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 wanted to make a post regarding the direction units and combat etc will go. I was inspired by LotR Battle for Arda's system of various supports and territory effects so this map will use something similar.

PS im bad at presenting information like this.

Battle Supprt

Units will have a unit type(s) governing what support they receive:

• Front
• Back
• Cavarly (Cavarly are also Front)
• Caster (Caster are also Back)
• Air
• Siege
• Fortification

Battle support

• Charge - Cavarly has a chance to hit a front unit before combat begins
• Retaliation - Unit has a chance to hit a cavarly unit before combat begins
• Anti air - Ranged unit has a chance to hit a air unit before combat begins
• Magic - Unit has a chance to hit a caster unit each combat round
• Flank - Unit has a chance to hit a back unit each combat round
• Leadership - Unit gives +support to friendly units
• Curse - Unit gives -support to enemy front units
• Sieging - Siege units have a chance to hit a fortification each combat round
• Defenses - Fortification gives +support to friendly back units

Terrain Support

Units will have a movement type that effects the support they recieve from terrain

• Infantry
• Ranged
• Mounted
• Flying

They will mostly be paired to unit type (e.g. Front units are Infantry).

The following terrain types are those that will be present in the test map (a couple more like snow will be present elsewhere)

• Open
• Hillside
• Forest
• Settlement
• Mountain

My initial draft with how they interact with each other is below. (Attack/Defense)

Units

Their are 7 base units and 3 (or 4 if made by another unit) extra units per player.
The base units will mostly be the same with some differences.
The extra units will be player specific and they will differeniate each player from one another. I have conceptualised them but not properly drafted them yet.
The die value is going to be 10.

The base unit statline that all players will have is below: (I dont know how to convey this any better so I apologise if its hard to follow)

As a text example:

• Heavy Infantry - 9 PU / 5 attack / 4 defense / Front battle support / Infantry terrain effect
  Support 1 is Retaliation / rolls 0 attacking and 3 defending against retaliation targets/
  Support 2 is Leadership / gives 1 support to 1 unit when attacking/defending

For different players, I intend for their to be 3 stats that are weaker (red on the graphs) and 7 that are boosted (green on the graph)

Base units for the Scourge:

As a text example for whats different for the Scourge:

• Light infantry- 5 PU -> 4
• Heavy infantry- 4 defense -> 5
• Ranger- 2 Anti air defense -> 3
• Cavarly- 3 attack -> 2 / 3 charge attack -> 2 / have curse support for 1 when attacking/defending
• Caster- instead of leadership, curse support for 1 to 2 units when attacking/defending
• Air- 3 attack -> 2

Base units for the Scarlet Crusade

Looking at these it can be seen that Scourge Cavarly and Caster units work abit different, and Scarlet Heavy infantry and Casters are stronger then their counterparts.

I expected the base values to chance as I test them since this is only a first draft.

That was abit long winded but I think that sets the tone for the direction I want to take units and battles on the map.

No default terrain? I guess so since it seems those terrains are omnicomprensive. If so, I don't think there is much of a point not having a non default terrain. For easy of use, the most common type of terrain may be taken as default. You can still define it as a terrain, if you want, leaving it without any actual impact (in this case, it would be better if it is not offered in the battlecalculator).

Im not much of a fan of default terrain because even in the most common type (likely something like a open field or a plain) their are advantages and disadvantages to different units, e.g. cavarly can move easier and flying units can spot enemy units easier but conversely theyre spotted easy in a open sky as well.

And then if that terrain is taken as a base, all the other terrain have values relative to that one and then it gets a bit awkard deciding "how much better is x at attacking in a mountain instead of a plain?"

Also, forest or woodland? Woodland would be technically the better term from traditional British usage, where forest just means wildland, and may be not wooded at all. Theorically, deserts are forests, but I'm under the impression this is not the current usage. I personally like forest better than woodland as a term, if they would be currently synonym (are they?). This is what wikipedia says:

After thinking about it more, I agree forest is a better term. When I was thinking of what to call it, I was thinking of the areas with trees in WoW Classic and due to scaling issues most of them arnt really forests.

