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I know that there are thousands of Tolkien, LotR based maps in the community, and i don't want to make a new one, with slightly different units and such, i am looking to make a new style of it!

The idea of destroying these great cities and locations of Middle-Earth seems wrong to me, so my plan is to do away with those ideas.

Major Cities and Locations will be marked as such, but cannot be destroyed, instead a marker by each of the cities, with three types of hardest will determine if it is still belonging to one player, another player, or is a free city.

The three types are for this reason:

• The Cities themselves cannot be destroyed, so it doesn't matter how strong they are in fact, but rather on the strength of the "City Marker".
• To that end i need different levels to apply for the difference in strenght of certain Cities over others. (IE: Minas Tirith would be tougher than Rivendell, but for different reasons!)
• That different reason is that you have a third type, which is magical protection, which is a little weaker than the lower level strength but needs something to happen before it can be destroyed, though with enough strength you can take it! (That will be done by over time healing it randomly, so that with enough attacks it will go down too fast!)

This will work in such a way that players can take control of other cities, and will be given some defences for themselves, such as those which cannot ever be taken out, until the city has been taken so many times, given way to the idea of slowly being wrecked!

That means its set for the players, however if you conquer a "rebel" city which wasn't well protected by you at the beginning, under heavy guard, or else under "special" protection then rebels may try and sieze it for themselves. This leads to "Free Cities" under their own protection, who form defences and are hard to beat out!

Now you won't want your cities being wrecked, or new ones blowing up so you can repair them. Since i have put in five stages of city strength you can increase it over time with engineers and general man power. Holding a city for about ten minutes (gameplay) will lead to a increase, however this only happens if the enemy doesn't outnumber you in the area around it.

The weaker it is, the less defences you can use and the weaker it is structurely. Cities that reach zero in the stages go out of your control, and their defences are completely removed, including any you built, as well as a sum of any men built from it. You can take this city or rehold it, and trying to engineer it will only succeed in bring back limited man power, or wealth, it will be weaker than before, for the rest of the game.

You will have a limited heroes, and "group heroes" that will appear in Cities after a while for you to use for yourself, as well as a commanding unit which represents yourself. If the Commander dies, all cities will take an immeadite test for Rebel action and you may lose control of many. However after five minutes (gameplay) if you still own more than two cities a new leader is elected, or else a Hero takes over till you get more cities.

Loss of all cities will mean removal from game, and if you leave then well, the Rebels are doing well!

Heroes are strong fighters, but not that much stronger than Group Heroes, however they can help in the taking of enemy Cities since they will stop the Cities in defence mode getting spare troops for battle because people fear to fight them. However if they die by a city you attack, your opponents get an instant lift and extra reinforcements! In defence of cities Heroes on your side will enable you a chance to get these troops, else its normal style!

Group Heroes are just stronger troops, but lack any of the special abilities of Heroes, however they do spawn a lot more with strength of Cities and can help turn a battle!

You will not need to really build Castles for better spawns, but rather make technological advancements for your race, or else attact more support through your cities.

Tech is done through usage of Minerals and can mean certain units become used now for the different races and you can get more upgrades of your units for a time.

Each City has its own area by the side of hte map which determines how many men will be produced from it over time, what it produces to feed them. How this works is that you can take more men for battle, but then your ability to feed them lessens and they may die of starvation on the field, and you may stop producing as many. However you can keep it in check and so not outproduce yourself. Over time with holding a city more units are produced, but food increases as well! (Good women!).

Most of this is running in the background of the game as you play it. So that most players can leave the Food production part alone and not go overboard and lose control! Special Heroes benefits will be easy to use, and while Cities at first are hard to take, with Tech Advancements you can construct better weapons for hte destruction of cities and defence of them, examples are:
Stronger Walls - With this your city is stronger, and so its harder to break the walls around it! (If these are not present this upgrade doesn't help that location!)
Trebuchet - Long-Ranged attack that can take down outside defences, and while weak against the Main City itself and cannot take it, it is a useful tool!

The map will be 256x256 as you might have guessed, but will not include certain areas of what you know of as Middle-Earth. It will centre in on; Gondor/Mordor, Misty Mountains/Arnor. Cities will not be impossibly placed and opp'ing, doesn't really work! You can't just destroy the city walls with a unit, while he has thousands are you, you must outnumber him with the right kind of troops, Heroes do not count!

For the benefit of all the extras, i'll make the Top area free for that usage, since the bottom cannot be fully used across it! The map won't allow huge armies, but they can become well trained. No race is super strong above others, and i'll include Balance abilities to determine strength of people when playing.

You'll be able to play either on the "Real" Teams of the map, or use your on alliances or free-for-all! Balance will on the whole give a lot of people's Cities to Rebels if they outnumber too much. However after a while it will become less Balanced with Tech'ers beating you!

