Remember the Primarchs (the WH40K-mod for Civ 5)

Skajaquada · Jan 29, 2011

Just thought I'd clean this OP up. As of now the work isn't really that active but you never know, Civ-games I can usually take year-long breaks with and then come back. I've also released the units and some extra stuff like the XML for the civilizations and some LUA-files, here http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=449649 so that anyone can do whatever they want with them.

Overview

It's really suppose to be this take on WH40K like Civ-games are "takes" on history, so the technology-tree will encompass the known eras in WH40K through Age of Progress, Dark Age of Technology, Age of Strife, Crusade Era, Heresy Era, Age of Imperium and Far Future with techs like "Warp Engine", "Las-Weaponry" and "Secondary Heart". The early units would then be the Imperial Guard and later on you'll build Space Marines and Chaos-units. The Orks would be barbarians and Eldar could be city-states. Then the Tyranids would be part of some late-game event. The yield-names would also be switched, most notably Culture would be Dominance and instead of culture-buildings it would be things like Titans and whatnot. The water would also be space and all the boats would be space-ships. The playable civilizations would then be the 18 original Primarchs and their respective Legion, again sort of like starting with Washington in the normal Civ-game.

Features

To keep it simple here are some features I was thinking of getting to making:

* Make the Ork-barbarians seem more Orky like how they're suppose to breed by releasing spores in battle. This is actually done more or less. I just wrote some simple LUA-script to store the starting-position of all barbarians, then when they die or fight I can do whatever either creating new barbarians, baribarian-camps around the starting-position.

* Sorcery, it probably wouldn't be too hard to implement. I think the promotion-system could be changed so there's a timer on some promotions that sounds like spells. Then the sorcery-units could have a timer built-in like a mana-pool for when they're allowed to use the spell-promotion. The UI could also easily be modded to show this meter. I think the fun challenge though would be to make it appear as a new system keeping the original promotions the way they are for wargear for example.

* Turn-dial on units and make the direction a unit is being attacked from matter. I think the actual UI could be borrowed from the bombard-code. I just need to always have a one-tile radius and then some quick function to make the unit turn towards that tile. There are then functions for the unit-objects that can be used in the combat-event that says what direction a unit is facing.

* Fear/morale, it seems somewhat appropriate for WH40K to have some sort of morale-system. One easy way I guess is giving all units a meter that decreases as the unit loses combat or just fights units with a high fear-spread value. Then when the morale-meter decreases beyond a certain point the unit becomes routed and is uncontrollable and randomly moves a tile every turn.

* Corruption, I don't know really... It could be fun if the normal units could be "upgraded" to Chaos-units at some point. Maybe fighting Daemons and other corrupted units could increase a corruption-meter though the ruins-improvement could have a chance of spreading the original corruption. It seems very much like WH40K, some marine is sent to investigate an ancient ruin and get corrupted by some shrine in there. Also, though it'll probably require the DLL I think it could be fun to have the Ruinous Powers spread like religion in Civ 4, or just have it as a yield that lets you build Chaos-units.

* Tyranids, they simply appear late-game to shake things up. Perhaps it's easy to add some checking like if they clear an entire island (planet) it'll spawn even more Tyranids on that planet making it a sort of incentive to stop them.

* Eldar, it's still pretty much a question-mark what interesting thing I can do about them. I think in this they would really fit as city-states AI-wise, that is not expanding and just making strange requests. However the rest I think it could be fun to shake up a little.

Download-link:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=449649

Original OP:

Spoiler :

TheChanger · Jan 29, 2011

EPIC MOD IS GONNA BE EPIC! holy crap this is the one mod ive been dreaming about for ages and i cant believe someone has already ported all the models over from Dawn of War! youve totally blown my mind O_O

i would definately be interested in helping you out and i have a fair bit of graphical modding experience for civ, so the tech buttons and other icons etc should be easy (im not too shabby on photoshop myself) ive also got 3DSMax 10 and quite a bit of experience in that department too. (mind you ive never successfully made a unit, but ive made a plethora of buildings from scratch)

if you like create a list of icons you need images (with size specifications etc) for and i shall do them

(IM SO EXCITED)

Bonci · Jan 29, 2011

incredibly awesome O_O

Decimatus · Jan 29, 2011

Wow, great unit models!

