39 replies to this topic

[Beren IV]

It is my general experience with games of the nature of TLA in which each player has a civilization with a limited set of objects (units and buildings in this case) that if a player is to defeat another player, unless certain victory conditions are set, the victorious player must utterly exterminate the other player, killing not only the defeated player's military units but also slaughtering all of his or her civilian population - in short, genocide.

There seems to be quite a bit of genocide in Middle Earth, or at least there is the threat of such, in Tolkien's writing. Tolkien rarely says specifically what becomes of the women and children of the defeated peoples except in one case (the Fall of Gondolin - and that is in HoME II). Nonetheless, the extent of the "scorched earth" policy that Tolkien's villains typically employ generally suggests a "leave no survivors" policy as well, although they certainly do take prisoners for use as slaves.

To what extent do you need to commit genocide in TLA in order to subdue another faction? Also, who can you use as slaves? What happens if you are playing a civilization that does not use slaves (e.g. Noldor), and you manage to conquer a settlement of a civilization that does (e.g. Morgoth)? Can entire nations simply surrender to you in exchange for their lives? Can you force another human player to surrender (e.g. terrorize his populace enough that they depose their leader and submit to you)?

It is my general feeling that the Elves and Dwarves are very, very difficult to enslave, that you need the dominating presence of a Vala to do it (i.e. Sauron just can't), and that even Melkor seems to generally have exterminated the Elven populations He displaced over the course of his war, and that while Sauron, in the guise of Anatar, did manage to guile the Elves into allying with him and sharing their secrets, Sauron nonetheless ultimately had to wipe out the Elves he was up against, nir, nis, whatever the Elvish word for child is, and all. In fact, nobody really had an easy time enslaving Elves or Dwarves, as both peoples seem to have valued their freedom to the extent that they would rather die than lose it. Not even Men in the later days ever managed to subdue Elves and make them submit.

Men, on the other hand, are used as slaves by all sorts of villains, including Morgoth, Sauron, great Orc lords, Undead, and even other Men. It seems perhaps out of place to storm into a Rohirrim village and have to kill all of the villagers as well as the guards.

[Caedus]

I think you have to be careful when you say that Elves are very difficult to enslave (in general). Sure the proud captains that serve in Gondolin would sooner die than give up, but that doesn't have to be the same for the 'ordinairy' Noldorin villager.

Gwindor was once a proud Elven commander, yet he was but a shadow of his former self when Beleg found him in his search for Turin. The Sil. states several times that Morgoth captures and enslaves gifted Elvish labourors.

My point is: we have to differentate between the shining examples of individuals of which Tolkien writes and the general populace of the races.

I have understood that in the game the evil forces have the ability to indeed enslave their enemy. But you have a point about the races of good though. It doesn't quite feel right if a player that leads Elvish forces has to exterminate Orcish women and children (maybe not so explicit in the game, but implicit when killing villagers) in order to achieve victory.

[Beren IV]

My comment on Elves and Dwarves being difficult to enslave stems from two comments in LotR.

In the chapters in Lórien, somebody (Galadriel, I think) says that "never will they [The Elves] serve him [Sauron] again."

In the appendix on the Dwarves, it notes that Sauron "discovered he could not control them [Dwarves]", and so "destroyed them" wherenever he found them.



It is plainly obvious that Morgoth could enslave at least the Elves; even Beren was supposed to be an escaped slave (and brought back into service under Telvido) in BoLT. I have discussed the reason why Sauron apparently could not with some other Tolkien scholars, notably in the Reading Room discussion of theonering.net, and the consesus seems to be: Melkor, being a Vala, had the force and power over minds that he could override the Elves' free will to the extent of being able to enslave them. Sauron, being "only" a Maia, did and could not.

I don't question Morgoth's ability to keep Elvish slaves; I do question Sauron's.

[Caedus]

Ah, but then I ask you want you mean with the term 'slave'. Because I think that the sentence you quote about the Dwarves, is about how Sauron underestimated the spirits of the Dwarves and that he could not control those. That doesn't necesarily mean that he can't capture Dwarves and force them to do physical labor for him.

So I make the difference between being slave in a physical sense and in a spiritual sense.

I'm afraid Sauron is very well capable of making Dwarves and Elves do what he wants through all kinds of cruel methods.

[Beren IV]

So, in short, you are saying that he can make them work for him because they fear him, but not because he can directly exert control over their minds, as he can with Orcs or (most) Men. I was of the feeling that the (average) member of these races would rather die than serve evil, and so would not be a slave even if it meant torture and death.

Of course, if we go with my feeling, there are going to be unusually docile Elves and Dwarves just as there are particularly ornery ones just because of their nature as individual creatures, and whether or not Sauron can take slaves of them will depend on whether he knows about this variability within them.

