Historical Battle Proposals

**The Angry Greek** · January 06, 2015, 09:54 PM

Alright, after playing the open beta and enjoying it thoroughly and re-reading the FAQ, I notice that there is a venue for us fans to suggest additional historical battles to the Dev Team.

I'm really big on historical battles in mods, since the concept of working with a set amount of forces against overwhelming numbers, or reenacting battles such that I feel that there is historical significance behind them appeals to me.

I'm going to do more research this week, especially on the event mentioned as "The Battle of the Pass" between Adunabar and the RUK, and see if I can formulate a narrative, or make up plausible scenarios involving the new minor factions. I open this thread to everyone who wants to suggest historical battles, and wants to place suggestions.

**webba84** · January 06, 2015, 10:46 PM

Look forward to seeing what you come up with!

**Thangaror** · January 07, 2015, 01:04 AM

By all means I do not want to deter you, some historical battles for DoM (some canon, some fan fiction) would be awesome! Sadly, scripting the historical battles is a real PITA. To my best knowledge no one has really succeeded in creating one for RTW. The existing ones are usually adaptions of vanillas HBs, much like in TNS.
I know of only one (kind of) well-done HB, made from scratch. By incident, that's one I made.

However, despite analyzing vanillas battle scripts I really couldn't figure out, how most of the triggers provided by the engine work. So I had to come up with some massive and error-prone workaround, that relies on the principle "60 sec after battle start, order unit XY to perform action A".

The problem is, that without a script the battle just doesn't work. Units far away from each other tend to run around randomly, randomly encoutering the enemy. For example, if one faction receives a reinforcement (like in the vanilla Battle of Telamon), the reinforcements disperse and don't arrive at the battle as an army. Neither will you be able to create an ambush (like in the Battle of Gergovia) because the hidden units just start to run around. Even a simple setup like at the Battle of Carrhae is just screwed up by the AI.

I contacted Bardo, who had written a short tutorial and made some HBs for LotR:TW (the only new HBs around AFAIK), but it had been ages since he had coded these and couldn't help that much. However, I kinda suck at coding, basically I've no idea what I'm doing.

So, if you have some background in coding and computer science, have a go! It's been a while since I looked into this stuff, but don't hesitate to ask, I'll help as much as I can.

**MasterOfNone** · January 07, 2015, 03:26 AM

They are indeed a pain to code and to create (not to mention balance, sometimes add voices, and all the associated elements). It is highly doubtful that we will have time to make even one HB even if we did have someone who could do it (which we don't, as I'm the one that used to do them and I suspect my limited knowledge back then is now - like Bardo's - much forgotten). Sadly, modding takes a great deal more time, effort, knowledge and talent (and memory!) than most players realise.

It might be better to see if there are any ways to improve the current HBs, although even that will have to be minimal.

**The Angry Greek** · January 07, 2015, 08:09 PM

I completely understand the concerns of the development team, and as someone with no modding experience, it would be an insult to suggest something that's difficult or that time consuming for a hard working team. I do hope that at the very least that if I can get some ideas down about at least ONE historical battle, that hopefully after 1.0 gets fully released, that something is held for reference if submods, or updates are planned.

Looking at what we know about the "Battle of the Pass", its implied that it was fought between Cirith Duath and Minas Ithil, that the forces of Adunabar defeated the forces of the RUK, that the White Company was devastated by traitors, and the Black Company formed as a result. It would imply that the Loyalists were outflanked in a narrow pass, and were utterly routed by the Rebel forces.

Based on that there isn't much to work on, and coding a map and a scenario for this would likely be insane, if not nigh impossible. I might attempt to create a rational scenario for a huge battle outside Osgiliath, but I would need to justify it, and would have to work on forming a narrative and creating a reasonable army composition for both forces.

**Feanaro Curufinwe** · January 08, 2015, 06:22 AM

I think I tried making Azanulbizar at some point. I failed, but that would be relatively simple for someone with the knowledge, I imagine.

**demagogos nicator** · January 08, 2015, 10:27 AM

If it somehow happen that you are goning to concider adding new historical battle I think that the Battle of Five Armies (or maybe some similar battle taking place in the FA, whcih may involve aslo Norht Rhun) is the best candidate because it involves most of the faction not yet present in any onther historical battle (Dale, Dwarves, Elven).

**Thangaror** · January 08, 2015, 10:48 AM

Originally Posted by The Angry Greek

Looking at what we know about the "Battle of the Pass", its implied that it was fought between Cirith Duath and Minas Ithil, that the forces of Adunabar defeated the forces of the RUK, that the White Company was devastated by traitors, and the Black Company formed as a result. It would imply that the Loyalists were outflanked in a narrow pass, and were utterly routed by the Rebel forces.

Based on that there isn't much to work on, and coding a map and a scenario for this would likely be insane, if not nigh impossible. I might attempt to create a rational scenario for a huge battle outside Osgiliath, but I would need to justify it, and would have to work on forming a narrative and creating a reasonable army composition for both forces.

I suggest to stick with battles from the Third Age, but many battles have the drawback that on army involved was not part of the factions in DoM, and there's no free faction slot left. Well, you could always use the Rebels I assume...

The Battle of the Five Armies, Battle of Pelennor, Battle of Dagorlad are waaaay to massive, so forget about it.

I once thought about creating one of Gondor's battles against the Wainriders. Either the disastrous Battle of Dagorlad or the following victorious Battle of the Camp. Both should be quite simple to do, doesn't involve ambushes and stuff (and Gondor being named RK, who cares!).

An interesting battle might also be the very first phase of the Battle of Dagorlad, trying to survive Sauron's onslaught with the Wood Elves.

And last but not least, it'd be hilarious to witness Bandobras "Bullroarer" Took to "invent Golf" at the Battle of Greenfields.