This doesn't seem an easy system to understand, and playing with anything is always much harder than understanding it, so I would suggest to try to do what feasible to simplify it, but it is totally your choice, and I'm not against complexity, in principle, if it serves the purpose of being truer to the setting (if I would actually play a map that I feel I cannot even try to optimize strategically that is a totally different matter, but we do have a few people that are undaunted by complexity and may gladly take all the complexity you are willingly to throw at them).

I wanted to make it similar to the Battle for Arda: Middle Earth map, with different terrain types and special attacks, but that map is much more asymmetric and alot of factions dont have e.g. a unit with "flanking" that can attack archers and so I wanted to make it more symmetric but yeah I think I can simplify it in some areas and I have some ideas on how to do that now.

I have a working, almost finished map of the east plaguelands now, its just missing: flags, map decorations to show which zones in the city are adjacent to zones outside the city, custom unit placement in each territory and most importantly notes.

After playing it for abit I have some ideas how to give each unit a better identity and simplify things.

These are the unit models for each faction, the images are taken from blizzards warcraft 3 or various free custom models:

And this is the current map for Lordaeron.

I still need to finish some territories, and redraw and add in Ghost Lands + Quel'Thalas. It comes in at 210~ territories, 10~ are impassable small bits of river or lakes and such. At the end that would be 250-260~ without any sea zones.

Since thats alot im worried atm that the whole Eastern Kingdoms + all the sea zones will be way to large but Khaz Modan and Azeroth are both smaller then Lordaeron, with 6 zones + 7 zones vs Lordaerons 9 zones and theyre all pretty big ones. Khaz Modan also has tons of mountains. Even if it gets too big I can see lots of territories to cut and make bigger so I dont think it will be that much of an issue.

@Hepps Yeah thats what it looks like and what I initially thought but I double-triple checked and didnt find anything.
But you did just give me the idea of searching for "" in the file and I found a unit placed with no territory.
I probably wouldnt have thought of searching for that if I didnt read your comment tho, so thank you alot.

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.

@Zaroph Looks cool. I'm guessing you've already talked to Frostion given that you are making a related map and seem to be adopting a similar graphic style.

Thank you and I havent but this map style is done with combing all the in-game maps in 1 big continous strip so I think its the most straightforward thing to use.

@Zaroph Very exciting! I welcome any parallel development of another Warcraft map. This can really motivate me in regards to speeding up the development of my own map

I really like this map's contrast to my map in development, as my map is “zoomed out” to the biggest scale possible of the Warcraft world. My map will actually be a bit thin in regards to regional differences, story and lore. It will have a lot of randomness and will be a big scale 4 vs 4 player map. Its seems that Warcraft: Lordaeron Wars could be a good counterpart. It seems much more zoomed in on an area of the world and the factions and races that actually resides there. Plus there could be some “real” lore and history represented in Lordaeron Wars. If this works out well, there will be a potential more similar maps

Thank you im glad to hear it could help motivate you. I think any events will be the last thing I focus so that theirs a playable map without them. I also saw the code in Greyhawk Wars being much more full with event related code so that would slow down making the actual map first.

In regard to lore and such, I would like to do some passive events such as if the Scourge hold Scholomance the necromancy school, their is a chance for them to get Necromancers that spawn there representing a batch of students graduating.

Since Warcraft lore is full of noteworthy and powerful individual characters I would also like to represent them with bigger events. They would give the player something to work towards as a mini-objective (like PU objectives but for units), and for the ai it could be chance based so that they would get a power boost and be more threatening to the player.

