1143 replies to this topic

[Black Dragon]

More ideas! *People Sigh*



Alot of my ideas come from extensive testing in LAN games with my brother, we often have 1v1s and since were twins we do have a very equal skill level which means we notice when a faciton isn't as strong as another.

Angmar

The overall feeling of Angmar from the original game is somewhat dull and boring. Angmar are one of those factions that seem to just possess unique units for the sake of being unique, ignoring all elements of realism or cannon. While Angmar may be an old faction, it doesn't need to deviate as much as it has done. Ok onto the suggestions:

Infantry
Infantry are pretty good but they've focused way too much on trolls. I know its the purpose but I really cannot see Trolls being in such abundance as human soldiers. Therefore I would like to propose that Angmar recieve more standardize infrantry units but keep the troll units as more elite and advanced versions for those who spend the funds to purchase them. Angmar can be a devastating faction, so why not let people build similar to other factions and have the option to truly level the playing field. Infantry there should be are all based on the Black Numenoreans:

-Thrall Masters (No changed required)
-Black Numenorean (No change required)
-Dark Rangers (No change required)
-Dark Pikemen (New Unit)

This would give Angmar a full set of infantry (now with Pikemen). However in order to retain the Hill Trolls, they should exist purely as advanced units, and like all trolls be considered as tanks.

Cavalry & Trolls
Trolls are meant to be feared fighting tanks, not an abundant of strange looking creatures. I believe that the trolls of Angmar should all be converted to exist purely as elite units intended to be on the front line. So I propose the following:

-Hills Trolls: X2 stronger than Dark Pikemen and also more expensive. In a formation the hill trolls would go in front of the Dark Pikemen, they can withstand the impact of a cavalry charge more than the infantry and are meant to absorb as much damage as possible. They are also alot tougher against buildings due to their weapon size.

-Snow Trolls: Snow trolls in my view are a little silly as cavalry, yes its cool seeing the white fluffy trolls trample infantry but they just don't fit as an abundant unit. Like the hill troll, they should be reserved elite units, where a player would only build a few of them, but in doing so they can turn the tide of battle. Two options I can see being done with Snow Trolls:
1) Seperate them so they exist as single units and behave alot like the trolls of other factions, only weaker and withot throw ability.
2) Keep them as Angmars elite units similar to the Black Uruks where only 3 of them can be constructed.

-Cavalry- I would like to propose that Angmar recieve the classic form of calvary, Dark Knights on black horses who perform like the counter-parts of other factions. I'd much rather see Dark Knights, then 100s of snow trolls. So in summary Angmars units will be....

Barraks: Standard infantry that are cheap and diverse
-Thrall Masters
-Black Numenorean
-Dark Rangers
-Dark Pikemen
-Dark Knights

Troll Pit: Elite units that are mostly expensive and stronger
-Wolf (no change)
-Hill Troll (stronger & more expensive)
-Snow Troll (stronger & more expensive / elite units)

Heroes
In a 1v1 battle, you will quickly notice how weak Angmars heroes are at low levels. Considering they have very few heroes it makes them a little slim in the area, when coupled with the fact that their spellbook powers are poor until Level 15 you find yourself struggling to cope with an opponent who brings in all of their heroes. (Imagine Gondor bringing Gandalf, Aragorn, Boromir, Faramir, Prince Imlahil, Blue Knight (forgot name), Pippin or the Elves bringing all 10 of their heroes)

I'd like to suggest:

Witch King:
The guys in his prime, he should be a feared hero who can kill hundreds, who few would dare challenge. He needs
-Higher Damage
-More Resistant to Melee & Arrow Damage (he's armored up)
-Stronger Powers: Needs to feel like the dark lord he is claimed to be...suggest the following abilities.

