Edain Mod for Battle for Middle-earth II: Rise of the Witch King

14 comments by Gnomi on May 22nd, 2013

Before coming to our today's update it's a pleasure to tell you that our current version (Edain 3.8.1) got over 55.000 downloads! (if you sum up the downloads on moddb and our main page www.modding-union.com)
This is our new record and there are more than 15.000 more downloads than of our last version. Most important for us is the awareness that Bfme (and also edain) still has many fans and enjoys great popularity. In addition it is fantastic to know that our numbers still can rise, even though you can't buy the game anymore. We want to say thank you to all our long lasting friends, who supported us and always stood by our side!
After telling you a lot about the changes for some heroes in our last update, we want to present you an update which gives you more information about the economy buildings.
For the next version we tried to underline the different identities of the factions by giving more possibilities to produce resources. For us it is very important to show different economy systems, which not only produce resources, but also give you price reduction or other special features. The normal farm, which just produced resources will be the past - today we spend time on collection of taxes, grinding, producing of parchment or the breeding of purebred horses.

We've already showed you the hobbit-farm and the Rivendell-scriptorium in earlier updates. Today we show you some more farms which brings color in the lifeless resource building system.
There are different kind of price reductions, which can be achieved with special economy sectors.
Those bonuses lower the costs of specifitc units and stack 5 times so you can get a reduction of -40%. Each player can decide for himself if he wants to reduce the price of upgrades, machines or infantry.
Gondor will have beside of the farm and the smith another economy building:
The dwelling house.
It's a long wish of the community to give gondor more of a "city feeling", which will be brought by such a house.
From each of those dweeling houses you will get taxes. There are two different models, which will be build randomly. The size is similar to the size of the barracks.
With those dwelling houses we will also introduce a new inhabitant-system.
Per level each house will spawn two people, who wanders around the house. They have diversifying routes and stop from time to time to talk to other dwellers.
You can see those features in the movie at the end of our update.
Additionally, as an attacker you can kill all of them and see them running away in panic when you attack the castle.
In the following screenshot you can see the different dwelling houses detailled. The level changes are shown from right to left:
Dwelling house

The dwelling house reduces the price of infantry and is only buildable in the fortress.
The forge can also only be build in the fortress and reduces the price of upgrades. The farm can only be build on neutral points outside of the fortress and makes your cavalry less expensive.

Rohan also will get new economy buildings to show their strengths better.
Beside of the farm Rohan will firstly get a mill, which grinds the collected corn and secondly a stud to have purebred horses.
With those two economy buildings there are two more sources of resource productions:
meal and horses.
The stud can be build in- and outside of the castle and cheapens rohan's cavalry. The mill can only be build in the fortress, but gives no price reductions. Therefore you can recruit peasents there. Farms have the same feature, but can't be build in the fortress.
The following picture shows the mill on level 3. Reaching level 2 the building gets the roof over the part with the horse and at level 3 it gets the arrow tower and the flag.
Mill

The stud uses the already named inhabitant-system. The horses will move randomly on the belt and will stop from time to time to graze. In our opinion the stud shows an important point of rohan: The dependence between human and animal.
At level 2 the stud gets windows on the roof and flags, at level 3 an arrow tower.
Auf Stufe 2 erhält die Stuterei die Fenster am Dach samt Banner, auf Stufe 3 erhält sie den Pfeilturm.

Stud:

Our last pictures shows the dwarven-'stone pit'., which will be a special economy building. Beside of the producing of resources (stones) and therefore a price reduction for buildings, this building will give you three different upgrades on level 1, 2 and 3:
Defensive line: Enables the possibility to use another defensive line in front of your citadel.
With this upgrade the player has the possibility to build towers or hearthes on two slots in front of your citadel.
Battle tower training: Strengthens the damage of your defensive buildings
Your towers will now attack with forged axes.
Building mechanics: Levels up all buildings to level 3
All buildings in your fortress will be leveled up to level 3.
The picture shows the pit in its final form - smokestack will get bigger with each level and will smoke ingame.

Dwarven-'stone pit'

The dwarves will also get a lumber mill for their neutral points plus the mine which can be built in- and outside of the castle.
Finally we want to show you a short movie about the new resource production buildings of Gondor and Rohan:

We hope you liked the update  and are looking forward to your feedback!
Your edain-team