Hey all. I think that it would be awesome to create a Middle Earth RTS. But not like the one that Vivendi is making. This one would be about Middle Earth as a whole , not just during the time of The War of the Ring. The first difference would be that it would have four ages: Elder Days, Second Age (S.A.), Third Age (T.A.), and Fourth Age (F.A.). Note that these ages would not be like the ages in other strategy games, such as Age of Mythology (AoM). In AoM there are also four ages. The idea, though, is to race up to the third or fourth age before anything starts really happening (assuming you don''t rush). The reason being that you cannot do too much in the first two ages, and most people probably will not attack until the third or fourth age. In the game I am thinking of, you would play the whole game in one age. After all, these ages were thousands of years long in Middle Earth. It might be possible for the ages to shift one (e.g. S.A. to T.A.), but that would be unlikely. Then you would have four races: Elves, Men, Dwarves, and Orcs. Each race would be very different in different ages. For example, elves would be much less numerous in T.A. than in the Elder Days, where men would thrive in the F.A. For each race, there would be a few kingdoms. For men there would be Dunedain, regular men, and evil men corrupted by Sauron. Elves would have the Noldor, the Sindar, and the Dark Elves. You would collect certain resources: food, wood, gold, and spirit. Certain races would be more adept at certain resources (e.g. Dwarves at gold and Elves at spirit), so it is needed to trade with other races, and for that matter hold alliances. Thigns for different races would be made using different types of resources. Dwarven cave cities might be made with food (feed them miners). Many elven things would be made with spirit and gold. Also the units would be completely different. I''m thinking that orcs would be all around versatile by gathering, building, and fighting. The orcs would be very cheap so you can mass-produce them, but they are horrible at all of the things that they can do. Men and elves would have warriors and villagers, but for the elves the units would cost a lot more and be fewer (depending on the age), but exceed at their task. Dwarves would also be few and expensive, but they would be almost like the orcs with all around but not quite, they would be good too. Men would be your general RTS race (once again depending on the age). There would be maps of Middle Earth, Beleriand, and Numenor, and campaigns for certain things (the exile of Feanor, the downfall of Numenor, the War of the Ring, the Last Alliance). I have a lot more ideas, although it may sound kind of cliched. But there is one problem: making it without violating any licenses. How would one do this? I think that you would just have to not use the names, such as Feanor, Beleriand, etc. There is a game being developed called The Last Alliance, and the people making it just use names like Gondor -> Cahndohr. Thanks!

you could make it anonymously
like those kings quest re-maker guys.. just dont try to sell it. heh

-eldee
;another space monkey;
[ Forced Evolution Studios ]

Do NOT let Dr. Mario touch your genitals. He is not a real doctor!

I think the Tolkein family would be all over it in a heartbeat if you tried to make money off of it, and even if you didn''t, they''d probably require their stamp of approval on it...irregardless if you change some names around. I don''t think there''s any way of getting around that, but if you could get permission to do a freeware game, or if you are willing to sacrifice most of the royalties to the Tolkein family, I bet you''d have a better chance of getting permission.

I think a strategy game based off of the Middle Earth mythos would be pretty cool, but I wouldn''t want it to be the typical hackneyed RTS paradigm of gaming. This means doing away with the resource gathering/modeling structure, and the RPS style of game balancing. Tolkein''s fights didn''t talk about gearing up for war, they already had their armed forces ready, so I wouldn''t want to have to worry about building up my army while I fought.

I''m not sure how you would model the abilities of the Maiar, the Valar, and other beings of vast power (dragons, balrogs, demons, etc).

I personally didn''t like Howard Jackson introducing Elves at Helm''s Deep or the Warg Raider scene, but otherwise, I think TTT will make a lot of gamers like to see large scale battles implemented in the Tolkein universe. Also, if you do include the men of Numenor, you have to do all of them, from the Corsairs of Umbar, to the Black Numenoreans, to the Dunedain of both Gondor and Arnor.

I also think that if you include all the Ages, the first 2 are going to be on a scale unlike people who''ve only seen the movies are going to understand. I mean Tolkein destroyed two whole continents (Numenor itself and Beleriand) in two wars, and when Anacalagon the Black was slain, his death created a mountain range!! If people thought seeing vast armies in The Two Towers was cool, imagine trying to show the the battles of the War of Wrath, or the War of Beleriand in which armies composed of Dragons, War Eagles, Balrogs, and other Demons....even the Valar themselves fought. For that reason, I''d actually prefer to see battles fought in the 3rd and 4th age, as they are more closely related to our own medieval times with less flash, but still monumental consequences.

