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Updated Link for the Official Release
I tested the files on a clean install and everything appears to be there...however, if you download and the game crashes because of missing files, let me know in this thread so I can locate and upload those missing files.
Here is the Main Readme (finalized)
================================================== =======
LOTR MOD - v1.00
History
I always wanted to do a full-blown LOTR Mod...
Back in 2003, I created a LOTR scenario, which did nor get too much fan play, but this did not detract me from expanding the ideas I had for a full Mod. I created this Mod mainly for my own enjoyment, but I am releasing it to the general public because if there is someone out there who loves Middle-Earth, then this is for them too.
What to watch for...Ingame Features
- There are many new units, buildings, wonders, tile improvements and governments, with the goal to make each Realm different from the others...each Realm will have a different focus. You will have to play the game to unlock what those features are...and I'm not going to give specifics here.
When I revisited Cradle this past year, I immediately saw that the foundation was there to convert Cradle into LOTR. There are a lot of features that are in LOTR that are a part of Cradle. For instance, the basic tech tree of LOTR is a mirror of Cradle's tree. However, the LOTR tech tree adds a great deal of Realm-specific advances, which open the doors for unique realm units, buildings, wonders and wonder units, tile improvements and governments. There are also some in-game events that are geared towards each realm, and the plan is to expand on some of these event in future releases.
What this does is give each realm a distinction that has deeper than any other CTP2 Mod, even over Cradle III which I felt was the pinnacle of all CTP2 Mods in this particular area of gameplay. And to top it off, these advances are hidden to some degree because the Great Library does not give specifics for these advances...the player cannot simply map out a path to victory because he is left in the dark as to what these advances will lead to. This enhances replayability, IMO...
- New intro and new wonder videos to fit the atmosphere of Middle-Earth. Make sure to watch the intro at least once.
- I made an effort to follow the timeline spelled out in the Appendixes of 'Lord of the Rings.', from the middle of the Second Age when Numenor was sunk, through the Third Age, although this is impossible to match. Realms become powerful and suffer decline based on the timeline though.
- Three play options (Normal, Epic, which has more expensive Advances, Hordes of Morder, all realms except Mordor have Government-specific Melee units)
Victory...
There are 2 main Victory options. Fans of Cradle will recognize the template I'm using. The information is also spelled out in the Great Library.
Option 1. Control the One Ring through Knowledge
To win the game, you must have at least 2,500 Knowledge Points, which will give you knowledge of the location of the One Ring.
===================================
Points are gathered by:
1. Researching Ringlore and Council Lore before any other realm
2. Gathering Palantir Wonders, and holding the Council of Elrond Wonder
3. Creating ALL of the realm-specific Ring Wonders for your Realm (Angmar, Mordor, Haradrim, Easterling, Dwarves, Elves)
4. Constructing Courts (5 pts/5 = +1 per turn), Forges (10 pts/8 = +2 per turn), Great Halls (15 pts/10 = +3 per turn), Libraries (20 pts/15 = +4 per turn), Markets (25 pts/15 = +5 per turn), Trade Centers (30 pts/15 = +6 per turn).
5. Finish the One Ring Wonder (Knowledge) before your rivals.
Once you have the Ring in your possession for 3 Turns, you (or the Ring through you...) will rule Middle Earth.
(Access Knowledge Points by clicking on the Happiness icon at the top right of your mainmap screen.)
Option 2. Search for the One Ring
To win the game, you must have the following...
===================================
- 10 Palaces (Each Palace requires 1Court and 1 Castle)
- 5-25 Beacons (Each Beacon requires 1 Ballista Tower)
- Send out at least 10 Search Parties that have searched 50% of Middle-Earth. Search Parties can be created within your Realm's borders with the Search Party Tile Improvement, outside of your borders if you build a Fort to extend your borders and then build a Search Party Tile Improvement in the Fort's radius, or the Explorer unit can be disbanded anywhere outside your Realm's borders. Depending on the size of the map, you may need more than 10 Search Parties to complete the job.
- Finish the One Ring Wonder (Search) before your rivals.
Tips...
- The initial Realm Wonder for each civ is great in that it is cheap, it give a nice happiness bonus and it give you an incredibly strong (non-movement) garrison unit. Each Realm has one of these Wonders to build, and also has 3-5 other Wonders that are unique to that realm.
- When building a Wonder, reference the Great Library to see if the Wonder will give you Wonder units. Make sure you have room in your city garrison to accommodate the creation of these units too, when the Wonder is complete. One in particular gives 6 units in addition to a regular Wonder bonus.
- Realm-specific units are better than the default units (they are often cheaper and a little more powerful), so if you have access to them, use them. But build a few default units if for no other reason that they have a chance to become Heroes and Great Commanders.
