Shouldn't the ring be discovered in Rivendell?

**Vampiresoap** · October 29, 2012, 10:52 PM

In every campaign, at about 20th turn, the ring just got randomly discovered in some northern city. In my humble opinion, that just doesn't make sense.

The sequence of event should be like this. Bilbo gives the ring to Gandolf and leaves for Rivendell ==> Frodo picks up the ring from Gandalf and travels to Rivendell ==> the White Council ==> Fellowship.

So if you are playing as Gondor, The One Ring should be in Rivendell the first time you hear about it. Because that's when Denethor sends Boromir to take the ring for himself.

I know the Fellowship campaign being an individual campaign and all, but shouldn't the white council event be part of the Grand Campaign? I really wish the next official release includes that.

And I know my ideas aren't worth much

, but here's what I think:

Every good faction should hear about The One Ring at some point in the game, and they are given a chance to send the best general to Rivendell to participate in the white council. And then, there should be a "good" crusade targeting Barad Dur. If The One Ring is brought to Barad Dur successfully, the Mordor faction will be eliminated.

I know it's kinda similar to what we are having in vanilla, but we kinda all know that currently it is almost impossible for the good faction player to get the ring to Barad Dur. Even if you are lucky enough to stumble across the ring, it just gets stolen so easily...As a result, Sauron gets the ring 90% of the time.

Yeah, please don't mistakenly think that I'm trying to tell the modders what to do. I'm not, really. I'm just trying to be vocal about the game I love. People (including me) give silly ideas all the time, but we also learn something from silly ideas all the time. All in all, I'm just trying to help.

**uddhava** · October 30, 2012, 04:30 AM

Well I think the way it works now is also to forment war between the good and evil factions. It wouldn't make sense to attack Rivendell and otherwise it would perhaps be to easy to eliminate Mordor (I have never succeeded at this btw but in my Dale, Rohan, and SE campaign I'm tramping around Mordor now. Had I the One Ring Mordor would soon be finished). Apart from the fact that you cannot send one general across all that territory without angering a lot of people.
You can prevent the stealing of the ring by dumping the bearer in a stack with a higher ranking general. As I understand it, the 'steal' trigger won't be activated.

Perhaps it's possible though. Personaly I'd just have the ring spawn to a nearer location instead of in Umbar or something when playing as the Dwarves. That alone would be a huge improvement. Making it less easy to be stolen without resorting to the above would be nice too (in fact, since it's so hard to come by, I'd rather see it's impossible to lose it)

Uddhava

**TLG** · October 30, 2012, 05:03 AM

Originally Posted by uddhava

Well I think the way it works now is also to forment war between the good and evil factions. It wouldn't make sense to attack Rivendell and otherwise it would perhaps be to easy to eliminate Mordor (I have never succeeded at this btw but in my Dale, Rohan, and SE campaign I'm tramping around Mordor now. Had I the One Ring Mordor would soon be finished). Apart from the fact that you cannot send one general across all that territory without angering a lot of people.
You can prevent the stealing of the ring by dumping the bearer in a stack with a higher ranking general. As I understand it, the 'steal' trigger won't be activated.

Perhaps it's possible though. Personaly I'd just have the ring spawn to a nearer location instead of in Umbar or something when playing as the Dwarves. That alone would be a huge improvement. Making it less easy to be stolen without resorting to the above would be nice too (in fact, since it's so hard to come by, I'd rather see it's impossible to lose it)

Uddhava

There are quite a few small little improvements I'd like to see to the whole One Ring quest. For starters I'd like it if you could only lose the ring if you do something wrong or if your general has really

traits

**Ngugi** · October 30, 2012, 06:48 AM

It's made so for a fun game play experience, which make pretty obvious sense if you think about it. Predictability is a very boring feature in a TW game.
Rivendell (or the Shire) would be default targets for an evil player if so. Now it's rather intended to work as inspiration for the player, good or evil, to attack settlements and/or facions you otherwise wouldn't to hinder or enable Sauorn's return.
This is not a LotR copy either (then it would be a worthless strategy game since many factions either would not exist or would be very much weakened, units would have to be removed etc etc ; for anyone who wants something like that there's the FotR campaign), this is a 'What if' game at the end of the Third Age.

It's not a far fetched concept either, the Ring indeed had the interest to slip off people's fingers and get to a new sutiable carrier. To claim "But it did not leave Bilbo" is indeed true, but actually it tried, it was just never lucky in those attempts

Further Denethor and Boromir had no clue about the Ring being found until Boromir was at Elrond's Council. He want there since he and Faramir had dreams that seemed to foretell something about the future and wanted help from Elrond to understand it, since Rivendell was mentioned in the dream. Do not trust the movies to much

Elrond would never been so stupid he summoned folks to 'come have a chat abour the Ring' haha, since then it would be revealed it had been found and its location (here the game chose the movie concept, which is understandable). The 'counci'l of Elrond was a mere chance or a work of fate, since a lot of groups had come to him concerning different matters at the same time as Frodo arrived and Elrond wanted their input when it came to come to a decision on what to do.

@ TLG
These are the scripts for if Gollum or others takes the ring.
It's found in campaign_script.txt in data/world/maps/campaign/imperial_campaign

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Apperently the risk is just 2% every turn it will happend, but you can for example change it to 1 or 0.5.
Ofc a very simple change, much more can be done to tweak it, but as I'm no scripter I will not give suggestions on it hehe. If you lower the risk do not forget to open data/world/maps/base and there delete map.rwm before starting a new campaign (not saved game compatible)

**uddhava** · October 30, 2012, 11:38 AM

Originally Posted by Ngugi

It's made so for a fun game play experience, (...) this is a 'What if' game at the end of the Third Age.

