Aggressive Wildlife - A Hostile Planet

[Ryika]

Aggressive Wildlife - A Hostile Planet
A mod that makes aliens the dangerous predators they're supposed to be.
​

So, you're bored with friendly, passive aliens? Want them to really defend their territory? Want them to hunt down anything that comes too close? Well, this mod may be for you. Be aware that it's meant for higher difficulties, AI might have MASSIVE problems to progress (or even survive) on lower settings. Even on Apollo, AI might just get crushed if they spawn between 3 nests - and so may you. That's just what happens when you land on a hostile planet. This mod can make the game extremely hard if you spawn near a nest or two (or if you're reckless) - don't blame me for any frustration you might run into. 8)

Sounds nice? Okay. But what does it actually do?

Well, at its core it changes the default stance that aliens take against human intruders to "I'll hunt you down and eat you alive" (aka "very hostile") . Easy as that. They also get extra vision-range, so they have an easier time finding things to mangle. Taking over their parts of the planet, as well as defending against them if you're unlucky enough to spawn next to a nest of them is much harder now. Especially early on - or when the aliens suddenly start spawning stronger units. On top of that, Aliens will now destroy improvements and try to eat your workers. The Alien-Units have been tweaked to support each other and fill more distinct roles.

In case you missed the fact that the headline is a link to the mod, here's another one!

Full-feature list if you want more information:

Spoiler :

Main-Feature list:

Alien-AI and Diplomacy
- Aliens will now always be hostile against all players
- Aliens will now pillage and try to kill workers
- Aliens will now attack cities and outposts

Unit Tweaks

General:
- Twice as many "colossal" land units will spawn (weaker, but still terrifying siegeworm before turn 80)
- All alien units now heal 15 damage in Miasma (was 5)
- Tweaked Alien stats so they work better as an "army" instead of just making them banging their heads against whatever is in their way. (More information below)

Units
Aliens how have 2 tiers. "Evolved" Versions of the normal Aliens will start spawning on turn 80.
Alien Spawn rates have been changed:

Before turn 80:
Wolf Beetle - 45%
Raptor Bug - 25%
Drone - 15%
Manticore - 15%
YOUNG Siege Worms may spawn.

After turn 80:
Evolved Wolf Beetle - 40%
Evolved Raptor Bug - 25%
Evolved Drone - 15%
Evolved Manticore - 15%
Queen - 5%

After turn 140:
ADULT (normal) Siege Worms may spawn.

These numbers scale with game speed.

Raptor Bug:
Combat set to 12 (down from 14)
-> Is a fast, but now slightly weaker Unit comperable to cavalry

Wolf Beetle:
Combat set to 13 (up from 8)
-> Is now a strong core unit of the alien army

Manticore:
Movement set to 2 (up from 1)
Range Strength set to 12 (was 10)
-> Is now able to keep up with other aliens and takes the place of a ranged unit

Drone:
-> Seems to do fine. Low combat strength is okay - it's the most mobile unit and ignores Zone of Control

Sea Dragon:
Combat set to 12 (was 14)
Range set to 1
Range Strength set to 12 (didn't have any)
Moves set to 2
-> Is now an alround sea-alien that can cause problems to coastal empires if they don't have a decent naval defense force

Kraken
Range set to 1
Range Strength set to 52 (didn't have any)
-> Still fills the spot of being a menace to anyone who gets into deep ocean.

(these changes WILL affect aliens that the player gets from skeletons)

You'll have to find out what stats the new tier of aliens has by playing (or looking at the mod-files)!

Buildings
- The Ultrasonic Fence has been moved to Alien Ethics

Hardcore:
Extra-Spawnchance for Aliens has been set to 25 (was 10) when using raging aliens.

______________________________________

Latest version is v7.

Mainly overhauls aquatic aliens. Also reverts a few changes the latest official patch made to Apollo AI.

Apollo AI:
- Doesn't get a free affinity level anymore and its bonus-strength against aliens has been set back to 40% (was 60%).
- Only gets 2 free combat units instead of 3.
Reasoning: Tier 2 Melee units with 60% combat strength just wrecked the aliens, making the AI almost "immune" to them. I feel like reverting these changes was necessary to ensure at least SOME "power struggle" between Aliens and Major AIs. If you don't like this change you can remove it by deleting the apollo.sql file in the slq-folder of the mod.

