Angmar - Demesne of the Witch King Thread - Dominions 3: The Awakening

Well, this is a mod that I had been working on a couple years ago on the Shrapnel forums. Since coming back to the game, I've picked right back up where I left off.

So, I thought of the Angmar, founded by the Witch King of Angmar (the lord of the Nazgul). It would be a MA nation (with a nod in the direction of having Morgul be the LA variant and Mordor be the EA variant), and would be based on the evil human kingdom in northern Middle Earth. Since this kingdom is in the Misty Mountains, there is certainly the possibility of goblins and trolls.

Notable Figures:
The pretender selection for Angmar will be pretty limited, perhaps being restricted only to various forms of Sauron. Currently, there are a number of possible ones, which need to be fleshed out: Dark Lord (titan SC), Eye of Flame (immobile), Lord of Gifts (forge bonus, stealthy, corruption?), The Necromancer (archmage style), Master of Shapes (can alter between vampire, great wolf, and bat forms).

One thing that would make Angmar have a different 'feel' from other nations would be the inclusion of a heavy thug with the starting commanders, the Witch King of Angmar. This is a pretty big benefit, since it automatically supercharges expansion, but much of the magical potency of the nation would be focused in this unique unit. So, it's not so much a question of his presence overpowering the nation, but the fact that he can only do so much keeping the nation balanced.

I'd like to have the eight other ringwraiths as either unique summons or essentially as the result of artifacts. The unique summons seems like it would be relatively easy. However, I'm wondering if it's possible to do something like the lycanthropos amulet or the pebble skin suit and have a MR-based chance of turning into a Nazgul each turn when the artifact is worn. Obviously, these would be the nine rings of power intended for human hands.

Magic Diversity:
I'm thinking Angmar would have three magical paths as primary things: death, astral, water and fire. I think having very few sacred units (just priestly commanders and the nazgul themselves) would help to prevent it from being one of those mod nations that makes a race that can do everything.

National Units:
For units, I think the wild and barbarian-like human kingdoms of Angmar and Rhudaur as well as the orcs of Mt. Gundabad would provide sufficient variety. I'd imagine the Angmar humans to be elites with good equipment and stats, but costing lots of resources and a fair bit of gold. The Rhudaur humans would have furs and axes and would probably have a small berserk bonus. Finally, the orcs of Mt. Gundabad could be the capitol-only troops, supplying cave trolls and warg riders.

Anyway, suggestions are very welcome.

Version 0.5 - All national units done. No national spells complete and no heroes available yet.

Version 0.51 - Nazgul heroes added. Some units changed for gross balancing efforts (national mages made not quite so sucky)

Version 0.52 - Three national spells added, along with Barrow Wights and Uruloki.

Version 0.53 - Beginning to add pretender chasses.

Link to download:
Dl.dropboxusercontent.com

Edited by: LumenPlacidum

Interesting to see where this mod will go. Thanks for posting here.

Well, I think I'm nearly done with the nation. I need a second sprite for the two pretender chasses, the hill troll, and the witch king (I think I lost the other sprite for him... it used to exist).

I still need to add two more pretender chasses: the Wraith Necromancer (simple mage/researcher), and the Shapeshifter (man, wolf, bat). I'm not at home, or I'd post up the most recent iteration now, but I'll do that at the end of the weekend.

Nearly time to start thinking about mods for the other ages of Middle Earth.

Angband for Early Age (probably going to have some very powerful summons in the balrogs, winged dragons and unwinged dragons)
Mordor for Late Age (mostly orcs and trolls)

Then, maybe I'll start working on other themes from middle earth: The Noldor, Durin's People, Avari, Vanyar, Numenor, etc.

I was working on a Mordor mod for a bit, but I wasn't liking how it was playing when I was testing it and I put it on the shelf. Meanwhile, I have a large modding project that I am about to start, and will not get around to working on it for months at least (if ever). Would you be interested in my sprites?

here is a preview pic I made while working on the mod

Some of the Orc sprites on the top row are unfinished (they are COE3 sprites which turned the skin green, but that is about all the work I did on them). I was particularly happy with how the Nazgul sprite turned out- I got it from the Mytheology mod and did some work on it.

Edited by: yu.gnomi

I did want to work on some Tolkien mods for other eras also. I wanted to try doing a Mordor mod, based on orcs and trolls. You've got some nice sprites. I'd like to hear what ideas you have for a LA Mordor, though.

These were my ideas for other possible nations:
Angband - Early Era (EFDB) Morgoth's armies of powerful orcs, trolls, dragons, and balrogs and evil maia are summonable
Eldamar - Early Era (AENS) The Noldor elves of Valinor. Expensive troops (like, crazy expensive) with the finest armor and weapons. The Vanyar would be capital-only elite mages. The elves of the west loved the stars, and they have powerful astral magic.
Gondolin - Early Era (AESW) The elves of the mountains. The patron of Gondolin was the valar Ulmo, lord of the seas. However, the elves of Gondolin were also Noldor, so they bring knowledge of earth and stars to Ulmo's water. As they all respect and worship Manwe, they have knowledge of air
Iron Hills - Early Era (EF) Dwarves of Durin the Deathless; they protect the holy sites where their race was created
Angmar - Middle Era (AEFWDB) Witch king and the nation of corrupt men and some orcs
Numenor - Middle Era (ESB) Devout and powerful men, with just a bit of corruption
Avari - Middle Era (AWNS) Wood elves
Mordor - Late Era (DFB) The orcs and beasts of Sauron in Mordor; some trolls; summonable nazgul on fell beasts
Erebor - Late Era (EN) Dwarven nation

Edited by: LumenPlacidum

I had no ideas for doing multi-age Mordor, I was going to make it a Early Age nation, and leave it at that. Although I have read the Silmarillion (a while ago), and could understand putting Mordor in the Middle Age, and placing other Tolkien nations in the Early Age.

Here is a link to what I have Dropbox.com

zip file includes Sprites and a .dm file- it is a playable mod but pretty rough. Feel free to cannibalize sprites or whatever out of it.

Mordor and the other lotr era stuff makes most sense in the late age, since lord of the rings has fairly understated magic anyway and after the 3rd age magic basically leaves the world completely and it's all left to humans. It's quite similar to the age progression in dominions where by LA you've mostly got human nations left and all the really powerful magic beings have left the world.