Hex's new potential project - WOTR

[hexagonian]

Having more or less completed my work on Cradle (with the exception of the Visible Wonders coding, which willl be the last element that I will actively put in Cradle), I'm turning my attention to a possible new project...one that has been kicked around a lot on this forum, but never has been realized...

A War of the Ring Scenario, based on Tolkien's Middle Earth. I haven't decided if I want to concentrate on the First or Second War of the Ring. The First War would actually be an easier fit, but the Second War offers a greater depth in characters, and it is this one I am leaning towards.

It would be similar to the Alexander scenario - probably not as complex though, as I want greater control over what the AI can accomplish.

It will also be a war scenario - no tossing the Ring into Mt. Doom...and it will not be a Mod. The map will be premade - and units and cities will be in place already. Some SLIC files may be needed.

And I may need a playtester or two - I'm asking Ben as my first choice as tester as I know he is a Tolkien fan, and he can offer the help I will need in certain areas. Files will not be released until it is done. No betas as per my Cradle setup.

I was doing a lot of thinking this past weekend as to how I would go about doing this, and I have some definite ideas that might work. I'm not going to reveal much of them either at this point in time - at least not publically, because since this is a Scenario, many of those elements need to be discovered while playing.

My Cradle files will be the base from which I will work from.

I'm not going to make any promises that this will get done though, but it is something I think I can pull off.

[HuangShang]

What is War of the Rings?

[child of Thor]

Originally posted by HuangShang
What is War of the Rings?

It's another name for Lord of the rings, a trilogy of books by a guy named Tolkien. He is widely seen as the father of hi-fantasy.

Hex,
could be good, nothing quite like a chance to slap down some orcs
On that note will we get a chance to play as the different powers within the story?
Oh yeah and you are going to need lots of new sprites no?

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by child of Thor
On that note will we get a chance to play as the different powers within the story?

The one question that I've had in regards to this is whether I can get the AI to work with multiple civs in a coordinated way. Conceiveably you would have the following alliance as the most likely setup.

Gondor
Rohan
Elves
Dwarves

against

Mordor
Isengard
Harad
Easterlings

The trick is to get each of those civs to work against the rival 4 - something that I do not think can be done effectively. There needs to be no war between the allies. So my plan is to break it into a two-civ game, with the potential to play either Sauron and all who is allied with him against Gondor and all who are allied with them. I'm focusing on having the human player play Gondor.

If somebody with SLIC experience wants to chime in and say it is possible though, please do so...

This will be more along the lines of a game to play once or twice, especially since scenarios do not have the replay value of a Mod. But I will make every effort to make this a hard one to win...

Originally posted by child of Thor
Oh yeah and you are going to need lots of new sprites no?

Suprisingly, I think I have most everything I need to make this work - though I may make a call for some things.

[Peter Triggs]

The trick is to get each of those civs to work against the rival 4 - something that I do not think can be done effectively. There needs to be no war between the allies.

Getting the two groups of allies should be no problem. I doubt though that we'll ever see co-ordinated Allied attacks though.

[Turambar]

Being a huge Tolkien fan I've also considered trying to make a LOTR scenarion but never really got round to it. I'd love to help out on this in anyway I can. I know some SLIC (and am learning it fast) and a bit about the AI etc. So if you need any help then just ask .

And I also co-run a Tolkien forum *points to sig*.

I think the second WOTR would be better as it's more well know and would be more of a challenge to the player and certain events (if thats what you aim to do) during the Last Alliance may be difficult to do such as the 7 siege of Barad-dur.

Under what Civ would you class the Hobbits, Dunedan of the North, Ents etc?

So my plan is to break it into a two-civ game, with the potential to play either Sauron and all who is allied with him against Gondor and all who are allied with them.

If you did that then how would give only certain cities the ability to build units that only that race would have? Such as only having Mordor cities building Orcs or stopping Minas Tirith from building dwarves?

[hexagonian]

Peter,
Thanks for the info - as you probably guessed, I would rather sacrifice some detail for a fun game, so getting the AI to act in a coordinated way is more important than detail.

Originally posted by Turambar
Under what Civ would you class the Hobbits, Dunedan of the North, Ents etc?

