Beyond War Units

[wotan321]

The developers went to a lot of trouble to make Civ4 more civilized, to give some alternatives to War as a dynamic in the game. Missionaries are already one unit that is powerful and non-violent, how about we think of some others.

With the unprecidented modability of the game, we should be able to come up with units that influence the game but don't destroy units or improvements.

For example a Satyagrahi unit, that if attacked, causes the attacking civ to lighten its attitude toward the attacked, or other civs attitudes toward the attacked, depending on the attackers civics choices.

Or a diplomat unit that could have just enough influence to turn the tide in another civs attitude toward you.

Already, specialist Great People fill this need in the game, its something Firaxis has build into the game. Along with diplomatic choices to dissuade nuclear proliferation and such, this points to how much more there is to this game now than just warring.

Do I think war needs to be eliminated from the game? Of course not, but now we are invited to take advantage of all this game has to offer, and that includes units beyond war units.

Its gonna be fun......

 

[aahz_capone]

Not a bad idea. however, why would anyone attack the satyagrahi in the first place?

Great people represent a lot of stuff already, but maybe more can be made. A Great Diplomat, for example, could force peace on your enemy. A Great Internet Nerd could release a computer virus on your enemy and theyloose all their tech research points.

Is there already some kinda supply lorry thing? What about a Great Sportsman?

 

[Pascal]

Hey, great idea!

How about a new type of Great People: The diplomat (or something like that).
You send that diplomat in the capital of another civ, and it raises dramatically the disposition of that civ!

 

[LouLong]

I feel a likely exploit here !

 

[wotan321]

aahz_capone asked:

why would anyone attack the satyagrahi in the first place?

Hmmm.... excellent question.... perhaps the Satyagrahi unit could be stacked with other units, or placed in cities, or placed on resources.

LouLong commented:

I feel a likely exploit here !

Yes, it all would need to be fine-tuned for balance, but that is true with any modification. We don't want to tip the scale too far in the other extreme either, its inaccurate historically, and would take a lot of fun out of the game. But I think if we try, we can make it work, and make it fun.

 

[WildWeazel]

Spies, Saboteurs, and Terrorists

 

[Dom Pedro II]

I think its going to be very hard to develop such units until we know what exactly can and cannot be done. I mean, some of these things seem like interesting ideas but may not be possible.

 

[n003lb]

Satyagrahi, I had to look that up to see what you folks were talking about. After reading up on it in Wikipedia (best damn site on the net, IMO), I do like it, but not as a unit. Where this would be great is if we could implement this as a "policy" for the entire nation, like a new religion or something.

I don't know if this is possible, since we won't get the game until tomorrow at the earliest. I do think this would be better than a unit.

 

[TheBladeRoden]

Celebrities! Send out Mike Myers and Pam Anderson to spread the Canadian influnce into other countries. Germans get Hasselhoff.

Corporations: Capitalist bonus culture unit! Even the French cannot resist the power of McDonald's for long!

 

[Random Observer]

I think its going to be very hard to develop such units until we know what exactly can and cannot be done. I mean, some of these things seem like interesting ideas but may not be possible.

Between XML, Python, and the SDK I dont think theres much that cant be done. It seems like not much is hard coded in the game.

 

[WildWeazel]

Anything but the Gamebryo engine and the "core Civ engine" can be edited.

 

[the100thballoon]

Anything but the Gamebryo engine and the "core Civ engine" can be edited.

what exactly is the "core civ engine" and how much of the game does it control?

 

[WildWeazel]

I'm just echoing what I read, hence the quotes. I assume that means the basics of what makes Civ Civ, like turns, tiles, cities, stuff like that. So no RTS building-based conversions.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

I'm just echoing what I read, hence the quotes. I assume that means the basics of what makes Civ Civ, like turns, tiles, cities, stuff like that. So no RTS building-based conversions.

Yeah, if you want a modded RTS game, AoE3 came out last week

 

[WildWeazel]

That was a hypothetical suggestion.

 

[Gerikes]

what exactly is the "core civ engine" and how much of the game does it control?

I'm not too sure, but I can make some guesses. Please note this is all hypothetical.