[Enarwaen]

whee - seems like Beren wants to take a stab at Game Design, eh?

i can assure you that not every battle is a total annihilation scenario. our battles in TLA will have many different objectives that the player needs to fulfill in order to win - depending on the situation you will be required to e.g. delay the advancing enemy and in the same time retreat as many as possible of your troops to safety - or you'll need to execute an ambush and kill or route as many as let's say 50% of the enemy's army.

to put a long story short - TLA will feature a smart way of having different battle objectives which must be fulfilled to actually win these battles.

more details will be announced at a later date ...

about enslaving - only the Forces of Darkness and their like-aligned Minor Civs will have the ability to enslave other civilisations. we are currently toying (again) with the concept - so i cannot make a definitive statement yet. but you can be sure that good-aligned civs (e.g. like Noldor or Edain) will *not* become slavers - even if they manage to conquer an enemy stronghold - they would most likely free the slaves and integrate them into their own population or send them off home.

[Beren IV]

A couple of questions, then:

1. I do not doubt that the TLA editor will be able to create any number of victory conditions. However, what options would the random map generator have in creating games? Would randomly generated player versus player games have special victory conditions, or would it more likely be the standard "last-player-standing" setup?

2. What happens if, for the sake of argument, a Noldorin player playing as the House of Finarfin (definitely not evil) invades the stronghold of a human-controlled Edain or Dwarven opponent? Can the Noldor assimilate them? This is the situation that I am concerned about.

[Enarwaen]

@Beren

ad 1) you still think way too much in the confined AoX-quarters *hint*hint*

ad 2) if you happen to conquer an enemy settlement you will be prompted with some options like Raze, Occupy or even Enslave for the Forces of Darkness amongst others ...

and no - you won't be able to assimilate a 'foreign' tech-tree ... so it's not a situation as in Starcraft/Warcraft where you can suddenly build your enemies units and buildings.

[Caedus]

Hmm, but wasn't the point of enslaving Noldor by Morgoth that he could use their expertise? I mean, he doesn't have a lack of regular workers, so it would be quite useless to enslave his enemies just for hard work, unless he did it at a very large scale.

[Beren IV]

Got it. I understand that the standard AoX game isn't what we are going for, but it is my experience that players frequently want a simple, last player (or team) standing winds scenario. Either way, I expect that there will be plenty of armed conflict between civilizations that would normally have more friendly relations, so the question of what happens when an Edain army conqueres a Dwarven town is something we have to consider. But the assimilation is that you can incorperate units and buildings, but assimilated villager units would build buildings of your civ, rather than the civ they originially come from? Or do they become independent "vassal states" that are AI-run and from which you can levy taxes of resources, goods, and troops, the way you can with minor civs?

Edited by Beren IV, 26 July 2005 - 11:27 PM.

[Caedus]

Regular players might want a simple 'last man standing'-wins type of game, but the point is that the game is first and foremost about the world of Tolkien and not about what players want in a strategy game. So I don't think that should be top priority. Might be nice, but not too important.

[Beren IV]

All too true. Of course, there is no "true" Tolkien interpretation, since some things - for instance the amount of magic (for lack of a better word) - were left deliberately ambiguous by the author.

[Rinion]

I recall somewhere in LotR that evil Dwarves were mentioned. - but maybe it's just me.

I was wondering; on a random map, can allies attack each other? For example, the Galadhrim against Noldor, or will players be restricted to enemy combat? The latter would be more purist, but it could get dull after a while.

[dathui]

TLA is abit about "what if"-scenarious, and one of those might be "what if the Noldor made the Galadhrim angry". Afaik we will not restrict diplomacy in any way, thou we might restrict things regarding FoD abit, i don't know about that one.

[Enarwaen]

@Rinion
the civ that you are controlling will have a set of pre-defined diplomatic relations with all the other civs on the map. we are basing these relations on the information gleaned from the books. what you do after the game has started is strictly your own affair - so as an example if you decide your Noldor Civ should get hostile towards let's say the Galadhrim - well it is possible to do that with many diplomatic actions (breaking an alliance, canceling trade agreements, threatening the other civ ...) and direct actions of your units (attacking their caravans, moving your army into the territory of the other civ ...)

hope this answers your question

[Beren IV]

Gotcha. This means that there will need to be a balancing act between civilizations' popularity and their power.

[Enarwaen]

not only that - but your actions concerning your neighbours will have a large impact on all Diplomatic Relations.

e.g. if you break an alliance - your former allies will view you with some contempt and suspicion. (meaning there will be a considerable penalty for doing this)
if you then go ahead and become openly hostile towards another civ (that can be either a neutral civ or a former-ally) your former allies could take that action as a justification to declare war on you ... so basically 'backstabbing' isn't to be taken lightly (unless you have the military muscle to back up your ambitions)

[Caedus]

Great! It seems only logical that your neighbours should start to become supicious when you're suddenly breaking off alliances and attacking former friends. Trust is a very important element of diplomacy.

[Mithrandil]

Lol, to my vision, TLA is becoming somewhat R:TW and AOW like, with the pre-defined diplomacy, trade agreements, not AOX-style.
I thought TLA was going to be the perfect game a year ago, but now I'm just amazed

[Drashkurz]

Rinion, on Jul 28 2005, 03:46 AM, said:

I recall somewhere in LotR that evil Dwarves were mentioned. - but maybe it's just me.

Was that Galadriel's 'all peoples were divided on that day save the elves' comment?