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hexagonian
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Gnawing on your mind...
Jun 1999 time: 23:21
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Having more or less completed my work on Cradle (with the exception of the Visible Wonders coding, which willl be the last element that I will actively put in Cradle), I'm turning my attention to a possible new project...one that has been kicked around a lot on this forum, but never has been realized...
A War of the Ring Scenario, based on Tolkien's Middle Earth. I haven't decided if I want to concentrate on the First or Second War of the Ring. The First War would actually be an easier fit, but the Second War offers a greater depth in characters, and it is this one I am leaning towards.
It would be similar to the Alexander scenario - probably not as complex though, as I want greater control over what the AI can accomplish.
It will also be a war scenario - no tossing the Ring into Mt. Doom...and it will not be a Mod. The map will be premade - and units and cities will be in place already. Some SLIC files may be needed.
And I may need a playtester or two - I'm asking Ben as my first choice as tester as I know he is a Tolkien fan, and he can offer the help I will need in certain areas. Files will not be released until it is done. No betas as per my Cradle setup.
I was doing a lot of thinking this past weekend as to how I would go about doing this, and I have some definite ideas that might work. I'm not going to reveal much of them either at this point in time - at least not publically, because since this is a Scenario, many of those elements need to be discovered while playing.
My Cradle files will be the base from which I will work from.
I'm not going to make any promises that this will get done though, but it is something I think I can pull off.
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Peter Triggs
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Gone Fishin, Canada
Jan 2000 time: 05:21
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quote:
The trick is to get each of those civs to work against the rival 4 - something that I do not think can be done effectively. There needs to be no war between the allies.
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Getting the two groups of allies should be no problem. I doubt though that we'll ever see co-ordinated Allied attacks though.
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Turambar
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England
Apr 2002 time: 05:21
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quote: Originally posted by hexagonian
I would love to be able to pull this off - it is similar in concept to the use of goods to create particular units but this has not been pulled off yet though. Again, a question to the SLICers if cities can be limited in the type of unit it can create. |
Perhaps units could be linked to the buildings in a city in some way? That would make the units available to each city unique within a civ and the buildings could then be made obsolete through tech. I'm not sure if this would be possible though.
Would you also have character units such as Aragorn etc?
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Peter Triggs
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Gone Fishin, Canada
Jan 2000 time: 05:21
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quote:
I would love to be able to pull this off - it is similar in concept to the use of goods to create particular units but this has not been pulled off yet though. Again, a question to the SLICers if cities can be limited in the type of unit it can create.
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IIRC, in the WW2 scenario they used some mod_XXX functions so that only German cities could build German tanks and likewise for the French.
Didn't IW start a LOTR scenario? He's probably put some thought into this.
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ískallin
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of the Republic of Iceland
Mar 2002 time: 05:21
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I hardly now any SLIC but i am a ultra-gigantic-super-extra fan of Tolkien i have read all of his books 4-5 times
and you could get up to 5 cities in Rohan:
Edoras, Dunharrow, Eastfold, Westfold, Helms Deep
and 7 cities in Gondor:
Minas Tirith, Dol Amroth, Linthir, Tarnost, Pelargir, Edhellond, Calembel.
at least 7 cities in Mordor:
Barad Dúr, Durthang, Minas Morgul, Morannon, Tower of Cirith Ungol, Morgai
But other Cities of the Darkness are:
Gundebad, Dol Guldur and Isengard
only one city in Near Harad:
Umbar the City of the Corsairs
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J Bytheway
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England
Jul 2001 time: 05:21
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quote: Originally posted by Turambar
He did create them in the books.
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No, he created orc-human crossbreeds. The Uruk-hai were already around and were purebred orcs. That is what it says here:
http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/movie.html
(Penultimate bullet point in 'Major changes from the book to the film')
I trust that source, and with a little more research I found this quote from the same website:
quote: In Appendix A (iv) of The Lord of the Rings, in the section recounting the history of the Stewards, we find an account of the first appearance of the uruks. 'In the last years of Denethor I the race of uruks, black orcs of great strength, first appeared out of Mordor, and in 2475 they swept across Ithilien and took Osgiliath.' This passage seems to imply that the uruks actually appeared shortly before Gondor's great defeat of III 2475. |
The creatures that Saruman created should also be represented in the scenario, perhaps.
quote: And Goblins are the same thing as Orcs in Middle Earth Tolkien just used that name in the Hobbit as it was aimed at a younger audience. There is a variety of Orc however that you could use instead called Snaga (I think) that were smaller and used for tracking/scouting (if I remember correctly). |
From the same site again (it's a great Tolkien reference) Snaga is:
quote: A contemptuous term for the lesser Orcs of Mordor and Isengard, used especially among the larger and stronger Uruk-hai. It comes from a word in the Black Speech meaning 'slave'. |
There is some marginal suggestion that goblins referred to the smaller kinds of orc, from the foreword of the hobbit:
quote: [The word 'Orc'] occurs in one or two places but is usually translated goblin (or hobgoblin for the larger kinds). |
But I would rather that reference to goblins be avoided if possible because such arguments are tenuous at best. Better just to have orcs and uruks.
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hexagonian
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Gnawing on your mind...
