[Strategy / Risk] Game of Thrones

[UmbraUnda]

I want to discuss concepts and mechanics of a new unique Game of Thrones map I'm working on.

Features

• 480x480 Map with Westeros and Essos (Most of Essos)
• Realistic and Proportioned map based on this map.
• Big Castle Exteriors with walkable walls (based on doodads) + Instances for major castle's interiors (Example: Castlerly Rock - Instance would consist of inner mine tunnels, gold vault, and throne room.)
• 12 Players: Winter, Free Folk, Night's Watch, North, Riverlands, Vale, Iron Islands, Stannis, Daenerys, Lannisters, Reach, and Dorne.
• More paths than 2happy4u's A Song of Ice and Fire, which left out many major characters like Arya.
• Expansive paths - Each path has multiple quests. Each quest advances the path with better units and more heroes. (Example: Danerys travels throughout Essos - hatching her eggs, gathering armies like the Unsullied and Dothraki and appropriate heroes.)
• 7 Resources - Different lands are more rich in certain resources encouraging trading and conquest.
• Gameplay - RTS Combat, RPG, and City Building.
• New combat mechanics (Armor/Weapon Types)
• Lots of upgrades for harvesting, abilities, and unit/building stats.

Winter

Spoiler

March south to the wall while building up your army.

No paths - however there are many quests/conditions for new heroes and units.

Free Folk

Spoiler

Unite the tribes & destroy the Night's Watch while fending off Winter.

Free Folk - All tribes unite under King Mance; attack the wall for better pastures to the South.
Giant - Discover lost Giant tribe. Mag the Mighty leads the Free Folk adding more Giants however some tribes will rebel.
Joramun - Mance find's the Horn of Winter; has many special abilities.

Night's Watch

Spoiler

Great Ranging begins...

Jon - Joer dies. Jon named Lord Commander.
Marsh - Joer dies. Marsh named Lord Commander.
Free Folk - Alliance with the Free Folk. This causes a rebellion at Castle Black.
Winterfell - Jon takes Winterfell, proclaimed Warden of the North.
Dragon Glass - If Jon comes to Dragon Stone, he forges weapons from the Dragon Glass mines. Permanent Bonus vs. Undead.
Stark Reunion - If Jon conquers Winterfell; Sansa, Arya and Bran returns to Winterfell.

North

Spoiler

Robb Crowned King in the North after Battle of Riverrun II - Army assembled with Riverlands.

Stark - Robb is successful. Sansa and Arya reunited with Robb - Bran eventually return.
Bolton - Robb fails, Boltons sack Winterfell and Roose Bolton proclaims himself Warden in the North.
Jon - Robb and Boltons fail. Jon takes Winterfell, proclaimed Warden of the North.
Vale - Accept the aid of the Vale
Rebuild Winterfell - With the Boltons defeated, Winterfell is rebuilt and the remaining Northern Houses pledge their support.
Stark Reunion - Sana, Arya and Bran return to Winterfell.
Ice and Fire - After returning, Bran tells Jon that he is a Targaryen. Jon marries Daenerys.

Riverlands

Spoiler

After Battle of Riverrun II - Army assembled with the North.

Tully - Robb is successul, Tullys marry Freys.
Frey - Betray the North and ally the Lannisters.
Brotherhood - If Riverrun is taken by Lannisters. Gain support of the Brotherhood without Banners to help reclaim the Riverlands.
North - Thoros and the Hound see Winter coming in the flames. Go North to aid the Wall.

Vale

Spoiler

Decide whether to support a side in the war of 5 kings or unite the Lords of the Vale.

Little Finger - Joffrey is poisoned, LF escapes back to the Vale with Sansa before becoming Lord Protector.
Lords of the Vale - Unite the Lords of the Vale and reform the Falcon Knights.
North - Aid Jon in defeating the Boltons. Little Finger is killed by Sansa.

Iron Islands

Spoiler

Iron Islands Army on Flint's Finger poised to strike Moat Cailin.

Balon - Balon successfully conquers the North. Reigns as King of the North and the Seas.

Kingsmoot - Balon is Killed. Euron named Iron King.
Valyria - Euron finds treasures in Valyria including armor and a legendary horn rumored to tame dragons.
Daenerys - Pledge the Iron Fleet for Danerys.

