Hello guys, I have been thinking of a very snazzy idea of a Lord of the Rings RTS using the backdrop of medieval: total war. Think of the map of middle-earth, and imagine that divided each into little states, each with its own income, type of population(which would effect which type of soldiers each region produced), and resources ... The game would be played exactly to the way Total War is, your starting kingdom has x number of provinces each with its own pros and cons. For example, the elves may have completely unmatched archers, but they will have very few warriors total, whereas rohan may have outstaning cavalry, but wussy archers, and Orcs may have the cheapest, but crappiest units. Certain events which happen in the book could be incorperated into the game somehow, say with the destruction of the ring all orc provinces split into independant kingdoms (or whatever) and that the siege of Minas Tirith will occur on [whatever year it was], but on the whole the way the gameworld is operated depends ultimately on what the player does. Anyway, i came up with this idea in bed last night, and thought it would be really cool. I was hoping this may be the starting point for a mod (but, of course, i know thats wishful thinking) I have heard that there is an upcomming LoTR strategy game, but although it has barely started development, it seems like it'll be a generic RTS/RPS warcraft III-ish game. Tell me what you think, Thanks edit: and also what i just thought of while prusing my copy of The Atlas of Middle Earth, each 'age' in medieval could be taken as Second Age in middle earth, or Early Third Age, or The War of the Ring [edited by - MrPoopypants on April 1, 2003 6:37:39 PM]

While not terribly original it could probably work. Could just be a mod of the current Medieval: Total War? I don''t know how feasible that is.

As far as WC3 being a generic RTS title...can I cut you now?

What i say about WC III being just a generic game, sure i played it, and loved it, for a little while... After a couple weeks of playing it i just lost interest and havent played it since.

I call it generic cuz it still had the peasants->resources->army + some RPG elements going on, and the total size of an army per player was wayyyy to small for my tastes.

-

anyway, yeah modding for Total war would be neigh near impossible (i dont know of any modding tools out there, but it could be worth an e-mail to Creative Assembly)

I had the same idea a while back and think it would work better for LotR then a WC3 style would. When I think of the battles in LotR, I think of what was shown in the films. Battles like that are what people would want to do in a game, and it''s not possible in WC3. I believe Medievel: Total War would do more justice to the world of LotR, and would love to see a mod for it. One thing that a WC3 style would do better is hero characters, and LotR is full of them, although it wouldn''t be that hard to achieve the desired effect in M:TW.

One last thing I must say and can not stress this enough, if Saron is going to be in it then there should be animations of the soldiers he''s attacking being shot into the air and all over the place. It would be very cool looking and faithful to the opening scene of LotR:FotR.

"Well, on second thought, let''''s not go to Camelot -- it is a silly place."

Unless you want a game that is basically "Let''s do the war part of the books in a game", I would suggest going long before the books happened. This way you can get the Dwarves, Elves, Humans, Orcs and Goblins involved. Heck, if I recall correctly, the Dragons used to be a relatively big player in Middle Earth.

If you want to do the books, have fun... I wouldn''t buy the game, but I''m sure that a lot of people would.

If you don''t want the books in a game, you''ll probably actually want to go well before the first ringwar. Back when Elves were still a serious player in the world, Dwarves did get out of the caves to fight and Humans were the all too populous ''ghetto race'' of Middle Earth. Possibly back in the time of Numenor (sp?) or during the building of Numenor. Maybe call it Middle Earth: Racial Clash or something like that. A good war between all of the intelligent races of Middle Earth, the Humans, Elves, Orcs, Goblins and Men. While everyone likes the Hobbits to a certain extent, reality is that they just don''t play that big of a part in the socio-political landscape of Middle-Earth. You could simply make a group of people called ''Halflings'' that will one day turn into the River People, Hobbits and any number of other races that might be scattered throughout Middle Earth, but they would be more of a cooperative race than anything, working with one of the other races, as they see fit.

I would almost rather see a scenario type game, where each race has different scenarios, each one working toward different victory conditions. Humans want to get a good, balanced land mass for their peoples. Dwarves want to control the Mountains and the rivers near their mountains. Elves want to keep the forests pristine and under their control. Orcs want to defeat their weak predecessors, the Elves and gain huge farms of human Thralls. Goblins want to kick the Dwarves out of the caves and mountains, though not to mine it for riches, just to live in and because they''re jealous or possibly because they believe that the Mountains are theirs or some such.

Anyway, just some ideas.

quote: Original post by solinear
........ [above] ..........

Ahhhh, the memories come flowing back. I really need to read them again.

[EDIT] Liquid Entertainment is making an LOTR RTS. I just thought I'd let everyone know who didn't.


- Rob Loach
Current Project: Upgrade to .NET and DirectX 9
Percent Complete: X%

[edited by - Rob Loach on April 1, 2003 12:33:29 AM]

I agree with pretty much everything solinear said. One thing that could be added is another mode called something like "Historic Battles", and would feature the more famous battle from Middle Earth, such as Helms Deep, Battle of the Five Armies, and the Goblins and Dwarves War.

"Well, on second thought, let''''s not go to Camelot -- it is a silly place."

ah yes, these are all very good ideas

about the age thing:

what i said in my original post was that when the player chose the ''early period'' it would take them to the time of numenor and ''high period'' -- the battles with Gondor and the kingdoms in exile and the ''late period'' or war of the ring

the Historic battles would be very very cool, but technically there were too many people in some of the battles

but anyway thanks for all of your responces i think this would really make a cool mod, i just need to figure out how to get all the tools and stuff

and by the way orcs and goblins are technically the same race

Really I thought they were different...