| ==================== Large Middle Earth Third Age All Stars ==================== |
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Background
The game is based on Tolkien's world. It takes place in Middle Earth, the continent where elves, dwarves, orcs and men live among various other sentient races. The followers of Melkor encounter Good in several conflicts throughout the Third Age, a period of roughly three millennia. In this game the mightiest realms from all over the history clash in one epic war.
General
The main structure of the game is complicated compared to many other TripleA games, so make sure you understand all rules, unless you want unexpected events. Basic rules are explained here, more complex rules have their own sections.
- Although most units can move 2 or more territories, they can not usually Blitz.
- Units are produced by invisible factories, any territory that could produce units in principle does have one. Elsewhere fortresses and towers can produce 1 unit.
- You can still collect PUs from territories without controlling your capital, but not from objectives. PUs are not captured when taking a capital.
- Units with 2 or 3 hitpoints regenerate one hitpoint each turn.
- Battles can not last more than 10 turns. This is only a technical rule, for infinite battles where neither side has firepower left can occur.
- On the map, undeeps (South Undeep and North Undeep) are connected to The Wold, and Belfalas is connected to Tolfolas.
Unit abilities
In this game, units can have abilities the effects of which are not obvious. This list contains theese with short descriptions included. They only appear by name both in tooltips and the "Units" table below due to lack of space.
| Unit Abilities | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Short | Ability | ||||
| infantry | inf | - | ||||
| cavalry | cav | - | ||||
| creature | cre | - | ||||
| melee | mel | - | ||||
| archer | arch | - | ||||
| siege | sie | different from "X (xY) siege | ||||
| fortification | fort | different from "X fortification" | ||||
| unseen | uns | unaffected by terror, different from "X unseen" | ||||
| flying | fly | air unit | ||||
| mountainwalk | mw | can enter mountains | ||||
| raider | raid | can blitz, +2 when attacking settlement | ||||
| militia | mil | +2 when defending settlement | ||||
| cave dweller | cd | +1/+1 in cave | ||||
| forest dweller | fd | +1/+1 in forest | ||||
| X armor | X arm | can give -X support to 1 enemy melee units | ||||
| X (xY) ranged | X (xY) ran | can give +Y attack support to X allied melee units | ||||
| X (xY) fortification | X (xY) fort | can give +Y defense support to X allied infantry units | ||||
| X leadership | X lead | can give +1 support to X allied non-fortification units | ||||
| X terror | X ter | can give -1 support to X enemy non-fortification non-unseen units | ||||
| X net | X net | can give -1 attack support to X enemy melee units | ||||
| X (xY) charge | X (xY) charge | attack only, targets infantry, X/12 chance to hit, Y attacks, first battle round only | ||||
| X spear | X spear | defense only, targets charging units, X/12 chance to hit, first battle round only, max. 1 attacks per target | ||||
| X flank | X flank | targets archer-infantry and siege units, X/12 chance to hit | ||||
| X antiair | X aa | defense only, targets flying, X/12 chance to hit | ||||
| X unseen | X unseen | targets units with unseen attack, X/12 chance to kill, max. 1 attacks per target | ||||
| X (xY) siege | X (xY) siege | targets fortification units, X/12 chance to hit, Y attacks | ||||
Territory Effects
Territory effects are comparatively complex in this game. There are eight of them, but a single territory can have up to three. This, together with the fact that multiple bonuses from territory effects are always cumulative, makes calculations troublesome, you must keep them in mind though. As a proof and also to present how it works, here is an example:
Suppose you want to attack Cerin Amroth which is defended by an elven archer and has forest, hill and settlement territory effects with a knight. Then you look up the table below. Your knight is a cavalry, and has armor support, so it is armored. Three columns have effect on your unit: all, cavalry and armored. For the hill, you only get 1 defense bonus, but no one cares since you are attacking. For the forest you get -3 attack penalty (-2 for cavalry and -1 for being armored). The settlement makes this even worse, adding -2 more penalty. Finally, you end up with -5 penalty, so you only have -1x2 attack left meaning you can't attack at all, opposed to the elven archer, which ends up boosted to 13 defense - sadly, this is cut back to 12, because nothing can pass that limit (+2 for the forest, +2 for the hill, +3 for the settlement and +1 for forest dweller).
| Territory Effects | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name | All | Cav | Cre | Arch | Sie | Fly | Fort | Armored | Other | ||
| mountain | +2 | -3 | +1 | +1 | -3 | +1 | +2 | - | No Blitzing, only mw and fly can enter | ||
| hill | +1 | - | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +2 | - | - | ||
| cave | +1 | -3 | +1 | -2 | -2 | -2 | +3 | - | No Blitzing, cavalry can not enter | ||
| pass | +1 | -2 | +1 | +1 | -1 | +1 | +2 | - | No Blitzing | ||
| marsh | -0 | -2 | - | - | -2 | +1 | - | -1 | No Blitzing | ||
| forest | +1 | -2 | +1 | +1 | -1 | -0 | - | -1 | - | ||
| river | -0 | -0 | - | +1 | +1 | +1 | - | -0 | No Blitzing | ||
| settlement | +1 | -2 | -1 | +2 | +0 | - | +1 | - | - | ||
Game Options
- All units Blitz: there is no much to explain, all units (except flying and immobile ones) can Blitz
- Territory effects allow all units: all units can enter mountains, not only mountainwalk; cavalry can enter caves
- Fortification prevents charge and flank: when attacking a territory with any fortification unit present, charge and flank attacks will not work. Defending spear is therefore not expected to work either, it does though. Possibly it will be fixed in the future.
- Free For All: game is free for all; normal objectives do not work; weaker players gets some extra PUs each turn for better balance