- The same holds true with Realm Governments...but since you do not know which Realms have them and when, you may want to hold off on a government switch. Usually they will be available to research once you research the default Governments though.
- If your alignment is Good, you cannot slave or enslave after a battle. Too bad...
- The most powerful Realm (on paper, at least IMO) is Mordor, so if you want an easy time of it, play them. The fact that you cannot enslave if you are a good Realm also means that the Evil Realms are generally more powerful in the player's hands too. And the Good realms also lose production over time, so that will make a difference. The goal here was to mirror the books.
- The weakest civs militarily are the Hobbits (no Realm units, other than 3 Wonder units) and the Northmen. Actually, the Northmen have no bonuses at all other than than their Realm Wonder.
- Upgrading of old units takes place on the next-highest Unit advance of that type of unit (Melee, Flanker, Ranged, Bombard) and will cost approximately the cost of the new unit. If you do not have enough gold, you will not be able to upgrade that unit at any other time in the game.
================================================== =======
INSTALLATION
This mod also REQUIRES the most current Activision CTP2 Patch available at Apolyton.net and Modswapper.
This Mod will overwrite files from the default game, so you will need to devote your installation of CTP2 to this Mod.
1. Install Activision Patch.
2. Install Modswapper. Modswapper should create a desktop icon when installed, if not create one.
3. Unzip the LOTR files into your :\...Program Files\Activision folder, or into the folder that contains the Call To Power 2 folder. If you are not sure, unzip the files onto your desktop and manually place the folders into the correct directories.
4. To activate LOTR, load the CTP2 disk, and select ‘Quit’ if the game launches. Double-click on the Modswapper icon on your desktop. This will give you the option to select the different option – from there, the game will launch.
You need to make the following change in the
userprofile.txt file
located in the following directory Activision\Call To Power 2\ctp2_program\ctp
Look for the line
DebugSlic=Yes
and change it to
DebugSlic=No
Change Number of players to 13 to activate all Realms for your game.
================================================== =======
Please realize that this is a work in progress...there may need to be some adjustments on unit strength and balance. If you have any suggestions about adjustments, I'm all ears.
I'm also considering running a contest (with a Grand Prize) for high score down the road, so consider this version as the means to get your feet wet.
(I ran some contests in the ffh thread at civfanatics a couple of years ago...the main prizes were custom posters, which were quite popular)
--
Updated Link for the Official Release
I tested the files on a clean install and everything appears to be there...however, if you download and the game crashes because of missing files, let me know in this thread so I can locate and upload those missing files.
Here is the Main Readme (finalized)
================================================== =======
LOTR MOD - v1.00
History
I always wanted to do a full-blown LOTR Mod...
Back in 2003, I created a LOTR scenario, which did nor get too much fan play, but this did not detract me from expanding the ideas I had for a full Mod. I created this Mod mainly for my own enjoyment, but I am releasing it to the general public because if there is someone out there who loves Middle-Earth, then this is for them too.
What to watch for...Ingame Features
- There are many new units, buildings, wonders, tile improvements and governments, with the goal to make each Realm different from the others...each Realm will have a different focus. You will have to play the game to unlock what those features are...and I'm not going to give specifics here.
When I revisited Cradle this past year, I immediately saw that the foundation was there to convert Cradle into LOTR. There are a lot of features that are in LOTR that are a part of Cradle. For instance, the basic tech tree of LOTR is a mirror of Cradle's tree. However, the LOTR tech tree adds a great deal of Realm-specific advances, which open the doors for unique realm units, buildings, wonders and wonder units, tile improvements and governments. There are also some in-game events that are geared towards each realm, and the plan is to expand on some of these event in future releases.
What this does is give each realm a distinction that has deeper than any other CTP2 Mod, even over Cradle III which I felt was the pinnacle of all CTP2 Mods in this particular area of gameplay. And to top it off, these advances are hidden to some degree because the Great Library does not give specifics for these advances...the player cannot simply map out a path to victory because he is left in the dark as to what these advances will lead to. This enhances replayability, IMO...
- New intro and new wonder videos to fit the atmosphere of Middle-Earth. Make sure to watch the intro at least once.
- I made an effort to follow the timeline spelled out in the Appendixes of 'Lord of the Rings.', from the middle of the Second Age when Numenor was sunk, through the Third Age, although this is impossible to match. Realms become powerful and suffer decline based on the timeline though.
- Three play options (Normal, Epic, which has more expensive Advances, Hordes of Morder, all realms except Mordor have Government-specific Melee units)
Victory...
There are 2 main Victory options. Fans of Cradle will recognize the template I'm using. The information is also spelled out in the Great Library.
