MIddle-Earth: Lord of the Mods (septa)

[PCHighway]

AlcTrv-
PC Highway- Cataphracts were before knights, and they were incredibley powerful first.

I agree with you. They were good 'units', but not as good as you and make them out to be. I am half Greek, and have been to Greece. I've been to the former Constantinople, and believe me, no one likes to praise the Greeks more than I, not even Xen.

I would be the first to champion a new, ingenious, and successful idea implemented well by them. But cataphracts, as you say, were indeed before knights. "Cataphract" simply means 'heavily armored' and the idea of the cataphracts was to put a heavily armored horse unit out. Contrary to the hired mercenary troops from the barbarian cultures, which they had been using as cavalry before that.

AlcTrv-
I know the cataphracts were not alone, but they were incredibly powerful at the time, often easily defeating main enemy infantry forces. I know that the tactics were damn good, but the cataphract was their main tool of conquest, and it was what they were feared for, not their infantry as much

See, this is what I disagree with. They did, in no way, represent 'raw power'. Which you seem to imply, cataphracts carried a bow as well as a lance, they had food rations in their saddle bags and were often times sent through difficult routes, used as a commando. They were a very versatile feature of the Byzantines army. The cataphracts were most effective because of superior tactics in which they used well. Ambushes, parthian tactics, and harassment of troops is indeed nothing to laugh at, when used effectively. And of course they could simply charge the enemy from the flank while the infantry was making a direct assault. They also carried a small sword for fighting closely, but afaik, from what I've read, rarely used it. It was a last resort for them in battle. Longswords can be effective with cavalry, not so much for slicing through the enemy, but for stabbing him.

AlcTrv-
Alexanders cavalry is exactly an example of the see-saw relationship that exists between cavalry and infantry (much like with the attackers in war and the defenders. Early on- often the defender, archery Rome-Offense, siege weapons and speed, etc. The attacker usually won, and was defeated by a counterattack, not a defense Skip ahead [past some more seesaws] WWI- Trench Warfare (defense) WWII and beyond- Nukes and Tanks (Offense BIG advantage)

I wouldn't go so far as to saw 'see-saw relationship. They were all part of the army, and it was simply how well the commander was able to maximize his forces strengths, and minimize their weaknesses. IMHO, the type of effect you are talking about is more common in the era of guns, where indeed cavalry became just, if not more so, important as infantry. And of course mechanization (which isn’t cavalry by any means ), helicopter air 'cavalry', and the like.

AlcTrv-
And I'm not saying tanks and cataphracts are in it, I do believe most cavalry (except rohan) should be weak. Especially since Lord of the Rings is so much more based around infantry than cavalry (except rohan, again)

I agree, these people just don't like people debating, think it's a fight.

AlcTrv-
I'm just trying to prove that in the real world, cavalry is/was not just for harrassment. It WAS used as shock troops, but not in the way of harassment, but more strike fast and do heavy damage before the enemy is ready, and hopefully shatter them. The difference is that they are not just a secondary force, but are and have often been used to totally shatter the enemy as the main weapon

Do you have any idea how hard it is to kill more than one person with a lance, on a horse? I don't either, but it certainly doesn't sound easy. Maintaining the life of the horse would be hard enough, let alone getting the strength to wield a lance, probably close to 20-30 pounds, and awkward. Thus the sword comes in. while easier to sue mounted, still awkward, and leaves you very vulnerable.

Oh, and PCHighway, if you will. Or simply PCH, I don't call my self a Personal Computer Highway. Instead it's the scenic Pacific Coast Highway in California.

I'll post the last debate for general settings (defense settings) tonight, and tomorrow the overview for the next thread.

 

[PCHighway]

Original Defensive Bonuses
1.) Level size 1: 0
2.) Level size 2: 50
3.) Level size 3: 100
4.) Fortress: 50
5.) River: 25
6.) Fortifications: 25
7.) Citizen: 16
8.) Building: 16

Suggested Defensive Bonuses
1.) Level size 1: 25
2.) Level size 2: 50
3.) Level size 3: 100
4.) Fortress: 75
5.) River: 60
6.) Fortifications: 40
7.) Citizen: 5
8.) Building: 5


1.) This explains itself, the defender in a size 1 city gets this much defensive bonus. Since aqueducts come later, we should give them at least some defense bonus.

