The game is designed so that you’ll reach the end of the tech tree in 350-450 turns on standard speed, making it about the length of a normal game despite never reaching technology levels beyond the Medieval per se. The game starts at year 1 and you’ll get to year 3019 around turn 450 on standard speed, although it will say “AD” instead of “TA”.

The slower pace makes it so that the game is less focused on rushing the tech tree, allowing for more immersion in Middle-Earth. The slower pace is accomplished by moving back the National College (renamed Record Chamber) to Education, removing Universities, Oxford, and Observatories, and slightly weakening the scientist specialists (more info in the “Buildings” and “Specialists” sections).

Most of the game takes place in “The Third Age” era which combines Ancient, Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance techs. The tech tree is the same up to the Renaissance. The Renaissance techs are renamed/replaced with new techs for immersion and balance. See the “new techs diagram”. The military units available never progress beyond the Medieval ones, and all the civilization uniques in this mod stay relevant the whole game.

At the end of the tech tree is the “Ring Lore” technology, which is very expensive and causes one to enter the endgame “War of the Ring” era. It unlocks late-game social policies in the “Fellowship” and “Shadow” policy trees. It also initiates a race to find and claim the One Ring (see Ring Wonder Diagram, and the One Ring section).

The Ring Lore technology is followed by a repeatable future tech called Mentoring, inspired by BlouBlou’s Eras – Medieval Age mod. It increases culture and gold in the capital by 1 each time it is researched.

This mod adds 14 Middle-Earth themed civilizations, taken from Yenyang’s Middle Earth Civilizations mod (although many of the uniques are different than in his version). Each is classified as “Good” or “Evil”, which are defined by special “Good” and “Evil” technologies that are given for free at the start of the game, and which are otherwise inaccessible. These techs – along with other special ones - are in their own hidden era called “The Great Years” which lies between “The Third Age” and the “War of the Ring”.

This means that you may choose to start in the late game (most techs already researched) by selecting “The Great Years” instead of “The Third Age” in the game setup options, and it will work because you will still only get the special tech your civilization is supposed to get, and not the others. However, you should NOT start in the “War of the Ring” since that would give you all the special techs you are not supposed to have.

The Good civilizations are Arnor, Gondor, Rohan, Dwarves, Eldar Elves, Silvan Elves, and
Hobbits. The Evil civilizations are Mordor, Goblins, Angmar, Easterlings, Harad, and Umbar. The last civilization, Isengard, has a unique ability that makes them start with both the “Good” and “Evil” technologies giving them access to the features of both.

Evil civilizations have access to the “Thrall Workhouse” building, unlocked by having a Workshop in the city, and it contains “thrall specialist” slots. Thrall specialists produce 1 food and 2 production, but no GPP. The Thrall Workhouse building in turn unlocks a special worker unit also called a Thrall, but only once you also have a particular late game tech (see the “new techs diagram”). The Evil technology also gives access to the Dol Guldur world wonder.

Good civilizations can found the White Council (World Congress), participate in its international projects, and get extra delegates from diplomats. Evil civilizations can still participate by voting, but cannot found the Council or contribute to projects. The Good technology also gives access to the Mirror of Galadriel world wonder.

The World Congress is renamed the White Council. It is unlocked by a new technology after Education, called “Watchful Peace”, which only Good civilizations have access to. Watchful Peace in turn leads to “Council of the Wise” which gives +1 delegate per diplomat and unlocks 2 international projects: “Drive Out The Necromancer” and “Quest of Erebor”.

Once half the civilizations in the game research Ring Lore, the White Council enters the War of the Ring era and the “Quest of the Ring” international project is auto-proposed. Also, starting in this era, elections for “Peacekeeper” will be regularly held, which lead to Diplomatic Victory.

Unlike in vanilla Civ 5, the top two vote-getters will NOT receive extra delegates, to make Diplomatic Victory less easy and give time for other events to occur in the late game. Winning the Quest of the Ring and successfully destroying the One Ring, for example, will give a large delegate bonus and can often help secure Diplomatic Victory.

Irrelevant resolutions have been removed from the game and the great person resolutions have been merged into one that now gives +33% GPP toward all great people.

Certain world wonders – namely Orthanc, Rhosgobel, and Mirror of Galadriel – will grant an additional delegate in the White Council.

Spies are no longer acquired passively by advancing through certain eras. In LOTRC, the only way to acquire spies is to either

1. Build one of 5 new world wonders, each unlocked by a different policy tree, representing buildings that canonically housed a palantir. Note that the Emyn Beraid is not one of these, since the Elostirion-Stone did not communicate with the others.
2. Build the Rhosgobel, Mirror of Galadriel, and/or Dol Guldur world wonders.
3. Build the new “Hall of Intrigue” national wonder, which is unlocked by having constabularies in every city.

