Challenge Mode ideas

[Kael]

I really like the challenge modes in 0.34. I was chatting with Xienwolf and he had a ton of great ideas for more of them. This is your chance to suggest your own.

As a reminder these are the challenge mode type options that exist in FfH:

1. Barbarian world- the barbs start with several cities on the map.
2. Increasing difficulty- the difficulty increases for human players every x amount of turns.
3. High to Low- the player has to become the highest ranked player, then switch to the lowest ranked player twice during the game.
4. Final Five- Every x amount of turns the lowest ranked player is removed form the game until only 5 remain.

The best entries should be simple, but significantly effect gameplay, as the above options do. They should require additional art (we have enough on our plate in that category).

They should be easy for the AI to adjust to. The AI should be okay with the conditions playing as it normally does. Challenge modes like capture the flag, holding specific points on the map, or capturing specific units (as in regecide) won't work.

 

[Squirrelloid]

Increasing difficulty isn't really a challenge. It means you get to play the important part of the game on an easier difficulty than you normally play and crush the AI with your massive advantage from that. This may just be a function of my playing normal Civ IV on monarch/emperor, and FfH2's AI is weaker so monarch is actually not hard at all. (It also means I need to go down difficulty levels to do increasing difficulty if there's going to be any room for it to go up at all).

There should be a mode that makes the Barbarians only produce animals. If we're going to make it a challenge, have it force creation of all the unique barbarian mega-animals.

Edit: Call it big game hunters. Add more mega-animals and spawn one every so many turns. Give each one a building it can build if 'captured'.

 

[Demus]

The conquerer:
Players aren't allowed to build settlers, the AI is. The goal is to win, not by expanding your empire, but solely by taking it from others.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

I think the ol' time classic "I am the greatest!" where all AIs are locked into war against the player from turn 1 would be quite fun as a challenge

 

[steampunk1880]

Make resources start disappearing past a certain number of turns. This would probably be based on game length and difficulty.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

How about an option for team games where you loose if any of your allies are defeated? Or maybe even extending it so that you must defend all your Vassals too.


How about an option that makes all the AIs have peace with the barbarians, so the Barbs all focus on the human player(s)?


How about an option where the weakest AI players will periodically form permanent alliances with each other to overpower the stronger ones, even if they are over the normal limit of 2 players per alliance? (I'd personally like that limits removed entirely. Maybe you should borrow that code from Snarko.)


How about option that give the Barbarian State extra traits, like Aggressive/Charismatic Raiders? (Perhaps as part of the Aggressive Barbarian option.)

 

[it-ogo]

"Total espionage" - each AI player immediately gets each tech human player obtains.

"Low to High" - As soon as at least two AI players or teams become in score below human player they immediately merge into one team - with permanent alliance (until there is 1 human player against all AIs).

 

[Turinturambar]

1)Demon's playground: Starts the game with the infernals in play.

2) Perpentach's madness: You play as Perpentach, every 50 turns until turn 400 you gain a new random trait, but lose half of your noncapital cities to a Perpentach AI with your previous traits.

3)Merc for hire(Gibbon's Gibberish?): Switches your civilization to a random civ every 25 turns.

4)Beast World: All animals' strength is doubled and twice as many spawn. Starts the game with the great beasts on the map.

 

[shapecharge]

How about a rare metals and mana challenge where there is only as much copper resources as 3/4 the starting players, Iron and Mana as half the starting players and Mirthial as 1/4 the starting players randomly placed on the map making the fight for resources that upgrade the combat power of units all that more intense and the chance to monopolize a stratigic resource. Also lets those Dungeons ect.. on a vien or load of Iron be all that more special when you explore and find it instead of "Great like I needed anthor Iron"

 

[merciary]

King of the mountain (someone can probably come up with a better name)
As soon as a nation becomes first in the score all other nations declare war on number one. As soon as someone else becomes number one all other nations form peace with the previous number one and declare war on the current leader. To win you must remain number one for a set number of turns, not sure on how many though.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

How about one where you loose the game if you loose your capital city?


I assume that something like allowing revolutions and civil wars would be too much.


