Major Ideas

I suggested these in the EA forums, but of course, I didn't know EA well back then... I'm just giving an idea to the campaign, and some new features for War of the Ring.

I wish to see some good changes in War of the Ring, specially carrying mercenaries and special units (such as Dol Amroth Knights and Noldor Warriors) to the Living World Map.

For mercenaries, I think they should be chosen corresponding to the region they are in. For example, in Rohan, good factions can hire Rohan Spearmen or Rohan Peasants and evil factions can hire Uruk- Hai. This because, come on, Elves are on Dagorlad. Hobbits on Dagorlad? Come on... summoning hobbits from powers is one thing, hiring them permanently is another.

Here is a suggestion:

• Grey Havens: Good can hire Mithlond Sentries (Mithlond means Grey Havens), and evil can hire Corsairs of Umbar.
• Ithilien: Good can hire Ithilien Rangers, Evil can hire Haradrim Lancers
• Helms Deep: (I know this one has no Inn but still, it would be useful if an Inn was placed) Good would be able to hire Yeomen Archers (BFME I) and/or Elven Warriors. Evil factions would hire Uruk-Hai Pikemen.
• Rivendell: Good can hire Rivendell Lancers, Evil can hire Goblins Warriors and Goblin Archers.
• Lothlórien: Good c an hire Elven Warriors / Lorien Warriors + Lorien Archers and evil can hire Goblin Warriors and Goblin Archers OR Mordor Orc Warriors + Mordor Orc Archers, since the book stated that Lothlórien was attacked from Dol Guldur.

And so on... it would be really great to see this last idea implemented. Also, there are some important characters missing, such as Imrahil of Dol Amroth for Men, Celeborn for Elves, Balin for Dwarves, Uglúk for Isengard, Grishnákh for Mordor (if Gothmog deserves to be a hero, I think Grishnákh deserves to be one too), Bolg, son of Azog for Goblins. I do not know if these are already in.

I also wished to see new regions in War of the Ring, such as Dead Marshes cut in the south, and place Northern Ithilien instead. Rohan is too big to be only a simple region. Dividing into Westfold and Rohan would be great. Amon Hen, or Emyn Muil at least, would be great too. Lebennin in addition to Anfalas and Belfalas. There are some other forts missing too, such as Edoras, Dunharrow, Dol Amroth, and such.


And here is the idea for the campaign (there is a list of known bugs below if you want to skip this list of 10 missions. They were 30, I may post the rest later. Note that the following suggestion does NOT necessarily need to be implemented, and this is only in case you wish to make them linear. If not, this will still prove to be a good source of ideas, in my opinion):

Mission 1

(Goblins, Moria)

Description: The Goblins of Moria have no love for Dwarves and wish to destroy Balin and the other expeditionary Dwarves on their mines. Their objective is to pull back the Dwarves to the Mazarbul Chamber, and afterwards, destroy them completly.

Heroes: Gorkil the Goblin King (Lvl 1, may lvl to 4)
Units: Goblin Warriors, Goblin Archers, Cave Trolls.

Mission 2

(Gondor, Osgilliath)

Description: Boromir and Faramir must hold Osgilliath from the Mordor attack. They must hold off waves of attackers until the bridge can be destroyed.

Heroes: Boromir (Lvl 1, may lvl to 2), Faramir (Lvl 1, may lvl to 3)
Units: Gondor Soldiers, Gondor Archers.

Mission 3

(Isengard, Isengard)

Description: Saruman must prepare Isengard for war. Your mission is to create 90 Uruk-Hai (6 battalions) and hold off attacks from Rohan. After most trees have been cleared and you have your troops ready for war, the Rohirrim will arrive to make a final attempt to stop you.

Heroes: Saruman (Lvl 1, may lvl to 3)
Units: Uruk-Hai (Infantry only).

Mission 4

(Elves, Rivendell)

Description: Glorfindel detects a Goblin invasion near Rivendell. After sounding the alarm, Elrond, Glorfindel and Glóin must attack the goblin base and destroy it.

Heroes: Arwen, Elrond, Glóin, Glorfindel (All Lvl 1, all may lvl to 3)
Units: Lórien Warriors. Will also be able to build a Green Pasture and train Rivendell Lancers after Arwen's arrival.

