The Hobbit: Kingdoms of Middle-earth

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The Hobbit: Kingdoms of Middle-earth was a multiplayer/strategy mobile game that was developed by Kabam, with some involvement from Warner Bros. The game is free-to-play, with in-app purchases available for those who wish to give themselves a competitive advantage. The game was developed by Kabam, and was released in October 2012. It was released along with The Hobbit: Armies of the Third Age.

GAEA Mobile acquired the game, along with some other titles in mid-2016. As the license was soon to expire, The Hobbit: Kingdoms of Middle-Earth has gone lost in history on June 30th, 2017.

Gameplay revolves around players building their own kingdoms and going to war with rivals. When starting, players can choose to be a part of the dwarves or a part of the elves. Actual gameplay does not vary depending on what you pick for the most part; differences include how your city physically looks and the "Heroes" that can join you, but the mechanics are generally the same. Players can create or join an Alliance, and make other Alliances their comrades or enemies.

Players can attack other, computer-controlled lands as well, and gain bonuses to resource production. This varies per land type the player conquers and holds onto. The land is held by keeping a hero together with troops on the tile for the time the player wants the boosts. Another player can attack this tile and capture it. This would result in your hero returning to your base, with many Units being lost, or a successful Defense.

Some heroes could save a certain percentage of the used Units to return home even if the party would be wiped out.

Resources[]

There used to be 7 official renewing resources:

Food
Wood
Stone
Ore
Gold
Population
Pearls (only in Laketowns)

Each resource had their own meaning to the ecosystem of a player. Upgrading buildings would usually cost Food, Wood, Stone, and Ores, whilst leveling up the Main Hall would cost Gold as well. All buildings in Laketowns required Pearls to be upgraded, or built in the first place.

Training up an army was not only very costly, but all units had an upkeep per unit. However, as a Zero on a resource didn’t affect a player in any negative way, a good course of action could be to move all units to a single city, and thus having a city with no Food, as well as a frozen progression forever. As many events gave Unit Boxes (which could be opened up to 1000 a time, and could contain billions of units), this was a highly recommended strategy. A city that cannot progress is never doomed, as attacking was always possible with any city, at any level, without any resources or with big resources.

Population was a mechanic dependent on the Taxing a player put in onto their city. The percentages set would affect the happiness, in direct correlation with the tax rate. When having no tax, the city was completely happy, and if a player would set the Tax Rates to maximum, population growth would become 0. Certain statistics, one of which was happiness, could be modified by items gained through events.

A few other major resources were Gemstones, Mithril, Runes and hourglasses.

Gemstones were primarily useful for the enhancement of equipment put onto heroes, and this could vary from attack increase, Damage Increase, Marching Capacity Increase, Enemy Damage Decrease, and March Speed Increase. Gemstones of the same type and rarity could be combined together to create stronger stones when combined with a rune. The higher the stone the lower the chance to successfully merge runes together.

removing a Gemstone from an equipment piece used to cost another kind of rune.

Mithril was a Purchasing resource, which would affect all the Servers you had a city in. Purchasing Mithril had an exchange rate from $1 being 10 Mithril. However, in the Midstages and Late Stages of the game, it became rather easy to obtain vast amounts of Mithril without having a big bank account. Many events started practically giving away Mithril. If a player had a good alliance, they could easily obtain 1000 ServerBound Mithril. Some events would give the player Cross Server Mithril, but the requirement for this was to win the event.

Mithril could be used to purchase almost anything in the game, but was most useful to open additional Chests, which functioned similar to a Gacha.

Runes could be very different in function. Everything that needed a ‘special resource’ would request for certain runes. Whether this is the combining of Gemstones, enhancing the XP of a weapon, or increasing player buffs, all these would be runes. All obtainable through events, Goblin Camps, Mithril shops and missions.

Hourglasses were never meant to be stacked, as visible by the fact it was one of the few resources that would always remain the complete number, however many a player had. This resource was obtainable purchase with Mithril or acquirable by the Chests, Events, in a lucky scenario through the attacking of a Goblin Camp, or through the many in-game missions. All hourglasses had unique naming focussed on some character in Middle-Earth, and had their own timeframes they could skip. As long as a building would be completed within 5 minutes, a player could skip construction by tapping on a building. If it took too long, the speedup menu would open.

