History VideoGame / TheBattleForMiddleEarth

* ZergRush: Mostly used by the Mordor. Evil faction tend to use this since their units are much cheaper.

* TheArcher: As normal units, and as heroes.

''The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth'', or ''BFME'', is a series of RealTimeStrategy videogames, developped by EA Los Angeles and published by EA Games, which uses the [=SAGE=] engine (the same engine that the one of ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerGenerals''). Those games use the ''LordOfTheRings'' licence, and are heavily inspired by [[Film/TheLordOfTheRings the movies]].

* ''The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth'' (2004), which follows closely the movies

** ''The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth II: The Rise of the Witch-king'' (2006) - an expansion pack for ''BFMEII'' -, which campaign is a prequel to the event of ''LordOfTheRings''

* AllThereInTheManual: Plot and subtext informations of both games are rare enough to cause the story making very little sense if the player didn't read the books or at least watched [[Film/TheLordOfTheRings the Peter Jackson movies]].
** Arguably the premise of ''BFMEII'' can also be this, as it revolves around what happened in the north after Frodo and the Fellowship left Rivendell. Which were rarely if ever brought up in the movies themselves.
* AnnoyingArrows: Mostly averted. Elven archers with upgraded arrows can kill an enemy with one shot but may take two or three with normal arrows. Even enemies with upgraded armour can withstand at most two upgraded Elven arrows. Factions with weaker archer units deal less damage but still kill with no more than maybe five arrows. "Monster" units such as trolls, mumakil, ents, etc. need many shots to kill due to their size and durability.

** In ''BFME'', skirmish and multiplayer modes have an imposed limit for the Good and Evil sides, the Evil one being twice the Good one
** During the campaigns of ''BFME'', this limit is gradually increased when controling specific territories. The maximum is the same as the multiplayer / skirmish one
** In ''BFMEII'', the limit is increased with specific buildings. Both sides have the same maximum limit. In the campaigns the maximum limit automatically increases from mission to mission

* ArrowsOnFire: Upgrade for most of the archers in ''BFME''. In ''BFMEII'', it is still the case for Human, and Orc archers, but Elven ones upgrade their arrows with a kind of silver alloy.

** In both games, hero units keep their experience from mission to mission, as the player retains his general powers. Upgrades have to be researched in each mission
** In the ''BFME'' campaigns, the player keeps his units with their level, and their upgrades, but must research those upgrade first to apply them to units he just created
** In the ''BFMEII'' campaigns, the player keeps his heroes but not his army
** In the ''BFMEII'' "War of the Ring" mode, the player keeps the army he created during the turned-based mode, but not the troops created during the real-time battles

* TheCavalry: Several missions of the Good campaign of ''BFME'' consists in surviving until the reinforcements come. Most of them are a literal example, as TheCavalry is the Rohan army.

There is two games:

* BowAndSwordInAccord: Some heroes (Legolas, Lurtz, Faramir, etc) can switch between sword (or knives for Legolas) and bow. There is also the Gondor rangers, who use daggers when having to defend in melee fighting.

* DeathFromAbove: Eagles and Nazgul mounting Fell Beasts in both games. ''BFMEII'' adds a flying dragon, the ability for the Mordor fortress to hurl a giant volcanic rock, and several general powers (burning sunrays, rain of arrows or of burning rocks).

* DoomedByCanon: Strangely averted in the Good campaign of ''BFME''. [[spoiler: Fisrt, the Moria mission ends with Gandalf slaying the Balrog without being separated from the Fellowship. A bonus objective of the Amon Hen mission requires to save Boromir life. Later, Faramir is not grievly wounded in Osgiliath, Theoden does not die in front of Minas Tirith, and Eowyn is not grievly wounded near of him.]]

** There is only one resource (money), which generates automatically when the player owns specific buildings. Farms / slaughterhouses / mining pits / lumbermills / furnaces does not create different resources (units don't eat, buildings don't need wood, stone or steel to be built/repaired), they are only different appearences for the money factory
** Ranged units , defense towers, and siege units have unlimited ammunitions

* HumanResources: One of the Evil factions resource producing buildings is the slaughterhouse, which produce much when feed by your own troops. More, Mordor basic infantry is litteraly free: one practical way to gain easy money is to build Orc infantry, just to send them to the slaughterhouse.

* MagicKnight: Gandalf looks like a SquishyWizard (he only wears a grey/white robe, wields a sword and a staff) but he is an incredibly tough melee fighter with destructive magic spells, being one of the Good hero with the most hitpoints.

** One of the magical powers granted to a Good general allows to heal allied units in a short area

** ''BFMEII'' and its expansion being [[VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory Very Loosely Based On A Famous Story]], the cannon-status of ''The Rise of the Witch-king'' is questionable, though.

* {{Plunder}}: Eomer has a skill which make the player controling him to gain money when he or allied units near him destroy enemy units and buildings. Evil factions have a general skill which has the same effect, but for every units of the player.
* PlotArmor: You might think Faramir would be weaker than Boromir, being the younger brother. And Gimli weaker than his father Gloin. But Faramir and Gimli are more important to the plot of Lord of the Rings, therefore they are higher-level heroes. Averted with Legolas and his father Thranduil: Thranduil is worth more.

* RapePillageAndBurn: How end most siege missions of the Evil campaigns.

