Age of the Ring: Realms in Exile mod for Battle for Middle-earth II: Rise of the Witch King

Hello, friends!

Today I will talk a bit about Mordor's new Second Age sub-faction led by Annatar.

If you don't know much about Second Age lore, Annatar is... spoiler alert... Sauron. However, it is Sauron in his fair form. In that Age, Sauron tried to control the Elves by teaching them how to craft Rings of Power so that he could control them through their rings. By controlling the Elves he would control Middle-Earth as they were much more powerful in the Second Age than during the Third Age.

So you can see that his primary plan back then wasn't one of military conquest, but rather using his cunning to manipulate others into doing his bidding. When that plan failed, because the Elves were aware of him when he forged the One, he turned to using hard power instead.

I tried to represent this in his hero form, and I think I can say that I've created an interesting mechanic (although difficult to master). Let's go into that so you can understand what I mean.

The way Annatar levels up is different than other heroes. He has an ability called "The Lord of Gifts" where he spawns a treasure called "Gift of Annatar"; every time he spawns a gift he goes up one level. In his standard "strategy", which is a form of stance (we'll talk more about that in a bit), the gift can cause two different outcomes when an enemy picks it up (and only enemies can pick it up), it can either grant 500 resources or explode causing a lot of damage, with a 50% chance for both. This is to represent his ambiguous personality in this form and will always keep his enemies guessing whether it is worth accepting his gifts.

However, in this form, he is basically a support hero and his attacks are long-range debuffs to enemy troops. But Annatar does not only have many names, he has many forms. And this is represented by his different "strategies".

Strategies are unlocked after you purchase the "Lesser Rings" upgrade in the Fortress. It works the same way as Isengard's Focus System, the difference being that whenever you change a "strategy" it changes Annatar's abilities. The default is called "Cunning" and he is mostly a support hero with abilities to make enemies fight among themselves and to permanently convert units to serve him.

The defensive "strategy" is called "Lore", and it represents Annatar when he was in Eregion teaching the Elves how to forge the Rings of Power. In this form, his gifts always grant enemies resources, he buffs enemy structures and gives experience to enemy heroes, but in tow, he cannot be attacked by his enemies. It's a safe way for him to level up unharmed but if not used correctly can make your enemies too strong. When he is wearing the One Ring, he has the ability to imbue part of his spirit in a structure, making it much more resistant to damage.

This strategy is especially fun in FFAs, where you can walk to your enemies' territory unchallenged and balance the different powers in the way you see fit by giving gifts to the right people. They will love the free gold until they realize that they are only pawns to you...

His aggressive "strategy" is called "Malice", and it represents when he revealed his true colours to the Free Peoples. In this stance he can attack enemies and is quite powerful, however, his gifts always harm enemies and do not level up him. This stance is useful when you want to do harm as he gains experience very little experience in combat.

At level 10, he can also turn into his true form to cause even more damage.

There's a cost to change between strategies so that players don't abuse this system, except if you want to go back to your default strategy.

This is a summary of his abilities and this new mechanic. There are some other abilities but this should give you a good overview of what he is capable of. There are also other heroes to help Annatar on his goals. I won't go into much detail but some of them are pretty famous and infamous...

And here's a look at the spellbook.

I also want to thank TrenchDog for doing the voice acting for Annatar, he sounds awesome! And there are some little easter eggs in his lines, try to see how many you can get.

That's all for today folks, see you when we release 0.4 on the 24th of October.