I would really like to have shown you a playable version of my map, so that you could get ideas and stuff. But my map still needs tweaking and some features are not done yet. Very many errors still keeps popping up. But then again, I would also like to see what you come up with by your own so that maybe I can get inspired

There wont be anything as intricate as your hero, item and back pack system since thats beyond my capability to code and I dont think the rest would really inspire you Unless I could get a flying Naxxramas unit with territories out of bounds on the map to work.

I will gladly help you out with some of the map making stuff if you need it (and if I have time, as I am often occupied buy real life stuff for many days in a row). In regards to stuff like graphical style, sounds and music, it would be cool if like the Warcraft maps would share some resemblance and players could feel some consistency, even though the maps have totally different focuses. If you are very into the lore of Warcraft, then you can probably help me out with some soon needed flavor and lore texts for my map, when I need to implement it?

Thank you for the offer. Im following the structure of other map xml's and the example xml so I think I am fine in that regard and anything basic since theirs examples of every little thing in them for me to look at. If anything comes up that I struggle with I'll be sure to post and ask thanks.

In regards to the sounds, I've always played with sounds off so I've never really thought about them.
In regards to graphics, the resource that I was going to use was wowheads model viewer for a clean image of units e.g. a ghoul, and then stick it in a border with a letter representing its role. The inspiration for that came from your dragon wars since its a nice visual cue to tell what it was.

Since I havent started the graphics and I wasnt going to do sound since I completely forgot about it, I wouldnt be opposed to collaborating to make them more consistent with each other for the reason you said.

I would love to help you with any lore stuff but im most familar with pre-cataclysm lore from playing wow and almost all the relevant maps I play on warcraft 3 that bombard me with lore are pre-cata as well, so if thats relevant I would like to help.

@Lothorn said in middle earth:

I mean, I have a few thoughts about it, dont know if u agree, but the ranger unit from the elves is too strong, thats why one of my main focus as evil is to suffocate the elves as quick as possible.

I identified this as being the main problem for evil as well so Im glad someone else agrees. The stats for the cost is it makes it extremely strong and the elves end up spamming it and this almost always caused me to lose the game with evil.

The other problem I identified was the discrepancy in strength between Gondors units and Mordors unit. Gondors units have more stats then the southern evil factions for the same cost. The southern evil factions also typically have stats heavily skewed towards offense like 2/1 or 3/1, whereas since Gondor have more stats theyre 2/2 or 2/3. This last bit is important since it makes evil almost certainly lose when theyre on the defense.

The last "problem" I guess so to speak, is that the rivers on the map are pretty useless. Theyre not used to strategically seperate areas since every zone can connect to another one across the river. One part this affects is that Isengard cant expand west because theirs to many places to defend from across the river and with the 2 movement units of good in the area.

How my games typically played out were as follows:

• Rhun is stalemated in the north since they cant defeat either Dale or Dwarves and theyre also right next to each other to reinforce.
• Mirkwood is stalemated because Elf Rangers in either North Mirkwood or High Mirkwood stalemate the whole northern area with their movement range and they simultaneously threaten Rhun, Orcs and Mordor in Dol Goldur.
• The Orcs have to park their army in Eregion because if they dont theyll lose either Moria or North Caves by splitting their forces. But theyll eventually lose to the Elves or Freefolk attacking and then since the flood gates are open, Evil have basically lost
• Gondor front I think was always the weakest part in my game plans when I played but with the comments I said above, I think the only way evil can win it is if Khand or Haradrim are used purely as can openers for Mordor. I did like the naval options but I found that their was never any good pay off.

I did end up making a small mod that changed alot of unit stats and connections between zones but I didnt document the changes and I dont think it played better.

Its been a couple months since I posted an update and truthfully I havent done any more work on the map, mostly due to being disheartened after finding the initial graphic work I did was too small.

However due to the recent world events I find myself with lots more free time and more spirit to continue so their will be more updates.

@Hepps Yeah thats what it looks like and what I initially thought but I double-triple checked and didnt find anything.
But you did just give me the idea of searching for "" in the file and I found a unit placed with no territory.
I probably wouldnt have thought of searching for that if I didnt read your comment tho, so thank you alot.

