[MOD] Lord of the Rings / Mid-Third Age - MERP Edition

[Blood Royal]

Welcome to Middle Earth!

I present to you, the Lord of the Rings in a mid-Third Age bookmark - the MERP Edition (Middle Earth Roleplaying Game).

This mod/bookmark is a pet project of mine, I am actually also part of/working with another modding team - Sauron's Will (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...of-the-rings-saurons-will-second-age.1173022/) - together with several others, including @Indyclone77 and @Zarathustra_the. In particular, I am using @Shade2's excellent map which he has been doing a superhuman effort on getting ready And of course, the 3D art of @rewinged and @MattAlexi . But we, and hopefully other future Lord of the Rings bookmarks if they want to be under this "umbrella", are committed to sharing resources whenever possible and help each other out.

Behold the north of Middle-Earth:

And the south:

And a close-up view of Minas Tirith:

I'll be posting dev diaries and updates as new content is added, that'll help keep me productive

Oh, and I am NOT one of those modders who wait for everything to be perfect before releasing something - my goal is to release this as soon as it is fun to play, even if it has issues, and that should be possible by the time 1.1 comes out in June and I integrate the new changes.

And the setting:

It is the year 1300 of the Third Age. In the North, the fractured lands of Arnor are mostly under the sway of Arthedain, Rhudaur and Cardolan, three successor kingdoms who split from Arnor some 500 years ago. The elves of Imladris and Lindon remain, though much diminished, and the Dwarves are still frequently seen crossing between their holdings in the Blue Mountains and the Misty Mountains, the greatest of which are the halls of Khazad-Dum, or Moria in the elven tongue.

In the south, the realm of Gondor is in the noontide of its power. The glories of the Dunedain of the south seem to rival that of sunken Numenor, and they have pushed their borders far east and north and south, even taking the great Haven of Umbar. Yet the east and south are stirring once more, as strong Easterling tribes such as the Balchoth encroach upon Gondor’s allies in Rhovanion and threaten Dorwinion, and Gondor may have over-extended itself… its vast frontiers are hard to properly defend, and there is always the fear of treason from within – the Dunedain of Gondor are a minority, after all, and not everyone is happy with the Dunedain monopoly on power.

In Mirkwood the southern areas of the forests have darkened and become infested with evil beasts, and rumours speak of a terrible sorcerer living at Dol Guldur. Yet most worryingly of all, in the high north, in the cold lands of Angmar, a tyrant styling himself The Witch King has arisen and has begun gathering to him all the tribes of orcs and evil men to his fortress at Carn Dum.

Darkness stirs in Middle Earth once more – the old alliances are broken, the Dunedain, though at the height of their power, are divided and the elves are leaving these shores. It is up to a new generation of heroes to ensure that the sacrifices made in the Wars of the Last Alliance were not in vain, and that evil will not be allowed to return.

 

[Blood Royal]

Preview of portraits
(all randomly generated by the game from the ethnicities files, except for the House of Elrond)

Dunedain:

The Dunedain, the Kings of Men, rule Gondor and the successor kingdoms of Arnor - Arthedain, Cardolan and Rhudaur.

Noldor:

Though many sailed West after the sack of Eregion and the War of the Last Alliance, thousands yet remain. Their power is centered in Northern Lindon and Imladris, the Hidden Valley, where Lord Elrond rules:

Dwarves:

In the mid-Third Age, the great halls of Khazad-Dum are still the envy of the world, and other dwarf houses are also major regional powers.

Wood elves (WIP - not quite happy with these yet):

Thranduil's realm is the primary seat of power for the wood elves in the mid-Third Age, but the Galadhrim of Lorien, under the rulership of Amroth, are also a force to be reckoned with.

Orcs (WIP - I'm sure someone else can do better and will - eventually!)

Orcs in the mid-Third Age have only just begun to recover from the disastrous defeat they suffered at the end of the Second Age and the subsequent rooting out of all known orc strongholds. The Watch on Mordor remains and Gondor guards the gates, but inside Orcs are breeding once more - and the orcs of the cold north, the one place where they were not fully rooted out in Eriador, are flocking to the banner of the newly proclaimed Witch King of Angmar.

 

[Austregisel]

Holy Shit! This is GREAT!

 

[Duno]

This is brilliant! Bit new to the modding tools, though I plan to use them when I have the time, but can you create wonders? Not really good at graphics design so I was wondering if they built in something for that.

 

[Kinasawa]

Amazing!

Gondor color is like Egypt, quite awful in my opinion. Maybe use black on them or a dark blue.

 

[NovaCameron]

Ay, a very dark navy blue would work better for Gondor. And why is the map.... Tilted? It makes my head hurt and I don't know why.

 

[Blood Royal]

True, I did actually want all the Dunedain realms to be various shades of blue, I'll change Gondor to a very dark blue

As for wonders, yes, @rewinged has expressed an interest in joining our team and making some for us, but it requires 3D art skills to make them, you can't just do them in the editor Duno.

I'll also hopefully be posting another preview today of the population map mode and how we handle cultures, religion, wilderness, etc.

