RiFME development thread

Deon

Lt. of Mordor
Joined
Jan 13, 2008
Messages
2,956
Location
St.Petersburg, Russian Federation
Rise From Middle-Earth!
Based on RiFE by Valkrionn




Civilizations
Spoiler :

Fangorn
Treebeard - Neutral Neutral

Gondor
Aragorn II Elessar - Lawful Good

Harad
Herumor, Fuinur - Lawful Evil

Isendard
Saruman the White - Chaotic Neutral

Mordor
Sauron - Chaotic Evil

Rohan
Theoden - Lawful Neutral

Sindar
Luthien - Neutral Good


Credits:
Spoiler :
Leaders:
Sauron - Chugginator
Theoden - Cfkane
Aragorn - model by Cfkane, reskin by IgorS and Capo
Luthien - edited ver. of Cfkane's Glorianna


Units:
Sauron - Chugginator
Rohan unit artstyle - Chugginator
Black rider - Chugginator
Gondor swordsman, gondor knight - Chugginator
Uruk-Hai Swordsman, Uruk-Hai pikeman - Chugginator
Uruk-Hai captain Lurz (for fort commander/great general) - Chugginator
Elven workers - Chugginator
 

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Technology tree/religion development

Here's a preliminary sketch for the early tech tree, without early magic/religion shaeningans.



Tech tree
A few comments: I originally planned to make Mathematics to require Writing AND Construction, this is why it's orange (I tried to keep specific color schemes for techs but lost the idea somewhere in between). But it looks like there's too many "scientific" things with it, and LOTR was more about fantasy than progress. Thus I plan to place "Scholarship" in the place of Mathematics and make the only requirement - writing. It will be the "advanced scientific" tech while being fantasy-ish enough, and it will allow to use any advanced + :science: buildings we want while leaving a place for sages/scholars and magic-oriented heroes.

Sailing requires fishing AND woodworking (well, you need wood for ships...)

Improvements
As I told, there're 3 kinds of improvements: agriculture, nature and industry- related.

Example :
Farm, Tree Farm and Mushroom farm for flatland/forest/hills.
Workshop, Lumbermill, Mine for flatland/forest/hills
Cottage->hamlet->village->town, Tree house-> tree hamlet->tree village->forest town, Burrows->Grotto->Living Caverns->Cave Town.

Every race is supposed to have an affinity for a certain type of improvement.

Unit tiers
Metal casting, Archery and Horseback riding are all tier-3 techs and allow a new unit type.

I think I will go with a "rounded" swordsman with some city attack bonus, a "less att/more def" archer with a city defence bonus and a horseman with movement bonus.

Culture
All lvl 1 techs are supposed to give a chance to expand a culture, meaning an influence of some kind. The most effective one is Traditions, which allows Wayshrine (+3 :culture:); Crafting allows a Craftsman Workshop (+1 :hammers: +1 :culture:), farming allows a Tavern (+1 :culture: +1 :food:); Hunting allows a Sheriff's Office (+2 :culture:; +10% defence bonus); Forestry allows a Park (+2 :culture:; +1 :health:).
 
Ok that's it.

Progress Report

Currently I've made only 7 placeholder civs. I will make them viable first, and only then move on other civilizations.

Gondor - currently based on Bannor, I have partial art for them (swordsman, knight, phalanx), still a lot to do.

Rohan - currently based on Hippus. Unit artstyle is almost full, thanks to Chugginator.

Mordor - currently based on clan.

Sindar - currently based on Ljosalfar

Fangorn - currently based on Jotnar and Scions, same spawn mechanic, 3 food per pop. Going to limit them to never grow. "Saplings" using creeper graphics instead of Thralls for Jotnar.

Isengard - based on Kuriotates mechanics, with Varg strategy similar to centaur strategy.

Haradrim - based on Malakim and Lizardmen, lawful/neutral evil; elephant units and unique elephant resource
 
My current ideas:

1) I want to limit the maximum number of cities, for each civ its own. Middle Earth was not overcrowded with cities. Never. Wilderness should be.

2) Probably Ents should be Fallow and use respawn mechanism only. They need their entwives anyway and they should have a worldspell "Search for the Entwives" which is similar to Scions worldspell.

3) I think 3 or 4 religions should be enough. 1 is the corruption of Melkor, evil religion. 1 is a neutral religion for dwarves, the worship of Aule. 1 is a good religion, the worship of Manwe. Probably there's a place for one more or two religions though, so suggest.

4) I want a bit different Techtree from FFH2. Less magic, it should be limited to heroes and world units only. More combat units and rock-paper-scissors mechanics. Also more flavor, if possible :D.

5) Civ-specific Improvements: 3 types: "agricultural", "industrial" and "forest". They should serve the same purpose but have a bit different yields, graphics and flavor. Example: Farm, Tree farm, Cave farm for Humans, Elves and Dwarves respectively. Same for Cottage, Tree house, Grotto. Etc.
 
OK, now I want as much help as you can offer, although I will develop this without help too :).

Various unique ent (treant) art would be great. Also I will have to get unique art for Haradrim and the remaining art for Gondor someday. I can use retextures for now, but models would be cool.

Any suggestions and ideas are HIGHLY welcome.
 
Since your Magic will be limited to much fewer units Have you considered more levels for spell lines?

