The Road to Edain 4.8.2: Bounders from the Shire

[The_Necromancer0]

Greetings, companions of Edain!

Today we want to present a new unit coming to Imladris in patch 4.8.2: the Bounders from the Shire. These brave hobbits will aid Imladris in the early game and broaden their opening moves.

The Bounders are hobbits tasked with protecting the borders of the Shire, bounder literally meaning "persons watching the boundaries". With the approach of the War of the Ring, the number of Bounders greatly rose to combat the increasing appearance of strange creatures on the borders.

"Defenders of the Shire!"

Ingame, the bounders are a standard-tier horde of 15 units that can switch between ranged and melee attacks. They can be recruited from hobbit farms, cost 300 resources and take up 90 command points. They have standard tiers, apart from their speed that is below average, and the following abilities:

Throw Rocks (Level 1): Switch to rock-throwing ranged attack.
For the Shire! (Level 1): Even though Hobbits are a mostly peaceful people, they are surprisingly resilient in the defense of their homes. In a large radius around Hobbit farms, they gain +25% speed, +25% armor and deal +25% damage. Bonus lasts for 30 seconds after leaving the area. Passive Ability.
Food and cheer and song (Level 1): Hobbits value their peace and quiet more highly than any other people in Middle-earth. At any point, they can enter any Hobbit farm to lay down their weapons, reimbursing 50% of their buildcost. Passive Ability.

Imladris has always had a hard early-game by design and we don't want that to change too much. From their base they can only recruit elite elves with small unit-counts. Their standard-tier units all come from the external plots which is why the boundes felt natural to add. We wanted to be careful not to overshadow the Dunedain, they should remain Imladris' premier spam strategy but the gap was always hard to bridge. Unless you constructed a Rivendell Barracks you were stuck with just your starting units to get the ball rolling. All this was exacerbated in FreeBuild, where you had no Wandering Companies to start out with. The Bounders from the Shire are meant to bridge this gap by giving Imladris new strategic options, providing a useful early-game defensive unit without taking the spotlight later on.

Bounders are not a cost-efficient unit. On their own, they are more expensive than most standard tier swordsmen, take up more command points and lose in 1v1s against pretty much all of them. Even like this, the Bounders provide a strong early game creeping option with their ranged option they are quite effective in taking out creeps without suffering too much damage.

However, For the Shire makes them a terrifying unit around Hobbit farms which allows them to defend their home from small groups and then chase down survivors. Without the buff, however, they lose against most other standard infantry using their mechanic (formation, ambush, etc...).

Finally, Food and cheer and song is a thematic ability that allows the player to soften the blow of their higher purchase cost when transitioning to other units. Hobbit fight to protect their homes but once this is accomplished they will return to their lives. It also ties in with Rivendell's strong focus on keeping your units alive: Unlike almost all other "early game units" like Dunlendings, wild Goblins, etc., this ability rewards a careful player who keeps his hobbits alive instead of trading them away for economic damage.

Reinforcements from the Shire
The more quick-witted of you might have noticed that these units are very similar to the ones summoned from the spellbook. Not to worry, we noticed this small detail too and have made changes to the spell. Reinforcement from the Shire will now summon three hordes of Hobbit archers and Farmer Maggot.

"They won't get through us!"

The archers give the player early game ranged reinforcements that shoot faster the longer they are in combat, allowing them to deal a surprising amount of damage. Farmer Maggot is a solid melee combatant that is accompanied by his three dogs: Grip, Fang and Wolf. The dogs reduce the speed of any cavalry that come near them.

Additionally, the Bounders are roused by the arrival of their friends, gaining the For the Shire buff as long as they are nearby. This gives you the unique opportunity to go on the offensive with your Bounders while still benefiting from this powerful buff.

Other Changes
With this addition, part of our hope is that this will Dunedain starts a more viable option. However, we are also making additional changes to make this strategy better.

Dunedain can now purchase upgrade globally once Halbarad is on the field and at the correct level. This removes the clunky requirement of have Halbarad near the units that you wanted to upgrade and allows you to split your army more effectively. The change pairs nicely with the new ability we're giving Halbarad. He will now be able to summon a Dunedain Tent near allied settlements from which the player can recruit Dunedain. This gives the player easier access to more recruitment centers from which to increase their number of Dunedain.

Finally, specifically for FreeBuild, the player will be able to recruit up to two Wandering Companies from the citadel once Gildor has been recruited, making up for their removal as starting units in FreeBuild.

We hope you liked this article and are, as always, looking forward to your feedback!

Your Edain Team