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Sunday 2 March, 2008
GAMEPLAY
Started in on the evil campaign this time, and I can see why Rohirrim can run over orcs the way they can: you build a lot of orcs. The very first mission is to build 100 orcs. After the first, evil missions boil down to "build a lot of orcs and kill everything." Your bases in the evil campaign are generally less secure than in the good campaign - both of the good sides get free walls around anything bigger than an outpost, and castles are nigh impenetrable without siege equipment, which the AI doesn't really make good use of.
DESIGN
The most distinctive aspect of this game is the building system. Buildings can only be placed on "foundations" which are created by citadels, the foundations for which are pre-placed on the map. There are three levels of citadel foundation: outpost, camp, and castle. Outposts have three foundations regardless of faction, while camp and castle foundations depend on which army you play. Resources are generated by structures, and so generating a lot of resources precludes building a large number of unit producing buildings. This system also precludes "offensive towering" - building "defensive" towers in or near the enemy base, a strategy endemic to the genre. This system also allows the pace of the game to be defined by the map - a map without castle foundations is very different from a map with camps at most.
Buildings also have three "levels" - resource buildings level up automatically over time, while unit producing structures level up after building a certain number of units. Higher level resource structures produce more resources, while higher level unit producing buildings build faster and often gain access to new units and upgrades at level 2.
These are innovative systems, but they are innovative ways of simplifying the genre - rather than deciding when it is time to "tech up," or how to lay out their base, players upgrades their infrastructure in the course of building up their armies and have base layouts defined for them. This, combined with other aspects of the game's design which tend towards the same end, are probably a consequence of the game's movie license - these decisions were probably made to cater to those drawn to the game by the movie brand without necessarily being interested in an RTS game as such.
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