I am getting this error that has completely stumped me since I have looked over my xml 4/5 times and I cant spot the problem the error is describing. I would appreciate it if I had abit of help to see what it is.

I was adding 4 players to be uncontrollable minor factions to a map, and after putting in all the relevant details into the xml and files into the flags/unit folders, this error arises when I click to select what map to load and then again when I load the map in question.
Ive included the xml if its needed.Warcraft_Lordaeron_Wars.xml

May 03, 2020 10:51:32 PM games.strategy.engine.framework.ui.GameChooserEntry fullyParseGameData
SEVERE: Could not parse:file:/C:/Users/Tom/triplea/downloadedMaps/warcraft_lordaeron_wars-master/map/games/Warcraft_Lordaeron_Wars.xml
games.strategy.engine.data.GameParseException: map name: 'file:/C:/Users/Tom/triplea/downloadedMaps/warcraft_lordaeron_wars-master/map/games/Warcraft_Lordaeron_Wars.xml', game name: 'Warcraft: Lordaeron Wars', Could not find territory. name:
	at games.strategy.engine.data.GameParser.newGameParseException(GameParser.java:108)
	at games.strategy.engine.data.GameParser.newGameParseException(GameParser.java:102)
	at games.strategy.engine.data.GameParser.getValidatedObject(GameParser.java:335)
	at games.strategy.engine.data.GameParser.getTerritory(GameParser.java:388)
	at games.strategy.engine.data.GameParser.parseUnitPlacement(GameParser.java:1337)
	at games.strategy.engine.data.GameParser.parseInitialization(GameParser.java:1292)
	at games.strategy.engine.data.GameParser.parseMapDetails(GameParser.java:204)
	at games.strategy.engine.data.GameParser.parse(GameParser.java:97)
	at games.strategy.engine.data.GameParser.parse(GameParser.java:91)
	at games.strategy.engine.framework.ui.GameChooserEntry.fullyParseGameData(GameChooserEntry.java:52)
	at games.strategy.engine.framework.startup.mc.GameSelectorModel.selectByName(GameSelectorModel.java:271)
	at games.strategy.engine.framework.startup.mc.GameSelectorModel.loadDefaultGameSameThread(GameSelectorModel.java:243)
	at games.strategy.engine.framework.GameRunner.loadGame(GameRunner.java:290)
	at games.strategy.engine.framework.GameRunner.showMainFrame(GameRunner.java:277)
	at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

And then while loading attempting to load the map:

May 03, 2020 10:51:37 PM games.strategy.engine.framework.ui.GameChooserEntry fullyParseGameData
SEVERE: Could not parse:file:/C:/Users/Tom/triplea/downloadedMaps/warcraft_lordaeron_wars-master/map/games/Warcraft_Lordaeron_Wars.xml
games.strategy.engine.data.GameParseException: map name: 'file:/C:/Users/Tom/triplea/downloadedMaps/warcraft_lordaeron_wars-master/map/games/Warcraft_Lordaeron_Wars.xml', game name: 'Warcraft: Lordaeron Wars', Could not find territory. name:
	at games.strategy.engine.data.GameParser.newGameParseException(GameParser.java:108)
	at games.strategy.engine.data.GameParser.newGameParseException(GameParser.java:102)
	at games.strategy.engine.data.GameParser.getValidatedObject(GameParser.java:335)
	at games.strategy.engine.data.GameParser.getTerritory(GameParser.java:388)
	at games.strategy.engine.data.GameParser.parseUnitPlacement(GameParser.java:1337)
	at games.strategy.engine.data.GameParser.parseInitialization(GameParser.java:1292)
	at games.strategy.engine.data.GameParser.parseMapDetails(GameParser.java:204)
	at games.strategy.engine.data.GameParser.parse(GameParser.java:97)
	at games.strategy.engine.data.GameParser.parse(GameParser.java:91)
	at games.strategy.engine.framework.ui.GameChooserEntry.fullyParseGameData(GameChooserEntry.java:52)
	at games.strategy.engine.framework.startup.ui.panels.main.game.selector.GameSelectorPanel.lambda$selectGameFile$7(GameSelectorPanel.java:271)
	at games.strategy.engine.framework.ui.background.BackgroundTaskRunner.lambda$runInBackground$0(BackgroundTaskRunner.java:50)
	at games.strategy.engine.framework.ui.background.BackgroundTaskRunner$1.doInBackground(BackgroundTaskRunner.java:121)
	at javax.swing.SwingWorker$1.call(Unknown Source)
	at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(Unknown Source)
	at javax.swing.SwingWorker.run(Unknown Source)
	at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(Unknown Source)
	at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(Unknown Source)
	at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

