Alien invasion mod

[trickofthehand]

Been away from civ for a while but finally came back, unfortunately not to news of Civ 5 but that's another matter altogether. Anyways, I was playing an earth map game and thought of how fun it would be to have an alien invasion occur randomly in my game. Then I got to looking around to see if anyone's even come close to making a mod like this but found nothing.

So modders, how come no alien invasion mod? I'd love to see a mod that adds a random chance for an invasion to occur starting once x amount of civs reach the industrial age. An industrial age invasion could have aliens reminiscent to those in the War of the Worlds novel, with alien technology being at least an age ahead. This would continue thru to the Future age. So an invasion occurring during the Future age could have aliens of roughly the strength of units in the Next War mod.

To give humanity a fighting chance the aliens should start with low numbers, but should they conquer cities they'll be able to build their own units.

Well just thought this would be a cool idea to kick around. I think they key would be that the invasion is NOT a guaranteed occurrence, but rather a random chance to happen in every game you play with this mod enabled.

Thoughts?

 

[Countmonte8242]

You get this idea from Civ2? One of the best scenarios I remember from it was exactly this.

 

[trickofthehand]

I definitively missed that mod. Then again I only got internet shortly before civ 3 came out so I didn't experience many mods for civ 2. How did that scenario play out?

 

[Countmonte8242]

It was a scen that was included in the first expansion pack I believe. There were 3 Earth coalitions you could choose from- like North America, Europe, and Asia or something. And then the Aliens. All the human civs start with techs up to around tanks / normal jet fighters and such; they still didn't have more modern weaponry. The Aliens attack you from turn 1 with much more advanced units, so its a fight for survival until you can tech to more advanced weaponry.

 

[Baldyr]

I've had the very idea for some time now, so I gather we're not the only ones who's been thinking in these patterns.

Personally, I'd like a mod like this to begin with an event that announces first contact with extra terrestrial intelligence. The first turn, one mother ship would hower above the top city on the map. (This could be done with a building that has it's graphics projecting a disc like object above the city. Like with the Plague "building" in the RFC mod what projects a giant scull above the inflicted city.) Players would of course know what this meant, and have some time to make emergency preparations.

The next turn an additional 10-20 mother ships will park themselves above all the biggest cities, and the Alien "civ" declaring war on all players, human and AI alike. The way this could work would be that the Aliens would automatically kill all units and all people in the city that has a mother ship attached. (I imagine some sort of biological agent that will wipe out any opposition.) This could either happen in one turn or be done over time, representing fighting over control of the city. (The more units, the longer it could take, buying time for the player.) It would, however be the inevitable end result, and end with the mother ship building "teleporting" itself to another city while the Aliens get ownership of the first one (at size 1, because it would only be inhabited by a skeleton crew of Alien engineers). If they would get their own city style, it could be a ruined human metropolis, rather than an unworldly Alien city.

This process would go on until the aliens have taken over all but the smallest of cities, when the mother ships disappear from the map (taking to Earth orbit). Now the fight for survival would begin! 90% of the map would be in Alien hands, but their cities would only be controlled by a single (but powerful) unit. (Maybe a huge mechanical thingy?) The units that were not inside the cities taking on the mother ships, will of course still be around, but maintenance costs would have their numbers diminishing too. (The remaining cities would not be able to sustain much more than the "free" units, depending on difficulty level.)

The way this "War of the Worlds" would be fought is by building up nations with new armies, at the same time fighting off flying recon type vehicles that are being dispatched from the Alien occupied cities. (With time, there could also be Alien ground forces coming out from their cities, trying to overtake the last pockets of human civilization.) The new unit available to all human players would be the Resistant Fighter, a irregular military unit reminiscent of the bands of human survivors in the Terminator movies. These units would be invisible to (most) Alien units, as they are too small to really be noticed by their sensors. The Resistant Fighter would be a military unit but also have some Spy abilities, like the ability to enter enemy cities (with a chance of capture, of course) and therefore be able to see what the Aliens are up to. (What they are producing, how fast they are growing, et cetera.)

