lotr: Battle for Middle Earth

Pugsley

With this game out next Monday what are you expectations from it? After seeing the preview game two of them had (they just faught each other) it seemed of a tiny scale, with a massive defending force of about 30 people tops, which sucked. And magic seemed to be the single only weapon that done damage, but over looking that and calling them nubs at the game But when you look into it theres only really 2 armies, and that DOES suck, theres 4 'armies' but only 2 of them can produce a base and troops, the other armies are just Neutral and the Fellowship of the Ring pretty much, so I can see this becoming tedious rather quickly, and to add to it each army has no more than a dozen troops to choose from. So basically I expect very very little from this game, what about the rest of ye?

RE*AC*TOR

Monday? I thought games got released on a Friday normally...
I'm hoping for C&C Generals type fun, with nifty grapics and LOTS of units.

Grand_Izer

PC Zone awarded it 91% (whom i consider reliable for the most part) and the prospect of recreating the battles at Helms Deep and Minas Tirith will be enough to convince me to hand over some of my hard-earned dough for it.

I'm not certain about the release date though. Most places are reporting Friday 10th but CD-Wow list the release date as Monday 13th.

CombatCow

I was really looking forward to this until i saw the last ''into the battle'' video..WTF did they do to it.....it looks fookin muck.

Although the pczone review says it's great, i will have to try it out somewhere before handing over cash for it myself...

And it's out on the 10'th

CC

Pugsley

For release date I was going off the official site here
And if their releasing it in America first, silly silly EA, surely after the shambles of Doom3 all large games would have 1 universal release date?

And yea Combat Cow, same for me about the 'into the battle', small scale doesnt even describe it, Warcraft3 has more troops by the look of things, but I am purely hoping the devs just blow at it. Onyl being 2 armies is pathetic too, most RTSs have at least 3 armies.

edit: it actually seems that just a day or 2 ago EA added the third army, Mordor to their webby, hmmmm, odd.

Agent7249

Been playing the game for the past few days, I dunno how but its been playing alright on my old comp. P3 850mhz, 320mb ram, GF2 32MB. I just have everything on the lowest specs and smallest screen res . Anyway from what the game has in the skirms its fairly class.

Seeing as how I consider the sides are depicted from the skirms, I would disagree with ya there pugsley seeing as how rohan, gondor, mordor and isengard are definitly four seperate sides. I've tried all to their potential except mordor. So far I've taken a liking to gondor, rohan is alright but the fact they have no powerful infantry soldier (sword/shield) is a bit of a let down, then again their cavalry slices through infantry like a hot knife through butter.

Anyway I would reccommend the game to any strategy gamers with a comp powerful enough to run the game on high specs.

Pugsley

Any one else played this? going in to get it tomorrow probably, and if its pants I wouldnt mind knowing

CombatCow

Yer i did get it and im not hugely impressed with it to be honest, I didnt like the first mission with the fellowship...the second one with rohan is fun tho. But one think i cant understand is that Rohan only has 4 fighting units.....4 !!!! and Gondor only have 6.. :eek: what the hell were they thinking.....Isengard and Mordor have 10+ units each...anyway im not that fond of the building aspect of the game which you HAVE to put buildings on foundations around your base....it dosent work that well and leads to all bases looking the same and knowing that all the buildings are right beside each other with no real chance for strategic placement imo

For me it didnt strike me instantly as being a fantastic game but i will have to give it more time....


CC

CombatCow

Iv no idea what that means.............


CC

_CreeD_

I thought the restricted building was a good departure from the norm. You can't build a superbase you need to expand to other areas of the map. The emphasis here is on fast but reasonably detailed battles, a good mix of speed with the need to make sure you use the right unit at the right time. I loved the first half, up until defending Minas Tirith. You can attack the Black Gate after that or take over the rest of the map - which I opted to do. The main problem is the maps are very simple and repetitive . I've heard they are the same ones used for multiplayer and it seems they are designed from this standpoint first, just given enough editing to create a single player mission. I would have also liked to see more emphasis on maneuvering in the Living World Map, using it to add a proper strategy element rather than just letting you choose which upgrades you want to win next.
The production quality is very high and I LOVE their use of the original soundtrack, it just loses steam after a short while imho.