1: Mount
2: Curse (whatever he has now that reduces enemy armor etc, but it should also make units fear him and cower)
3: Poison Strike (should be able to fire a poisonous ball of black flame which blasts back units and heroes similar to fireball)
4: Morgal Blade (should be very damaging and turn any unit into a wraith upon death)
5: Hour of the Witch King (conjur a beam of light around him which then eminates outward killing all in its path- see Elvenstar of BFME 1)

Personally the Wk's hour of the WK power that resets timers is very poor considering it can only target a single hero, meanwhile Aragorn can summon armies of the dead, arwen can flood, Elrond can summon tornado's yet all the WK gets as Angmar is an egg timer lol)

Numenorean Captain
I'd like to propose a new hero for Angmar, the Numenorean captain. I'll leave it to you guys to figure out a name, but I feel he would be excellant as a mounted unit who is armed with a sword and serves a similar role as Faramir. Perhaps giving him a sword & bow. I won't go into any detail because I believe he could be easily constructed.


Spellbook
My only gripe with Angmars powers is the fell wind, I would like to suggest that when that ability is used, units caught in its path are given reduced vision range to simulate a dazed effect. Otherwise its pretty much useless and just slows an enemy for a few seconds at most.

[Shikari]

Some pretty nice ideas, I had always thought along the same lines with the snow and hill trolls, they should be much more rare. I would put forward that, like mordor angmar be a more or less cavalry-less faction. They have the starting cavalry that the thralls can get, and the snow trolls are the really elite cav (cut down to 3 in a horde) Then hill trolls should be like the other factions trolls, a basic troll, however he can be upgraded with a pike, making him into a pike unit. They are single units, but unique from other trolls, they can form combo hordes with another troll, making a total of 2 in a horde.

Hero Wise yeah, angmar's heros need looking at. Rogash should go imo. I talked with rob about moving lozenjara from the goblins to replace him. A snow troll makes more sense to me, don't know about anyone else.

Fell wind, I'd have to disagree with. It's probably angmars most useful power. It is incredibly frustrating when your retreating a hero, who should just about make it, only to have him knocked down by fellwind and caught up...

[Devon]

I just have to say....Angmar heroes need a debuff if anything. WK wasn't really at his prime, his master had just been defeated. Atm they're all currently army killers by themselves. WK is too strong, Kharsh auto should be removed and poison debuffed.

[Allathar]

I don't know, Angmar is the one faction that strangely manages to be under- and overpowered at the same time...

[Gothmog14]

Angmar is defiantly a strange one, though the heroes aren't underpowered at all. Karsh is one of the most overpowered heroes in the game, up there with Boromir and Lurtz, and the Witch King can take whole armies just by himself (though the Hour of the Witch King needs replacing or buffing). Rogash is ugly (and sounds like a retard) so I say get rid of him, and bring in the Goblins' Snow Troll hero like Shikari said. I don't think they need any new units though, they're pretty complete, though the Snow and Hill Trolls need to be changed up (in the books and movies, Hill Trolls were the larger of the Olog-hai Sauron gave armor, the Troll that almost crushed Aragorn was a Hill Troll, so it's kind of strange having breen, running trolls).

[Scryer]

I don't know, Angmar is the one faction that strangely manages to be under- and overpowered at the same time...

Agreed. Angmar is, by far, the weirdest faction to play with (for me, anyways). It seems that Good Angmar Faction players know their units inside and out and have to carefully manage their resources in order to make Angmar deadly. This faction has such a weird curve to it, that it throws people off sometimes (either when they face Angmar or if they use it).

I think that the Thrall Units should get some upgrades (like a banner and forged blades -no heavy armour b/c these units are meant to be the light infantry) - personally. I also think that Hwaldar's leadership should be fixed a little (or his last power to be permanent units) because hardly any Angmar player is using Wildmen unless it's very early in the game, which makes his Leadership and Plundering powers useless.

