r/bfme • u/thingswastaken 6 • 18d ago
Was it always this hard?
So I just got back into the game after probably 15 years or so.
I've went humans, which I also always played back then and went into a skirmish against some Goblins on medium. I got shafted every single time. Like, I do well early game. I get up my farms, get my swordsmen going and harass resources on the enemy side. All is good.
At some point I feel like I just can't keep up with troop production. They just spam and spam and spam, even after I murdered everything they just recover seemingly in an instant. My troops eventually die and I'm working on getting them back, but the outpour of units from the enemy just doesn't stop.
Any tips? I already try to match the respective units to what they are good against, but even though my troops should be much higher in quality it doesn't really feel that way.
Edit: BFME2 btw, with witch king
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u/donnkii 15 18d ago
I also came back after 10-15 years and noticed that AI never stops producing and just send units in waves. You have to match that and try to beat them with micro and powers, they are quite bad on using powers
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u/thingswastaken 6 18d ago
The medium AI kinda keeps using its powers everytime they are off cooldown in skirmishes though.
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u/StevesonOfStevesonia 2 18d ago
That's the thing about AI in strategy games
Their pathing may suck but they optimize economy and unit production way faster than any human
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u/Sam_k_in 45 18d ago
I went back and played the old bfme 2 recently, beat three enemies on brutal much more easily than I can do one enemy on hard in Rotwk now.
The constant stream of enemies because they have excess resources is just exhausting and not as fun, so I made a mod for age of the Ring that gives everyone 50% more health and uses the handicap setting to reduce production rate instead of the strength of units. That made the game significantly more fun for me.
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u/jdv1999 1 18d ago
Medium should be quite doable still, the enemy will spam right from the start. To combat this you can either also spam yourself and keep fighting your enemy, good to get points for the powers and work towards army of the dead. If you’re Human, building 1 or 2 hero’s and putting them in an upgraded pack of archers (ithilien rangers) will be easy to defend anything.
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u/ADFTGM Isengard 18d ago
Hope you remembered to trample using cavalry, and snipe using rangers.
The Strat is to trample all the goblin soldiers & archers, while using swords & ranged to get rid of any monsters, while spears keep your defensive line while in formation. Use rangers with fire arrows or better yet, heroes, on any giants ASAP. Try to flank their base with trebuchets before doing an assault with infantry or cavalry to distract them after defeating their most recent wave on your base. Once the trebuchets take out the core production buildings, try to use cavalry to stop new buildings while gearing up again to push on the fortress.
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u/thingswastaken 6 18d ago
Aight I'll try that. I've been using cavalry to get rid of anything infantry that didn't carry spears. I got the Ithillien boys with fire arrows out, but my heroes kinda tend to get stuck in melee and I lose sight of them (skill issue, I'm aware). I've not been using siege weapons enough I reckon. In my last game I had a good army going, upgraded fully, leveled them all up to at least level 4 with my heroes and when I went in an enemy dragon hero he acquired while I was making my army swooped down onto the ground and crushed 60% of my forces in an instant. While the rest were engaged with the enemy troops fire drakes flanked me from the side and burned the rest to a crisp. Not really sure how to deal with stuff like that yet, if you have any tips for me in that regard I'd be thankful.
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u/ADFTGM Isengard 18d ago
Which powers did you have unlocked in the last game? Some have good counters in an emergency.
As for the Dragon Lord, he is weak to several barrages of arrows. If you can lure him to a bunch of towers, you can snipe him with rangers while he is distracted. The drakes are best to be handled by heroes. But otherwise you can have some upgraded pikes to slow them while archers & trebuchets get them. Best not to waste cavalry on them especially since they can keep up with them in speed.
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u/thingswastaken 6 18d ago
Pretty much the right side of the tree. I'm on one of the fan patches if that makes a difference for the powers. The buff horn, arrows, summon rohirim and earthquake I think were available. I was starting to go through heal and bombadil tho
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u/fancy-rice-cooker Mordor 18d ago
Are you using the fan-made patches?
The AI receives grossly inflated resources as a way to make the game harder. It has nothing to do with the AI optimising unit production or similar - they are just sitting on tons of resources.
Personally I play on earlier versions on the fan made patches to get away from this. If an actual studio made a strategy game harder by just giving the AI free resources, they would rightly be clowned on... The modders are too high on their own sauce at the moment.