Friday, April 1, 2011

Battle for Middle Earth 2 - Evil Campaign - Mission 4 - Fornost



Battle for Middle Earth II - Evil Campaign Mission 4 - Fornost
This is a hint/walkthrough post for Battle for Middle Earth II. You can find an index of all our Battle for Middle Earth II posts here.

You need the Untamed Allegiance power to complete the bonus objective of controlling both Spiderling lairs. Before you use the power, you may wish to kill the Spiderlings first as once controlled they come under your control and will use up your Command Points. They cannot be decommissioned in a Fortress.

This is a very easy mission if you watch the behavior of the AI and notice what they do and where they go. They are typically very strict about this. For example, a battalion of Dunedain Rangers will literally stand near a mine and do nothing, or run past your troops and not stop to fight, because they have a specific guard position or target.

The Earth Hammer hits everything all the way out to a short distance outside the outer wall, so you basically have just a few minutes to penetrate the inner city and destroy it before it strikes again. To make life easier, you can build a series of Fortresses to protect your rear lines in case you lose too many units.

The Earth Hammer countdown starts when you have destroyed all the buildings in the outer city, or if you penetrate the inner city -- which you can do if you clear one side of the outer city and smash your way through the walls with giants. This is the easier way of handling the Earth Hammer as the inner city won't have fully awakened yet and the eastern wing will largely be deserted of units.

I recommend taking the eastern side, clearing the Archery Ranges there to stop the Dunedain Ranger sorties. Then take the middle and start clearing the inner walls of catapults. Break into the inner city and take out the Earth Hammer, then finish up the map.
The western side of the outer city and inner city have bonus capture-the-building objectives. After capturing a building, you can abandon it and the enemy will not try to take it.
The Dwarves do not have cavalry or anti-cavalry, so you should gradually replace your initial goblins with just Spider Riders and a few Giants. In any case, they have the easiest time in taking out the plentiful Dunedain Rangers in this mission.

The archer-manned barricades outside the inner wall are easily cleared if you rush in with cavalry or come in close to the wall from the sides -- the catapults are scripted to bombard the area in front of the barricades, and won't deviate from this even if you are behind the barricades, probably because they might hit their own troops.

Giants should get targeting by their Bombard power instead of being directed to attack. The walls and different heights on this map can confuse them and cause them to unexpectedly walk around when they don't have to.
Also, unlike trolls, Giants can hurl rocks over walls to hit units and buildings. Trolls also have a much shorter range.

The Goblin King can be brought up to level 9.

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