Brief General Ideas

[Le Sournois]

After Horde maps which are really good, maybe there could be Besiege maps when you attack the fortress.

However, Besiege maps have always seem rather boring in the Campaign in comparison with Fortress Defence because you got all your time to destroy the ennemy fortress, and the ennemy stays still in the wall which make less epic battle than Horde maps.

Maybe one interesting revamp would be to put a scripted an allied AI fighting besieging the fortress with you. You should therefore analyse the AI attacks against the ennemy and attack strongly at the appropriate moment, by complementing the strenghts of your ally rather than using catapults against the archers to win slowly the game.

The AI batallion fighting alongside you could loose progressively armor and damage while fighting, in order to make the challenge still real.

The points were an amazing idea in Horde maps, they could be also very nice for Besiege maps.

The Defence of the fortress should therefore be very strong. When you kill an ennemy battalion, instantly the defender would train another one at least at the beginning.

However, the more frequently a type of ennemy battalion would be killed, the longer it would take to respawn it.

The Ennemy could get stronger at different stages of the game : changing instantly to level 3, then 5 (their normal progression would be slow), get equipments of Heavy armor and Forged Blades, global leadership...

[Smeargollum]

Hello everyone!
I would like to suggest to remove all kinds of random fear effects.
As an example:
Somtimes when you tell your pikes to attack a troll they are stunned by the troll so that they don't attack him for a few seconds and the troll can do what he wants.
Stuff like this can be extremly annoying or even decide a game, and especially because it is random and happens only sometimes it is more like a gambling game than an RTS game.
Things that let your units trembel in fear randomly:
- Trolls (from Mordor and from the creeps)
- Ents (noticed it by the normal melee ents)
- Angmar walls (lol  )
- Zaphragor ()
- Wights (unit of Angamr  )

Maybe there are more, but that is the stuff I noticed so far.

Have a nice day!

Edit: Units fear the whight lair and the Nazgulbattalion as well

[Fredius]

I strongly disagree for Trolls, Ents and Wights. I understand the balance idea behind it but this mechanic is meant to show the intimidation of these giant creatures, which is realistic considering that they could squash you if given the chance, or in the wights case they're literally undead walking. It's only realistic that smaller lesser men would fear them. Not to mention the fact that it is also a core mechanic of the BFME series.

In Zaphragor and Angmar walls case Im not sure, but definetly no for giants and undead.

[Smeargollum]

Well, of course it is realistic that creatures like Trolls, Ents or Wights are fearsome and lesser man are afraid of them.
But first of all I don't think that realism is the most important thing in a RTS game and when theses units are supposed to have a fear effect for other units it shouldn't be random.
It would be better when each troll, ent, whight, ... had an active ability to stun units. Even though I don't think that would be great for the gameplay, not even speaking of balance, it would at least not be a random luck game.

So when the team wants them to have such fear effects they should be via an ability and not random  at some point at the game in my opinion.

[steadii]

I really think that concept of flying units should be reconsidered. Because it is quite funny when AI summons eagles that are trying to destroy building and they do something between zero to minimum damage. Also they are not as good even against normal units as they should be. Imagine eagles destroying Gundabad army in BOTFA (which was of course extreme, but still).
I agree that eagles and fellbeats should be vulnerable against arrows. But Smaug with nearly impermeable skin shouldnt be, it should be nearly unstopable force.

[Halbarad]

So, how do you want flying units to be changed? Eagles should be stronger in general against everything, especially buildings? Eagles are already considered to be Gondors strongest tier 3 Spell and they can destroy whole armies when they are used good. Making eagles stronger in general would mean either using less eagles for this spell or making this spell a tier 4 spell.
However, I did once suggest to reconsider flying units and make them vulnerable to revenge trample damage, same as trolls or cav when they are attacking, so that they don't have to be so weak against archers anymore, I'd still like to see that being implemented (just imagine what would have happened if the orc-army in BotfA would have raised their spears directing to the eagles who were flying directly into them). Such a system would especially raise the strength of Dragons like Smaug, they could attack with Dragonfire without taking any risk to get revenge trample damage. Also normal flying units wouldn't have to be so weak against archers and Dwaves would have an easier time fighting them.

And yes, I do also think that Smaug should be much stronger then any other flying unit  (like in 3.8.1, where you needed 6000 + Ring to get him). But of course it should also be possible to kill him, just think of it like that: If you fire a thousand arrows on him, one should be able to penetrate his eye or something.

[steadii]

However, I did once suggest to reconsider flying units and make them vulnerable to revenge trample damage, same as trolls or cav when they are attacking, so that they don't have to be so weak against archers anymore, I'd still like to see that being implemented (just imagine what would have happened if the orc-army in BotfA would have raised their spears directing to the eagles who were flying directly into them). Such a system would especially raise the strength of Dragons like Smaug, they could attack with Dragonfire without taking any risk to get revenge trample damage. Also normal flying units wouldn't have to be so weak against archers and Dwaves would have an easier time fighting them.

And yes, I do also think that Smaug should be much stronger then any other flying unit  (like in 3.8.1, where you needed 6000 + Ring to get him). But of course it should also be possible to kill him, just think of it like that: If you fire a thousand arrows on him, one should be able to penetrate his eye or something.

I think the same way. Flying units should be vulnerable and not so much efective against pikes and units with heavy armour in general, but against normal troops should be OP. Normal flying units should be vulnerable to archers, too, but definitely not dragons.

