War of the Ring - beta

[techumseh]

Originally posted by Catfish

I'm in a quandary over Moria. Too hard or too easy? Does it need to be expanded a little? Is the Balrog shy? Is the Balrog too tough? If the party spends too many resources in Moria (members and time), then there might be a better payoff taking another route and just sending in Gandalf.

Thanks for the input, guys – well, sort of, it means more work for me.

I won't be working on it tonight; I'm off to see Carcass on their reunion tour.

I'd say a bit harder and a bit more complex. Moria should be the toughest stretch in the game - at least that's how I see it in terms of the book.

Is there any way to free up a trigger event for Moria? That could allow you to have more control over when the dark forces attack in overwhelming force, ie. just before the fellowship gets to the bridge.

What are the other options, beside Moria? Carhadras, the Gap of Rohan, the High Pass? Are any of these playable?

[Arthedain]

Got some great tips there Catifsh, thanks! ^^ And you should be glad that it affects my mood, it means I enjoy playing it

[Arthedain]

And I'm going again.. reloaded from Emyn Muil, gonna go a different way this time. Though I just remembered that I probably need Smeagol. Doh!

[Catfish]

Originally posted by our_man
In my game there seemed to be a constant stream of Easterlings descending down the road running just outside Mordor to join the assault on Osgiliath. There were also a few trolls and other nefarious beings on this route too. To use an analogy, it was like trying to pick the right time to cross a road with lots of traffic, and despite looking both left and right to make sure the coast was clear, Frodo et al got splattered.

What I mean is that if you hold Cair Andros and Henneth Annun, you can attack out of there and clear the 1 or 2 tiles on the way to Cirith Ungol using Rangers of Ithilien and/or heroes, especially Faramir. You need units with reasonably good attack values because it's hill terrain with a +100% defensive bonus. I'd consider waiting for big 'uns like trolls and ologs to pass. In earlier versions of the scenario it was more difficult to get from Henneth Annun to Cirith Ungol because Frodo and co had to pass through twice as many tiles; the trip could still be made in a single turn (the tributary from the Ephel Duath acted as a road), but there were more tiles to clear.

Originally posted by our_man
Enough with my sour grapes! On to something I really liked about this scenario that I thought was pretty unique. It's great that the player gets to have a pivotal role in holding off Saruman's forces from Rohan. If you don't send up any reinforcements Rohan's pretty much screwed. The hit-and-run nature of the fight up here was pretty special - I don't think there's any other scenario where using your allies cities to heal units before heading out for another sortie is so essential.

Yes, I think once you get Eomer and the boys into that forest adjacent to Helm's Deep, you're a good way to saving the city. I fortify Eomer (and Gandalf the White if I haven't already sent him east) and attack anything on or adjacent to the road between Helm's Deep and the Fords of Isen using the remaining Riders of Rohan. Rotate Riders back to the forest and if they've got any movement points left (don't overstretch them), heal at Helm's Deep in the same turn. Fortify everything else. You'll get a lot of stack kills on that road. Then it's a question of getting your timing right with the Ents to take Isengard. You've got to take out all of the orc garrisons with the Ents at the very least (probably 2-3 Ent rotations from Derndingle). You can use the Fords of Isen as a stepping stone or ride right up the road to Isengard in a single turn if you're doing well. I’ve had some disasters at the Fords of Isen when I've moved there too early.

If I'm tardy with my heroes in the Isengard theatre, I often use Gwaihir and the eagles to pick off stacks of Saruman's forces from the safety of impassable terrain.

Originally posted by techumseh
I'd say a bit harder and a bit more complex.

OK.

Originally posted by techumseh
Moria should be the toughest stretch in the game - at least that's how I see it in terms of the book.

The player has the advantage of advance knowledge. Every alternative to Moria has to be equally as tough or at least penalise the player in some fashion. There are two possible rewards for passing through Moria: Gandalf the White and some bonus dwarves.

Originally posted by techumseh
Is there any way to free up a trigger event for Moria? That could allow you to have more control over when the dark forces attack in overwhelming force, ie. just before the fellowship gets to the bridge.

I can piggy-back a CreateUnit action on the Doors of Durin trigger without affecting events space (I added the possibility of some trolls in the last version). I'd have to find some room for an extra Delayed event, say if I spawned a bunch of orcs on the west side of the Bridge ≈ 3-4 turns later. Alternatively, Eye Orcs on map 3 could act as a trigger for 'reinforcements' at the Bridge. That way I could avoid using Delay.

