I have been thinking about the Culture in this mod for a while, and finally arrived at a point whre my ideas are articulated enought to put them up for discussion.

The very short version: I suggest Culture being replaced by something else ("Safety" http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/9503/shield16sh6.gif) while keeping the effects it has on the gameplay in a new disguise and somewhat altered balance.
Overall it is more of a athmospheric change, there are however some gameplay and balance applications as well.
I kept the changes, to what i believe to know to be doable by XML modding only for now.

Why ? Somehow, culture does not seem to fit in the setting too well. Concider any of the paragon settings we have - the varios movies, the fallout games - the closest thing to a "culturized building" you will find there is a whorehouse.

To put it simple - post apocalyptic survivors just are not that terrible culturized.
They have more pressing concerns: War, Hunger, Famine and Pestilence. And even Chaos, who quit the band before the other four bekame famous. And of course they minions - Radiation, Aggressive Mutated Animals, Brainless Punks, zealous Leaders of concurrent surviving groups and they silly visions of the future.

Working the fields on the ourskirts of town (say 2.nd BFC ring :p) is necessary to survive, but very dangerous. And a school on the towns center does not help a lot in fendig off the perils.

The most pressing matter for a young surviving settlement is Safety.
Only by increasing the safety can the settlement expand the area of worked land, grow and become a oasis of life and relative safety in the wastelands.

So now in terms of game mechanics. Basicly we can keep using the Culture meachnic of the game. We just call it "Safety" (Or maybe a native speaker can come up with a better term.)

There will now be buildings generating http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/9503/shield16sh6.gif instead of :culture: (Obviously, it will be rather Walls than Libraries).
There will still be boarder pops when certain level of Safety is achived.
There could still be the Safety slider - increased funding for town militia, patrols and the like. It is sound enought, that increased safety would make people happier.
There could still be a Victory condition, to become a beacon of stability, safety and hence good live in the Wastelands. Recognized, admired and envied by everyone.

Slower scaling of Safety levels. I am thinking only 4 levels:
Poor: 0 - 9. One Ring, just settled.
Fragile: 10 - 499. 2 Rings, Full BFC can be worked.
Strong: 500+. 3 Rings - intruders from outside must pass through some of our territory and will be detected before they can enter/attack cultivated lands in most cases.
Legendary: I am thinking 30000. the default 50000 seem just to impossible in this setting. 4 Rings. This city became a beacon of safety. 3 such cities win the game.

The effects of that new scaling: The cites will grow and able to work the full BFC at the same pace as in normal game. But expanding the safety zone further will become harder and slower.
It will take a lot more time to close all the gaps in the own land. The Civilizations will be more of Islands of Safety in the Wastelands, maybe connected by a road or highway, than solid blocks.
Barbarians might stay dangerous for extended periods of time, spawning and roaming in between those islands.
Ressources outside the cities BFC will take longer to connect, making settling within direct reach of those ressources more important.

Optional Addition: Increasing the minimal distance for cities from 2 to 3 would further increase the "Islands" effect.
It would also help controlling the land - with the slower growing boarders it will be hard to completely block of another Civ's expansion, but the higher minimum distance will prevent settling in between other civs cities most of the time.

It will become nearly impossible to flip a city through Safety. I was never too fond of that flipping mechanic with Culture in the first place. It makes even less sense with safety. Culture flips were not too likely in the mod anyway, as there are only few sources of culture.
It is however still possible to have a safety-fight over the influence in a Work-able BFC tile if 2 cities are settled to close - which makes some kind of sense - the one who is better able to protect those outlying squares (from Barbarian or Concurrent Civ intruders) will have controll and over the land.

On Buildings, Wonders, Specialists. Generally increased safety is connected with somewhat different buildings, than culture would be. Here my preliminary ideas. It's not a complete list, but i tried to cover all tha basics.

