12-08-2000 09:10									#61
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Theoretically Aragorn should have a chance but he always lose to Sauran . I have tested it a dozen of times. Seems fortress and fortification do not help in defense against air raid.

Nazguls can stay in the air if they try to attack your air units. They can stay their forever as far as you put an air unit there for them to attack. When you move the air unit they will follow. Using this you can lure the Nazguls to a plain or grass terrain then use Gandalf to kill them. Another way is use Aragorn on mountain and put one or two eagles in the same square. The Nazguls will attack the Eagles and get killed by Aragorn.

Submarine units lose their invisibility when carrying missiles. That's why Frodo always gets spotted.

Ah. Maybe you play FW and I play MPE? MPE Version could have made the AI civs stronger in battle.
[This message has been edited by Xin Yu (edited August 11, 2000).]

	12-08-2000 00:33									#62
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Just wondering, has anyone ever had any sucsess playing this scenario as Isengard, as I remember there being an option to?

I tried it first siding with Mordor- I captured that Yellow good guy civ, and most of Gondor proper, but then Mordor backstabbed me and kicked my but....

I then tried siding with good.. I captured a few Mordor cities, including the one with the Baelrog- I did pretty good but ran out of time- Mabye more time should be allowed if you are playing as Isengrad?

	12-08-2000 01:15									#63
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That was kind of my point Xin. You're probably better than me at this scenario but that includes the fact taht you use shortcuts. I tried to make my game as close to the book as possible. When Gandalf killed a Nazgul, the part of the fight on the High Galgals popped in my mind so on. Kind of explains why I never though of diplomacy teleportation or Nazgul Traps. Anyway I totally agree with Harlan. Our role as scenario editor is not only to find more tricks but more importantly fix them as I think the game is more fun without them. And Black Dragon in version 3 I could win with Isengard (not take all cities but almost). You're right the hardest thing was to know when Mordor would attack you and attack them the turn right before and get the backstabbing bonus (or the civ-equivalent ). We'll try to make such a scenario for our new version if possible. And Harlan sorry i'll go check out that version I'll be back with more comments. In your e-mail you gave me the differences yoru friend added. Can you give me the list of diff beetween 4.0 and 4.1? I think what I'll give is a list of changes I think are needed for either 4.1 or your friend's scenario. BTW did he build his on 4.0 or 4.1??

	12-08-2000 01:25									#64
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My point is that I need to know which is considered the most up-to-date version (4.1 or your friend's) once this is known, we can make a list of thing to be done and once we agree do them. I think this protocol is pretty obvious and simple. I'll try to figure by myself which is the new one but you probably knwo and could save me time.

	12-08-2000 01:32									#65
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Ok I have jsut checked the catfish version (this is the best way to describe it). It has a lot of changes. I assume it is based on ver 4.1 because for example the islands are gone too (although it is possible you bought thought about it idependataly I dont think its the case). So I assume the catfish is the most up to date version we should start working with .( Btw why is the lordring.scn in catfish a few bytes different from the lordring from ver 4.1??). So anybody who wants to help here should get the catfish version. Personnaly i think its better to start with gameplay changes than aestethic changes. So even though some graphics definetly will need to change we'll start with gameplay. I'll get back with a few short comments soon and more a bit later.

	12-08-2000 01:52									#66
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Ok Catfish is definetly based on 4.1
I'm starting a game, lvl emperor playing as Gondor. Give me a few days for full comments. I won't use any cheap tricks (as defined by myself) although I'll test them after the game to see if they work.
Xyu plz get this ver as soon as u can if u dont ahve it and help me playtest it.

	12-08-2000 03:27									#67
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OK, I'll look into the 'catfish' version. Please give me a place to download (my hotmail e-mail account is almost full so I may not receive large files via e-mail. If you want to send me the scn via e-mail, have the files zipped).

The tech tree needs some work. Currently there's nothing worthes research for.

The ability to build settlers should be taken off. This way the human player will be reluctant to use his limited settlers to build cities.

