30-11-2003 20:15									#1
	LOTR scenario Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

I'm starting to put together a scenario for conquets based on Lord of the Rings, the major problem with this is the lack of any fantasy unit animations included with conquests, I am completely inept at anything art related so theres no chance of me making my own, does anyone know of anywhere where there are fantasy based unit animations or would anybody be willing to create one or two? The most useful would be one for ents (walking, talking trees), nazgul (man in black upon a black winged creature), the balrog (fiery, shadowey figure) and some different varieties of orcs, at the moment the first 3 will have to be left out and the orcs represented by the foot soldier medievil unit animations, can anyone help me out?

	01-12-2003 01:11									#2
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The ent and the balrog have already been made. If you can't find them here (which IIRC you should) you might have to ask around at CFC.

	02-12-2003 00:55									#3
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There is a fantasy mod being created by someone, but it appears to be more of a mediaval mod than a magical fantasy mod.. it may have someuseful materials.

I think Conquests would allow a good LOTR scenario. With the reverse Capture the flag options, you could have the Ring like the Middle age Christian Relic, and have to bring it to Mount Doom , where it gives the player 5,000 victory points. If Sauron captures the ring he gets 5,000 VP..

ART: Perhaps we could take art from the Film DVD , I know how to record it .. I'm also making my own 3d editing software which would work well for this type of graphic. It isn't neccesary to make hundreds of animations for units.. just at least 4 direction gfx for each movement type. Maybe some of the dinosaur gfx could be used.
You could change the warrior unit from civ3 and make it green.. give it an orc /goblin like appearance for example.

There have been LOTR maps made before also.. but are you thinking of a film or book based LOTR, there are differences.. the film is actually more action based with Frodo getting to Osgiliath much quicker i believe.
It missed out the first old forest with Old man willow who tries to kill the hobbits(hes an old Sentient intelligent tree monster).

Scenario Events would have been useful, perhaps they will come (CTP2 source code edition may be better for events).

Conquest flavors may be useful also, with flavors for Elves, Humans(includes hobbit , dwarf?) Orc, Wizard.

How about a Hobbit scenario too? It would be much simpler and I don't think anyones really tried this story.

	11-12-2003 01:09									#4
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There are around 100 fantasy units available, including orcs, elves, dwarves, wizards, ents and all that stuff. one way to obtain them is downloading my warhammer fantasy mod (very "magical fantasy" actually)

There is also modding team on CFC, working on large LotR mod that will be a base for all kinds of scenarios. Have a look at least.

	11-12-2003 08:18									#5
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Hey I was just messing around & created a leaderhead of Frodo. Tell me if you're interested

	11-12-2003 16:54									#6
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heh... I've been building my own LOTR scenario since the Beta (which I was in). I have absolutely NO ability to make custom unit icons or have but little clue what I'm doing with that, so I've only been using the default unit icons and such, but altering all of the properties and which civs may have them, etc.

I used our own BigFurryMonster's Middle Earth Map.

Reverse capture the flag, locked alliances, marshes in the correct locations, and an actual volcano for Mt. Doom, not to mention actually placing down the civilizations and (eventually) the units have been nice additions. I'm still working on getting the units right, though I honestly don't have enough time to really work on this with everything else I'm up to.

What I'd really love to see is someone with actual artistic talent and lots of time make a really awesome LOTR scenario. As long as it's relatively accurate as well, I'll be reasonably happy (and can always alter their work if need be).

Btw... one issue that I've found aggravating: What do you do about the Army of the Dead (and other such things) without the events system from the Civ2 Editor?

	11-12-2003 18:20									#7
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There are quite a few VERY good LOTR Leaderheads out there also. But most of that stuff is posted at CFC.

	12-12-2003 06:13									#8
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Hey all, I've got some fantasy units from CFC, including that rather impressive Balrog one, I'm actually using BigFur's map myself, with a few modifications. I'm really unsure as to just how to model everything at the moment, I'm not entirely sure how the reverse capture the flag works, I was thinking having a victory point location in Barad-dur for the Mordor Civ to capture and return the ring unit in order to win, and maybe having a 'dummy' mount doom civ that is incapable of building any units and that the good guys can capture with a unit carrying the ring, after sneaking it into Mordor, would this work? The only other alternative I could think of would be to simulate the destruction of the ring with a wonder and tie the victory conditions to it.

As for modelling things like the army of the dead I was thinking of a statue of zeus type system where after researching the tech and building an appropriate wonder a dead/ent/eagle whatever unit appears every few turns, what does everyone think?

	12-12-2003 08:27									#9
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This forum is distracting me from working on my own mega-scenario.