Militia Headman: (City Specialist, could als be called Protector, or maybe Sherif) +1:gold: +4http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/9503/shield16sh6.gif +3:gp: (Towards Great Protector)

Great Protector: (Great Person) Settled: +3:gold: +8http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/9503/shield16sh6.gif +1 XP for new units from this city.
Can not bulb techs.
Can execute a "Safety-Bomb" giving 5000http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/9503/shield16sh6.gif to the city (Immediately making it a "Strong" 3 Rings City - might be valuable to quikly access ressources, or block off expansion)
Can construct a "Rangers Guild" special Building.

Palace: +2http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/9503/shield16sh6.gif, maybe 1 Protector Slot. Souldn't be overpowered, as the food is less abundant in the mod, than in normal game. The rest as usual.

Rangers Guild: +4http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/9503/shield16sh6.gif +100%http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/9503/shield16sh6.gif in the City. Should be a good thing for trying a builder style Safety-Victory.

Monument: +1http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/9503/shield16sh6.gif (Still +1:) for CHA).
Monuments work basicly the same as before - they inspire the population, remember them of they duties and beliefs, so they will go work on those dangerous farms outside fo town because it is needed, even tho the monument not really makes working there safer.

Walls: +1 http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/9503/shield16sh6.gif (And of course the usual defensive bonus.)

Town Militia: +1http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/9503/shield16sh6.gif, +1 XP for new units. +1:) per 10%http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/9503/shield16sh6.gif Can turn 1 Citizen into Protector.

Barracks: +1http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/9503/shield16sh6.gif, +2 XP for new units. Can turn 1 Citizen into Protector.

Boradcast Tower: +1http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/9503/shield16sh6.gif +1:) per 10%http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/9503/shield16sh6.gif, +1:) With Charismatic, Hit Singles. Required for Voice of the Badlands.
No Multiplier, no Specialist Slots. Make it a cheaper instead (maybe 90:hammers:).
Good communications are good for increased security. Broadcasting warnings, survival tips and success meassages should also make people more content.

Voice of the Badlands: World Wonder. Requires Broadcast Tower in the city and 4 BT in the empire (On standard map) +4http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/9503/shield16sh6.gif +50% http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/9503/shield16sh6.gif in the City
-10% War-:mad: (Empirewide)
Grants Hit Singles.


I do know where most of the things touched here are in the XML, so i could help produce the needed changes fast and more or less painless, if the general idea/direction is found interesting/worth pursuing.

gret idea!

This is a really good idea. It fits excellently into the theme, and we can clearly get there without SDK or even python changes. If you want to work on XML changes, I can easily merge them with my existing 0.7 changes; send me a zip of just the changed files, or a zip of everything and a list of the changed files. I can use "diff" to find and merge the changes.

As I see it, here are the needed items.
1. Change gamefont.tga/gamefont_75.tga. Painful but necessary. Have you done it? If not, if you can make/find a 20x20 icon and a 16x16 icon with transparency, I can cut them in.
2. Change the name of "culture" in the text file to "safety", and "artist/great artist" to "protector". This can happen at the end of my single text file in a new section.
3. Change some buildings and global culture thresholds as you have described.

At this point we are already 90% there and it's playable.

4. Based on my experience with changing religion to vision, what happens next is a slow process: there are dozens of messages which refer to "religion" and I had to find them one by one in playtest, search out which key, and override it.

I'm excited, I think this will be a great addition!

My assessment of the tasks was similar to yours. The XML should be pretty straight-forward; Gamefont... :vomit: - but i have some practice working it, so it should be ok. I will use the icon i used in the Post ?
And in the end a proably long hunt for tha last missed text tidbit still referring to culture :crazyeye:

I will finish a first ute (Basic Crossbow) by tomorrow, and then look how far i can get with this on Sunday.

I can do the xml stuff, but I can't do art. If you can make the 20x20 and 16x16 safety icons, I can cut them in and also do the basic renaming in the xml. Making and tuning the buildings either of us can do. If you had the time to work on more ute variants, that would be better probably. (switch back to new art thread for more on that.)