Mission 5

(Isengard, Gap of Rohan)

Description: Saruman must attack the Gap of Rohan to close the Gap to the Fellowship, so the Fellowship will be caught unexpected. Saruman may lvl to 5.

Heroes: Saruman (Should be Lvl 3, may lvl to 5)
Units: Uruk-Hai, Uruk-Hai Crossbowmen, Battering Rams

Mission 6

(Fellowship, Moria)

Description: After realizing the Gap of Rohan is no longer open to them, the Fellowship must pass through the mines of Moria. Gandalf will fight the Balrog using the Glamdring ability (his sword is named Glamdring) and he has to win. Even if he wins, the Fellowship will loose him.

Heroes: Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Boromir, Gandalf, Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin (All lvl 1, may lvl to 2. Gandalf may lvl to 3. Boromir is lvl 2, and may lvl to 3)
Units: N/A

Mission 7

(Elves, Lothlórien)

Description: The Fellowship arrives Lothlórien. However, the Goblins never call it a day, and the Fellowship is bring tracked (Aragorn: By nightfall these hills will be swarming with Orcs!). Haldir must protect Lothlórien.

Heroes: Haldir (Lvl 1, may lvl to 4)
Units: Lórien Warriors, Lórien Archers, Elven Warriors (?)

Mission 8

(Rohan, Eastfold, since you already have the map)

Description: Éomer must protect the people of Rohan. Having a single Rohirrim battalion of 10 riders with him, it won't be an easy task.

Heroes: Éomer (Lvl 1, may lvl to 3)
Units: Rohan Peasants, Yeoman Archers

Mission 9

(Elves, ?)

Description: Glorfindel and Glóin must go to the aid of the Mithlond, they must choose their way through the ruined kingdom of Arnor to get there.

Heroes: Glóin, Glorfindel (Both lvl 3, may lvl to 5)
Units: Lórien Warriors, Lórien Archers, Rivendell Lancers. May now hire Dunedain from the Inns. The mission itself could provide some free battalions of Dunedain (1 or 2).

Mission 10

(Fellowship, Amon Hen)

Description: Isengard desires the One Ring. At Amon Hen, the Fellowship is attacked by Uruk-Hai commanded by lvl 5 Lurtz. Boromir dies, the Fellowship is broken.

Heroes: Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Boromir, Frodo, Sam (All lvl 2, may lvl to 3. Boromir should be lvl 3, he may lvl to 4).
Units: N/A

K N O W N _ B U G S

1.Trick'sy Betrayal - There is a bug which makes the ally units attack ally heroes when attacking something. For example, I have Aragorn and there are allied Mithlond Sentries attacking Helms Deep's gate, I take Aragorn to help break the door and those Sentries who are too far to attack the gate will start attacking Aragorn. Also happens with builders, or, let's say, single units. This happens with computer players in War of the Ring. Does not happen in Skirmish.
Current Fix: Try t o stay away from allied units while they're attacking.

2."This fight continues without me" - There have been several reports of Drogoth disappearing if he approaches the edges of the map. Another similar bug is, when playing War of the Ring, battalions may be too big to stay in the map, and units such as builders who stay at the back of the army will stay outside the map. Others may even get stuck on hills. For example, on Umbar.
Current Fix: Those units that have an icon can still be selected, but the game will automatically de- select them. The key is to be fast and order the unit to move back to a playable area before the unit gets de-selected.

3.Invulnerable - Some units may be untargatable after being trained. I have never played with human players so I don't know if it happens with other human players. They get off their batallion and, individually, they'll start following enemy units to attack. This can happen to every unit, although I have detected it happens more often with larger batallions such as Mordor Orc Archers, Goblin Archers, etc.
Current Fix: Run a way until the computer player orders the battalion to re-form (computer somehow fixes it for himself) OR use Cavalry to trample down archers or infantry. Of course, if the units are pikemen, this might not be a very good idea.

4. Peace and Love - Sometimes units will loose their ability to attack. This has happened to me twice with Theoden. shdowojoarlove reported the same thing to happen with Dwarven Zealots.
No known fix yet.

