Gunner
Emperor
I'd ask seZereth who made the Regiments Mod about that. He seems to know alot about the unit formation xml file. That's my guess of where it'd be.ArbitraryGuy said:
Oh and by the way, those counters look pretty cool
Conspiramod: Development Thread
- Thread starter ArbitraryGuy
- Start date
Oh and by the way, those counters look pretty cool
This mod reminds me of the Illuminati boardgame.
Just some different ideas inspired by that thought:
-Having groups give different bonuses to each other if they're connected in some sort of 'trade' network. A 'line of influence' tile improvement that's similar to a road.
I.e. Every Capitol connected to the Illuminati's Capitol by a 'trade route' gives the Illuminati +5 production or coin
Every Capitol connected to the CIA's Capitol by a 'trade route' gives the CIA +2xp for every new spy unit
Every Holy City connected to the Knights Templar by a 'trade route' gives the Knights Templer +10% research
Every city with a specific building connected to a certain player gives so and so bonus
and so on...
This gives enemies incentives to disrupt consipracy networks or to attempt to subvert other networks to their own
-Any thoughts on incorporating UN voting into this or just importing the concept directly?
-In this mod, wouldn't actual territorial or player control be relatively meaningless? My recommendation: Besides having the 12 consipracy groups, also have some actual civilizations duking it out with each other. These civilizations will start out with lots of cities, high maintenance costs, and research much slower than the consipracy groups. Give each of the consipracy groups a unique religion representing their influence that will be founded at their starting city. This way, it'll be like the one city challenge whereby diplomacy and influence is your best bet of winning, while bigger civs fight each other to the ground.
Just some different ideas inspired by that thought:
-Having groups give different bonuses to each other if they're connected in some sort of 'trade' network. A 'line of influence' tile improvement that's similar to a road.
I.e. Every Capitol connected to the Illuminati's Capitol by a 'trade route' gives the Illuminati +5 production or coin
Every Capitol connected to the CIA's Capitol by a 'trade route' gives the CIA +2xp for every new spy unit
Every Holy City connected to the Knights Templar by a 'trade route' gives the Knights Templer +10% research
Every city with a specific building connected to a certain player gives so and so bonus
and so on...
This gives enemies incentives to disrupt consipracy networks or to attempt to subvert other networks to their own
-Any thoughts on incorporating UN voting into this or just importing the concept directly?
-In this mod, wouldn't actual territorial or player control be relatively meaningless? My recommendation: Besides having the 12 consipracy groups, also have some actual civilizations duking it out with each other. These civilizations will start out with lots of cities, high maintenance costs, and research much slower than the consipracy groups. Give each of the consipracy groups a unique religion representing their influence that will be founded at their starting city. This way, it'll be like the one city challenge whereby diplomacy and influence is your best bet of winning, while bigger civs fight each other to the ground.
ArbitraryGuy
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Gunner said:I'd ask seZereth who made the Regiments Mod about that. He seems to know alot about the unit formation xml file. That's my guess of where it'd be.
Oh and by the way, those counters look pretty cool
Thanks Gunner.
Oran-ge said:
Yes, very fun game... a lot of influence from that here. (I'm suprised someone hasn't mentioned that yet).
You bring up some good ideas.
In my sketching out ideas, a lot of the groups will produce special resources to help you out (e.g. Area 51 will supply you with some sort of "Alien Tech" to produce UFOs faster) , so networking will be important.
I was thinking about some kind of U.N. mechanism... maybe call it the "Council of Evil" or something? Any ideas on resoultions?
I'm shying away from non-conspiracy civs. More civs always runs worse on my computer, and I think it'd keep things simpler.
Thanks for the ideas!
Holistic
wrapped in plastic
The Council of Evil sounds like a good replacement for UN. Resolutions? Outside of enforcing specific civics, the only thing I have to suggest is a "Ban on Overly Complicated Schemes to Eliminate Secret Agents" (or something to that effect).
Didn't notice anything written about civics, so here's some ideas in that respect. If that part of Civ4 is of any interest for this mod, that is. The equivalent to government civics could be Conspirators, e.g. Mastermind, Board of Directors, The Government -- those in the know and in control of the conspiracy. The equivalent to legal civics could be Cover, e.g. Sworn Secrecy, Dummy Corporations, Spin -- how the conspiracy is covered and kept secret.