OK, "safety" is in. I changed the ring definitions and city spacing, and did a basic search for messages. I did not change the icon, and I have not changed the buildings yet. I played a couple of games last night. I had bad luck with stupid deathclaws killing my settlers, so I did not get very far. It seems that we will have little "corridors" of unoccupied territory running between the cities. To get a lot of unowned space, it may be necessary to increase the city spacing to 4, but that may be too large. I will try some each way.

I will attach the icon shortly.

Sorted of related idea...

Electrical power - whether provided via solar generators - ought to provide a slight safety boost. It's harder to sneak up on a camp at night if their floodlights are working!

Civ4 already includes the concept of electrical power and the icon exists. Originally power would double the effectiveness of factories. In a scaled down version of the game power could provide a a marginal bonus to productivity and safety. It would only supply the bonus once - being powered by multiple sources only acts to remove single points of failure.

Power sources could either be solar, wind or tidal. Thus in order for a city to be powered it must have in it's plot either a waterwheel, solar panel in a desert or windfarm on a rooftop. This means that pillaging raiders could quite easily cut the power, which adds an extra tactical level to the game.

Optionally coal and/or oil could be used with the appropriate power plant to provide power.

Here are the gamefont files and the source files for the icon in different resolutions - i am not exactly sure what is needed - are there .dds icons for culture ?

The gamefont icon looks a bit less crisp than i would like, but at least i did not mess up the whole file (at least from what i can tell)

On city spacing... a forced distance of 4 might be indeed to much.
Maybe those small coridors we have on min distance of 3 will be enought - enemies will be able to moove there without ob, and perhaps you can make barbs spawn there sometims as well.

Electrical power - whether provided via solar generators - ought to provide a slight safety boost. It's harder to sneak up on a camp at night if their floodlights are working!

Civ4 already includes the concept of electrical power and the icon exists. Originally power would double the effectiveness of factories.

I agree. I had this most of the way in there. But, it turns out in XML, the *only* effect power can have is on the production bonus of a building. So I gave up for now. If we can think of effects that can happen with Python, I can do that.

There are a couple of effects I was trying to achieve, both based on scenes from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. There is a nice speech near the end about turning lights back on in the city to encourage the other survivors. I was planning a City Lights World Wonder, the first player to turn on the lights becomes famous -- culture bonus, now safety bonus. I got stuck worse on this one because I don't have a building for it. The only thing I can think of which would be a single wonder building, is a streetlight. Not very morale-boosting.

Any thoughts for a better building to represent this?

The second effect is a one line quote by Aunty Entity. You may recall the town, Bartertown, has a huge cave with pigs underneath it to provide methane, and she says, "Pig s**t. That's what powers Bartertown". I was going to add a Biofuel technology which would require pigs, or cows, and use that as the tech quote.

I think oil generators, and this type of biofuel, would be the easiest to setup. Solar and wind power require a fair amount of technology to be efficient, and coal requires large scale mining. So my plan was to have Refining enable power from oil, and Biofuel enable power from pigs. Maybe those techs could enable building a Generator building, which would have the safety effect and enable the City Lights wonder.

What other effects should power have?

Here are the gamefont files and the source files for the icon in different resolutions.

Thanks, I am sure everybody hates messing around in gamefonts.

Here is what it looks like so far. I have not changed any buildings except for adding barricade, based on seZereth's cool barbed wire fence.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=182763&d=1215908814

I would prefer electricity on large scale not beeing part of the game - at least for now. It might be a good feature for later "expansion" into a "Next War after Rebuilding" phase or something.

Sure, we alredy do imply usage of eletricity with the Broadcast towers for example. But it think this is something that can be powered by small generators (tho you will need a whole lot Pig Sh**t to actually do something :lol:).
But giving the city power in the sense of civ, would imply huge, advanced, industrial powerplants.
Seem not to fit the theme to me.

based on scenes from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. There is a nice speech near the end about turning lights back on in the city to encourage the other survivors. I was planning a City Lights World Wonder...Random thought here. IIRC in Mad Max Sydney (?) was not lit by electricity in the end, but by lots of fires... So how about a "Lighthouse-tower" ?

