Battle for Middle-earth II: Rise of the Witch King Windows game

Greetings, Companions of the Edain!

First things first: Yes, Part I was somewhat of an April's Fool, not meant to outright lie to you, but to mislead you with outrageous statements to hide the truth. But what is truth, and what is lies? Well, you can now go back to the article where we've added additional context to some parts to help clarify the intentionally ambiguous statements.

So what are we really doing with the build style? The truth is simple. We are indeed planning to re-introduce free build in Edain, but nothing as drastic as making it the new build style for the whole of Edain as the previous article was trying to get you to conclude. Fixed build plots remain our favorite and will remain Edain's main build style, instead freebuild will be introduced as a new gamemode in Edain 4.8.

Selecting this gamemode will indeed do all the things we discussed in the previous article and we did make all the changes we listed there. However, those generic changes were not always enough to make a faction feel good in freebuild. In this article, we will be taking a dive into some of the more specific changes we made to each faction in this new gamemode.

Rohan
The main issue we ran into with Rohan was that there were several duplicate buildings. While they make sense in the fixed build plot setting, they do not make as much sense in free build. As such, the following buildings were removed:

• Rohan Farm
• Stud Farm (external)
• Well

The removed economy buildings already have equivalents, and the well is replaced by the assembly point.

Isengard
Similarly, Isengard has had its external mineshaft removed, since it was just a duplicate of the internal one. Apart from that, no major changes were made to the faction. It is not overly dependent on the location of plots and as such did not need many changes to adapt to the freebuild mode.

Gondor/Arnor/Belfalas
Gondor has always been seen as the simple, beginner-friendly faction, their mechanics are relatively uncomplicated, and their play style allows a diverse array of strategies. In the freebuild gamemode this faction remains relatively untouched. Nonetheless, on top of the generic changes, we also had to rework the Stonemaker.

This building previously provided upgrades for your camp or castle. Now, with neither camps nor castles left, it instead provides upgrades to battle towers, repairs nearby buildings and strengthens the citadel and its extensions.

Mordor
One of the changes the original game developers made from BFME1 to BFME2 was making the orcs cost a small amount of resources. One of the reasons for this were balance concerns, as spamming orc pits in free build does not have the same opportunity cost as with the fixed build system: You can just keep building more and more until you run out of space. For now, we have decided to keep the orc warriors free, but we will be listening to feedback to see if this is a major balance problem.

Apart from that, we've also made some tweaks to Sauron's Influence of Sauron. Since it functioned as Mordor's economy upgrade, we had to rework parts of it. When cast on an economy building in the FreeBuild gamemode, Influence of Sauron will grant all current economy buildings of that type a level. This is essentially a one time experience boost and will only apply to current buildings and not future ones.

Dwarves
Dwarves faced a similar problem as Gondor, the Stonemason was not designed for free build and as such required a minor rework. The Stonemason already functions as an economy building and provides a powerful stacking buff, so we simply gave it the ability to also buff battle towers through an upgrade.

Imladris
Imladris did require several changes, mainly in relation to Erestor and their economy upgrades. For Erestor, we simply made him a recruitable mini-hero, just like with Erestor on Fortress Maps. He is cheap and quick to build, recruitable once a Library has been constructed. Be careful though, as he can be targetted by the enemy - we suggest not to send him on scouting missions.

The economy upgrades posed another problem. In the fixed build mode, they provide levels to economy structures on top of their other effects, but this is no longer the case in this gamemode.

Angmar
Angmar was another faction where we had to make a balance choice. In fixed build Edain, one of Angmar's weaknesses is that they need to have external plots in order to level up their buildings. With the ability to construct those external building through the builder, one of Angmar's weakness became muted. However, Angmar also loses access to the impressive walls that protected their levelled up buildings so potentially this could even out the problems. We will be keeping an eye on the faction and the feedback we get.

Misty Mountains
Misty Mountains was an interesting faction to adapt. In the fixed build system, they are the closest to what could be considered free build. It seemed only normal that this would inverse in fixed build. We kept most of the tunnel mechanics when it comes to Gundabad and Goblin-town, which means that in the Freebuild mode Misty Mountains is actually the faction that comes closest to being fixed build, as they are limited by their tunnels in how much they can build.

We are also exploring different ways of making the construction of wild lairs feel organic. We haven't reached a consensus on the solution yet, but we agree that wild lairs being constructed by the Moria builder seems illogical.

Lothlorien
Lothlorien was the most complex of the factions to adapt. In fixed build, they make full use of the castle/camp system, so we had to make quite a few changes. In the end we decided to go back to the 3.8.1 system of Seed of the Golden Wood.

At the core the faction remains the same, buildings you construct will unlock units at your citadel. However, you do not construct these building using your builder, instead you must use the citadel's ability "Seed of the Golden Wood" to summon buildplots on which you can construct buildings that unlock those units. You still have access to a builder that construct external buildings, resources buildings and defenses.

That's all we have to say for this article. There are still a few unknowns but we are hard at work designing new concepts to resolve them. What did you think of these changes? What other changes would you like to see made to factions specifically in an effort to adapt them? We look forward to your feedback.

Your Edain team