Pugsley

CombatCow wrote:

Yer i did get it and im not hugely impressed with it to be honest, I didnt like the first mission with the fellowship...the second one with rohan is fun tho. But one think i cant understand is that Rohan only has 4 fighting units.....4 !!!! and Gondor only have 6..

tbh, what troops can any army have? Light Infantry, Heavy Infantry, Cavelry, archers, cavelry archers, and siege. Thats only 6 units, havign 6 diffrent types of archer isnt going to change much, neither will having 16 types of infantry. Look at Kohan2, its a superb game, probably the most tactical RTS I have played, and it has 6 units per army more or less.

The game normally is only average at best I would agree, but crack the pop cap and the game gets 100 times better, you can actually get real armies, which normally made Isenguard more or less useless (they could only get 6 units of infantry/crossbow squads, wtf kind of army is that?), mod that pop cap up to 3000 however, and you can get an army (I just added an extra 0 to all pop caps, seemed to do the job quite nicely). The only problem with this is that you cant play on-line, so make a backup. If you are interested in editting the pop caps, third or so post down here gives a good guide to doing it:
http://mec.ogresnet.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=2040

c0y0te

Can't say I'm hugely impressed with it so far...

Not crazy about the restricted building

Maps are quite small

Fellowship stuff is a bore.. more like rpg than RTS

Unit control is not the smartest I've ever seen and the constant need to combine territorial gains with defence is a pain.

On the flip side - the gfx are nice and it is lord of the rings we're talking about, but if you are a purist - stay the hell away from this. It doesn't follow the books or the films too closely (plotlines vary, characters that should be dead .... don't die etc.)

I got more action from the C&C series, and in particular the latest (Generals and Zero Hour). I don't expect to have much replay from this versus endless replay value for the C&C stuff.

Overall - not too impressed I guess.

c0y0te

chewy

just started playing this ,how do you defeat the fire beast at the end of the first bit , gandalf doesn't have effect on him just hitting him normally?

is there a trick?

havn't a clue

Kevok

You have to use gandalfs lightning attack on him.

Pugsley

run away just using lightening and the blast spell as often as their available, hes quite easy if you just keep away from melee

chewy

hi there again

playing this game religiously, enjoying it...

how do you defend helms deep in the good campaign

you've very little money or income...

i found it impossible to keep on the ladders off the walls, the heros are very powerful but its hard to keep directing them...

i've tried to concentrate on either archers behind the walls or riding out with horsemen...the later works better for a while...

what have people found are the best combinations of units, ya know when you can put archers and infantry together with those little arrows etc...

--

the small amount of armies you can create is annoying but I guess it makes it harder but you end up raking up all this money you can't spend...

Pugsley

Well my way of doing it was only build 2 archery ranges and the rest just farms, to get yourself a good cash flow, and basically make sure every archer has flame arrow, put the hero's up on the walls, and leave about 3 squads of troops with flame arrow over the front door just to stop that odd battering ram that appears, but put virtually everything else on the deeping wall, as its the only real place that gets properly attacked.

Impurity

i have to say, i was very umimpressed by this game! it looked great, couldn't wait to get it! the first mission sucked so much! the camera view is terrible! there could be a huge battle going on but you can't zoom out far enough to see it all, so therefore you can't really manage your troops very well. the building bases sucks as said above, you have to build your buildings on specific foundations and you are limited as to how many you can build aswell!

and the map! the map is terrible, it's not like the good old C&C or any other good RTS map for that matter where you have a mini map of the current level that you can easily click on it anywhere to zoom to any part of the level, this mini map is a drawing on a piece of paper that draws the map out as you discover it, but it gets very confusing! instead of a valley for example, you just have 2 lines representing the valley borders, it's hard to know what it's actually representing sometimes!

i'd give it 3/10

thats just my view, i'd recommend everyone to play it before buying it if possible incase they think the same as me!