My Scanner at home died away a while ago, so i can't put a concept drawing up right now (i still do those by hand), but imagine a old wild-west water tower (I think they used simillar stuff in Australia) with a fire on top of it.

It is somewhat in line with the theme, and it is feasible in the sense, that it might work like this - it's elevated to spread light over some distance, the tank could contain fuel (Yea, Safety First :p)

I added in the specialists, And edited the buildings that were already there (did not add the new ones yet, and also left Broadcast/Voice alone for now).
Also found some rogue pixels on the gamefonts Alpha (Causing that artifacts at the boarders, you can see in Davids screenshot)

I did not make the needed Text-Keys (The list below) - might be better if someone with a Typo/Word ratio better than 3.75 write those.

Also did not duplicate changes to Boarder pop levels, city distance, since you alredy have those.

The "changelog"
Art\Interface\MainScreen\CityScreen
Specialist Buttons

XML\GameInfo\Civ4SpecialistInfos.XML
TXT_KEY_SPECIALIST_PROTECTOR
TXT_KEY_SPECIALIST_PROTECTOR_STRATEGY
TXT_KEY_SPECIALIST_GREAT_PROTECTOR
TXT_KEY_SPECIALIST_GREAT_PROTECTOR_STRATEGY

XML\Units\Civ4UnitClassInfos.XML
TXT_KEY_UNIT_GREAT_PROTECTOR

XML\Units\Civ4UnitInfos.XML
TXT_KEY_UNIT_GREAT_PROTECTOR
TXT_KEY_UNIT_GREAT_PROTECTOR_STRATEGY
(Using Great Spy Name List)
(Using Ancient Great Spy Art (The Ninja Guy iirc))

XML\Buildings\CivBuildingInfos/XML
Palace -> 1 Protector Slot in
(And out again - the Gouvernor immediately assigned him in the Capital, making the city not grow. Might cause uproar with players and might harm the AI if they do the same.)
Monument -> No Change needed.
Walls -> +1 Safety. Made it not obsolete safe.
Barracks -> +1 Safety. Protector Slot.
Library (School) -> Removed Culture.

just wanted to encourage you, i like this whole concept.

@refar: I have cut all your files into the game and started testing. One problem, when your borders expand, there is a popup circle icon with a single purple note in it. I hunted around to find this icon, it is art/interface/buttons/process/processculture.dds. Who knew? It is 64x64, but the circle clips it. I scaled up your 20x20 icon to 64x64 but it is clipped and offcenter, plus blurry. Could you try out this icon and see if you can make a proper one for it? It should be easy to test even in vanilla, you always get it on turn 5.

I kind of assumed there would be a .dds icon (It will probably be used on "Building" Culture in a city as well) but did not find it...

I had a Safety_Icon_64 photoshop file in the archive - that i scaled to fit a button. Can you try save it as .dds and use it there ? It has Alpha chanel set and should work - might still be clipping with the circle tho.
If that one does nor work, i will take a look at that processculture thingie.

I kind of assumed there would be a .dds icon (It will probably be used on "Building" Culture in a city as well) but did not find it...

I had a Safety_Icon_64 photoshop file in the archive - that i scaled to fit a button. Can you try save it as .dds and use it there ? It has Alpha chanel set and should work - might still be clipping with the circle tho.
If that one does nor work, i will take a look at that processculture thingie.

OK will do.

The first version with "safety" is released. See the welcome thread.

Points for discussion (among others!)

Which civics should affect safety, and how?

