Capturing abandoned units in a post-apoc mod

For one of the WROL edition mods in the modern era, I'd like for there to be some postmodern units that can be captured and immobile. I guess they're designated to some Civ, made available to all civs, but immobile and without an attack or defense value. Then these can be upgraded (but at a high cost as well as knowing the technology) into working units.

Say there's a tank museum and some of the units can thus be put back into service. I guess for practical use, then for example the order of upgrades needs to be.
1. Abandoned immobile tank
2. Movable crippled tank
3. Working tank

The cost to make it movable wouldn't be too high but it would have nearly no offensive or defensive strength and nearly no movement rate. It would be a lot of work to get it to a city to upgrade it.

What do people think? Has anyone made/used this idea in their mods or scenarios? By making it an upgrade, then the abandoned and crippled versions only show up in this manner. The initial unit has to be immobile so that it's not creating havok. Maybe it's a designated barbarian unit? Is there a way to make it upgradable in the field to make it the crippled version or can upgrades ONLY happen in cities?

In this example, since it's a tank museum, then that could be within a city, and so upgraded there. Other units might be found abandoned in the field.

Maybe they could be treated in either the manner like captured artillery or they could be "enslaved" and automatically changed into the crippled limited mobile version in the field too?

EDIT:
This same method might be done to automatically upgrade initial units in the mod. Say you begin with some very low-grade civilian units that are poorly equipped. You capture a barbarian held settlement with that had only some weak defending units but you overwhelm them. Within the barbarian city there is either an improvement that allows hanguns due to a local resource cache of them, or there are some immobile units with handguns that then are captured and can be upgraded. It's sort of a way to upgrade your existing units or to signify new people you've met that were captives and who with your help have been freed to be a part of your party.

I'm trying to think of ways in a post-apoc mod how units would realistically happen. Everything would be so crippled with no Rule of Law, and no initial ability to create units. Instead a ton of foraging for supplies would happen. The idea of improving the existing starting units is an intriguing one to me.

Example:
Think the Walking Dead. Sheriff Rick begins as an injured hospital patient without much ability to fend for himself. He then arms himself as an upgrade by visiting the sheriff's building, and then there could be an upgraded version of Rick with a shotgun. Then say later he finds some body armor and so the new upgrade shows Sheriff Rick with both a shotgun and body armour. You can't make the first version, but can upgrade it. It would be very limited.

Perhaps in the tank example you have a special tank engineer who then finds immobile tanks at the museum (without them being shown) and then can upgrade the engineer into a tank ?

In my mod, one of the homesteaders is a boat repair business operator. In this way, he could have one working boat, but several that are immobile, some that are crippled, and he could end up upgrading i.e. repair them to put them back in service. Now if he could sell them/trade them with the other homesteaders, a whole new economic system would exist such that some might create units to sell to another civilization(homesteader) in order to trade resources or to support infrastructure costs. He can't build new boats as it's beyond his capacity without hulls and parts, but it's plausible that he could salvage materials and refurbish the crippled ones to some degree.

As far as know, the only tradeable unit is a worker between civilizations. You could designate the "worker" as a special unit that no longer improves terrain, but could be upgraded into low level military units as precursors. A worker with a boat shop could become a refurbished boat after much upgrading. If you could create divergence (which I don't think is possible) then the precursor could become different things. I don't think you can have more than one tradeable unit type between civilzations.

The benefit of immobile units within cities under barbarian control


Simulation of maturing units

You have some interesting ideas there. For upgrading basic units to a better version more equipped can be done like how normal units are upgraded to better units you would just make it already researched or something and once the player has the resources he can upgrade it. I think you can only have upgrades in "cities". So if you want to have certain upgrades always available you would have to use resources and adjust your map so the player doesnt get to that resource immediately and so wouldnt upgrade it as soon as he gets into the map unless you want to setup a tech for it. You can also have upgrades always available for a player, but place the unit a distance away from the city and so would not upgrade immediately. These units also could only be a certain amount and you cannot build them at least not for a while. Tons of things can be done with just resources, techs, units, buildings, terrain etc with using civ-specific tech trees you can achieve many things, but you would have to think it through and it then can become quite complex.

Probably for immobile units you would have to have another unit come and pick it up, but I dont think the AI use "land" transports very well so just keep that in mind. I know you can use flag units as immobile units and have other units come and pick it up as a relic and then return it to the capital but this only rewards you with victory points and maybe gold and other things, I dont think it has to be victory points but your limited in what you can do there.

I remember seeing a topic that there was a way to make a military unit as a tradeable unit to other scenarios but you have to switch it with the worker spot and have it in the exact same spot in other locations if I remember correctly.

For some extra ideas you may want to, if you havent already, check out such heavily-modified scenarios like Vuldacon's Escape From Zombie Island 2 Complete. He manipulated alot of gameplay mechanics for alot of different things and achieved alot what some people may have thought was not possible.

Yes, I think using the "Reverse Capture the Flag" attribute might be utilized to capture some units and bring them back, at least for shields released back to finish projects, but also to upgrade those special flag units.

Yes, the several zombie mods are superior in both making wonderful units as well a story and so making it an immersive unique mod. In fact the idea of an infection via a unit like a zombie made me think of a Vampire Apocalypse mod where a powerful vampire captures units that are of extremely low power, but then get upgraded in certain locations to varying degrees based upon whatever infrastructure or resources are nearby. Initially they're very weak and vulnerable, and if ignored and unknown to the player, then by the time they encountered them, many civs have been overrun. I've thought of a locked alliance where this obligates the human player to attack and have to deal with a massive swarm of varying degrees of vampires. Such a thing played out in Stake Land, which is really another flavor of post-apoc films.