To make it realistic the larger you spread, and the areas you take will effect Rebel attacks and such. Also if Cities are near each other, and one is owned by a player and the other by a Rebel, the Rebel may after a while of inactivity by the Player in the area attack the other City!

No map presently in the work. I am just getting to grips with how i'll do all the triggers parts, because none are that complicated. More a case of making it fair!

Please give me your views.

- Coko

Sounds awesome, and quite possible to pull off. The first LotR map I might actually enjoy playing.

Sounds great! Notice us when it's Finish. Good luck with it. Sounds a bit impossble though. But I bet you can make it!

Great consept Coko. This will be a great hit, as all current Lotr maps have the same triggering and same everything. All current Lotr maps are copies and it's nice to have a whole new map.

I like this new "City" concept, it disables the use of 30 min gametime just to mass armies. I really think it's better, it's a bit smaller scale than the rest of the maps but you enabled lots of new realistic features.

I suggest you start working on it.

Wow, this sounds really good, It's too bad you need the extra space for the food production thing otherwise, since it is a bit smaller scale you might be able to fit much more of middle earth than in previous maps with this city idea.

Nice work and be sure to keep us updated!

Wow... If this have chance to be "alive" Take it! This kind of map could be a great Concept! This system could reniew many idea of A.I and could be used in many map such sim city!

But, I don't know if it's going to work, that will need Hour and Hour of hard work and maybe some tests.... I hope (if you start it) you will finish it!

Coko.... Im a lotr fanatic, i know tons about lotr even some small details. If you need help making the map, triggering, history, etc. just ask

Thanks to everyone for your views on it. Glad to see you like my idea, as Moose did say, all of it is basically possible, and i have good ideas on most parts.

The difficulty will be in making sure that all the factors work for every player, and don't get "Bugged Up" by things happening in the game.

So that when you take a city it gives it to someone else straight away because the trigger to set up the town for you hasn't fired. I've ways around it, and as with all my maps, it will not include a single Wait. My plan is to use a large amount of Death Counters, some going up, others going up and down.

My plan for Cities owned by players revolves around the fact that i'll set it up using a Death Counter set to that Player, so that it can only work with him. Switches will be used simply for checks and unchecks on triggers which can only work at one time. (Some will have up to five checks, though working different to Randomisation, it just means five things have to be done in certain order and such.)

Thanks for offer of help Pryo, i might want assistance in testing this project and that will mean around six players to have a go at it.

Mapwise i should be ok, but i understand some people's concern, it will be different completely! I'll not have large defences around things such as Gondor/Mordor which just get ignored, these will be replaced by large well-defended Cities and the small outposts, (for Balance Reasons ).

My favourite feature is that i'll set the health of things to percentage as the game goes on, so that a damaged City will be easier to take than a tough one, while certain factors will reduce it. (Another part is to keep bugs from appearing with Percentage being dropped, but health is already below that, i'll be using certain units created for a few seconds to do the damage, such as Reavers/Scarabs.)

I'll not start work yet, but just get those triggers into my head, and please note this will be Freeware, and open to usage, triggers and all. I'll even write a little Trigger guide to how i did them if thats what people want, and they like the idea. I'm not well-known on Battle.Net anyway, so getting fame there isn't important to me, just making a fun map!

Updates soon Work to start in two weeks, with the arrival of new Computer, to hold everything and run it at good speeds!

Np... me, alpha and moogle can test thats 3 already!

That is true enough and i can always get more on a Map Night, well i've been working on the map with paper at the moment, working out how i would work it.

My plan is to have the "Real World" of Middle Earth set to a tilt to give me more area to play with and enable better use of terrain, so Gondor is now Centre Bottom, Mordor becomes Middle Right. That gives me the whole Left Middle/Bottom sides as well as the Top Left for certain parts!

Towards the idea of Balanced Units, i'll be using Protoss Structures for my "City Markers" objects since i can make users effect them through upgrades of shields, and they don't burn down like Terran, nor heal like Zerg. Plus i want the "City Markers" to be evident and enable more troops to attack it, than just a few!

Towards increased defences of structures, since i'll use a mix of Photon/Turret/ZergBuilds to show defences, i'll give different amounts depending on how strong the place is, how many defenders are around it, and these don't get destroyed, unless the City is "Ruined!" That is useful, because otherwise i'd have to edit the terrain around every one of them to enable creation of defences by players.

As you may have noticed, you don't really build structures in this at all, and i'll keep it down by setting upgrades to minimal of 3 for all but Shields and therefore not need "Upgrade Structures" for higher levels!