[Birds]

I don't think that flying units are weak in the first place. Sure maybe they take a bit too much damage from archers at the moment. But they do a lot of damage and the eagles are arguably the strongest tier 3 spell. Flying units being weak against pikes is a nice idea but not easy to implement.
But even now flying units are far from useless. You don't see them often, but when used at the right time, they are devastating. If the enemy doesn't have many archers or you focused his archers and killed them, eagles can kill all that's left. Same goes for flying Nazgul, even though most of the time they are more useful with their armor.
I imagine that Dragons will be a lot tankier than other flying units, after all they are armored in scales and not some big flying bird.

[Seleukos I.]

I agree with Birds that birds, I mean eagles  are far from beeing weak atm.
Flying Nazgul also can be devastating, in certain situations. If your opponent isn't ready for them and doesn't have any archers/ranged units, then they can deal a lot of damage.
You can kinda compare them with cavalry: Cav units wreck swords, archers and heroes, can outrun their own counter (pikes), but once they get chaught by pikes they die quickly. Flying Nazgul wreck everything that doesn't shoot up, can outrun (most) archer units, but when archers get to shoot at them they die quickly. The difference between the two is, that cav can also be killed by archers and swords, flying units can't get killed by melee units. This means that ranged units need to be a harder counter to flying units than pikes are to cav.
This beeing said, I think that both eagles as well as flying Nazgul are in a good spot right now, in terms of combat power.

Concerning dragons:

But Smaug with nearly impermeable skin shouldnt be, it should be nearly unstopable force.

Well, I agree with you that smaug - if we go by the lore - should be able to kill every army you can build in Edain with one breathfire. Same goes for most bases. The problem however is, that we are talking about a RTS game. And in a game, Smaug, if he should be buildable in a normal game, needs to have some counter.
Let's  take a look at the dragons in the valilla ROTWK:
They were able to set ablaze armies as well as building, they were able to deal a lot of damage. But, and that's the thing, you were rather squishy. You could kill them with archers, with heroes and with pikes (if he ran into them). Also Drogoth, the dragon hero, was able to deal devastating damage, but he also died quickly vs archers.
Now this "interpretation" of dragons is very different of what we see in the Hobbit movies or read about in the hobbit or silmarillion books, but it worked in terms of gameplay.

If Smaug (or any other dragon) in this game would be a "nearly unstopable force", as you suggested, than he would need to cost something like 20 000 resources. This would mean you almost never ever get to see him in a competetive game - and if you do, it's game over immediately, because of how strong he is.
Lorewise this would make sense, ofc: If smaug decided to join any battle, this battle would most likely be over right away, but gameplay wise this would be trash^^

The best way I see to have a really strong and op smaug would be by making him go super ham once you got the ring: If a ring is in the game the players usually aren't looking for balanced gameplay anyways, so a super strong smaug wouldn't be too much of a problem here.

But in a normal game (without ringheroes) every faction should be able to counter a flying dragon, even if it doesn't really make sense in terms of lore.

Best regards,
Seleukos

[Éomer Éadig]

I wouldlike to make a suggestion concerning catapults and ballistas. I would like them to do more damage to buildings, but have a lower firing rate. As it stand now, they are extremely effective against armies, provided they have just a small meatshield in front.

As an example, you can kill Gandalf with one ballista and one uruk troop, as Gandalf will be continuously stunlocked by the siege engine, with a split second window to escape (if micromanaged) which can be countered by the troop. Siege engines in general are sometimes just a massive pain to deal with.

Against base buildings then, they do tend to deal little damage, hence the damage buff against buildings.

[Birds]

Making catapults better against buildings is a good idea. Right now you don't see them very often, exept against arcerclumps. The knockback and damage is strong against heroes even though it's far less then it once was. lowering the fireing rate would be a nice change or even just removing the hero knockback.

[Le Sournois]

I think it would be nice if the Conquest and Victory Points mods would apply also to the AI.

For now, only the player can win if he has more than half the settlements and the AI cannot win in that way. I have always think this mod is for "lazy parties" at least against the AI, and I always found these mods not engaging compared to "Legendary Heroes" or "Epic battle".

If the AI could win like the human player can in these mod. That would enhance grealty their interest. As the AI is good at taking settlements and ouposts, this would make it very challenging and quite epic and would force agressive gameplay against the AI rather than stay defensive (as I tend to be personnally).

Maybe the delay before winning could be extended to make it possible to counter the AI in a reasonable time, 4 minutes is a bit harsh.

The other mods "Legendary Heroes" and "Epic Battle" are very good as they are. I like the fact the AI is not affected by those mods because you can enjoy your strenghts without the AI bothering you by showing the same strenghts. And that's also allows challenges by playing with more handicap than in skirmish.

Personnally, I would enjoy the return of the old "Battle mod" where all command points are doubled, because firstly I don't see the points of having both the mod "Elite" and "Massacre" and secondly "battle"mod would allow the player to use more command points but with some limits that you do not have in epic battle.

In BFME II, you had a lot of options in terms of command points limit.

[IgRAzm]

I have a small suggestion - if that's technically possible, make the citadel unit decommission feature an ability that can be cast by it on units, rather than automatically performed when right clicking on it. I ask you, how you others manage to NOT missclick in a stressful situation when defending as Lorien? Their citadel fills 1/3 space of the camp.

[The_Necromancer0]

I strongly support this suggestion. This would also fix the issue with inconsistent decommission buildings.

[Seleukos I.]

I support this idea as well.