"War of the Ring" thread

[Endoperez]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
We missed leadership. Next patch.

Regarding themes: change the units in a theme is fully possible. In the map file you can force the player to play with the theme IIRC.

A more direct way of adding and changing themes will probably come in the nex patch.

Is this still going to be added? When? In "the next patch"? It isn't that important, but would be nice.

[Kristoffer O]

Themes was not as easy to change as I thought. I'm not sure what JK's opinion is, but he said it would be a bit of a bother.

[Cheezeninja]

Since im fairly new to the forum and this is the first time i've seen this thread i just want to say it looks awesome and i cant wait for the mod.

It seems that Pangea carrion woods would be awesome for Isenguard.. as Saruman did the majority of creative crossbreeding with orcs. Although im not quite sure how Blood Slaves and Saruman go together.

I think an awesome way to run the whole ring/frodo thing would be to somehow make it so that You can only have Sauron as a corporeal pretender when you have the one ring in your possession. You could place Sauron with some other orcs already in a province with superior Good force on the first turn, causing the death of Sauron and the aquirement of the ring by the forces of good. Perhaps the only commander present could be a certain hobbit... I have absolutely no idea what goes into modding, but it would work out well if the good side started with the ring, Sauron was a monster SC, and you couldnt call him back unless you re-obtained the ring. Give the Nezgul Assassination so they can go after hobbits with rings, and make them from one of the units that have a specific number you can summon, and re-summon when they die.
Wait! Ok, hard wire the one ring to a hobbit, make it horror mark him, and change the horrors into Nezgul... and then if Sauron has an inkling where the hobbit is he can cast Send Nezgul. I suppose you could make the ring a Unique Artifact that does some really good AND bad stuff. There has to be some reason for the good player to take it out of their laboratory, maybe it could have a permanent gem income, be cursed, and cause horror marking. Then when the Nezgul kill the hobbit it can be reforged with a large number of death gems... representing the effort of getting it back to mordor and giving the forces of good a chance to try and re-forge (find) it first. What happens if 2 teams attempt to forge a unique artifact on the same turn?


I also think Mordor should start out with the ability to scry somehow to represent the eye of sauron.

Again i have no idea if its possible to mod any of these things into the game, im just throwing out ideas. This email ended up changing from a statement of anticipation to a long rambling post. I hope some of my ideas helped at least a little.

[ April 23, 2004, 17:05: Message edited by: Cheezeninja ]

[JaydedOne]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
Themes was not as easy to change as I thought. I'm not sure what JK's opinion is, but he said it would be a bit of a bother.

Here's something I don't get -- aside from obviously coded effects specific to themes (like destructive domain), don't you pretty much replicating the creation of a theme every time you mod a nation? In theory, I could, given enough typing and use of Photoshop, remake Last of the Tuatha for Man as a mod if IW decided tomorrow it shouldn't exist anymore. I couldn't force anyone to take certain scales (although it could be recommended in the design doc) and I couldn't set up a design point price (which, admittedly, might be a shortcoming if trying to create better-than-average themes which required balancing) but I could alter heroes, change out selectable units, offer different starting sites, etc.

Is there some other way to end-around theme creation by basically setting up mod commands to force certain scales or design point costs (perhaps just increasing cost for all Pretenders for that mod nation), effectively jury-rigging themes even if the mod name itself doesn't appear as a "selectable" theme?

What other issues am I forgetting? Are any of these ideas workable?

[Gateway103]

Perhaps one can make Sauron a nation-specific immobile pretedner with only 1 misc slot, and give this nation (probably ermor) a special transformation spell castable only by Sauron with The Ring.

Say perhaps Sauron is the only one with 8 Death magic (restrict death gem to Mordor only?), and he'll need the ring to give him +2 Death to be able to cast the transformation spell.

Problem is that you have to make sure he can't empower himself or boost his death level via items, which entail item and site editing. Or if possible, edit the cost to empower him in death to 999 gems or greater, which effectively negates the possibility (don't think this is possible right now).

Although that doesn't limit empowering of other mages... And this would only work for human player... I doubt the AI will give the Ring to Sauron if it can get it...

Just some not very useful thoughts...

-Gateway103

[gladestrider]

Interesting discussion. A big thanks to whoever bumped it up.

For what it's worth, I did this:

(1) Took the ME map that was announced on this forum Last month.

(2) Modded the map to support two players: Gondor/Iron Hills/Rivendell and Mordor/Isengard/North Mirkwood. I had originally planned to do a 6-player mod with those 6 nations, but I play mostly SP so I haven't been motivated.

I have a handful (not all) of the characters assigned to various starting points. Shelob is in her spot, as is Treebeard. I also put in Smaug and the Balrog, just for fun. Hmm, The Watcher in the Lake (at the back door to Moria) is there, plus the Necromancers in Dol-Guldor (I think that's what it's called).

(3) I modded the nations of Man and Ermor to Gondor and Mordor (respectively), rebuilt their recruitable unit lists to include elves, dwarves, and men for Gondor and Uruk-hai, Orcs (and wargs), and Trolls for Mordor. All of the units are existing units that have been modded, as opposed to units with new graphics (I didn't want to bother with artwork yet.)

I intended to make Sauron the creature (Moloch? I can't remember) that looks like a big flame and mod it to make it immobile, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

The Ringwraiths are all granted via the map file--they are not recruitable, but they are immortal. Frankly, they're turning out to be dirty bastards, so some tuning is in order there.

Note: Nothing is more refreshing that capturing a province with an army of hobbits.

The units need a lot of tuning, but it's moving along. If anyone ever does any artwork (even if it's just banners), I would appreciate it if they'd share.

Please keep the ideas flowing!

PS. JK or K, I would really like a way to override the #poptype recruiting lists for a province. In other words, I'd like to clear out the #poptype list and build my own, so I can put Ents in Fanghorn, Elves in Lorien, Rohirrim in Rohan, etc., like this:

#clearpoptype
#addreccom "Goblin Warg Chief"
#addrecunit "Goblin Warg Rider"
#addrecunit "Goblin Arrow Fodder"

As it is, the "fortress recruit list" for each nation is huge and I have to exercise discipline to not recruit them where they shouldn't be (Captains of Gondor in the Iron Hills, Elves in Gondor, Uruk-Hai in Mirkwood, etc.)

gs

[HotNifeThruButr]

Nice, ambitious mod

Anyways, the head is Baphomet