Definitely include other races (the war eagles for example...or the Ents) and it might be fun to do some "What if" battles of entire armies against Dragons even though Tolkein seemed to like the idea of a solitary hero taking out a dragon, like Bard vs. Smaug, or Earendil vs. Ancalagon (admittedly, the battle against Ancalagon was more than a one on one thing, but Earnedil had the telling blow if I remember correctly). So the idea is cool...but please change the conventions of the style of gaming away from the typical Warcraft/C&C vein of strategy gaming. I''d much rather see it done in a Total War series style of strategy gaming which I think is a far superior style of strategy gaming and mix in some elements from Kohan, with some tactical control of games like GI Combat or Combat Mission series.

To tell you the truth, I would not sell this game. It would probably be a 2D SDL game like RTS games more than one year old. The graphics would be 3D models rendered onto bitmaps. This scheme would also work for epic battles, such as the War of Beleriand.

I think that it would be nice making a game covering at least the first age alone. You see a lot of games that focus on The Lord of the Rings, but I have yet to see a game that is not about The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, or the general setting of the late Third Age -- with the exception of Angband. This would make it a unique, almost a niche game. Since this game would not be sold as shareware or anything, frankly I would not care whether people who have not read The Lord of the Rings, let alone The Silmarillion would be able to play this game. This game would mainly be for myself.

Another thing I would implement that I have emphasized in my first post is to make it clear that you will not be advancing from age to age. This is because each age is thousands of years long. To make up for ages, technological advancement would be through improvements and events. This would effectively give the game a more steady feel.

I am also questioning whether housing is a valid element in RTSs. Every time I play a game with houses (e.g. AoM), being limited in the number of units I can create because of houses is more of an annoyance than a strategical element, and I usually end up building a ton of houses in the beginning and forgetting about it afterwards. Does anyone know why developers implement houses? What gameplay element do they add? Are they so that players do not boom like crazy and create a 5000 man army?

I would also like to introduce more dramatic differences in the races. The industry is pushing towards this (WC3, AoM), and I think it would be nice to take this largely into account. After all, these are not just men, here. We have orcs, dwarves, and elves to deal with -- four different generations of them. This would not be limited to certain units for each race, but almost different everything.

• Dwarves


• Resources
  
  
  
  • Mining - Excellent
    
    
    
    • Unique Resources: Mithril, Gold
    
    
    
    
  
  
  • Wood cutting - Fair
  
  
  • Farming/Hunting - Poor
  
  
  
  


• Civilian Units
  
  
  
  • Citizen
    
    
    
    • Gathering - Excellent
    
    
    • Building - Excellent
    
    
    • Fighting - Poor
    
    
    • Cost - Good
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  


• Military Units
  
  
  
  • Axeman
    
    
    
    • Close-ranged - Excellent
    
    
    • Long-ranged - Abysmal
    
    
    • Constitution - Good
    
    
    • Cost - Good
    
    
    
    
  
  
  • Archer
    
    
    
    • Close-ranged - Good
    
    
    • Long-ranged - Fair
    
    
    • Constitution - Good
    
    
    • Cost - Good
    
    
    
    
  
  
  • Scout
    
    
    
    • Close-ranged - Poor
    
    
    • Long-ranged - Poor
    
    
    • Constitution - Fair
    
    
    • Cost - Good
    
    
    
    
  
  
  • Hero
    
    
    
    • Close-ranged - Excellent
    
    
    • Long-ranged - Good
    
    
    • Constitution - Excellent
    
    
    • Cost - Poor
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  

I know that the Dwarves example is a bit generic, but if I worked on it some more I could get it really unique, especially if customized for each age and put into perspective with the other races.

What do you think? Would you like to play a game like this? Do you think that if I wrote a letter to Tolkien Enterprises asking for permission to develop a freeware game mainly for my own pleasure that they would let me?

Thanks!

Game balance could be an issue. Afterall, Elves pretty much kick-butt and take names. They have thousands of years of combat experience, they have far superior senses, and don''t have the same kind of mortal fear that other races have. Their only disadvantage in the third age is there isn''t many of them. And I wonder how you''d do the ultra-powerful beings like balrogs, dragons, drakes, wyrms, war eagles like Thorondrin.