Victory for the player(s) would, then, be all about cooperation (old suspiciousness would still be a factor), research of new anti-alien Techs, and random events that offer unique possibilities to fight off the intruders. (Random events would also benefit the Aliens, like managing to infiltrate a human city, turning it alien.)

I'm sure something like this would have to be balanced thoughtfully, but anything is possible, right? And how about a zombie outbreak mod?

 

[trickofthehand]

I had a thought about a zombie outbreak mod while in the shower yesterday. Unfortunately it just wouldn't mesh well, I mean what are your tanks going to oppose, zombie infantry?

I like your ideas for the alien invasion mod with some exceptions...

I'd like to see it as a completely random chance of happening when you're playing civ games with this enabled. That way you're not playing the game the entire time just waiting for the invasion. Secondly I don't really like the 'take over all the cities' aspect, rather I think the alien civ should spawn (land) with a decent force and begin to conquer cities which it can then use to train it's unique units. Here's where some present civics such as slavery could come into play (human slaves to the aliens). Besides, in my opinion it's much more realistic that a war mongering alien civ would probably choose to spare the majority of human population and use us for labor. After all if you're transporting a planet conquering army you're probably not gonna have much room for civic engineers, labor force, etc. etc. Therefore it would make sense that they would instead enslave humans and force humans to use human tools and factories to produce their goods. That is until the planet is completely conquered and the civilians start arriving.

So the alien civ could touch down in 3 or 4 different spots around the world, would make sense if this was correlated to the largest land masses. Their motherships would disembark units and they would begin their conquest. Alien civ would need strategic resources just like human civs so that way they couldn't just take 1 city and start building their Ultimate World Enslaving MechaRhino. Sure they may have more advanced or different materials but they aren't transporting an entire planetary economy with them, they'll have to adapt their technology to our Iron, Aluminum and Uranium. This also gives humans a fighting chance since they'll have to secure strategic resources in order to build their more powerful units.

The random spawning locations would mean that some civs may get wiped out in the initial onslaught while others are relatively safe and can start building their forces to counter the alien's push. I agree with this event putting an end to all current wars and perhaps increasing relations with all leaders. The current AI is pretty stupid and Montezuma will probably fail to see that the aliens aren't going to stop with the French, and will send modern armor to raze your cities while your forces are being sent to engage the aliens.

One thing I don't agree with is researching alien technology, I don't like any of the futuristic aspects of Next War and I think Civilization should be kept to very near real-world techs. That goes for units as well. I think then fun of this would be trying to beat back an alien civ using your armor, mech inf and aircraft carriers already present in game. Merged Mod is a great candidate in my opinion for 'hosting' this mod since it already combines many great mods that expand upon the game but keep it within Firaxis's confines of authenticity.

Those are my thoughts.

 

[Baldyr]

I had a thought about a zombie outbreak mod while in the shower yesterday. Unfortunately it just wouldn't mesh well, I mean what are your tanks going to oppose, zombie infantry?

You might be underestimating the zombie as a creature. Its already dead, so it would be very hard to kill off a Zombie unit. Sure, you can smash every single living corpse into smithereens, but your own dead soldiers will be rising up to fill their ranks. So, they would "heal" really fast and require one last hit before being totally disintegrated, making them hard to finish off.

Furthermore, zombies aren't about individual strength, but rather the numbers. A zombie outbreak would start in a city, causing either a small "incident" (maybe loose a population point and damage some units) - or a total collapse of society. If the latter were to occur in a game of Civilization, the city would be razed and every population point turned into a number of Zombie units.

The aim would, then, be to isolate the infected area on the map. The zombie epidemic would travel both via contact with the Zombie units (which will disperse in every direction) - and via trade routes (as does the Plagues of RFC). The nearer the Zombie unit is to a city, the greater the risk of another outbreak in a metropolitan area (which is the catastrophic thing you wanna avoid happening). New Zombie units would arise from any improved tile that the existing ones would traverse. (Also, the Improvement itself would be pillaged. This makes Towns, Villages and Hamlets extra precarious, since they will spawn more than one Zombie unit!)

