Greetings, companions of Edain!
Epic sieges are a central theme in Edain 4.5: New siege weapons, new defences, and an overhauled balance ensures more intense battles. Moreover, not only can you enjoy such clashes in regular skirmishes; no, we've also taken a closer look at fortress maps like Minas Tirith and created a new map type where siege fans can pull out all the stops:
These maps give you the opportunity to defend a fortress with a faction of your choice against overwhelming waves of enemies!
Not all fortresses have been integrated as horde maps yet, but there are now enough maps that we're ready to present them to you.
Horde maps offer a new challenge both for single players and for players who want to defend together with a friend in co-op.
So, how exactly does a map like this work? At the beginning, you choose your faction, just like with a normal map, and then you start the game within your castle. Horde maps give you some freedom, in that you can defend any fortress with any faction.
You begin with a lot of initial resources and have a few minutes to build up and prepare for the attacking hordes. Then, you'll have to do your best to keep the fortress standing and fend off invading troops!
If one considers Minas Tirith as an example, there are a couple of pivotal aspects that characterise siege scenarios in general.
Most of the time, you are attacked by Mordor troops, until a strong supporting army arrives to aid you. Afterwards, assailants from Harad take their turn. You'll also have to deal with special events like Grond's attack on the front gate.
In addition, you can no longer cheat the system as easily as in the first Battle for Middle-earth I: In BFME1, it was always well enough to get rid of all ladders or siege towers, and then everything would get relatively quiet, because the enemies could not get on walls anymore. This won't work here!
You've destroyed siege towers? The Dark Lord shall send new ones! You've slain the Orc hordes on your walls? Just a little break, nothing more!
Furthermore, from time to time you will have to counter especially strong waves heading towards the defenders: in Minas Tirith, for example, Orcs might try to take the southern wall with a concentrated attack from Cirith Ungol. These waves react to the course that the general battle takes. If Orcs, say, manage to bring down the central gate, they can press the assault there with lethal elite units. You will really feel like you have to withstand a truly relentless horde.
In order to survive, we have provided each faction with suitable reinforcements!
While Rohan comes by default to the aid of Gondor, as in the books, other factions get supporting armies that adapt to the context. The idea was always to send reinforcements following the same general principle.
Taking Minas Tirith as an example again, an allied faction of Gondor comes to the rescue. Should you play as Rohan, the reinforcements are Gondor troops in turn, while a Mordor defender (yes, even this crazy scenario is possible!) will receive support from Isengard.
With different horde maps, of course, there is a wide range of assault or reinforcement possibilities to be had.
Each map leads to a different finale. In Minas Tirith, the well-known Army of the Dead appears and allows you to finish all your foes off rather quickly if you held out that long. In Minas Morgul or Edoras, you can look forward to something else!
As mentioned in the aforesaid passages, you may play many of the maps with a friend: fortress build-plots, CP, initial resources, gate control and reinforcements are then split evenly between the two players, so that both contribute roughly for the same amount. However, you don't have a material advantage with two players, because you don't have more overall starting resources or more CP available.
Replay value is king!
It was also very important to us that the replay value of the very maps be as high as possible, and that it not become monotonous the second time around. That's why there is a massive variety of possible attack waves! There are 8,031,810,176 different combinations of assaulting hordes on Minas Tirith alone. Yes, that's over 8 billion possibilities!
If you consider that one can play with 9 different factions and defend alone or with a friend, the final result then amounts to 722,862,915,840. We're therefore talking about over 722 billion combinations. Or, in short: a whole universe of possibilities!
If defending the fortress seems quite easy to you, don't get cocky yet! In this case you can activate a special hard difficulty which increases the challenge enormously: Less money, fewer CP, slower accumulation of spell points and so forth.
Those looking for a strenuous challenge shall definitely get the opportunity to prove their mettle!
As you can see in the screenhots, you gain points during the siege: the longer and the better you carry on resistance, the more points you get. This has already led to some heated competition (and to some very interesting strategies) among team members and beta testers for the highscore!
If you enjoyed this update, we'd be grateful if you could give us your vote for Mod of the Year!
Note: If you have the time, please register before voting - it will make your vote count more!
We're looking forward to making this new game mode available very soon. Let us know what you think in the comments!
Your Edain Team
I really would like to share enthusiasm but when I see this, I also see former horror version of Helm's deep map, with endless spam of units which eventually led to laggs and sometimes game crashed because of that.
