LOTR scenario

[mostly_harmless]

I'm starting to put together a scenario for conquets based on Lord of the Rings, the major problem with this is the lack of any fantasy unit animations included with conquests, I am completely inept at anything art related so theres no chance of me making my own, does anyone know of anywhere where there are fantasy based unit animations or would anybody be willing to create one or two? The most useful would be one for ents (walking, talking trees), nazgul (man in black upon a black winged creature), the balrog (fiery, shadowey figure) and some different varieties of orcs, at the moment the first 3 will have to be left out and the orcs represented by the foot soldier medievil unit animations, can anyone help me out?

[Mongoloid Cow]

The ent and the balrog have already been made. If you can't find them here (which IIRC you should) you might have to ask around at CFC.

[Admiral PJ]

There is a fantasy mod being created by someone, but it appears to be more of a mediaval mod than a magical fantasy mod.. it may have someuseful materials.

I think Conquests would allow a good LOTR scenario. With the reverse Capture the flag options, you could have the Ring like the Middle age Christian Relic, and have to bring it to Mount Doom , where it gives the player 5,000 victory points. If Sauron captures the ring he gets 5,000 VP..

ART: Perhaps we could take art from the Film DVD , I know how to record it .. I'm also making my own 3d editing software which would work well for this type of graphic. It isn't neccesary to make hundreds of animations for units.. just at least 4 direction gfx for each movement type. Maybe some of the dinosaur gfx could be used.
You could change the warrior unit from civ3 and make it green.. give it an orc /goblin like appearance for example.

There have been LOTR maps made before also.. but are you thinking of a film or book based LOTR, there are differences.. the film is actually more action based with Frodo getting to Osgiliath much quicker i believe.
It missed out the first old forest with Old man willow who tries to kill the hobbits(hes an old Sentient intelligent tree monster).

Scenario Events would have been useful, perhaps they will come (CTP2 source code edition may be better for events).

Conquest flavors may be useful also, with flavors for Elves, Humans(includes hobbit , dwarf?) Orc, Wizard.

How about a Hobbit scenario too? It would be much simpler and I don't think anyones really tried this story.

[embryodead]

There are around 100 fantasy units available, including orcs, elves, dwarves, wizards, ents and all that stuff. one way to obtain them is downloading my warhammer fantasy mod (very "magical fantasy" actually)

There is also modding team on CFC, working on large LotR mod that will be a base for all kinds of scenarios. Have a look at least.

[Strider_479]

Hey I was just messing around & created a leaderhead of Frodo. Tell me if you're interested

[Arnelos]

heh... I've been building my own LOTR scenario since the Beta (which I was in). I have absolutely NO ability to make custom unit icons or have but little clue what I'm doing with that, so I've only been using the default unit icons and such, but altering all of the properties and which civs may have them, etc.

I used our own BigFurryMonster's Middle Earth Map.

Reverse capture the flag, locked alliances, marshes in the correct locations, and an actual volcano for Mt. Doom, not to mention actually placing down the civilizations and (eventually) the units have been nice additions. I'm still working on getting the units right, though I honestly don't have enough time to really work on this with everything else I'm up to.

What I'd really love to see is someone with actual artistic talent and lots of time make a really awesome LOTR scenario. As long as it's relatively accurate as well, I'll be reasonably happy (and can always alter their work if need be).

Btw... one issue that I've found aggravating: What do you do about the Army of the Dead (and other such things) without the events system from the Civ2 Editor?

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

There are quite a few VERY good LOTR Leaderheads out there also. But most of that stuff is posted at CFC.

[mostly_harmless]

Hey all, I've got some fantasy units from CFC, including that rather impressive Balrog one, I'm actually using BigFur's map myself, with a few modifications. I'm really unsure as to just how to model everything at the moment, I'm not entirely sure how the reverse capture the flag works, I was thinking having a victory point location in Barad-dur for the Mordor Civ to capture and return the ring unit in order to win, and maybe having a 'dummy' mount doom civ that is incapable of building any units and that the good guys can capture with a unit carrying the ring, after sneaking it into Mordor, would this work? The only other alternative I could think of would be to simulate the destruction of the ring with a wonder and tie the victory conditions to it.