This scenario is already hard enough, why should we make it harder? Unless, we make a hot seat version of it: Play Gondor, Elven, and Rhun in turn to coordinate the good force.

	12-08-2000 05:30									#68
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Xin,
The Catfish files are at least 1/2 MB, even if zipped. Can you handle that? There's no website to get them from.

As I said, I'm pretty burned out on this scenario, so I'm happy to leave it up to whomever cares such issues as settlers, new techs and so on. My only caveats are that A) ya'll try to be as true to the books as possible, and B) I can veto changes I really don't like.

That aside, Xin I'd like to see if you have antidotes to things like teleportation short of having "house rules", which is always a last resort. Most of those problems are gonna be there Catfish or 4.1. Some of them, like Nazgul traps, I'm stumped to think of anything. On that particular one, as a last resort, just keep having the Nazgul reborn, so long as Barad-dur hasn't fallen? But one could also just keep them frozen in one place for turns on end, no?

And Lul, as you seem to have figured out, the Catfish version is definitely based on the 4.1. I think the .scn file named Lordring is different cos he put his most recent changes in there, but you'll have to check it out to be sure.

	12-08-2000 05:46									#69
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The tech tree does need some work although I'm not sure it's a good idea to add good research (on first turn I sell libraries and university and put luxury at 30 %) it just doesnt fit with the books. I totally agree with Harlan about sticking as close to books as possible. I don't mind NAzgul traps that much it's ok if they stay in I just never use them personnaly. Taking settlers off isnt a bad idea at all. I think u say the scenario is hard because u set your expectations to high. You don;t have to be able to take all cities within time limit at deity. If this is unachievable, it doesn't mean the sce is too hard. I'll get back with more stuff once I've done more playtesting.
BTW I;ve never done any sce I bet I could mangae somethings but I'll definetly need help for the harder stuff. Now where do your competence on this stand Xin?

------------------
"But no living man am I."-Eowyn
Many have become chess masters -- no one has become themaster of chess. -Siegbert Tarrasch
The meaning of victory is not to defeat your enemy but to destroy him,to eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his every achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can recover. That is the meaning of victory. Lord Commander Solar Macharius

	12-08-2000 09:09									#70
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Allo allo, what's all this then?

I don't know what stuff of mine you've sent these guys, Harlan, but my files are based on version 4.1. I haven't touched them for what must be half a year now and have not played Civ2 for nearly a year, so I'm a bit rusty on what's going on.

I'll give a brief summary of some of my changes.

Shelob was missing from the original and was added to Minas Morgul. You won't need to add Shelob to the Events file - apart from that, this file is virtually full.

If you actually go through the Events and Rules files, you'll notice that Harlan has included some techs which have no purpose in the game whatsoever. It's obvious that part way through the development of the scenario, Harlan discovered alternative methods. I never bothered to remove them - they're basically harmless.

It was possible in the original version (4.1) to donate impossible units to your allies. They then acquired the prerequisite tech for these units and were then able to produce them. I fixed this problem by adding a few obsolete techs and gave them to the appropriate tribes.

I left settlers in, but prevented the Elves and Rohan from being able to produce them using the donation method, mentioned above.

Added Industrialization and Automobile techs to provide Rohan and the Elves with unique city styles.

Fixed the shield background problem in cities.gif

I halved the movement of the horsed Nazgul and doubled its range. I never actually playtested this feature, but Harlan liked the idea. In my ToT version, I actually had some of my Nazgul invisible as well.

I gave Saruman the ability to attack air units. The Game.txt said he could, but in fact he couldn't.

There was the problem of both The Balrog and Galadriel suiciding, the latter running out of fuel. Ignoring the possibility of these units attacking powerful defenders, make sure the AI is set to 3 (air superiority) to avoid these suicides. I hadn't touched Civ2 for a few months before I sent these files to Harlan and I believe I may have sent him a mixture of old and new - without some of the more recent changes.

Many of the other changes I made were cosmetic, adding bits and pieces to various files - I'm not going to detail them all here.

I think many of my units' graphics are place holders or partially complete, so I hope I don't see them floating around the net with my name attached without my consent. I'm sure I have more since working on the ToT graphics.

