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.

@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.

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.

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