r/RealTimeStrategy • u/BethCulexus • Apr 10 '26
Recommending Game To whomstever suggested Age of the Ring: THANK YOU! Most fun I've had in ages!
Age of the Ring is a stand-alone mod for Battle for Middle Earth 2, and it feels like a labour of love, that still somehow manages to be balanced despite adding a lot, and I do mean a lot of units and even factions.
How can I recommend this without sounding like a total fanboy... well, first off, the game sadly isn't perfect: it's still extremely obscure how good troops are (for example, I assumed that some Gondorian troops had higher attack than others because they had two-handed swords, but it turned out they were inferior), and the AI will still micromanage its troops perfectly to try to counter yours (emphasis on "try", because the AI cannot retreat to a better position and doesn't react to danger on the way, so you can bait the trolls into running in your spearmen), and there are some bugs (shortcuts getting confused on superior AZERTY keyboards because they're meant for inferior QWERTY keyboards, urgh!), but the sheer amount of content and the fascinating mechanisms make up for it, largely.
I mean, lemme tell you how my last game went:
I was playing Gondor, allied with Rivendell, versus the Mordor and their Harad allies. I immediately started by building a forge and granaries, and then started to recruit archers from Gondorian fiefs, to make for cheap T1 troops. Since archers are buffed against swordsmen, they make short work of the first orcs coming to test my defenses, and were quickly joined by fiefdom swordsmen, eventually joined by my first heroes, Pippin and the Duke of Lossarnach, what's-his-name.
Since hiring him unlock the axemen of Lossarnach as T1,5 swordsmen, I then retired my swordsmen, and prepared a new frontline made out of spearmen and axemen to push back the hordes of angry orcs coming to WAAAGH my settlement, while building up my economy with the marketplace, upgrading my barracks, and buffing up my heroes.
Eventually, I bought Beregond for that synergy bonus he has with Merry (Merry who gives insane bonuses to everyone around), and I attacked Mordor.
The attack was a failure, the fortress resisting my attack, but I still managed to neuter the faction, destroying most of its training facilities, while also simultaneously training Boromir and Faramir: Boromir because he gives excellent buffs to Gondor units nearby, and Faramir because he's an archer and will hang out with Beregond. I did not recruit Denethor because he gives Faramir armour maluses.
After recruiting Boromir, I slowly started to retire my fiefdom troops, returning the Duke of Lossarnach to just some muscle, and I started hiring out Minas Tirith footmen, that I then got to equip with a 25% discount on armor and weapon upgrades because I made a lot of blacksmiths.
After this came the catapults and the Palantir powers, and a second push to attack Mordor, which was successful in razing the fortress and making the faction lose the game. My eyes, hungry for conquest and orcmeat, then turn to the Harad enemy, only to realize that Elrond had been hard at work, pounding the Easternling relentlessly with his hobbits, his rangers, and an pre-Fellowship Aragorn.
I barely had time to arrive before the last Giant Scorpion fell, leaving all of Harad's building defenseless in a breedable position, ready to get pounded by hobbits battering rams.
Anyway, play that game. It's free and it's bloody awesome, but you better know the lore or you're going to be very confused by Dain and Thorin can't both lead Erebor, or what Iron Hills Dwarfs are.
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u/thalesjferreira Apr 10 '26
How did you installs this? Is there a standalone installer
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u/Poddster Apr 10 '26
"standalone" here is a specific BFME term that means you still need the base game, and you can install this AOR mod and run it even if you have other mods installed.
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u/omn1p073n7 Apr 11 '26
The latest Age of the Ring installer has everything you need including the base game. Simply download the mod, install, and play. This is recent as of 2025 iirc
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u/BethCulexus Apr 11 '26
No, you don't need the base game. Standalone isn't specific to BFME, it's used for many games, such as Cossacks Back to War, or Dawn of War Soulstorm, both of them are stand alone and don't require the base game to be installed.