I got tons of tech/unit/building icons in my mod that you can look through and utilize if I can borrow some of your unit models for my mod.

filli_noctus · Jan 30, 2011

Looks good. What do you intend cities to represent in this mod? I don't really see the 'nids plonking down a city and building a monument to the Norn Queens.

Regarding the space marines with chaos backpacks, I'm not as up to date with 40k fluff as I used to be but iirc the space marine backpack isn't supposed to have changed a great deal since it was first created (if you look at the old metal mini's representing early power armour patterns the backpack vents sre still behind the shoulders), CSM power armour has been altered by the power of the warp, leading to the vents being on those long stalks projecting beyond the marines shoulders. I suspect the Space Wolf with a chaos backpack would be one of the 13th company from the 13th black crusade event that GW did a few years back. [/nerd]

Skajaquada · Jan 30, 2011

There are Capilary Towers that can be exported from DoW2. If the Tyranids are just barbarians I think they can make nice camps, though of-course it doesn't make much sense. I think a challenge here might be making the Ork-barbarians and Tyranid-barbarians attack each-other, just now I searched for "barbarian" in the asset-folder and I didn't find anything conclusive how they work. There's a barbarian civilization as well as a leader defined, the civilization is just set to unplayable and if I set the barbarian leader to any of my civilization the game crashes. The LUA-files just seem to handle the popups.

One work-around might be to make the Tyranids an unplayable civilization, if their cities are Capilary Towers standing in ruins of normal cities, and if they don't have any settlers, it might work. There's just that initial spawn to worry about... Perhaps they should always be there? One city sending out Lictors (powerful enough so you can't scout it out and be rid of the Tyranids too early), then more and more powerful Tyranids, if they manage to swallow one civilization you're screwed. I don't know, just something that makes them feel different from barbarians?

That's really cool about the backpack. Then in that attached picture of the Power Armours I think the first two can just have the normal backpacks representing the normal versions. Then whatever techs leading to Chaos can start to change the armour in a Chaos-like way. There aren't any more helmets than the ones I've used there though so I still think the Chaos-helmet on the first two top left makes a nice pre-Heresy helmet.

Jennar · Jan 30, 2011

Please don't make the nids unplayable. Some of us like Nids and like to play as nids.

TheChanger · Jan 30, 2011

if i was to design a mod like this, (which i have thougth about a lot, lol) i would have a few phases of devolopment. the first phase would be the 20 primarchs of the space marines, the second phase would be the Chaos gods and corrupted chapters of space amrines, and the third phase would include the Xenos like orks, eldar, dark eldar, tyranids, tau and necrons etc.

so basically i agree with Jennar on not making some civs (like tyranids, orks and eldar) unplayable, and just give them some unique mechanics and civ traits (for example we could leave barbarians as Orks as well and allow the Ork Civ to be at peace with them, which would give them a great early game advantage). other civs like your Tyranids could have swarming mechaincs that allow limited stacking of some unit combat types; terraforming in the form of spreading synapse and consuming living matter (forests jungles etc) and a steamroller effect that makes it difficult for them to start off, but once theyre going youd have a hard time destroying them.

Skajaquada · Jan 31, 2011

I think the depth would be a little compromised with more playable races. The way I was thinking was that the different marks of Power Armour could almost signify beginning of eras from Civ-games. This might also permit us to have techs that don't just lead to weapons because there would be some room to fill. Also aren't the Orks born with all the understanding of technology they need? Aren't they with the Eldar pretty ancient races? I don't see how they could advance together with the 20 Legions. Even if we had models for all the races (which we don't, making everything seem incomplete on top) the scale would probably have to be smaller for all races to make it seem believable.

However since the Tyranids basically have a tech-tree already with that chart of their evolving, I suppose that can be used. I remember coming across entries at which turns different barbarians will start to spawn. That can be used for the Orks, but if the Tyranids are a non-playable civilization they might still need a tech-tree. I suppose they can fit as one extra race with only one faction perhaps as a little *extra*

Bonci · Jan 31, 2011

you can have different tech trees for different civs!
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=386362

TheChanger · Feb 2, 2011

any news Skaj? my offer to help with icons etc still stands

Skajaquada · Feb 2, 2011

It's going forward thank you!

