LOTR: War of the Ring ver. 0.9

April 22, 2007: go to the new thread.


A major update. Probably the last in a while. I'm calling this ver 0.92. I've also created an Ent scenario to accompany this.

March 13, 2005: Version 0.92

-----------------------------------

If I don't post this now I may never. I'd like to acknowledge the great modding community, especially those who've been producing JRRT-based scenarios. There's been a lot of creativity here that I've drawn inspiration from.

I don't have anything too fancy in this scenario. No new artwork or animations. I went for trying to capture the ideas of the War of the Ring using Civilization Conquests as the model. So in this scenario you will find:

-A compact custom map based on information from The Atlas of Middle Earth
-Playable Civs: Gondor, Mordor, Rohan, Isengard, Elves, Dwarves
-The Ring is an immovable nuke/princess
-Frodo is invisible to all except Nazgul and King units
-Mt. Doom is the goal of Reverse Capture the Flag
-King units have special abilities/attributes according to their characters
-Mountains cannot be crossed except for where there are roads crossing them (just like in the books the Misty Mountains only had three passes)
-The special units for civilizations are modeled after Civ units, including Uruk-hai, Orcs, Riders of Rohan, Dwarven Kindred, Evlish Bowmen, and Mumakil.
-Custom Civiliopedia entries for units and improvements, mostly based off of the Encyclopedia of Arda
-Difficulty levels from Gollum to Iluvatar
-Valinor is included as are Eagles and Swan Ships
-Customized Wonders like The Pelennor Wall and The Light of the Valar

I've put a fair amount of my own research into this, and I like to think my design has been solidly based in both the JRRT lore and the geopolitical modelling principles of Sid Meier. There will undoubtedly be some disagreement with other fans, but I stand by my decisions and welcome any reasoned discussion. One of the goals of my making this mod was that there are a lot of events that are only briefly mentioned or alluded to in the books, like what the Dwarves were doing during the War and Galadriel throwing down the walls of Dol Guldur. So now we can see what those missing pieces might've looked like.

I apologize in advance if the game is slow to load at first. Gameplay, however, should be pretty quick.

I've found a lot of replay value, especially with the different civs, but also because the AI seems to do different things at different times.

So with that, I hope you enjoy my first attempt at modding.

LOTR.zip: Version 0.90 (removed after 550 views)

Dec. 11, 2004: Version 0.91 (removed after 2355 views)

March 13, 2005: Version 0.92

sounds promising. a screenie perhaps?

Looks good just in the editor, yet why is Valinor included? If it has to be I would side on it being its own civ and in a locked alliance w/the elves.

I mean, the War of the Ring was a reletively small engagement compared to what it took for the valar to come to Middle Earth before.

give us a screenie, we needs it

Why isnt nazgul closer to the shire?
Why are there aluminium, oil and uranium on the map?
Why Is the one ring an A-Bomb, it dosnt lokk like a ring.
There should be more men in lothlirion.
Where are the fellowship?
Should be more men in mordor.
thats all for now good work.

Okay, so screenshots...

Galadriel doing her thing...


What Denethor can build...


Osgiliath is overrun.


How to get a leader...



And a quick response to the questions raised so far...

1. The Swan Ships need to dock at Valinor, the ships are Elvish, ergo the port must be Elvish for the ship to enter the tile. That's the pragmatic explanation. Besides that, I don't think within the framework of the scenario or even the trilogy, the Valar need to be represented as a totally different civ. Maybe in the War of Wrath or other Silmarillion affairs, but not at this point.

2. Nazgul being by the Shire... again pragmatically, if the 3 movement Nazgul were near Frodo at the beginning, the game would be ended in two turns, and would totally change the nature of the scenario.

3. You don't see the modern resources on the map during gameplay so don't sweat it.

4. The fellowship is represented by Gandalf. Civ is a game of military units, i.e. legions of soldiers, so having Aragorn be a swordsman doesn't fit the Civ model, esp then having a bowman for Legolas and an axeman for Gimli, then the fellowship would be an army, not a group of individuals. Some scenarios have tried to capture the more individual aspect of the journey, but I didn't try to do that.