The "core civ engine" probably holds all the icky calls to the system (such as the system calls to read a file from the hard drive). Of course, you'll be able to say what file to read with a script, but as for how it goes about reading it, you don't need to worry about. Also, the file integrity checker will most likely not be modable, for obvious reasons.

The core probably has all the system calls and probably the internal data structures (you can add as much info and data to the xml files as you want, they still need to be stored somewhere when the game is run, and you don't really care how it's stored as long as you have a way to retrieve it later), along with other stuff.

Also, there might be internal stuff that you think you can have control over, but you really don't modify at all. For example, if you can change what happens on mouse events (a left mouse click, for example), you might get to mod the interface by searching for these "mouse events" and doing an action you specify (play a sound and make a dialog pop up). Really, you're probably not getting the mouse events straight from the operating system interrupts like the core engine is, you're probably getting the mouse events from the core engine itself who's just passing them to you. This is an example of stuff you can't change (how the engine handles mouse interrupts), but that the engine will probably give you "control" over. Thus, the fact that the "core" won't be modable probably won't hinder the ability to mod too many parts of the game.

This is just my guess however. I think that anything you can come up with short of modifying the lowest-level of code will be modable, whether directly (AI scripts) or indirectly (in the possible mouse-event example).

 

[the100thballoon]

I'm not too sure, but I can make some guesses. Please note this is all hypothetical.

The "core civ engine" probably holds all the icky calls to the system (such as the system calls to read a file from the hard drive). Of course, you'll be able to say what file to read with a script, but as for how it goes about reading it, you don't need to worry about. Also, the file integrity checker will most likely not be modable, for obvious reasons.

The core probably has all the system calls and probably the internal data structures (you can add as much info and data to the xml files as you want, they still need to be stored somewhere when the game is run, and you don't really care how it's stored as long as you have a way to retrieve it later), along with other stuff.

Also, there might be internal stuff that you think you can have control over, but you really don't modify at all. For example, if you can change what happens on mouse events (a left mouse click, for example), you might get to mod the interface by searching for these "mouse events" and doing an action you specify (play a sound and make a dialog pop up). Really, you're probably not getting the mouse events straight from the operating system interrupts like the core engine is, you're probably getting the mouse events from the core engine itself who's just passing them to you. This is an example of stuff you can't change (how the engine handles mouse interrupts), but that the engine will probably give you "control" over. Thus, the fact that the "core" won't be modable probably won't hinder the ability to mod too many parts of the game.

This is just my guess however. I think that anything you can come up with short of modifying the lowest-level of code will be modable, whether directly (AI scripts) or indirectly (in the possible mouse-event example).

Thanks! Wasn't really worried, but its nice to have a confirmation of that (even if only hypothetical).

 

[WildWeazel]

I'm not too sure, but I can make some guesses. Please note this is all hypothetical.

My first thought (due to the name "civ" engine) was that the basic concepts of the game would be "locked up," but that actually makes a lot more sense.

 

[Vino6]

What would you think about illegall inmigrants... i mean, the cities on the border are xx% of their original country... if you could send inmigrants there as a tactict, then those cities would be less of their original country and more of yours, providing a bigger chance of that city to start a revolution and join your civ.
I guess this unit would have the possibility to cross border even if you dunno have open borders, but with the chance of making the other civ furius if they "find out" what you did...
I guess the first thing would be "easy" to do with python and xml, but for the last thing we'll have to wait for the sdk.

Another good unit, for whom i have no name defined yet, could be one who could try to convince another empire to adopt some civics....

 

[King Jason]

I thought of this;

Remove the ability for Cities to build culture and wealth. And allow them to build units based off of the great merchant and great artist.

So let's keep it simple for now, Artist and merchant. Artist will cost X shields and have the ability to move to any city and grant it X amount of Culture. the merchant would be very similiar to the caravans of Civ2, it costs X shields and you move it to a city far away and it will grant X amount of gold.

This is actually doable. it would be fairly easy to implement from what I've gathered as I've browed the XML, it's actually why I thought of it.

In essence it would be that much different from a city building wealth or culture with the exception that it would be an actual unit that we can manipulate.