Bear in mind that all my changes were meant for my version only. I never intended to release them on the net - at least until Harlan got wind of them .

If you guys nag me enough, I might get back into it again - I've been in Civ2 hibernation. I'd probably prefer to leave the Civ2 version alone and work on a ToT version if I did anything at all. My main concern really was just to fix some of the outstanding bugs rather than redesign the scenario.

	12-08-2000 11:42									#71
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Hey Cat.
Well my main concern is that I have never done any scenario design. How about I tell you a few things that could be changed and you tell if it is possible.
I'm ready to do a lot more cosmetic change myeslf( for example add descriptions in the pedia for units and such).
Get me back on this

------------------
"But no living man am I."-Eowyn
Many have become chess masters -- no one has become themaster of chess. -Siegbert Tarrasch
The meaning of victory is not to defeat your enemy but to destroy him,to eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his every achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can recover. That is the meaning of victory. Lord Commander Solar Macharius

	13-08-2000 00:51									#72
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My starting strategy:

The far southern front
Rely on road pillaging and amphibious attacks by Faramir to hold off the Harad in the south. Once your southern front is safely protected the Harad will basically stonewall against your defenses there. This should give you enough time to build up a fleet and destroy the harad ships while still on sea. Some seem to move along the east coast towards you so you might get lucky with 4 ships destroyed in one turn!
You can later use these ships to ferry units around. You'll have to, as most roads leading to Harad will be cut by now.

Minas Tirith:
Pillaging is the key, destroy every fort/road next to the river. Don't destroy the road close to the mountains leading to Minas Tirith! Reinforcements will have to be shipped to MT later in the game this way.


Isengard:
I only try to take this when I have enough Ents and Gandalf/Aragon nearby. I usually try to destroy some roads near Mordor while I still can and prevent them from crossing the river.

The north:
I usually try to stonewall my opponents here. Build up your defenses and destroy roads to slow them down. How you use Radagast is up to you but I usually move him south. Also try to protect that Eaglecity.

Frodo and the Ring:
I'm doing this the classic way, read the book.


It worked for me in the end, fingers crossed when I slipped Frodo and Gollem into Mordor and let them camp out on Mount Doom. I wasn't attacked, so by by Sauron!

	16-08-2000 00:11									#73
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Lots more discussion since I last checked out this place!

Catfish:
All your changes sound good with one glaring exception: Saruman attacking air units. The readme.txt and the books imply that Saruman was unable to stop the Ents. Giving him the power to attack air would make the D=4 Ents way too easy to defeat. Even if you countered by giving the Ents power to attack air, they are soooo slow and of course Saruman is a vet unit with D=10(vet 15) and 70 hps! Plus all around Isengard are hills and mountains giving him effectely double or triple defense. Even Gandalf cannot generally defeat him unless he stops on one of the few non-river plains or grass squares. Also, IIRC when a unit with the ability to attack air is attacked by air in a city, it receives X 4 defense: "Your Saruman scrambles to defend Isengard". As others have noticed, Isengard is already hard enough to defeat. There's no reason to make it harder.

CapTV:
How do you defend MT with Faramir moved south to take on Harad? All the Olog Hai plus The Grond around there always force me to keep him hanging around MT. Just one Olog Hai planted on the hills next to MT will kill two Pikemen every single turn. Two Olog Hai will kill four, etc.

Up north, how do you keep the Nazgul from killing all the Eagles in Eagle's Eyrie(sp)? Radagast and the Eagles can't attack Nazgul.