Labor options could be replaced by Initiation (or any word that describes how co-conspirators are recruited/controlled). Specific "civics" for this category could be Secret Ritual, Mind Control, etc. Economy-civics could be called Funding, and the civics could be something like Extortion, Pyramid Scheme, Alien Patents, Televangelism, etc.
Didn't notice anything written about civics, so here's some ideas in that respect. If that part of Civ4 is of any interest for this mod, that is. The equivalent to government civics could be Conspirators, e.g. Mastermind, Board of Directors, The Government -- those in the know and in control of the conspiracy. The equivalent to legal civics could be Cover, e.g. Sworn Secrecy, Dummy Corporations, Spin -- how the conspiracy is covered and kept secret.
Labor options could be replaced by Initiation (or any word that describes how co-conspirators are recruited/controlled). Specific "civics" for this category could be Secret Ritual, Mind Control, etc. Economy-civics could be called Funding, and the civics could be something like Extortion, Pyramid Scheme, Alien Patents, Televangelism, etc.
I'm guessing you guys didn't include the Triad or Yakuza as playable civs cause they're local organizations for the most part, who don't really have a grand plan to take over the world.
Furthermore, I notice alot of these consipracy groups are based in the western world. You already said that you're not going to have non-consipracy civs here, so I'm guessing race/geopolitics doesn't really matter. However, may I suggest some just for flavour:
-Al-Qaeda
-The Muslim Brotherhood
-The Mossad
Also, consider:
-The Voice of America
-Project for the New American Century
Furthermore, I notice alot of these consipracy groups are based in the western world. You already said that you're not going to have non-consipracy civs here, so I'm guessing race/geopolitics doesn't really matter. However, may I suggest some just for flavour:
-Al-Qaeda
-The Muslim Brotherhood
-The Mossad
Also, consider:
-The Voice of America
-Project for the New American Century
ArbitraryGuy
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@Oran-ge
I like those groups, Oran-ge. Thanks.
@Holistic
I hadn't really though about civics yet
. Those are some good ideas, thanks. I'll think about civics some more an post my ideas tonight and see what people think.
I like those groups, Oran-ge. Thanks.
@Holistic
I hadn't really though about civics yet
. Those are some good ideas, thanks. I'll think about civics some more an post my ideas tonight and see what people think.
Holistic
wrapped in plastic
Here are some more "ideas". Well, one idea more precisely; Exposure.
According to conspiracy-themed movies and TV-series I've seen, conspirators fear to have the conspiracy exposed by investigating journalists or FBI-agents obsessed with the abduction of their sisters. A limited form of an "Exposure"-concept might make sense in this mod.
It'd basically work by assigning all bases an "Exposure Risk", and once a base passes a given threshold, there'd be a chance that the base is exposed, i.e. insta-gifted to a minor Civ (with some fitting name). Besides losing the base, exposure also means that all culture (or whatever the corresponding concept is called in this mod) of the previous owner is stripped from the base permanently. Exposed bases can't be captured by other conspirators, exposure lasts a set number of turns (whereafter it's given back to the previous owner) and there'd only be one Exposed Base on the map at any given time (the public loses interest very quickly, and is eager for the next scandal). This means there would be three or four ways in which to "Cover Up" the base;
1) Expose another base
2) Wait for the exposure to end and for another base to be exposed
3) Destroy the base
4) Use a Great Person (Spin Doctor?) to Cover-Up the base
Exposing other bases could either be done voluntarily, or by a (pretty expensive) Spy-equivalent or Great People-consuming mission. The next base to be exposed could be randomly assigned among the Top 5 cities in the corresponding Info-screen, or simply to the base with the highest (or next highest) "Exposure Risk".
Exposure Risk could increase from
a) Buildings (maybe buildings in general, or just some in particular)
b) Unhappiness (disgruntled initiates might leak)
c) Tech level (each tech discovered makes the conspiracy harder to cover up)
d) Great Peoples (if a corresponding concept is kept)
e) Civics
Exposure Risk could decrease from
f) Culture (but this would mean that once exposed, bases get more susceptible to exposure, if culture is stripped away from the base (which might not make that much sense anyway))
g) Buildings
h) Great Peoples (Spin Doctors)
i) Civics (could open an interesting use for Emancipation-unhappiness)
According to conspiracy-themed movies and TV-series I've seen, conspirators fear to have the conspiracy exposed by investigating journalists or FBI-agents obsessed with the abduction of their sisters. A limited form of an "Exposure"-concept might make sense in this mod.
