Editing this here for what was originally in post 1.
I would like to announce the beginning of this project that I have been working on the past few days, Warcraft: Lordaeron Wars.
Introduction
It was inspired by both my love for the large macro rts maps in Warcraft 3 which use various warcraft continents and time periods as their base, and the joy that I've had recently playing against the TripleA ai on the various fantasy maps here.
The setting will be some amalgamation of the Eastern Kingdoms during and after the Third War, before the setting of WoW happens.
Initially I wanted to do a full map similar to what Frostion is currently working on and including Northrend, but while I found I could do the Eastern Kingdoms in a reasonable number of territories, their were only several territories for each wow region whereas I wanted to do much more. The other reason I chose to focus on just 1 continent was that both of the other two continents are rather bland when compared with the Eastern Kingdoms in terms of race diversity, settlements and conflicts.
Gameplay
The final playable map I hope will include the whole Eastern Kingdoms using their pre-cataclysm states.
Their will be territory effects but some these will do the same thing, just renamed for flavour (Snow, marsh, beach)
The following 12 races are those that I intend to place in the final map:
- Scourge (Scourge, Cult of the Damned)
- Scarlet Crusade
- Blood Elves
- Amani Trolls (Zul'Amen, Hinterland trolls)
- Forsaken
- Dalaran Remnants (Dalaran, Southshore and Stromgarde)
- Orcish Horde (Revantusk Trolls, Kargath, Grom'gol Base Camp, Stonard)
- Dwarves (Ironforge Clan, Wildhammer Clan)
- Dark Iron Dwarves
- Dark Horde (Blackrock spire forces, Dragonmaw Clan)
- Stormwind
- Gurubashi Trolls (Zul'Grub, Temple of Atal'Hakkar), although this could be merged into 1 troll player
All factions will use mostly the same unit roster, with some various differences and some unique units for flavour.
For example, the Scarlet Crusade infantry will have higher attack then average, flavour wise this is due to their fanatasim; and the Scourge caster will provide a penalty to enemy infantry, flavour wise this is a banshee using a curse spell.
In terms of unique units, the idea I have for the Scourge is a necromancer that after a battle involving it is concluded, it takes the TUV of enemy units defeated and divides the number to convert it into very bad but free skeleton units.
Although I have envisioned some events regarding units or territories being captured, I am not sure on how large a scope I should do these yet.
Roadmap
Due to this being my first mod, I wish to first make a small test map of the Western Plaguelands for my use and then move on to complete the Lordaeron area before doing the rest of the Eastern Kingdoms. This would let me get a handle on things and to also at the minimum release a playable map of the Lordaeron area. Hence I have decided to split this project into 3 phases:
Phase 1
- Unit and flag icons for Scourge and Scarlet
- Decide on die value, unit stats and balancing for base units and their Scourge and Scarlet counterparts
- Territory PU values
- Territory effect values
- Complete and get a playable xml
Phase 2
- Finish Lordaeron to get a playable game map, and perhaps keep it as a standalone map in the mod for someone to play a smaller map
Phase 3
- Finish the rest of the Eastern Kingdoms with every player included
I am currently in the process of making a test map for the Western Plaguelands, which will serve as a mostly 1v1 area for the Scourge and Scarlet Crusade which will help be get a better idea on balancing the game.
This is the current map I am using for the Western Plaguelands:

Due to the importance of Stratholme (and also Blackrock Mountain furthur down the line) I wished to create a seperate connected zone for it.
In my initial making of the Eastern Kingdom map, I intended to use a road system where the map roads would provide access to large swaths of each region but I found that this just bloated the number of territories in each region with the road themselves and furthur bloated each region by having to divide up the map in such a way that made both the location features (e.g. towns and towers) and the roads meaningful, hence I abandoned doing this.
Their are currently 15 territories in Stratholme and 28 passable territories in the plagueland. Although this single region comes in at a huge 43 territories, from my initial border making this was easily the largest singular region on the whole map, and it also includes the city of Stratholme in it which will be 2 of a kind with blackrock mountain. Hence although I have yet to make a finalised version of the full Eastern Kingdoms map, I am not particularly worried at this time that the playable area will be to huge.