General Valdez

If anyone from here is playin look for me i play as Valdez, i cant get enough of this game is is awsome.

Pugsley

I have to say I loved the way the maps were just basic line maps, like on the front page of the novels, they look really cool IMO and function very well too, very good addition to the game. As for the building limit, thats to stop someone just building a million farms and 20 barracks, because of how the resource system works you need to plan out how strong you want you economy, upgrades or military, it also means owning more than 2 towns is a huge advantage, with the extra slots for money buildings. But diffrent strokes for diffrent folks

humanji

I absolutely love this game. I was a little disappointed about how few units you can have in each battle eg Helms Deep and Minis Tirith were a little underwhelming at first glance. But you get used to it, (and there is also an editing trick that allows you to put more units in each army). I think it's the little touches that make this game. Things like riding your cavalry through enemy units and sending them flying or setting fire to an Ent and watching him douse himself with water! And although I said they were underwhelmnig at first, the above two battles get very intense as you desperately try to hold on until reinforcements arrive. It can get repetative, but all in all, it's a bloody great game!

humorguy

I have played War of the Ring, and this is similar. With what is going on in games like Shogun and Rome Total War, I rate this game so so.

Also, what is going on in the 2nd mission, stopping the enemy getting across the bridge? One minute your building units waiting for the attack at the NW bridge, next, the barracks is collapsing all your guys fall down dead and the game is over! A bug, a huge enemy spell - or something I am not getting?

CerebralCortex

humorguy wrote:

I have played War of the Ring, and this is similar. With what is going on in games like Shogun and Rome Total War, I rate this game so so.

I agree I think games where you have to gather resources are going to start to lose out to games like the Total War series especially for those gamers who are looking for pure battlefield tactics. Btw is Rome total war anygood?
Is it better than Shogun assuming you have played it.

CerebralCortex

Ye should all play d-day and desert rats versus afrika corps they have to be the best world war 2 rts's I have ever played.

Pugsley

CerebralCortex wrote:

humorguy wrote:

Btw is Rome total war anygood?
Is it better than Shogun assuming you have played it.

Aye its better than shogun imo, a lot more to it, particularly in the units front, and the campaign is a lot more complex. The only thing about R:TW is its very, VERY hard to get absorbed into a campaign, I managed to get very well into my campaign as the greeks and it was fantastic fun, hoplites simply rock. If you liked the previous total war games you should like this too really.

CerebralCortex

Pugsley wrote:

Aye its better than shogun imo, a lot more to it, particularly in the units front, and the campaign is a lot more complex. The only thing about R:TW is its very, VERY hard to get absorbed into a campaign, I managed to get very well into my campaign as the greeks and it was fantastic fun, hoplites simply rock. If you liked the previous total war games you should like this too really.

Is medievil total war worth a gawk.

I bought LOTR:BFME last Monday. I've played roughly 3-6 hours each night. One of the first things i do after work, when I get home is fire up the game. usually I lose my interest in games and just play skirmishes, but this game has got my attention.

I started the Evil Campaign first, since I hate the Hobbits. Playing against Normal AI. Played abt 18 acts, and have gotten most of the powers to the Balrag. Not going to finish the campaign till i get all the powers, since Gandalf is a pain to kill.

I love this game. Its inspired. I'm a fan of RTS's especially the C&C series, and total war series, and this is a lovely move away from the normal RTS game type. I'll break it down a bit.

Graphics: Lovely. Really nice. A bit drab for individual maps, but the units are nice to look at, and the evil units are great when Sauroman (SP?) passes by. Ents on fire, and Elephants on fire falling to crush units underneath. Still very visually appealing after 26 or so maps completed. Strategy Map is beautiful, with lovely short movies (from the actual movie) for most regions.