Stannis

Spoiler

Captured Storm's End, Army poised to strike King's Landing.

King Stannis - Win Battle of Blackwater, Stannis is crowned King.
North - Lose Battle of Blackwater, go North to aid the Wall and gain support from Northern Houses and Mountain Men.
Lord of Light - Grant power to Melisandre for her rituals. Sacrifice certain characters at bonfires for bonuses.

Resurrection - Melisandre resurrects Jon should he fall in battle.

Daenerys

Spoiler

Dragons hatched. Marching East with remaining Khalasar. Gather support to return and conquer Westeros.

Queen of Essos - Conquer cities of Slaver's Bay. Gain ships to travel West.
Khaleesi - Kill the Leader of the Yun'Kai Dothraki and become their Queen.
Free Cities - Any other city in Essos will lend its support to Daenerys once conquered. Each Free City provides a unique bonus.
False King - Aegon is found to actually be an imposter. Aegon is killed. If Dorne supported Aegon, they now support Daenerys.
Ice and Fire - Marry Jon Targaryen and begin another inbred Targaryen dynasty.

Lannisters

Spoiler

Alliance between House Lannister and House Tyrell. Get ready to defend King's Landing.

Joffrey - Joffrey's reign is solidified having defeated his enemies.
Tommen - Joffrey is poisoned. Tommen takes the throne.
Gold Hand - If Jaime is captured (killed) by the North/Riverlands, brings back Jaime with a gold hand + Brienne.
Cersei - Should all of Cersei's children die, Cersie is crowned Queen.
Faith - Faith takes over King's Landing, many characters killed or imprisoned.

Reach

Spoiler

Having lost Renly, Tyrells ally the Lannisters. Get ready to help defend King's Landing.

Tyrell - Margery becomes Queen. House Tyrell enjoys golden age with House Lannister. Loras joins the Kingsguard.
Tarly - Randyl Tarly lauches military campaign to support House Lannister.
Citadel - Maesters of the Citadel focus their efforts on rediscovering high technology of Valyria to power their Astrolabe and enhance their maesters.

Dorne

Spoiler

Unite the Dornish Houses and Oberyn vs. Mountain at 10:00 game time.

Oberyn - Oberyn defeats the Mountain, starts a war with Lannisters + gain Tyrion.
Donan - Oberyn is defeated. Doran plots for revenge...
Aegon - Arianne and Sand Snakes rally the forces of Dorne to Aegon's cause. Aegon Lands at Gryphon's Roost with the Golden Company.
Daenerys - Pledge support to Daenerys instead of Aegon.

Appreciate any feedback and advice. Also if you have any ideas to add, feel free.

 

[Oliver]

fairly good sounding idea, what progress have you made so far?
Is the plan to keep it below 4mb?

 

[UmbraUnda]

fairly good sounding idea, what progress have you made so far?
Is the plan to keep it below 4mb?

Roughed out the map so far + made the Eyrie castle (looks pretty good), I'll post screen shots soon.
Before I go too deep into working on this, I want to finalize all the features and mechanics.

The plan is to make it as good as possible - file size will probably be 50MB+ cause I'm gonna go all out on custom models and custom sound.

 

[UmbraUnda]

Updated Playable Factions + Paths + Start Summary. The list is not final and incomplete; things could change + more stuff will be added. Also keep in mind that certain paths can overlap with other paths.

 

[Oliver]

You certainly seem ambitious in a good way

I'm no expert on wc3 stuff by any means, but some advice which applies to any undertaking is to not to set your goals too high without a plan for reaching them.

Can I recommend you break it down into releases say:
Release 1: basic layout with basic units maybe some faction units
Release 2: heroes and abilities
Release 3: castles and some decoration
Release 4: Major story lines for major factions
Release 5: story lines for all factions
Release 6: custom models and content + finalise decorations

You might subdivide the story arcs, decoration or factional tasks but each of these has a more distinct and defined goal which is achievable.

This way you can also have players testing your gameplay elements as you develop the map rather than investing all your time and only getting limited feedback until final release

You may well have had such a plan but this is incase you didn't have one.
___________________________

You list:
"RTS Combat, RPG, and City Building."

What break down do you have for this? Will players build their base like on a melee map or will have be given the city with buildings to be upgraded?