Hehe nice Coko this will be interesting. This was sort of what I'd intended with a map I have, currently about 20% done. The cities were capturable, and thus got you special units specific to the city. And it was done on 128x128 so basically, it had the spawning thing, but the units were named as companies, so i.e Archer Company. So for your fourth spawn, you'd get maybe 3 archers, 2 horsemen (vultures), and 2 swordsman companies, or something realtively infinitesmal to what you get in regular lotr games. So I'd have the epic scope of M-E, but a smaller and more manageable playing field. Good luck with this, and if you need anything, history, names etc, I am ALSO your man (along with whoever else said they could help).

EDIT: I would also like to test whenever the time comes for that .

Sounds fun Coko. Where'd you get the idea for that?

If they die on thef ield from starvation you're bringing in a whole new meaning to UMS simulation

Anyways my idea(if you haven't thought of this already) would be to say, how much food is necessary for your troops to survive. Maybe not an exact amount but maybe it could say:

"Large amounts of food needed"
"Medium amounts of food needed" ect ect

Food system idea:
Make it based on score points.

IE:
PLayer 1 - 100 food
Player 2 - 80 food
so on and so on...

Different units need more or less food than others. Strong units might need 2 food and stuff like that. If your army needs more food than what you can provide then the exess units will either flee your army and become like maruders. They join the enemy or they die.
The units to have the effects I listed above will be the farthest from your bases since it's harder to get food to far away units than ones who are very close to your base.

I like this idea a lot! The different food requirement for different units can really work, and enables me to have better usage with Cities, because i can set a global counter for playes, with three options, either Safe Food count, where they will only run out if units reach above a set limit / depending on amount of players within game and units created. (Trebuchet would need about six people to work on it as such, though they are like Divisions i'll base it on single unit counts.)
Normal Food, it will be set a little lower, but faster unit build rate
Low Food, lower setting till units may leave, die, but insane unit build rate, will be about five minutes and then they start to die!

Factors; Unit Level, Type of Units, Number of Cities, Size of Cities, Game Balance Parts...

Basically i'll get it sorted out for one level, and then add all the changes that can effect it, so except for a few changes in Conditions and Actions the triggers look really similar...looking around 30 triggers per player at a guess, so not too high!

Ok, i've given the food thing a little more work, and to get it perfect, what i would do would create all units that are made for each spawn just off the map of play, and they would be moved at one piece at a time to their place and first of all be owned by the Computer, so that i could get the score system set up. Just have it work out who owns the spawn'ing spot, and set their food systems up as it were, and therefore work it all in!

I agree, and i think i would play it a lot also, but i would make the buildings killablre cuz i like killing buildings

You misunderstand, you will kill buildings, such as defensive buildings, and also the buildings the represent the City as a whole, those will be around a lot. I'll also include the option to have it like "Real LotR" where bases represent the time of 3rd Age itself, though that will be hard to balance! With that will be more "Outposts" which are not rebuilt but rather there and then destroyed! Like some parts of that LotR map where you built on Vespane to get areas...

THIS HAS BEEN REOPENED;
BECAUSE THIS PROJECT HAS BEGUN

IT WILL BE THE MY ENTRY FOR THE MAP MAKING CONTEST

IT HAS BEEN VIEWED BY EVERYONE, BUT IS ALL MY OWN WORK, AND IDEA.

YOU MAY CONTINUE TO POST YOUR VIEWS ON IT, AS I'LL ADD INFORMATION/SCREENSHOTS AND SUCH SLOWLY.

THIS MAP WILL BE FREEWARE ONCE COMPLETED AND HANDED IN, OR IT WILL BE GIVEN TO THOSE REQUESTING IT.

» Moved to Idea Forum

With this idea you got a pretty decent shot at the $250.
Anyways have you had any idea changes since then?

Currently, i've been looking towards trying to reduce the requirements on the players to keep themselves under control all in their terms, so that the play is fluid and concise, rather than if you do one battle your economy and food things go to the tatters.

This means getting an automative system up to work with it, and presently thats harder than it sounds.

It really is harder to think about a fair system than to make it in triggers.
It would be good if when you make a battle you don't die that heavily and stuff.

You should make like a pillage system that gievs you bonuses(gold maybe), when you kill buildings or units.

That wouldn't be hard to place in, but if i was going for realistic, i'd maybe have it linked to your Food Count, maybe allowing a slight increase for it, because you loot the killed.

Remember that Heroes and "Important" Heroes within this map, are used on two levels, support fighters for your general units, giving slight bonuses, and looking good for the map.

Balancewise, since you can take locations or cities from others, or strange locations, such as Mordor player having Rivendell, factors come into play, such like an Elf player will NEVER have any ORCS, nor the other way round. Humans are a little more mixed, while an "Evil " set player holding Dwarf land will get the "constructions of the dwarves" but little Dwarf units. (NOTE i don't plan to include Dwarves as a starting force, though you can take areas belonging to the Computer Controlled Dwarf Cities.)