It's not a far fetched concept either, the Ring indeed had the interest to slip off people's fingers and get to a new sutiable carrier. To claim "But it did not leave Bilbo" is indeed true, but actually it tried, it was just never lucky in those attempts

Further Denethor and Boromir had no clue about the Ring being found until Boromir was at Elrond's Council. He want there since he and Faramir had dreams that seemed to foretell something about the future and wanted help from Elrond to understand it, since Rivendell was mentioned in the dream. Do not trust the movies to much

I agree but the OP has a point that since it's very hard to come by, it's a shame you can lose it so quickly. 2% is not a lot but in chance that doesn't really matter. The amount of assassins that died while doing their dirty work for me, that only had a mere 10 or 5% percent chance to fail is staggering. That's because the game calculates that chance every time again.
Consider a game of dice. If you throw two dice the biggest chances are for a sum of 6 or 8. If you take all the rolls you made in your life perhaps that will be true but there will be many games where you will throw a lot of 10's or 5's or 9's. In theory the chance is low, but since every dice throw is unique every combination is possible. So while it's rare that the game will 'roll' the 2% to lose the ring, it might happen as often as three times in a single game!

Hope that made any sense, gametheory is a

So perhaps with yur info I'll change the odds

**Withwnar** · October 31, 2012, 01:12 AM

Originally Posted by Ngugi

Apperently the risk is just 2% every turn it will happen

Actually it is a 2% chance every time the character is selected. Select him 25 times within a turn and that's a 50% chance that he'll lose the ring. Never select him = 0% chance.

Also, the CharacterSelected event only fires on a general who is outside of a settlement and is commanding an army (or has no army). So it is impossible to lose the ring when he's in a settlement or is in an army that he is not commanding.

**Ngugi** · October 31, 2012, 06:24 AM

Originally Posted by Ngugi

(...) as I'm no scripter (...)

Directly proven

Originally Posted by Withwnar

Actually it is a 2% chance every time the character is selected. Select him 25 times within a turn and that's a 50% chance that he'll lose the ring. Never select him = 0% chance.

Also, the CharacterSelected event only fires on a general who is outside of a settlement and is commanding an army (or has no army). So it is impossible to lose the ring when he's in a settlement or is in an army that he is not commanding.

Thanks for clearing things up W'

**Salah-ad-deen** · October 30, 2012, 11:00 AM

What happens if you bring the ring to Rivendell but don't want to destroy it? (or go and destroy it)

**k/t** · November 01, 2012, 02:24 AM

I thought the most common total when rolling two (normal) dice is 7.

Something with a 2% chance of happening done 25 times does not equal a 50% chance of it happening. Every attempt is independent of the others.

**Aldor** · November 01, 2012, 08:46 AM

Originally Posted by k/t

I thought the most common total when rolling two (normal) dice is 7.
Something with a 2% chance of happening done 25 times does not equal a 50% chance of it happening. Every attempt is independent of the others.

1) Ye, 7

2) Ye, but here we are talking obout the chance before the first throw until the last throw. Then you can assume that you will loose the ring with 50% chance after rolling 25 times.

**uddhava** · November 01, 2012, 03:55 PM

Originally Posted by k/t

I thought the most common total when rolling two (normal) dice is 7.

Something with a 2% chance of happening done 25 times does not equal a 50% chance of it happening. Every attempt is independent of the others.

You are probably right, I was thinking of the Colonists of Catan boardgame where the 6 and 8 are the most valuable resourcecards since these numbers should comeup the most.
And precisly because every roll is independent you can play entire games with 6 and 8 (or 7) hardly coming up. So the math doesn't always match the practice.

Anyway I'm neither a scripter nor a mathematician but the few times I managed to claim the ring I invariably lost it quite quickly. Hence my suggestion to make that perhaps a little harder apart from using exploits.

Tenx uddhava

**k/t** · November 01, 2012, 06:22 PM

No, you can't assume that.

Isn't it possible to click the general carrying the ring somewhere far away and let him go on his own? That way you don't have to select him each turn.

Ngugi showed you what you need to change if you feel the chance is too high.

**Incomitatus** · November 01, 2012, 07:59 PM

At all times the game has a number between 1 and 100 stored. When an event with a chance to happen comes along, the game compares that number to the one it has in storage. In the case of this ring script, if that number happens to be 1, you lose the ring. (Unless the RNG uses 0-99 instead of 1-100... in which case the number could be 0 or 1). A 'roll' of 2 won't do anything since the script calls for less than 2 and this part of the game uses integers only, to the best of my knowledge. So, no, you can't set it to 0.5%... unless you put two 'rolls' in the script one at < 1 or 2 (depending on whether it's 0-99 or 1-100) and then call for another at < 50 or 51.

If you insist on thinking of it like dice, then realise that the game 'rolls' a single 100-sided die and does so in advance of needing it. It uses that die for any event that needs a chance to happen. It re-rolls on a save-reload (but only one, quite clever that... you get one chance to save/reload for a different result, but subsequent save/reloads won't change things). If save/reload doesn't get the number you need, you can reload again and do some other action that uses the die roll - spy, assassinate, auto-resolve, bribe, diplomacy, etc - to get a fresh roll for what you are wanting to do.