2.) These shouldn’t get that much of a bonus, lets keep it the same, 50 is a pretty good bonus as is.

3.) Again, this is good enough! 100 defensive seems extreme, but probably necessary.

4.) The defensive bonus for a unit standing on a fort. Fortresses should be better than the vanilla game, they proved to be effective in multiple times in Middle-earth. c3c will offer some bonuses that we can also mod, otherwise I would suggest raising it even more.

5.) This is the defensive bonus to a unit who gets attacked across from a river. Rivers were often used as defensive position in Middle-earth, the Fords of Isen, the original Minas Tirith, and countless other ones.

6.) This is the bonus a defending unit gets, when fortified (thanks Yoda Power). A simply raise to 40 would be sweet. Imagine, if you had a fort behind a river, and had a fortified unit on it. You would get a 175 bonus. Not including the type of terrain you were on.

7.) Each citizen in the city gives a certain bonus against bombardment, since we won’t have too much artillery. And we will have smaller cities, we don’t want it to be too high. This would be reduced to make the rare artillery more effective.

8.) Same as above. How often a building gets lost should be relatively high, and as Yoda power says, we can modify each building to our specifications anyway. This way we can make certain ones more vulnerable than others.



Culture levels:
Fledgling
Weak
Fragile
Solid
Strong
Glorious

We should try and customize these to make them more fantasy like. Imagine Isengard having ‘Glorious’ culture. We should use generic ones, like “mighty” etc.



I don’t think we should lower the culture level multiplier, we don’t want to discourage culture.

The border factor, if you lower the level, the border then expands quicker. It’s currently at 8. I think Middle-earth had less cities, and more ‘territory’. If we cut this buy half, maybe even reduce it to 3, then we will get the desired effect. It will make smaller cities more useful.
Some people don’t think the AI will pay attention, but I believe they will, as they will be less likely to settle a piece of land for a resource.

 

[[Ant]Wimp]

5.) River: 60

I konw in ME rivers were often used for defence. And I agree we should increase the def factor. But I think 60% is a bit too much iso the original 25%. How about 40%?

6.) Fortifications: 40

Again, same as above. How about 30-35%?

In all, increasing def bonusus sound awesome, cuz you'll need to plan your defences better, but wont the game get out of balance?

-edit-

 

[embryodead]

Bonuses are too high! With this settings, it will be most wise to sit on your back all the time. River/fortifications should better stay at 25% for the sake of playability. If you must, go with the river (50%?) but not "F". It's just F

Also - if town gives 25%, then what about walls? If they give just 25% they become quite worthless. They can't give 50%, since a walled town (of size say 1) will have higher bonus than a city.
I think the current civ3 settings are very good. Look at it this way - EVERY settlement needs walls, otherwise its easy prey. That's why 0% bonus vs. 50% walled is good. And walls aren't expensive, I build them very often.

Higher bonus for fortresses is OK.

 

[AlcTrv]

Ah, well, I think we definately need higher defense bonuses than in regular civ

 

[embryodead]

Originally posted by AlcTrv
Ah, well, I think we definately need higher defense bonuses than in regular civ

any reason why? please?

 

[tjedge1]

Originally posted by [Ant]Wimp
Ok, movement of 2, but on large(r) maps more.

Just in case anyone didn't understand my vote, this is what I was trying to say.

 

[PCHighway]

embryodead-
any reason why? please?

I can think of a number of reasons. Mostly, as it is, nearly all terrain in civ3 vanilla has little difference. If I attack you in the open desert, I have just as good a chance to kill 'you' if I had attacked 'you' in the grassland. This to me, is not a good thing. A number of mods out there have drastically altered the defensive bonuses, namely MEM. Yoda Power lowered most terrain defensive bonuses for terrain to 0. This gives him greater modability factors for other things, and it in turn makes the game easier to understand.

