Risen - Alternate Timeline WW3 mod

Albert Einstein said:

I know not what WWIII will be fought with, but WWIV will be fought with sticks and stones

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Risen is my little webcomic-turned-mod that takes place in an alternate timeline where Hitler gets assasinated in 1940. (this was before I found out Red Alert has the same premise) Fast forward 70 years and the world is a different and yet somewhat familiar place. New civilizations that have risen out of the ashes of WWII are now gearing up for another go around. But with the right mixture of technological and supernatural developments since then, this war could turn out to be Armageddon itself.

As your civ's leader, can you achieve your national objectives without escalating into a nuclear holocaust, or will you take pride in knowing you were the top dog when the end came? When all other hope is lost you may still try to evacuate as much of your population off-world as possible; or you may try to swiftly end humanity's suffering yourself via WMD's or summoning the four horsemen.

But all those scenarios and victory conditions are for another day, becuase I haven't graduated to Python yet. So let's start with the civs.

Completed Features
Incomplete Features

THE CIVS

Unigov
Short Description: This security-minded supernational organization has decided that the best way to bring law and order to the globe is to make itself the one world government. But they'll soon find out not everyone's going to agree.
Free Techs: Fishing, Agriculture
Civelopedia Entry

Leaders: Percival T. August
Executive General of Unigov
Expansive
Financial
Favorite Civic: Representation
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Diplomacy Text
Civelopedia Entry

Jane Claudine Lentulus
Union Security Director
Organized
Industrious
Favorite Civic: Police State
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Diplomacy Text
Civelopedia Entry

Unique Unit: Military Police
Replaces: Marine
+50 City Defense
Ability to quell riots
Civelopedia Entry
Finalized texture

Cities:


Hertfordshire
Short Description: The royalist House of Hertfordshire have ousted the parliamentary government whom they felt had brought the British Empire to ruin by half-century. Now they seek to bring back ye olden glory days and "reclaim the colonies" is first on the How-to list.
Free Techs: Fishing, The Wheel
Civelopedia Entry

Leaders: Edmund Langfordance
Lord High Constable
Aggressive
Spiritual
Favorite Civic: Vassalage
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Civelopedia Entry

Becki of Hertfordshire
Heiress Presumptive of the White Crown
Creative
Expansive
Favorite Civic: Hereditary Rule
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Civelopedia Entry

Algernon Cottingsworth
Duke of Newcastle
Financial
Organized
Favorite Civic: Caste System
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Civelopedia Entry


Unique Unit: Transport Plane
Replaces: Bomber
Carries 2 units between cities
Paradrops cargo into enemy territory
Civelopedia Entry
Finalized texture

Cities:


KPC
Short Description: The still-communist Sino-Russian Alliance has the largest army in the world, but can it stand the test of corruption, seperatists, and Unigov globalization?
Free Techs: Hunting, Agriculture
Civelopedia Entry

Leaders: Djivelegov
General of the 6th Combined Arms Army
Expansive
Industrious
Favorite Civic: State Property
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Civelopedia Entry

Sai
General of the 24 Group Army
Philosophical
Organized
Favorite Civic: Nationhood
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Civelopedia Entry

Unique Unit: Conscript
Replaces: Infantry
As strong as a knight but costs as much as a warrior.
Can be built alongside marines.
Civelopedia Entry
Finalized texture

Cities:

neoVisigoths
Short Description: Too strong to be swiftly reconquered, German territory instead suffered a 50 year war of attrition that sent it back into the Dark Ages. Even so, the neoVisigothic clan's preference for unconventional warfare coupled with their lust for revenge make them a fearsome threat.
Free Techs: Mining, Mysticism
Civelopedia Entry

Leaders: Wilhelm Ravenhurst
neoVisigothic Warlord
Industrious
Philosophical
Favorite Civic: Slavery
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Civelopedia Entry

Lilith Victoria
neoVisigothic Spiritual Leader
Creative
Spiritual
Favorite Civic: Paganism
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Civelopedia Entry

Unique Unit: Chemical Trooper
Replaces: SAM Infantry
Requires Fascism
Causes collateral damage
Less effective against aircraft
Causes sickness, inability to heal, or fallout-like state on attacked tile
Civelopedia Entry
Finalized texture

