Possibly the most underrated game ever, LotR2 is a true gem. The King has just died and you must compete with 5 other royals to try and claim the throne. The object behind the game is to acquire surrounding counties, amass money and resources, raise armies and castles, and wipe your opponents off the face of the earth. The game is turn-based, functioning on a 4-season cycle, each cycle ending with a click of the "End Turn" button.
Your county grows over time if your people remain healthy, and they must be strategically distributed among grain-farming, cow-herding, blacksmithing, castle-building and gathering stone (for castles), iron and wood.
Taxes must also be changed in accordance with the rations you feed your people, which in turn affect the amount of food in stores.
While the game is fairly simple, many clever strategic opportunities arise that can thwart opponents. If an enemy army is advancing towards you, it can be more strategically in your favor to conquer a county (which is about to be conquered by the enemy,) drain the county of resources (by sending them to another county under your control), tax the people to starvation, and then surrender as your opponent takes the county. The computer will then spend (fruitless) resources restoring the county you drained, which could have been better spent defeating you. The people will grow unruly, eventually form mobs, and
terrorize the land, and the opponent will lose the county.
When armies clash is one of the most exciting aspects of the game. 7 different types of units, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, can take the field: Pike men, Mace men, Archers, Crossbowmen, Swordsmen, Knights, and Peasants. The entire course of the game can be decided by these real-time battles. There is incredible strategy involved in these battles and in many maps, the terrain plays a crucial role and must be used cleverly according to the units in your army (e.g. using archers to shoot the enemy from the other side of uncrossable rivers.)
The other aspect of battle is the sieging of castles. There are 5 different castles that can be built and each requires its own tactics for success. Since almost every scenario begins with each player's beginning county having a castle, the key to defeating the computer opponents is bringing down castles.
This is an incredibly entertaining game and stands head-and-shoulders above many of the "newer" games that come out these days.
