Civ idea

[sputnik323]

Keep in mind that culture is a variety of things, including a way of life. The very structured society is that. Being influenced by another civ might disrupt that and encourage people to break free. Otherwise, people might see how "happy" the other civ is and convert.

Also, indviduality does exist in the colletive society of Japan: Each person is still allowed to think and act indepedently, even if they're discouraged from standing out. Much would be the same in this civ. Though an alternate leader might exist in which most everyone is a mindless drone and everything is done similarly, but with more direction.

Of course individuality still exists... but as the saying goes, the tendency is to stamp it out. I guess its just becoming harder to find real distinctions between what you are proposing and what is already there in the game. You have a few mechanics of the game that are unique, but as far as some of the philosophy used to create this civ could be said of some of the other civs or religions. OO already has a mindless component to it. A hive is not mindless... it is a collective mind (a group 'one mind'). I think that is why pushing for an extreme position or drastic changes makes more variety for a new civ. Even if they don't look like ants or bees, if you make them think like them it will make this civ more unique instead of being a civ based on OO mentality IMHO.

 

[Mylon]

Of course individuality still exists... but as the saying goes, the tendency is to stamp it out. I guess its just becoming harder to find real distinctions between what you are proposing and what is already there in the game. You have a few mechanics of the game that are unique, but as far as some of the philosophy used to create this civ could be said of some of the other civs or religions. OO already has a mindless component to it. A hive is not mindless... it is a collective mind (a group 'one mind'). I think that is why pushing for an extreme position or drastic changes makes more variety for a new civ. Even if they don't look like ants or bees, if you make them think like them it will make this civ more unique instead of being a civ based on OO mentality IMHO.

I'm actually more focused on the mechanics: The idea of a civilization that improves rather than improving the individual cities/units. The lore isn't quite as important to me, But using mind mana one could make telepathy and mind control a big part of the civilization.

 

[Jabie]

The perfection thing sounds a bit like the Dural. Perhaps you could adept them for Orbis.

 

[Mornar]

I like the idea. However, I think that if make a hive-like civ, make it 100% hive like. If they share mind, there's no individual personality, so I'd say no GP at all. I like the idea of sharing experience, but it needs some tweeking (I mean, it's just bad if after one or two fights with barbarians you have all units on lvl 2, it's just bad). And I like the idea of 'strenght in numbers', I mean - projects that make all the civ stronger.

How about that: no culture whatsoever (tho I'd guess they can't convert sides based on culture, I'd imagine they just don't give a damn about culture), same as great people. I'd actually imagine them as partially insectoid, possibly swamp or desert dwellers. Now, for the basic concept -their basic city borders range is 2, they can work only tiles in range of 1. They can only build cities within their borders or max 1 tile away from the border, but every city built in this 'network' makes all the network stronger in some way (tbh I can imagine, that +1% hammers/food/research per city could make a difference after a short while). Perchaps a unit that could claim one tile of territory to anable colonising other continents (worker?). Units could work in a similar manner, every unit within or in short distance of borders makes every other unit affected by a small percentage (+1% stength?). I'd imagine they'd have cheaper settlers and workers, too. Drawback - no culture, no great people, and one interesting fact - the fall of their capital city equals death of the whole civ, that would just automatically become barbarians, or just die, whichever. I'd guess that this could make the civ overpowered/underpowered, but honestly saying, I'm not a pro Civ IV player, and I don't know a thing about balance in this game. So I hope there are people that can rebalance this ^^"

What I'd hope such a civ to be, a strongly territorial civilisation, very reslient to anything that is outside of their hive, probably defenders and agnostic, very strongly based around numbers - with basically weak units and cities, but that can support each other and eventually become very strong. And yes, I'd think of them being a bit similar to zerg from Starcraft.

 

[Mylon]

I was very much considering something along the lines of after so many combats all units start off at level 2 (though this should not apply against barbarian units, much in the same way barbarian units cannot grant great generals). And after more combats all units start off at level 3. Etc. There does seem to be a certain demand for the extreme here (the real mindless drones), so perhaps I can design the civilization around this to accomodate.

The only problem though is if the civilization is too extreme, a lot of mechanics are going to be thrown out the window. I mean, I'm already discarding the thought of the typical set of buildings, but now discarding culture, trade, and great people also? The civilization might end up being too radical.

Mechanics wise, making the civilization build projects that improve the civ as a whole is fairly easy to code. All of the other changes will take some serious consideration of their effects. Robbing a creative civilization of their ability to culture bomb might not be a good idea, for example.

 

[civ_king]

actually we could have great people however all they do is buff the respective specialist, or ad a building that increase its stat by 5% cumulative? so 5 great scientists would boost science of civ by 25%

 

[Iskar Jarak]

I think that it would depend on how you want the civ to be played, with Mornar's idea they would practically have to be builders, but with Mylon's idea their play style would favor the conqueror, and from everything so far they seem to be a builder type nation
Either way would individual exp be allowed, I think it wouldn't be.

 

[Larklight]

Maybe, rather than insectoid, go for Platonic?

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

i think the leader should be a council rather than a single being.

something like this perhaps
http://nalro.deviantart.com/art/Council-110897430

 

[Iskar Jarak]

@Larklight: what do you mean by Platonic

@Psychic Llamas: If the civ is a hive mind type thing then why would there be any need for a council, though being several minds linked could work, but why do you think it should be a council?

 

[Seon]

Maybe the Leader could be a sort of a spokesperson for the entire hive-mind?