This means that there is a competition for the available spies, and civilizations with higher science and production may be able to get multiple, while others may not get any - unless they painstakingly build the Hall of Intrigue national wonder. However, since most of the world wonders are behind different policy trees, it is practically impossible for a single civilization to hoard all the spies.

The policy trees and wonders are: Honor→Tower of Ecthelion ; Piety→Tower of the Moon ; Patronage→Orthanc ; Aesthetics→Tower of Amon Sul ; and Commerce→Dome of Stars. Tradition and Liberty do not unlock spy wonders since they are already the strongest trees.

The Mirror of Galadriel is unlocked by the "Good" technology and requires a Garden in the city. Dol Guldur is unlocked by the "Evil" technology and requires a Thrall Workhouse in the city. Rhosgobel is available to absolutely anyone upon researching Theology.

There are two basic types of tourism generation in Civilization 5: 1) “landmark tourism” which
is generated as a percentage of the culture from tiles, world wonders, and natural wonders worked by a city, and 2) “great work tourism” which comes directly from great works stored in cities (2 base tourism per GW).

Since Hotels are not available in the timeframe of this mod, tourism is generated a little bit at a time from a handful of buildings.
1. Inn (Opera House): 30% landmark tourism, +25% tourism from great works.
2. Noble Estate (Bank): +25% tourism from great works.
3. Plaza (Amphitheater): 20% landmark tourism.
4. Caravansary: 20% landmark tourism (also given a merchant slot in addition to original properties, so there is a good reason to build them now).
6. Harbor: 15% landmark tourism.
7. Seaport: 15% landmark tourism.

Stacked together (when they are all built in the same city), they convert 100% of world wonder, natural wonder, and improvement culture into tourism and boost great work tourism by 50%. Landlocked cities will be able to get up to 70% landmark tourism, a slight disadvantage. Culturally strong civilizations should be nearing culture victory slightly after other late-game events such as the Quest (or claiming) of the One Ring occur.

Specialists have been reworked for balance and immersion. Writers and Scientists are replaced by “Scholars” who each yield 2 culture and 2 science. Artists and Engineers are similarly merged into “Artisans” giving 2 culture and 2 production. Musicians are renamed “Bards”. Merchants have been rebalanced and now give +4 gold (up from 2) but do not produce GPP, so you cannot get Great Merchants.

Great Scholars can produce a great work of writing or a science boost, but cannot write a treatise or build a tile improvement. Similarly, Great Artisans can produce a great Artifact or give a production boost, and Great Bards can give a tourism boost or a great work of music (unchanged from musicians).

Each of these great people is named and produces a real great work from the lore, and many of them have associated quotes. There are 68 great works of writing, 71 artifacts, and 47 great works of music (ok to have fewer of music since bards will also be used to boost tourism directly). This took a huge amount of time to put together so I hope you like the little bit of extra immersion. Note that many of the great people/works are from outside the Third Age because I wanted to have as many as possible.

The specialists are also rebalanced by unlocking all their guilds at the same tech (Guilds) and making their guilds functionally identical.

In addition, all great general and great admiral names have been replaced with characters from the Third Age of Middle-Earth.

Many buildings have been tweaked for balance, immersion, and compatibility with the new
technologies and specialists, but the basic set of available buildings is essentially the same. Most changes are just new names and icons, or very slight modifications of function.

The religious buildings have all been replaced and are now also split up into “tiers”. See the “religion and beliefs” section.

All the world wonders have been removed and replaced with 25 brand new world wonders representing the canonical wonders of Middle-Earth. Furthermore, the tech that unlocks each wonder is accurately based on the canonical construction date (or rough timeframe) given by Tolkien. As stated in the espionage section, 5 of the wonders that canonically housed a palantir are unlocked by 5 different policy trees and give the owner an additional spy.

In addition to the main 25 world wonders, there are a few special ones. Good civilizations have exclusive access to the “Mirror of Galadriel” and Evil civilizations have exclusive access to “Dol Guldur”, both of which are science focused and will help with researching the late-game Ring Lore technology, mirroring the canonical role of these places and characters in worrying about the fate of the Ring.

The One Ring itself is represented as a (very powerful) world wonder that is unlocked by an arduous set of prerequisite “buildings” that represent searching for it. The prerequisite “search” buildings can each be built multiple times across the map by multiple players, so everyone can compete to get the Ring. To make the race more fun, each time a prerequisite is constructed, the game notifies all the players the same way it does when a world wonder is built. There is 1 new Shadow policy and 1 new reformation belief to help build these prerequisites faster.