5. "From the highest peak to the lowest dungeon..." - shdowojoarlove reported that after building a wall and upgrading to a gate, the path there would be unbuildable even after the gate has been destroyed.
No known fix yet.

6. High Jump - Sometimes units will jump high distances to capture a building. This has happened with Umbar Corsairs and Hobbits so far.
No known fix yet.

Edited by Xingdao Fan, 28 May 2007 - 09:52 AM.

Hi Xingdao Fan,

Thank you for all of the suggestions, they are VERY appreciated. I'll try to respond to as much as I can.

I wish to see some good changes in War of the Ring, specially carrying mercenaries and special units (such as Dol Amroth Knights and Noldor Warriors) to the Living World Map.

For the mini-hero hordes, unfortuantely for right now I do not have them carrying over from map to map as of yet. The main reason, it is impossible for them to be carried over using the current system. For example, if you were to play a given map and create three of them then all three would carry over. If you were to play another area and create 3 new battalions than all of them would carry over as well giving you 6 total. If someone could continue to do this is would make them more and more unbalanced. Imagine you play a map with 4 battalions of black riders attacking your camp. To do this I could try to have them act as heroes, but I do not know if I want to go this route.

As for your other inn ideas, I really do like the idea that each map would have their own units for good and evil that can be purchased from the inn. The amount of coding to implement that is a little much for the benefit IMO. Instead, I've gone with a different route with the inns. (check out the new topic). It's unique as I don't think I've seen something like this yet, and I really like the idea of choosing another faction that you can ally to and ask for their help.

Also, there are some important characters missing, such as Imrahil of Dol Amroth for Men, Celeborn for Elves, Balin for Dwarves, Uglúk for Isengard, Grishnákh for Mordor (if Gothmog deserves to be a hero, I think Grishnákh deserves to be one too), Bolg, son of Azog for Goblins. I do not know if these are already in.

For this I've added most of them. Imrahil is with Gondor, Celeborn is with the elves. I've not finished the Isengard heroes and I have 1-2 Mordor heroes left to do, but those listed are planned. As for Bolg, I currently am not planning on adding him as of yet. I've added 3 heroes to the goblins, and while Azog and Bolg are both dead during WotRI did not take Azog out. He won't be appearing in the campaign as it is. But, when I finally get around to the Hobbit campaign Bolg will definitely be there for the battle of five armies. As for Balin the same could be said as for Bolg, he might show up in the Hobbit campaign.

For the Living World, I would really like to add more regions and split it up. I just do not have the time to get it all to work correctly and edit the files. If anyone wanted to do this to help me out, I would be incredibly grateful, but it is not that high on my priorities.

For your campaign, it would work if like you said I made it linear. I might make some of these into single player missions later, but I'll see. For the bugs, I'll look into these. I've managed to fix a number of bugs, but I'll check these out to see if I can.

Thank you for your reply. I would separate the regions gladly, but World Builder burns all my virtual memory (this could not be a problem if someone could make the Maps), and I do not know what is required to change the War of the Ring mode itself.

Edited by Xingdao Fan, 29 May 2007 - 04:58 PM.

As far as I can tell the regions for War of the Ring are all in .w3d files. Each region is a subobject in a a number of the files. I think to add and remove regions you would have to make the same change in the following files:

LMR_BORDOR
LMR_EDGE
LMR_FILL
LMR_HIGHLIGHT
LMR_SLEDGE

If you want to adjust the territory edges (Gondor, Arnor, Etc.) You have to change:
LMR_REGEDGE
LMR_REGFILL

I believe these are the files that nee do be adjusted, not the livingmap file. I just don't have the time to go through and make the changes, but it would be nice to modify these things. There has to be an easier way to edit these files.

There will be some editing of INI files required too, as you have to reference and name any new areas you add in the w3d's

There will be some editing of INI files required too, as you have to reference and name any new areas you add in the w3d's

Yeah, that I already can do I just have not edited the w3d files. Has anyone edited these files for BFME2 before? It looks like EA probably just carves out pieces of the map and extrudes/transforms those pieces.

Ah well, maybe for some time in the future. (I would love to reshape the map to add more Rohan regions, Paths of the Dead, and split up some of the other areas.)

Robert J.