The Road to Edain 4.8: A Return to Form Pt. I

[The_Necromancer0]

Greetings, Companions of the Edain!

Many years ago, we decided to take Edain back to the roots of BFME: the fixed build system. We believed that this build style provided a deeper layer of strategy and added many interesting ways to fight. What followed were some of the best years for Edain, coming in 5th and then 1st in the ModDB Mod of the Year competition and seeing huge numbers of players download the mod.

The decision was controversial, but at the time we believe that we had made the right one. Now... we're ready for another change. Over the years, we've tried to make the system work with heaps of duct tape and hacky fixes and what was supposed to take a couple of years took us a decade to finish. But the reality is that EA was right when they made the switch: Free build may not be superior to fixed build, but it sure is a lot of fun.

And due to this reality, we made the decision that we will, too, be taking Edain back to its true core: the BFME2 free build system.

Going back
Starting from 4.8, you will be able to select a new gamemode in which you no longer have access to castles and camps with the free build system. Instead, when you start a match, you will notice quite a few changes.  Firstly, you will notice that your starting building is now a single vanilla style fortress with a central citadel and a certain number of defensive plots. Secondly, that your starting units are replaced by two builders that emerge from your fortress. Finally, you will see that all settlements on the map will have been removed. You are left with no troops, no fortress and no easy targets for expansion.

Thankfully, this is not some sick practical joke. The builders that spawn from your citadel can build an unlimited amount of buildings, unlike the War of the Ring builders. They also have a much expanded roster of buildings, including buildings which could previously only be constructed by claiming a settlement plot. All that's left for you now is to build up your fortress, train armies and conquer your enemies!

I feel naked...

One thing to note is that even in this new gamemode, outposts flags will remain on the map and can still be claimed to build special outposts, even though you will not be able to build standard outposts. In vanilla, maps were populated with inns, outposts and signal fires that created points of interests on the map. Before 4.0, we had already expanded this system by adding entire subfactions of units and heroes to the inns. In 4.0, this system was changed to use outposts flags, but at its core remained the same. The player goes to a specific place and claims it, they can then build units and heroes from it. Outposts flags are functionally similar to inns and as such, we decided to keep outposts instead of replacing them with inns. We felt it was important to still have points of interests on the map that players could conquer. This also helped us balance some of the outposts, as the powerful economical ones would have been too strong if the player could have simply built them in the back of their base and made pretty much infinite money.

If you cannot put an outpost in your base, then consider
putting your base in an outpost

Faction Changes
Our goal with this new gamemode was to transfer the essential experience of each faction into the free build style. Ideally, the only difference between the fixed build and free build versions of a faction should have been the build style. However, that was not always possible. We will go into the changes made to each faction in a future article but they include things like merging buildings with too much overlap, removing certain upgrades and introducing new buildings to factions that specifically relied on the external plots. Here is a list of generic changes we made to all the factions:

• Removed economy upgrades
• Economy buildings now level up over time
• Economy buildings have a radius that impact their resource production
• Economy buildings all have the ability to Man the Defenses at level 3
• Faction start with two builders instead of their starting units
• Factions start with a citadel surrounded by 4 defensive plots instead of a camp/castle
• Settlements flags removed from the map
• Builders can construct all internal and external buildings apart from a few duplicates and outposts

Denethor, his only son and his only son's ranger friend out for a picnic

The decision to work on this gamemode was bittersweet to make, and it took a lot of internal discussion. But when we boiled it down to its core, there remained a simple truth: nothing can top EA's base work. We heard the fans lamenting the LOSS of the free build system and will commit to going forward on this new direction for Edain and try our best to continue onwards. With that being said, we look forward to your impressions of the new and old build style at the same time and can't wait to tell you more about some of the changes we've made in future articles. Share your feedback here!

Your Edain Team