Will the RTS portion be done by units spawning periodically or trained from buildings?

How will minor settlements be handled with this will the:
Act as an upgrade for the major settlements?
Act as settlements in their own right training units?
Act as resource production locations?

- edited misread the story arcs -

 

[Fingolfin]

If you are going to make a map based on a "real" map, make sure to use the Terrain 1.0 tool from the tools section. It allows you to paint a map and convert it into a heightmap. Basically, you create a new map with the dimensions you want, lordaeron summer tileset and depp water. Then, you open up Photoshop or GIMP (free) and create an image which is as large as the map, +1 on each dimension (in this case it would be 481x481 px). Paint your map in black and white using black for water and white (or rather, gray) for land and mountains. Save it as .tga and convert it using the tool into a file named "war3map.w3m". Then, download a MPQ editor and use it to open the map, and replace the existing file with this name with the one you created. Open the map in the editor and swap to whatever tileset you want, make sure the heights are correct (this takes some tuning). You can use the smooth tool to rough out the edges. I made my own westeros map this way, i'm attaching it to the post so that you can see! It doesn't have essos though. I can't seem to find its heightmap, but i'm attaching another one so that you can see how it works.

 

[UmbraUnda]

You certainly seem ambitious in a good way

I'm no expert on wc3 stuff by any means, but some advice which applies to any undertaking is to not to set your goals too high without a plan for reaching them.

Can I recommend you break it down into releases say:
Release 1: basic layout with basic units maybe some faction units
Release 2: heroes and abilities
Release 3: castles and some decoration
Release 4: Major story lines for major factions
Release 5: story lines for all factions
Release 6: custom models and content + finalise decorations

You might subdivide the story arcs, decoration or factional tasks but each of these has a more distinct and defined goal which is achievable.

This way you can also have players testing your gameplay elements as you develop the map rather than investing all your time and only getting limited feedback until final release

You may well have had such a plan but this is incase you didn't have one.
___________________________

You list:
"RTS Combat, RPG, and City Building."

What break down do you have for this? Will players build their base like on a melee map or will have be given the city with buildings to be upgraded?

Will the RTS portion be done by units spawning periodically or trained from buildings?

How will minor settlements be handled with this will the:
Act as an upgrade for the major settlements?
Act as settlements in their own right training units?
Act as resource production locations?

- edited misread the story arcs -

Thanks for the feedback. Good suggestions, I'll keep it in mind if this project takes a long time.

RTS combat - Train and fight with your soldiers (lots to choose from ~25+).
RPG - Heroes have quests to progress their arcs and gain the support of other heroes + new units & items.
City Building - Harvest resources and expand already built cities or build new cities. (Honestly city building is not going to be so major, rather resource management and upgrading tech will play a greater role; maybe I need a better word for this).
Players will definitely not have to build bases from scratch, rather expand what they start with.
Minor settlements will provide more population room and harvest-able resources. They can train units too if it has a barracks (or you build one).

 

[UmbraUnda]

If you are going to make a map based on a "real" map, make sure to use the Terrain 1.0 tool from the tools section. It allows you to paint a map and convert it into a heightmap. Basically, you create a new map with the dimensions you want, lordaeron summer tileset and depp water. Then, you open up Photoshop or GIMP (free) and create an image which is as large as the map, +1 on each dimension (in this case it would be 481x481 px). Paint your map in black and white using black for water and white (or rather, gray) for land and mountains. Save it as .tga and convert it using the tool into a file named "war3map.w3m". Then, download a MPQ editor and use it to open the map, and replace the existing file with this name with the one you created. Open the map in the editor and swap to whatever tileset you want, make sure the heights are correct (this takes some tuning). You can use the smooth tool to rough out the edges. I made my own westeros map this way, i'm attaching it to the post so that you can see! It doesn't have essos though. I can't seem to find its heightmap, but i'm attaching another one so that you can see how it works.

Nice, that is a pretty handy tool although I already started working on my map so I'm pretty much set and have no use for it. Although, having a shadow map would be a neat art asset to add the gallery.

 

[Fingolfin]

Nice, that is a pretty handy tool although I already started working on my map so I'm pretty much set and have no use for it. Although, having a shadow map would be a neat art asset to add the gallery.