Its been a couple months since I posted an update and truthfully I havent done any more work on the map, mostly due to being disheartened after finding the initial graphic work I did was too small.

However due to the recent world events I find myself with lots more free time and more spirit to continue so their will be more updates.

@Frostion

@Zaroph To me it seems like that some territories are maybe a bit to small, taking into consideration that two armies consisting of several unit types and allies might stack up and go into a single territory, containing yet another big army. Maybe you should consider 50-75% larger map? Or 50% larger map and 25% smaller units?

Although I agree that their are territories that are small in size which is why I was thinking of decreasing the unit size by some %, I think part of the problem is that in WoW, their are areas of interest that are typically a questing hub or some sort of camp of monsters, and between these are passing by areas with generic area appropriate monsters. So when drawing borders on the map, the territories are centred on the areas of interest and so the size of the tripleA territories ive done is limited by the size of the area of interest and whats around it. I think a good example of this is Shadowfang Keep and Pyrewood Village in Silverpine forest. Theyre both right next to each other, take up a small amount of room, bordered by the sea and mountain, but theyre very distinct areas that I wouldnt like to merge unless gameplay necessitates it.

Before making the copy of the map i posted, I tried merging similar territories together. E.g. their are 4 farms in north Silverpine Forest, 2 of them have undead and 2 of them have Wolves/Worgan in them so I merged the 2 similar ones together.

I looked for the largest conjoined map of vanillia or TBC available and this was the map I found, which included Kalimdor on the other side which I have cropped out. The size of the in-game map at the moment is 5058x4500. Since only the right half is used its more like 2500x4500. The thought of increasing the map size hasnt occured to me, but I imagine doing a large increase like 25%-75% would stretch it and make it not look nice? But I guess the only thing to do is try it in combination with a unit decrease to find a good solution.

Also, the units look good besides jagged edges of the circles. I hope you have kept all the original unit pictures without the circles. I guess that they are much larger. Then you can make much larger circles and with a graphical program scale them down to the wanted size, before or after adding unit avatars. If you need help with unit work. I will gladly help if/when I got time

After looking at other maps and considering the size of the map, I decided to make the units 50x50 pixels in size. So I set the options in the properties folder to be 50 height/50 width, and then I made the final images to be a 50 pixel diameter circle. The two sets of black edges on the circles are a single pixel in size. Would it look less jaggered if I say, made the coloured border circle 500x500 pixels and then made them 10% smaller?

PS: Map work is much more important at this stage of the creation process, as you can always return to the detail of unit pictures.

Yeah changing anything on the map leads to having to start up gimp and do editing, run the map creator in tripleA to generate the center and polygon files, whereas for the code I just pop it in easily.

Been a month+~ since I posted an update but I've working along on my spreadsheet and it can now spit out the code for the game when I make changes to unit stats or territory effects etc. I was redrawing Quel'Thalas and the Scarlet Enclave onto the map which was a pain and made me want to temporarily stop doing work on it. I also redrew on 3 rivers that flow into the central lake so that theirs an option for speedier sea travel.

