Middle-Earth 'War of the Ring' Scenario 1.0

hexagonian · November 30, 2002, 16:00

The Middle Eart 'War of the Ring' Scenario is now available for public play. Actually, it has been up at my site for a week or so...

I just ran 100 turns in a test on the hardest level with nothing more than setting up a queue for units. I did not move units either.

I lost half my cities to cities to Mordor (17/35). Granted, moving units to counter will lessen the losses, but the AI is a lean mean killing machine.

(and playing on lower levels should also reduce the damage, as the bonuses are reduced)

There's no shame in doing that either.

Here' the main readme.

If you are a first-time player, make sure you read this entire file and the Main Readme for all info. This mod also REQUIRES the most current Activision CTP2 Patch available at Apolyton.net, Modswapper and Cradle 1.3 through 1.32.

1. Install Activision Patch.

2a. Unzip 'Cradle' into the Activision\Call To Power 2 folder.
2b. Install 'lotr' into your Activision folder.
2c. Install 'lotr update' into your Activision folder

3. Install Modswapper. Modswapper should create a Desktop icon when installed (do not create a ‘Cradle’ Modswapper shortcut from your desktop). To activate the Scenario, load the CTP2 disk, and select ‘Quit’ if the game launches. Then double-click on the Modswapper icon on your desktop. This will give you the option to select the War of the Ring Mod – from there, the game will launch and you can select the Scenario option to load up the game.

Gamenotes - Play as Gondor – Mordor is a cakwalk

This is an beta version of the Scenario, so please note that there may be some balancing issues to address. There are some things to be aware of too (listed below).

1. Please do not exchange maps with Mordor, even though you may have the option to do so. As it stands now, most of you are very familiar with the world of Middle-Earth, so cut the AI a break – it needs all the help it can get – or maybe not...

2. Most of your units cannot move through unroadded Mountains (exception of Dwarves, Rangers and some of the special units). So cutting the roads into Mordor will cut off your entry points – and the object of the game is to totally defeat Sauron by conquest. Many of the Mordor units can move through mountains though. You will have the ability to build roads on regular mountains but not white or brown mountains. Also, roads take anywhere from 15-20 turns to complete, and all Tile Improvements have been increased in price.

3. IMPORTANT – HARD SETTING OPTION: Try to hold onto your cities, as they are the only ones you will get. If you lose a city and retake it, the corruption of Mordor will be so great that you will only be able to raze it. In the same way, taking Mordor cities will also only give you the option to raze them.

4. Some of your leader units cannot move from their city – this is not to reflect their inability to move but rather the choice they made in the books not to move. They do make great garrison units though, as they are powerful as defensive/bombard units.

5. Many of the other leader units in the game are there for atmosphere only, and losing those units will not affect your overall purpose of defeating Sauron. However, try to retain Strider and Gandalf because you will hasve the ability to upgrade them into more powerful units and Gandalf and Aragorn are the only units you have that can reform a city.

6. Some of the Mordor garrison units are very powerful (they have a lot of HP) because of a SLIC issue that forces me to reduce the number of garrison units from what I had planned. Basically, having too many garrison units causes ALL AI units to fortify and not move at all. I needed to have certain areas heavily garrisoned to prevent the human player from simply marching into an undefended Mordor.

I am hoping for some creative SLIC suggestions to add a more atmospheric element to the Scenario. Please note where you had successes and where you had failures – so I can make adjustments to fix those areas in the Scenario.

hexagonian · November 30, 2002, 16:17

I just noticed that the install readme has some inaccurate info - the info above is correct, but make sure you do the following, as this is not reflected in the readme that comes with the download

2a. Unzip 'Cradle' into the Activision\Call To Power 2 folder.
2b. Install 'lotr' into your Activision folder.
2c. Install 'lotr update' into your Activision folder

HuangShang · November 30, 2002, 16:41

thats tight
new games...

Amesjustin · December 1, 2002, 23:42

Been playing this - pretty good start. It does need more atmosphere, as you said, but great job on this so far.

Very tough, I might add. Sauron handed me my ass rather quickly.

hexagonian · December 7, 2002, 09:23

So, is anyone playing this????

Immortal Wombat · December 7, 2002, 14:14

/me raises hand

I'm collecting my thoughts still. It's can be overwhelming at first with so many cities and units, and no clue as to where Mordor will strike.
I think Mordor's initial lack of focused attack means it is hard to raise a focused defense, and so harder to bide your time until you can get a reasonable attack. Maybe that's good

Is it possible to have all non-character units fortified at the beginning of the game? The first turn seems to take me ages.
Also, my navy just annoys me. Probably a personal preference thing.