Also I don't think i would suggest limiting magic use to World Units and Heros Only. I like them being the only ones to have powerful magic, but I think it may be appropriate to have some National units (limited number) That have access to 1st (maybe 2nd) level spells but that assumes you are looking at 5 or 6 levels of spells per line. There is evidence of other users of magic in the world they just didn't play a large role in the story.
 
There will be, but I want to have them more kind of "utility" spells, various abilities based on unit, rather than pure "spells". Pure spellcasters were very limited in ME, but a descended Maiar or two would be ok. Also note that I want to add a leader-hero to most factions with unique powers thus allowing a national spellcaster, so there wouldn't be a problem that there's no magic world unit avaliable.

Also there will be Balrogs, Orc shamans, Dwarven Veinseekers, Elven mages (well, yeah, very few) and other units with magical abilities, but they won't be dependant on manas. I want some unique additional spells for them with mana, i.e. an elven mage which can cast a "rushing waters" when near a river tile with an access to nature mana should be able to cast a type of vitalize spell, with fire mana "boiling currents" etc. I haven't developed this thing yet, but I plan to do it. Also Mana would be much less abundant, a rather rare resource in comparison to current FFH mechanics.

This is in the long run though. At first I want civilizations with their civ. trait, hero and leader traits. Techs will come later.
 
Really like this idea. If you are limitting this to one map (so no custom games) you could limit cities by having them all pre-placed and selecting ''no city razing''. That would probably be easier then trying to have arbritary limits for each of the civs.

Also I'd say go with limitting magic to heroes and a few world units. Sounds like a good idea.
 
Also, what if Uruk-Hai would be Recon units (replacing rangers, beastmasters etc.)? They were not common until the White Hand army appearance and I would consider them to be more valuable and strong than other orcs. I plan to give some weakness to orc melee line which should be compensated with numbers, so stronger recon units sound OK to me.

Really like this idea. If you are limitting this to one map (so no custom games) you could limit cities by having them all pre-placed and selecting ''no city razing''. That would probably be easier then trying to have arbritary limits for each of the civs.

Also I'd say go with limitting magic to heroes and a few world units. Sounds like a good idea.

No, I plan to extend it to a mod first. I've started it as a scenario for RiFME but noticed that there's too many things to change to make the scenario middle-earth like, so it's easier to plan the mod first and the scenario next. The scenario is in early early alpha and in the RiFE forum. It has terrain, cities etc., with the exact options you suggested (no razing, no settlers), but the civs are placeholders and only use custom names, units etc. are the same, so it immediately loses Middle-Earth flavor.
 
There will be, but I want to have them more kind of "utility" spells, various abilities based on unit, rather than pure "spells". Pure spellcasters were very limited in ME, but a descended Maiar or two would be ok. Also note that I want to add a leader-hero to most factions with unique powers thus allowing a national spellcaster, so there wouldn't be a problem that there's no magic world unit avaliable.

Also there will be Balrogs, Orc shamans, Dwarven Veinseekers, Elven mages (well, yeah, very few) and other units with magical abilities, but they won't be dependant on manas. I want some unique additional spells for them with mana, i.e. an elven mage which can cast a "rushing waters" when near a river tile with an access to nature mana should be able to cast a type of vitalize spell, with fire mana "boiling currents" etc. I haven't developed this thing yet, but I plan to do it. Also Mana would be much less abundant, a rather rare resource in comparison to current FFH mechanics.

This is in the long run though. At first I want civilizations with their civ. trait, hero and leader traits. Techs will come later.

That all makes sense and accomplishes what i meant. :)
 
I don't like the 3D leaderheads though I must say. I think 2D leaderheads in the style of FFH would be far better quality. It kind of ruins the emersion to have a diplomacy screen pop up and think ''Oh look its a badly reskinned Elizabeth''.
 
It's not a badly reskinned elizabeth, man :). It's a cool leaderhead with ears, locks, jewelry, sparks flying around etc :). The author did a good job at modelling it, don't neglect his work. If you think it's bad, you can always do better, that's my motto.


Also it's quite easy to replace it with 2d leaderheads. Just find the pics. Much harder is to find or make all 3d leaderheads thus I want to accomplish it.

Sauron and Saruman are great :D.
 
Well, I have some skills for it but it takes a lot of time. Not that I am in a hurry. As I told, given that there're pictures avaliable, it takes less than an hour to make all the necessary changes to make them 2d for the full list of leaderheads I plan (~3 for each civ, ~12 civs).
 
It's not a badly reskinned elizabeth, man :). It's a cool leaderhead with ears, locks, jewelry, sparks flying around etc :). The author did a good job at modelling it, don't neglect his work. If you think it's bad, you can always do better, that's my motto.


Also it's quite easy to replace it with 2d leaderheads. Just find the pics. Much harder is to find or make all 3d leaderheads thus I want to accomplish it.

Sauron and Saruman are great :D.

Of course I respect the work that these people have done, but ultimately I think that 3D leaderheads look pretty stupid - even the ones used by Firaxis in unmodded civ.

I can't do better, no, only a relatively small number of people can produce these leaderheads at a reasonable quality which will give you a very limitted amount of art to choose from.
 
If you can help to establish a 2d leaderhead gallery, feel free to suggest pictures. It looks like I will have to do two versions (2d and 3d) anyway, considering the amount of 2d-loyalists.
 
IMHO Luthien doesn't fit for the Sindar. She isn't known as a Leader at all. Why not Galadriel?
 
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