To be clear, I am not a fan of making camps and castles unbuildable in WotR. It makes for short, uninteresting battles, IMO.
However, if that is the direction being taken, I think the AI has got to have different priorities in WotR. All the computer does when I play this mode is run to the nearest outpost, capture it, then build nothing on the three build slots, since it seems to think that camps and castles still need to be captured. With an opponent like that, it is an incredibly simple matter to take your time, build up a few upgraded troops and wipe out whatever forces the AI brought with it. That is, if the AI doesn't decided to forfeit before you even engage.
In Skirmish mode, the AI is challenging and engaging. It takes careful strategy to beat it. the WotR AI, not so much.
My suggestion is to make camps/castles buildable again and let the battles in WotR take place similarly to a skirmish battle. My guess is that this is not something that the mod team wants to do, which is fine. It's your mod. But if this is the case, something needs to be done about the AI in this mode. WotR was my favorite mode in the base game, and it's incredibly boring in this mod, which I simply LOVE in Skirmish mode.
I know this is more of a "Giving you a problem but not providing you a solution" kind of thread, but I'm really not sure how to fix the AI outside of giving it the ability to build camps/castles again, which seems to be out of the cards.
To be clear, I am not a fan of making camps and castles unbuildable in WotR. It makes for short, uninteresting battles, IMO.
In my opinion too, and if AI have problem with "unbuildable skirmish" game, then your idea is simple solution to this. Or better. If it's not a lot of work, we could have 2 version for WotR, new "unbuildable" & classic "buildable". It Was my favorite mode in the BFME2 game, but in Edain it's weakest part of mod (in my opinion). But WotR with brilliant-sweet-awesome skirmish mechanic from Edain mod? For me dreamed play in LotR setting.
Cheers
ps. sorry for my "engrish" :b
There are two main points, why camps and castles are not buildable in the war of the ring.
First of all, on every map there can only be a limited amount of camps and castles, so if you are playing on a 2 player map in WotR, there will be only the 2 camps/ castles. But if you play with more than two players, everyone but two of them would not get any camp or castle, so they will be much weaker, or even absolutly useless. Also the starting position in the WotR depends on the territory you came from. Therefore it might happen that you will have no chance to be at the camp/ castle before your enemy is there, or if your enemy has cavalry. These things would destroy the whole WotR mode.
Instead, our plan is that all camps and castles on the map are replaced by outposts, so in addition to the normal outposts nearly every player can get one at the start of the game, and an outpost is not that strong that a player without one has no chance at all.
The second point is the whole concept of WotR. When you play on the livingworld map and fight a battle you have to options, either to auto-calcuate the battle by the computer, or to fight the battle by yourself in real time. This real time battle is supposed to be the exactly same battle, with the slight difference that you can act much more intelligent and use different tactics with your army, instead of clashing them on each other. But what the real time battle really was, was just a normal build up game. You play a battle you would have lost for sure, because you had hardly any units in the land, but you build yourself up until you have an army with maximum strength, so after finishing the battle the whole army will be transferred into the living world, where it is that strong that every other fight is one.
But that is absolutly contradicting the idea of WotR. Instead of making tactical decisions and conquering enemy lands, you fight on battle and overroll your enemy afterwards. If one battle decides the rest of WotR, you can also play a normal skirmish.
But that is absolutly contradicting the idea of WotR. Instead of making tactical decisions and conquering enemy lands, you fight on battle and overroll your enemy afterwards. If one battle decides the rest of WotR, you can also play a normal skirmish.
I can't fully agree with this, since the spamming/cheating nature of BfME's AI makes it considerably difficult to build up from the ground. Once i had to defend the base for nearly two hous with absolutely no chance to launch a counterattack, such hard was the rain of orcs. Onlu after this much time the AI finally gave up.