Amesjustin · December 7, 2002, 14:36

This mod is good so far and VERY tough. Haven't won a game yet.

The first turn is a 20 minute one, but I expect there is little to do about that.

To add atmosphere, you might want a more detailed explanation of the unique characters both on your side and Gondors. The Gondor units can have the Mordor descriptions in the library, and the units can have a popup when they first appear.

I also had a strange experience - I came across Gollum creeping along the outskirts of one of my cities, and quickly dispatched him. I got a message saying that my killing of the Gollum unit has increased tensions with the land of Mordor, and they were not pleased. But I was already at war with Mordor.

I noticed you have other, disabled civs (dwarves, hobbits, etc). I think once those are all enabled the game will have more of a LOTR feel. You could start off each civ as relatively small, but in full-fledged alliances and excellent graces with each other against the much larger Mordor. They should have seperate tech trees as well.

I think the advances should be a little faster, too.

Can't wait to see what you do with this next!

hexagonian · December 7, 2002, 19:17

Quote:

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
I'm collecting my thoughts still. It's can be overwhelming at first with so many cities and units, and no clue as to where Mordor will strike.

Isn't that a good thing?????

Quote:

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
I think Mordor's initial lack of focused attack means it is hard to raise a focused defense, and so harder to bide your time until you can get a reasonable attack. Maybe that's good

I've played through 40 turns concentrating on stategies issues, and have lost and gain cities. Mordor does stack up units and does make thrusts into Gondor (currently I have a 6 stack and a 5 stack of Mordor units that snuck in to Anfalas and Dol Amroth, and with defenders at a premium, its getting dicey. I lost West Osgiliath and by the time I had units in place to try and retake, it was loaded with 12 units. Faramir and a stack died trying to retake...(I'm hitting the retreat button regularly now)

Quote:

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
Is it possible to have all non-character units fortified at the beginning of the game? The first turn seems to take me ages.

You need to know what you have available, and I do not know of an easier way to do that. Same with building queues. Its hard to cut down on the management for that first turn because you are playing a civ with 35 cities already in place.

Quote:

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
Also, my navy just annoys me. Probably a personal preference thing.

Navy is downplayed, but it can serve some purposes.

Quote:

Originally posted by Aimesjustin
I noticed you have other, disabled civs (dwarves, hobbits, etc). I think once those are all enabled the game will have more of a LOTR feel. You could start off each civ as relatively small, but in full-fledged alliances and excellent graces with each other against the much larger Mordor. They should have seperate tech trees as well.

The intial build was to see if I could get a game with a focused Mordor, and to streamline it so that Mordor would go all out against the human player. It is a goal for me to have multiple civs though

I still have some doubts that multiple civs (especially those that should be allied with the human player) would truly go against Morder and not the human player - and the city lists for some of these civs are rather thin too.

They are even thinner for civs allied with Mordor.

Ben has emailed me about SLIC issues, so his input will be invaluable, but at the same time, I'm hoping that there is enough interest in this to make it worthwhile to pursue.

I mean, I posted the files last weekend, and as of this morning, there were only 50 views to the thread and the responses - most of those views may not have tried this, so if only 5 or so went ahead and played it (and it seems to be very playable based on your report), then that's a lot of effort for little payoff.

There are only about 20-25 advances per civ in the game, so the research time does seem long. Advance research time can be cut down by playing at lower levels (and using the quicker Scenario setup) The main difference in the lower levels lies in incremental bonuses for the AI (which are offset by Mordor's slaving ability and PW bonuses), and there is a good sized hit on the human tech research rate on Hard to Impossible.

hexagonian · December 7, 2002, 21:39

Quote:

Originally posted by hexagonian
I've played through 40 turns concentrating on stategies issues, and have lost and gain cities. Mordor does stack up units and does make thrusts into Gondor (currently I have a 6 stack and a 5 stack of Mordor units that snuck in to Anfalas and Dol Amroth, and with defenders at a premium, its getting dicey. I lost West Osgiliath and by the time I had units in place to try and retake, it was loaded with 12 units. Faramir and a stack died trying to retake...(I'm hitting the retreat button regularly now)

Further play had those units split into two directions. One group dithered around Anfalas giving me enough time to assemble a force strong enough to deal with it - (as soon as I had seen the stacks, I headed units into their direction) - the other disappeared into the mountains and made a beeline to Harrowdale and promptly attacked it out of nowhere. I had units within the city that were able to stop them, but it was sheer luck that I did.