So I suppose that there must be some progress from that map otherwise you wouldn't public this as a complete fresh news.
Hello
thanks for the Feedback!
You can't really compare the Horde-maps with Helm's deep Horror, as they way they are scripted is compeltely different.
Obviously more units always means more lags and a higher chance of crashes. But I can assure you, that we made tons of tests, even before we gave the maps to our beta testers for testing.
For me it felt that Minas Tirith has similar amount of lags and crashes as playing with 3 AIs on a map.
Also in the last week I made a stress test on one of the map, where I deactivated victory (so I could play endless until it crashes) and also added FX than you'll have in a normal game, to make it even more demanding for the engine. I played on high to very high settings.
My computer is multiple years old and I played for multiple hours, before I stopped the game (without a crash), as I needed to do something else. :) A normal game normally doesn't last multiple hours, but 30-50 minutes, while the first 5-7 Minutes are just preparing without fighting.
If someone still gets crashes, he can always lower some settings to low/very low and it should work without any crashes. (things like shadows can always be set to very low, as you don't notice the difference in nearly all cases)
The only crashes of our testers in the past few weeks on any of the Horde maps were all bug-related, which are mostly fixed (and the rest will probably be fixed before christmas).
Also endless is not the same as endless. You can spawn units every minutes and get endless units that way, which can easily stack up.
Most of the attacks on Horde maps, don't spawn, if theprevious spawned units aren't killed. In Minas Tirith there are always at least 10 different teams - each team can contain one or more bataillons - andwhenever a team gest destroyed, it respawns and attack again. That way you will get constantly attacked, but there is always a maximum of units on the map. :)
Hope that answers your concerns!
Of course! Thx for explaining!
Usually when I play, it last at least 1-2hours
That is very good! I am glad you guys got some good workaround for big army crashes with these maps. I look forward to trying it out myself.
Considering the countless hours I spent as defender in skirmish siege maps waiting desperately for the AI to attack something other than the gate with siege engines other than rams or catapults, this looks just like the feature I've always been wishing for :-)
Suddenly I'm a lot more impatient for version 4.5 than before :D
im assuming we could see maps such as Isengard and Helms Deep as well? would be cool :) or other maps. Barad Dur, Black Gate, Dul guldor, erebor? thatd be awesome :)
All those maps are planned for the future. :) Probably not for 4.5, as we don't want to start even more new things, but finish and polish the existing maps.
The 4.5 will be great!
Wow this sounds awesome as hell! WHEN?
4.5
This looks amazing! I am excited to try this out in 4.5. Though, admittedly, I will be playing on normal difficulty modes ad opposed to the additional hard mode. But this is yet another fun thing to do in the game that just so happens to benefit greatly from the updates to siege combat present in 4.5. Thanks for your hard work! :)
Concerning the coop version, is it possible to have 2 differents factions in the fortress, or is it forbidden ?
(Great work, and can't wait to play with it, obviously).
You can choose any two factions you like.
Thank you for the quick reply. Good lusk with the progress on the mod.
This. Is. Awesome.
Exactly the thing a Dwarven defender like myself has been waiting for since this game came out!
Will we be able to play as Arnor on any Siege Horde map?
Because IIRC Arnor gets automatically loaded depending on the map you choose... so is there a way to play as Arnor on Minas Tirith map?
No, sadly there is no way to play Arnor on a Minas Tirith. But we will continue adding HORDE to more maps, including Arnormaps. You will be able to play Arnor on fortresses like Amon Sul, Fornost, Carn Dum...
ETA? ive been following you guys for years. good job.
Hi I'm new and just got Edain yesterday. Are these Horde maps already in the mod? I can't seem to find them? Or is this just a "dev-blog" of an incoming update?
Hi guys! I have to say I love the horde maps, but I feel they are way too difficult. Even the "non-hard mode". And it is just frustrating. I managed to win Minas Tirith twice, but...I built lots of catapults and always targeted the enemy catapults first, if I didnt, they devastated my defense because the catapults on the walls just target troops instead of the catapults on autoacquire. Tt was a save-load festival. Any chance there could be a more "casual" difficulty for the horde maps?
Hello, I tried to play with friend but we ran into problem. We have only very limited command points. Is there any way, how to increase command points limit in siege battles as defenders ? We just want to enjoy some epic scale battles.