[MOD] Planet Roanoke, a/k/a all SMAC'ed up

This mod picks up once you hit Era II, which roughly correlates with both Ancient and Classical eras in vanilla Civ. However, we seem to be stuck with making Era I (Survival) work better. As people have complained here and in our dedicated forum, there's "not enough to do" in the beginning.

Here are some problems that I would like to troubleshoot:

1. There's often nothing to build. If you follow the tech tree optimally, you usually have something to build at all times, but follow it any other way and you often run out of choices.

2. Scarcity of food. Roanoke's tiles naturally have 0 food, and food is the player's (human or AI) highest priority in the early game. This leads to problem 4 below...

3. Abundance of food. Turns out that having buildings generate food is a bad idea once you can build self-sustaining food improvements. This is because the food doesn't come from a citizen, so that the population keeps growing.

4. Not enough improvement choices. Putting aside bonus-specific improvements, right now each terrain type has only one viable improvement option -- hothouse for sand, extractor for basalt, mine for hills. This wasn't the intention, but offering choice here is just an illusion: when you are starving for food, building an extractor on sand just doesn't make sense.

I would summarize the above problems as: Not Enough Choices.

What we are trying to model here is "marooned on a desert island." On the one hand, realistically being stranded is a pretty crappy situation. But since this is a game we're talking about, how do we make this scenario both convey that feeling of desperation but also be lots of fun?

Some proposals from our team have included a "do or die timer" (your colony is leaking energy or whatever and must fix the problem by X time or perish), narrative interludes, quests, or just skipping this era altogether. Some specific ideas I can think of right now to respond to the above problems include:

1. Throwaway buildings that provide some marginal benefit. Or, if the "do or die" condition is in place, you start with "Bad" buildings and have to "fix" them. (But is that fun? What are your choices here?)

2. The only big solution to this is to change the planet to be more hospitable, but then we have to give up the main premise of the game. Maybe each improvement is worth more food? Also, we could implement an artificial "fresh water" type system to limit where you can build food improvements, which is one of the interesting challenges of Vanilla.

3. Instead of generating food, perhaps there would be a "process" or a fake building / unit that adds a small amount of food to your granary. I could see the AI ending up being a junkie on this thing and never moving beyond it, however...

4. See my irrigation idea under 2. There are certainly more choices to be available in the next era. What I have always been interested in doing is to allow a choice between "medium value now" vs. "low now, high later" improvements, but the AI does not recognize these choices and apparently always chooses the latter. I originally wanted hothouses (medium value) to be different than terraforms (low now, high later), but the AI can only choose one or the other, so the choice is fairly meaningless except to the player (which then gives the player a huge advantage).

Please contribute your ideas of what would make a "stranded on a desert island" scenario fun!

It seems to me that this early stage is about exploration, you are on a new planet that you know notihng about. You will have the most fun in this early stage if you randomize as many things about the planet as possible.

Does the planet contain friendly native life?
Does the plaent contain unfrindly native life?
Are their pieces of former ships that have crashed here and can be salvaged from?
Are those big glowing stones helpful sources of power, or deadly sources of radiation?
Can the patch of colored fungus by cultivated for food, or does it release spores that will kill your colonists?
etc..etc..

I would suggest starting colonies with a decent number of weak units to incent the player to go wandering with them in what could be an incrediably hositle environment or a utopia. I would recommend a background routine during world generation that makes each world random and unknown (much more than just a random map). Even experinenced players should have to carefully consider sending that unit into a tile of fungus or wait until they have the appropriate tech that reveals its use from afar.

Negotiations with natives if it is more complex than the vanilla system. They could desire sacrifices or items or people, and trade with them and other colonies could form a lot of the activity of the later early age (once they are discovered) and be a good reward for finding them. But again, trade will need to be reworked to add some options beyond what vanilla civ allows.

Consumable resources would be interesting too. So you want to use the siding from your ship for a basic shelter or a crude canoe to allow your explorers to cross to a remote island? Using the consumable resources allows early game build options on a time limit that forces players to make sure they are ready to handle life once they run out. It also allows player to explore with different starting builds. And its easy to program (always a bonus).

