LORD OF THE ONE RING is released

[AGRICOLA]

Peasants can't move can they?

Dammit, another brilliant scheme shot down in flames.

You mean Faramir is bugging out right? Aragorn is with the FOTR in the Mines.

Correct. Right scen, wrong guy. Duh.

I suggest maintaining the Osgiliath garrison for the time being - for happiness. It won't be attacked for a another two months yet and it produces lots of gold. I'd suggest rehoming the garrison incrementally so they can bugger out at a moments notice though.

Only 1 gold/turn when it is being starved.

2 techs per turn! man that's cruel. Now you're getting into the spirit of things.

Can't do 2 techs/turn with the place populated by immobile, illiterate peasants. The best they can do is a tech/2 turns without emptying the royal treasury.

[kobayashi]

Originally posted by kobayashi

2. I would estimate that you’d complete all your quests and destroy the Ring in 130 days or so if you did everything in a timely fashion. The actual time taken will vary depending on each player’s style and there is no set time limit, but the AI build up would crush you if you don’t do what the event messages require of you. There are no time index events so everything is fluid.

Been thinking ever since I wrote this (I call this the Agricola effect) and if I set the turn increment to -6, renaming Jan and July to Day and Night, I could actually fit the time frame of the triology quite snugly. Any flaw in my thinking?

[AGRICOLA]

You may want to give some consideration to morning/afternoon or AM/PM. Usually, nothing much happens at night. IIRC, techumseh in Market-Garden had 4 turns per day but the period from dusk to dawn was omitted.

LOTOR is playing well. I'm on Day 23 and things have been interesting but not overly hectic. You seem to have done some excellent playtesting as enemy attacks on Helm's Deep have been strong but not overwhelming. The fighting has centered around West March where 4 Rohan Lancers and a couple of Inf have been holding the Isengarders at bay, mainly because the latter are all Mv=1. Eomer's imminent arrival should greatly relieve the pressure and may permit some offensive action to reduce the spawning.

Other highlights?

Day 15, Eomer, Faramir and a couple of other units staged an amphib raid on Osgiliath East and captured it. The city was razed when Mordor recaptured it the next day. It should be interesting to see what effect, if any, the loss of both its only port city and the Nazgul base closest to Minas Tireth has on future Mordor ops.

Henneth Annun was razed on Day 19.

The hobbits have been laboriously working their way through the cave, including doing some backtracking and fancy footwork to get around very unfriendly goblins. It now looks like they won't be able to reach the galleon that has been standing by offshore to rescue the vertically challenged lads. Bummer, I really hate to abandon units.

As I said before, LOTOR is playing well and the turns are short. Good stuff.

[kobayashi]

But Frodo and the boys were under a mountain...in the middle of a large continent....what made you think a galleon could rescue them?

Almost tops sending Faramir to knock on the blackgate with his Ranger pals.

[AGRICOLA]

I have played Harlan Thompson's LOTR and there are parallels between it and LOTOR. In LOTR, a ship or two came in very handy in getting Frodo to his goal. As I have no idea of how he's going to get out of the cave and back to the main map, I was just trying to cover one of the possibilities. Also, it gave me some idea of the eastward extent of the cave [i.e. how far and where the hobbits needed to travel].

I obviously misunderstood a popup which seemed to suggest that there might be an actual exit.

The Fellowship of the Ring is heading through the Mines of Moria, on their way to Mordor where the One Ring can be destroyed. To Gimli's dismay they find that Goblins have exterminated the Dwarves within their great underground city of Khazad-dum. The fellowship must now hurry to the East exit before they too are overcome by the Goblin Horde.

[kobayashi]

There is a gate, at the East End (but Gandalf must dispatch the Balrog first) and beyond it lies green fields. When Frodo 'opens' it, his doppleganger appears on the otherside of the 'gate' on the main map. Ever watch The Prestige (Michael Caine ), or sort of like a transporter site in TOT but you'll need to disband the old units.