It'd basically work by assigning all bases an "Exposure Risk", and once a base passes a given threshold, there'd be a chance that the base is exposed, i.e. insta-gifted to a minor Civ (with some fitting name). Besides losing the base, exposure also means that all culture (or whatever the corresponding concept is called in this mod) of the previous owner is stripped from the base permanently. Exposed bases can't be captured by other conspirators, exposure lasts a set number of turns (whereafter it's given back to the previous owner) and there'd only be one Exposed Base on the map at any given time (the public loses interest very quickly, and is eager for the next scandal). This means there would be three or four ways in which to "Cover Up" the base;
1) Expose another base
2) Wait for the exposure to end and for another base to be exposed
3) Destroy the base
4) Use a Great Person (Spin Doctor?) to Cover-Up the base
Exposing other bases could either be done voluntarily, or by a (pretty expensive) Spy-equivalent or Great People-consuming mission. The next base to be exposed could be randomly assigned among the Top 5 cities in the corresponding Info-screen, or simply to the base with the highest (or next highest) "Exposure Risk".
Exposure Risk could increase from
a) Buildings (maybe buildings in general, or just some in particular)
b) Unhappiness (disgruntled initiates might leak)
c) Tech level (each tech discovered makes the conspiracy harder to cover up)
d) Great Peoples (if a corresponding concept is kept)
e) Civics
Exposure Risk could decrease from
f) Culture (but this would mean that once exposed, bases get more susceptible to exposure, if culture is stripped away from the base (which might not make that much sense anyway))
g) Buildings
h) Great Peoples (Spin Doctors)
i) Civics (could open an interesting use for Emancipation-unhappiness)
Gunner
Emperor
Thats a pretty cool idea for the exposure. I would just be concerned about how the AI treated. Might take alot of SDK modifications to get it right.
Love the exposure idea, very creative and provides an exciting mechanism tied to the theme of this game!
I've been thinking more about the core mechanisms of Civ and how they translate into a mod like this. Civ's atom is the city, so I think turning cities into organizations make eminent sense. So, what is a "city" in game mechanism terms?
In Civ4 there are 3 foundational resources from which cities draw to ultimately project power: population (food), hammers, and commerce. Stripped of their game story, each of these really represents:
Population = capacity. Therefore, food = capacity building. A bigger population allows the city to produce more food, hammers, or commerce (either by working the fields or through specialists).
Commerce = expansion of possibility. The primary purpose of commerce is generating research, which ultimately enables the player to do more and different things. Commerce spent on city/unit maintenance is really about retarding scientific research. For secondary purposes, commerce also substitutes for hammers (rushing, as does food) and culture (which, unless you are playing the odd culture game, is very similar to city/unit maintenance is primarily serving as a research retardant).
Production = realizing possibility. Production is putting into play the possibilities that research (commerce) opens up. This could be parlayed into even more food/commerce/production (most buildings) or units, for the external projection of force.
OK, now that I've deconstructed the sub-atomic mechanisms of Civ4, how do we reconstruct it for this mod?
Well, I'm not a conspiracy theory follower so I can't contribute very specific ideas, but I would consider how to flavor the above mechanisms.
1. What is the fundamental capacity of an organization (the ones, like the CIA, being taken over, not the faction of the player)? Probably, like cities, they would be human resources, in which case people would still be people and "food" would be it is that allows you to recruit people, e.g. salaries and perqs. Other types of capacity could be funding or, more vaguely, "power." Basically, the question is what resource enables an organization to become a more powerful organization? The answer should be the translation of population.
2. In what ways does the organization contribute to the possibilities of the conspiracy, whatever the equivalent of R&D would be? (Although, alternatively, you could find other uses for money, like culture, and play up those mechanisms instead). In any case, I think money remains money, unless you believe power is the root of money rather than v.v. Calling commerce "power" (which can be converted into money, since technically in Civ4 commerc is disintict from money) would also be kind of interesting.
3. In what ways does the organization expand its own power either through internal infrastructure or the external projection of force (or defense)? If, as you initially described, the units of this game will consist of lawyers, et.al., then how, exactly, do you "build" a lawyer?
All of this musing is moot if you decide to completely gut the idea of cities and make it so that each city sits on its own square and either controls no territory, or the territory is meaningless as a source of resources. But maybe there is a way to make the land around the "city" meaningful by thinking about how the 3 units of food, production, and commerce translate into this game.