Link to video.

Right, the AI isn't smart and so can't be as clever as a human player and understand the upgrading process if overly complex. But what I might do is preset some scenarios within the mod such that the human player is designated to play a particular civ, and so they might have a lot of logistical issues to relocate a valuable but crippled resource back from one city to another.

And city/settlement could be labeled Jack's Gun Repair and in essence be a shop that gets taken over by rebels as a command center, but then has these immobile upgradable units within. Then they're upgraded to crippled and movable there, but to fully upgrade them to a useful status, then have to go to the capitol. And the capitol is really just the main homestead where post-apoc survivors are using as their base. In this the names of the settlements can tell a story versus generic city names.

A city/settlement might be Area 51 for example and possess captured exotic technology or even extraterrestrial tech. There was a clever History channel documentary on what if Martian invaders attacked the UK during WW1. Something like this could be done in which a captured Martian unit is put back in service to attack them.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=194237

Link to video.

So, Crackerbox, if you preplace the immobile units in a "city" to be captured, that should work okay. You'd have to have a "barracks" in the "city" in order to upgrade it to something operational on-site, in all likelihood having to build this "barracks" first, presuming an existing one is pillaged/destroyed when the "city" is taken. Make sure everyone has access to the preplaced units (assigned to each civ in the editor) or they will be destroyed when the "city" is taken.

I think having resources, rather than technology directly, is the way to go. The preplaced units start out obsolete, so that you cannot actually build them, or make them flagged as Kings for the same reason. The problem is how to move them from point A to point B to be upgraded. For naval units, you could require an escort, but there is no land unit equivalent. "Flags" and "princesses" will consume the unit when it gets to its destination, and then teleports it away to some random location. This would work well if you had a non-specific unit that gives you shields, gold, or culture, but clearly you want a derelict vehicle that you can reactivate in stages.

Instead of immobile, perhaps you can simply not assign an A.I. script -- such as Explore or Offensive or Naval Power -- to the base unit to keep it at home, but then the computer won't ever use it. Which may be a good thing, perhaps.

I tried to adapt an Avalon Hill boardgame called "Dark Emperor" to CivIII some time ago. It was an early modding attempt, the game kept freezing up, so I abandoned it, but I want to tell you about something that worked pretty well.

The boardgame starts out with the Necromancer player beginning with the necromancer, a siege train, and also two sidekicks, one of which is Lord of Vampires. I made this Lord of Vampires an air unit with the ability to enslave, creating Greater Vampires, which in turn the Greater Vampires could enslave, creating Lesser Vampires. (As I recall, the Lesser Vampires were land units, while the others were air units, so that religious units, spellcasting units, and vampire hunters were basically antiaircraft units and interceptors.)

I didn't know if the A.I. could handle starting out with an aircraft, but it pulled it off, and after a few "bombing runs", the necromancer was beginning to amass a small army of vampires, just like what is intended in the boardgame. In fact, as I recall, since the players didn't start out near each other -- the mod was intended for random archipelago maps -- I believe the vampires used barbarian camps as foodstock in the early turns.

So the idea you mentioned about Dracula is doable.

A couple of things:

1. You can only upgrade in cities with an improvement that allows upgrading
2. Units will always upgrade to the most advanced unit in the upgrade path that you have the required resource and/or tech for. So what resources are connected to what cities is a way to control upgrading.
3. The only tradeable unit is the default capture unit in the general settings tab. It does not have to have the same position as the worker currently holds

Sounds like a fun mode or series of mods. Good luck!

Thanks for your replies. The modders at civfanatics are a wonderful bunch of kind human beings. Who would have thought that Civ3 would be still be played all these many years later? That kind of creativity and desire to bring joy to others is heart-warming.

The goal is to demystify the actual process of homesteading in history, explain logically how they coped with natural disasters, plague, and their own lack of knowledge. The pioneers in history often taught the "greenhorns" who traveled out West in search of land and fortune. Many came from the urban areas with little practical skills.

In the event of a collapse due to any number of causes, it's not like the Walking Dead. Zombies are not the main concern, knowing how to clear land, till the soil, add soil ammenities, learn what seeds to plant, what plant diseases, when to harvest, how to use what water you have, these things are what let people survive and thrive.

Because of this, that homestead becomes a valuable resource. A concentration of wealth occurs with tool making, herbs grown for medicine, organization of flora and fauna. So predators come to take back the encroaching borders and to remove the Other who is a potential threat.

I'm hoping to make it more realistic and more personal by encouraging the player to think of what a tiny community would do to cope, and then if successful becoming a village, and then a real community. The specialization of human beings in a post-collapse scenario would be very limited. Much of the technology would be practical, but some of it would be scavenging those supplies that couldn't be immediately manufactured, but cobbled together to form practical and lethal tools.

A shovel and a rifle are both practical tools under these conditions. It's not a mod about learning Fusion technology.

Crackerbox, I've been working on a post-apocalyptic mod, myself. Would it be okay if I share what I've been doing with you? I hate duplication of effort, and if some of the graphics could be of use to you without you having to do it all yourself, then all those hours I've put into the project will have paid off for someone other than me.

Our concepts are different, but the setting is close enough that there should be a lot of overlap.

Erebras said:

Crackerbox, I've been working on a post-apocalyptic mod, myself. Would it be okay if I share what I've been doing with you? I hate duplication of effort, and if some of the graphics could be of use to you without you having to do it all yourself, then all those hours I've put into the project will have paid off for someone other than me.

Our concepts are different, but the setting is close enough that there should be a lot of overlap.

Spoiler :

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=527891

Spoiler :

Click to expand...

I would be delighted to cooperate so that we get something into the hands of the players as soon as possible. PM me please.