I will point out, that due to the size of the map, it is hard for Mordor to stack up unit as effectively as it could. There are probably too many single and 2 unit stacks that can be picked off by my stacks, but given time, they will stack up. And even the single units pop up out of nowhere, it seems, and cause me to scramble to counter them.

Based on the powergraph, Mordor is slowly out-building me in military. My hope (guess) is that Mordor is taking care of infrastructure and garrisoning, and then will start sending larger and larger stacks into Gondor.

One thing I do want to point out in relation to this is that there is an option currently in the LOTR setup that only give a player his initial core of 35 or so cities. Any additional cities captured from Mordor or recaptured back from Mordor are instantly razed to the ground.

Initially, this was the original intent of the Scenario, and makes the game especially challenging to play because defense is extremely critical, so if players are able to hold Mordor in place in the normal setup, then they ought to give that one a try.

hexagonian · December 14, 2002, 08:18

Just a bit of an update on the development front.

Ben and I are currently discussing SLICs, and what can be done to enhance this Scenario, so this project is moving forward.

Maquiladora · December 14, 2002, 09:03

Does that include scripted events?

I could do with some more simple examples to use myself.

Immortal Wombat · December 14, 2002, 14:42

Dunno about simple

Ok, some are simple enough to copy and paste out for other scenarios, the messages and so forth.

Incidentally, if people want to give suggestions, (I'm sure if Turambar pops in he'll have something to add) and hex gives them the go ahead from a gameplay point of view, I'll do my best to get 'em in.

Maquiladora · December 14, 2002, 16:53

Well okay not too simple i can understand most slic or maybe thats cause of those helpful comments

I think i can spawn units (havent tried yet looks simple tho) but i havent seen any example of moving units or telling them where/when to attack in any of the scenarios.

Turambar · December 14, 2002, 17:33

I'll give this a look on Monday most likely

.

HuangShang · December 15, 2002, 19:03

lol ill wait 10 dys for vacation to start
my life skill teacher loves to swamp the class w/ hw

stankarp · December 18, 2002, 05:52

I downloaded the two files but I cant get it to run.

LOTR is not showing up on my modswapper. I reloaded the patch, modswapper and the files again and still no LOTR.

My modswapper has cradle 1.2 and 1.33a (several versions of the latter)

MY modswapper contains a lot of old cradle and other mods. Could it be too full? How do I enter modswapper and delete some of the old mods? Any other thoughts?

hexagonian · December 18, 2002, 09:54

Make sure you have them unzipped into the correct directory - its different than Cradle - the files get unzipped into the folder that contains the Call To Power 2 folder. If you are not sure, unzip onto your main drive and copy the folders over the existing folders with the same directory structure.

To remove Modswapper options, look for the various (CRA...)_gamefile.txt files and delete all the ones you do not want.

Gonna see the movie tonight

ToonGoon · December 18, 2002, 13:56

Quote:

Originally posted by hexagonian

I'm hoping that there is enough interest in this to make it worthwhile to pursue.

I mean, I posted the files last weekend, and as of this morning, there were only 50 views to the thread and the responses - most of those views may not have tried this, so if only 5 or so went ahead and played it (and it seems to be very playable based on your report), then that's a lot of effort for little payoff.

I would love to be slapping (getting slapped by) Orcs right now but the holidays IMO make this a very difficult time for almost everyone to get a lot of time to play. Maybe once some holidays/vacations start people get a greater opportunity to spend some time with this.

Also, the LOTR:TTT being released in the US will most likely help this mod immensely.

Immortal Wombat · December 18, 2002, 20:28

By a peculiar set of circumstances, I ended up seeing TTT twice today

hexagonian · December 19, 2002, 00:23

So did my son - in fact, he may end up seeing it 4 times by the end of Saturday. Lucky stiff...

He got a last-minute call last night to go to the midnight show, then we all went tonight, another friend invited him to go Friday, and then he may go with me on Saturday.

Incredible movie, though I lean toward FOTR as the better movie - mainly because there was more emotional pull in that one (fall of Gandalf, death of Boramir) The Mines of Moria is still the best sequence so far, though I expect a lot of highlights in the third movie. I'm especially looking forward to the last battle outside the Black Gate. That'll be a killer...when Mordor pulls all the stops out to crush the Gondor rabble.

Gollum is incredible, that much is for sure. Give that CGI critter an Oscar.

So what did you think???

Immortal Wombat · December 19, 2002, 13:40

4 times

Yeah, I agree with FOTR being slightly better. The devations from Tolkien seemed more pointless this time around, and they did get annoying. But RotK will be good. I posted an I-just-got-home review in the OT thead.

