Battle for Middle Earth 2

Porcupine formation is an ability only available to pike units where they form two concentric circles with pikes extended, forming a barrier of cold steel. As a result, they gain a 65% boost in armor and cause trampling cavalry to decelerate much faster (if they are foolish enough to try, that is). However, there is also another use for the porcupine formation that many players do not know about or exploit.

Using Porcupine Formation to Scout

Yes, you read that correctly. Porcupine formation can be used to scout. A little-known fact about porcupine formation is that it increases your vision and removes a greater area of the fog of war on the map. This is somewhat misleading. The pike unit itself will not be able to see further in the direction it travels, but will instead be able to see that distance in all directions around it (which makes sense given that the unit is forming a circle facing in all directions). This makes the fog of war revealed behind and to the sides of your unit, making it very effective for scouting.

You can see in this video that the fog of war is expanded in all directions, allowing the pike unit to find a resource building nearby.


This maneuver takes very little time to execute - less than a second. This is much less than the amount of time it would take to actually move your pike to the sides to scout. You do not even have to wait until the unit is completely in the porcupine formation to get the sight boost (as seen in the video). It can be executed very quickly by simply pressing 'M' (the shortcut for porcupine formation) and then immediately right clicking on the map to continue on your path. Note that porcupine formation will put your unit in the defensive stance, so you should switch back to aggressive when attacking the resource building.

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