As for the map being tilted, I think it's only like that when totally zoomed out - when you zoom in it should appear just like the vanilla Imperator map, we used those exact same dimensions at least.

 

[Blood Royal]

Dev Diary #1: Populations and cultures

Middle-Earth is sparsely populated compared to Earth, but there are several population centres spread across the map.

Eriador:

The South:

Rhovanion and Mirkwood:

In terms of cultures, there is a wide range of inhabitants:

In Eriador, Arthedain contains the greatest concentration of Dunedain among all the realms, while they only rule as a small nobility in Cardolan and Rhudaur.

The East is a mix of wood elves, dwarves, Easterlings (tribals) and Middle-men Kingdoms such as Dale, Dorwinion and Rhovanion:

Gondor is around 20% Dunedain/Lesser Dunedain in the mid-Third Age (and a small percentage of Black Numenoreans in Umbar who keep their beliefs to themselves...), with a large minority of Gondorians (mixed heritage) and the original hillfolk inhabitants such as the Dunlendings, Ethirfolk, Eredrim and Calendings:

"Special" cultures such as Dunedain, elves, dwarves, etc. get country bonuses based on the % of those pops in their kingdom. So in the case of Gondor, for example, they have these bonuses:

I want there to be a balance between trying to keep your realm with a high proportion of Dunedain (at the expense of increased army upkeep and lower population growth) and having a large realm with lots of manpower and extra income. Balancing this will be a constant work in progress, however, and the same goes for elves, dwarves, beornings (bear shape-shifters), and other "special" pop cultures/races.

And speaking of culture, I have disabled the mechanics for pop assimilation and conversion - I'll eventually make some kind of melting pot event triggered on a 5-year on_action pulse where certain cultures begin merging, but certainly not across racial lines - elves will never become dwarves, etc. But it should happen that Dunedain intermarry and become Lesser Dunedain and eventually Arnorians/Gondorians if they are a minority in a country and if say, Dunlendings are living in a Dunedain realm, they should also eventually become Arnorians/Gondorians. I might also make some laws to hasten or decrease the rate of Dunedain assimilation (ie., Intermarriage laws, encouraged / neutral / frowned upon / illegal).

Likewise, in terms of pops living together, I think it's unrealistic for elves to have human subjects and to some extent, vice versa. If there are significant racial minorities in a kingdom, ideally I'd want some kind of event where you go "I will grant the humans/elves/dwarves/whatever a land of their own" and then they go to a certain area and become a vassal kingdom. If you refuse, there should be some realm instability effects.

Orcs, on the other hand, should of course be purged. Ideally, via an event that causes orc pops to spawn into tribal armies when an orc province is occupied. When orcs conquer good human/elf/dwarf lands, probably half the population should be exterminated and half should be enslaved.

There are also "wilderness pops" in the form of beasts, wights, spiders, etc. These are all in 0 pop uninhabited provinces, so if everything is working as intended, you should actually never see one as a character or actual pop, they are mostly there for map flavour to represent uninhabited areas.

And finally, then there's the pops themselves:

I have made them into Upper tier / Middle tier / Lower tier, for respectively, Citizens, Freemen and Slaves. Tribals remain tribals. I've also tweaked their values a bit, so that middle tier pops also produce a bit of resources and tribals provide more manpower, etc.

Eventually I need to implement some kind of slavery laws, so that there will still be a distinction between poor Lower tier pops (but free) and Lower tier pops who are actual slaves (in orc realms, etc.).

 

[tsf4]

Very neat, BR! I will be following this...

Why not just make the wilderness areas as uncolonized land? Modifiers could be added to make it a rough going/to simulate how rough some areas were.

 

[Kinasawa]

Great dev diary, insane amount of work is such a short time!

As before, I will complain about the color palette chosen, specially for the Dunedains. The grey colors are dificult to pick up in a map where uncolonized land and impassable terrain are already grey (from your pictures, Orkish culture is also grey ).

"For seven days he [Ar-Pharazôn] journeyed with banner and trumpet, and he came to a hill, and he went up, and he set there his pavillion and his throne; and he sat him down in the midst of the land, and the tents of his host were ranged all about him, blue, golden and white, as a field of tall flowers." - The Silmarillion, Akallabêth, p. 270

It's tricky, because almost everyone uses a mixture or blue / black + white / silver or green / dark green + gold... Tolkien lack imagination for the heraldry haha

 

[caesarian]

This looks promising

 

[Blood Royal]

Very neat, BR! I will be following this...

Why not just make the wilderness areas as uncolonized land? Modifiers could be added to make it a rough going/to simulate how rough some areas were.

Hello again, tsf4! It's more of a flavour thing, I like knowing there are beasts, spiders, wights, etc. in an empty province

Great dev diary, insane amount of work is such a short time!

As before, I will complain about the color palette chosen, specially for the Dunedains. The grey colors are dificult to pick up in a map where uncolonized land and impassable terrain are already grey (from your pictures, Orkish culture is also grey )

It's tricky, because almost everyone uses a mixture or blue / black + white / silver or green / dark green + gold... Tolkien lack imagination for the heraldry haha

True, most of the culture/religion colours need to be changed, it's just not high on the list of priorities for 0.1 atm - there are many more critical things to work on!