5. On what textual basis do you think Lothlorien should have more men? Besides which, bowmen are fast to build so in a few turns Lothlorien has another unit there. This is also a balancing question, the Elves are militarily not very robust for a reason: they weren't as involved in the War of the Ring with men and materiel as other kingdoms.

6. The Ring = Nuke should be obvious. The ring represents something evil that did not come of nature, and the choice before us is whether we can pry ourselves from this great power and unmake something that should never have been made. I thought the Nuke idea captured well the idea of the Ring, and besides which, Civ doesn't have a stock Ring icon. And I'm no artist.

7. Under the difficulty settings the AI gets more starting units and builds faster, so unless you play at Gollum, Mordor should be able to pump out units quickly and give you a good challenge.

Hope the screenshots work. Thanks for commenting.

Difficulty levels: Gollum to Iluvatar--nice touch

You mentioned that the modern resources are not seen. So what ages are present and is the tech tree any different?

one question

in the forth screenshot, what is that nuke?

mouselmm said:

one question

in the forth screenshot, what is that nuke?

Click to expand...

The One Ring. Good scenario quasi, Osgiliath and whatever the bay city gets overrun so quickly though! So does Dol goldur (whichever Mordor city is sitting by itself) gets razed by Dwarves real quick too.

I just have to say, this feels great that the scenario's being played by other people.

All civs start at Medieval Age but with different free techs. The tech tree is unchanged, other than certain scenario units or improvements getting triggered on or off by certain techs. There isn't a whole lot of time to research techs because the library infrastructure isn't there and the war should probably be absorbing your funds. I've found that the AI may research a couple more techs before the time limit runs out (60 turns), but not a whole lot more. Certainly not far enough to reveal any modern resources.

We know from the books that Osgiliath, the Westfold, and Dol Guldur fall relatively quickly. So those cities going down is part of the gameplan. I have been able to keep Osgiliath alive sometimes with luck, but not too often.

Any comments on the King units or special units? Aside from the map, that's probably where I spent most of my time tweaking.

Thanks for the feedback!

Why is the One Ring unmovable?

You need a unit to pick it up.

About the scenario, I really like it because I actually played and won it like you are supposed to. As Gondor I sent a divesion force to Morganon while Frodo slipped past Minas Morgul. Really great.

One thing I would suggest is giving Gondor some special unit to build because everyone else has one. Maybe an infantry unit 3/3/1 using the legion graphic?

Gunner said:

You need a unit to pick it up.

About the scenario, I really like it because I actually played and won it like you are supposed to. As Gondor I sent a divesion force to Morganon while Frodo slipped past Minas Morgul. Really great.

One thing I would suggest is giving Gondor some special unit to build because everyone else has one. Maybe an infantry unit 3/3/1 using the legion graphic?

Click to expand...

Which unit picks up the Ring? Gondor's UU could be something like the White Tower Guards.

Cool! I'm glad you were able to win as in the books. What difficulty setting were you on, out of curiosity? I find it's hard to win it the "right" way past Elrond difficulty.

I actually had Gondor with the legionary unit at first, since I used Rome for their template, but in the end I decided against it. Having a 3 defense legion would mean pikemen could be unneccessary, and we saw that Gondor used pikemen for defense and longbowmen and horsemen/knights for offense in the film and books. So to keep that "menu" of military units I decided not to give them legionaries. Gondor is also in a rather desperate time in its history, and unique units tend to be available during high points in a civ's history. Maybe Gondor would have some special military unit in the future, maybe their special unit is an F-15 or a Panzer.

