(10) Battle for Minas Tirith

Name: LoTR: Battle for Minas Tirith
Players: 10
Genre: Strategy; defence/offensive map
Description: The forces of Sauron attempt to storm Osgiliath and destroy Minas Tirith, while the forces of Good must hold out until the arrival of Aragorn.

Background: Middle-Earth lies in the balance; a savage army of Orcs lie poised to strike at the White City, Minas Tirith. Osgiliath's defenders look out at the approaching ships; they know that it is only a matter of time before they are overrun.
But allies are on their way; Theoden and Eomer ride towards them, rallying the people of Rohan as they go, but still that will not be enough to halt the unstoppable march of the forces of Sauron; only Aragorn and the army of the oath-breakers may yet save the day.

Detailed Features: Another Minas Tirith map, yes, but one revolving around strategy, featuring:

- One hit kills for most units, or no damage caused, varied for each unit by armour (hardened skin, % chance). Also used on most AoE damage abilities.
- Special units such as Mumakills who can absorb considerable damage, as well as having special abilities.
- Potentially deadly, yet not overly powerful, heroes, who fit together and carry out a purpose, each one with a special ability. For example, Gandalf is an expert at taking out Nazgul, and can drive one away, while Faramir and Denethor working together, supporting each other, can take on considerable number of orcs, while Theoden and Eomer are experts against Mumakills.
- Rohan as reinforcements, who have to fight through an area, rallying forcing, to arrive, with varying speed and strength of troops depending on success there.
- Rally points setters for the orcs, enabling them to more easily control their forces.
- No lag caused by stupidly large number of troops.
- Siege towers that can be placed anywhere along the outer wall of the city. As they are based on waygates, they affect pathing, so will be automatically used.
- Nazgul that can turn the tides of battles, without being overpowered - highly counterable by Gandalf, but spears and arrows also do a reasonable job.
- Catapults for the forces of Good - main catapults that are very inaccurate, but deadly and long ranged, and lesser ones for taking out siege towers.
- Heroes of good that reincarnate after 4 minutes where they died. While this may seem slightly unfair, 4 minutes is a considerable length of time to be down a hero, especially since heroes can die very rapidly if you are not careful.

Most importantly, it is very strategically based. Heroes are not gods that dominate the game, but powerful tools when used well. Attacking the main gate, with four covering archers towers and a tight entrance, may not be the best of ideas, but maybe taking out the side towers and storming the walls might be. Enemy forces storming your side? Knock out their siege tower, and try and hold them at a choke point. Those archer towers causing some trouble? Send in your Nazgul to knock it out.

You say heroes are only powerful when used right.

Our units died in a few seconds when they attacked, however our heroes were as good as invulnerable. Sometimes a battle with a nazgul and a hero could last for allmost 5 minutes, both had lots of health but no health. Four heroes could take out all horde armies, because they could not be damaged.

Care to explain why I've seen heroes drop in less than two seconds, then? Because that is the reality. If they get surrounded, they die very quickly. The only way to avoid getting surrounded is to let the enemy through to destroy the target behind, and that ends up with the humans being overrun - then you're pretty much finished.

The orcs aren't underpowered, and both normal units and heroes must be used in tandem - try winning without using any heroes against decent opposition.

Oh, and most heroes aren't supposed to be able to do much damage against nazgul (though the Rohan heroes' spears are reasonable), and Nazgul can't do much damage to heroes because that led to Nazguls being able to easily kill heroes.

Of course a hero dies if hes surrounded 1:20. But I often fought battles of hero vs 10 units, and he just killed them, one at the time, with one hit each.

What im saying is:
Heroes have ALOT of health, so do nazguls.
Units have NO health.

Meaning a hero allmost never dies (well, mumakils did take me down pretty quick), nazgul never dies (gandalf might take em down, but normal units and heroes had no chance) and units die easily.

The catapult was weird; i clicked on a spot, a few units died, and then a few seconds later i saw a small rain of fire animation on a nearby spot that had nothing to do with the damage or aoe.

The battles ended quickly; if two armies faced eachother one died pretty quickly because of the "1 hp system". In our case, the armies of good died in a matter of seconds (dont ask me why, i couldnt do much else than attack move, since micro plays no part in a battle where you die in one hit). And then the armies of evil just attack moved toward our base. We gathered 4 heroes and easily killed their whole army, simply healing ourselves when we took damage.