Option 1. Control the One Ring through Knowledge
To win the game, you must have at least 2,500 Knowledge Points, which will give you knowledge of the location of the One Ring.
===================================
Points are gathered by:
1. Researching Ringlore and Council Lore before any other realm
2. Gathering Palantir Wonders, and holding the Council of Elrond Wonder
3. Creating ALL of the realm-specific Ring Wonders for your Realm (Angmar, Mordor, Haradrim, Easterling, Dwarves, Elves)
4. Constructing Courts (5 pts/5 = +1 per turn), Forges (10 pts/8 = +2 per turn), Great Halls (15 pts/10 = +3 per turn), Libraries (20 pts/15 = +4 per turn), Markets (25 pts/15 = +5 per turn), Trade Centers (30 pts/15 = +6 per turn).
5. Finish the One Ring Wonder (Knowledge) before your rivals.
Once you have the Ring in your possession for 3 Turns, you (or the Ring through you...) will rule Middle Earth.
(Access Knowledge Points by clicking on the Happiness icon at the top right of your mainmap screen.)
Option 2. Search for the One Ring
To win the game, you must have the following...
===================================
- 10 Palaces (Each Palace requires 1Court and 1 Castle)
- 5-25 Beacons (Each Beacon requires 1 Ballista Tower)
- Send out at least 10 Search Parties that have searched 50% of Middle-Earth. Search Parties can be created within your Realm's borders with the Search Party Tile Improvement, outside of your borders if you build a Fort to extend your borders and then build a Search Party Tile Improvement in the Fort's radius, or the Explorer unit can be disbanded anywhere outside your Realm's borders. Depending on the size of the map, you may need more than 10 Search Parties to complete the job.
- Finish the One Ring Wonder (Search) before your rivals.
Tips...
- The initial Realm Wonder for each civ is great in that it is cheap, it give a nice happiness bonus and it give you an incredibly strong (non-movement) garrison unit. Each Realm has one of these Wonders to build, and also has 3-5 other Wonders that are unique to that realm.
- When building a Wonder, reference the Great Library to see if the Wonder will give you Wonder units. Make sure you have room in your city garrison to accommodate the creation of these units too, when the Wonder is complete. One in particular gives 6 units in addition to a regular Wonder bonus.
- Realm-specific units are better than the default units (they are often cheaper and a little more powerful), so if you have access to them, use them. But build a few default units if for no other reason that they have a chance to become Heroes and Great Commanders.
- The same holds true with Realm Governments...but since you do not know which Realms have them and when, you may want to hold off on a government switch. Usually they will be available to research once you research the default Governments though.
- If your alignment is Good, you cannot slave or enslave after a battle. Too bad...
- The most powerful Realm (on paper, at least IMO) is Mordor, so if you want an easy time of it, play them. The fact that you cannot enslave if you are a good Realm also means that the Evil Realms are generally more powerful in the player's hands too. And the Good realms also lose production over time, so that will make a difference. The goal here was to mirror the books.
- The weakest civs militarily are the Hobbits (no Realm units, other than 3 Wonder units) and the Northmen. Actually, the Northmen have no bonuses at all other than than their Realm Wonder.
- Upgrading of old units takes place on the next-highest Unit advance of that type of unit (Melee, Flanker, Ranged, Bombard) and will cost approximately the cost of the new unit. If you do not have enough gold, you will not be able to upgrade that unit at any other time in the game.
================================================== =======
INSTALLATION
This mod also REQUIRES the most current Activision CTP2 Patch available at Apolyton.net and Modswapper.
This Mod will overwrite files from the default game, so you will need to devote your installation of CTP2 to this Mod.
1. Install Activision Patch.
2. Install Modswapper. Modswapper should create a desktop icon when installed, if not create one.
3. Unzip the LOTR files into your :\...Program Files\Activision folder, or into the folder that contains the Call To Power 2 folder. If you are not sure, unzip the files onto your desktop and manually place the folders into the correct directories.
4. To activate LOTR, load the CTP2 disk, and select ‘Quit’ if the game launches. Double-click on the Modswapper icon on your desktop. This will give you the option to select the different option – from there, the game will launch.
You need to make the following change in the
userprofile.txt file
located in the following directory Activision\Call To Power 2\ctp2_program\ctp
Look for the line
DebugSlic=Yes
and change it to
DebugSlic=No
Change Number of players to 13 to activate all Realms for your game.
================================================== =======
Please realize that this is a work in progress...there may need to be some adjustments on unit strength and balance. If you have any suggestions about adjustments, I'm all ears.
I'm also considering running a contest (with a Grand Prize) for high score down the road, so consider this version as the means to get your feet wet.
(I ran some contests in the ffh thread at civfanatics a couple of years ago...the main prizes were custom posters, which were quite popular)
--
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