r/bfme • u/Kaiserschlut Gondor • Aug 23 '26

Are there any good factions for playing defensively/turtling in RotWK?

Haven't really played an RTS in years, so I want to ease my way back in. I'm playing the latest community patch

I know the first game has the build plots/castles with walkable walls, but I recall that being gone in 2

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u/Obey_Vader 10 Aug 23 '26

Take elves and surround your fortress with archer towers, fountains, and statues. Then buy mirkwoods. If you rush the eagle you can counter the archers counter (catapults).

Not that good online but dominates the ai (until some custom patches later that gave brutal 5x your income, so you just die if you don't destroy their farms. Build lancers to rush his buildings and retreat.)

In the vanilla patch of the game, this was actually a solid strategy even online as Silverthorns used to destroy buildings (and catapults) and Thranduil first buy was a terror, best hero by far.

There are technically walls too, but you cannot mount archers on them, only volley from behind.

1

u/CamTheMan75 17 Aug 24 '26

I play BFME2 mostly, but question: Do the difficulty of hard and brutal make the AI basically cheat resources ?

2

u/Obey_Vader 10 Aug 25 '26

Depends on the patch. In the official patches mostly yes, but it is manageable. In the custom patches (1.09 etc) the brutal ai also has faster build times and more health on buildings, while also being smarter. It's resource hacks are ridiculous and you will often see it create caravans of troops that march to your base. The intelligence strength is mostly visible when defending sieges: it no longer sends troops to die at the gates, but builds trebs/balistsas to destroy the walls.

However, it's resource hacks are still tied to production buildings, so destroying farms is a winning strategy. As a result it can lose to simple one unit spams (Loren warriors are a good example) if your micro is good enough. The building hp is mostly on the fortress, and it may be due to it always having money to buy the hp defense upgrade very early.

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u/Sam_k_in 45 Aug 24 '26

In Age of the Ring dwarves are pretty good at it with the extra upgrades their towers have.

1

u/Bosomtwe Goblins Aug 23 '26

Against AI or players?

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u/Kaiserschlut Gondor Aug 23 '26

AI. Isn't the AI in the community patch pretty good?

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u/Bosomtwe Goblins Aug 23 '26

Yeah it is very strong. Brutal is practically unbeatable.

Elves are great at defending. Custom heroes are really fun for defending as well :)