Middle-Earth campaign map?

[Cyprian2]

Love your ideas, Stazi and huth (plus, the map is astounding). I'm glad to see this mod from the Elder Days is being revived. (Hope it's still progressing, btw...) I'd be glad to offer my services for building/unit/faction descriptions when you've come to the point where such things are required. Feel free to PM me. Until then, best regards. I will be keeping an eye on this.

[Stazi]

Thanks for the offer Cyprian. I'll surely PM you when I'll have something a little playable. I'm still not sure if I have enough time and enthusiasm to finish this mod so I don't want to waste your time.

Now I'm focusing on tech tree and units rooster. I'll probably release an alpha version (without any new music and limited gfx) for those who would like to help me with gameplay and balance tests. btw Middle-Earth economy, income from different regions, tradeable goods, etc. are a mystery to me. Does anyone know where I can find such a detailed information? Maybe someone who has an experience with LOTR mods for Rome or MTW2 could help me with this? (I don't like 3D strategic map so I rarely play new TWs).

[Stazi]

I'm testing some possibilities and I'd like to know your opinions.

1. Zones of recruitment - "national" units will be recruitable with full strength (say 100 men per unit) only within the core provinces e.g.: elven units in Mirkwood, Lothlorien, Imladris. Adjacent provinces will produce the same unit but with 60 men and all other provinces 40 men unit. It'll simulate stretched supply lines and limited number of recruits in regions far away from homeland. Of course, you'll be able to merge all these small detachments into full, 100 men unit.
So, if you loose large part of your army far away from your homeland, you'll have 3 options:

• wait for new units from your homeland
• wait while building detachments and slowly reinforce your army.
• recruit human mercenaries - much weaker but numerous.

This should force players to better prepare their campaigns and make the game harder. This should also help AI to keep its homelands.


2. Land trade routes - two options here:

• simulate trade route via buildings with fixed income (like mines or cathedral) e.g.: if you control all (say 5) provinces that belongs to the trade route you'll be able to start building trading posts or caravanserais. Disadvantages: a) always the same income, b) if you loose one of the provinces you'll still get income from 4 others.

• make fake sea that connects all 5 provinces, give provinces tradeable goods, ports, shipyard kind of building which will produce tradesmen/caravans. Tradesmen/caravans will work like ships. Disadvantages: possible fights between tradesmen/caravans, port icons inside provinces with no visible coast. Advantages: realistic and fluctuating income even if you control only one province.

I'll probably use this second option to make Anduin navigable (for normal ships) from Osgiliath to the sea but I'm not sure about full inland trade routes.

I think about 4 trade routes:
- from Blue Mountains to Shire and Bree
- kind of Silk Road from Khand, through Harad to the coast - Umbar or further to Gondor (maybe Pelargir)
- From Rohan, through the Undeeps ford to Rhovanion
- river trade route from provinces along the Anduin Vale, through portage way at Sarn Gebir to Osgiliath.

Let me know what you think. All suggestions and ideas are warmly welcomed!

[drone]

1. Zones of recruitment - "national" units will be recruitable with full strength (say 100 men per unit) only within the core provinces e.g.: elven units in Mirkwood, Lothlorien, Imladris. Adjacent provinces will produce the same unit but with 60 men and all other provinces 40 men unit. It'll simulate stretched supply lines and limited number of recruits in regions far away from homeland. Of course, you'll be able to merge all these small detachments into full, 100 men unit.

That's a pretty neat idea. How would you implement it?

[Stazi]

That's a pretty neat idea. How would you implement it?

I'd like the idea to be mine. It was invited by Cegorach and described here. I've done a few tests and it works.
What you think about the other idea? Which option do you prefer?

[drone]

Interesting trick with the units. As a software guy I'm racking my brain for reasons why the developers would put something like that in.

I don't quite understand your first proposal on the inland trade routes. How do you force ownership of a set of provinces before unlocking a building? The second is reasonable, but will that method allow for "seaborne" invasions?

[Stazi]

I don't quite understand your first proposal on the inland trade routes. How do you force ownership of a set of provinces before unlocking a building?

Before the start of the campaign each province gets the unique and indestructible landmark building (multiple copies of "forest clearing" from VI). I've discovered that a building to be indestructible only need to use "forest clearing.bif" as its icon file name (3rd column in BUILD_PROD file). So, all landmarks share the same icon and description but Info Pic can be different. If you nullify the description's text and imprint the whole description directly on the info pic you can have unlimited number of different indestructible buildings. To know what is the role of anyone of these buildings, you only need to right click on it. So, you can make trade route buildings dependent on these landmarks and choose which province belongs to the route.

I think it's really useful idea because you can add whole variety of buildings' traits (faith propagation, happiness bonus/penalty, mercenary magnetism, etc.) and they will work as the province's parameters.This even solve the problem of units valour bonus which stops the AI from further developing the province when the unit's requirements are met. It works even better cause the possible range of the bonus is 0-9 now. And every province with its own picture and description is really nice feature, isn't it?

The second is reasonable, but will that method allow for "seaborne" invasions?

ooops. That's why I'm always begging for comments. Thank you very much! I was so focused on implementation of this feature that I forgot about this "little" side effect. It makes this method useless for land trade routes but I think It still makes sense for rivers.