Thanks for the suggestions, Kael. Always a pleasure to get input from a senior and more experienced modder

You propose an interesting solution to the idea of exploration, which is to make the world random enough to offer something new to learn each time. This is intriguing. At the same time, I am trying to imagine how to design it (both code and storyline) in a manageable way. I guess I could see at least three levels of randomness:

1. The rules themselves are up for grabs (e.g. are the natives friendly?). Right now I feel this is too hard to implement. It would require branching "storylines" that are challenging enough in RPG's. But I'm happy to keep kicking the idea around.

2. The world itself is more random or unknown. This intrigues me. One very specific mechanism I could imagine for implementing this is not all that different from the original SMAC: replace some or all resources with an "unknown" bonus that you uncover only by moving onto the square -- like a goody hut. (To keep some game balance, I could imagine using the default map script to place bonuses appropriately, and then replacing them all via script with this bonus, but that is coded to "remember" what it "really" is.) Then, as you suggest, when you get the prereq tech, bonuses are revealed to you "as is." I wonder how the AI will deal with this...

3. Random events. This was proposed on our forums. However, I feel this suffers from not offering players a chance to control or learn, and therefore lead to a kind of "spearman vs. tank" feeling. A random meteorite shower is not fun unless you could have done something to prevent it, or if it offers you new choices of how to handle the crisis.

Padmewan said:

Thanks for the suggestions, Kael. Always a pleasure to get input from a senior and more experienced modder

You propose an interesting solution to the idea of exploration, which is to make the world random enough to offer something new to learn each time. This is intriguing. At the same time, I am trying to imagine how to design it (both code and storyline) in a manageable way. I guess I could see at least three levels of randomness:

1. The rules themselves are up for grabs (e.g. are the natives friendly?). Right now I feel this is too hard to implement. It would require branching "storylines" that are challenging enough in RPG's. But I'm happy to keep kicking the idea around.

2. The world itself is more random or unknown. This intrigues me. One very specific mechanism I could imagine for implementing this is not all that different from the original SMAC: replace some or all resources with an "unknown" bonus that you uncover only by moving onto the square -- like a goody hut. (To keep some game balance, I could imagine using the default map script to place bonuses appropriately, and then replacing them all via script with this bonus, but that is coded to "remember" what it "really" is.) Then, as you suggest, when you get the prereq tech, bonuses are revealed to you "as is." I wonder how the AI will deal with this...

3. Random events. This was proposed on our forums. However, I feel this suffers from not offering players a chance to control or learn, and therefore lead to a kind of "spearman vs. tank" feeling. A random meteorite shower is not fun unless you could have done something to prevent it, or if it offers you new choices of how to handle the crisis.

Click to expand...

You may want to not have any civs that both ai and human playable. That way you have 2 groups:

1. Player civs (all representing crash survivors).
2. AI civs (all representing planet natives).

The AI civs can cover a wide range and dont have to be that balanced (some can just be flavor) since they wont be played by humans. Of course there is tons of ideas for different alien civs, but just determining what random civs show up on the planet could add a lot of variance.

The stranger and more alien civs you make the better.

Kael said:

Does the planet contain friendly native life?
Does the plaent contain unfrindly native life?
...
Negotiations with natives if it is more complex than the vanilla system. They could desire sacrifices or items or people, and trade with them and other colonies could form a lot of the activity of the later early age (once they are discovered) and be a good reward for finding them. But again, trade will need to be reworked to add some options beyond what vanilla civ allows.

Click to expand...

This is a dynamic I was hoping to save until Era IV. To some extent, I wanted to make the process of colonization more harshly allegorical of the Euro-American experience: most of the native life won't even be recognized as living, never mind sentient, until some later stage. (This requires some reworking of the existing "animals," which I'm not happy with anyway). The basic storyline being:

So, putting that aside, I think another aspect that you touch upon that I'd like to explore is expanding diplomatic/economic options with your fellow colonists. I think there should be lots more choices for how to get along with your fellow man -- I would really love an RPG-style conversation tree to be possible between you and other civs that has some small effect on your diplomatic relations.