For a tier 3 power (or 4 power - if you're considering changing them) maybe you could replace "Freezing Rain" with a "Summon 3 (or 1) Ringwraith(s)" power. Freezing Rain is so useless unless! Unless you guys decide to make it permanent. I am pretty sure that the other Ringwraiths wouldn't have completely abandoned the Witchking when he was taking over Arnor. But then again, I don't recall reading anything about the other Ringwraiths during this time. This seems more like a tier 4 power to me. But I think that Arnor's tier 4 powers are 'pretty' useful...Keep in mind that the Ringwraith(s) don't have to be on Fell-Beasts. I really don't even know (for sure atleast) that Angmar needs a power change.

I do agree with Black Dragon that maybe Angmar could get a Black Numenorian Captain or something like that. Because, as of now, Morgromir (sp?) is the only one who can give out a leadership bonus, and it isn't even a passive power! I mean c'mon. I think that you guys should either create a Black Numenorean Captain (or something of that calibur(sp?)) or give a full leadership power to Morgramir or Hwaldir.

Regarding the units, I like them the way they are. They have light cavalry and infantry. If anything, I think (like I mentioned before) that they could get minor upgrades. Nothing like heavy armour though. In my opinion, I think that these Thrall units are used to quickly harrass your opponent until you get the cash to purchase more powerful units. I also think that heavier calvary would take away from their uniqueness and make the factions more "cookie-cutter-like".

I have an idea for the Black Numenorean units; Why don't we make their power depend upon their stealth? One element that this game lacked from the very beginning (even BFME1 didn't quite have this!) was good stealth! As of now, all I have to do is gather a couple of hordes (sometimes unupgraded hordes but usually archers) and kill those annoying rangers in the forest. If anything, the most effort I took into killing those annoying rangers, was that I sometimes had to send some soldiers to spot them before I gunned them down. I am proposing that the team could consider introducing stealth and seeing what happens with a more advanced stealth-element - which could be a power for a new hero. I think that Angmar needs this because it has such a weird curve to it.... I keep saying this but it's really all I can think of when I want to describe this faction. Any good Angmar-players on this board want to elaborate their strangths and weaknesses?

Here's my idea for a Numenorean Captain hero:

He'd have a pretty low defence, high range and range-attack, he'd have low melee damage, and high speed. Of course the melee/range attack bonuses would be applied to this hero.

Anything with stealth, is assuming that the Rangers and this hero are hidden in forested areas.

Power 1: Bow/Arrow Toggle
Power 2: Numenorean Leadership (passive) - Grants all Numenorean soldiers and rangers bonuses in attack, defence, and especially speed.
Power 3: Summon Frozen Land - Same as the Angmar power except that it decreases the enemy hordes' speed by a high/med. precentage.
Power 4: Exiled Reinforcements - Summons 1 Numenorean Soldier Battalion and it summons 1 Numenorean Ranger Battalion for a limited time.
Power 5: Veiled Replenishments - Heals a targeted area and it stealths friendly units in that area for 45 seconds.
I do realize that this guy is a lot like Faramir.

So what do you guys think?

Edited by Scryer, 06 February 2008 - 02:07 AM.

[Gothmog14]

Hmmm, there were no Black Nûmenoreans (when is the other accent anyways) in Angmar during the Rise of the Witch-King or ever. I propose we get rid of them altogether and add something that makes more sense (like, just changing the names of units, not their models or anything).

If a new stealth system is implemented (which I think it really difficult) I think Elves and Harad units should be the ones to take advantage of it.

[robnkarla]

hehe, I'm still trying to digest everything in this thread. I've read all of it quite a few times, but I'll post something a little later when I have the time to articulate everything. (I just wanted to make sure everyone knows that I am reading the posts, which is one reason why I've been moving more stuff out of the beta forums to get all the discussion going as I work on 1.06.)

Robert J.

[Black Dragon]

Had a few more suggestions:

GONDOR
-Able to build a new structure called the Beacon of Gondor. This beacon uses the same model as the map beacons that can be captured, and when build it starts to bring in units from Rohan over a period of time. For instance, the beacon is build and a player chooses the Rohan Riders, pretty much like a free unit, but with a long timer until they arrive. So after say 30 minutes, a group of Rohan Riders arrive at the beacon as though they came to Gondors aid.