Your units (at least your modern ones) would be able to smash the Zombie units quite easily, but as mentioned they're not easy to kill of completely and if they are not dealt with, they'll just heal (collect more dead people in their ranks). The point is, of course, that there will just be more and more of them, while your own resources in terms of cities and improved land diminishes over time.

And when you think you've got them all, every razed city is still a source of disease and could infect new cities any time. Every inflicted tile could be covered in a Fallout like improvement requiring scrubbing. This, of course, is risky business and the Worker doing the scrubbing would be at risk of causing another outbreak (turn into a Zombie unit).

You would only be able to call the entire thing off when every single Zombie unit has been destroyed and every single infected tile been scrubbed. Until then, it can and will just start all over again, sooner or later.

One thing to consider is also your neighbors. Firstly they'd call off any and all Open Borders, crippling your economy.(Otherwise, the disease could spread to them, too.) Secondly, they could take advantage of your situation and opt to invade. This is of course foolish of them, but not very unrealistic either if they are your arch enemy or you're occupying some of their turf. So, a manageable situation could easily turn into a planet wide emergency if the international community isn't pulling together at the moment of crisis...

I like your ideas for the alien invasion mod with some exceptions...

Well, you can't please everyone and those were just some ideas of mine. I'm sure an Alien invasion mod would be very different from my own vision, since I'm not doing one myself.

Your own ideas I do like however, even if they would call for a somewhat predictable scenario. I do second your ideas about natural resources, though, and it could be a key objective for my Resistance Fighter units to pillage/sabotage these. When I mentioned new Technologies I wasn't thinking about Alien Technology as such (even if the Aliens would have there own Techs) but rather inventing new ways of combating them. Like Alien Biology, allowing you to identify the invader's weak spots. This in turn could allow a new unit, promotion or building with the aim of defeating the Aliens. Another Tech would be Alien Language, giving you the option of gathering intelligence on them (maybe direct your espionage efforts on them).

Regarding rival leaders of the world, the common enemy would automatically give bonuses to all relations, especially over time. I don't, however, think that it should be unthinkable for the Earthlings to ensue their petty disputes even in the face of an Alien invasion. Everyone wants to be on top when the dust settles, after all. So no Permanent Alliance between all original Earth civs, please!

The best thing would be to have a merged mod with an Alien Invasion, Zombie Apocalypse and maybe some other global calamity. As you said, it could be entirely random if and when these occur in a single game. The Zombie epidemic could however spring up again and again over the course of a single game - or just be a single incident - with the potential to become a global one. The thing would, however, be that you'll never know! So you'd be playing the game as usual, preparing for just about anything and everything...

 

[Tholish]

I have an Alien Civ in my FutureMod, and it has a chance to appear on any Future era start. (My mod uses different sets of civs depending on which ear you start in) They have all the really advanced techs, but no earlier ones, and cannot build the Spaceship. There's also an Invasion scenario that puts various modern era (mid twentieth century) civs on Earth and the aliens on the nearby moon (this one uses my ThreePlanets map script so Mars is also there).

There's a nice Tripod unit (ie from HG Wells) that I haven't used yet. Thinking about making a second alien Civ that can appear in the Industrial Era. Maybe they'll just be basically another Indusrial Era civ with a lot of UUs and UBs, only AI playable.


To make Aliens appear as an event in a regular game you would have to have an Alien civ (which would be hard to keep out of random games) or use the Barbarians. You could do it this way. Have a couple of unique barbarian units. The first unit is a worker that can make an Unobtanium mine improvement (its the only unit with this build), and this imp structs the bonus Unobtanium so it appears. The bonus Unobtanium is necessary for the barbs to build their unique alien units, first Tripod and later Saucer. But the key is that there is an event placing the unbuildable Unobtainium mine builder.

 

[Baldyr]

Tholish, I think your Future Mod is gearing up to be very good, so keep up the good work!