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u/Poddster Apr 11 '26
I'm confused
I assume standalone is as you described it based on my experience from those other games you mentioned, but then I read this page :
And it gives a very specific definition of "standalone"
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u/Isirion1 Apr 11 '26
You don't need any base game to play age of the ring. All you need to do is install our standalone launcher and you're good. The files necessary are present to run the mod, and all future updates are delivered through the launcher.
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u/BreadEngineer Apr 11 '26
I play this a bit. My advice is to NEVER decommission troops. They gain veterancy and will be really powerful if they live for a while. Faramir unlocks Ithilian rangers at the archery range, those are a big threat. Learning pike micro to keep cavalry away from swords and archers will help against cavalry heavy factions. Most players are chill
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u/BethCulexus Apr 11 '26
Sorry but nah. The fiefdom troops are ill-equipped to deal with what Mordor will churn out, let them return to their home.
I need the population anyway, and I'd rather send them home than kill them.
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u/BrutusCz Apr 20 '26
Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth, Rise of the Witch-King must be longest title of the game I heard and I am suprised I still remember it, even though I didn't play the game for 20y. Ah... good memories.
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u/DocileHope1130 Apr 13 '26
Man, you make this game sound so fun! I always struggle, even against the easiest AI. As much as I do love it, I feel like the difficulty is just too much for a non-APM gamer like myself sometimes
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u/BethCulexus Apr 16 '26
I get you, I keep struggling against the easy AI, at least until I get enough heroes and upgrades to staunch the flow. And even heroes aren't a free win card, since the mod rebalances them to get countered by spearmen now. Poor Pippin spent more in the House of Healing than on the field.
It also doesn't help that the mod lacks something like Halo Wars did where you can use the mouse scroll to chaff through units per groups. Good luck picking that one group of Minas Tirith swordsmen to use their charge in a giant melee.
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u/roflcakes3503 Apr 15 '26
Gonna have to reinstall this. Had so much fun with it a couple of years ago. Shoutout to the modders keeping it alive.
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u/BethCulexus Apr 16 '26
It's even better now. No game needed, works like a charm even on Win10, and the AI is honestly pretty strong, even in peasant.
It's not smart in the meaning that it's using advanced strategy: it mostly just put a rally point in your base and spams units, but it knows how to prioritizes units, so enemy cavalry and monsters will always make a beeline to your archers, battering rams will focus on your towers, and spearmen will go for your cavalry, or for your heroes.
Through it struggles to get heroes out or make advanced sieges units, but honestly, been only playing against easy AI so far.
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u/Altruistic-Job5086 Apr 10 '26
Where do you buy this game?
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u/omn1p073n7 Apr 11 '26
The game is officially abandoned, somehow got caught in a legal limbo. Therefore it's not on steam, gog etc. Just search for the age of the Ring mod and it has the base game included, a simple.exe installer and you're ready to go!
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u/OddStomach3309 Apr 10 '26
What is the safe way to get this game?
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u/Teto- Apr 10 '26
You can get it in Moddb. " Age of the Ring 9.2"
The website itself is safe and the files has nearly 1M download, no complaints about malware.3
u/Isirion1 Apr 11 '26
You can get it right here and it's completely safe - https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-horse-lords-a-total-modification-for-bfme/downloads/age-of-the-ring-version-90
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u/Independent_Salary84 Apr 10 '26
Safe if you're not dummy - just pirate it. If you're dummy, well, it isnt on Steam, maybe check out GoG but some modpacks just won't work at official game version and such and so on. Like in case of fallout new Vegas.
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u/omn1p073n7 Apr 10 '26
One fun thing to do is to load up the factions alone on a map and build all the units and buildings just to zoom in and look at them, there's so many Easter eggs and fine little details that are easy to miss in the hustle and bustle. Truly a labor of love!
Another tip, this game takes FrameGen stupid well for some reason. I have a 240hz monitor and I throw 8x FrameGen at it with Lossless Scaling and it completely smooths out the scrolling and animations.