Cities:


Olive Green
Short Description: The militant environmentalist cult, Olive Green, has fought for years on Mother Earth's behalf against sprawl and industrialism. But now with the grave threat of global nuclear war approaching, they now realize the only path to final peace is the end of human civilization itself.
Free Techs: Agriculture, The Wheel
Civelopedia Entry

Leaders: Jean-Patrick Montegomery
Leader of Olive Green
Philosophical
Aggressive
Favorite Civic: Environmentalism
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Diplomacy Text
Civelopedia Entry

Unique Unit: Monkeywrencher
Replaces: Spy
Requires Ecology
Requires University
Moves over impassible features
Improvement sabotage regrows forest
Unit sabotage lowers city population
Finalized texture

Cities (TBD)

Might of the Pariahs
Transcendent Technologies
Magnhild Industries

TECH & UNIT ADDITIONS
Century of Warfare
This brings in some of the "Lost Units", plus some new ones as well.
More techs will be brought in as well to fill out the 20th Century.

New Tech Ideas:
radar
lasers
organ transplant
highways
Water Supply & distribution
Agricultural Mechanization
Advanced Surgery
Space Construction
Jets
Mobilization
Organized Labor
Civil Rights
New World Order
Commercialism
Megacorporation
Chemical Warfare
Popular Sports
Fundamentalism

New Unit Ideas:
Armored Car
Early Tank
Biplane
Zeppelin
Steam Frigate
Portable Machine Gun
Bazooka Soldier
Wooden Carrier
Escort Ship
Nuclear Carrier
Nuclear Sub
Mobile Artillery
MRLS
Missile Cruiser
Amphibious Transport


You have entered the Future Era!
If we were to take the holistic approach, Civ would begin with the Dawn of Man and End with the Dusk of Man. Risen hopes to at least reach the Mid-afternoon of Man.

New Tech Ideas:
Nanotechnology
Superconductors
Interplanetary Travel
Cybernetics
Genetic Engineering
Genetic Stratification
High-powered lasers
Plasma
On demand media
Wide Spectrum Vision
Subspace communication
Artificial Consciousness
Corporate State
Electronic Integration
Spynet
Magnetism
Curing Cancer/AIDs
Alternative Fuels

New Unit Ideas:
Land Warrior
RC Robot
Slicer
Stealth Fighter
Laser Tank
Anti-grav Tank
Urban Fighting Vehicle
Walker
Stealth Fighter
UAV
Hoverchopper
Orbital Bomber

Alternate Unit Ideas
With the new exporter tools it might be possible to give the new civs all unique units, seeing as Risen was originally planned to be an RTS mod. Though they might be more fitting for a pure scenario, since they mostly come from one time era and it'd outbalance the other civs in normal games.

NEW VICTORIES
The New Time Victory
Unlike in vanilla civ, the game doesn't end by a static date. Here the players can have an influence on the date the world comes to an end. And even though on planet everyone dies at the apocalypse, those with the highest score will at least not have died in vain. Even though those in 1st place may want to end the world quickly, the path there will start generating events that could bring your civ to its knees before the others.

Nuclear Winter
Everyone's favorite end of the world scenario since 1945! Instead of that wierd localized globabl warming, nukes will actually cause fallout toward the east of where the nuke landed. First it started affecting health, then improvements start getting destroyed, then bonuses will dissappear, grass turns to desert, and the whole world is plunged into darkness.

The Four Horsemen
Research in to the occult will allow you build shrines to the four horsemen. Naturally when you have a shrine can build the corresponding horseman. These guys are uber military units that will wreak havoc upon everything, but only one of each can be built at a time. Aside from being strong in a fight, they can bring about disasters such as famine or mass suicide depending on their nature. There's a random chance that they'll go rogue though, so you'd best get them into enemy territory before that happens. Once all four of them get onto the map at once...well, I haven't figured that part out yet, but rest assured the end will come that much quicker.