Imagine how you might sic lawyers on an organization and tie it up in legal proceedings. The equivalent mechanism might be quite a lot like parking an axeman on a city's wheat tile and then pillaging it. (Or even just sitting on it). But what, exactly, the lawyer would be parked on is the question I'm raising here.
I've been thinking more about the core mechanisms of Civ and how they translate into a mod like this. Civ's atom is the city, so I think turning cities into organizations make eminent sense. So, what is a "city" in game mechanism terms?
In Civ4 there are 3 foundational resources from which cities draw to ultimately project power: population (food), hammers, and commerce. Stripped of their game story, each of these really represents:
Population = capacity. Therefore, food = capacity building. A bigger population allows the city to produce more food, hammers, or commerce (either by working the fields or through specialists).
Commerce = expansion of possibility. The primary purpose of commerce is generating research, which ultimately enables the player to do more and different things. Commerce spent on city/unit maintenance is really about retarding scientific research. For secondary purposes, commerce also substitutes for hammers (rushing, as does food) and culture (which, unless you are playing the odd culture game, is very similar to city/unit maintenance is primarily serving as a research retardant).
Production = realizing possibility. Production is putting into play the possibilities that research (commerce) opens up. This could be parlayed into even more food/commerce/production (most buildings) or units, for the external projection of force.
OK, now that I've deconstructed the sub-atomic mechanisms of Civ4, how do we reconstruct it for this mod?
Well, I'm not a conspiracy theory follower so I can't contribute very specific ideas, but I would consider how to flavor the above mechanisms.
1. What is the fundamental capacity of an organization (the ones, like the CIA, being taken over, not the faction of the player)? Probably, like cities, they would be human resources, in which case people would still be people and "food" would be it is that allows you to recruit people, e.g. salaries and perqs. Other types of capacity could be funding or, more vaguely, "power." Basically, the question is what resource enables an organization to become a more powerful organization? The answer should be the translation of population.
2. In what ways does the organization contribute to the possibilities of the conspiracy, whatever the equivalent of R&D would be? (Although, alternatively, you could find other uses for money, like culture, and play up those mechanisms instead). In any case, I think money remains money, unless you believe power is the root of money rather than v.v. Calling commerce "power" (which can be converted into money, since technically in Civ4 commerc is disintict from money) would also be kind of interesting.
3. In what ways does the organization expand its own power either through internal infrastructure or the external projection of force (or defense)? If, as you initially described, the units of this game will consist of lawyers, et.al., then how, exactly, do you "build" a lawyer?
All of this musing is moot if you decide to completely gut the idea of cities and make it so that each city sits on its own square and either controls no territory, or the territory is meaningless as a source of resources. But maybe there is a way to make the land around the "city" meaningful by thinking about how the 3 units of food, production, and commerce translate into this game.
Imagine how you might sic lawyers on an organization and tie it up in legal proceedings. The equivalent mechanism might be quite a lot like parking an axeman on a city's wheat tile and then pillaging it. (Or even just sitting on it). But what, exactly, the lawyer would be parked on is the question I'm raising here.
Mewtarthio
Emperor
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Holistic said:
Feh. That rarely happens. I can assure you personally, We have an entire division devoted to posting Our deepest secrets on message boards and B-movies everywhere. It utterly destroys the credibily of anyone attempting to expose Us: "Oh, yeah, sure, that sounds like something out of a stupid movie--oh, wait a minute, it is!" Indeed, this very post is already degrading Us to a mere joke in your minds.
My own experience aside, how many people would believe that, say, George Bush is working for the Knights Templar? I imagine, of course, that high-profile organizations would be less suseptible.
ArbitraryGuy
Rusty Shackleford?
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Wow... lots of ideas to chew on, thanks guys.
@Holistic
As Gunner said, my concern would be with the AI, but I do like the idea as a game mechanism. I think the simplest thing to do would be attach a similar event to "unhappiness"... i.e. if there is "unhappiness" in a group, the group would risk defecting, being exposed, or cutting ties. Something like that. I'm not sure if "exposure" would be the proper term for it, as Mewtarthio points out, but the mechanism would function as what you've delineated. It'd give players incentive to keep their minions happy and not turning on them. Thanks for the input.
@Padmewan
Also interesting ideas. That's not the direction I was leaning, but I like your idea for "renaming" some of the yields. Thanks for the input.