Just a small idea, reject if you feel its crap lol Just trying to vent all ideas I have

[Devon]

OK idea, but in practice I don't think it would work. Maybe change the inn model to a beacon? That's pretty much the system BD is suggesting.

[Black Dragon]

Ooh another idea I forgot to post

ELVES
-TOWERS-
The elves can build two additional types of tower which are very different from the battle towers.
1) Watch Tower: This tree house type tower is cloaked when constructed close to trees...it extends the line of sight and can also detect stealthed units. Excellant to be posted near farms to give an early warning to approaching enemies.

2) Archer Tower: This wooden tower allows three archers to stand on top of it and fire arrows much further than the battle tower. Whilst being considerably weaker than the battle tower it is designed to kill enemies approaching from afar. Has a slow firing rate but longer range due to its unrestricted platform.

The standard battle tower is reserved primarily for base defence. The new towers would suit more for the Mirkwood alliance since they are light but can shoot further.

-Melorn Trees-
The Elves are meant to be more reserved, less focused on fighting. Unlike Gondor they don't build giant fortresses but instead rely on the magic of their people to defend their lands. The Melorn trees could be allowed to upgrade to hide units near them, allowing the elves to adopt more stealth.

[Dalf32]

i guess i'll start from the bottom...
black dragon: i really like those elven ideas. the mallorn trees stealthing nearby units (only if they already stealth when near trees). the new towers sound like they could add an entirely unique facet to base defense for the elves (probably mirkwood as you said); sort of a 1-2 punch of RB defense. it could be a little more expensive to construct both (i suggest each one costs a little less than the normal one but together cost more) and offer a different aspect to the defense of the outer rim of your base.

as for the beacon idea: i doubt (like yoda) that it could work very well in practice, but perhaps changing the inn to the signal fire model and calling it a beacon would work even better than the inn. it would probably quiet some people who complain about the invalidity of inns on a battlefield... of course we would then have to come up with a new model for the signal fire

i'm horrible with angmar and dont use them so i will stay out of that little thing for now...

[Scryer]

Wow, Black Dragon, you're just full of ideas these last couple of days .

I do like the new towers and Mallorn Trees ideas that you've came up with. I also agree with you that the Elves were more reserved during the War of the Ring (and even a little before then too), so I also think that we should play them that way. I believe that the foretress for the elves kind of supports this because you can't really use it offensively, not only that but it hides the units around it with the mist upgrade.

Now regarding an advanced stealth system - For me what matters is that stealth can give you an edge to the game if you use it properly. The only reason that I suggested that Angmar has more stealthy-based units (only the Numenorean units - maybe they could be called the exiles of Arnor -or something like that? I honestly don't think that this needs to be changed?) is that because Angmar has such a weird curve to it (I'm sorry that I keep over-using those words) that the stealth-units could support and strangthen Angmar as a faction. Like Allathar said, Angmar is over-powered and under-powered at the same time... One thing I know for sure, is that we need to discuss whether or not we need to change Angmar.

I don't think MOTE needs any stealth (except mabey for the Rhun Brigands or something small...) because they're pretty powerful as it is. MOTE (when fully developed) will probably have a really powerful edge to the game. They have the Blue Wizards (if you haven't heard, RJ, added the animated rock guy as one of the wizard's last power. Before I disliked the idea and now I love it after I saw it in action), they have Mumakil, elite units, elite calvary (I'm talking Rhun), Ballistas, sweet unit-models, 2 Ringwraiths (I personally think that the other one should be on a fell-beast - but that's a personal opinion), Mumakil Captain, and a Rhun Captain. I'm pretty sure that MOTE would be grossly overpowered if they got good stealthed units.

I also agree that Elves need to get advantage from stealth. I think that thier faction should revolve around stealth (not the Silverthorn Upgrade!), precision, and accuracy. I would like to see the elves become a faction where when they find a weakspot in their enemy, that they can quickly (and stealthily) dish out some destruction to that area and quickly eliminate their enemy. I'm probably thinking a little far-fetched right now. But that is the way I see the elves as a faction.

