Barbarians of Middle-Earth

[Erebras]

An idea came to me as I was posting on another thread. I was thinking if I made a (yet another) mod set in Middle-Earth, I wonder what would happen if I made the forces of Mordor (and the Variags and Easterlings and Southrons) not a playable faction or a non-playable civilization, but rather used barbarian camps to represent them? I could preplace them and stock them with immobile defenders, but at the hard-coded intervals they would have a "massive barbarian uprising" of orcs or whatnot, and they would respond to people entering their area, albeit along that weird NW-SE axis.

In remote, uninhabited areas of the Middle-Earth map there would arise barbarian camps of orcs or goblins to harry the Gondorians, Rohirrim, or the other free peoples of Middle-Earth. As these are not preplaced, they'd only have Basic Barbarian, Advanced Barbarian, and Barbarian Sea Unit, so they'd basically be spontaneous bands of goblins and pirates.

The question I'm posing to knowledgeable modders is "What are the things to look out for in creating this scenario?" Is there a maximum allowed number of units, such that all those camps filled with "horseman hordes" would crash the game? Will the AI have a conniption fit? If one barbarian camp mobilizes to strike at a nearby unit or settlement, will ALL the barbarian camps mobilize to join them? What are your thoughts and suggestions?

 

[Jerry'sGoldfish]

could you make some units used especially for middle-earth scenario, while other more general to use with other scenarios?

 

[Wolfshade]

Erebras, this will help you with cities. Rest of the stuff you may learn from the Storm Over Europe by Civinator (scheduled events, upgrades). Having Middle-Earth barbarians as civs (non-playable) locked in the war with other(s) will make them acting much more effective than if they'd be barbarians, IMHO.

 

[Erebras]

Jerry'sGoldfish, I'm not sure what you are requesting. My post was about barbarian hordes. But, as an answer without really understanding the question, there are already many Middle-Earth-appropriate units out there, not least of which are Plotinus' dwarves and hobbits, and also the units from LotM and (to a lesser extent concerning yrch) Warhammer. Add to that all those huge unit packs posted by others (Britons, Bronze Age Middle Eastern, et. al.) and there is no end to what a modder can come up with.

Wolfshade, I had no idea about size 0 cities that retain the name after razing. That's an extremely interesting point. Does it really work? Does it override the Cities list in the civilizations Editor? I am dubious, but hopeful. [EDIT: I just read Civinator's post more indepth. I see it's a matter of citysite-resources that has no effect on city names for civs settling on top of them. I get it.]

Making the barbs a locked alliance faction at war is a way to go, but it misses what I'm getting at. The forces of Mordor don't necessarily need to research techs, make trade routes, found new cities, and all those things that civilized people do. You're 72% evil, so of course, you understand, Wolfshade. Anyway, the forces of Mordor just need to occupy territory and be a hindrance/nuisance to other players/tribes. Their units are pretty much single-era (although there is a reference to orcs being responsible for inventing torture devices in the modern day). This trait becomes even more critical since the scenario I'm envisioning is set AFTER the Third Age, with Eldarion Telcontar's reunited kingdom falling apart from within, as The Return of the Shadow alludes to, even though JRR Tolkein never completed the storyline. So if elves, dwarves, and goblins are fading into the background in this new age, it makes sense to make them barbarians instead of an actual, full-fledged civ.

Not that I was going to lump elves and orcs together! Now I'm confusing the issue.

So, will massive amounts of barbarians work with the AI, or not?

 

[T-mun]

You should take a look at EFZI2 with all those Zombies around as a standard Civ but in locked war with all the other Civs and acting really nasty. This mod is one of the around and there's a lot to learn from it. I can assure you it is hard to play, scary, dark... and wonderfully built.

 

[Jerry'sGoldfish]

sorry to drag further my discussion, i only ment that sometimes a round shield added to a unit and his dress clour changed can be a historical unit, while having beside the original middle-earth unit with fancy shield or bright colours. thank you

 

[Erebras]

Jerry'sGoldfish, no need to apologize. I'm not a unit creator, in the sense that I don't use Poser or PaintShop or those other programs I see on these forums, but having said that, I have had some small success with cutting-and-pasting, like my Lizardman Oracle and Razordon that I'm working on. They aren't perfect by any means.

What you seem to need is actually a bit simpler. It involves palette changes to the pcx files, which are relatively easy to do, certainly less labor-intensive than cutting-and-pasting. I did a pretty good job tweaking the Etruscan Chariot for my CivSpecific mod, and recoloring horses on cavalry units --- making a black one brown, for example -- is not a problem.

Shields can be, I'm supposing. Putting a large shield over a small shield shouldn't be a big deal, or in away-facing poses (NW, NE, N) you could delete a large shield and replace it with a different one, but cutting-and-pasting shields might not be all that easy.

I'll be reworking existing Firaxis units for my MagePunk mod. Mostly it just involves reducing the length of the units' legs for the dwarves or (for the "hobbits") resizing to 60%-70% of normal, but I'll be adding a rifle to Bismarck to make the Factory Guards, and I've already run into problems getting the smoke effects to work for the dwarven arquebusier (it's a palette issue I cannot resolve).

So, Jerry'sGoldfish, all this is to say you are welcome to use the units I tweak or redo when I complete them, and I'll see what I can do about making some units less Middle-Earthy. Hopefully more skilled and knowledgeable unit creators will come to both of our rescue!

 

[Erebras]

Making the barbs a locked alliance faction at war is a way to go, but it misses what I'm getting at. The forces of Mordor don't necessarily need to research techs, make trade routes, found new cities, and all those things that civilized people do.