Jun 1999 time: 23:21
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Thanks for the imput so far. Because this is most likely to be a two-civ game, the basic units will have to be somewhat generic in nature, as all cities will be producing the units. Somehow, I do not think there is a way to have city-specific units in this type of setup. I do think that the AI will be more focused if it is limited to a single civ, and based on the fact that there are not a whole lot of cities to work with in the first place, limiting the human to a single civ might be for the best. Too bad CTP2 does not have hotseat...
Anyhow, if I start off with this format, I can expand it later to include multiple civs.
-Snaga will be replacing Goblins
-Uruk-Hai will be changed to Uruks (more encompassing)
I actually have 4 classes of Black Riders/Nazguls. There will be the full Nine in the game, and they will be in at the start, although, the Witch King might be a wonder unit created by a branch that only Mordor can research.
2 lower class Black Riders
2 upper class Black Riders
4 Nazgul
1 Witch King
I'm thinking of doing the same for Gandalf the White, but there may be 2 Gandalfs in the game then...
Grond is something that may make its way in, but since it is siege-specific, having it either on the front lines of a non-city battle or operating as a ranged unit might be out of character. Still, I'm leaning to include it.
The whole city size issue has already been worked out - I ran some tests tonight...
Turamber - I might take you up on the GL entries. Let me finish the basic Modded files that I need to do, and I'll send them to you to implement. It may be a few more weeks though, as there is a lot of stuff to do.
My main goal is to get all of the basic files set up with all of the additions, and then make sure its all stable. Tweaking numbers is the easy part.
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Locutus
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ACS CTP1/2 Manager & Civ4 Co-Manager
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Hengelo, The Netherlands
Nov 1999 time: 06:21
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quote: Originally posted by hexagonian
Somehow, I do not think there is a way to have city-specific units in this type of setup. |
Why not? There have been numerous scenarios that did it already. Alexander, WWII, Frederick the Great, and I've helped several other people set up a similar thing. If you have cities, you can have city-specific units, it's really easy to do. And I think you *should* do it as well, get the advantages of both: playing with 2 civs gives better AI results, playing with more than 2 civs adds greatly to the atmosphere of fighting in an alliance. If the city and unit sprites of the Elves are different from those of the Humans and Dwarfs, that will greatly add to the atmosphere of the game.
Also, I think you may want to consider using some more fantasy sprites. You're using all regular-game sprites while there are some quite nice looking dragons, elves (use amazons! :cute , goblins, etc out there. IW's website has a bunch but I think I could even find more if I went through my archive. Such sprites would greatly add to the atmosphere as well, even if they are of a slightly lower standard than Activision's/Morgoth's sprites.
quote: Too bad CTP2 does not have hotseat... |
Actually, it does. What John said...
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Turambar
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England
Apr 2002 time: 05:21
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I think multiple civs would be better and reflect what happened better. If you have one civ controlling Gondor, Elves and Dwarves then you could end up with Cirden sending a fleet of Elven ships packed with dwarves from the Ered Luin down to fight in Gondor.
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hexagonian
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Gnawing on your mind...
Jun 1999 time: 23:21
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quote: Originally posted by Locutus
Why not? There have been numerous scenarios that did it already. Alexander, WWII, Frederick the Great, and I've helped several other people set up a similar thing. If you have cities, you can have city-specific units, it's really easy to do. And I think you *should* do it as well, get the advantages of both: playing with 2 civs gives better AI results, playing with more than 2 civs adds greatly to the atmosphere of fighting in an alliance. If the city and unit sprites of the Elves are different from those of the Humans and Dwarfs, that will greatly add to the atmosphere of the game.
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Boy, I thought I would be able to knock this out in a few weeks...But it looks like this will become one of those projects that will evolve over time. (sort of like Cradle did!!!) The nice thing about this is once I get the pieces in place concerning the foundation files (units, advances, buildings and so forth) these additional things probably can be added in easily, or at least tried.
Still, having multiple civs will make it harder for a player to beat the game, because he will have less control over what the other allied civs are doing.
My one thought on all of this is that since this will be a scenario instead of a random map setup, players will have a feel for how to beat it after playing it, so I do want to limit public releases - and as such, I want to limit who I have testing the setup too.
Question
Will the SLIC file that enables allied situations conflict with the current Diplomod/Frenzy files, as those files have a tendency to foster war between all civs in the game (one of the main reasons whyI wanted to limit it to a 2 civ game)
And I will need someone to give me the relevant SLIC code for civ-specific units, but I will not need it for a few weeks, I'm guessing.
quote: Originally posted by Locutus
Also, I think you may want to consider using some more fantasy sprites. You're using all regular-game sprites while there are some quite nice looking dragons, elves (use amazons! :cute , goblins, etc out there. IW's website has a bunch but I think I could even find more if I went through my archive. Such sprites would greatly add to the atmosphere as well, even if they are of a slightly lower standard than Activision's/Morgoth's sprites.
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I will have to take a look at the units that are available, but to be honest, I am happy with 95% of the units that I do have now - from a purely graphics standpoint too. Some of the futuristic CTP1/CTP2 units actually look good in this setup (for instance, the CTP2 War Walker makes an excellent Shelob)
And the CTP2 Zulu/CTP1 Warrior/Samauri/CTP2 Slaver are very good for the orcs/trolls
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