I got a working version to load in game just to see how it looks and to spot any glaring issues like an island polygon space taking up a river or sea zone, which their was a few instances of.

From playing it in game and from doing in the details, I can see some big issues to fix:

• Decrease the unit sizes on the map. After playing with the in game unit zoom, I am thinking to make them 15%-25% smaller then what they are right now

• Adjust the center points of zones so that the text is in a better location

• Start doing manual placement because alot of the auto placements are pretty bad but the auto placer may yield a better result after making the models smaller

• Some zones and terrain types dont match. I didnt want to go overboard with terrain types so I tried to fit mis matching areas to the closest type. First example: theirs many farms that litter all of Lordaeron and I was really confused on how to classify them so I just used open. Second example: A zone with a lone magic building or spire, a zone with a camp of lots of troll huts and the zone of Silvermoon City all share the terrain of Settlement. I think in this example I need some sort of minor/major settlement differentiation. Third example: theirs lots of caves as in WoW you explore them for quests and the only terrain effect I had that fit was Hillside.

• Colours of provinces and on the map. Also, I used 2 different red hex codes for BloodElves (pure red) and ScarletCrusade (scarlet red) but they look much similar then I expected in game

I wanted to make section here about unit placement since its its own thing with several paragraphs. I did unit placement by looking at what was in the zone in WoW and approximating it to the units I used, e.g. for a troll camp they have units x, y and their chieften is z so I put in 2 units of x,y and 1 of z. But after entering the game, I think this approach of winging it was pretty bad since their lots of areas that have un even spreads of units. The biggest offender this was the Amani Trolls who after I looked at the unit count for, had a much larger number compared to the others for their size.

I think I am going to solve it by linking the PU of the zone to the number of units it starts with. For example a capital (that is worth the most PU) starts with 8 or 10 units, a major city/outpost has 6, while some far off distant camp (likely with 1 PU) has 1-3 units.

But this may still be a problem since in WoW, factions like the Scourge or Scarlet Crusade have many more zones then player factions like Forsaken do. This was also something I noticed since Dalaran barely controls anything so it feels like I had to overbloat the few provinces they did have with more units.

Some pics:
1st pic is of Silverpine Forest + Hillsbrad + Dalaran. It doesnt look as bad as the other areas because theirs less units then other places.

2nd pic is of Ghostlands + Eversong Woods. As can be seen and I mentioned earlier, I think I went overboard with the trolls.

And the zoomed out map

Overall its all coming together in one unseemly but hopefully "playable" map once I have taken care of issues and added some missing things like boats.

__
Thanks to Frostion for the wooden bridge models he created since I was struggling to find 1 that I liked that I could orient into different angles.

Sorry for the late response, I just dont really like responding in this sort of thing if I dont have a update post to make

@Zaroph Ah, so I understand you consider a woodland something like a low density forest or a forest something like a high density woodland? I don't really know if this is the common use, since I'm not a native English speaker (and, from what I read, the matter is not clear at all), but I tend to see the two terms as just synonyms (woodland=forest).

I dont know the exact definitions but yeah youre spot on in the first line. I see them as rather synonymous as in theyre both areas that have trees and wild life, but the imagary I get of a forest is that it has a higher density of trees and other plants. Not many areas in WoW fit that so I would rather just use the word that to me means a low density forest.

Without default terrains (and if TripleA would not stalemate your units), you could have all terrains giving only positive or null modifiers, and have the weakest attack/defence units, per each terrain related type (infantry/ranged/mounted/flying), just at attack/defence 0/0 (both on a same unit only if that unit is the weakest in both cases). I think that would make the most sense, lacking a default terrain, and may also be easier to compute.

I think I understand and this will be something I try when I get back to doing the unit stats after I finish other stuff.

Still, are you really confortable that your default att/def units values, that the battlecaulculator prompts you to use, don't actually exist? I guess, for such a game, the battlecalculator should not allow you clicking on the button until you have at least one terrain selected.