	16-08-2000 03:22									#74
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Sieve Too: I have refined my strategy to deal with the Nazguls.
The first turn, use Gandalf to attack an Orc unit on hills (3 squares west of Eagles' Eyrie) to punch a hole to the Orc wall. Move Gandalf to SOUTH of the square then attack. Two Nazguls from Moria will try to attack Gandalf afterwards. On turn two let Gandalf back to Rivendale to have a rest, and move TWO eagles to the mountain square SE of the Nazguls, along with Aragorn (who can barely reach that square on turn two). The Nazguls will suicide against Aragorn. This will help the Elven city to hold out longer.
Also on the first turn, move Radagast to two squares NW of the Mordor city north to Rivendale. And on turn 2 move him one more square to northwest. Two Nazguls will try to attack him and stuck in the air on a plain square. Turn 3 Gandalf can kill the two Nazguls in one blow.
Use 'Nazgul traps' to let two Nazguls (one SW to rivendale, one north to hobbiton) crash. Then use Gandalf to kill the other Nazgul threatening Hobbiton.
Evacuate all non-city square in the South and pillage the roads and fortresses next to MT. The Nazguls will not attack the cities if you have a lot of units inside. They'll move North to attack the Elven city.
Wait till Aragorn is recovered then move him close to Moria, on a rivered mountain square and fortify him. Put the eagles above him to attract Nazguls. They should soon come and suicide against Aragorn (not tested).

Other tips:
Move Sam and Merry to north, trying to protect the Northern city. They'll arrive on turn 5 so I don't know if it is always possible to be on time.
Move Pippin south to escort for Frodo and the ring.
The Mordor Orcs will pillage the fortress on the road connecting Rivendale and the Cossack (?). After Legolas becomes vet let him kill the orcs on the way and move Boromir to the Cossack to protect the city.
Move Gimli through the hole of Orc wall to eagle's Eyrie and protect the city.
After the Nazguls are defeated use Aragorn and Gandalf to occupy Moria.
Using Ents and eagles to occupy all Isengard cities except its capital. Then concentrate your forces (Aragorn, Gandalf, Treebeard, Eomer, Legolas, ..., and a couple of ents) to attack the capital. The first 4 units are tough to kill.

	16-08-2000 04:02									#75
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Sounds like some good ideas Xin Yu!

Question on using Radagast to attract Nazgul: When Gandalf attacks on turn 3, he hasn't recovered yet. Turn 1 he kills an tough Orc (and being a non-vet, he often takes quite a beating), turn 2 he goes back to Rivendel, turn 3 he's supposed to attack the two stacked Nazgul before resting a full turn. Do you mean turn 4 instead of 3? If so, Radagast will have to find something else to do for a turn.

Moving Gimli to Eagle's Eyrie: This will take a few turns since he doesn't have "all as roads" or "ignore ZOC" attributes. Suggest moving Merry there instead. He has both attributes as well as x2 versus air and can defeat attacking Nazgul, as well as anything else.

Moving Sam and Merry north(Lossoth?): I dunno if it's worth it trying to save that one isolated small city. Tying up two heros seems like quite a sacrefice. Here's what I do: I move a vet Hobbit and one of the vet Dunedain you get at the start up there and rush buy another Dunedain. The Dunedain can see 2 squares and hopefully detect incoming Wolves. If you also rush a Settler on turn 1, you can start mining the square to forest. After that, the vet Hobbit behind walls is enough.

Boromir protecting The Cossack: Again, I try to get a Hobbit there. On turn 1, the Settler starts mining the city square to forest. After that you have defense bonuses from rivers, forest and walls. Before that, an Eagle can defend reasonably well too.

I notice you didn't mention the south. At least initially, the major concern is Harad. Without a hero, you can't defeat any Mumakil that land. I try to get Boromir down that ASAP. He has the fastest movement.

	16-08-2000 04:56									#76
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Sieve Too: I tried to use longboat chains to move hobbits to South. They should arrive on turn 4. Before that I use warships to attack Harad ships before they reach my shore. Gimli and Boromir can reach the carrock and Eagles' Eyrie as early as turn 4, faster than the hobbits. Boromir will free the units at the Carrock so I can move them to Hobbiton and disband them. Then I'll use the hobbits to replace Boromir and Gomli so they can move East to attack the Rhun. The Eagle city will be attacked by a lot of tough units so I use Gomli (defense 6) instead of Merry. Merry and Sam go north to eliminate the Mordor force there since you need to deal with them anyway. Radagast and Gwaihir will join them there. After they become vets they can launch attacks to occupy Mordor cities.