It's actually possible to use it on a map which you've already made some unit stuff to, you just have to set the tileset back to lordaeron summer and import the heightmap. I'm just saying, recreating the terrain accurately by hand is such a hassle, and you'll never get it 100% right. It's your choice though, i can understand if you've already placed 100+ doodads and don't want to do have your work undone.

 

[UmbraUnda]

I have a few options for laying out the architecture and I want people's opinions.

Option 1) Fantasy medieval models (example wc3 base files barracks and Castle). + Doodad based cities & main building.
Many cultures could use different textures sets while using the same generic building models (Ujimasa Hojo's building sets for different races).
Humans-Andal Westeros; Gilneas-First Men Westeros; Highborne-Essos.
Many castles would have unique models but there would be some repeats (could try to make it more unique with doodad decorations).
Smaller Doodad based walk-able walls.

Option 2) Realistic medieval models from my medieval map & Arab buildings (All made by Mike, although I edited some). + Unit based cities.
European models would be used for most of Westeros and Arab models would be used in Dorne and Essos.
These models are smaller and act like puzzle pieces so I can build a dozen unique castles with the pieces (Realistic + Consistent Andal Architecture).
Bigger Unit based walk-able walls.

Option A) Smaller cities more proportional to where things were on the map with less paths.
Option B) Bigger major cities and castles with more paths.

Options 1 and A would feel a lot more like 2happy4u's ASOIAF for the most part.
However, I'm leaning towards for Option 2 and B for something a bit more unique and realistic, although it takes up a bit more map room, it'll be worth it.

 

[StoPCampinGn00b]

I want to point out that the ASOIAF map suffers from small pathways + small units, and of course the hero targetting. I understand that those are part of the games, but I think the gameplay itself in the Robert's Rebellion map is much more fluid and enjoyable due to open engagements. RR allows more real time micro and teamwork, rather than chokepoints, hero aims, and AoE melts galore. The biggest plus in the ASOIAF map is the paths and the massive amount of lore. It'd be a dream come true to have the smooth gameplay of RR and scale and detail of ASOIAF.

Subscribed and really looking forward to how the map will look. i.e. screenshots!

 

[Oliver]

Doodad based walls are cool because they won't spam the minimap with white dots so you can easier see your idle units and you can easily control scale.

Unit based walls are ite because they can be damaged/repaired automatically by units (as opposed to destructible). Maybe you could have doodad based walls but with some of the walls being unit/destructible to be a breachable weak point.

It would be cool to have a risk/strategy map with good attention to the sieges - like the fortress siege map, with multiple layer walls, gates, battering rams, ladders etc. Would be hard to make it work right though. You could have players complete "tasks" or quests to unlock siege related stuff, maybe to sneak people inside the walls, disable unit production at the base for some time or, as a defender, to raise militia.

Maybe you could mix open and closed areas and give the units native to each area an advantage in that environment, home field advantage style.
Tight spaces and chokes gives ranged units big advantage.
Open spaces gives fast units the advantage to manoeuvre round and hit weak targets.

I agree with stopcampingn00b on both having open areas and wanting to see screenshots.

 

[UmbraUnda]

Things have been busy. Good news though. My medieval map is close to an alpha release (this GoT map uses its systems so it has priority for now).
The map is roughly done and I'm impressed how well it came out. The proportion to the actual GoT map is nearly perfect.
Some tweaks were made for some tight spots but for the most part its true to scale - looks great. I'll post some screenshots soon.

I'm researching major castles layouts now - I'm impressed in many ways...
I also now realize how bad 2happy4u's map messed up castles. Many should have been atop high platue's and many castle's layouts are inaccurate.
Example: Storm's End. It has no docks and should've been on the edge of a steep cliff. The layout should've been circular with a grand tower in the middle.

Good thing Game of Thrones has many scenes showing major castles. I'm going to do my best to make them legit.

 

[UmbraUnda]

Here's a roughed out minimap and map view. It's a long way from done however the propotions are looking pretty good. Top right border is going to be used for instances. I think I might add a bit more sea below dorne... What do you think? Appreciate any feedback.

Map referenced from: http://www.sermountaingoat.co.uk/map/versions/speculative_map.jpg

 

[Chaosy]

Good luck making GoT justice

 

[Dr Super Good]

I am not sure something written as a book series and then roughly translated into a gory over priced fantasy soap opera will translate well into a Warcraft III map.