But if you can get the game balance right, it should be a fun game. How would you do the manufacturing/resource element of the game though? Would you start out with the various kingdoms already being fairly powerful (I like this idea) or make them build up their kingdom from scratch (I don''t like that idea)? Would you include Naval elements so you could have battles between Gondor and the Corsairs?

I''d go ahead and ask permission...at worst they''ll say no, but they may say yes. Who knows, you might be privy to some cool stuff they only give out to licensees...

good luck trying to make 1

AP: I''m going to need it!
Dauntless: A lot of people ask that question, but I think I have the answer. Elves would be crazily good, but they would be extremely expensive and you wouldn''t be able to make a lot of them, depending on the age. This is the same with orcs, except that the orcs are horrible but extremely cheap. I mean, I really don''t think that elves run around all the time boning each other every other day. Whereas orcs probably do it hourly.

It is kind of funny with the elves'' immortality (maybe they bought the rings, eh?), because if you look at family trees, you see Arwen born to Elrond, and then you see Aragorn born from Elros (I think). They''re cousins! But then they''re not! It turns out that there are about 30 more people in that line before Aragorn is finally born. Hehe.

I like the idea of how you start out with kingdoms already built in certain places. I think I would put that in there. Thanks for that.

Also, someone mentioned making it unlike regular RTSs and more Total War-like. What kind of strategy was Total War? How was it different? Thanks.

quote: Original post by elendil67
AP: I''m going to need it!
Dauntless: A lot of people ask that question, but I think I have the answer. Elves would be crazily good, but they would be extremely expensive and you wouldn''t be able to make a lot of them, depending on the age. This is the same with orcs, except that the orcs are horrible but extremely cheap. I mean, I really don''t think that elves run around all the time boning each other every other day. Whereas orcs probably do it hourly.

That''s pretty much what I was thinking you''d have to do too. But the bad guys side at least has trolls andthe Uruk-hai in the 3rd age.

quote: Original post by elendil67
It is kind of funny with the elves'' immortality (maybe they bought the rings, eh?), because if you look at family trees, you see Arwen born to Elrond, and then you see Aragorn born from Elros (I think). They''re cousins! But then they''re not! It turns out that there are about 30 more people in that line before Aragorn is finally born. Hehe.

Yeah, actually Arwen and Aragorn are related, but it''s fairly distant. And since Galadriel is Elrond''s mother in law, that makes Arwen her granddaughter....and since Isildur''s line came from....wait a second, I don''t think I wanna know where this goes

quote: Original post by elendil67
I like the idea of how you start out with kingdoms already built in certain places. I think I would put that in there. Thanks for that.

Yeah, trying to build from scratch wouldn''t be as fun. Have the kingdoms already established, and from there if you''d like you can make the player worry about maintenance of the kingdom.

quote: Original post by elendil67
Also, someone mentioned making it unlike regular RTSs and more Total War-like. What kind of strategy was Total War? How was it different? Thanks.

The Total War series so far includes Shogun, and Medieval, with a nother one coming out in the ancient time period (Greeks, Romans, Persians, etc). What makes it a bit different is that it splits the strategic and tactical portions of the game. The game starts off in strategy mode with a map. The map contains provinces from which you build your buildings, fortify your kingdom and build your troops. Each province is rated by things like how much resources you get from it. From there, you can move your armed forces from province to province...either reinforcing your own province, or invading another (or if you have a friendly alliance..just passing your troops through). Once the fight begins, you get a chance to form up your armies (which are based on unit types) and then the attack begins in real time.

The Total War series were the first RTS games to do epic battle scenes with literally thousands of animated sprites on the map all duking it out and with each sprite have a small AI that determined its morale, how to group, and things like that. It''s impressive to watch I can forsee within the next year or so having hardware capabilites to have thousands of 3d polygon units (shoot, look at anything Koei makes on the PS2 for their strategy/tactical games and we''re almost there now).

Hmmm. That is an interesting thing. I was always looking at that Shogun game and it sounded kind of cool. I should pick it up at the nearest Office Depot, I think it is in the bargain bin. Since I have disadvantages with this game, I would want to make up for them with a sweet game. Thanks for your help so far. I think I need to check those family trees again.

Arwens a perv!

yes, you can get a balance with diferent races, like starcraft or something like that. just try hard