Event handling: to cater for the lack of events.. there could be a website HTML file which gives you details of all units, cities, wonders, events that take place in the Game (it can be read offline too, just saved on disk). When Frodo Enters RIVENDELL city and makes contact with the Elf civ, you click on the Website hper- link for Rivendell and then it takes you to some text thats taken from the LOTR book, and explains what to do next in the game and gives background info to make the player feel the atmosphere surrounding the plot. It could say : All the races have sent ambassadors in the form of their finest champions (special warrior characters) to Elronds hall (house), including Gimli the Dwarf, Boromir of the Northern Humans. They are here mainly to decide what the Good races of Middle earth shall do with the newly discovered power of the One ring. After days of endless discussions , you, Frodo declare you will take the ring to Mount Doom to lead it to its destruction though you be very afraid... etc

I would like to make a Bethshelob (Shelob) unit, don't remember the name.. that spider monster thats in the last LOTR film. Reading about her made me want to make it come to life.
She could have a old womans hags head, maybe a hard scorpion like body as well as the spider look.
For a unit she could have radar setting, as she sees well in the dark with all her eyes, perhaps see invisible and invisible set. Gollum can see her with See invisible set, or perhaps wizards and magical creatures.

The Conquests mods stealth attack and slavery options would work pretty well with LOTR as well.
Aragorn could be given stealth attacks for orcs and Nazgul , maybe most creatures .

Gollum could appear from a Statue of Zeuslike wonder but only once , if possible (make the appearance to 2000 so it only happens once? ). The wonder could be obtained by capturing it from a city near Mordor.. make him appear regularly and act as a cruise missile and then anyone who captures his Spawn wonder will be able to use his services. Maybe he'll have to just be a one off scenario unit.

This Story is large and complicated so will take time to make a good scenario, but if Conquests scenarios can't do it nothing can

	13-12-2003 00:46									#10
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I would think a Wonder that produced Uruk-ai or whatever they were called would be good for Isengard. If it was me I would make an White Hand civ for Saruman with Isengard as its capital and that Wonder and a Mordor civ with Sauron as its leader and unbreakable alliance between the two set in the editor. Then add Rohan, The Shire, Gondor, etc as the Playable civs. The Player could choose to be one of the latter civs and has to Diplomatically work alliances between them to battle the Two Towers.

	13-12-2003 05:15									#11
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Wow. A good, fully immersive LOTR would be great. Events would be a bonus of course. If only...

	14-12-2003 20:41									#12
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The Civ 2 LOTR scenarios were quite good, but make sure you don't include stuff just for the sake of including it if it's going to prove irrelevant to the gameplay. An example of this is where previous LOTR scenarios have included the city of Moria and Balrog units, with no real way to incite the human player to go through them what with the powerful monster present.

do you have any idea how you might use the Balrog in the scenario, mostly_harmless?

	27-12-2003 01:29									#13
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I was a HUGE fan of the Civ2 LOTR scenario... for a long time I played it more than the regular Civ.
I've been planning on making something similar with Civ3 for a long time as well, but the time it takes to make good animation has kept me tied so far.

Anyway, if anyone in interested in working together, I'm interested. We could even make seperate scenarios for the "good guys" and the "bad guys" and share resources... *shrug*

Anyway, I've been into art and stuff a bit and could probably do something if I get the time. Once again, I really really loved the Civ2 scenario (by Harlan Thompson), so it might be a good idea to stick a little into it. Drop me a note.

	27-12-2003 03:00									#14
	Full PM-box? Change here!

I went to see RotK last weekend, and I found myself thinking about a civ scenario, and how it would work, but I've encountered 2 problems:

1) I have no artistic ability nor any graphic program other than Paint

2)I tried to search the myriad of units on Fanatics but they've disabled Search!

It would be really cool to find a graphic for a Mumakil (the huge elephants) or the Witchking - you could make Eowyn with anti-air ability!!

quote: do you have any idea how you might use the Balrog in the scenario

Make the mountains impassable, forcing you to go through Moria?

Maybe you could have a barracks in Moria, and have a tech that allows upgrading Gandalf the Grey to White?

	27-12-2003 03:23									#15
	Increase Your PM Length

Bring it on... with all the talent above this should be a great game

	28-12-2003 01:42									#16
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quote: Originally posted by justjake73 Make the mountains impassable, forcing you to go through Moria? Maybe you could have a barracks in Moria, and have a tech that allows upgrading Gandalf the Grey to White?