Gandalf has another life so I let him attack on turn 3. I wish there are other ways to keep the Nazgul there for one more turn .
[This message has been edited by Xin Yu (edited August 15, 2000).]

	15-09-2000 22:55									#77
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I just pulled new copies of some scenarios to stock my new PC and I got LotR version 4.0 which I think I got from either the Apoly database or St Leo's Zig. I must have had v1 or v2 before because this one looks totally different. But I have those non-restarting civ unconquerable islands to the southwest, so it must be 4.0. Do any of you know where v4.1 happens to reside?

v4.0 is much more difficult than the old version that I had previously, I just ran the first turn yesterday and got butchered using my old version strategy. With the 2fp of most Mordor/Rhun/Harad units the pikeman bonus is negated, unless you are using them to defend against your own units. The extra landings around MT and weak defending terrain for Gondor mandates pillaging then evacuate to the cities and surrounding hills. 2x air for orcs limits the effectiveness of eagles and wizards, Mumakils don't get smacked by catapults anymore and Ents can't hitch a long boat ride to MT. Still a lot of extra city improvements that can be sold off... but every little bit helps.

I can tell that I am going to have to give this version 4+ some time, but I might as well get v4.1.

Thanks.
[This message has been edited by Sten Sture (edited September 16, 2000).]

	16-09-2000 22:05									#78
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1. Sieve Too, the Version on ACS in not 4.0 it is 4.1 or was 3 weeks ago when I download my copy.

2. Xin, I can tell you that I Deity for LOR 4.1 you may want to rethink some of your strategy. If you keep churning out defensive units along the river you need to have something that can stand up to the armada of gallies that Mordor puts on the river. I made it to turn 10 or 11 before I messed up and moved the ring without waiting for Frodo. I lost a lot of cities, but at about turn 8 Harun went to war with Mordor and cleaned out a lot of my problems. One thing I'm going to try this next time is go get a settler into Eagles Eyre and Entwood as soon as possible. If you can't get those cities go grow faster then you spend all your gold building eagles and Ents and use up your support too fast.

Ken

	17-09-2000 00:00									#79
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I just DLed the ACS LotR file and it is v4, but it has the weird indestructable islands in the southwest. Is that v4.0 or 4.1?? The .scn file is dated 4/25/98 at 1:17am and the events.txt file is dated 4/5/98 3:55pm. Which version is this? Help.

	17-09-2000 01:46									#80
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Ken: not that river. I meant the rivers and sea of south which you can use to transport hobbits from hobbiton to MT. Your transports have a move rate of 8 so you don't need a lot of them.

SS: you have V4.0. V4.1 does not have the small cities on the SW corner.

	17-09-2000 02:55									#81
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I just opened the version from Leo's site and it is v4 and it is missing the southwest islands, but the scn file is dated 4/20/98, as is the rules.txt.

The ACS version (with SW islands) of the scn and rules are both dated 4/25/98.

Unless I read Harlan & Lul's posts above incorrectly, it is not clear that v4.1 does't have the islands (even though Lul's statement of 8/10 implies that Harlan said that) and the later date would support the 4/25/98 files with the SW island cities.

I'll look at the rules files and see what the differences are.

*The April 20 no island version lists end tech prereqs as (no, no) and the April 25 island version has them listed as (Las, nil).

[This message has been edited by Sten Sture (edited September 16, 2000).]

	17-09-2000 11:12									#82
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Well, I just tried the settler thing for assisting the Eagles and the Ents.

1. Settlers gotta have big time support, e.g., tanks with AP sabot rounds and a couple of Missouris or Iowas for backup.
2. Settlers are slow movers even with help from rivers. Orcs and Nuzgul are not.

On the plus side I did find a non-hero unit that can toast an Offensive Orc. A vet catapult inside of a city wall and river defense bonus just barely survives if it attacks an Orc that also has a river bonus.

Also, don't be dumb like someone, who will remain nameless, and forget that Faramir only has a defense of one and let him get stuck on the wrong side of the river at the end of his turn.

Ken