Other Apocalypse Ideas
Large Heavenly Bodies Falling From Space
Gray Goo
Robot Takeover
Global Warming (whoah it's back already!)
Black Holes

(Un)natural Disasters
As the world at large comes closer to the end, smaller disasters will start popping up that could turn the tide in an otherwise civilized competition. Please not that these or anything else in this thread is subject to change

Blizzards
Hurricanes
Thunderstorms
earthquakes
Solar Storms
Chasm
Lightning
Zombies
Famine
Plague
Mass Suicide
Hemoclysm
meteorites
scorched earth
volcanoes
ashes
Insanity
power outages
locusts
etc.

The New Space Victory

This Space Victory will be a little different than the other one. Here the space station can be a collaberative project by multiple nations (fluff-wise by a neutral third party). Once it's complete, the next task is to start moving your people onto the space station by building transport shuttle pads in your cities. Another option is to move military units onto the shuttles to help you boot off other people off the station. Once you have the largest percent of your people on the space station, you can wait until the world ends to claim victory (though that's conflicting with the time victory). Alternatively, you could gain complete control of the space station by cracking the seven layers of encryption on it's main computer. Then you can send your folks off to another star system for the win. Though if your opponent has the most people on your space station, you can send it crashing into the sun or onto the planet (preferably on his capital) and start anew.

Rulf Taurel IV
This guy is born somewhat randomly like the rest of the great persons. But he sticks around like any other unit. While he's around and happy he'll provide some good benefits to your civ (which are chosen civic-like). Even if he's born in your civ, enemies will try to snatch him out from under you. Spies can attempt to kidnap him. When he's attacked by military units, he may either fight to the death, withdraw, or surrender like workers. Also, if he gets unhappy enough, he'll go rogue on his own.

IMPLEMENTATIONS FROM OTHER MODS
Religious Victory
Is your religion the best? Well, prove it by getting the highest influence level! Also comes with inquisitors probably.

Civil War
People get unhappy. And when they get really unhappy, they revolt. And when they revolt, do they join the nearest neighbor next to them? No, they go and create a new one like they're special or something. I know others are working on this, but my ideal situation would be that rioting will randomly spawn barb units. Then when it gets really bad the mad cities will break off together and create a new nation (maybe with random colors and a random unused leader) with a name derived from the original country like Independant States of ______ or something like that.

The New UN
In Risen, (or in real life, as some could argue) the peacefully enforcable new world order of idealism is not yet realized, so the UN as Civ4 knows it, won't quite work. To best fit with the world of Risen, I think it would be best to have multiple international organizations existing at once (NATO, EU, Warsaw Pact). Membership would be voluntary. So you could back out if you didn't like the nuke ban or the mandatory civic of slavery, but you would lose out on the trade boost and the org-wide defense pacts.

Sort of Fallout-ish. Nice looking premise. You can never get enough AH.

the only suggestion I can make is what about a "good guy" civ? You know, one that's fighting to presever freedom, not just for a unigov, political power, etc. Like a future United Nations or something?

tombeef said:

the only suggestion I can make is what about a "good guy" civ? You know, one that's fighting to presever freedom, not just for a unigov, political power, etc. Like a future United Nations or something?

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Not that any of the civ's in real life are good guys all the time...

Good is relative and history is written by the winners.

woodelf said:

Good is relative and history is written by the winners.

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Absolutely true. But I think some people would appreciate fighting for freedom instaed of unigov or extinction. Just a thought. That's why I had "good guy" in quotes.

That was kind of the idea behind the story. Who do you fight for when there's no clear good guy (or faction rather)?

You fight for your God...

You have the 4 horsemen of the Apocalypse, why not introduce the opposite of that force? By introducing the re-birth of a "Messiah" figure... It could put an interesting spin on Religion.

DarkCloak said:

You fight for your God...

You have the 4 horsemen of the Apocalypse, why not introduce the opposite of that force? By introducing the re-birth of a "Messiah" figure... It could put an interesting spin on Religion.

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Who's Rulf Taurel IV?

New Tech Ideas:
Nanotechnology
Superconductors
Interplanetary Travel
Cybernetics
Genetic Engineering
Genetic Stratification
High-powered lasers
Plasma
On demand media
Wide Spectrum Vision
Subspace communication
Artificial Consciousness
Corporate State
Electronic Integration
Spynet
Magnetism
Curing Cancer/AIDs
Alternative Fuels

Click to expand...

