry ,turtle strat?

I sorta like the idea of being able to build anywhere as long as it is on a certain terrain type (idk, stone or somethin'). I got kinda bored of the games where the units die so fast and the pop cap is so low that it matters more where your units producing buildings are than your army. In bfme 1 the buildings where not normally right next to the battle and therefor you had to acutually gather an ARMY not a gaggle of production buildings.
And, it would still allow for forward building rushes where your go and either build on enemy controlled land or a nearby plot of constructable terrain.

Oh thanks Darkbusta!

You still have to gather an army you know
Build anywhere doenst change that. In fact it makes the game more fast paced.

mabe they should do what they did in Tiberium. there are few tech levels and you could lower that tech level like tech 1-3 or so

if there are tiers
host can ask what tech level they want or so...

1- Main units, tier 1 buildings
2- Available better units, upgrades, teir 2 buildings
3- walls, towers, more upgrades, tier 3 or more tier 2 buildings
4- Best units, more upgrades , Tier 3, more buldings

hope its something like that

This post has been edited by Glorfindel_Elf_Hero: Aug 18 2005, 17:57 PM

I read somewhere here that in the preliminary testing a player that tried to camp ALWAYS lost.

So it seems to me walls will be a thing you get to solidify your control of the game once you've already won map dominance.

Also, I hope they don't overdo this fire thing. Really, the majority of all maps should be inflammable (no fire whatsoever).

But if the elves have a great strategy of hiding in the treees then you don't have to send your army past and know they're gonna be ambushed. Then an ambush you actually HAVE to hide your units there WITHOUT the other player knowing.
OTHERWISE he could just set fire to the trees and burn you out.

But obviously you can't just burn trees left-right and center.
(I'm assuming you'd still get mills in BfME2?)
So then you have to watch it, because you could build our mills there to harvest the wood.

(And then watch in agony as one fire-archer sets the wood ablaze and you see how your lumberer spam fails when all your lumberers run about screaming and your mill burns to ashes)

They are adding a number of features to prevent turtling.
1. goblins will destroy an early tutrle every time, masses of goblins climb over walls to find no army=dead wall user
2. dwarves and possibly goblins will tunnel under walls, surprise attack should wipe out campers, if mordor had that now gondor would die
3. new game ending powers and I am guessing wall crushing powers
4. dwarves seige is twice as powerful per machine as others, walls won't last long
5. walls may not be able to completely encircle a base which means only one side is protected while another side more open (chokepoint)

Yes, there will be games where players will turtle up and it will take extra time to beat them but anyone who gets beat over and over with a strat will either change their strat or continue to lose, and seriously who plays to purposely lose? Also 30 minutes isn't that long of a game. If that is all it takes to win then who cares. I personally think games that last less than 5 minutes are a waste. Why play if you spend more time setting up a match then actually playing one. Anything more than an hour better be because the players are equally matched, and not because one turtles! Walls should be a hinderence to weaken an enemy or a temporary way of escape, not a way to slow down defeat or a way to win.

BfME2 should be as much for strategy as it is for micro, and walls are a strong part in strategy. I hope they don't weaken walls to the point where they are to easy to destroy. Besides the strongest cities of the ancient world were always the most heavily defended and fortified. Weaker and smaller armies didn't waste their men on the open fields they outlasted their enemies behind strong tall walls. I hope walls are very srtong and important and can be well defended. No, wall can outlast a better artilley and a better supplied army. So it should be in this. Gondor would have lost their city to flame and orcs if Rohan hadn't shown up in time to put a stop to one of them.

And please note I do not think anyone should be able to have a defense powerhouse base within the first 20 minutes of play. It should take time to build up a sizable defensive base to fight back against the high numbers and siege of the FoD. So, don't flame me for being a turtler Besides I like the Elves who will die if they try to turtle.

I mean honestly.. shouldn't EA know by now that players want ACTION and not Turtling "noobs?" It only takes fun away from the players trying to siege while the player inside is belittled and flamed. Fun games should NOT evolve around walls and shit..

... so true