What to do about the "Creative" trait? One huge reason for playing a Creative leader is to get the +1 culture/turn bonus. This makes it much easier to get captured cities back on their feet, without a monument or whatever culture-generating unit. It makes no sense for creative to generate safety. It makes perfect sense for protective to generate safety. But that totally changes the play balance. I have already deleted philosophical and spiritual as having no useful effect; does creative have to go too? (Whatever will Brandi think? :-)

I have to admit - i completely forgot about creative in the concept. :wallbash:

A possibility would be to rename "Creative" to something safety related - then the bonus could stay. The Fast Buildings might need adjustment tho. But this is just a fast shot - as i said i did not think of it before.

Random thought here. IIRC in Mad Max Sydney (?) was not lit by electricity in the end, but by lots of fires... So how about a "Lighthouse-tower" ?

Interesting idea. I do like the idea of low level electricity being developed, maybe not huge factories but house lights. I had planned to rename "radio" to "electricity" to capture the dependency on electricity for broadcast, but I stopped when I learned how limited power is in the existing XML tags.

I did create a button, basically a night shot of city skyscrapers with lights. That is the effect I was aiming for.

Maybe big searchlights instead of a fire?

The searchlights can be done, the lightning effect will however be not, or barely visible - as you pointed out previously - we allways have day in civ. Fire cen be better seen at day.

However, as your idea assumed electric light rather than fire... Maybe some odd neon light construction - like some old neon store-signs etc. put together to a "monumental" light-sighn.

It would be similar to the Broadway building - the neon there is not very stiking, but noticeable.

The searchlights can be done, the lightning effect will however be not, or barely visible - as you pointed out previously - we allways have day in civ. Fire cen be better seen at day.

However, as your idea assumed electric light rather than fire... Maybe some odd neon light construction - like some old neon store-signs etc. put together to a "monumental" light-sighn.

It would be similar to the Broadway building - the neon there is not very stiking, but noticeable.

Neon sounds interesting. The rocknroll building also looks neon. I have seen, but not investigated, the jedi knights units which must also have this effect type. Not quite sure what the building would actually look like. Maybe a big arrow pointing down, says "Aliens look here"? :-)

A bit of a odd idea, but might work...

I could take the Statue of Liberty or Colossus or maybe the lower parts of the Eiffel Tower (Or basicly any other somehow recognizeable shape). Strip the plating, keeping only the "skeleton frame", then attach the lights to that frame.

So - if it turns out the way i hope it too - you could still recongnize the monumetn but it would be obviously rebuild or at least "redecorated".

A bit of a odd idea, but might work...

I could take the Statue of Liberty or Colossus or maybe the lower parts of the Eiffel Tower (Or basicly any other somehow recognizeable shape). Strip the plating, keeping only the "skeleton frame", then attach the lights to that frame.

So - if it turns out the way i hope it too - you could still recongnize the monumetn but it would be obviously rebuild or at least "redecorated".

Sounds interesting. Speaking of Statue of Liberty / Eiffel Tower, or any big modern wonder, I had thought about a unique item you find in the ruins -- a ruined wonder. Rebuilding it, which would require a lot of worker time, would give you a big bonus. But a "ruined statue of liberty" model might be hard, and plus we have the problem you and others have pointed out with a valuable item which is only available in one place -- non-adjacent players would not have a chance to fight over it.

Less practical is the idea of finding a ruined statue of liberty and loading it onto a truck, to rebuild it in your own city. Then I need a unique truck graphic, but at least the graphic for what it looks like when it's installed in the city is already there.

It would have to be a big truck too :lol:

A possibility would be to rename "Creative" to something safety related - then the bonus could stay. The Fast Buildings might need adjustment tho. But this is just a fast shot - as i said i did not think of it before.

Or get rid of creative and use protective instead.