Sound: Again, lovely. Really draws you in with the evil legions marching, their cries during slaughter, and drums from Trolls. Those Elephant units look and sound like in the movie. Music is a bit lacking, but its mostly taken from the move.

Gameplay: Would have liked a little more options in regards to unit control. Quite simple controls, but very easy to get hang of. I didn't bother looking at the tutorial, so if you've played any generic RTS you'll catch on immediately. Unit behaviour is a wee bit stupid at times, but has some lovely reactions. Like Ents getting angrier and more destructive when they see your Lumber Mills. Or Trolls having a fight with each other if you leave them together for a bit. Unit Experience is anotehr nice Feature.

But, My biggest love for this game is that your army continues through the campaign. What you build you keep. Only Total had that before, and Its great. I hate building millions, crushing the enemy, and then finding out you have to start from the beginning again. Also nice is that you need to pay attention to which army you're using, depending on the enemy you're facing. i.e. If you want an army thats capable to fighting cavalry while you build up your base camp. Woohoo! great!

Faction Balance: A bit of a sore point. Evil forces per unit are a bit weaker than Good. Mostly cannon fodder. On the other hand, its part of what makes Evil so much fun to play. Only two heros as opposed the 4 Good. Gandalf is way overpowered. Overall not too bad. Special powers (spells) are annoying. Evil is more production based, with Good being able to summon 4 types of units. But last power for Evil is awesome. Balrag is so cool, when you launch him at a city. Alot of fun.

Overall: One of my favourite RTS of all time. Best one I've seen in years. Original concepts. More could have been done, but in its own way it stands up to any of the RTS legends like C&C. I like it because it asks you to use some original thinking when using Mordor units or Gondor pikemen. This game will keep me interested (continous play) for probably another week and a half. last game that did that was Rome: Total War...

Is medievil total war worth a gawk.

I'm somewhat of an addict to the Total War series. I've bought them all, and I've never been disappointed. Depends what you're looking for, since it can take a while to complete a full campaign.

Ye should all play d-day and desert rats versus afrika corps they have to be the best world war 2 rts's I have ever played.

played desert rats game when it first came out, and I didn't think much of it. Very generic WW2 style Strategy. Quite boring and at time quite frustrating at how crap the AI was. Not a very enjoyable game. At least for me. As for D-day, I haven't tried it. <Shrugs> Unlikely to now. Starting to get a bit bored of most games now. Tend to keep to the Favourites, like TW series, C&C, Empire Earth, and now BFME...

Pugsley

Deleted User wrote:

Not going to finish the campaign till i get all the powers, since Gandalf is a pain to kill.

But, My biggest love for this game is that your army continues through the campaign. What you build you keep. Only Total had that before.

Faction Balance: A bit of a sore point. Evil forces per unit are a bit weaker than Good. Mostly cannon fodder. On the other hand, its part of what makes Evil so much fun to play. Only two heros as opposed the 4 Good. Gandalf is way overpowered. Overall not too bad. Special powers (spells) are annoying. Evil is more production based, with Good being able to summon 4 types of units. But last power for Evil is awesome. Balrag is so cool, when you launch him at a city. Alot of fun.

Yea gandalf is silly over powered, especialluy his word of power or whateevr it is, kills EVERYTHING around him, and in a huge area, more or less a full screen, totally stupid ability, not to mention his lightening sword kills about 20-30 units, and his light spell can kill a mumakill in 1 shot, and his wizard blast can wipe out 2 or 3 squads in half a second if you line it up right, whatwere they thinking when they made him?