In regular civ3, it is very easy to kill units. A +10 defense bonus barely make any difference. Youo two seem to think it will tip the balance, but in reality a swordsman with 4 attack can still kill a spearman with 4 defense with little or no problem. How many times have you seen evenly matched (say, 3a-3d) naval units fighting, and the attacker will win? The +10 defense bonus, and the +25 fortifying bonus also, means next to nothing.

This is more noticeable in naval battles, since such units are hard and expensive to build. Making the weight fall on fewer units, and pressure higher.

I will compromise, however you will have to pay for it. If we are going to lower the defense bonuses, I want the Fortresses to get a boost, at the least.

 

[embryodead]

Originally posted by PCHighway
I can think of a number of reasons. Mostly, as it is, nearly all terrain in civ3 vanilla has little difference. If I attack you in the open desert, I have just as good a chance to kill 'you' if I had attacked 'you' in the grassland. This to me, is not a good thing. A number of mods out there have drastically altered the defensive bonuses, namely MEM. Yoda Power lowered most terrain defensive bonuses for terrain to 0. This gives him greater modability factors for other things, and it in turn makes the game easier to understand.

In regular civ3, it is very easy to kill units. A +10 defense bonus barely make any difference. Youo two seem to think it will tip the balance, but in reality a swordsman with 4 attack can still kill a spearman with 4 defense with little or no problem. How many times have you seen evenly matched (say, 3a-3d) naval units fighting, and the attacker will win? The +10 defense bonus, and the +25 fortifying bonus also, means next to nothing.

I understand the whole idea behind it, but the exact values don't make sense ie.
- raising towns bonus to 25 makes walls useless. it's unacceptable. that's unacceptable - as I said, small settlements were walled or were open for taking.
- if you give 60% river bonus, it will mean that it is easier to siege a walled town or city (often a fortress in case of LotR) than to attack a unit on the other side of the river (a passable one, not like the Anduin). does it make any sense?
- fortifications are temporary encampments etc. and with 40%, again you are making it close to a walled city. in Civ3, 25% bonus for F is not so important by itself, but it sums up well with other bonuses, making sence when comparing all the values.

Of course 10% bonus is nothing. After all, it's the "null" bonus for open terrain. Anyway, what's wrong with equal A/D values with attacker winning? Here are some examples, A/D + HP: 3/3, 3:

(chance for attacker to win)
open terrain: 45%
open terrain, fortifications: 36%
open terrain, fortifications, river: 29%
open terrain, fortifications, river, walls/city: 19%

I think the current Civ3 bonuses are well balanced and proportional. I don't like these changes in MEM for example a 50% penalty for swamps. I know defending in swamp areas is difficult but why is that attacking in a swamp is easy? Actually it's the attacker that has to move, which sucks, so to speak (I have no idea what is the bonus in C3C unfortunately)
50% (istead of 25%) for woodland areas seems reasonable though, especially in fantasy setting.

BTW Raising all units' HP lowers the randomness and increases the significance of bonuses. In the above example, if both units had 4 points instead of 3, the chance for the siege would be 15%.

I won't complain about the fortress bonus, since the point is valid... uhm, most of the ME fortresses are actually cities in the mod, oh well

 

[PCHighway]

How about this.
We boost level 2 city to +75, and level 3 city to +125.
Then with walls it will add up. For instance with a +25 bonus a village (level 1 city) would then have as much of a bonus as a town(level 2 city), and the town in turn would have no chance of raising it’s defense, as it couldn’t build walls? Thus it once again makes walls effective, I was thinking we should implement some other building defense bonuses also, such as a ‘castle’ or a keep of some sort.

‘Historical’ reasons for pumping up defensive bonuses.
In the very detailed account of the Middle-earth battles, we see just how important -fortification- was. Ambushing was more effective than attacking a ‘fortified’ enemy.

