The player can flank the enemy to receive an attack advantage.

There are improved graphic effects like spreading fire and light reflection.

The new Goblin, Spiderling and Corsair units can climb walls.

Certain neutral buildings can be captured, to build ships, recruit special units, or get extra resources.

There are new powers such as the ' Watcher in the Water', 'Flood' and ' Tom Bombadil', and new defensive upgrades such as boiling oil, flaming arrows, trebuchets and catapults, including bonus-giving monuments.

The player is able to build section of walls which expand in non-linear direction and attach the wall to impassable terrain, such as mountains.

There are missions or portions of missions inside buildings in the single-player campaign.

The command point system has also been modified, which is dependent on the number of resource buildings (farms, mallorn trees, mine shafts, furnaces, tunnel, slaughterhouse).

Additionally, the method of building bases on predetermined plots has been replaced with the traditional real-time strategy building style which features a fort operating as a base hub.

The single player game consists of more varied objectives with long-term consequences than the 'search and destroy' scenarios which dominated the first game.

Buildings are not expanding to higher levels simply by usage anymore (except for resource collecting buildings).

Naval battles are possible, and players control larger battalions.

Resource accumulation has been tweaked.

However, the game and its version of the war in the north should not be seen an accurate record of what Tolkien actually wrote, since many liberties have been taken (see below).īFME II differs remarkably from BFME in many ways: The story highlights some of the lesser-known events of the book - as EA had acquired a license from Tolkien Enterprises as well as one for the movies, they used the battles in the north as the focal point, which are only briefly hinted at in the Extended Edition of The Return of the King (film) DVD, and noted in the Appendices in the novels: in the books it is explained that while the front of the war that the Fellowship characters are experiencing (and which is directly shown by the movies) is the primary one, it is in fact a war fought on many fronts across Middle-earth. For the Evil campaign, it begins with the siege of Lórien from Mordor's stronghold of Dol Guldur. For the Good campaign, the story starts in Rivendell where the Goblins from the Misty Mountains are poised to attack, while the Fellowship of the Ring journey south. Factions include the Elves, Dwarves, Men of the West, ( Gondor and Rohan combined) and the Goblins, along with Mordor and Isengard. Unlike its predecessor, the game is set mainly in the northern regions of Middle-earth, and focuses on the war there.

Battle of midle earth 2