Middle-earth Mod

[BTS] Middle-earth Mod 0.4.1

I have no idea what this legend is? :p
 
"On this occasion the presents were unusually good. The hobbit-
children were so excited that for a while they almost forgot about
eating. There were toys the like of which they had never seen before,
all beautiful and some obviously magical. Many of them had indeed
been ordered a year before, and had come all the way from the
Mountain and from Dale, and were of real dwarf-make." - "A Long-Expected Party", Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien.

"Altogether those were good days for us, and the poorest of us had money to spend and to lend, and leisure to make beautiful things just for the. fun of it, not to speak of the most marvellous and magical toys, the like of which is not to be found in the world now-a-days. So my grandfather’s halls became full of armour and jewels and carvings and cups, and the toy-market of Dale was the wonder of the North." - The Hobbit
 
Now that is awesome. Brilliant idea!
 
Here, have some diplomacy music for Saruman, Sauron, and Herumor (Umbar, should you ever add it - I'll make something different for the Haradrim) that I made (apparently, there's something wrong with the bit rates though).

And also, here is diplomacy text I made for Saruman, Sauron, and the Witch-king (unsure if you have that or not, but posting mine can't hurt).
 
Here, have some diplomacy music for Saruman, Sauron, and Herumor (Umbar, should you ever add it - I'll make something different for the Haradrim) that I made (apparently, there's something wrong with the bit rates though).

And also, here is diplomacy text I made for Saruman, Sauron, and the Witch-king (unsure if you have that or not, but posting mine can't hurt).

Thanks a lot! I'll definitely include this. I really can't do my own music, so these are very useful.
 
So, there's bad news, and good news.

The bad news is I got sick; I currently have a cold and don't feel so great.

The good news is I had less work and school this week, and so the new map is being worked on. And just for fun, I'm posting some screenshots. :D

Spoiler Screenshots :

To make a long story short, I took the map from the back of LOTR, and transposed a grid on it, like so.

Then I could just add terrain onto the grid in the best way for both gameplay and accuracy, thus making my life easy AND my map accurate. :) No resources yet, but they'll come soon enough.

---​

This is an image of the Shire, and the capital of Arnor (Annuminas).
Spoiler :
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A picture of Mt. Gundabad, Angmar, and the Trollfells.
Spoiler :
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Eregion and Moria. (Still working on this part!)
Spoiler :
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Ah, well, I discovered some more looping errors - it is as if my corrected file isn't saved properly, very weird - so expect an update whenever I can find time to correct them once again. No problem though; I'm using your leaderheads for my own mod as well, and modding thrives on sharing, doesn't it? :)

On that note, I've started adding Umbar, Harad, Khand, and Rhun to my mod, and fleshing them out here might provide you with inspiration for yourself (or just use ideas I mention here, whyever not). I'm thinking of making Herumor the leader of Harad, and Castamir the leader of Umbar.

Umbar will have the Corsair as its unique unit, replacing the Privateer and capable of being the main naval unit of the era, instead of the Frigate (I've completely reworked naval balance - including Pirates, Privateers, and Sea Rovers! - so going into details wouldn't be useful). Their unique building will be the Haven; a Courthouse that gives a free specialist per Fishing Boat and Whaling Boat. 'Haven' can both be a safe place (/ place of authority; a Courthouse?) as well as a docking place for ships, and replacing the Courthouse allows it to be built even in non-coastal cities that still have Fishing or Whaling Boats within their borders.

Harad, of course, will have the Mumakil, although I'm not yet sure about its specifics, mostly because I've also completely changed the War Elephant's role (as well as the two unique units I have that are based on them; Khmer's Ballista Elephant and Carthage's Loxodonta - the Numidian Mercenary is now Numidia's unique unit). For the unique building, I don't have a name yet, and would like suggestions. It'll probably replace the Theatre and provide a culture bonus for each Plantation resource (and Ivory?), as Harad is a huge area with lots of different tribes / cultures, varying from Mesoamerican jungle cultures to medieval Arabian cultures.

Khand will probably have a Variag as its unique unit, replacing the Chariot possibly? Unsure about that yet, but its unique building will be the Yam (Mongolian, 'supply point route messenger system', horse relays), replacing the Broadcast Tower (because nothing replaces it yet) and adding a trade route and +10% gold. Or perhaps a Merchant specialist. Who knows.

It is said that Rhun provided lots of food to feed all of Sauron's armies, and that it had a huge trading network, so its unique building - again, no idea about the name - will replace the Market and give +1 food to all river tiles (but lose a small gold bonus that I added to Markets which doesn't exist in Civilization IV anyway). The Wainrider could be its unique unit, but more than that, I don't know yet.

Also, making a city name list is an endeavour that takes hours per civilisation for me (literally, yes), and while I'm not happy with Harad's list - all but the first dozen or so are random names I found in a list; I couldn't research anything about them - I'm happy with the rest I made. Mordor, Angmar, and Umbar (I gave them locations of Near Harad to flesh them out) have probably about three hundred city names in total (Umbar has more than a hundred, for example, and that is without including Harondor). As for Isengard, well, I couldn't find anything but the dozen or so I have, which is quite a pity. Certainly because I intend to add Rohan and the Dunlending as well, so Isengard can't use cities of them (using Rohan would be a stretch, but Isengard using the Dunlending list could work - except that I want to add the Dunlending as a separate faction).

I'll upload those sometime later, if you're interested. I still need to create Rhun's and Khand's list after all.

EDIT: Should I release my Middle-Earth civilisations for public use? I also changed your buttons (Saruman's hand, Sauron's eye, Angmar's fortress thingy symbol...) to make them more in-line with the ones Civilisation IV uses.
 