Putting more thought on the subject, I think that a marriage between a Alien and a Zombie mod is a given. The zombie epidemic would be a scourge of extra terrestrial origin. As the earthlings can research Alien Biology, so can the Aliens gain deeper knowledge of the human creature. By accident they could discover how to reanimate dead human tissue and wield this knowledge into a weapon.

So, given the time to research such a plague, the Aliens will be able to unleash Zombie units into battle. Since the virus/parasite/whatever afflicting the human corpses is infectious, there could also occur bigger (and unintended) outbreaks in metropolitan areas. As any zombie movie would have you believe, this could very well spell certain doom to the city in question. Given that the situation can be managed somehow, a global zombie apocalypse wouldn't be inevitable though.

It could, also, be possible to research some form of antidote that would put an end to these outbreaks. Given the time to research it, of course. Otherwise the Zombie menace could outlive the Alien invaders. The end result could, therefore, be the destruction of both man and alien alike. Only the zombies would remain...

 

[trickofthehand]

The only reason i don't think a zombie mod would work well in the more 'vanilla' vein of Civ is because as we've established: the zombies aren't going to be using guns, therefore their combat value is going to be pretty low. To make their combat value higher than any pre-gunpowder melee unit (if not even lower than that) would be unrealistic (I realize the irony of calling something 'unrealistic' in the midst of a discussion on a zombie apocalypse). The end result would be that you would simply steam-roll all zombie units with a handful of units. The only way to prevent a steam-roll would be to
a)give the zombies high combat value
b)give the zombies huge stacks of units

Since we're not going to be having machine gun and artillery wielding zombies, we're not upping their combat values; so that only leaves us with the option of giving the zombies huge stacks of units. Still, that only delays the inevitable as many wars against the backwards Hyuna Capac while playing Lincoln in an earth map have shown. His spearmen don't last long against my Modern Armor backed up by Missile Destroyers supported by Stealth Bombers and overwatched by carrier based F-16s. Doesn't matter that he's fortified 20 of them, just means a few extra turns is all.

My point is that it just doesn't really add any enjoyment to the game. It would feel more like an annoying task that you have to micromanage (scrubbing the tiles of infection) with only the population loss to your city and production setbacks to show for it. There just wouldn't be a real threat or challenge. I think the only aspect of the zombie outbreak that could be incorporated is the disease spread and it's negative effects on population, but like you mentioned RFC already has that.

I'm a huge fan of the zombie genre, I just think that civ is way too large-scale and yet not micro-managed enough to incorporate. The only thing you would really be able to counter with would be military units to kill zombie units (boring cuz weak) and the 'scrubbing' of infected tiles (boring, basically another version of cleaning up after nukes).

I don't know, maybe this would actually work in pre-renaissance ages? Just don't see it as a challenge in modern age.

On another note, I agree with the no permament alliance with all civs during an invasion. I'm just worried about how weak the AI is in Civ. Montezuma isn't going to realize that the alien civ that's currently half a world away is going to one day be raping him if he decides to attack your lightly defended homeland while your armies are fighting abroad. It's a tricky balancing act, because you would have to make the AI realize the gravity of the situation and the importance of unifying against this threat while also allowing the AI to simulate human behavior, which might actually be to invade you even in the midst of an alien onslaught. The key would be to make Montezuma NOT invade every game, but still leave him an option to do so which I don't think the current AI is capable of doing.

I see what you meant about new technologies. Those actually make sense, I just think that incorporating them would be incredibly difficult since the invasion would be a random event after all. It wouldn't happen in every game you play, therefore you'd have to keep those techs out of the games that don't incur an invasion.

Maybe this whole thing is a pipe dream

 

[Baldyr]

Maybe this whole thing is a pipe dream

Sure it is! But it doesn't make it any less enjoyable for me to discuss the subject!

You might be right about the zombie idea, by the way. It really has the potential to be more annoying than challenging. But, therein lies the challenge for the mod maker!

 

[trickofthehand]

Zombie outbreak in the classical age. Praetorians vs zombies.