** Most of [[VeteranUnit units gain experience]] and regiments gain [[RegeneratingHealth the ability to replace fallen comrades]], their level cap is 10 in ''BFME'', and 5 in ''BFMEII''. Some unit can be upgraded with gear better than their starting weapons / armors
** A few buildings can level-up

* SiegeEngines

* TunnelNetwork: In ''BFMEII'', both the Dwarven faction, and the Goblin faction had resource-mining structures that doubled as entrances to their respective [[TunnelNetwork Tunnel Networks]].
* UnexpectedGameplayChange: The games are RTS with RPGElements, but there is a few missions of ''BFME'' which looks a lot like a kind of cheap DungeonCrawling game (underground dungeon, only hero units, looking for gold). The Shelob's lair mission is one of them, but features later an other UnexpectedGameplayChange: it begins like a DungeonCrawling and ends like a standard ''BFME'' mission.

* VictoryPose: The troops troops cheer after every successful minor skirmish. That is to say, if you send one squad of cavalry to run down one squad of orcs, they will stop and cheer once the orcs are dead. Every. Time. Well, at least morale is good. They will also cheer if a hero is present and nearby. Which makes sense for, say, Aragorn or Theoden, but the Hobbits?

* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: The Evil campaign of ''BFMEII'' has a mission when the player (commanding a Goblin army) has to conquest the Shire. When it is done, an Isengard army leaded by Grima build a base there, thanks the player for doing the dirty job, and turns against the player. The end of the mission consists in destroying it.

* WhenTreesAttack: The Fangorn, and Isengard missions of ''BFME'' (both campaign). Ents (including the Treebeard hero units) can also be trained as Rohan units in ''BFME'', and as Elven units in ''BFMEII''.
* ZergRush: Mostly used by the Mordor. Evil faction tend to use this.

* AnnoyingArrows: Archers are generally the strongest units. Elven archers even throw enemies back with each shot.(Assuming the first shot doesn't kill the enemy...which it usually DOES. Though the corpse still gets flung.) However, with armor upgrades, dwarves and uruk-hai can stand a couple of arrows before going down.(Though humans, elves, orcs, hobbits, etc. can't so you could say it's played straight.) Of course stronger units such as trolls, mumakil...and obviously the HEROES can take many arrows before dying as they're clearly superhuman.(Although the frailer ones, such as Arwen or the hobbits still go down VERY quickly to arrows.)

* ZergRush: Mostly used by the Mordor.

* ''The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth II'' (2006), which shows battles and fights in other places

** Most of units gain experience, their level cap is 10 in ''BFME'', and 5 in ''BFMEII''. Some unit can be upgraded with gear better than their starting weapons / armors

* ActionGirl: Eowyn in both games, Arwen in ''BFMEII''. The Hero Editor of ''BFMEII'' allows to create one (Elvish Archer and

* {{Cutscene}}: Mostly by using the game engine. ''BFME'' also includes (size-shrinked) cutscenes extracted from the movies, displayed in the mini-map window without interrupting the actual gameplay.
* CutScenePowerToTheMax: During the ''BFME'' Amon Hen mission of the Good campaign, there is a cutscene where Legolas is shown using a high level skill that will only be unlocked several missions later.

** ''BFMEII'' multiplayer / skirmish / "War of the Ring" modes have a special gameplay features involving a wandering Gollum carrying the One Ring. He drops it when dying; any unit which steps on the Ring gains it, and if it reach the player's fortress it allows him to train the ultimate hero of the Good / Evil side (Galadrielle for the Good, Sauron for the Evil)

** Aragorn has a level-1 skill ("[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Middle-earth_plants#Athelas athelas]]") which heals the allied heroes nearby

* {{Plunder}} / RapePillageAndBurn: Eomer has a skill which make the player controling him to gain money when he or allied units near him destroy enemy units and buildings. Evil factions have a general skill which has the same effect, but for every units of the player.

* TheCavalry: Several missions of the Good campaign of ''BFME'' consists in surviving until the reinforcements come. Most of them are a litteral example, as TheCavalry is the Rohan army.

* ArmyOfTheDead: Summoning them is the ultimate power of the Good general powers, and a level 10 skill of Aragorn. They also intervene during scripted events, leaded by Aragorn in both cases: the siege of Minas Tirith in ''BFME'' (both campaigns), and the siege of Rivendell in ''BFMEII'' (end of the Evil campaign).

* ActionGirl: Eowyn in both games, Arwen in ''BFMEII''.

* ArbitraryHeadcountLimit

* AwesomeYetPractical: Charge of Rohirrim riders.

* TheCavalry: Most of factions have one, but the Rohan of ''BFME'' mostly rely on it.

* DamageIsFire

** Averted in the Good campaign of ''BFME'', in the Amon Hen mission rescuing Boromir before he is killed when protecting Merry and Pippin allows him to be used is the following missions of the campaign
* GiantSpider:
** Shelob in the Cirith Ungol mission of ''BFME''
** Goblins in ''BFMEII'' have spider-riders. They also can hire Shelob as a hero unit

* GameplayAndStorySegregation: In some missions, objectives include a HeroMustSurvive one, even if the player base has the building which can resurrect heroes.

** Ents)

* DungeonCrawling: The Moria and Shelob's lair mission of the ''BFME'' Good campaign. Especially the

* ArmyOfTheDead: Summoning them is the ultimate power of the Good general powers. They also intervene during scripted events, leaded by Aragorn in both cases: the siege of Minas Tirith in ''BFME'' (both campaigns), and the siege of Rivendell in ''BFMEII'' (end of the Evil campaign).

* TheBerserker: It is one of the Isengard units.

* RPGElements: Most of units gain experience (their level cap is 10 in ''BFME'', and 5 in ''BFMEII''), as heroes (their level cap is 10, and they gain skills at specific levels), and a few buildings two. Killing enemies and fulfilling some seconday objectives (in campaigns) grant experience to the general, which buys powers usable on the battlefield. Some unit can be upgraded with gear better than their starting weapons / armors.