Exactly what I thought

Or rather, I thought maybe make the Western gates and eastern gates separate civilisations and cities (Although they would still appear on the diplomacy screen and I don't know any way around that in Civ 3), then fill the mountains with goblins and a Balrog; make the Balrog a king-type unit so he must be killed in order to destroy the eastern gate civ and let the party out; not sure what to do about Gandalf being upgraded, maybe make the Balrog immoble by the exit and have the Gandalf the White unit blocked in... but then you'd havr the problem of two Gandalfs. Can a land unit have a flag to make it destroyed after attacking? That way you could do that and just make sure the player know that he damn well better not attack with Gandalf unless absolutely necessary

	29-12-2003 17:24									#17
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good!

	01-01-2004 00:23									#18
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Random thought - the Balrog could be a 'Wonder' that depending on who owns it, generates a Goblin unit each turn or allows Gandalf the Gray to be upgraded to Gandalf the White (one time)

	02-01-2004 04:23									#19
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I would suggest having a mithril resource necessary for an Istari Resurrection themed tech that would permit an upgrade of the Gandalf unit.

or the Gandalf unit could have a found city ability that would consume the unit, and mithril would allow construction of a 1-turn Gandalf the White GW that would generate a new gandalf (set it to 2000 turns so it won't repeat)

of course, in LOTR a settlement in moria couldn't be maintained, so no other food-helpful resources could be present in the vicinity. A new defendable moria civ would be theoretically possible but a wide departure from the source material

	03-01-2004 05:30									#20
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Yes, I'd also go for the mithril (or maybe something else?) resource type that is only found in Moria. After capturing Moria the barracks in there would allow Gandalf the Grey to upgrade to White... and since there's just one Gandalf in game you don't need to worry about multiple upgrades.
Human player would of course have the tech for the upgrade, but couldn't just do it without the special resource.

Then also there should be a way to make Moria starve out if not controlled by Mordor (or that dummy Moria civ)... maybe have a government that can sustain Moria when not controlled by the good guys? That way there would be enough time to upgrade Gandalf - and of course let the fellowship pass - before Moria dies out from starvation... a rather "realistic" solution, if you ask me... think about the good guys trying their best, but it's just not possible to turn Moria into an operating city and it slowly stagnates and finally dies out.

	07-01-2004 16:50									#21
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Ha, I knew we'd be inevitably seeing this! I love some of the ideas here. I'll want to play this, especially if Admiral PJ provides some film images for it. Some things are going to be tricky though - city list for Isengard, for example...? And will it be possible to play it on a random map, as well as a map of Middle Earth?

Also, when the mod comes out, I'd love to have a go at adapting it into a Silmarillion mod... one for the hard core!

There were, of course, lots of differences between the book and the films - and quite right too, as a film isn't the same thing as a book. As Peter Jackson said, you could have filmed the book scene by scene, line by line, but it would have been literally unwatchable. Some of the main differences are that in the book Frodo never went to Osgiliath at all, there were no elves at Helm's Deep, and the whole Tom Bombadil/barrow wight business was there.

Of course, such differences make no difference to a game or mod, because the whole point of such a mod is to see what happens when you do things differently. The worst thing would be a mod that forces you to do exactly what happens in the original story. I look forward to making Radagast the Brown the hero!

	10-01-2004 08:35									#22
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on the moria subject you could possibly make it a barbian camp and give them a special balrog unit. what about umbar though and how are you going to trick the AI into attacking helms deep? Maby victory points? also settlers should be deleted so the shire dosent end up settling the whole west and kicking everyones butt

	10-01-2004 08:40									#23
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what about tech too maby when you get iron working you can get urakai or somthing? I was thinking about starting a lord of the rings mod my self and was loking for ideas when i found this. I was just planing on using the regular game units and each civ would recive there own few special units. what buildings should be used to? i was thinking about making units weeled too so then gondor would have to go through the black gate. would the dwarvs have there own nation they really dont do much in the book.

	16-01-2004 01:22									#24
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Hehe, you're right about getting the AI to attack Helm's Deep; it was hard enough in Civ 2, where I did modify the excellent ROTK scenario whereby a number of Uruk Hai/ Berserker/ Siege Ballista units were created outside Helm's Deep using force-timed events, but even then they'd only actually attack Helm's Deep if I put invisible units a couple of spaces from HD to exert a ZOC and stop them running off to take Edoras... which was pretty unwieldy. It's hard to imagine it working for Civ 3.

	16-01-2004 03:08									#25
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Will Flak units shoot down the winged Nazgul? ha! j/k

Good luck on this- LotR scenarios are always a challenge.

	27-01-2004 09:15									#26
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I acutally started on this I made all units wheled so the ura-kai would have to go through helms deep. Please I only have 2 techs and since it would be such a short senario what else would I put in it? p.s if you want me to give you the mod so far request it and ill e-mail it to you. i need a few more opnions.

	27-01-2004 19:39									#27
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There's a complete scenario based around the fellowship just been completed and posted at Civfanatics...