As for modelling things like the army of the dead I was thinking of a statue of zeus type system where after researching the tech and building an appropriate wonder a dead/ent/eagle whatever unit appears every few turns, what does everyone think?

[Admiral PJ]

This forum is distracting me from working on my own mega-scenario.

Event handling: to cater for the lack of events.. there could be a website HTML file which gives you details of all units, cities, wonders, events that take place in the Game (it can be read offline too, just saved on disk). When Frodo Enters RIVENDELL city and makes contact with the Elf civ, you click on the Website hper- link for Rivendell and then it takes you to some text thats taken from the LOTR book, and explains what to do next in the game and gives background info to make the player feel the atmosphere surrounding the plot. It could say : All the races have sent ambassadors in the form of their finest champions (special warrior characters) to Elronds hall (house), including Gimli the Dwarf, Boromir of the Northern Humans. They are here mainly to decide what the Good races of Middle earth shall do with the newly discovered power of the One ring. After days of endless discussions , you, Frodo declare you will take the ring to Mount Doom to lead it to its destruction though you be very afraid... etc

I would like to make a Bethshelob (Shelob) unit, don't remember the name.. that spider monster thats in the last LOTR film. Reading about her made me want to make it come to life.
She could have a old womans hags head, maybe a hard scorpion like body as well as the spider look.
For a unit she could have radar setting, as she sees well in the dark with all her eyes, perhaps see invisible and invisible set. Gollum can see her with See invisible set, or perhaps wizards and magical creatures.

The Conquests mods stealth attack and slavery options would work pretty well with LOTR as well.
Aragorn could be given stealth attacks for orcs and Nazgul , maybe most creatures .

Gollum could appear from a Statue of Zeuslike wonder but only once , if possible (make the appearance to 2000 so it only happens once? ). The wonder could be obtained by capturing it from a city near Mordor.. make him appear regularly and act as a cruise missile and then anyone who captures his Spawn wonder will be able to use his services. Maybe he'll have to just be a one off scenario unit.

This Story is large and complicated so will take time to make a good scenario, but if Conquests scenarios can't do it nothing can

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

I would think a Wonder that produced Uruk-ai or whatever they were called would be good for Isengard. If it was me I would make an White Hand civ for Saruman with Isengard as its capital and that Wonder and a Mordor civ with Sauron as its leader and unbreakable alliance between the two set in the editor. Then add Rohan, The Shire, Gondor, etc as the Playable civs. The Player could choose to be one of the latter civs and has to Diplomatically work alliances between them to battle the Two Towers.

[Immortal Wombat]

Wow. A good, fully immersive LOTR would be great. Events would be a bonus of course. If only...

[Gibsie]

The Civ 2 LOTR scenarios were quite good, but make sure you don't include stuff just for the sake of including it if it's going to prove irrelevant to the gameplay. An example of this is where previous LOTR scenarios have included the city of Moria and Balrog units, with no real way to incite the human player to go through them what with the powerful monster present.

do you have any idea how you might use the Balrog in the scenario, mostly_harmless?

[mTk]

I was a HUGE fan of the Civ2 LOTR scenario... for a long time I played it more than the regular Civ.
I've been planning on making something similar with Civ3 for a long time as well, but the time it takes to make good animation has kept me tied so far.

Anyway, if anyone in interested in working together, I'm interested. We could even make seperate scenarios for the "good guys" and the "bad guys" and share resources... *shrug*

Anyway, I've been into art and stuff a bit and could probably do something if I get the time. Once again, I really really loved the Civ2 scenario (by Harlan Thompson), so it might be a good idea to stick a little into it. Drop me a note.

[justjake73]

I went to see RotK last weekend, and I found myself thinking about a civ scenario, and how it would work, but I've encountered 2 problems:

1) I have no artistic ability nor any graphic program other than Paint

2)I tried to search the myriad of units on Fanatics but they've disabled Search!

It would be really cool to find a graphic for a Mumakil (the huge elephants) or the Witchking - you could make Eowyn with anti-air ability!!

do you have any idea how you might use the Balrog in the scenario

Make the mountains impassable, forcing you to go through Moria?

Maybe you could have a barracks in Moria, and have a tech that allows upgrading Gandalf the Grey to White?

[Paddy]

Bring it on... with all the talent above this should be a great game