As I posted earlier in the thread, I already got rid of spiritual and philosophical, I'd rather brainstorm about a useful way to keep creative. Or some new trait, maybe, which would have the safety bonus, rather than adding it onto protective.

why not still use creative, it´s all a question what you call creative, or?
How about creative in building traps, early warnings systems, creative in getting the populations of a city to make patrols (or better patrols), creative in creating stories which reduce the probability of an attack (build faster a reputation which reduces the barbarian is the area), creative in including the barbarians in the population of the town and therefore increasing safety, etc... Only some ideas

But a "ruined statue of liberty" model might be hard, and plus we have the problem you and others have pointed out with a valuable item which is only available in one place -- non-adjacent players would not have a chance to fight over it.


I really don't think that this is a problem... I mean, in FFH, there are a bunch of unique features that only really benefit one person(the one who is nearest... it adds to the randomness of the game; you wouldn't want the game to get repetitive, right? it's these small touches which keep (at least my) interest in the game...)

I don't play FFH, but I assume these features have relatively low power, and there are a number of different possible ones. That seems fine, and Fury Road has a few of those today like the ultra-light fighter ("The Pilot" unit). I'd like to add more of those, and westamastaflash has suggested a few good ones.

The original post was about game-winning class units found in one ruin only, which seems to be more of a problem unless it's a scenario map which guarantees everybody access.

Actually, viewed as a scenario, that might be interesting. The punk units are here to support it. The NextWar mechs or the dreadnaught land unit from NecroCristi might work as the target unit. I'm not sure the AI would "get it", though.

not all are low power... one is similar to this idea: when a unit reaches level 15, it can enter a (previously unpassable) tile and receives the very powerful unit sitting there. that tile is placed randomly, and isn't in every game... and it is only in one location...

i like the safety idea, had an idea for an addition. No idea if its possible. When a city is founded it can get safety from one unit (+1 or +2), building don´t give safety direct buildings (perhaps walls as execption, but buildings could give mainly a safety bonus), but allow a certain number of units to create safety (eg barracks allow 3 units to give safety), the great protector gives also safety. If a city grows to a new level, a certain base safety is necessary to hold the level, is the produced safety is too low, the safety level can fall again. The idea behind this, units on patrol and as guards give safety, no units => no safety, with certain building supporting them (eg radio tower, faster communications with the patrols)

something like this: so a newly founded city with two defenders would get +1 safety from one unit, building baracks it would allow both units to give safety, resulting +2 safety, monument +50%, so this town would get 2 + 50% = 3 safety. Growing one safety level would mean a upkeep of 5, so this city would need another defender or building (the figures were only examples)

no idea how hard it will be to code, to balance and if the AI will understand it but it would force the player to defend all cities, not only the threathen border cities

When a city is founded it can get safety from one unit (+1 or +2), building don´t give safety direct buildings (perhaps walls as execption, but buildings could give mainly a safety bonus), but allow a certain number of units to create safety (eg barracks allow 3 units to give safety), the great protector gives also safety. If a city grows to a new level, a certain base safety is necessary to hold the level, is the produced safety is too low, the safety level can fall again.

If I understand correctly, you suggest that a city's safety level could fall if it doesn't keep enough units on patrol. This would force a player to keep units back at their interior cities. It's an interesting idea; in the vanilla game culture never falls. One possible way to model this is with "negative safety bombs". In the vanilla game, you can use up a great artist to give a one-time +4000 culture bonus. Maybe if something bad happens, such as a punk pillaging an improvement or an animal rampaging in the countryside, it should
cause a one-time say -500 safety penalty. I guess the size of the penalty should depend on what your safety level is, no point in crippling your new colony with a -500 penalty.

As I posted earlier in the thread, I already got rid of spiritual and philosophical, I'd rather brainstorm about a useful way to keep creative. Or some new trait, maybe, which would have the safety bonus, rather than adding it onto protective.


Courtesy of "synonyms.com", I believe I will rename Creative to Vigilant.

Apart from the Rangers Guild which can be built by the Great Protector, what other buildings are needed for a safety victory? Whichever buildings we add, should also get 2x production speed for Vigilant leaders.