I understand what you mean with strategy; i saw alot of different ways to be strategic. But... Well the whole map needs some fixing. There were alot of text messages in the beginning, i had units all over the map, i had 5 hero icons blinking on my left. I was just confused by everything, so i just ignored the messages and units and slowly got control of the situation. You should allways start off slowly; Not just give a player hundreds of units and heroes spread out over a large map.

Instead of me having a small army there, one here, another one in a fortress there, you should give each player a small place to defend. Nobody likes controlling huge forces that a spread out over the map. Instead, give each player a hero and a small force and position THEM over the map. I think player 2 (blue) had a nice start; just one town and a few units.

I personally think maps of this army size should be computer controlled mostly. The orcs and humans should be computer controlled and should automatically just keep spawning units to create a nice battle environment around the walls. Then the players on each side get a small "special-force" to turn the tide of the battle.

Obviously you were up against completely useless opposition, because attacking with just 10 units is, in the end, a foolish thing to do. They get 55 units per spawn, and one mumakill - not even including the spawns with the Nazgul can summon.

Normally, only one place is being fought in by one player at any one time. Osgiliath for red, blue and yellow, and then down the right to re-inforce for teal and purple. Then, it switches to Minas Tirith after the fall of Osgiliath. Of course, you could just fall straight back to Minas Tirith, but its not recommended.

Also, I'm guessing that you haven't played as the forces of Sauron - you should do. You'll probably then have a very different view on it.

EDIT: If you are interested, attached is a reply of me and four random people, without a word, completely overrunning and slaying those immortal heroes. And all of this within half the time we had available to win.

When i said i fought "hero vs 10 unit"-battles i did not mean they only sent 10 units; i mean some units were seperated from the group and encountered my hero alone.

And thanks, im sure the replay will give me a better overview of the game. Ill watch it tomorrow; not enough time at the moment!

edit (doublepost): Ive watched the replay, and yes, the forces of sauron seem to be alot more fun. But i still stand by my first points (the larger post above) and do not approve this map in its current state. Sorry =/

I likewise (for the same reasons) do not approve. I doubt many will, so if you would like I can move this to Map Projects. Else I will graveyard it in 24 hours.

So your problems with the map are:

- Units die too quickly (matter of opinion; personally I prefer it that way).
- Catapults are bugged (possibly, I'll look into it, but I haven't noticed that).
- Heroes are unkillable (very much untrue; even I have difficulty quite a bit keeping heroes alive and useful).
- Nazgul can't kill heroes on their own (Nazgul have a summon ability, though; anyway, they aren't supposed to be able to, otherwise they chase them down with ease).
- No micro requirement (this is a macro map, rather than micro; I detest the requirement of micro in 'strategy' games).
- Too much information thrown at players at the begining - yes, I'll agree with this one, and am thinking about a new, much much shorter message at the beginning, merely a line or two.
- Forces too spread out and too many units/heroes - you only get one hero, the other icons are just icons, to aid in healing. Yes, your forces as a team are spread out, but for each player has their foces in one place (apart from, actually, blue).

Do you just dislike a combat system where micro doesn't resolve who wins? Or do you just dislike the way in which battles are over more quickly? The normal units are essential in terms of winning or losing - they are the only effective means of taking out towers or heroes for the orcs, and the most effective way for the humans to quickly take out a large orc army.

Move it to the map projects, by the way.

Well its hard to explain WHY this map is not approved; its alot of different things. Most other dissapproved maps were easy to send to the graveyard, because i had a clear reason WHY they were being deleted.

Great...very helpful...

I did post a list of reasons, but you chose to ignore them.

Yes, but most of them were either factually inaccurate (such as the unkillable heroes), or matters of preferences, which I'm not going to change (such as the one hit kill/no damage system and the removal of unit micro). I do agree with the one about you being dropped into it with far too much going on and too much to read.

Moved.

You can't say my opinion is inaccurate; its my opinion and from my point of view THAT is correct. It's all about taste, everything is. And when i review, i write what I think about the map. Thats why the map needs approvals from different moderators.

That goes slightly beyond the opinion stage, and starts venturing into the factual stage. And I can tell you, even with a full chain of healing, heroes can still go down very fast; your assertion they are as good as invulnerable isn't accurate.

The other points are more a point of view, but many of them come down to micro vs macro in the end.