 

[Mylon]

Well it seems 3.17 changed how the game handles buildings. Previously, scripting could add multiples of a building even if it wasn't possible to build more than one of the building. I'll either have to find a workaround, or reverse this change in the dll.

 

[arkham4269]

If you do go a semi-hive mind, you might want to go with the Phraints from the west coast 'mod' of AD&D, Aruduin (or originially the Aruduin Grimoire) by David A. Hargrave.

The Phraints where a insectoid race that was completely logical so were similar to your typical Vulcan in regards to emotion. They were mostly neutered warriors and workers with male drones and female queens as well as the head queen which did most of the egg-laying. Phraint units would all came from the same 'stick' in that the all the same eggs attached to a birthing pillar.

Most phraint where green or blue, but there would be some 'Crazy Eddie' red phraints. (The term taking from the novel A Mote In God's Eye) These phraints could understand emotion and thus could harness magic.

Here is a picture of one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arduin

I would think that a race like this might be interesting to have a civ that could 'grow' warriors with more experience to start with, but then would advance very slowly, perhaps also not being able to 'upgrade' into a higher class of units like axeman to heavy infantry for example.

 

[arkham4269]

As I just posted over on the Minor request thread, I've been thinking that since FfH is about duality and orcs are the dark reflection of elves, that there should be a goblin race as a dark reflection of dwarves.

But how to make them unique? I mean there are lots of races, more if/when the Asian flavored civs come in and perhaps someday the Jotnar as well. Well I know I got shot down about the Kadhi (but the base idea seems to have survived with the 'Tibetan' civ) but I was thinking that FF's Archos civ might be an excellent match.

Both Dwarves and Goblins mostly live underground. So do the spiders revered by the Archos. Now in the Hobbit, you also had spiders in forests as we do in FfH. Now living under trees is at least better than living out in the open so I could see Goblins doing it as well.

Certainly there would be some challenges to this since all of the graphics are the Archos are all designed for 'men' and not shorter goblins. I don't know what resources are available to have units created. However, since most of the units are already done, I would think it a lot easier to just change the human graphic to a goblin.

If this flies, then a small tweak could be done to the barbarians and Clan of Embers by transforming those current goblin units to kobolds. Wouldn't even need to change their graphics, just some tweaks in the to the text coding.

 

[Seon]

But orcs are not the dark reflections of elves, they are humans who worshippepd Bhall! (Unless you are talking about their completely opposite world view).

Goblin civs, however, would be cool, maybe making them Warcraft style miners and other weird gadget makers?

 

[arkham4269]

But orcs are not the dark reflections of elves, they are humans who worshippepd Bhall! (Unless you are talking about their completely opposite world view).

Goblin civs, however, would be cool, maybe making them Warcraft style miners and other weird gadget makers?

Well I guess one of these days I really need to read the entire FfH lore.

On the Goblins, we already have gadget makers in them Mechanos and besides, FfH/FF/Orbis is supposed to be something new. Why make it a Warcraft/Warhammer clone? I mean we already have the Luchirp making golems and Mechanos making gadgets; I can't think of anything else that could be wedged in there, hence my view they could use the FF Archoes as a theme. Besides, making them goblins wouldn't fundamentally change the Archoe; mostly just their animations.

 

[Seon]

Maybe Goblins make mobile suits as a mix between Golems and Gadgets?

 

[civ_king]

goblin shredders FTW!

 

[Iskar Jarak]

Why bother to change the Archos to goblins if your not planning to change the civ, just leave them as they are, if it isn't broken don't fix it.

 

[arkham4269]

Why bother to change the Archos to goblins if your not planning to change the civ, just leave them as they are, if it isn't broken don't fix it.

Well I can think of a few reason right off the bat.

First is aesthetics. We already have plenty of civs that are based on men or at least man-sized humanoids. Adding in another civ is boring.

Secondly, my idea is I think it would be good to have goblins to be the 'dark-mirror' of the dwarves. Both tend to live underground. In my D&D campaign long, long ago, I had goblins being smarter and more into magic. Orbis already has those. In many campaigns, goblins are like 'evil gnomes' and do tinkering and the like. Orbis already has the Mechanos and the Lurchirp. So how to make them unique? Well the history of the Archos has them living underground to BANG! we have a match.

Thirdly, by bringing them into Orbis as goblins, it will alert players of FF to expect changes if changes end up being made. Just because I like the Archos as they are, I can expect some fiddling with them just as Ahwaric did with the Scions when he ported them in.

Fourthly, other than changing the graphics, not much is needed to be changed rather than going through the long process that the Ngolome are going through and all the problems the Jotnar are causing in FF in stability issues. The Archos already work so just changing the graphics probably won't screw things up as badly.

Fifthly, I think it allows to tweak the CoE a bit. As I've said, the graphic models for the current goblins always look like kobolds to me. Again in many works and in my own personal D&D games, Orcs and Goblins can work together but often times the goblins resent the Orcs pushing them around simply because they are bigger. Since the goblins would tend to be more organized, they could keep from being subjugated outright like the kobolds were.

So if we make the current CoE goblins kobolds, (just changing the name, nothing else) what else needs some tweaking of the CoE? Obviously with the Matzatl, I think the Clan needs to lose their lizardmen. I've always dislike these units. I'd rather see orc or kobold versions of these. Plus, last time I checked, the CoE doesn't look very orcish to me...but I haven't seen one lately I'll admit.