Hey, there's no way you could have copied that without opening the events file.

you sent frodo to Mount Doom by ship? Harlan must be having a fit right now.

[fairline]

Just started a (ToT) game. Hopefully converting it won't have screwed the scenario balance up...

Initial impressions are very good: atmospheric LOTR film music and text pop-ups, a good representative unit mix and that ingenious map incorporating Moria. This looks and feels like a proper LOTR scenario

Rangers seem a bit girly: I elected to keep Faramir and his nonces in Henneth Annun and they were swamped after a handful of turns by pesky ring-wraiths. Can you beef 'em up a bit, or give them alpine move and sub invisibility so that they can skedaddle to a safer locale?

Things are also getting a bit hectic in the mines of Moria. the fellowship are getting a bit short of health. Better get the hell out quick.

I'm managing to hold my own around Helm's Deep atm though, now that Eomer and his Rohirrim are on hand. I'm betting things might take a turn for the worse in the near future though.

All round, it's an excellent start to the scenario: you've captured the edge-of the seat feeling that the forces of darkness could overwhelm me at any moment In fact, I'm liking this so much that I think I'll complete a non-Catfish unit set that can be posted with the ToT scenario conversion, with your approval.

More to follow after I return from hols...

[kobayashi]

You know 256 colours is not really that bad for making units. The main problem is the scaling algorithm which MGE uses to display graphics in the game. I know TOT has many times more colour, but the 'crispier' TOT units, is it mostly due to the TOT scaling algorithm and not because the graphics use a bigger palette?

[AGRICOLA]

Originally posted by Kobayashi:
you sent frodo to Mount Doom by ship? Harlan must be having a fit right now.

I sincerely hope not. In the Readme for v4.1 he wrote the following:

This unit acts like a nuclear bomb- it will completely destroy all the units in Barad-dur plus any units in the squares adjacent to it. But The Ring has a movement range of only three spaces. At the end of each turn it must end in a city, be used in an attack or end up in the same square as the unit Frodo or it will be destroyed. The only way to get The Ring close enough to Barad-dur to use it there is by having it brought there by Frodo (the Longboat naval unit can also carry The Ring, but obviously that cannot get all the way to Barad-dur).

I took it to mean that he didn't really much care how The Ring, or for that matter Frodo, travelled as long as the RING/missile had a place to land.

Originally posted by Kobayashi:
Hey, there's no way you could have copied that without opening the events file.

Right on. And I would seriously recommend that anyone playing this scen make copies of the popups, either by screenshots, by copying by hand, or by opening events, using a word or a phrase in the popup and FIND to locate the text, copying it and exiting the file.

This scen is unusual in that the popups give information on what is happening as well as outline the course of action that players must/should follow. I consider that the latter is much too important to just read and then return to the game. The popups are excellent and seeing the sequence gives one a sense of the continuity of the scen.



In the game, I'm on turn 45 (Day 57) and it looks like the Battle of Helm's Deep will be a victory, though a costly one. The Ent, stacked with Eomer and Gandalf to clear the way, is within one square of its target. The cost hasn't been cheap: at least one city lost and 2 razed as well as 20+ lost units.

The Isengard attack is beautifully designed and as overwhelming and frightening as the first 6 turns of Nemo's Red Front. Really well done. In retrospect, it appears that a couple of decisions made 30 turns earlier are the only difference between victory and defeat. I'll send the details in a couple of days.

P.S. Did you get the e-mail that I sent you a couple days ago?

[kobayashi]

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
In the game, I'm on turn 45 (Day 57) and it looks like the Battle of Helm's Deep will be a victory, though a costly one. The Ent, stacked with Eomer and Gandalf to clear the way, is within one square of its target. The cost hasn't been cheap: at least one city lost and 2 razed as well as 20+ lost units.