Incidentally, what kind of bonuses should Mordor get if Frodo is killed/ring is taken?
More units would be easier, but not terribly realistic. If I can get the Blitzcode working, I'll see if I can trigger the implimentation of that on Frodo's death, so Mordor just goes for it without any further fear then.

hexagonian · December 19, 2002, 15:25

I saw your post on the OT after I posted here. I still enjoyed the Gollum/Smeagol interchange a lot...

Part of the problem for me was that 'Towers' is probably my least favorite book out of the trilogy and most of my favorite parts of the book are relegated to the third movie. (The confrontation of Saruman/Gandalf at Orthanc, Minas Morgul, Shelob).

They better make RotK into a 4-hr movie to cover it all.

Give Mordor a 10% HP bonus for 40 turns, as Sauron's minions will now fight with greater ferocity now that their lord has his ring. And give Gondor a (-1) happiness hit for 10 turns.

Are you going to need an additional entry for Gandalf the White? If so, cut and paste his stats over the AIRCRAFT_CARRIER, as I will use that entry - I forgot to do an second entry for him.

BTW, I'm going to reduce the costs of the advances a little bit for the next update. And do you think I have Isengard too-well defended, since you mentioned difficulty in taking it out.

Turambar · December 19, 2002, 16:32

Here's a link to my review http://forums.shoresofvalinor.com/sh...&threadid=2402

Feel free to post your reviews in that forum

.

Still haven't got round to trying this out yet

. Will try to soon!

Immortal Wombat · December 19, 2002, 20:02

Yeah, I will. I've improvised with my own UNIT_GANDALF_THE_WHITE entry using UNIT_GANDALF stats.

First test of the SLIC this evening.

I got the syntax errors out, so that's all good. However, none of the events work yet

Still working on that one

hexagonian · January 3, 2003, 11:14

...bumping, just to keep this on the first page.

...and wondering if this has been played, or is everyone waiting for the SLICs?

Immortal Wombat · February 17, 2003, 08:53

EL BUMPO!

I have two more issues to work out in the SLIC, and then I'm done.

If anyone has any ideas for storyline messages, *simple* events or other such atmosphere additions, the time to request them is now. I will declare the SLIC done very soon.

Oh, and let me just say, that this scenario is absolutely amazing. Hex put in a fantastic effort on this, and it has a beautiful map, good game balance, a tough challenge, and hopefully a whole lot of atmosphere. Play it for goodness sakes people! Best CtP2 fan-scenario released IMO.

hexagonian · February 17, 2003, 15:54

Ben, in your testing did you think that I should add the additional Mordor units, or is it playing tough now without those units???

Certain units I have to add (Black Riders), but I had also placed some normal Mordor troops at the start.

BTW, I saw TTT for the fourth time this past weekend...

Immortal Wombat · February 18, 2003, 04:39

I think you should add a certain number of mobile units at the start, or else the Black Riders suffer the same non-movement bug. If you add a couple of Snaga per AI city or something like that, you should get your "explorer" quotas fulfilled so that the Black Riders can go around pissing the human off.

On Impossible level it gets hard fairly fast, but on lower levels you can get a good cushion of easy (like *no*AI movement at all) turns at the start. It doesn't take many many I shouldn't think, just enough to cause the human some early pillaging irritation etc.

It plays well

LDiCesare · February 20, 2003, 17:19

Just saw that thread. I downloaded and played once to see what it looked like. I really didn't like those Mumakils...
I think it would be good to have some messages to explain what's happening. I know the book, but it could add to the atmosphere if I knew where the One Ring is (or if I knew it is still lost). A few events in the beginning of the game to set up the atmosphere would help IMO. In particular, getting some of the main characters (Strider, the halflings) in Elrond's place should trigger some event?
I didn't go far enough to do anything good, however, so I still have to discover the scenario. Overall, the map looks nice, but I must get those nasty orcs to stop looting my roads!

Martin Gühmann · February 20, 2003, 17:39

I just downloaded the *.zip files of the lastest version, one thing I notice is that all the path discriptions starts with \Call To Power 2\.. is this intension, that it does start with the default parth suggested by the installion program of Activision. As this part of the path is left to the user my default CTP directory is found under C:\Activision\CTP2\ so I have to move the files and probably other players, too.

Another thing I found is that the *.zip files overwrites your Colors00.txt if you don't care, could you remove it from the main directory, or put into the scenario directory or give additional on how to replace it manually.

And another thing I found is that the installtions notes state that the scenario is still alpha stage while the readme states the scenario is in beta stage.

-Martin