Mod of the Year 2020 | Best Multiplayer 2023
11 unique factions full of new heroes, spells, and abilities. Hundreds of new maps. A brand-new campaign.
A thoroughly reworked and expanded War of the Ring mode - and much more!
Age of the Ring offers the most diverse, engaging, and competitively balanced BFME experience ever made.
Want to know more? Check out our Wiki! Looking to play? Join our Discord community!
Read our FAQ for answers to common questions,
and read our Installation Guide before installing.
What's that? Return of the King Campaign? Never heard of it. Just kidding - we're working hard but can't tell you when it'll be released. Right now, the missions we have completed have several times the detail of the Two Towers missions, so it's going to be a while. It'll be worth the wait, however - especially if you're a Tolkien lore nerd like us.
Some of you might have seen that we won this year's Best Multiplayer Award at the Mod of the Year Awards. We're humbled by this recognition of the massive and ongoing effort made to increase Age of the Ring's competitive viability. With our 11 highly asymmetrical skirmish factions, competitive balancing is a big challenge - to that end, we're continuing to work on 8.0 patches, and are now coming up on Version 8.3. This article addresses some its core changes and additions.
To freshen up the competitive scene, we're introducing 8 new competitive maps in Version 8.3. These cover a diverse set of areas and landscapes and were made with feedback and testing performed by our balance testers.
Aelin Veren
Aelin Veren lies in Northern Ithilien, where its beautiful gardens cover the ruins of
long-forgotten royal thermae.
Aldamóri
Aldamóri is a secluded land, hidden in the northern forests of Rhun, where a tribe of
Kinn-lai elves and Men coexist peacefully.
Ayún-âma
Once known as the Heavenly Eyes, these two temples have long been swallowed
by the unforgiving sands of the Abrakhânic desert and are now known as
Ayún-âma, the 'Eyes that are Blind'.
Bakhjad
In the heart of an enigmatic and mist-shrouded jungle, a forgotten world reveals itself as tendrils of ethereal fog weave through towering trees and ancient vines.
Gloomglens
Of old a coniferous marshland, the Gloomglens have in recent years been the site of logging by local woodsmen who use the nearby rivers to transport timber.
Meadhollow
The Anduin winds its way through Meadhollow, meandering past beautiful
golden aspens and evergreen firs.
Mitheithel
The Mitheithel, or Hoarwell, arises in the Misty Mountains. Joined with the Bruinen and Glanduin rivers, it would become a part of the Gwathló, one of the greatest rivers in the North.
Bloodwood (2023 Halloween Tournament Map)
Within the last flicker of Mr Bones' dark and dying soul lies the accursed realm
of Bloodwood, where the spirits of his victims suffer for all eternity.
We've taken a shovel to some of the more boring and lesser-functioning spellbook powers for Misty Mountains and Erebor, reworking or fully replacing them with powers that should hopefully be more fun and useful.
They Are Coming
We noticed that Misty Mountains players heavily leaned towards the right side of the Spellbook, almost never using the They Are Coming spell (which temporarily increased Moria Orc production speed). In order to address this, we changed They Are Coming to now be a spell that can be cast on Orc Tunnels and Wyrm Lairs, spawning 6 permanent battalions of Moria Orc Screechers. These units respect the command limit.
Ravens of Erebor
Ravens of Erebor used to grant +10% movement speed to nearby friendly units and -25% movement speed to nearby enemy units. We realized that this was too inflexible, so we reworked it to be more useful in more situations. Now it instead increases the speed of everything that is nearby: movement speed and attack speed, the speed of cooldowns, and unit and resource production speed.
Fully Armed and Filthy
Rather than Heavy Armour, Fully Armed and Filthy now grants weapon upgrades (Khuzdûl Runes, Mithril-tipped Arrows, and Fire Arrows). We realized that the former implementation only reinforced a strength (Dwarves have always been tanky) rather than compensated a weakness.
Undermine
We saw Undermine being used as an unhealthy and unfun option to rush the enemy fortress. To remedy this, we changed its stun effect to a buff to allied armour and a slow heal over time. It is now also protected by several Vault Wardens.
As you may noticed in the above screenshots, we have implemented House Colours (meaning player-chosen colour schemes) in Age of the Ring. To get this out of the way first and foremost: House Colours are an entirely optional and intercompatible feature, meaning that you can turn them off and on at will using our Age of the Ring Options tool, and play with and against people that have them on or off without losing compatibility. In other words - you never have to see them if you don't want to and using them is entirely up to you! So if anyone in the comments or on Discord whines about things being 'too colourful' or whatever, please point and laugh at them.
We believe that House Colours will greatly enhance gameplay clarity. Have a look!
Due to the increased popularity of competitive play (thank you to everyone that has helped promote AotR!), we've gotten great feedback on the current state of the mod - we are always paying attention and listening! This means that for 8.3 we have been able to do a lot to address the various things that have stood out. Below is a list of some of the more notable directions we've taken. This is by no means an exhaustive list, nor is it detailed - the actual changelog will remain under wraps until we release.
That's all for now.
The Age of the Ring Team
We have released Age of the Ring version 8.0, featuring new factions, a new War of the Ring mode, balance and bug fixes across the board, new tools, and...
Today we are giving you a first preview of the Return of the King campaign. While this preview will not contain any explicit spoilers, those that want...
An article detailing upcoming balance changes to the Rohan faction.
Today we're going to take a look at the reworked War of the Ring mode, which has been entirely overhauled for the next version
Age of the Ring 8.3.1 has been released. PLEASE READ THE INSTRUCTIONS!
Age of the Ring 8.0 has been released. Please read the instructions!
Age of the Ring 8.3 has been released. PLEASE READ THE INSTRUCTIONS!
Age of the Ring 8.2 has been released. PLEASE READ THE INSTRUCTIONS!
Age of the Ring 8.1 has been released. PLEASE READ THE INSTRUCTIONS!
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CampaignWOTR_HelmsDeep_LoadScreen has been duplicated twice in handcreatedmappedimages.ini. please consider
"IsengardDunlandRider_Banner" has this army map.ini. But it is not in the game.
8.4 at Steam Workshop?
UnitCategory
Name = BANNERUI:MoriaShaman
PluralName = BANNERUI:MoriaShamans
Filter = ANY +MoriaShamanHorde right MoriaShaman
End
UnitCategory
Name = CONTROLBAR:LW_Unit_MoriaShamanHorde
PluralName = CONTROLBAR:LW_Unit_MoriaShamanHordePlural
Filter = ANY +MoriaShamanHorde
End
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "AotROptions.py", line 1378, in <module>
File "encodings\cp1255.py", line 23, in decode
UnicodeDecodeError: 'charmap' codec can't decode byte 0x90 in position 6037: character maps to <undefined>
can someone help me?
i cant open age of the ring
greetings
I seem to have found a mistake in the "map good council of elrond" memory. so alternateFormation = GondorSpearmenPorcupineHorde in map.ini
GondorSpearmenPorcupineHorde This army is not in the game
the game name is GondorSpearmenHordeHordePorcupine
Minas Tirith Spearmen don't have an option in their commandset to toggle formation in Council of Elrond, so this doesn't matter.
Thanks