I managed to replace the terrain-textures with some from DoW2 using Devliverator's little guide. Sadly it was a dead-end as all their ground-textures have half the resolution of Civ 5's ground-textures. They're really nice actually. Also the terrain-textures spread quite a bit over a lot of hexes and hills, so it would probably be hard making any sort of city-scape or "Forge World" textures that would be meaningful. I was thinking the forrest-sprites could be ruins perhaps.

I don't know, it would be fun to do something with the terrain-textures for that "Total Conversion"-feeling, if just to darken them a little to make the units fit, but I think the bright-blue smurfs fit in nicely already with Civ 5's colorful terrain. I might have one request though: Anyone know how to tyranoform textures in Photoshop? It would be cool if say one continent's textures was replaced with a version that looks infected by the Tyranids, or whatever "Tyrannoform" is

EaSyKiLL · Feb 2, 2011

You have permission to use anything from my Primarchs Civs.

I have attached the files.

I have pretty much given up on this game, so you can use anything I had conveyed in our previous conversations too.

View attachment Warhammer Primarchs.rar

Skajaquada · Feb 6, 2011

Never mind, will post updates soon

TheChanger · Mar 12, 2011

BUMP!

Skajaquada · Mar 13, 2011

I was planning to update any day now. It's progressing. The Dark Gods speak more clearly every day

During the weeks I've posted this idea at a WH40K-community here if anyone want to follow it, otherwise I'll post a summary further down. Civ-wise I've succeeded in changing the terrain-textures (was really easy when I found out Devilerator did that 6 month ago

) and re-scaling and using the existing effects for my own units. That's really 100% complete (at-least figuring out how it's done, it might take several months getting in all units with effects). Here's a video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ29ADpDixk

That Dreadnought sounds-like (minus the hovering) and uses the effects of the Gunship. The great-person effects will also make nice magic and the blue-muzzle effect from the Mech will make nice plasma, however the lasguns will fire gunpowder. If anyone asks, imagine if you will a super-hot laser-pointer that sears the gun as you fire it, creating something vaguely similar to a gun-powder effect. You're worshipping the wrong Emperor if you think Stormtroopers fire red-beams of light

Tech-tree

A little quick about the tech-trees. I was thinking there could be one Adeptus Mechanicus that lets you travel through the technical advancement in the WH40K-universe leading to Power Armours and whatnot. Though only researching here will only lead to Imperial Guard units as well as civiliation structures (I really do want it to play like a normal civ-game and not a all-out war-game) like factories and similar.

Another tech-tree would be advancement in the geneseed, maybe even every tech could be one of the 20 or so additional organs the Space Marines have. I'm not sure how this will work in a Civ-game, but I was thinking the Space Marines could be as they are some sort of tank-units or super-heavy infantry. Please post any thoughts how you think this will work or could work in Civ5 as I've really no experience making mods for Civ-games and balancing them. A little general I was thinking the gas to used to produce the lasguns could be much more common, and maybe the IG require less to build more, than say the adamantium and ceramite to build the Space Marines.

Another tech-tree would naturally be Chaos. I was thinking (though now I've just read it could be hard) that Chaos-buildings or even tech would give negative Happiness to make them a little different. Then instead of Happiness we would call it "Corruption" to make it seem a little more grimdark. If possible it would count up and not down. Then we'll see how that can be balanced, if Chaos Gates spawn Daemons every other turn and yield negative happiness or some Plague Aqueduct (from Nurgle) gives unhappiness but gives a lot of food.

I was also thinking there could be some tech-tree Legion Codex for upgrading units, like the Imperial Guard Commissar isn't really a Adeptus Mechanicus "tech". Maybe these techs could also provide free promotions or how that can work in Civ 5 (I actually haven't played a Civ 5-game in 6 month or more, so I'll have to pick that up soon to do some "research"

). A minor thing I was thinking about here could be something about the formations the units use. It won't really be heavy-coding, I was mostly thinking a set of unique units, maybe even tied in to the other techs so I won't have to make one unique-unit for every that already exist. Anyway, inspired by those pre-Heresy pictures with a sea of Space Marines that first units you build could all use the warrior-formation then you research some Advanced Tactics and they spread out more, maybe even build in less numbers to represent more efficient warfare. Naturally one "Unit" of Space Marines would cost less strategic resources.