Defending[]

Whenever a City would be attacked, the player could have three choices: having a big carriage take all the player resources to another city owned by the player, lose all resources, or Defend.

Defending had 5 factors that used to have a lot of meaning.

Personal Units
Defending Units sent by allies
Hero selected for defense
City Wall Defensive Units
Player Research

Personal Units could either be enabled or disabled to defend one’s city. This way, a player could choose to ignore the attack and retaliate with a bigger army than the attacker, and reconquer all lost resources, if the player was confident. Dependent on the the research level of scouting, and the amount of hourglasses a player had, and the attacker’s research level, a fight could in theory be defended by quick-training the correct units.

Activating a Rune of Protection when an attack was heading towards a player City would result in it becoming active after the attack, and therefore was not fit as a defensive method. Activating a Unit Enhancing Rune, whether offensive or Defensive, could also give the player an edge over the attacker, if the player would be online at the time of the attack.

Traveling and Attacking[]

to be completed and sorted

Not sorted, generic additions[]

Traveling from one tile to the other, whether to attack a land tile where a base was located, or a computer-controlled land, always takes a while. The minimal travel time was always 30 seconds, and the maximum could be days. Some high-level players found a way to make travel time always be 30 seconds, and this could cause chaos, as a player could not always locate the attacker before the troops arrived due to this.

Goblin lands could have various resources, and dependent on the level, they could even hold great equipment for heroes, or gems to imbue into the equipment a player already had.

There used to be 5 types of resource: Gold, Stone, Wood, Population and Food. Food was required to hold onto the upkeep of your army. Every troop held its own resource, and resource collection was automated. Thus, a player was only required to upgrade buildings, and manage their army. Gold was collected per base of taxes, and the higher the taxes, the lower the happiness of the people, and the lower the population growth. All resources except population could be sent to another player as a gift, and could also be recharged faster by buying packs in the shop.

Army upkeep could be dodged entirely by dedicated one of the 4 original cities to a Army City, as holding massive groups of billions of troops was possible, and could cause huge negative numbers in upkeep. Having no food in the city doesn’t affect it negatively, except for the fact a player would never be able to train new troops in that city, nor upgrade farms. Armies could be instructed to either protect a city or just be hidden. Being hidden would mean that any player could raid your town, but would always have to deal with the City Wall Defenses, which contained traps focussed per troops it was tasked to defend against. A player could request support from their allies in the alliance chat, and could receive units in their embassy. If this were to happen, a player would get additional help from their ally. Troops in the embassy also require the food of the player, as all troops require their upkeep in the place they are.

Players could have up to 4 cities, with a later addition of a 5th, based upon Laketown. All 4 cities held the same kind of research and could hold onto troops that were oriented upon the race they’ve chosen to be, and held the same heroes. Laketown however had it’s entirely own growthpath. Laketown had it’s own type of troops, research, and held a new resource: Pearls. These were required for the other types of research only available in Laketowns.

To setup a new city, a player was required to have a City Deed, of which fragments could be found in goblin camps, or could be received in special events or purchased with Mithril. When a City Deed was obtained, a Plains tile had to be captured, and then transformed into the city, and had to be build in their order. Having a 3th city deed, but not having a 2nd city would cause the player to not be able to found a new city.

Players choose to play as dwarves or elves. Each race's city looks different, and the buildings and troops have different names. E.g. dwarvish catapults are elvish ents. Dwarves were very technologically oriented, as all things were mechanical, whilst the Elves were very naturally focussed. All buildings were shiny and all troops were all other species and animals we encountered in the series.

External link[]

The Hobbit: Kingdoms of Middle-earth article at DotMMO
The Hobbit: Kingdoms of Middle-earth article at GameSpasm
The Hobbit: Kingdoms of Middle-earth Tips and Strategies
Everybody's Guide to The Hobbit: Kingdoms of Middle-earth book at Amazon.com
Discussion about the game’s closure at GameSpot