Yeah, the Ring needs to be seized by a unit (Frodo is a convenient unit). It doesn't move on its own. And Frodo can die. But the Ring would just sit there waiting to be picked up by the next bearer (perhaps the Black Riders). This allows the game to be played by both sides. If the Ring is used (to someone) then its gone. So there's the temptation to use it, because it could take out a lot of Orcs. But once used, there's no hope of returning it to Mt. Doom and achieving victory that way. So there you have Denethor's dilemma.

Enjoy!

Blackheart, that's actually an idea I used for Denethor. You'll notice that he has attributes 1/3/2 because the Guards of the Citadel are his secret service detail. The same idea goes for Theoden (4/2/2) who leads the King's Riders and Durin (6/2/2) who leads a unit of Dwarven kindred.

Then there are the Elvish king units, Elrond and Galadriel, who are Ringbearers themselves so get powers associated with their Rings. And Saruman who has a blasting fire. And Sauron who can't move but can see anywhere.

I have to say this is a great scenario. It really shows what you can do with nothing but a bit of imagination and creativity. I have no doubt that the LOTM guys - when they finally unleash their masterpiece on the world - will produce something sumptious and fabulous, but this scenario does show that you can make something fun and atmospheric with nary a custom unit or leaderhead in sight. There are lots of original ideas here which really work: I love the idea of using Recon missions for palantir use, for example.

My game was decidedly non-canonical. Having got Frodo and Gandalf to Minas Tirith, I decided to recapture Osgiliath and hope to use the recaptured territory to provide some cover for the Ring. This worked until Frodo was killed by marauding Orcs! Fortunately I got a Pikeman to the Ring and picked it up. The chance of secrecy was lost, so an all-out assault was launched on Minas Morgul in the hope of blasting a way into Mordor. Minas Morgul was duly captured (and renamed Minas Ithil, naturally). A successful blast from Gandalf at a Troll then produced Aragorn, so having renamed the wizard Gandalf the White I sent Aragorn with an army of knights to attack the Morannon from the behind. Meanwhile off went our heroic Pikeman to the mountain, where the Ring was successfully disposed of. Fantastic stuff! The replay showed that the Ents had apparently captured Dol Guldur during all this, which would have been pretty cool to watch.

I'm grinning ear-to-ear. You're a good storyteller, Plotinus.

This is a very good scenario. I just played a quick (and kinda strange) game as Mordor ( ). On my first turn, I attacked an enemy longbowmen with my nazgul, and got a leader right off the bat. I made an army, and began my invasion of Gondor, using captured artillery to weaken their cities. Gondor actually ended up being a pushover, since i had attacked with an army before they could even hope of getting any good defenses. Meanwhile, I sent out a few orcs to pillage Rohan, and one to go all the way to the Grey Havens and the Shire (I called this "Operation Shire DESTRUCTION!!!!!!!!" ) What was weird was that on it's way to Mount Doom, the One Ring was captured by Isengard. While they we taking it to Mt. Doom, Rohan captured it. And right next to my border, I captured the One Ring, and moved it to Mt. Doom in about 3 turns (Now that's teamwork in action! Even if most of the people were on the other team! ) All in all, this is one of the funest scenarios I've played!

I'm glad the scenario's going over well...

Since I have very little experience with modifying civ rules I was wondering if anyone had suggestions for a couple problems I keep encountering:

1. The air units in this scenario are not allowed to Re-Base, and when under human control there is no option to Re-Base. However under the AI the air units are able to Re-Base and, annoyingly, they do.

2. If I set the Ent units to Offense they go charging off to kill Barbarians that they shouldn't even see. Is this because the AI gets to see the entire map?

And a more lore-based question:

3. I remember reading that Dwarven warriors were called Kindred somewhere, but I can't remember where. I don't have my books with me so I can't look it up and I'm not turning anything up with Google. Can anyone corroborate this or was I dreaming?

Thanks guys!

quasidemo said:

2. If I set the Ent units to Offense they go charging off to kill Barbarians that they shouldn't even see. Is this because the AI gets to see the entire map?

Click to expand...

Yes, the AI does.