The Disaster of the Gladden fields, where Isildur died, we hear that the able commander was very effected by terrain-
“If the land had been flat or the slope in his favor he would have formed his company into a dìrnaith and charged the Orcs, hoping the great strength of the Dűnedain and their weapons to cleave a way through them and scatter them in dismay; but that could not now be done.”

I could compromise and lower them of course, but by doing so I require that fortresses be raised in defense bonus, to give the player at least some amount of more defense available.

You miss my point on "equal A/D values with attacker winning?".
The problem is that the defensive bonus should give the defender the edge. This is why the size3 offense line always gets more attack than the current defenders do, from my understanding.

 

[embryodead]

Originally posted by PCHighway
How about this.
We boost level 2 city to +75, and level 3 city to +125.
Then with walls it will add up. For instance with a +25 bonus a village (level 1 city) would then have as much of a bonus as a town(level 2 city), and the town in turn would have no chance of raising it’s defense, as it couldn’t build walls? Thus it once again makes walls effective, I was thinking we should implement some other building defense bonuses also, such as a ‘castle’ or a keep of some sort.

It's ok, though the same can be achieved with adding the mentioned buildings. Or do you want both
Going further - how about leaving the boni unchanged then adding Keep (+25%) and Fortress (another +25%, req. Keep).
This way we could have a wide range of combinations to represent places of Middle-Earth for example:
a bare village 0% (what value are few houses )
a walled village like Bree, 50%
Edoras, a town with keep, 75%
Dol Guldur, town-sized fortress, 100%
Umbar, city +keep, 125%
Barad Dur, a fortress-city, 150%

If you insist, let it start from 25% not 0%... then, a unit fortified in Minas Tirith (city-fortress, hills, behind river) gets a bonus of 275% (but on second though, 250 and 275 doesn't make much difference...)

Originally posted by PCHighway
You miss my point on "equal A/D values with attacker winning?".
The problem is that the defensive bonus should give the defender the edge. This is why the size3 offense line always gets more attack than the current defenders do, from my understanding.

And its exactly like you said - in the open terrain chances are even. Fortified behind a river defender will win 71% of the times, thats enough for an "edge" I think.
Attackers should have higher values because they would have no chances against equal defenders hidden in cities, hills whatever.

 

[Sarevok]

are you guys going to use the giant ME map thats currently in the user created maps forum?

 

[Noldodan]

we might, but we might not. I think that we should at least have a smaller map as well.

 

[Sarevok]

oh, im just curious because I think i can help out a bit for mapmaking. i was going to remake my LOTR maps, but i dont think i will anymore. I had been offered to help out with this so... here I am.

 

[RRnut]

Hello,


Noldodan, Thanks for that map. What did you get that from? THe map that I'm working from is just the map from the front of the book. it is relativly detailed but it doesn't have any of that on it.

Re: defenses. hmmmm. I had written a long post on this but just realized that it wasn't to the point. I think that I'll work on it. i think a derivative of embryodead's idea is good, but that his defense bonuses are too much. i'll post again sometime.

RRnut

 

[embryodead]

IMHO that Giga Map is quite unusable for normal game. Good luck with cities If you made up about 200 city names total, then maybe... but still I don't think it's "realistic" to have whole ME including Rhun, Harad etc. filled with tens of large cities.
We do need smaller maps, though as mentioned earlier, there are 4 or 5 people working on new ME, so I guess no one can make any promises as which of those maps will be used.

Re: defenses. hmmmm. I had written a long post on this but just realized that it wasn't to the point. I think that I'll work on it. i think a derivative of embryodead's idea is good, but that his defense bonuses are too much. i'll post again sometime.

If you say my defense bonuses are too much, then I can only agree, since that was my point

 

[Sarevok]

you could laways use hagburts map, its a standsrd map, which makes load time much quicker, and its a pretty good map. its the map i used for my maps.

 

[PCHighway]

embryodead-
- raising towns bonus to 25 makes walls useless. it's unacceptable. that's unacceptable - as I said, small settlements were walled or were open for taking.

