the battle for middle earth 2

i was a big fan of the first game. if you're not familiar with the game, the first was an rts based on the lord of the rings movies. for the sequel, the designers got the license to work from both the movies and the books, so new material was available.

the graphics are really sweet and there are a number of factions to play with different abilities and units. where the first game limited construction to specific locations on the map, the new game allows building anywhere.

resources are gathered not by individual units (like many rts's) but simply by creating buildings that generate resources over time. the quirk they threw in for the sequel was that resource gathering buildings are handicapped based on proximity to other resource gathering buildings and impassible terrain -- basically in order to maximize their gather rate, you need to place them in open areas away from other gathering buidlings.

since rts's are generally a race to get resources, the result in this system is that you must spread out rather thin over the map. and while you can create defensive structures to defend this gathering outposts, the reality is that defensive structures in the game are horribly underpowered for their cost. a single squad can typically take down a tower without much difficulty even tho towers are actually more expensive to build.

while there are something like 6 different factions, the depth of each faction is a bit limited. probably along the line of 4 or 5 "regular" soldier types (hand to hand, ranged, cavalry, etc) and then a couple of special types depending on your faction (siege engines or trolls or the like). add in maybe 3 or 4 different upgrades you can buy and that's about it. however, the factions are reasonably distinct (even if they do share many similarities -- particularly in the upgrade paths) particularly when it gets to heros that can be recruited.

speaking of heros, there's a little feature they added called create-a-hero that allows you to design your own hero that can be recruited during play. it's pretty well designed and allows you to mix and match from the pool of powers available to the other built-in heros. it would be nice, tho, if you could adjust the power level of your hero so that you could design a cheaper one who might get out of the gates quicker or a supremely powerful one that would cost a ton of resources. instead, "create-a-heros" all cost the same 2000 resources.

the single player game i haven't delved into very much, so i'll skip it and address the multiplayer vs computer skirmish games.

it sucks. which is really, really, really too bad. the problem is that the computer ai isn't very good. here's a typical scenario in 2 humans v 2 computers on anything but easy setting:

the computer opponents decide which player they will attack, then begin rushing almost immediately. they bypass any units attacking them and head directly for resource gathering buildings in an attempt to crush your gathering ability. because they select one of the players and both rush, the target of the attack will have a very difficult time defending -- particularly since the defensive structures do almost nothing to impede the attackers. however, all is not lost. while the targetted player is being pummelled, the other player can waltz right down to the closest ai base and completely destroy it without fear of a defending army because, well, the ai is too fixated on destroying the other player to bother with defending itself. and of course, once the ai's base is destroyed, the assaulting army vanishes into oblivion. talk about offense being the best defense. this is silly. now that it's two on one, you simply take it to the remaining computer player and exterminate it. if done correctly, both players will survive, but occasionally one of the humans might succumb to the initial onslaught -- or at least be so injured as to be a non-factor in the endgame mop up. it's as tho the computer is a spoiled child and decides that since it can't win, it'll just try to ruin the game for one of the players.

so the basic strategy for success is to simply rush the computer since that's all it's going to be doing against you. don't bother defending, or upgrading, or anything. just rush.

even on the highest difficulty, you can beat the computer in under 10 minutes. now it's possible to fight against additional computer players on the same team, but i suspect that's a matter of numbers. because they attack so quickly, i doubt you'd be able to take more than 3 to 2. and you can forget about multiple computer teams. we tried 2 v 2 v 2 and the computer players from "opposing teams" completely ignored each other on their way to attacking their individual selective targets. they literally walked through each other's bases to get to mine (my team mate had been eliminated and was in observer mode -- it was really silly).

so basically, the computer ai fixates and kamikazes. not fun.


too bad, too, cuz the game has a ton of potential. because of the nature of the game resources, i suspect it won't be long before somebody comes up with an unofficial patch that rebalances things a bit. likely making defenses a bit tougher. but what would be better is if an official version is released to address these issues. here's keeping my fingers crossed.

 

so i've been continuing to play this. don't get me wrong, the ai is a bit sketchy, but there's still enough good stuff in the game to make if fun.

we've been going 2 humans vs 4 medium ai and it seems challenging enough. i've been goofing around with the dwarven faction trying to perfect a hero-only army. the dwarven heros are SICK when it comes to combat. they are tanks -- short, hairy tanks. and as they gain levels, they get sicker and sicker. there are only 3 standard dwarven heros plus whatever create-a-hero you select (i made another dwarf). those guys alone once leveled up sufficiently can take down whole ciites without much difficulty (the dwarven heros are particularly adept at building removal). in fact, a good way to level them up is to roam around and take down resource gathering buildings.

i end up with some pretty sick kills to death ratios (like in one game it was 140+).