Originally posted by techumseh
What are the other options, beside Moria? Carhadras, the Gap of Rohan, the High Pass? Are any of these playable?

1. No Caradhras.
2. High Pass: increased risk of early Mordor mobilisation. The reason the Fellowship avoided the High Pass in the book was because it was watched by the Enemy.
3. Gap of Rohan: I've done it a couple of times in really old play-tests. I split the party early. In one play-test I remember Saruman sneak-attacked some of my party members with wolf-riders. After tripping 3 Crebain spies, I was a whisker away from causing Isengard to mobilise early. Still should send someone up to the Lorien trigger - and Frodo needs to find Gollum (Or is it the other way around?).
4. Sailing along the coastline/ship-chaining: I've never tried this as I never thought it would pay off. Frodo still needs to get to the Emyn Muil.

Originally posted by Arthedain
Got some great tips there Catifsh, thanks! ^^ And you should be glad that it affects my mood, it means I enjoy playing it

Oh good, but it still looks like it needs to be made easier. Just keep a few saves handy - at least until the scenario's better balanced.

I noticed that when I was installing the scenario on a mate's machine that the batch file installer was out of date. Some of the city improvement graphics were different; the directory structure was off as well. I've updated the installer. So if you have a picture of the Stock Market for the Treasury then you should run the new one. Looks like nobody noticed anyway . I haven't had time to look at anything else. That's the only change.

[techumseh]

Could substituting avi. files for event text messages save significant events space?

I've been experimenting with avi. messages, trying to reduce the file size. I doubled the size of the frame to 640X480 so it's readable, but cut the frame rate to 1 fps. So far I can get a 10 second clip (good for one of the longer messages) in about 500kb, without sound.

Would this be of any interest?

[Mercator]

Hmmm... I'm pretty sure you should be able to get videos far smaller than that. For one, you can set a frame rate lower than 1 fps, so you'd only ever need one frame.

For example, I attached a one frame video of the War of the Ring opening screen (a lot bigger than 640x480). It's about 135K. And with a frame rate of 0.0001 fps, it'll last for almost 3 hours (so just press space when you're done reading).

I tested it in Tot too. The image quality is not brilliant, but quite alright, and definitely readable.

(I used VirtualDub for the video processing; opened a screenshot PNG image to create the one frame video, used the Indeo Video 5.10 codec at 50% quality, width and height of the video need to be divisible by 4).


Still, 100K+ of video is a bit steep for replacing a 1K piece of text. And replacing shorter text events like that is going to look a bit silly.

But considering I'm downloading gigabytes of data these days, there really isn't too much reason anymore not to go all out and create full-length videos (apart from the effort needed to create them, and the more limited options of actually putting them online somewhere).

I bet WWII scenarios could be spiced up a bit with archive footage when capturing an objective city, say.



Also, I made my first attempt at playing the scenario this weekend... Three Nazgûl popped up next to Frodo and friends on turn one, right when they were travelling to Buckland... They didn't survive.

[techumseh]

Interesting. You're certainly ahead of me on this.

I did a little more experimenting, and found replacing one of the longer texts with video saved 429 bytes of stack space. This is a screen shot:

[our_man]

I wish the ring had never come to me...

I did it. Wow. That was something special. That was a lot of effort. In the attached screenshot Frodo is just about to get rid of the blasted ring; hopefully from here on in things will get simpler. They would want to be: Corsairs control Belfalas and have nearly finished Pelargir defences off, Easterlings rule Dale and Mordor holds Cair Andros and Osgiliath and has rendered Anorien defenseless. The casualty count was spectacular - only Aragorn, Legolas and the hobbits remain out of the Fellowship of the Ring. When I lost Gandalf in the initial assault on Osgiliath after the Black Gate opened I thought I was done for, but I somehow I managed to hold on long enough for Frodo to finish his quest on Turn 71.

In conclusion it's certainly winnable as it is, but I am under no delusion that it was down to my skill. I think I was very, very lucky on several occasions. Getting Frodo, Sam and Gollum through the swamp by themselves cannot feasibly be done IMHO; I needed to send the eagles in to clear a path for them.

The best LOTR ever for the Civ2 engine, which is saying something as there are a lot of high quality LOTR scenarios out there. Take a bow Catfish!

[Mercator]

Originally posted by techumseh
Interesting. You're certainly ahead of me on this.

Well, I've done some video encoding before. Not for Civ2, though.