Btw, armies continue in Homeworld1 aswell last time I checked, and in Ground Control

As for balance between good and evil, yea mordor are utterly useless, they have 2 decent units, the trolls, and they die like flies to a few flame arrows, and mumakills, which suffer the same fate. The orcs are just a way of giving the enemy experiance too or providing a meat shield for trolls if the other player isnt watching a battle to order his men to fire at trolls/mumakill. Both the good armies seem pretty decent too, with Gondor having thr mighty tower guard, along with very good archers, along with proper walls at base (only army that gets walls, which is stupid imo). However Isenguard are possably my favourite army in the game, I loved doing their campaign, once you get a few squads of fully upgraded uruk's your unstoppable really, have a few pikeys to stop a cavelry charge in its tracks, sword infantry to take the archery fire and combine every infantry unit with a squad of crossbow men, they really are a force to be reckoned with, warg riders arent too bad either, and their siege units are fun too, especially the mines.

Khalim

this game is indeed fun.

Rohan and Gondor rely on heroes, while Mordor and Isengard rely on massing hordes...just like in the movies.

resource management is at a minimum, a bit like Total Annihilation where you build at one spot and the resource just keeps on accumulating.

the predesignated build spots encourage expansion - so games shouldn't drag out too long.

i haven't played this online, and i probably would never try. but the enemy ai in skirmish is okay.

all in all, i love Rohan, nothing like trampling down hordes of Uruk Hai.

Pugsley

The problem with rohan, is they have NOTHING to stop a horde of fully upgraded uruk pikemen/crossbow squads, elves go splat, and cavelry just hit the pikes like p*ss on a rock, so they HAVE to rely on hero's, which is a MAJOR weakness imo.

The problem with rohan, is they have NOTHING to stop a horde of fully upgraded uruk pikemen/crossbow squads, elves go splat, and cavelry just hit the pikes like p*ss on a rock, so they HAVE to rely on hero's, which is a MAJOR weakness imo

Well, you could use Ents, but the crossbows are easily upgradable to Fire, which makes them an expensive suicide unit. I don't like Rohan. Their cavalry are rather weak, & their peasents are fodder. The horse archers are handy, but not that dangerous except in really large numbers. I tend to avoid using Rohan as much as possible.

Ents being the Siege units are also a pain. Too restrictive.

all in all, i love Rohan, nothing like trampling down hordes of Uruk Hai.

Nah, Gondor is way better for that. At least you can provide backup using Rangers, or tower guards.

Btw, armies continue in Homeworld1 aswell last time I checked, and in Ground Control

Lol. Point taken. I didn't really like ground control that much. Homeworld was alot of fun, but a very different type of game to this.

As for balance between good and evil, yea mordor are utterly useless, they have 2 decent units, the trolls, and they die like flies to a few flame arrows, and mumakills, which suffer the same fate.

oddly enough i'm really starting to like playing Mordor. Sure most of the units are crap, but the Trolls are so much fun especially once they've passed level 2. The drummers are great for mass attacks with orcs. Send in 8 units of orcs supported by 4 drummers and they become quite a hammer. besides I love seeing my whole population limit marching across the map to the sound of drums. I'd get my arse handed to me on multiplayer though.

ButcherOfNog

CerebralCortex wrote:

Is medievil total war worth a gawk.

Yes, its available on budget now, picked it up myself as i'd not tried any of the Total War games, the campaign is excellent as is the battle system underneath it.

sweep_101

The game is great and iv only played it for a few hours but the Rohan cavalry aren't bad to be honest and they're even more effective striking in the rear

Khalim

its just my playing style - i like having the three hunters leading my army

it just doesnt seem right that Gondor knights are better per unit than Rohan.

well, the patch should be out pretty soon and we'll see what changes they've made (if any)

Pugsley

EA? balance a game after release? heh, even a patch is asking a lot, never mind a patch to balance the game.

it just doesnt seem right that Gondor knights are better per unit than Rohan.

But they're expensive for what you get. Until you upgrade them well, they can be taken out easily with archers, which is an expensive loss.

I play Gondor as much as possible, simply cause I like the castle style. It gives me a period of calm before I start expanding. Besides Gandalf is very useful