Some of those are not exactly "future" considering half of them are alreadybeing used (ie. nanotechnology genetic engineering, super conductors.)

the only suggestion I can make is what about a "good guy" civ? You know, one that's fighting to presever freedom, not just for a unigov, political power, etc. Like a future United Nations or something?

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Oh like America, who fights for freedom and democracy, and bombs a bunch of brown people every 4 years. I guess all those deaths are justified, because if America says its good, then the whole world must say its good


Really though, I think you have some great ideas here. Keep up the good work.

Also a nice apocalypse type thing could be destruction of electricty. Think about it, if electricity was somehow removed from the Earth. There would be a big problem. Water is pumped by electricty and we obviously wouldn't have heat in our house (and gas is also handled with electrcity.) The biggest thing though is all those big nice defense systems countries build are all run on computers (and so is mostly everything else) which uses electricty. Bam the world would be in havoc.

How do you know I've been doing good work? Maybe I haven't been working at all on this in the past 2 1/2 months. Then again, maybe I have, and it's just bad work.

if WWII didn't have axis, china wouldn't be communist anyway, there wouldn't be a russo-sino league. also in truth, the chinese couldn't stand the soviet neither, they split with them in real history (develop into what is now called maoist but adopted free market economy immediately after mao died) and receive US technology to help contain the soviet (some of china's current warship are still powered by GE machinery), of course once soviet is no more, china becomes the next target...

anyway, a scenario doesn't need to be realistic, just plan it as you like! ;-)

Oh man, I love alternative history!

I have a heap of suggestions and stuff:

Civs: You seem to be neglecting a few large parts of the world. What if the League of Nations went downhill after the neoVisigoths, Hertfordshire'eans and the nations of Unigov left and ended up a confederation of bickering, paranoid, arms-racing nation-states. Perhaps they could be accompanied by various African colonies.
The hallmarks of the League of Nations could be varied troop and vehicle types, strong navies and efficient industries, but a lack of natural (luxury/strategic) resources.

What if (no 2) South-East Asia united under a single banner? The unification could have started as a means to resist the European colonial powers, but continued through power hungry leaders keeping the countries together in order to resist the Sino-Russo Alliance? An amphibian blitzkrieg (could have) lead to the annexation of Australia and New Zealand.
The hallmarks of the South-East Asian Entente could be big populations/pop growth, good guerilla/amphibian/jungle troops and resources but lack of heavy industries (atleast in the beginning).

Terrain: On a planet torn to shreds by war, there must be huge tracts of land rendered unusable by warfare, ie no-mansland. Some new graphics for burned forests and jungles, trench-ridden-mortar-pounded grasslands/plains/tundra/desert and dito hills/mountains. Productivity would be zero to near zero and defence bonuses reduced.

Units: What better units for an alternative history scenario than the ridiculosly expensive but oh-so-useful desperate units of long wars?

Floating fortress v1: immobile naval unit, capable of transporting and repairing multiple aircraft AND ships (though the repairing part might be unbalanced). Can only defend, but can bombard tiles/cities/units. Built using several fishing boats (or maybe special single purpose work-boats) and at a hefty cost in money. Perhaps a limit of 1 or a few more, buildable only in ocean to balance.

Floating fortress v2: Dead slow (1 move) naval unit, works as a medic for ships in adjacent tiles, can attack naval units, can bombard tiles/cities/units.
Again, perhaps a limit of 1 or a few more.

Hovercraft transports: Not alot to say. Transports units on land, coasts and maybe oceans.

Hovercraft tanks: Simple tank-ish units, can traverse and, coasts and maybe oceans.

Hovercraft artilley: Artillery unit, can traverse and, coasts and maybe oceans.

Just a few of my suggestions, might not fit in with your view on the conflict. Oh, and great mod idea!

*Looks a posting dates* Oh darn. Late post

Indeed, my Risen mod sort of died after Warlords came out because I figured that Civ was going in a direction unfriendly with anything having to do with the modern era, still never bought that exp pack actually. Hopefully BTS in its modernity focus will bring a reversal of fortunes and my mod can rise again!

Of course the inherent problem with modern mods is the you have to sit through a whole game until it's pretty much won or lost until you start seeing any new content. Either that or try to start filling out the back end like I did or you make it so that all games start in 1900.