I did a little more experimenting, and found replacing one of the longer texts with video saved 429kb of stack space.

429kB of stack space? ToT only has ~100kB.

This is a screen shot:

Ah, white text on black will look a bit nicer than the ToT-dialog-turned-video I did... It should compress even better too... Would that one screen be the entire video, or is the idea that you slowly "page through" multiple screens of text?

[Boco]

In your playtests, Catfish, what percentage of the time did you win by the literary margin (8/9 of the fellowship survive and the major sieges end in victory for Rohan/Gondor)? What is your goal in these terms?

Is it desirable or practical to offer the player different levels of difficulty (e.g. change unit stats) in a bat or vbs file?

Hope this reads okay. I'm pecking away with clumsy fingers on an iTouch.

[techumseh]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by Mercator
[QUOTE] Originally posted by techumseh
Interesting. You're certainly ahead of me on this.

Well, I've done some video encoding before. Not for Civ2, though.

I did a little more experimenting, and found replacing one of the longer texts with video saved 429kb of stack space.

429kB of stack space? ToT only has ~100kB.

This is a screen shot:

Ah, white text on black will look a bit nicer than the ToT-dialog-turned-video I did... It should compress even better too... Would that one screen be the entire video, or is the idea that you slowly "page through" multiple screens of text?

Err, that's 429 bytes. I meant bytes.

This is the entire message, in one video. It shows for 10 seconds, which is about how long it takes to read this much text. This is one of the longest messages in the scenario, so it shouldn't require 2 or more screens.

If you can do it so it plays as long as you want, and uses far less space, that's the ticket.

[Catfish]

I considered using video from the RotK movie for the destruction of the Ring, but file size and copyright issues (I think I've plundered enough) prevented me. As far as using video for text, it sounds good. I'll see what I can do without it. When I start scrambling (which will probably be as soon as I open the events file), I'll look into it.

[Edit: OK, I'm sold. The pic below, single frame compressed with the Indeo 5.11 codec produced a 124 kB AVI file.]

Originally posted by Mercator
Also, I made my first attempt at playing the scenario this weekend... Three Nazgûl popped up next to Frodo and friends on turn one, right when they were travelling to Buckland... They didn't survive.

Well that was short and not-so-sweet. What tile were they in? I have never been attacked by Nazgul on tile (64, 66) in the first turn. I'm not a complete bastard.

Originally posted by our_man
I did it. Wow. That was something special. That was a lot of effort.

Excellent.

Originally posted by our_man
In the attached screenshot Frodo is just about to get rid of the blasted ring

Who or what damaged Sam? Gollum? Shelob? Or did you evade Shelob? Had either Sam or Frodo acquired veteran status?

Originally posted by our_man
Easterlings rule Dale

I'm happy to see the Easterlings take Dale. The effect of distance means that their main assault lags behind Mordor's and Harad's. In many previous play-tests I held Esgaroth and Dale comfortably. I removed Dale's river (+50% defensive bonus) with a bit of hex-editing. Then I advanced the Easterling battering rams; once they start hitting those cities you're in for a fight. I'll often leave an eagle up there to take care of some of those from the safety of Long Lake. Recently, I unblocked an AI sticky spot along the River Running.

Originally posted by our_man
When I lost Gandalf in the initial assault on Osgiliath after the Black Gate opened I thought I was done for, but I somehow I managed to hold on long enough for Frodo to finish his quest on Turn 71.

There's a decision to be made over whether to fight in Osgiliath or withdraw to Minas Tirith. Minas Tirith provides a higher defensive bonus, but when Osgiliath is overrun, the Pelennor Fields wonder becomes obsolete and Mordor begins assembling siege equipment in the city. I generally sell off improvements and withdraw (rehoming any units from the city), but at lower difficulty levels, holding Osgiliath has more appeal.

Originally posted by our_man
Getting Frodo, Sam and Gollum through the swamp by themselves cannot feasibly be done IMHO

That's the number one priority in the list of scenario changes; I'll probably have to expand it to a secondary map. You might notice that the land mass index of the Dead Marshes differs from the surrounding area. That's to prevent the AI targeting units from outside of the marshes. The Easterlings that you encounter are just cutting through. Air units, such as the Winged Nazgul, will target units on different land masses, but in this case they're still just passing through - on their way to attack the elves.

Originally posted by our_man
The best LOTR ever for the Civ2 engine, which is saying something as there are a lot of high quality LOTR scenarios out there. Take a bow Catfish!