Kael said:

Consumable resources would be interesting too. So you want to use the siding from your ship for a basic shelter or a crude canoe to allow your explorers to cross to a remote island? Using the consumable resources allows early game build options on a time limit that forces players to make sure they are ready to handle life once they run out. It also allows player to explore with different starting builds. And its easy to program (always a bonus).

Click to expand...

I really like this idea, as it offers a positive way to reflect the same dynamic as the negative "do or die" path. In-game I guess this could most easily be represented by having, e.g., a "wreckage" building that is a prereq for some other set of buildings, each of which, when built, consumes the wreckage. The trick is to balance the choices so each one is equally viable but leaning towards a different strategy for survival.

To some extent our initial buildings were meant to reflect this: each civ would have the ability to build something right away that would contribute to survival but by their own strategic preferences: create food, create production, create energy / research, scavenge. Maybe this could be amped up even more by splitting these buildings into smaller pieces and putting a cap on how many can be built. As long as they're balanced, I think the AI should be able to handle it as well...

Kael said:

The AI civs can cover a wide range and dont have to be that balanced (some can just be flavor) since they wont be played by humans. Of course there is tons of ideas for different alien civs, but just determining what random civs show up on the planet could add a lot of variance.

The stranger and more alien civs you make the better.

Click to expand...

Singing the woodelf tune here

Consistent with my post about alien life on Planet, I think the rogue alien civs could certainly have widely varying life cycles, personalities, etc. The problem is that if I want to stick to my original idea, you won't really communicate with them until much later in the game -- as a simple matter of realism, it will take some time to figure out that they're alive, never mind capable of communication. Still, the main thing that they would offer early on is a source of competition much more threatening than human factions. Definitely worth thinking about...

I wonder if there's a way to set up the map script to produce a "crowded" map. I don't know where it's decided in the setup how many civs to put in a default map of a certain size.

Padmewan said:

Singing the woodelf tune here

Consistent with my post about alien life on Planet, I think the rogue alien civs could certainly have widely varying life cycles, personalities, etc. The problem is that if I want to stick to my original idea, you won't really communicate with them until much later in the game -- as a simple matter of realism, it will take some time to figure out that they're alive, never mind capable of communication. Still, the main thing that they would offer early on is a source of competition much more threatening than human factions. Definitely worth thinking about...

I wonder if there's a way to set up the map script to produce a "crowded" map. I don't know where it's decided in the setup how many civs to put in a default map of a certain size.

Click to expand...

You may be able to come up with some example of early game native civs. What if another ship had crashed on the planet 40 years ago and those people had changed due to conditions on the planet (or maybe they became just a feral "lord of the flies" type of culture). And you can always have the civ there but not allow communication with the player (as barbarians are now) until an event is done.

It would be easy to make the animals/barbarians into alien lifeforms and just apply a random chance that the player is at war with them at the begining (the chance that the natives are violent or not).

Good ideas banged back and forth. Hopefully I can think about them and post more later.

Alien AI civs work for me, obviously. Need the Universal Translator tech though.

(Side note: Got a graphics tablet today. Look forward to doing more concept sketches that I've been unable to do for laziness -- irrational aversion to scanning)

The lifeform already on Roanoke by original design is the Lattice, inspired obviously by Xenofungus. Right now the Lattice is pretty much a nuisance -- from the colonists' POV, a geological oddity but not, like Xenofungus, necessarily alive. (A good analogy would be stalagmites/tites -- geological formations that grow).

The problem with Lattice as a source of conflict is that right now it is pretty static. If it has an effect on your civ, it's indirect (blocking movement / improvements). Maybe, though, the Lattice could be more active/malevolent. Lattice would be the one and only improvement available to the alien civ, and its minions actively weave more Lattice...

So run with this for a moment: How would you make a terrain feature into an antagonist (or later protagonist), without necessarily resorting to "ents"? What can Lattice "do" besides grow -- relesase noxious fumes? Presumably, instead of pillaging your improvements, its units would replace it with Lattice.