There will be a lot of Leader type units in the game...Many of the main characters would be classified as such.
The Dunedan and Ents could be handled as Leader units (similar to the Wonderunits in Cradle) Hobbits would have several cities on the map, but they would be a non-factor in most other ways. The focus is more or less on a war via military might. Hence the reason why I considered the First War as more viable from that standpoint.

Originally posted by Turambar
If you did that then how would give only certain cities the ability to build units that only that race would have? Such as only having Mordor cities building Orcs or stopping Minas Tirith from building dwarves?

I would love to be able to pull this off - it is similar in concept to the use of goods to create particular units but this has not been pulled off yet though. Again, a question to the SLICers if cities can be limited in the type of unit it can create.

Again the basic units wold probably have to be generic in nature - swordsmen, axemen(dwarves), archers and the like.

[Turambar]

Originally posted by hexagonian
I would love to be able to pull this off - it is similar in concept to the use of goods to create particular units but this has not been pulled off yet though. Again, a question to the SLICers if cities can be limited in the type of unit it can create.

Perhaps units could be linked to the buildings in a city in some way? That would make the units available to each city unique within a civ and the buildings could then be made obsolete through tech. I'm not sure if this would be possible though.

Would you also have character units such as Aragorn etc?

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by child of Thor
It's another name for Lord of the rings, a trilogy of books by a guy named Tolkien. He is widely seen as the father of hi-fantasy.

Technically, the war is the main topic of the books, rather than the books themselves, but I won't quibble too much .

Sounds like a great idea if you can pull it off - I'm something of a significant Tolkien fan myself, and I'm eager to assist if possible - just don't get distracted by changes in the films (Not that many are significant, but I can think of one that is - Saramun being the creator of the Uruk-hai (which he wasn't in the books)).

[Peter Triggs]

I would love to be able to pull this off - it is similar in concept to the use of goods to create particular units but this has not been pulled off yet though. Again, a question to the SLICers if cities can be limited in the type of unit it can create.

IIRC, in the WW2 scenario they used some mod_XXX functions so that only German cities could build German tanks and likewise for the French.

Didn't IW start a LOTR scenario? He's probably put some thought into this.

[Locutus]

*Great* idea, Dave

Yes, the Alexander scenario also extensively makes use of mod_CanCityBuild* functions (Greek/Ionian cities can build Hoplites, Indian cities Elephants, cities in Persia proper Mounted Archers, etc), quite useful.

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by hexagonian
The one question that I've had in regards to this is whether I can get the AI to work with multiple civs in a coordinated way.

There is another problem with having multiple civs in the game, and that is, for the sake of accuracy, it will be hard to come up with 10-20 cities per civ. For instance, are there actually 10 cities of Rohan (or Rhun, Harad, Isengard, Dwarves, Elves) that can be named? Limiting it to a two-civ game will allow for me to place plenty of cities per civ. And the focus would still be the same - the forces of Sauron against all those who are resisting him.

[J Bytheway]

It's still not that easy to place many cities - large regions of Middle Earth are deserted - I presume this is going to be a short term scenario with no settling possibility. But then again, most of Sauron's human troops came from beyond the borders of the map in the book, so the map you use might need to cover more and thus have less detail so the scarcity of cities is not a problem. Of course, OTOH again, CTP2 does allow huge maps...

Have you got a map already, or a plan to obtain one?

[hexagonian]

Yes, there is not going to be any settling - all the cities will have to be pre-set. The timeframe is going to be a period of several years, so tech is going to be based more on the concept of unit training. I'm still debating the concept of unit upgrading, like I have in Cradle, as I want to maintain a large variety of units during course of the game.

The map is something I want to do - its probably the main reason why I started this in the first place. I also have some unusual concepts worked out regarding the map - many of which I'm not going to reveal, because they will tie into gameplay issues. I do want to get the basic data entry done before doing the map. It will be a gigantic map though.

I just finished the basic data entry for the units - no stats (attack/defend/movement) yet though. I also want to get all of the basic data entry in for everything else - for governments/wonders/tile improvements.

I will post the unit list soon, and it will be open for suggestions, especially along the lines of stats. There are about 66 total units, of which half are leader-type.

[Immortal Wombat]

Damn, you beat me to it... I was waiting on some of the fantasy units to come out of Civ3.
ents, trolls and others are on the list still. I have a roughed out list of units and sprites to use of you want to see it.
Are you not working with Omni's ME map? Is it too small?>