We are trying to transcend the standard view of cities, since the first upgrade that lets cities not next to a fresh water source will come a late 2nd era, small cities will be what you see most often. A cheap wall effect sounds fine to me, but small cities in fact, will be representing some of the most important cities\forts of the books. Nothing we can do about that part, from my point of view.

embryodead-
- if you give 60% river bonus, it will mean that it is easier to siege a walled town or city (often a fortress in case of LotR) than to attack a unit on the other side of the river (a passable one, not like the Anduin). does it make any sense?

To me, of course it does. If we are trying to make a more in depth terrain combat, then we should at least try and be realistic. If you are fording a river, not something you could do without small easy to sink boats, you sure as hell are going to suffer some major losses. This is what conceivably would make fords so important. As for 'small rivers', It's important to remember we aren't talking streams here. The river in Bree, and the one in Rivendell both stopped the Nazgul. Neither can be considered large on the scale of Aduin. Hell, when Turin Turambar built a bridge so the river could be crossed easier, it single handedly led to the sack and successive defeat of Nargothond. The major natural defense which kept that city free for so long. And your trying to tell me rivers were less important than a watch tower? I will try and compromise on a lower river defensive bonus, simply because this is to trivial to argue about. I can simply change it myself, from the final version anyway.

embryodead-
- fortifications are temporary encampments etc. and with 40%, again you are making it close to a walled city. in Civ3, 25% bonus for F is not so important by itself, but it sums up well with other bonuses, making sense when comparing all the values.

My idea was you wouldn't have a walled city without a fortified unit in it, which you caught on to. You probably guessed I am trying to make battles outside of cities more involved, this can be done when I bring up terrain later.

embryodead-
I think the current Civ3 bonuses are well balanced and proportional. I don't like these changes in MEM for example a 50% penalty for swamps. I know defending in swamp areas is difficult but why is that attacking in a swamp is easy? Actually it's the attacker that has to move, which sucks, so to speak (I have no idea what is the bonus in C3C unfortunately)
50% (istead of 25%) for woodland areas seems reasonable though, especially in fantasy setting.

As for swamps, I think we are going to leave those behind. I'm pretty sure we are going for a 'wilderland' type of setting. Instead of disease it would be some type of attack from raiding orcs\animals. Maybe even famine, I haven't asked Celeborn or thought about it much myself. Yet I think that in such open terrain (think LotR- weathertop) you should have less chance of defense than on regular terrain. In our case that would consist of dropping the defense bonus to 0.

embryodead-
BTW Raising all units' HP lowers the randomness and increases the significance of bonuses. In the above example, if both units had 4 points instead of 3, the chance for the siege would be 15%.

Other mods seem to solve this by doubling the attack and defense values (TAM). We should probably choose one of these systems, but far less extreme. I don't know about you, but I like some 'randomness'.

embryodead-
I won't complain about the fortress bonus, since the point is valid... uhm, most of the ME fortresses are actually cities in the mod, oh well

Simply because I respect your opinion I lowered the stats by half. What do you think of these-
(Just sitting around saying we disagree with each other isn't going to get us anywhere. So some suggestions on the actual bonus would be nice.)

Original Defensive Bonuses
1.) Level size 1: 0
2.) Level size 2: 50
3.) Level size 3: 100
4.) Fortress: 50
5.) River: 25
6.) Fortifications: 25
7.) Citizen: 16
8.) Building: 16

Revamped Defensive Bonuses
1.) Level size 1: 10 (wallsORtower +50=60)
2.) Level size 2: 50
3.) Level size 3: 100
4.) Fortress: 75
5.) River: 40
6.) Fortifications: 30
7.) Citizen: 5
8.) Building: 5

 

[[Ant]Wimp]

Lets wait with all the maps till C3C. All the existing maps will need to be upgraded with the new options etc.

 

[embryodead]

@PCH
Suppose it's ok
Though if level 1 settlement has defense up to +60, make level 2 +60 also.

@Wimp: very true