The One Ring helps a lot for domination victories, and boosts culture so the wielder is less likely to lose to a culture victory before the conquest is completed. But it does not directly make culture or diplomatic victory any easier. If you’re aiming for a culture or diplomatic victory, it is actually better to try to destroy the ring, which will unlock the powerful “Ring-Bearer Memorial” world wonder. The Ring can only be destroyed by Good civilizations participating in the Quest of the Ring international project. Once this is done, nobody on the map will be able to build the wonder representing the Ring. Conversely, if the Ring is claimed before the Quest is completed, the participants will still get some of the lesser benefits but the Ring-Bearer Memorial will be unavailable.

Each natural wonder has been renamed and given new yields, properties, and spawn patterns to fit thematically. Unlike in the base game, some of them are positively harmful to neighboring civilizations (eg the Dwimorberg), but can be made useful by new, niche reformation beliefs.

A miscellaneous set of policies have been tweaked for better balance, particularly with the new specialist system. Aside from that, Exploration and Rationalism (the most useless and most OP policy trees) have been replaced by “Fellowship” and “Shadow respectively. They are unlocked late in the game – once the player enters the War of the Ring era – and are mutually exclusive. Furthermore, Fellowship unlocks building the “Ring-Bearer Memorial” while Shadow unlocks building “Claim the One Ring”.

Unlike in the base game, Patronage, Aesthetics, and Commerce can be opened from the beginning – but additional policies in them require the Philosophy, Drama and Poetry, and Currency technologies, respectively.

Religions are renamed to represent Ainu of the Tolkien universe. Each civilization is predisposed to found a religion corresponding to one in particular. Silvan Elves preferentially found “Yavanna”, Hobbits “Nienna” (Gandalf was friends with her), Dwarves “Aule”, Eldar “Varda”, Gondor and Arnor “Manwe”, Rohan “Orome”, Umbar “Osse”, and other evil civs “Melkor”. Most of the beliefs have been renamed to better fit thematically within Middle-Earth. Many have also been rebalanced and changed and a couple new ones have been added.

Since a LOTRC game never reaches the industrial era, great people can never be purchased with faith. Therefore, in order to prolong the usefulness of faith, I split up each religious building and its benefits into 3 “tiers” of increasing faith cost, with each building tier unlocking the next. I also nerfed holy sites so they give 3 culture and 2 faith instead of 6 faith, to slow down faith acquisition and make late-game prophets more useful, as the improvement culture can be converted into tourism.

Sheep are now a strategic resource and are used by Goblins, Angmar, and Mordor to train their unique troll units. Each sheep tile provides a quantity of 1.

There is a new special luxury resource called Mithril that only the Dwarves are able to see and mine, as part of their UA.

Bison have been renamed Kine.

Stone works can be built on Plains tiles, unlike in the base game.

In the original MEC mod, some specific units used faction/race specific art. To maximize immersion, this has now been expanded to include as many units as possible, which means for many civilizations units will look the same as they upgrade because archers and composite bowmen, for example, use the same art.

Some of the new units I added the custom art to are: goblin longswordsman (which now use the uruk longswordsman model, elf and orc pikemen, Gondorian citadel guards, and others, all of which originally used vanilla art in the original MEC. I decided to make the Rangers and Ithilien Rangers look like normal composite bowmen, since I think they should look more rugged than the other Dunedain models. I also decided to give Balchoth Warriors the immortal unit model so they would look unique and different than normal pikemen. Corsairs use the quinquereme unit model. Oathbreakers use the Pictish Warrior unit model. Rohirrim use the Companion Cavalry unit model. Hobbit Chroniclers use a single individual from the Scout unit model. Besains use a “female european” individual from the settler model.

Additionally, LOTRC incorporates Yenyang’s older Middle Earth Barbarians mod, so barbarians will use various goblin/orc/uruk unit models.

The new natural and world wonders, and most of the renamed/new buildings, use existing art and icons from the base game. I tried to do it as sensibly as possible (eg “Rammas Echor” uses Great Wall icon) so that it is intuitive. In general, the icons I picked try represent how something actually looks, or some aspect of it.

All the new features have appropriate tooltips and are extensively documented in the civilopedia. You should be able to learn the game fairly well “naturally” by looking things up in the civilopedia as you encounter them, even if you don’t read these guides. Furthermore, unused entries from the base game that would normally appear in the same “era tab” as something from this mod, have been removed to reduce clutter.

I would like to thank the contributors to Tolkien Gateway as some entries are quoted/copy and pasted from there (always with acknowledgment). Many of the entries are also remainders from the original MEC mod by Yenyang.