Brainstorming Thread: Middle Earth scenario

[Deon]

Greetings, I thought that this forum may be a bit wider than RiFE. I want everything from LOTR you have, saw or remember.

I've made a playtesting thread so feel free to give your opinions:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=8714560#post8714560
Currently I have: free people (esgaroth and bree as free settlements), hobbiton, gray havens, moria, gondor, rohan, mordor, rivendell+lothlorien, dwarves (Lonely mountain, Iron hills), pirates of Umbar, haradrim, easterlings as separate nations. I am not planning to add more yet. I want you to brainstorm civ. unique traits and leader traits, as well as UU, all in FFH Rife tech tree box.

 

[Deon]

Brainstorming Hobbits:

Palace mana? I assume 2 manas and 1 resource?

Traits? I assume, truant (+1 /city, -10% production) and agricultural (+1 food on a tile with 4; +1 commerce from windmills, 50% faster construction speed of granary)

Race promotion? Probably has something to do with retreat odds and no fear?

 

[Deon]

Unique buildings so far:

Spoiler :

Note: the palace should provide 1 resource of each, I've fixed that.

No unique art yet.

I will finish XML work first, and then move on art.
Also I am making this mod as a module thus you shouldn't worry about your installation.

 

[Sephi]

you could make tobacco a hobbit only resource (like pearls for lanun) and let the palace give 1 tobacco. I guess RoM or some other Mod already has the graphic for it.

 

[Valkrionn]

Yeah, tobacco already exists. Was planning to use the graphic for Hemlock (weapon for Recon) until we had the resource bug. Now that it's fixed....

 

[Deon]

Great idea about tobacco . These crazy hobbits always smoking their pipes .
I went for pigs first, but it makes them too close to Rohan (with Horses from Palace) which I probaly will remove too. Their palace is on a hill in a city, and there're 2 horses resources around, so I'd better change it to something else.

Yeah, tobacco already exists.

You mean Razorweed?

 

[Valkrionn]

Wait, it was used for razorweed? Damn.

 

[Deon]

I plan it to be avaliable only to Hobbits from the start, but be spreadable by plantations, so you could be able to grow more and sell them to other nations to make it grow more.

The question is: is it possible to increase a chance of bonus spread for a single nation? I want to include it the Agricultural trait.

 

[Valkrionn]

I plan it to be avaliable only to Hobbits from the start, but be spreadable by plantations, so you could be able to grow more and sell them to other nations to make it grow more.

The question is: is it possible to increase a chance of bonus spread for a single nation? I want to include it the Agricultural trait.

Spoiler :

Without some DLL work, you can't. You'd need to give them unique plantations.

Edit: Though if I remember right, if they are the only ones able to SEE it, then they are the only ones it can spread to. Regardless of if another civ has access to the resource itself. Need Opera to pop in and say if it does or does not function that way though...

 

[Deon]

Wait I am ok with others growing it after halflings sold it, I meant the speed of growth only, is it global or could be made customizable to each race? Also if it's just some C code, I could recompile it with checks, but it would mean that my mod is no longer modular . And i don't want to mess up your installation or require a separate one, I will develop it as a single scenario.

P.S. Done:

Spoiler :

 

[Valkrionn]

Wait I am ok with others growing it after halflings sold it, I meant the speed of growth only, is it global or could be made customizable to each race? Also if it's just some C code, I could recompile it with checks, but it would mean that my mod is no longer modular . And i don't want to mess up your installation or require a separate one, I will develop it as a single scenario.

P.S. Done:

Spoiler :

The speed can't be changed, it's set to the improvement. So it would be at the same speed for them all.

You could give them a unique worker, that has the build order for a unique plantation instead of the normal one. Easiest way to do it.

 

[Deon]

I need to ask for three things:
1) An appropriate name for an easterling leader, powerful enough to lead the war campaign. Current name is quite random and it pretty much sucks.
2) A general design idea, I plan to remove world spells alltogether, I don't remember any world spell-wide enchanting in LOTR. Rituals would be better.
3) Is it possible to stop Haunted lands natural growth without SDK changes? I want to use it to mark special "haunted" places (like Paths of the Dead) only.

You could give them a unique worker, that has the build order for a unique plantation instead of the normal one. Easiest way to do it.

I thought of new FARMS and PLANTATIONS, and to give them -1 from mines. I am afraid though that it would make them a perfect civ for Sacrifice the weak/slavery .

I think of adding a "power in numbers" ability, some default building that would increase city defence with the number of people. I don't know how to make it yet though .

