It Is The Well known Universe of the Lord of the Rings.
The World of Middle Earth stands at its Destruction. The Men has ever since the last war been a proud people, thinking they can make it on their own. the elves has gone into hiding and are starting to leave this world. But Evil knows no mercy and sweeps throug the middle Earth. Some must stay behind to try and defeat Sauron and his minions. Will You fight for the Survival of good? or do you choose a darker path as a minion of Sauron? NOW STARTS THE BATTLE FOR MIDDLE EARTH!
Author: Helena (The Netherlands), 20-12-2010 21:15 Agreed To me this one also was a little disappointing.
I decided to stick with the first suggested faction (demons) and had no clue as what direction to go or what to achieve. So in fact I just kept wandering around till my neighboring heroes were gone or I beat them. Then only one remote castle remained and I'm sorry to say the fun stopped too.
The whole idea seems very nice but, apart from the issues mentioned by John, a trapped hero (Arwen) in your camp that cannot be mobilized in any way is just no good.
Still, I admire the effort that is spent!
Author: John DiFool (USA), 18-12-2010 02:46 Unbalanced, and lacking Tolkienesque flavor First H5 map in several months, thought what the hey and gave this one a go.
Long story short, this map uses Middle Earth as a backdrop for what is essentially an 8-way FFA battlemap. There's very few heroes renamed for characters from the books (and the one I did find, Arwen, had a male avatar), no story, no quests, no alliances, and some strange omissions. The Rohirrim aren't here, for example, while I've seen them as a separate faction for every other LOTR Heroes map I've seen.
And then there's some balance issues. No guards between territories means early AI rushes: half the players were eliminated by the end of month 3 (including Sauron!). Players at the center of the map tended to fare poorly. And one AI hero got 61 Red Dragons from somewhere (I would guess a Diplomacized wandering stack, as the original Dungeon faction was long since conquered with me occupying his former capital)-that kind of thing can completely ruin a whole game (as it did mine, with my 31 Crystal Dragons dead in 2 turns), so as a designer you've got to set all stacks to Always Fight.
I would recommend that the designer go back to the base layout and rethink a lot of things, as this does have definite room for improvement.