Looking for help and ideas for LOTR Middle-Earth mod

[Renee]

I'm working on a Lord of the Rings Middle-Earth mod right now. I know there are already a few LOTR mods out there but I really wanted to make my own. It's tedious, but it's also a lot of fun =)

I'm getting pretty comfortable doing the modding except I have no clue when it comes to the graphics and sound.

So far I have the following things done:

- Huge Middle-Earth map with start locations. I have not set all the resources yet, I've just been using random resource seed) and I could still tweak things to make it more interesting. (see attached jpeg image)

- Five working civs complete with leaders (script only) and city names (Gondor, Mordor, Hobbits, Bree, and Dwarves) and I'm working on more. So far, just for fun, I have used existing traits and renamed some of them (ie: extended Golden Ages for Gondor called Legacy of Kings; and culture for kills for Mordor).

What I plan on accomplishing is this:

- I plan to have about 12 to 18 civs total. I would love to hear your input about which civs should be playable and which should be city states. I was originally going to leave out city states altogether, but they could be a good representation of some lesser Middle-Earth factions or creatures (like maybe Bree, Ents and Beorn?).

- I would like to give each civ new (or at least modified) special units and traits. I was thinking that the units and traits could just be renamed existing ones, but I'm open to any new ideas too.

- I want to have a civ-specific background, plus a head shot and dawn of man speech. I'd also like to have an animated (or even just a picture) of each leader for diplomacy screens.

- I would like to have civ-specific icons (like the white tree for Gondor, horse icon for Rohan, The Eye for Mordor, White hand for Saruman, etc).

- I would like to have civ-specific buildings (one for each civ) that replaces an existing building (with a slight buff).

- I would not object to changing technology names.

- And I would really like to experiment with a cut-off on techs after medieval era (so no gunpowder, etc...except maybe for Saruman so he can blast through the culvert in Helm's Deep!).

If anyone is interested in helping me out by making some graphics and/or sounds, or even just walking me through how to do them, I would greatly appreciate it! I've been trying to use Gimp for the icons but have had no luck so far.

And, please, if you have any ideas you would like me to include in the mod let me know and I'll do my best to include them.

I intend to post the completed mod on this site and publish it so it can be downloaded through the in-game mod browser. If your idea is included, I will include your name in the special thanks box

And thank you to everyone who has posted information about modding so far, it's been a great help!

Happy Civ-ing!

Renee

 

[Sneaks]

Sounds like you're off to a great start. Looking forward to see it progress.

 

[Renee]

Thanks, Sneaks, I'll try to post my progress often. I don't have a whole lot of time to work on it, but hopefully in another month or so I'll have a decent playable mod ready.

Last night I removed all techs from gunpowder on (except fertilizer and future techs). It was quite easy to do but I haven't tried playing to get to that point yet. All the later techs still appear on the tech tree (I would like to know how to change that).

I also doubled the research time on all remaining techs just to slow down progress a little (I've been using large teams so research has been crazy fast). So far even doubling tech cost doesn't seem to do much to slow discoveries down in team mode. I suspect it might get buggy later when I max out technology, but we'll see.

I like team mode because I don't want the 'good' and 'bad' guys to fight amongst each other (even though they do a bit in the story). But I plan to make at least three different versions of the mod: 1 - Start locations only and no teams. 2 - Start locations only and teams. 3 - All cities in place and teams. Maybe I'll make another version with a full tech tree too?

I also made the Isengard civ, with leader and city names. It's really tough to find city names for small civs! I even combined Isengard and Dunland to help, but I still had to make some up.

 

[Renee]

Deleting techs didn't work, so I'm looking for a solution to that.

I'm at the point where I need to decide which civs to include, either as playable or city states. Here is what I'm thinking:

Civs
"Good"
1 - Gondor
2 - Rohan
3 - The Shire
4 - Elves (combined Rivendell, Mirkwood and Lorien)
5 - Dwarves

Evil
1 - Mordor
2 - Isengard (combined with Dunland)
3 - Southrons (ie Haradrim)
4 - Easterlings (ie Rhun area evil men)
5 - Angmar? or Northern Orc tribes?

City States
1 - Fangorn
2 - Bree
3 - Grey Havens (Mithlond)
4 - Forochel
5 - Esgaroth (Laketown/Dale)
6 - House of Beorn?
7 - Druadan Forest (wild men near Gondor)?
8 - Moria?
9 - Eagle Eyrie?
10 - Valinor?
11 - Dol Guldur

I tried playing a game with a lot of city states on my map and there ended up being areas that were very crowded with city states (like Moria, Eagles, Beorn, Dol Guldur and Esgaroth were all very close to each other). So I think I will omit some of those just to spread things out a little.

I have also been playing with three elven civs (Rivendell, Lorien and Mirkwood) but I feel that in order to balance the forces of good and evil it would be better to combine these. I was also thinking of maybe making Rivendell a city state, that way it would always be in its spot west of the mountains; and combine just Mirkwood and Lorien elves into a civ.

The way that the starting locations end up makes for tight quarters in the middle with large open spaces on the edges of the map. This makes it tricky to expand into areas true to the story without angering neighbouring civs. This is one of the reasons I like the 5v5 team idea (good vs evil civs). Yet I don't really like the default team dynamics (teammates declaring war or making peace without your consent, group research is ok but kind of OP). Maybe I'll try the "always war" option.

Anyways, let me know if you feel the civ list is good or needs work =)

 

[Sneaks]

I would keep Lorien its own and the Mirkwood elves their own as well. Rivendell as a CS would not be the worst idea, though. The reason is that if you make 2 separate locations 1 Civ, that civ will invariably send all its workers to make a super-long road to connect the two sections, which 9 times out of 10 is a bad idea.

 

[Renee]

I was thinking of just having the elvish start location in Lorien, and they can spread into Mirkwood from there. It's also tough to find enough story-based city names for the elves so combining them makes for less invented names. For a scenario with cities in place, it will be a little far to travel between them but I would put roads in via the world builder so workers would not have to face all the evils of Mirkwood to connect the cities

I managed to get the city states with their proper names in place, and I made an elven archer unit last night (I made them very OP lol). I'm still looking for an 'easy' way to do the tech cut-off. Some help with graphics and sounds would be awesome, but no rush =)

 

[KevinMiles90000]

Check out the LOTR mod someone made for Warcraft III. That thing was the best thing ever.

 

[Renee]

Check out the LOTR mod someone made for Warcraft III. That thing was the best thing ever.

But that's not Civ V! And I don't have Warcraft III, only WoW and Warcraft I and II

 

[Lighthearter]

My modding skills in this game could be carried in a thimble, but I still applaud your initiative, being a huge Tolkein fan. I was actually hunting for a LOTR mod to do a Realpolitik off of - and this shows incredibly promise. Would you make every faction's army unique or give each faction a few unique units?

-L

 

[smeagolthevile]

I may be late to this party, but if you really want to service LotR make it a global map and put belriand in it, since the game starts in the stone age, before Belriand was sunk. Doing that you can really extend your Civ count with some really interesting nations, leaders and special units.