A friend at work inspired me to start gaming, so I patched up to 4.4. Imladris I have yet to fully comprehend, but I’m getting there. However the one thing I did notice since the patch is a significant increase in AI difficulty for Brutal and Hard. So significant that I can’t beat Brutal in maps I already beat on Brutal. I look at the aftergame data and something really sticks out. Right from the get go, I spend most of my resources on buildings, and my line plummets. AI on the other hand, starts gaining resources right from the get go, steadily increasing. Source unknown. But he doesn’t spend resources until a few minutes in. What this looks like on the receiving end is approximately 500% more units than I have to defend with. Overwhelming sums of low level battalions, escalating rapidly. It’s probably possible to develop a fast turtle strategy to defend against it, but that poses the question: why play the AI? It aught to be that the AI behaves like a human player and has a few different strategies to employ. It’s not realistic that a human player can come up with as many units as the Brutal AI can. Why practice defending yourself from something you are not likely to face in a multiplayer setting? 

Medium however, has a much more realistic chart. Medium has to spend the first thousand and work on getting it back with resource buildings. That I like. So I started playing Medium and had some great games. 

I had one game where silverthorns and Ents were the crushing blow. Those hero battalions for Lothlorien are deadly. There was another where Rohan farmhands and heroes swarmed over everything. The one faction I can’t seem to get a hold of is Gondor. I love them, but I can’t win with them. I can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong. I’m dead long before I get to hero battalions, or sequestered in my base waiting to die. My early and mid game strategies are lacking. I need to rethink the whole thing. Hero first approach doesn’t work because of Boromir’s cost, and Beregond doesn’t last long for the 1000 he costs. No, no, I need to rethink the way I use Gondor. We shall see what comes of it. 

I’m eagerly awaiting 4.5, as the final race will be added: Misty Mountains. Or Goblins. They haven’t decided, I think. It’s actually a tad overdue already. It makes me wonder what they are toiling over. Is it the unique mechanics of the race? Or are there any? Many questions. But we only need 1 more and then Edain is complete. It was a long time ago that Edain first came out. Several years. But well worth the wait. Gameplay is fantastic, graphically stunning, ingenuous mechanics, ample unique races to fit every style, I could go on. Point being, they’ve worked hard on providing a genuinely fantastic product. It is classy and polished. EA better take note of how the professionals handle things. 

I’m going to update the RTS preferences right after I post this. It’s time.