As people pointed out above the game scale and mechanics might be a bit too logical for a series full of plot armor and senseless battles involving large numbers of troops. Where as in the series the heroes lasted a few episodes thanks to their plot armor, sometimes, in Warcraft III they will last a few seconds as that huge "I am important, kill me!" sign on them causes them to be nuked down by every damage dealing unit that can be thrown at them if the enemy is vaguely competent.

 

[UmbraUnda]

I am not sure something written as a book series and then roughly translated into a gory over priced fantasy soap opera will translate well into a Warcraft III map.

As people pointed out above the game scale and mechanics might be a bit too logical for a series full of plot armor and senseless battles involving large numbers of troops. Where as in the series the heroes lasted a few episodes thanks to their plot armor, sometimes, in Warcraft III they will last a few seconds as that huge "I am important, kill me!" sign on them causes them to be nuked down by every damage dealing unit that can be thrown at them if the enemy is vaguely competent.

I know what you mean... Yes, hero targeting is quite the issue.
Still, fans of the series like myself enjoy playing GoT themed maps. And I've yet to find one that was true to the map proportions while maintaining lore and events - so I thought I'd try to make a map better than anything currently out there. It's definitely not perfect as a wc3 game but fans enjoys it. Even after a couple years since their last update, 2happy4u/dayne/panther's map is still playing on bnet quite often.

 

[Dr Super Good]

One mechanic for maps with important heroes to prevent them being nuked is to make them invulnerable while there are considerable number of non-hero friendly units around them. Heroes cannot be nuked down until late during a fight and most normal units have died and they are vulnerable, at which stage the damage is more manageable or the outcome of the fight has already been decided so it does not matter if they are nuked down. This also fits into typical drama nonsense that the characters mostly die late during a battle after the action sequence!

I think unofficial Heroes of Might and Magic 4 patches added similar mechanics to stop the classic stack of doom nuking down your hero problem the game suffered from. Other Heroes of Might and Magic games like 3, 5 and 6 avoided this problem entirely by making hero fate tied to winning/losing a fight, with the heroes themselves being invulnerable in combat.

 

[Fingolfin]

Personally, i had this idea of solving that problem by adding a bleedout timer to heroes, so that whenever they die, they are actually just incapacitated, and you still have about 15 seconds to clear out all enemies around the hero (during which time a bar appears above his head, counting down). If you succeed, he will come back with 15% health, maybe with a buff lasting about a minute which causes perma-death if he should get killed again during that period.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Personally, i had this idea of solving that problem by adding a bleedout timer to heroes, so that whenever they die, they are actually just incapacitated, and you still have about 15 seconds to clear out all enemies around the hero (during which time a bar appears above his head, counting down). If you succeed, he will come back with 15% health, maybe with a buff lasting about a minute which causes perma-death if he should get killed again during that period.

If he is the first unit that died, it is unlikely a large scale battle will be over in 15 seconds. It also means the hero never sees action in combat so might as well not exist in the first place.

Hence the invulnerable approach is better because it means they are always major parts of the fight until the end when they become vulnerable. It also gives players more opportunities to retreat them if a battle is going badly for potential comebacks. The mechanic can be expanded to only making heroes invulnerable if there are significant numbers of both friendly and enemy non-hero units nearby, so that an army of pure heroes with few non-heroes can attack the enemy heroes with a lot of non-hero units, even though the outcome is likely still going to be defeat.

Yet another approach would be to prevent non-hero units from attacking heroes at all but still allowing heroes to attack non-heroes. This again produces drama like combat since generally major characters are immune to death by extras and instead mostly die at the hands of another major character. So that non-heroes still have a purpose, heroes could take constant attrition damage if not near friendly non-hero units and near enemy non-hero units.

 

[Fingolfin]

If he is the first unit that died, it is unlikely a large scale battle will be over in 15 seconds. It also means the hero never sees action in combat so might as well not exist in the first place.

It's not like the numbers would be set in stone, or that the battle would have to be over. Basically, when a hero gets incapacitated, you'd have to clear a perimeter around it for it to recover before the bleedout timer runs out. Maybe not even that, perhaps you'd just have to bring another hero close to it for more than, say, 3-5 seconds. Then it gets the buff preventing it from getting back up indefinitely during the battle.

Hence the invulnerable approach is better because it means they are always major parts of the fight until the end when they become vulnerable. It also gives players more opportunities to retreat them if a battle is going badly for potential comebacks. The mechanic can be expanded to only making heroes invulnerable if there are significant numbers of both friendly and enemy non-hero units nearby, so that an army of pure heroes with few non-heroes can attack the enemy heroes with a lot of non-hero units, even though the outcome is likely still going to be defeat.

Yet another approach would be to prevent non-hero units from attacking heroes at all but still allowing heroes to attack non-heroes. This again produces drama like combat since generally major characters are immune to death by extras and instead mostly die at the hands of another major character. So that non-heroes still have a purpose, heroes could take constant attrition damage if not near friendly non-hero units and near enemy non-hero units.

It seems to me like these solutions could easily become none-intuitive to players. The amount of friendlies required to make the hero invulnerable will come across as arbitrary, but is also necessary - like you said, having one soldier making five heroes invulnerable is a bit weird. Players who don't understand how it works will be discouraged by seemingly invincible heroes beating down their force. Maybe a system where each hero gets +1 armor from each nearby friendly unit? Their survivability would scale with the size of their army.

 

[GhostThruster]

re: hero focus, could just use a custom armour type for heroes - that's how wc3 does it.


i have a map concept in mind that takes inspiration from ASOIAF, but is not set in its universe. in it, diplomacy/political maneuvering is encouraged and a possible avenue to victory. some of the ways i had in mind to incorporate politics into it include:
- neutral cities represent independent vassals, who you can recruit by building rapport with them through various means (e.g. trade, religion, marriage - see below).
- trade and religion affects how a player or neutral city perceives you. you can send merchants & priests inside their city to slowly build favour with them.
- you can arrange marriages with your nobles, and employ assassins to kill enemy nobles.
- you don't have to kill enemy units, but can instead capture them. turning them into the houses in which they served will improve your standing with that house.
hypothetically, i'd want it to be possible in my map to win the game without battling another player - you can trade, marry & bribe your way to victory.

seeing as a big part of game of thrones is politics, will your map have any features to emphasise this aspect?

 

[UmbraUnda]

Cool concepts guys but honestly, I'm just going to remove hero glow from all the units so they camouflage. I think heroes should be kill-able though, sorry.
Lol I can imagine it now, heroes go invunerable and get divine shield buff - except instead of saying invunerable next to armor, it'll say plot armor xDDD.

 

[UmbraUnda]

Roughed out Eyrie's terrain and main buildings. (Bloody Gate, Gates of the Moon, Stone, Snow, Sky, and Eyrie) I think the terrain and buildings fit aSoIaF's description (wiki description, i should buy the books...) and the walkable walls/towers/stairs/ladders help defense. Still gotta add other buildings, doodads and destructible resources as well as touch up the terrain. So far, I think it works well. Sorry about the weird shadows, forgot to calculate shadows for the screen - will do another one when its further along.

 

[UmbraUnda]

Updated Eyrie and its holds. Gates of the Moon's layout is now correct according to the book with many towers/keeps and larger than the Eyrie. Bloody Gate also expanded.

The Bloody Gate (EDIT: Nudged the left stairs and tower so that it mirrors the right tower's placement.)

Gates of the Moon (EDIT: Rotated right Barracks doodad to remove banner from middle of walkable wall)

Stone

Eyrie and Sky

 

[UmbraUnda]

King's Landing + Red Keep. Still a bit rough - also all the tower models will be replaced for variation and lore accuracy once I find more models...

 

[UmbraUnda]

Here's some more rough castles ... still in progress. Bronzegate & Storm's End, Highgarden, and Harrenhal.

 

[UmbraUnda]

Revised Storm's End and surrounding land.

Mid-Westeros Zoom Out... still very rough missing a lot of walls and other doodads... the spacing between everything feels pretty good though.
From upper left to bottom right: Iron Islands, Riverlands, Vale, Westerlands, Crownlands, Dragon Stone, and a bit of Bronzegate.
Please ignore the ruined tower and townhall east of harrenhal - forgot to delete those.