I'm SO sorry for not giving any updates in the past 5 months. Work + School took up all of my time. But now that school's out I've got loads more time, and I've been concentrating almost 100% on balancing this mod so it will be even better. I've put off adding much new content in favor of balancing what I've got.


Anyway, I welcome all advice, and I'm going to document all planned changes soon enough. I've finished the map, and moved on to balancing the tech tree. I hope to be able to release a much-improved gameplay and accuracy update by the 2nd week of July. I do start college in August, but I'll still throw as much free time as possible into this mod.

Again, thank you to anyone who has giving suggestions, bug reports, or just played the mod, and thank you for putting up with the long delays. :D

EDIT: (Projected release: July 8th)
To-do list before update:
Balance Tech Tree
Correct Wonders (Lots of misplaced tech reqs, such as Second Age wonders w/ TA techs and vice versa.)
Civic Balance
Unit Balance

Building Balance
Harad, Easterling, Angmar, Mordor, Dwarves Ethnic Art (This is final priority, and I'll release an update anyway if every other goal is completed.)
 
Everything is almost finished... I've almost got Harad's Ethnic Art finished - I should release the mod by Saturday.
 
Oooh, awesome! Feel free to ask for (more / the ones I previously uploaded but improved in the meantime) diplomacy music (or text) if you wish. :p
 
Sounds great! I'll upload tonight, then I've got to go out of town for a week. I'll be back soon to forge ahead with new projects!
 
Oooh, awesome! Feel free to ask for (more / the ones I previously uploaded but improved in the meantime) diplomacy music (or text) if you wish. :p

I would like it if you'd upload those for the next update. I'll be working on Civiliopedia text, diplo music/text, and the like.
 
Good to see this worked on again, one of my favourite mods by far. :D

In regards to the map I'm glad it is more accurate, and has much less 'blank space', with more resources and rivers in expanses such as harad, rhovanion etc. However I feel like two things are missing.

First the Anduin no longer being navigable means the naval battle against the Southrons becomes largely ignorable as Gondor is now open to attack across any point of the Anduin, rather than acting as a natural barrier and forcing enemies to attack by sea, or through Osgiliath and other fortified crossings. Needless to say this is pretty necessary from both a lore and gameplay standpoint.

The other, while less important from gameplay standpoint, is the changes to various mountain areas. The old map has those cool 'hollow' mountain passes that let Dwarves role play and expand through mountain cities only, now mountains feel a bit like glorified fences with little life to them. While it doesn't really impact too hard on the balance or accuracy of the map, it loses a certain cool factor that made the original map unique, and also means the Dwarves have to expand outside their mountain holds (let alone any potential goblin civ). :(

Overall though loving the update, hope you keep up the good work! :goodjob:

EDIT: No one starts with their starting technologies. Also poor Rivendell has no resources! :lol: They tend to do quite poorly.
 
Oh! Sorry, I never got back to you. But now Minigrinch's post bumped this thread, so...

Well, you can access the entirety of my mod (obviously WIP, and even everything that's in isn't finished; the Governor unit from the Empire civic, for one, will crash the game, two Worker art styles don't work, and Cirdan has no diplomacy music yet - also, it's not meant for public release, but hey, this isn't really a public release so much as it is 'look and profit'). Note that most graphical assets come from this site, with the exception of most flags and buttons and a tiny few leaderheads (Bilbo, Kundaj V, Castamir... That's all I think), which I've made myself. You'll undoubtedly recognise things I've taken from this mod. :p

I dislike Castamir's music, so I'll rework that at some point. I'm also unsure about the later music of Sauron and the Witch-king. And, again, Cirdan - well, the 'Elven civilisation' - has no music as of yet (nor a nice flag or button). But besides that, even though I don't have an Arnor or 'Rhovanion' (Dale, Laketown...) civilisation yet, they do have music, and I've just added Elendil and Brand as leaders of Gondor (no Civiliopedia text yet, though) so that you could easily hear them in-game.

Feel free to use any music, city lists, diplomacy text, Civilopedia text, ideas (unique units and buildings, for example), flags, buttons, my characterisation of the less known civilisations (Harad, Khand, Rhûn...), or anything else. :)

Semi-edit: I started writing this at 15:something. It's currently 16:37. This uploading takes looong... It's currently 16:51. A security token was missing, so nothing was uploaded... Right...

Well, it's 17:06 now and I have no idea where to upload it. This site - the slow download, at least - says it'll take eight hours... I wonder if this will work, once the file has been properly uploaded to Dropbox?


EDIT: The forum lives again! And, in the meantime, I have finished all Middle-earth stuff (Cirdan, Arnor, Rhovanion), so use this link, if you wish.
 
Thank you!

School is about to start - I'm going to college this time, but I will attempt to keep working on the mod. If anyone wants to keep up with my current progress, I'll be putting my current project in the first post.
 
Hello! I'm new to this site, but I've been modding civ4 for a few years now. I'm free to help out with your project, if you want any help.

Sure! Right now I've just started college, so it may move a bit slower, but I'd appreciate the help. Feel work on whatever seems best. If you need an idea, I need help with strategy and civilopedia text on a ton of stuff - whatever's blank needs text.
 
Sure! Right now I've just started college, so it may move a bit slower, but I'd appreciate the help. Feel work on whatever seems best. If you need an idea, I need help with strategy and civilopedia text on a ton of stuff - whatever's blank needs text.

Here are some unit civilopedia entries from a LotR mod I abandoned a while back, I hope they help. Some of them were based on BFME II dictionary entires.
 

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Here are some unit civilopedia entries from a LotR mod I abandoned a while back, I hope they help. Some of them were based on BFME II dictionary entires.

Interesting! I don't have that many UU's for each civ. but I can definitely use/adapt some of these.

I'll let you know what else I need as soon as I get into the college routine. :)
 
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