The Isengard attack is beautifully designed and as overwhelming and frightening as the first 6 turns of Nemo's Red Front. Really well done. In retrospect, it appears that a couple of decisions made 30 turns earlier are the only difference between victory and defeat. I'll send the details in a couple of days.

P.S. Did you get the e-mail that I sent you a couple days ago?

You're about 2 weeks ahead of me in my test games, and I know the game inside out. Its too bad, you're steaming ahead so fast you'll probably miss the peak of Isengard power, when it starts raining fire. Its just as well.

(yep I got the e-mail, I only check my account once a week, sorry about that)

[fairline]

Originally posted by kobayashi
You know 256 colours is not really that bad for making units. The main problem is the scaling algorithm which MGE uses to display graphics in the game. I know TOT has many times more colour, but the 'crispier' TOT units, is it mostly due to the TOT scaling algorithm and not because the graphics use a bigger palette?

For me it's the palette. The original 8-bit palette is far too restrictive for my liking. A test is to use mge units and terrain in a ToT scenario and then replace them with 15-bit alternatives; the difference is clear.

I have a couple of minor observations about your scenario if it's not too late. Apologies if these have been spotted already but I've purposely not read the thread in order to view the scenario with a fresh eye.

- Aragorn has become Aragon

- the text popup for Gandalf the White reads 'then only can the rohirrim ride to the aid of Gondor'. Shouldn't this be 'only then can...'?

- Would it be slicker to have the fellowship and hobbits 'kill' themselves against a high defence gate prior to leaving Moria, rather than relyiing on the player to disband them? I say this largely as in ToT it doesn't seem to be possible to disband units outside a city. It probably isn't an issue in MGE.

- In my view the rangers and Boromir serve no purpose other than cannon-fodder. Can't they be improved a tad?

[kobayashi]

Nice to see you're getting into the thick of it.


- Aragorn has become Aragon
this is now known, Kobi's Bane

- the text popup for Gandalf the White reads 'then only can the rohirrim ride to the aid of Gondor'. Shouldn't this be 'only then can...'?
yes that seems to read better, plus a Capital R as well

- Would it be slicker to have the fellowship and hobbits 'kill' themselves against a high defence gate prior to leaving Moria, rather than relyiing on the player to disband them? I say this largely as in ToT it doesn't seem to be possible to disband units outside a city. It probably isn't an issue in MGE.
If the Ring Bearer dies (and multiple races will try to kill them as there is a second dungeon, plus there is the complication that the blackgate is also a gate unit) then Sauron will be reborn. May I suggest using the cheat menu to get rid of it. Actually its an interesting idea. I suppose its possible if I add new events/units but I don't have any more event space. If you end up doing the conversion, we can discuss how to do this using TOT's extra unit slots and event space

- In my view the rangers and Boromir serve no purpose other than cannon-fodder. Can't they be improved a tad?
Once again its Faramir, and the idea is for them to escape across the Anduin, not fight it out by themselves. (the first event message tells you this). I have considered it since it was suggested earlier but it will upset the game balance in the second half when there are more Rangers.

p.s. You will need Faramir's engineer capabilities to beef up Minas Tirith while Helm's Deep is going on

[GhostOfDisco]

Ah, so you should disband the Ring-bearer unit (or should you.)

Finally got Frodo and company out of Moria, disbanded the Ring-bearer as well as the Fellowship, and was wondering when I'd get to the next maze. Other than that, things are going well (took Orthanc before the Ents and have a massive militia army fortified in west bank Osgiliath.)

[kobayashi]

Hey, as an afterthought, is someone of authority posting a headline or something on the Apolyton main site?

[kobayashi]

I've got all my fine tuning done for the patch. A few final questions

Does anyone think the Black Riders or Witch King need to have attack factor +1?

Should I change the mountain terrain under the goblin cities (or any Mordor cities for that matter) to hills to make it easier to capture?

Are there any other topics that should be included in the game concepts menu?