Something needs to be done with the archers because as of now, with ST Arrow upgrade, you really don't consider heroes. Instead you just buy more archers. I've played elves before, and the STA upgrade is just disgustingly overpowered. I don't even consider archer heroes and Elrond, Arwen, and Glorfindel don't even come to mind when I could just buy more archers. And in order to kill them, you have to have horses and quite a few archers (and possibly some swordsmen) to kill off a couple battalions of these archers with that upgrade.

There is one idea I have, and it would be hell to implement. But I think that different factions should benefit from different maps. Like an Elves player could have more units stealthed in a Mirkwood level.

Another thing that I'd like to mention, is about this thread. Um, I really don't mean to be like a board mod (or w/e), but I really think that we're jumping around too many topics at once. On this page alone, we've discussed Gondor, Angmar, Isengard, and now the Elves. It's kind of hard to follow (or atleast, for me) and devlope discussions and ideas when we're jumping around from each faction within a post. I am doing it right now in this post, so Iapologize for that.

Edited by Scryer, 07 February 2008 - 03:15 AM.

[robnkarla]

Yes, I'm planning on re-organizing the forums really soon into an SEE style so it is much easier to follow and find items. I'll probably move many topics into an achive folder so I can go back and review everything to make sure there is nothing I missed.

I'll post more soon (I'm trying to piece together something for a news release about something very cool that I finally can post about), but I'll mention one thing. The Rhun Brigands are going to be one VERY different unit soon. (In combination with the Istari Alcove, they will be able to do interesting item......just think illusions.....)

Robert J.

[fehik]

My question is that, is that possible to compress the art and other stuff into a .big file, to lower the lag? I don't really understand why isn't poissibble to have .big file for the mod. WoTE uses it with no problem. Well i can't wait for the next update:D!!

[Sûlherokhh]

The .big file doesn't make it smaller. Besides, the .big file also causes a complication that Rob solved by just using a folder. For exactly those reasons, and because it is just more comfortable for modding the files, S.E.E. also uses a folder and not a .big file.

But most importantly (to answer your question), a .big file doesn't reduce 'lag'.

[Darkhinilus]

I maybe had two suggestions that also came from battle for middle earth I like in the first Bfme if you attack A enemy Fortress and you send in your army they dont go al at once but group by group and that was looking far more better and funner then the way its now that they go al at once in one hugged up group it would make the game exidier and you can use more tactics of taking the enemy down. my second suggestion was most players like to attack the enemy first before they attack they attack them I thought that if you play in A fortress map that they first defend and if they are able to stop your attack then that they attack you like normaly and if you are in the fortress that mordor and isengard use siege ladders and siege towers like in battle for middle earth one that would make it far more realisticer then the way Ea has done it in Bfme II.

[Sûlherokhh]

Please use whole sentences and interpunctuation as well as line breaks. This is really hard to read. You might as well use the list function to list several different suggestions lead by dots or numbers. Believe me, it will improve your chances that anybody actually reads what you write.

[SoraStrife]

Hey, just checking in over from MEC, just went through my first playthrough of the mod checking out the new stuff.

The one thing Ive noticed is that Rohan's economy is extremely weak with the stuff it requires to get diversified units from the barracks. Maybe, to really go back to the BFME1 way of things, have farms provide a food bonus that helps with the cost of units.

Ill post more as I sort out exactly what balances I see that are off.

[Dalf32]

for me, basically ditto what scryer said on the elven stealth, STA stuff.

umm, folders are easier to install and they solved a previous problem so the chances of going back to bigs is small imo.

i never found a problem with the rohan economy but perhaps that is just the way i used them. for me, they kinda start off slow, but you can pick up a lot of momentum and do a ton of damage real fast. perhaps i will take a closer look at them next time i play.

and punctuation is our friend...