Im not quite sure what you mean. Pressing ctrl+b on a territory brings up the battle calculator for that area and it automatically sets the terrain effect. Changing the terrain in the menu, I can see the attack/defense values change to what I expect them to be.

@Name said in Ancient Empires: 222 BC:

On the border issue, I dislike them as well. But since I still can't do much in Gimp (though such a change should be easy) and most of the map is at an earlier state than what you see here, it's something for later I think.

Is this something fixible by just making the borders a few pixels wider so they would look "smoother"?

I thought it was rather odd that their was no discord for TripleA considering discords ease of use, popularity etc. I wonder if its a generational/age thing since I imagine alot of of people playing axis&allies are not teens or young adults.

Another point is North Dale, which is just obnoxiously important. Just connects everywhere up north really hard to attack Erebor and Lake Town because u literally need to conquer all around otherwise you will get slaughtered.

Agreed I think this is the most obnoxious zone in the map and its existence means evil cant really get anything meaningful done up north.

Wow nice, would love to take a look in that if I may that is

Ive sent you details in a pm.

What are your thoughts on maybe allowing evil to build some sort of encampments that boost the allowed number of troops to be deployed in a certain castle. They could be somewhat cheap(3 bucks to boost 1 is fair?) and whenever the territory is conquered by good they all vanish(0|0|0).

I havent played this map in awhile so I cant exactly remember the details, but I think only 3 evil races had issues with this needing more production slots. Orcs for deploying goblin spam in Moria and the South/North Caves, and Haradrim and Khand down south since they cant get any high PU territory to capture and start reinforcing Mordor easier and closer from.

Rather then just affecting a Castle that already produces units, I think it could work better as being a factory itself but has a limit of producing 1 unit. I think maybe also giving it a defense of 1 so that you get alittle more incentive to use them, and also allow them to be made same turn the territory is conquered as a benefit of only being able to make 1 unit. Would also help Haradrim naval landings since they can reinforce on the second turn instead of the third.

@Lothorn said in middle earth:

I mean, I have a few thoughts about it, dont know if u agree, but the ranger unit from the elves is too strong, thats why one of my main focus as evil is to suffocate the elves as quick as possible.

I identified this as being the main problem for evil as well so Im glad someone else agrees. The stats for the cost is it makes it extremely strong and the elves end up spamming it and this almost always caused me to lose the game with evil.

The other problem I identified was the discrepancy in strength between Gondors units and Mordors unit. Gondors units have more stats then the southern evil factions for the same cost. The southern evil factions also typically have stats heavily skewed towards offense like 2/1 or 3/1, whereas since Gondor have more stats theyre 2/2 or 2/3. This last bit is important since it makes evil almost certainly lose when theyre on the defense.

The last "problem" I guess so to speak, is that the rivers on the map are pretty useless. Theyre not used to strategically seperate areas since every zone can connect to another one across the river. One part this affects is that Isengard cant expand west because theirs to many places to defend from across the river and with the 2 movement units of good in the area.

How my games typically played out were as follows:

• Rhun is stalemated in the north since they cant defeat either Dale or Dwarves and theyre also right next to each other to reinforce.
• Mirkwood is stalemated because Elf Rangers in either North Mirkwood or High Mirkwood stalemate the whole northern area with their movement range and they simultaneously threaten Rhun, Orcs and Mordor in Dol Goldur.
• The Orcs have to park their army in Eregion because if they dont theyll lose either Moria or North Caves by splitting their forces. But theyll eventually lose to the Elves or Freefolk attacking and then since the flood gates are open, Evil have basically lost
• Gondor front I think was always the weakest part in my game plans when I played but with the comments I said above, I think the only way evil can win it is if Khand or Haradrim are used purely as can openers for Mordor. I did like the naval options but I found that their was never any good pay off.

I did end up making a small mod that changed alot of unit stats and connections between zones but I didnt document the changes and I dont think it played better.