Then I think there should be another tech-tree, but I've no idea what could be in there. Something comparable to the Philosophy-tech in normal Civ 5? You know if Adeptus Mechanicus gives civilian factories something should give Culture- and Happiness-producing buildings. But I don't know, it might fit in the Legion Codex tech-tree, if Happiness is Corruption it's not so much about entertainment as perhaps Inquisitorial Fortresses. Maybe even Culture could be replaced by something more grimdark?

Social Policies

Naturally something would be changed here. I haven't given it much thought yet but perhaps some "Administratum"-branch with things like "tithe" doubling output of strategic resources or how that works. Another branch could perhaps be "Machine God" giving bonuses to factories and vehicles. Though the Machine God isn't real a happy tech-priest is a more productive tech-priest

Buildings

This is what I've been working on the last week. I haven't really given the bonuses any thought, it's mostly just for fun for now. One thing to note is that I was thinking the National Wonders could be for example Battle Barges, Strike Cruisers or even Warp Storms (requires a number of War Rift-buildings to build) but they're all named for your Legion. I suppose that wouldn't be hard, right? Even with the mod-tools we've got now I could just have copies of the techs for all civilization leading to their own National Wonder. I was also thinking unnamed Titans and ships could be buildings, then for example a National Wonder could be "Titan Legion" requiring a number of those, but it might be too many war-structures with barley no civilian structures. On the other hand I'm really hoping for a massive scale, and civilian structures might be easier to just invent names for. Then Titans and whatnot giving morale-promotions could be just right.

Anyway, here it is:

Spoiler :

Resources

Diamantine
Adamantium
Ceramite
Plasteel
Promethium

These are the ones I've found in the WH40K-resources. Then Plasma Weapons and the lasgun apparently use different types of gas producing the different colors. Some other general ideas is that the strategic resources could be cultists, psykers etc. you recruit from the country-side.

Team-colors and textures

Just a little note on this as I mentioned I wasn't sure what to do in the OP. I've since decided all Legions would basically have three colors: Pre-Heresy, Heresy and Chaos. It's vaguly based on the three distinct colors of the Luna Wolves (though they might have changed color when they changed their name) and the fact that the Dark Angels and Space Wolves that had some traitors as well as came into a lot of contact with the Warp, was the only loyal Legion that changed their colors.

Anyway, I was thinking after a number of Chaos-techs, or a choke point Chaos-tech your Legion would then change color. Again not really something done with heavy-coding but having a new set of unique-units. If it's too much work I could probably be happy enough with pre-Heresy colors on all units and then just Chaos-colors on the Chaos Space Marines. The "problem" I was trying to explain away with this was just then why the Space Wolves and Dark Angels changed colors. Then I found those three colors of the Luna Wolves and it all made sense

Attack-animatins and unit combat-values

When I was working on the effects I noticed it doesn't seem possible to have melee-units do bombard-attacks. As I think I said in the OP I was thinking of separating melee-attack and range-attack combat-values by having all bombard-attacks show the ranged-animation and effects. Then say a Dreadnought with power-claws and assault cannon could be a little varied in bombard and melee, while a Space Marine Squad with nothing but Plasma Cannons could be really bad in melee.

However that didn't work so it'll be something more traditional in the Civ-sense. All-melee units can still use a throw-animation on city-attacks too. Plus it'll look absolutly amazing when you click end-turn and the AI starts moving units everywhere and fire, like in that video up there. Otherwise any thoughts here about the game-play? As I've said I haven't modded Civ-games before this and I'm really not that into the gameplay-mechanics.

Conclusion

I think that's that. I can't upload pictures now, but I've been tinkering with 3DS Max and some models and decided to make all MK1-8 Power Armours researchable. Playing as the Primarchs researching all Space Marine-organs and Power Armour MK1-8 feels right you know, like playing as George Washington discovering horseback riding, as a Civ-game should be like

EDIT: Attatched some images.