How about one where lairs can never be cleared, so they continue spawning for the whole game.


How about an option that prevents settlers from leaving/settling outside of their civ's cultural boarders (after the first city is founded, of course), so expansion is hindered.


How about an option where the AI doesn't need any mana to get spell sphere promotions.

 

[jimi12]

Kill the king- Each civ, including the player, has a "King" unit that is immune to marksman. Civ ceases to exist after king dies and all cities and units turn barb.

Protect the capital- I dunno if this is possible, but make it so other players cannot tell which city is their capital. When civ's capital is lost, civ loses. Pretty similar to king idea above.

Independence!- You start on an already occupied world as a breakaway province of a civ. You have just declared independence and start at war with your motherland. Enemies of motherland will help you through gifting units (Im not sure if gifting was ever put back in ffh), ceasing trade, etc, kinda like the french in the American Rev.

Hell world- basium and hyborem can be selected as starting random ai civs. AC starts at 50.

EDIT: ninjad by MC!

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Here is a idea. The AI no longer hates nucks. It loves both using them and the people that use them. Than make the AI build large amounts of them and use them only against the Human player.
If that isen't chalenging enough for you...

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Here is a idea. The AI no longer hates nucks. It loves both using them and the people that use them. Than make the AI build large amounts of them and use them only against the Human player.
If that isen't chalenging enough for you...

What are "Nucks"? Do you mean Nuclear Weapons like ICBMs and Tactical Nukes in vanilla/BtS? There are no such units in FfH, so that wouldn't make much sense.

 

[OzzyKP]

"Low to High" - As soon as at least two AI players or teams become in score below human player they immediately merge into one team - with permanent alliance (until there is 1 human player against all AIs).

I like this one.

How about an option to play as the Barbarians? Like that scenario from BTS.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

How about an option to play as the Barbarians? Like that scenario from BTS.

You can make the barbs playable now. It doesn't work out too well. It won't let you be the real barbarians, only another civ that uses the same graphics/UBs/UUs/Leader/etc. You still can still make contact with other civs. You still pay upkeep. More importantly, there is still a real Barbarian civ in the game, and it is at war with you. There isn't really a way to tel them apart form your units, but they are hostile. Just about the only good thing about playing as the barbs is that you can build Acheron. The heroes that are spawned still go to the "real" barb player.

 

[it-ogo]

"Sponsor" - Earn victory for AI. Player rules civ X but he wins when civ Y (ruled by AI) meets some victory condition. Civ X may not have permanent alliance with civ Y.

 

[Squirrelloid]

You can make the barbs playable now. It doesn't work out too well. It won't let you be the real barbarians, only another civ that uses the same graphics/UBs/UUs/Leader/etc. You still can still make contact with other civs. You still pay upkeep. More importantly, there is still a real Barbarian civ in the game, and it is at war with you. There isn't really a way to tel them apart form your units, but they are hostile. Just about the only good thing about playing as the barbs is that you can build Acheron. The heroes that are spawned still go to the "real" barb player.

Well, presumably you create events which hand 'barbarian units' over to the barbarian player as they are created. There might be performance issues, as this could be processor intensive. You'd probably also have to do crazy things like require complete kills to insure the player functioned like actual barbarians.

 

[jimi12]

Slow expansion- All civs -50% culture. Settlers cost 5x as much.

 

[BeefontheBone]

The conquerer:
Players aren't allowed to build settlers, the AI is. The goal is to win, not by expanding your empire, but solely by taking it from others.

You mean the already-present One City Challenge? I guess adding a trophy for it might be nice.

I think the ol' time classic "I am the greatest!" where all AIs are locked into war against the player from turn 1 would be quite fun as a challenge

I think you can replicate this with "permanent war or peace" and declaring war as soon as you meet anyone.

Kill the king

Usually called Regicide I believe - it was in at least one of the scenarios in a Civ 3 expansion, with the Shogun unit upgradeable at certain techs so you had to choose between risking him in combat (and having a powerful unit) and keeping him safe at home. I guess giving everyone an Adventurer with, say, a Leader or Monarch promo which caused their defeat if the Adventurer died would do a decent job of replicating those conditions.