Please, while I appreciate the recommendation to use the barbarians as their own civilization, I really am asking if the game will crash or behave strangely if the world map is overrun with barbarian camps. So many players on these forums have tested the limits of using the editor -- like knowing the maximum number of resources or setting a terrain movement to 0 to make it work like a railroad or using None era techs -- that I am merely wondering if someone out there has already encountered a ceiling or cap on barbarians, such that each turn takes 20 minutes to complete or what have you.

Do you think the designers at Firaxis ever thought there'd be a game in which all of those 70-something barbarian tribes were on the map because none of the players wanted to go disperse the camps? One of those unlooked-for circumstances the programmers never took into account?

 

[Jerry'sGoldfish]

thank you for your very elaborate and elegant reply.

 

[timerover51]

The more Barbarian camps you put in the game, the slower it gets and the time to load increases quite a lot. If the Barbarians are set to Raging, it slows even more. Also, with pre-set Barbarian camps and a setting of Raging, it is very possible, indeed extremely likely to have the camps spawn up to 48 of the Advanced Barbarians, and when they start moving, the game really slows in the In-Between turns. Stacks of that size will attack Armies without hesitation, and are capable of killing them. Note: This is not theory, I have it happen regularly on my modified maps.

Be careful what you ask for. You just might get it.

 

[Erebras]

Thanks, timerover, for confirming what I've suspected. Even so, just having the camps on the map doesn't impact gamespeed (I experimented with placing many camps along the edges of the Fall of Rome conquest), but when they mobilize I can see how watching the hordes move piece-by-piece would take forever. Then again, how much different would that be from watching an enemy civ's stack-of-doom make its moves? I suppose when you have twenty barbarian stacks-of-dooms all moving in on you, it'd be time to go grab a cup of coffee, watch a movie, write a novella, discover a cure for cancer...

Timerover, you also confirmed that they would lay waste to a civ even with armies. That has Mordor (or Zombie Apocalypse) written all over it. Hmmm...

And why would anyone put the barbarians on anything other than Raging?
(That was rhetorical!)

 

[Erebras]

Jeez, I forgot to ask the obvious question. Timerover, if it happens regularly on your modified maps, what do you do about it? Since it's clear I like the Raging Barbarians game mechanic and want to utilize it to cut horrific swaths through the borderlands into the heart of the realm, do you have any suggestions of how to tame this savage beast and make it do what I want it to do?

 

[timerover51]

Jeez, I forgot to ask the obvious question. Timerover, if it happens regularly on your modified maps, what do you do about it? Since it's clear I like the Raging Barbarians game mechanic and want to utilize it to cut horrific swaths through the borderlands into the heart of the realm, do you have any suggestions of how to tame this savage beast and make it do what I want it to do?

Well, I did not give you the whole story. I normally use for my Barbarian units the Gallic Swordsman and the Cossack for the Advanced Barbarian, which normally in the one spawned in enormous numbers, and I give them a couple of extra hit points and make sure that the Russians and the Celts are never in the game. The standard Barbarian ship is the Privateer, also with a couple of extra hit points. As a consequence, dealing with large stacks on land does get a tad interesting. A Barbarian camp on an island or the coast will tend to spawn a stack of ships as well, they also wander a bit, and love to attack transport ships.

To deal with my own creation is not exactly easy. First, as I play on archipelago and continent maps, that tends to localize the problem a bit, but I do normally put a couple of camps on the same land mass as my starting city, which I generally go overboard protecting. I increase the combat experience hit points for Veteran and Elite Units to 6 and 8, although of late I have been using 7 and 10, to avoid loosing too many Armies to the Barbarians. I have several of the Wonders set to auto-produce Leaders, normally Heroic Epic (built once Literature is researched, no other requirements), Great Library (having this set to auto-produce Leaders does appear to help get Scientific Great Leaders as well), Sun Tzu's Art of War, Military Academy (normal requirements), and the Pentagon (need to research Nationalism first). Sometimes, I also use Newton's University. As a result, I always have Armies to use and make sure that I get a Victorious Army as soon as possible. I have also boosted the combat ability of the Swiss Mercenary (I play the Dutch a lot) to something approximating historical capability, and the Crusader as well (along with getting produced every 3 turns instead of 5). I also give the Army 6 to 8 extra hit points as well. The boosted Swiss and the Crusaders do pretty well at surviving when running into a stack of 24 Cossacks, but the ones of 48 are quite nasty. Knight Armies tend to die on a regular basis, and Cavalry Armies are about 50-50. I do build a fair number of Fortresses, the Crusaders are very handy for that, to keep a watch on areas, and give me some advance warning or problems.

On more advanced maps, I use more advanced Barbarians, normally the Rifleman or Infantry, with the Guerilla for the Advanced one with increased movement. All combat capability of these has been increased. For ships, I use the Destroyer, but need to get an Armed Merchant Raider in the game instead.

I have been experimenting with Test of Time scenarios using Dino Barbs, with boosted combat ability. Those have proved to be very nasty with Raptors as the base unit and either Torosaurs or Triceratops as the Advanced unit. I have added Torosaur cavalry to the game, and an Army of those works well on the smaller stacks.

One other anecdotal observation, that I have not thoroughly researched, but probably should, is that the AI Barbarians tend to go after me more than the other AI civilizations. However, the Barbarians do make life difficult for the AI. I should try running a few games in DeBug mode to check that more thoroughly.