Battle for Middle Earth

Hey guys, I played this game and it was really hard. He's rank 3000 or something but later he revealed that it was his smurf account.

Isen has a tough time on this map because it's small. His land gave me much pain. On the other side I was host.

Review... I'm curious about your opinion on this game guys. Well played mate.

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Review by: TheFatOFTheLanD
Starting Possitions
I_BANN_CHEATERS / Gondor – West
StuntedAzrael / Isen – East

Overview

This was quite a sloppy game by both players, with a lot of micro mistakes. However there was lots of action, nice use of summons, and some very pro Balrog usage to finish the game off, which made it an entertaining watch.

I_BANN_CHEATERS / Gondor.

You had quite a good early game, you pushed well down the right of the map, taking out his mill which really hurt his economy. I would have then retreated your soldiers back to your wood, by trying to attack further they were easily killed which was a waste. Your second wood placement was suspect, and you even ran off it to melee the uruks which nearly lost you the battalion. You really need to be pushing with knights to his side of the map asap, to make him tower up, and to keep the pikes over that side to guard, I though you were too defensive with your troops to begin with. You had quite a lot of setbacks this game and often did well to come back, with one of the most significant being losing all your knights, don’t try and melee pikes on an opponents host. You made the right choice to get elves before heal which was good, however when you summon them, try to split them up to take out pikes all around the map, don’t waste them attack mills, have your knights do that. You did some nice rushes on his base with your knights and rohirrim summons, which kept setting him back, however make sure you don’t lose knight battalions to tower fire. When you started to make towerguards I think that you should also send them round with soldiers, as these will deal with pikes far more effectively, you lost a lot of your towerguards to his pikes. In the end you seemed to constantly being pushed back and the battles were always taking place near your base, and the fact that you were losing so many units made it hard to counter. You did well to hang on, but in the end the Balrog was too much, well played.

Mistakes / Things to improve

• More offensive with knights.
• Formations, particularily knights in wedge to take buildings and soldiers in block.
• Split elves up.
• Try and use towerguards and soldiers together.
• Only buy camp when you know you can hold it, wasted 2k.
• Watch friendly fire from trebs.


StuntedAzrael / Isen

This is a hard map for isen to start on, but often as you showed as the game goes on you can turn it in your favour. I would start with a pit furn on this map, because it is hard to get a 2nd mill to start with. When he placed wood, don’t fight him there, move uruks off wood, but still near farm so that he cannot buy it, and cannot fight you out of wood since he will lose, and then you can keep an eye on his soldiers and stop then taking out your only mill. When you start to get uruks out you got your mills back well, and then managed to hold his knights up with a chant, and this bought you the time you needed to get your pikes out. You attacked well with them taking map control, and then got zerkers out to deal with the soldiers which worked well. However you were often caught off guard and lost several pike battalions giving him elves, which is a real killer for isen. I thought you were very fortunate to kill off all his knights and this let you get back in to the game, you then began getting wargs out, and killed his camp, which wasted him 2k. One thing that you need to work on is the defence of your base and use of the map to your advantage. There are several choke points on this map which can be used to hold of his knights, particularly when you have the left camp. I would have had 2 pikes and your wargs in the middle, and maybe 1 pike on the far right, and this would have held back his knights from rushing you base, and your wargs could deal with elves summons. You kept the pressure on his base which was very good, and forced him to use summons defensively, and eventually when you got the Balrog you used him very well taking out much of his base, I particularly liked the summon where you killed th retreating gandy and then took out his camp, this was very nice, and from here it was gg, well played.

Mistakes / Things to improve
• Start pit furn on this map
• Extra workers at mills, and make sure there are workers all through the game
• Don’t fight him on his wood
• Remember to use war chant, it recharges quite quickly
• Try to defend base better, contain him
• Constantly fight for map control
• Use saruman rank up on uncombined pikes to give them free banners
• When seiging split ballista’s up so trebs don’t kill them all


Overall rating: 5

GG guys especially late game (until he lost his castle) was very entertaining
But Jelle, I would recommend you the early rax strat on this map vs Isen. It works really great.
Why didn't you HS rush earlier? There was not much defence in his base and you could've killed at least some towers.

it wasnt me, but topalov

we share that account and i never ever play gondor

but i think y he didnt do that: 1300 is very much and it delays the soldiers so much pikes

and also, with lagg a horse rush isnt good

Just my opinion, early rax strat never works. Once blades and armor come out, doesn't matter how many soldiers or whether they are on land, FU uruks > FU soldiers. I even beat a rank 3 FU soldier with my rank 1 half damaged FU uruk.

Isengard won't have the money to buy Upgrades. The replay I posted in the linked topic proves that imo. Please have a look at that replay and answer there if you see a way to beat that strat on Southern. Thx

The Isengard in your replay:
- Didn't take a very good route
- Didn't use formation and lost a uruk vs. soldier battle
- Didn't have a very good BO
- Didn't even attemp to creep

I'll give you it's a very good strategy and the map gives Gondor by far the upperhand. Doesn't mean it's unbeatable. I've faced many variations of an early rax strat rangin from rax to upgrades, rax to horses, rax to trebs ( ). It's by no means "proven".

Thank you! I'll post again as soon as I meet a top 100 Isengard on that map. He should know the routes and BOs and that uruks are stronger in formation. Dunno if he'll have the time and enough units to creep b/c then he'd lose his mills even earlier.

tagged

reviewed

Thanks for the review. You were right, containment could work nicely. I'll keep that in mind.