Units:
- Sea Dragon is now a Range 1 Unit
- Sea Dragons now has 12 Melee Combat Strength (was 14) and 12 ranged attack
- Sea Dragon now has 2 Moves (was 4)
Reasoning: Instead of being a unit that just kills t1-boats and dies when it attacks cities, it's not now THAT strong against boats anymore, but a a bit stronger against cities - as it doesn't take any damage anymore when it attacks. Using boats when defending against aquatic attacks will now be possible and effective.
- Evolved Sea Dragon has been added and will start spawning on turn 80.
- Evolved Sea Dragon: 20 Melee + Range Combat Strength, 1 Range, 2 Moves
- Kraken is now a Range 1 Unit (52 Range Strength)

(I forgot to remove some changes from the changelog in the mod folder - this one is the correct summary)

_____________________

Civfanatics-only note: Modding anything that's more than just adding additional buildings or stuff is HARD, if you're a rookie at programming like I am. So a big thanks to anyone who's posted helpful stuff about modding, discussed mods or provided personal help (which weren't many because I didn't ask that often. ) - this mod is nothing special... but still much more than would have been able to create without your help.

 

[Calantyr]

I am currently playing with this on a super-massive/marathon/frenzied aliens map, I spawned 4 tiles away from a nest. It was utterly brutal until my Explorers got immunity to alien attack. Which another mod put at Purity 3. Ah.

200 turns of running for my life away from swarms of Siege Worms and Raptors. Beautiful.

 

[Ryika]

Yeah, I really have to find out how to remove the immunity for the next update. Removing alien nests that way, that's BLASPHEMY.

Also... you're right. You didn't say it, but I KNOW that's what you meant: People need to be PUNISHED for not winning before turn 180 or so. And I think I already have an idea how to do so...

 

[x2Madda]

Since Civ:BE has no scenarios yet, I really hope they make something like your mod into an actual scenario. Thanks for making this buddy.

 

[Gamewizard]

Wow, absolutely brutal. They are so aggressive. The explore wreckage quest was just 5 tiles from my capital but it was impossible to get to it before turn 100. Sending explorers out on their own is eventual suicide for them, as wandering drones will eat them up. On turn 90 I had a queen enter my territory and wipe out a highly promoted combat rover and I decided to wave the white flag on this one.

The queen said it had 25 movement...is that correct? I had quick movement on and it appeared out of nowhere.

Purity 1 definitely needs to be changed. It is a massive advantage vs these hordes of bloodthirsty beasties.

 

[Lord Shadow]

Yeah, I'm seeing that 25-movement thing as well.

Good work so far, Ryika!

 

[Ryika]

Oh... crap. Thanks for reporting. Had given her 25 movement to see if she does what she's supposed to do... forgot to change that. x_x Updated the mod just now - new Version has 1 movement.
Didn't change the version, sooooooo from my experience it should work with savegames and probably also reduce the movement of already existing queens. Not 100% sure about that though.

 

[Gamewizard]

Also, does this mod make harmony 1 pointless? Can you get the aggression level down to neutral if you don't hunt the bugs?

 

[Ryika]

No you can't, so yeah, it's useless. ^^ Will need to look into this for the next version.

 

[Pheylan]

Is the turn 80 thing hardcoded or does it scale with game speed?

Question aside, I'm looking forward to trying this out. One of my desires for BE was to have it be more of a survival game rather than just farming the aliens for XP and resources.

 

[Gorsky]

I won a domination victory in 50 turns by being the only civ that survived the aliens...

 

[Gamewizard]

I wouldn't play anything but Apollo with this mod. The bugs will eat them alive otherwise.

 

[Ryika]

Yeah, as the description says: Use higher difficulties. If the AIs still got wrecked, then they were probably just unlucky. Haven't really seen that happening in any of my games. ^^

Is the turn 80 thing hardcoded or does it scale with game speed?

Question aside, I'm looking forward to trying this out. One of my desires for BE was to have it be more of a survival game rather than just farming the aliens for XP and resources.

It's hardcoded and I don't think I can change that, because there doesn't seem to be a way to let the aliens.lua know what game speed it active. ...at least... none that I know of. ^^

I added a discussion thread to the steam forums that explains how to change the values so that they fit other game speeds. Spawn rate massive units will probably still cause trouble and the AI will get even more problems because it might lose units that it can't replace fast enough. So I recommend standard speed.

 

[Vicevirtuoso]

It's hardcoded and I don't think I can change that, because there doesn't seem to be a way to let the aliens.lua know what game speed it active. ...at least... none that I know of. ^^

Game.GetGameSpeedType() will return the ID of the currently selected game speed type in the database. Rather than check for specific game speeds, though, I'd recommend getting a multiplier based on the ResearchPercent of the current game speed, like this:

local iResearchMod = GameInfo.GameSpeeds[Game.GetGameSpeedType()].ResearchPercent / 100

This would give iResearchMod a value of 1 on Standard, and 3 on Marathon. You could use that to multiply whichever values are needed. The reason you'd want to avoid checking for specific game speeds is to allow for compatibility with custom speeds.

 

[Pheylan]

Since Steam limits me to 1000 characters I'm moving this over here:

A couple of notes from my first use of your mod.