 

[Blood Royal]

Dev diary #2: The Dunedain

The Dunedain are the heirs of fallen Numenor and the descendants of the tribes of men who fought against Morgoth in the First Age and were rewarded for their loyalty with long life, health and wisdom far surpassing that of other men. Though the craft of Numenor has waned in exile, the armies of the Dunedain are still some of the best-equipped in the world and due to their long life span, they also have decades more time to devote to their martial skills.

In the North, the Kingdom of Arnor has split into three rival kingdoms.

The populations of the three Kingdoms are as follows:

Arthedain

Rhudaur

Cardolan

Thus, really, it is only Arthedain that can be considered to have any significant proportion of actual full-blooded Dunedain and the associated bonuses. However, as long as the heirs of Isildur maintain in control of those countries, they still have significant advantages over other non-Dunedain realms, for it is not without cause that Sauron fears and hates the heirs of Isildur and Anarion - Isildur's heirs in particular, since Isildur was the one that cut the ring from his finger at the end of the Second Age.

As you can see, the descendants of Isildur and Anarion have quite a lot of special bonuses, and their heirs will have these as well as long as they marry another Dunedain. If they do not, then children of marriages to spouses of other cultures will only have a 50% chance of inheriting this trait (respectively, Blood of Isildur for the Northern (Arnorian) line and Blood of Anarion for the southern (Gondorian) line. The bonuses of these two lines are identical however. But as Gandalf says, due to the powerful +25% happiness for wrong culture, though men would tend to be scattered and divided across many realms, "There are some who can unite them...".

As Sauron or the Witch King, you should of course do what you can to make sure these lines are extinguished forever.

Gondor was settled by the more adventurous of the Numenoreans, those who came to win new lands and exploit resources. While Arnor and its succesor kingdoms did not achieve much in terms of conquest or great works in the long centuries of peace since the end of Sauron, Gondor expanded and reached new peaks of power:

Gondor is an extremely fragmented kingdom in terms of population, however:

Only a third of the population is of Dunedain descent, centered around Anorien and Lebennin, by the eastern coastlands and the Anduin river.

Thus, for Gondor - as an Empire - it is critical that they keep someone from the Line of Anarion (or Isildur, for that matter) on the throne.

Gondor is also keeping a "watch" on Mordor via the fortresses of Minas Ithil and the Black Gate:

Right now the orcs are mostly a nuisance, but if left alone, they could become a threat once more (I need to make some kind of attrition events for human armies crossing into Mordor to make it a costly endeavour to go in and purge it...).

 

[Austregisel]

It will be impossible to convert people to Dunedain and Gondorian right? And will this descending population of Númenor tend to fall if enemy invasions and hunger strike them?

 

[Blood Royal]

It will be impossible to convert people to Dunedain and Gondorian right? And will this descending population of Númenor tend to fall if enemy invasions and hunger strike them?

Yes, all cultural and religious conversion has been disabled.

It will be allowed in certain cases via "melting pot" events every half decade or so, but it will never be possible for a non-Dunedain pop to become Dunedain, it will only be the other way around, where Dunedain become first Lesser Dunedain and the Gondorian/Arnorian if certain conditions are met. For characters, I'll make some events where if a Dunedain marries a non-Dunedain, the kids become Lesser Dunedain or Arnorians/Gondorians.

 

[Samitte]

Oh man this is starting to look like a lot of fun (to play and to make). Can't wait to start working on my own project once my exams are done. Out of interest, will Halflings and Humans be able to marry and procreate and how do you plan to deal with this for other species combinations as well? Just have a bunch of half-this and half-that cultures? Or is it possible to block different species from procreating (though I am unaware if that is even fitting for the setting or whether it was a thing or not.)

 

[Blood Royal]

Oh man this is starting to look like a lot of fun (to play and to make). Can't wait to start working on my own project once my exams are done. Out of interest, will Halflings and Humans be able to marry and procreate and how do you plan to deal with this for other species combinations as well? Just have a bunch of half-this and half-that cultures? Or is it possible to block different species from procreating (though I am unaware if that is even fitting for the setting or whether it was a thing or not.)

There won't be any half- combinations except half-orcs and (very rare) half-elves, at least, that's my current stance!

What we usually do in total overhaul mods is try to prevent improper marriages (though that is harder in IR than in CK2 where it could be blocked in the culture file), and if one should slip by, the child will be stillborn to prevent weird half-interspecies thingies like half-spiders from polluting the gene pool

 

[OwIcohoIic]

Some progress of the first unit for Gondor. This is just the high poly sculpt, I'll post some updates once I've retopologized, UV mapped, skinned to the skeleton, baked the high poly down and textured him.

A closeup render of the helmet. I'll update this post as I near completion.

 

[OwIcohoIic]

The final Gondorian Armor model. I've been having some issues getting it in-game but I'm making progress

https://skfb.ly/6KFXw

 

[schultz]

This looks great. I'll be following this closely.