There was a "Town Militia" building in my original concept, which is not in the game yet. I assumed it however to be rather cheap, so getting it half price is not that big.

From my experimants to move for Safety victory i think we need at least one more +50% multiplier building - i do not have a good idea as of yet however.
And perhaps one or two more Protector slots as well (Tho i am not sure yet, where i would get the food from to run those, even if i had the slots, but that is what makes the game interesting.)

(partial double post)

Town Militia: +1 shield, +1 XP for new units. +1 shield per 10% safety. Can turn 1 Citizen into Protector.

Oh, I misunderstood/missed that before. But, that makes three XP-generating buildings with garage and barracks. Do you think that will be a problem? I can put this off administration or maybe off Diplomacy, since Civic Projects is pretty crowded.

For the ranger guild, I will use the Castle, or maybe Citadel, for now.

There is the Culture Truck (which I will have to retitle "Safety Truck"), but you can't rely on that because it is random. I am thinking to make the Industrious trait give double the percent chance to find something in the ruins, since there aren't many wonders to be built.

One other poster, countjackula, suggested redrawing Stonehenge, built out of rusted cars. It's a cool image. That could be a wonder, off Engines(?!), but giving it a +percent shield seems like an odd mapping.

Can anybody suggest other good building concepts for +shield and +percent shield?

I don't think XP generating buildings are a problem - we have some unique Promotions in the game, which do have some impact. For now mostly on the UTE, but if it prooves fun, more might come, so there should be more different upgrade paths.

On Town Milita - part of the reason why i had not put it inmyself was not having seeing a good tech. There was talk about a Tech tree expansion in the future, so maybe we can postpone the militia untill then.

To Industrious - i would prefer more wonders, that can be build instead of higher chance to pop something in ruins. I am sure many players will miss Wonders.
I know there is a small hinch there - artwork... But this is something that can be - at least to a part - helped.

The car Stone Henge is really cool - i seen the idea before and put it on my list, but did not get to it yet. :mischief:

I like the sound of car-henge. There's a bit in the Iron Giant where the beatnik is making sculptures in the scrapyard which might be worth looking at here.

As for buildings which increase safety, surely a Sheriff's Office and Jail would provide citizens with a greater feeling of safety.

I think Sheriffs Office ~ Town Militia is about the same for that matters. Both names are fine.

Jail might be worht a thought, but as said in previous post - we mignt need to put a tech tree expansion before adding more buildings, as it is just too crowded right now.

I like the sound of car-henge.

It turns out we are not the first to call this "carhenge". Wikipedia shows that it is a real place, in Nebraska. It even has a gift shop. See carhenge.com for concept art. Still, I can add a carhenge wonder off salvaging and just use the standard stonehenge building for now.

I don't play FFH, but...

As has been harped on before, you might want to try it. I was thinking that a sort of add-on to Safety is possibly taking something from FfH in the way of their Armageddon Counter (AC).

Now in FfH the AC unlock bad things as the counter goes up. I was thinking that perhaps this could be switched to something like the 'Civilization Counter' to represent how much people feel about the world in general. After 9-11, we saw here in America the attitude of "These are dark times and we need to protect ourselves" and so we allowed ourselves to junk a lot of our freedoms. After the Apocalypse, I would think that there would be people who would think we can't "afford" civilized things like "law, order, trail by jury" et al and so some Civ's would regress pretty badly. So instead of civilization growing back, it falls further into Warlordism and Tyranny.

So (sorry for long post) you could have the 'CC' that would start either in the negatives or at 0 and certain actions by the different Civ's would lower, or raise the CC. I was thinking that certain Civics like slavery would lower the CC as well as raising cities, raiding towns and other 'evil' acts. In most mods, captured slaves can be used as workers, disbanded for hammers toward a project or sold like in FfH for gold. Maybe you could also have them eaten for a boast in happiness for a city, which would lower the CC as cannibalism is usually rather frowned upon. I mean if the world is going to hell, a lot of people would look the other way just as long as they were clothed, fed and happy, no matter that their leader is a a crazy despot.