1. I got a drone from excavating an alien skeleton. It was very infrequently attacked by the red AI aliens. It did get attacked twice, but I ran it through areas that had a lot of nests and it wasn't attacked. I don't know that I ended any turns adjacent to an alien and didn't get attacked, but I was definitely within view and movement range (or bombardment).
2. The cities seem too strong against human attacks. I attacked KP early since she was right in the middle of 4 firaxite nodes and I was starting Supremacy. I took two Rangers and a Marine. Her city (capitol) was strength 27. First bombardment did 89 damage to my Ranger on a plains tile. I ended up losing all of the units to bombardment and my attacks because I wanted to see if it was a fluke. Her healing rate was high enough that I had her only down to about 50% by that point. At this point in the game (~100 turns on Marathon) she shouldn't have researched any defensive techs, much less built the buildings.

I'd really like this mod to do well. I want BE to be a fight for survival against the planet and aliens until you go deep Harmony. At this point #2 is frustrating enough that I'm probably not going to run it for the time being.

P.S. I'm not sure how much it affects the damage done/received, but I was playing on Mercury difficulty.

P.P.S. By turn 100 zero AI cities had been destroyed. I saw quite a few other explorers running around, a few with damage. I'll list my other running mods in another post.

 

[Pheylan]

1. Asteriod Refinery
2. Colorful Tech Web
3. Empowered Wonders
4. InfoAddict
5. More Tech Filters
6. Player Colour for Units
7. SimBa - Simple Balance
8. User Interface Tweaks

 

[Ryika]

Game.GetGameSpeedType() will return the ID of the currently selected game speed type in the database. Rather than check for specific game speeds, though, I'd recommend getting a multiplier based on the ResearchPercent of the current game speed, like this:

local iResearchMod = GameInfo.GameSpeeds[Game.GetGameSpeedType()].ResearchPercent / 100

This would give iResearchMod a value of 1 on Standard, and 3 on Marathon. You could use that to multiply whichever values are needed. The reason you'd want to avoid checking for specific game speeds is to allow for compatibility with custom speeds.

Wow, thanks a lot! That was really... easy. Only took me 15 minutes to understand and implement. Works like a charm. Can't find a thank-you-smiley, so I'll spank you instead.

snip

1.) Hm, that's interesting. ^^ Not sure why that happens, but I'd assume the bonus-dmg against aliens on that difficulty just discourages them from attacking. Will do some testing later.

2.) Oh, I didn't change anything about city strength. (didn't really change ANYTHING about the other AIs and tried to keep the changes to things that are directly related to aliens to keep the compatibility and modability as unhindered as possible) She's probably built her city on a hill, which gives a quite massive bonus early on + additional strength for each pop + the unit stationed in the city. Those cities can be really hard to take without affinity-4-units, but that's also part of the main game.

About the explorers: Yes, saw that too, but I think that's because they walked through Miasma. From what I've seen so far, Aliens do attack the AIs explorers and will one-shot them (except for the drone I think), as long as they don't have Purity 1.

About cities not being destroyed: Yes, I've done quite some changes in the latest 2 version to remove the onslaught that were the first few turns in most cases AI does quite fine at defending their cities, especially due to the weaker siege worm that spawns between turn 20-80. They do still lose their Capital from time to time, but for the most part they should "mimik" what the player does - defend their territory and expand slowly but surely.

However, due to the very low spawn rate on slower game speeds, aliens aren't really that much of a problem on Marathon - AI will just destroy one and then have enough time to heal and take out the nest before more aliens spawn. Now that I know how to scale alien spawn to gamespeed, I'll probably tinker around with the spawn-modifiers for slower speeds a bit to make it more interesting and balanced on Marathon.

 

[Pheylan]

2.) Oh, I didn't change anything about city strength. (didn't really change ANYTHING about the other AIs and tried to keep the changes to things that are directly related to aliens to keep the compatibility and modability as unhindered as possible) She's probably built her city on a hill, which gives a quite massive bonus early on + additional strength for each pop + the unit stationed in the city. Those cities can be really hard to take without affinity-4-units, but that's also part of the main game.

Alrighty. This is probably the earliest I've ever attacked the AI in BE, so I wasn't sure if it was normal or if you'd beefed up the strength of the cities since the aliens were so aggressive. I'll try and give your mod another go tomorrowish.

Thanks for all the work on this.

 

[kazuma6666]

This looks really interesting. Gonna test it tonight

 

[Ryika]

Alright, small update:
- Disabled the promotion that gave aliens +1 vision until Firaxis fixes the problem of unit hotkeys vanishing (reloading after starting the game is no longer necessary)
- Now works with all game speeds by default
- Wolf Beetle melee strength down to 13 (was 15)

Primarily wanted to get the hotkey-problem fand the gamespeed-fixes (thx again, Vicevirtuoso) live, they've been done for a few days now. Aquatic Aliens still not done, yet.