Darkhour · Mar 13, 2011

not a 40k fan but this looks sweet! nice one

Skajaquada · Mar 14, 2011

Thanks. I've got one thing to add before I forget it. I've been thinking on and off during the day what Culture could be and that it would be fun if Titans and war-ships were buildings, then it hit me... Dominance. I can simply replace "Culture" with "Dominance" then a set of buildings like Warhound Titan, Reaver Titan, Battle Barge or the various cruisers and battle-ships in the Imperial Navy, will produce "Dominance". Clever, eh? Seriously I'm not trying to pretend I'm not making a WH40K-version of Civ 5, it's not like I want to use the engine to re-create Chaos Gate, maybe later though...

Also Gold... There's a form of currency in WH40K however it might be more appropriate if it's manpower or something. I can't really see "Imperials" buying land you'd otherwise get by constructing a war-ship that will generate Dominance, or speeding up construction with. I think I like that, Manpower instead of Gold. Either you take time building war-ships and let the automated factory-temples construct super-soldiers, or you sacrifice Manpower into mindless servitors (cyborg slaves) and into the country-side to secure land. It feels grimdark too with people as currency.

Then it might seem a little silly not changing the rest. I've got this suspicion the hammers already are suppose to be manpower, but I don't know? Power? If it's not too generic. What else will power the factories? I mean everything is probably pretty automated in the year 40 000. Then they would just need the strategic resources and Power. Otherwise I suppose Production is pretty good already, then you have to think about what improvements and such will give bonuses to it. It might not be important to change the rest, but I really like Dominance instead of Culture

TheChanger · Mar 14, 2011

dude... that video is epic

fantastic job on all the art and animation stuff. the darker terrain is really fitting too

your tech tree ideas are interesting, but im not sure of the geneseed concept, it sounds bt confusing, maybe you could elaboriate on this a little?

the building list is also looking good

and i REALLY like the idea of replacing culture with dominance, gold with manpower (or maybe requesition like they call it in Dawn of War) and Production with Power. very fitting

Skajaquada · Mar 15, 2011

In WH40K the Space Marines aren't just 3 meters tall, they've got 20 or so additional organs, it's why we call them super-soldiers. I'm not making this up, they can spit acid, breath in any atmosphere, have a secondary heart, secondary lungs etc. This research was also mostly conducted by the Emperor while the Adeptus Mechanicus, the tech-priests of Mars, supplies the Imperium with all the war-ships and more mechanical technology. The Imperial Guard are also the soldiers recruited in billions from all the planets while the Space Marines number in perhaps houndreds of thousands.

Gameplay-wise I was thinking that you're playing as "the Imperium", or part of it controlling that Legion, so in some ways you're not limited to either Imperial Guard-units or Space Marine-units. Even-though lore-wise I don't think the Primarchs had anything to do with the geneseed-research as I said it'll be like George Washington discovering horseback-riding. It'll "fit" in it's own way. The biggest problem is just how to balance the Space Marines and Imperial Guard. They could be separated with one tech-tree being just Adeptus Mechanicus-techs while another one perhaps Adeptus Astartes allows you to buld Space Marines. Though I was thinking they would have to be combined, like research some "Portable Plasma Reactor" (Adeptus Mechanicus) and you can build some factory and a Imperial Guard-tank, then you need to research "Secondary Lungs" (Adeptus Astartes) to get some Space Marine-unit. Presumably he needs four lungs to carry his weapon or armour.

I'm not sure how this should be balanced. With the better SDK it might be possible to have two types of research-points, one for either tech-tree, but now I think both will be used for the same, so it'll just be like a really big tech-tree in Civ 5.

Anyway, I like Requisition instead of Gold. I was thinking perhaps Food could be requisition or something, but it would probably kill the feeling you're not always playing militaristic. I mean I really don't want cities to be military-bases... But Food for Food and Gold as Requisition fits nice. I think they originally got it from the WH40K tabletop-game where you balance your armies with requisition-points. There is also some resources on the various power-plants in WH40K that will make nice factories generating additional Power.

Remember the Primarchs (the WH40K-mod for Civ 5)

Crazy Engineer

Warlord

King

King

Hmmn

Crazy Engineer

Chieftain

Warlord

Crazy Engineer

King

Warlord

Crazy Engineer

Chieftain

Crazy Engineer

Warlord

Crazy Engineer

Warlord

Crazy Engineer

Warlord

Crazy Engineer

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