If you have a legal department in your group, you can put your power & influence towards producing lawyers to represent your cause
This is kind of modified from what you suggested, but here's where I was going. Keep in mind, once you control a group, you must build it up with "buildings" such as an "Executive Office" or "Recruiting Network" to increase your power inside the group once you "own" it.
food - "Recruitment"
shields - "Power" or maybe "Influence"
commerce - "Income"
- taxes - "Cash"
- science - "R & D"
- culture - "Dominance" doesn't change your borders, but enough can win you the game
@Mewtarthio
I'm from the Civ 4 modding diversion division.
@Holistic
As Gunner said, my concern would be with the AI, but I do like the idea as a game mechanism. I think the simplest thing to do would be attach a similar event to "unhappiness"... i.e. if there is "unhappiness" in a group, the group would risk defecting, being exposed, or cutting ties. Something like that. I'm not sure if "exposure" would be the proper term for it, as Mewtarthio points out, but the mechanism would function as what you've delineated. It'd give players incentive to keep their minions happy and not turning on them. Thanks for the input.
@Padmewan
Also interesting ideas. That's not the direction I was leaning, but I like your idea for "renaming" some of the yields. Thanks for the input.
Padmewan said:
If you have a legal department in your group, you can put your power & influence towards producing lawyers to represent your cause
This is kind of modified from what you suggested, but here's where I was going. Keep in mind, once you control a group, you must build it up with "buildings" such as an "Executive Office" or "Recruiting Network" to increase your power inside the group once you "own" it.
food - "Recruitment"
shields - "Power" or maybe "Influence"
commerce - "Income"
- taxes - "Cash"
- science - "R & D"
- culture - "Dominance" doesn't change your borders, but enough can win you the game
@Mewtarthio
Mewtarthio said:
I'm from the Civ 4 modding diversion division.
Oooh this also looks interesting AG, very much so. Reminds me of the old Syndicate Games where you controlled a corporation and used agents to at times violently and at other times using mind control semi peacefully convert the world to your views.
Syndication could be a tech if these will be included to allow for some form of mass spread of propoganda and thus, if culture is involved which it should be as it shows influence on a larger scale quite well, culture/influence will be boosted in all cities linked.
Perhaps if you wish to steer away from a tech it could be a wonder, Syndicate HQ (something along those lines anyway), and any city linked to the constructing one gets a reasonable boost to culture production.
Anyway just an idea. Might come up with some others but this looks great.
Syndication could be a tech if these will be included to allow for some form of mass spread of propoganda and thus, if culture is involved which it should be as it shows influence on a larger scale quite well, culture/influence will be boosted in all cities linked.
Perhaps if you wish to steer away from a tech it could be a wonder, Syndicate HQ (something along those lines anyway), and any city linked to the constructing one gets a reasonable boost to culture production.
Anyway just an idea. Might come up with some others but this looks great.
ArbitraryGuy said:
Civ4 has two interlocking resource-generation models: the land itself (usually the base number) and city buildings (usually a multiplier). I think it would be a mistake to abandon the first because even after playing many games of Civ4 I still find it easier to assess a city based on looking around it than within it (by squinting to look for that barracks or by double-clicking the city). A fortiori for a board game -- the more you can do to minimize interface switching, the more natural the flow of the game.
So, IMHO, it would be more visually satisfying and easier to deal with for me as the player if you could "push out" the core resource-generating mechanism from the city to the terrain so that I can glance at a city and immediately see that it has "marketing improvements" built on six "commerce tiles," from which I can immediately deduce the purpose and focus of that city, er, organization. The Civ series muddled resource-generation and -deployment between cities and terrain, but there's no reason to stick to this. Instead of having cities multiply resources (e.g. through building a factory), why not just increase resources by creating more types of improvements (e.g. build the factory as an improvement on the land itself)?
You would then be able to bias the destiny of each organization by laying out the "fat cross" terrain around each. If shields = power, then the White House should have shield-heavy terrain all around it, whereas, er, the Vatican would have lots of food terrain (?).
I would then focus buildings within cities on production-focused capacities, e.g. the equivalent of barracks and other unit-enhancing buildings, and significantly reduce the role of buildings in serving as a "multiplier" in favor of converting resources into usable assets. (Buildings that convert commerce into science and cash fall in between these two poles).
Again, the reason I am advocating this is that to capture a "board game" feel, I think you would want as much information available as quickly as possible to the player by looking at the board. In addition, if you were doing some serious graphical modding, making cities much cleaner so you could more easily spot individual buildings would also help.