 

[Valkrionn]

I need to ask for three things:
1) An appropriate name for an easterling leader, powerful enough to lead the war campaign. Current name is quite random and it pretty much sucks.
2) A general design idea, I plan to remove world spells alltogether, I don't remember any world spell-wide enchanting in LOTR. Rituals would be better.
3) Is it possible to stop Haunted lands natural growth without SDK changes? I want to use it to mark special "haunted" places (like Paths of the Dead) only.


I thought of new FARMS and PLANTATIONS, and to give them -1 from mines. I am afraid though that it would make them a perfect civ for Sacrifice the weak/slavery .

I think of adding a "power in numbers" ability, some default building that would increase city defence with the number of people. I don't know how to make it yet though .

For number 3, do you mean stop it from being placed on the map on game start (Flavormod.py, for that one) or it's growth? That's just in the feature, easy to disable. Can't remember the tag name off the top of my head though.

 

[Nor'easter]

I need to ask for three things:
1) An appropriate name for an easterling leader, powerful enough to lead the war campaign. Current name is quite random and it pretty much sucks.

Here's the wikipedia article about the Easterlings of the First Age, with several of their names given.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easterlings_(First_Age)

There's a separate wikipedia article that covers the Easterlings of the Third Age, but none of their proper names are given.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easterlings

 

[Deon]

I saw the second one . Thanks, I will use something appropriate or close.

Now, on to the "Hobbit" race promotion. I think. 15% chance to retreat, +1 first strike, immune to fear? Or +1 first strike is too much in such context?

 

[Deon]

Also, by the look at my map, I was not going for a specific date, but it looks like an end of the Third age. There's Rohan, the kingdom of Dale is there (under Esgaroth, the Dale is a Town improvement not to push the culture onto dwarves in Erebor), Wilderland is empty and deserted etc.

What do you think if I make Isengard into a separate town, and give it to Saruman which is an allie of Mordor? And make Moria a separate entity with a [held] Balrog? The only problem is a passage through Moria, but I will leave a tile near it so units should be able to bypass it (with a threat of being attacked from the city) which should imitate dangerous place which is passable quite good in my opinion.

Ideas?

P.S. I've found Rohan unit art by Chuggi. Great


PPP>>>SSSS>>> Oh dagnabbit. File is Unavaliable. Does anybody have a copy? I am going to try to find Chuggi.

 

[Deon]

I've got the units and I've figured out which traits do I want for hobbits.
It's:
Natural farmers
+1 on tiles with 4
+1 from plantation
25% faster construction of Hobbits' Cellar, Hobbits' Market, Smokehouse, Deruptus Brewing House

Good-Hearted
+2 /City
All units recieve -1 Attack when outside of cultural borders

Or just adopt "Pacifist" trait to them from Elohim.

 

[Valkrionn]

Pacifist will be better next version; I've merged the 'Extra Commerces while at Peace' work from Orbis, so as long as they aren't at war they can gain +% on any commerce.

 

[Deon]

Oh these news are good.

 

[Rasta69]

On the world spell issues (mages and what not being very uncommon lore wise in Middle Earth) they don't technically have to be Spells as such. For instance the Rohirrim world spell could be "Mighty Charge", or something to that tune, that gives every Rhoirrim Cavelry unit Blitz, +1 strength and +1 movement or again something of that nature. Basically you could keep the mechanic and merely change how it operates. The reason being in that it allows you to recreate some of the epic moments of the novels, such as the Charge of the Rhoirrim at the Pellanor fields or what not. There is of course the general problem with the arcane line depending on how closely you want to follow the lore. If you go lore wise then the only spell casters who are really mentioned are the wizarding council, of whom only three we know of (Ragdast the Brown, Gandalf the Grey(then Gandalf the White) and Saruman the White(then Saruman of Many Colours and finally Sharkey), the Ringwraiths show some definetly magicky powers, Sauron of course and the Elves seem to be the only others who wield something that resembles magic. The Balrogs according to lore are other potent magic users (there are several interpretations of the Balrog, the one seen in the movie is techinally correct but there are contentions over this issue. If my interpretation is correct what is shown in the movie is the magical power of the man inside the big firey doom beast XD and that seems to fit in with the lore, in that their used to be entire armys of Balrogs who rode Dragons. Seriously) You could take the route Games workshop did and simply wave away that restriction for the evil races, with Shamans and what not, and give the good races a large amount of named spell casters, or simply throw the whole thing out the window and say that Tolkien didn't mention the Cabal of wizards in Minas Tirith. Regardless what way you take just thought I'd point that out.