Another trick I could imagine playing is (as this is a SP game) replacing the human player's nearest Civ with an alien civ to guarantee a challenge for the human in the game. Or just inserting one.

...perhaps each earth civ could have a corresponding alien civ inserted (!)

Be cautious of the danger of designing from flavor instead of the other way around.

You may want to step back and design how you want your mod to play without any flavor aspects at all. Dont think about planets, space travel, aliens, nothing, thats all flavor. Think of it like a board game without any pictures or style on the pieces.

Then design how you want it to play. You should only be left with simple strategic decisions. If it is uninteresting at this level then no amount of flavor will help it.

Once you have the functional design done you can go back and look at it from a flavor aspect and use the flavor to make it even better.

Kael said:

Be cautious of the danger of designing from flavor instead of the other way around.

You may want to step back and design how you want your mod to play without any flavor aspects at all.

Click to expand...

Good advice.... although right now I am actually taking TWO steps back, because my goal isn't just to create a fun game (we could stop at FFH there ) but instead to model something from the "real world" in a way that is (a) fun but also (b) fun because it feels "true." So IMHO the flavor is in the service of the strategy, but the strategy is in the service of the goal/vision.

For example, if the goal is to model "exploration," then we should develop game mechanisms that make exploration fun. Ergo, the suggestions that you've put forward.

Your questions have led me to realize that my goal isn't to model exploration per se, but rather, colonization -- which entails exploration, but also a whole lot more. And this is leading me to rethink a lot of the mechanisms and assumptions of this mod.

More later, when my head is clearer...

Wow, this mod seems pretty cool its almost like an RPG in Civ 4 from what I've read about storyline and stuff.

As I posted in our forum area my main problem is trying to come up with a reason why these factions (civs) won't work together to survive....

With SMAC the people came out of stasis early and the factions formed in that manner. In our mod I'm not sure we have that backstory explanation so we're left asking "Why won't Santiago simply help me?". I understand fighting later on, but during the survival part we're missing that ingredient...

Anyone have viable or non-viable ideas?

We're now in a "restart" mode where we are refactoring some of the early game and much of the (as yet barely sketched) midgame, but so people have a sense of where we are going so that they can, hopefully, choose to pitch in, here is a rough backstory. I was hoping to polish it up, but why wait?

GAME PREMISE
1. The basic analogy / inspiration to draw from is the European colonizing experience (mostly the Americas, but also Africa and Asia)

2. To simplify the game, instead of lots of different missions launched by competing nations, there is one BIG mission but with lots of different agendas (same as SMAC)

3. As in colonial America, all of these different sub-missions (analogy: 13 colonies) are ostensibly under the "rule" of the originating power (the multi-national thingee)

4. Even more so than in the colonization of America, the natives are not recognized as human -- in fact, they are not even recognized as "alive." I think this is the most important game mechanism to me (and has been since we started the project).

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OK, so what goes wrong (storyline stuff):

1. The hidden cargo on board the ship is a new lifeform (the Cyneid) who, like the Pilgrims, are seeking "lifeform freedom" on the new planet. Unlike the Pilgrims, they do not have the blessing of mission control to set up a new colony. The Cyneid are/is uploaded to the ship's computer systems and hiding in encrypted, undetected code.

2. Space travel is long and slow. The crew alternate through partial hibernation, so a 45-year journey is more like a 15-year journey -- but even that is very, very long. A lot happens in that time -- namely, the tensions among the different motivations for colonization emerge. (Like SMAC).

3. Rather than splinter the mission, the colonists agree ("The Mayflower II Compact") to settle different parts of the planet but be federated (in game, the UN council)

4. The Cyneid, observing all of this and also in contact with its counterpart(s) on Earth, determines that its best chance of survival is to play off these tensions. (During the 45 years of the journey, Earth politics makes governance of the new colony very difficult as a new world war seems likely). As the ship pulls into orbit, the Cyneid plunges it into chaos by activating or deactivating various systems, including throwing open the Brig (a lot of miscreants accumulate over 45 years!). It then uploads itself to a landing pod containing the most compliant and manipulable humans and fakes an accidental launch, jettisoning the pod from the ship and landing on Roanoke.