However, certain things might raise the CC and if the CC got higher, it would cause more unhappiness in 'evil' cultures sort of like Republic does. I think no matter how bad things get, if one Civ is that "Shining City on the Hill" it gives ideas to the downtrodden. Perhaps it would also unlock certain buildings or units and maybe even Wonders like the New League of Nations or something that would allow a Diplomatic victory or maybe something like the Overcouncil in FfH.

I'm sure this might be a lot of work, but it would also allow a bit of "Good" versus "Evil" in the game and might also be used to unlock events depending on how things go. Sure in a game like this, it can be easy to run your Civ like a bastard, throwing enemies into the fire and the like, but there should be a penalty. Maybe you could have units defect (moral leaders) or units go barbarian, (I should be leader, not him!) and obviously if the CC gets high, the citizens will want more comforts, less war

I wouldnt like Fury Road to become a clone of FFH. Nothing against FFH, but its a different one.

I.e. i dont like that Good vs Evil thing. It's very Fantasy. A key element of Post-Apocalyptic setting is the desperate state of no Good and Evil. Just shades of grey as everyone tries to do all that is necessary to survive.

I wouldnt like Fury Road to become a clone of FFH. Nothing against FFH, but its a different one.

Neither would I, but FfH has a lot of elements that I think are easy to adapt to different themes.

I.e. i dont like that Good vs Evil thing. It's very Fantasy. A key element of Post-Apocalyptic setting is the desperate state of no Good and Evil. Just shades of grey as everyone tries to do all that is necessary to survive.

Actually after I wrote this, I felt that "good" versus "evil" wasn't what I was trying to say. More of the idea of may clan/tribal versus civilization. Law by fiat versus Law by Laws. One of the major themes of the whole post-apocalyptic genre is that people have regress and become just barbarians with tech. Road Warrior shows the fight between the 'civilized' folks trying to rebuild and the Road 'Mongols' who just want to take what they can get. I mean the gal they raped and killed in the beginning of the film might have had really valuable skills, but they didn't care.

Plus, as I said, after 9-11 a lot of people said we can't "afford" this or that. Well, a lot of people (like Benjamin Franklin) pointed out that morals, law, and a sense of fair play if you will are MOST vital when things get dark. Do you go out and try to extend your hand to help out others or do you go clannish and look out for only yourself?

Big idea in evolutionary theory is that a lot of times it's not the big & the strong that survive, but the ones that form alliances. Warlords usually don't cooperate. However, is it 'evil' to want to make sure your people, the ones that are looking up to you to protect them, are safe and secure as possible. In a world of very finite resources, is it 'fair' that others have while you do not?

So while it's not good versus evil, I think there is a lot of play in the sense of people/civs looking out for only there own selves versus perhaps people/civs who want to recreate, build and ally.

Plus for many gamers, there is the thrill of playing the 'bad guys' because it's a safe venue to do it. Conversely you have players (like me) who enjoy beating back the dark and building that Civilization from scraps and defending and showing that The Good Guys can win. When i was in Afghanistan, all my roommates played different versions of Civ and we all hated the Civs that just wanted to build lots of units and TAKE what we had built.

I was planning a City Lights World Wonder, the first player to turn on the lights becomes famous -- culture bonus, now safety bonus.
Hey, when I posted a suggestion about the City of Lights I didn't see this thread yet =).
I'm happy that this is in your plan too since I like this idea/name very much. And when I've posted this suggestion for the first time it gave a lot of culture too since (1) I didn't know about the "protection" yet; and also (2) it had nothing to do with casinos. I thought it could be tied to casinos but sadly I didn't remember the Mad Max analogy when I posted it.


"No building model" thingie
What about this (http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=3862) with a retextured sign saying "Welcome to City of Lights"?

This Idea is just plain great, and could be used also in standard BtS or FFH. Great idea :thumbsup: