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[Defense / Survival] The Siege of Minas Tirith

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Hello there,
out of boredem and due to the Coronavirus I have continued on a project I had started back in 2018. This thread should help to get more players to play the map and to get more feedback to improve the map. Unfortunately, it is really hard sometimes to fill the slots in Battle.net and since it is still a development version some players are not satisfied yet with the quality of the map. Maybe this thread helps me to improve the map. Besides, I want to get the map approved on Hive.

Motivation

"Why another Minas Tirith map?" you may ask. First of all, Gondor is my favorite faction in The Lord of the Rings. We were watching the movies as teenagers and playing The Lord of the Rings tabletop. I always chose Gondor and wanted to build the city as a real model for tabletop. However, this would be too much work for me so I chose Warcraft to create a map. I haven't played all existing Minas Tirith maps yet but I am sure if you are passionate about something and improve it long enough, your version will be enjoyed as much or even more than the other maps.

Description

The Siege of Minas Tirith is a defense map where two forces Gondor and Mordor fight each other. Gondor has to protect the White Tree in the city until the Army of Dead arrives and kills all soldiers of Mordor. Mordor has to destroy the White Tree before the Army of Dead arrives and kills them all. Every player can choose a hero. There are heroes available which do not participate in the siege in the movie but I thought players would like to play them anyway like Saruman or Treebeard. The heroes are automatically revived. You spawn units by enabling/disabling them. You have a hero unit which is the rally point for your barracks and can be moved around. This helps you to control the big army without using your hero at the front. All heroes have range damage to avoid getting killed too fast. The units are automatically spawned and only cost food. Gold is only used for items and upgrades. You gain gold only from killing units. The city has 7 gates which can be closed by Gondor players. The heroes can be repicked with a time limit. There is a preparation phase in the beginning to read tooltips, choose a heroe etc. Rohan and the Mumakil arrive halfway through the game and give you new unit types. Actually, this should stop the attack from Mordor for a while. The city has Trebuchets which can be controlled by all Gondor players and help to destroy Siege Towers, Grond and kill units. They can be upgraded as well.

The map is based on the movie Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (not the book!).

Videos



city1.png
city2.png
night1.png
night2.png
night3.png
orcarmy.png
whitetree.png


Download


GitHub


There are many issues I have created myself to improve the map's quality: tdauth/the-siege-of-minas-tirith

Discord


Comparison to other similar maps

Minnas Tirith Anniversary



As you can see I wrote a review of the map playing it alone two times for either side. The map might also be better balanced already but there is no auto spawn, no hero revival, no custom models and the city doesn't really look like Minas Tirith from the movie (not saying mine looks perfect).

Helm's Deep


The map seems more balanced, faster gameplay and has more upgrades for units. It was recommended to me by many players and seems to have a big fanbase already. However, the main difference is that it is Helm's Deep and I prefer Minas Tiirth. This difference should be enough reason to create my own map. I use this map as inspiration and try to add features from it into my own map.

TODOs/help

There are many TODOs but here are some of the most important ones. Maybe you can help me with these by either testing the map or knowing some resources I don't know yet:
  • Improved balancing, so players won't rage quit anymore. This might be the most important task!
  • Custom Gandalf the White model on a horse.
  • Custom Gothmog model on a Warg (maybe at foot, too).
  • Custom Merry and Pippin models in Gondor and Rohan armor.
  • Custom Army of the Dead model (the current is okay but it could look better).
  • Death animations for Grond and Siege Towers.
  • Team color parts for the custom Lord of the Rings models. Currently, only the health bars work.
  • More custom spells and items instead of the standard Warcraft stuff.
  • More upgrades and abilities for units.
  • More custom heroes: Merry and Pippin
  • Simplified spawn system (mark enabled unit types, auto priorize unit types which are limited OR just set a limit like 3 to 3 different unit types at once?). Currently one unit spawns every 2 seconds until the food limit is reached.
  • Simplified explanations of everything.
  • A fixed 30 minutes game until the Army of Dead arrives.
  • Improved terrain: The beacon and maybe the city/citadel should look better.
  • Improved sounds (mocks and music).
  • Some great screenshots and videos which I can use in this thread, the download thread and on github.
Please test the map and give me feedback. I am really trying hard to improve the map. This is the second version of the map. The first one was too big and didn't use real rings. It had only like 3 gates. I needed portals to push the Orc Army into the city. This version is much smaller, so you can start fighting immediately. I removed some features from the first version which were too confusing/unnecessary.
 
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It has a basic one if you add computer players. You can try to start it with one hostile computer players and units will be spawned. However with the new rally point system I guess I have to rework it. Here are some ideas:

How important is single player to you? I can try to improve it. Do you have any suggestions how the AI should work? I am not sure about heroes. I think no hero would be the best for the AI since he will be killed too easily. Maybe some more units instead.
 
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Level 25
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Well the models seem to be extracted from the game. I got them from a Russian website. Unfortunately, they have no team colors, so you need to enable HP bars. Fighting is a mess anyway currently, since so many units spawn all the time instead of waves.

I have watched videos like this:


However, he has to create buildings etc. inside of the city to defend it and of course he plays alone instead of 4 vs 4.
The first wall looks a bit smaller compared to the walls behind in the BFME RTS version. Grond has some Trolls moving it (mine doesn't :() In BFME you play either side alone and have to create an army from buildings. You have those nice spells to get some reinforcements or heal units etc. + multiple heroes.
Except from that you can basically do the same things in my map except I have more walls and the walls are taken much easier in the beginning.

I could increase the game time, so you have to defend the city longer but somehow Mordor will need some massive push in the end.

I like how in BFME Riders of Rohan actually Ride down infantery and Nazgul actually go down to kille riders/trebuchtes like in the movie. I could try to add some custom spells like that.

I have improved the AI on GitHub now:
  • Gondor AI automatically closes gates of the next ring when a gate is destroyed and moves their rally points back.
  • Gondor AI automatically defends the White Tree when it is attacked.
  • Mordor AI automatically moves rally points forward to the next gate when a gate is destroyed.
  • Mordor AI uses Siege Towers at the first ring at free spots and stops training them after the first gate has been destroyed.
  • Gondor and Mordor AI make smarter upgrades for gold.
When you watch my linked video, you can see that I almost lost against the AI since it kept pushing and pushing. Mordor AI also uses Siege Towers in the first ring. I would love more ideas/balancing feedback. Currently, I am trying to fix all bugs and improve the city a bit/add custom spells for heroes.
 
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