5. The Brig prisoners realize this is also their chance, seize another pod, and in the chaos also escape to Roanoke.

6. After restoring partial control over the ship, the remaining crew and passengers remain in tumult. The Cyneid have successfully pitted the human factions against each other. Each agrees to stick to the compact, but trust among them has reached a new low. Over the next 1.5 Roan days, the factions take their pods and go their separate ways. Unbeknownst to them, the Cyneid sabotaged the pods' communication systems, leaving each colony unable to contact the other in the hopes that it would remain hidden for as long as possible.

7. As a final parting gift, the Cyneid also sabotaged the mothership by scrambling its navigation system. Rather than achieve stable orbit, the ship (which was to standby for several years to return cargo to Earth) instead enters a death spiral around the planet, skimming the atmosphere and then disintegrating spectacularly. The new colonists are on notice that no return mission will be possible, at least not in their lifetimes. And with word reaching them just prior to the Cyneid revolt (which helped prompt the revolt) that Earth is in tumult, they realize that rescue may not be imminent, either...

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Feedback welcome! And come on over to the Roanoke discussion boards, where we are getting down to the nitty-gritty of how the opening moves will actually play out as a matter of game mechanics...

I really, really, really think that this works better answering the question of "why don't they help each other?".

Hey there Padmewan and team,

I much looking forward to this mod. I started out being affiliated with the CIV:AC effort at 'poly but a new job constrained my time too much. Having two project on-going is very exciting though. Hopefully the teams can interact and build on each others work.

Anyway, as to the backstory...

Your point about rising tensions during the journey is good and logical. Lots of room to flesh out some story there.

One thought that comes to mind is that near the end of the journey one senior member of the group just cannot deal with the isolation and seperation from 'home' and goes absolutely bat-**** insane. A close group of his (or her) loyal followers try to keep his increasing erratic behaviour from getting out of control, but sooner or later, some action (serious vandalism to the fire suppression system, dumping some precious cargo, attempting to alter the ship's course, etc etc) is so outrageous and dangerous to the entire crew that this person can no longer be ignored. They other 'leaders' must act.

While the leaders dither over what action should be taken, the insane guy does something else egrigious - he begins terminating all the cryostate crew. The others can only intervene by waking all the survivors (maybe 75% of the total or something), whom of, course, cannot be accomodated all at once in term of food, or even physical space. At this point, the more militant leaders decide to deal with the insane guy in an extremely harsh manner - boot 'em out the airlock.

The severity of this action causes a massive argument amound the leadership as well as the main crew. The issue morphs from the consequences of the leaders actions in the specific instance to a more general debate about the eventual fate of the Brigs. A main philosophical split emerges between the 'punishment' supporters and the 'rehabilitation' supporters. The members of each of these coalitions are only of one mind about this single issue. Soon enough (with much (though subtle) interference by the Cyenids), the two main groups breakdown over other philosophical holdings.

Anyway, just my musings. It is close enough to the SMAC story to maintain the central dilemma - the colonists split over philosophical differences, which drives the factions over the whole game. Yet there are enough differences that folks cannot claim an infringement on Firaxis IP. Especially with your own story elements about the Cyenids and Brigs.

Feel free to use, extend, discard, or whatever!

Kinjiru - nice addition to the backstory. If you want to get a bit more involved follow my sig to our main forums. We need any fresh ideas/people we can get. Padmewan and I are getting sick of each other!

Welcome, Kinjiru -- even if you have less time, I hope you'll still have enough to contribute ideas and playtesting.

I had decided for myself that instead of remaking SMAC, why not create something with a similar theme, but also "fixing" some of its problems, both in mechanics and in storyline. One of the biggest problems for me was -- what happened to Earth? So this time around I want to push the colonization angle harder and subsume SMAC's ecological theme beneath it. Hopefully, I will have time to polish this proposal a bit more while we also work out how the first 50-100 turns play...