Thanks. Glad you enjoyed it.

Originally posted by boco
In your playtests, Catfish, what percentage of the time did you win by the literary margin (8/9 of the fellowship survive and the major sieges end in victory for Rohan/Gondor)?

That's not the sort of thing on which I keep records. What are you driving at? Alternative scoring systems?

Originally posted by boco
What is your goal in these terms?

Keep constraints on style of play to a minimum. I think there are plenty enough in the scenario.

Originally posted by boco
Is it desirable or practical to offer the player different levels of difficulty (e.g. change unit stats) in a bat or vbs file?

It's not on the radar. Unless I see a need, players will have to make do with the hard-coded difficulty levels.

[Mercator]

Originally posted by techumseh
Err, that's 429 bytes. I meant bytes.

Ah, heh, that makes sense... It still seems a bit strange to replace something that takes hundreds of bytes by something taking hundreds of kilobytes... Events are precious commodity, though, and seeing your and Catfish's examples, it has some potential for improving a scenario's atmosphere too...

Hmmm, you could play a sound file along with the video, could't you? If you already have some sort of "theme" wave file, you could play that in the background, without having to put it in the video file.

If you can do it so it plays as long as you want, and uses far less space, that's the ticket.

You should give VirtualDub a shot. It's free, fairly easy to use and more than powerful enough for this kind of thing. What did you use?

Originally posted by Catfish
[Edit: OK, I'm sold. The pic below, single frame compressed with the Indeo 5.11 codec produced a 124 kB AVI file.]

Nooo, my eyes! Not Comic Sans!

Well that was short and not-so-sweet. What tile were they in? I have never been attacked by Nazgul on tile (64, 66) in the first turn. I'm not a complete bastard.

You must be a complete bastard after all then, because that's the square my 3 hobbits were on.

The Nazgûl were on (63, 65), (62, 64) and (61, 63), if I recall correctly, or maybe one square left or right of that. Three in a row anyway.

[our_man]

A vet Sam was attacked by Gollum and managed to fend the grubby little wretch off so Frodo could do his thing. I had a rather bruising encounter with Shelob a few turns earlier: vet Sam just managed to kill her in a direct attack, but was so badly wounded he and Frodo had to stay and rest for 5 turns, which really added to the tension. Still, there was no way I was going to risk Sam dashing with Frodo across Mordor on 1MP.

[Catfish]

Originally posted by Mercator
Hmmm, you could play a sound file along with the video, could't you? If you already have some sort of "theme" wave file, you could play that in the background, without having to put it in the video file.

That's what I have going at the moment. For consistency, I think I'll only use AVIs for Quest events and perhaps a couple of other types of major events, eg, Mordor's mobilisation. Many of the minor events with large strings (or duplicated strings, in the case of @AND events ) will miss out. Still, a considerable amount of events space has been freed up. I can fix the Dead Marshes area now, hopefully without too much hassle.

And you're right about the video image quality - it's not so hot in Civ2. Looks like an indexed palette.

Originally posted by Mercator
Nooo, my eyes! Not Comic Sans!

If you're going to moan, at least suggest an alternative. How about Palatino?



[Edit: Here's another. Been busy taking screen captures from the movies. At 50% compression, it produces a 51.6 kB AVI.]

Originally posted by Mercator
You must be a complete bastard after all then, because that's the square my 3 hobbits were on.

When I was working on the scenario start, however long ago, I tried to get Nazgul to attack that tile (maybe I am a complete bastard), but with zero success. In the book, the hobbits first headed south and then east; they didn't take the road. The AI just wouldn't have a bar of it. Nazgul always homed in on Buckland.

Now you've gone and made me do a bunch of boring tests - I knew I should never have posted in this thread. I began the scenario 50 times, each time moving all 3 hobbits to (64, 66). Three Nazgul spawn on turn one. In the 150 moves they made in total, attacks were made on only 2 locations: 27 against Sarn Ford and 11 against Hobbiton. My hobbit heroes were left unmolested.

Originally posted by our_man
A vet Sam was attacked by Gollum and managed to fend the grubby little wretch off so Frodo could do his thing. I had a rather bruising encounter with Shelob a few turns earlier: vet Sam just managed to kill her in a direct attack, but was so badly wounded he and Frodo had to stay and rest for 5 turns, which really added to the tension. Still, there was no way I was going to risk Sam dashing with Frodo across Mordor on 1MP.

Thanks for the info. That turned out quite nicely.