OTOH, the annoying thing about my suggestion is that you would spend a lot of time managing workers. But you could make this a core game mechanic if, for example, you gave each team a limited number of workers and/or required that each improvement built required some expenditure of a resource -- like building hotels in Monopoly.
ArbitraryGuy, I just reread your much earlier post in response to my similar line of questions, in which you proposed that each city have resource production capabilities tied to wonders in each city. That's definitely an alternative to what I proposed above. I still think using the core game engine of Civ4 (the terrain) makes more sense than abandoning it, because it's easier to figure out what the Mossad's powers are based on looking at the terrain rather than having to read the Civilopedia entry for its Wonder. Also, as I hinted at earlier, using terrain would give players more flexibility of play, for example the idea I'd brought up about deploying lawyers to pillage an organization's resources. It would probably be equally time-consuming (from a modding POV) to lay out the terrain for each organization as it would be to write the XML for each Wonder. Just my $.02
ArbitraryGuy
Rusty Shackleford?
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Padmewan said:
Actually, the more I think about your suggestions, the more I'm inclined towards them
. As you point out, it is the fundamental mechanic in civ. But, the only problem I would have would be the "abstractness" of the terrain, then. By going towards a city building-lead resource model, I would have avoided this abstractness, IMO. I was origionally just going to have it be some sort of empty board square around the cities.... What would terrain be? Board squares with different resource values on them? Empty office space? Thanks for the food-for-thought.
ArbitraryGuy said:
Gah! What do I know? I don't even know who the Masons are!
Office space isn't a bad start... something like a "division" or "department," maybe? The point is that each would lean towards a particular capability... an "open" organization like the Vatican would have much more land equivalent to flood plains, while a more secretive one would have lots of production capabilities.
Some brainstorming --
tile = Org Chart "box".
Not sure whether all tiles should be equal or whether some provide more resources than others. If the latter...
grasslands = public departments (food)
plains = internal departments (production).
water = black ops? can't be improved except special resources. Water would be useful in helping you segregate 2 types of units from each other (there are ways to turn off most of the special effects that make the tiles look like water).
As with vanilla Civ, you could improve each org chart box towards food, production, or commerce:
Food - Recruiting department (farm), PR department, etc.
Production - Training center (mine)
Commerce - R&D unit (cottage)
Combo - Brainwashing operations (windmill / food + production)
Some of these improvements could upgrade over time: unit -> department -> division or something like that.
"Bonuses" would not only boost production and add flavor, but also enable special units for those organizations, e.g. the "migrant laborers" resource could be improved with a "human trafficking network" (+2 production, +1 commerce) and also enable some kind of special building or unit.
[btw, another advantage of using the tile system is that you can use city AI to emph food, production, commerce without having to click into the city.]
If you do go with something like this, each city's fat-cross could be set up so that internal org units are inside, and external org units are outside, so it even looks right. Some cities would have more of one than another.
Other cities can be set up so they have only 9 culture so they never even get to the fat cross... just 9 tiles.
Other cities can be set up so they have only 9 culture so they never even get to the fat cross... just 9 tiles.
Robo Magic Man
Prince
This looks AMAZING, but just a few comments:
- Why the gameboard pieces? Wouldn't a mad scientist actually running aroud look better than a cardboard square with a face on it? I'd even help with unit skins if you wanted to use 3d people...
- I think it'd be cood to have some sort of rebel faction to fight off the conspirators, or maybe a group of paranoid, aluminum foil beanie-clad soldiers defending their strongholds from the grips of the all-seeing conspirator factions.
- Also, a unit suggestion: Sattelites used for spying and/or shooting lasers at their enemies (I once saw a guy in Washington, D.C. standing outside the Capitol building handing out sheets describing the mysterious sattelites that "invisibly penetrate walls and hurt every part of my body".)
- Why the gameboard pieces? Wouldn't a mad scientist actually running aroud look better than a cardboard square with a face on it? I'd even help with unit skins if you wanted to use 3d people...
- I think it'd be cood to have some sort of rebel faction to fight off the conspirators, or maybe a group of paranoid, aluminum foil beanie-clad soldiers defending their strongholds from the grips of the all-seeing conspirator factions.
- Also, a unit suggestion: Sattelites used for spying and/or shooting lasers at their enemies (I once saw a guy in Washington, D.C. standing outside the Capitol building handing out sheets describing the mysterious sattelites that "invisibly penetrate walls and hurt every part of my body".)
OK, just 'cuz I was screwing around and procrastinating on my own mod, here are just some initial concepts for tiles (if you end up liking the idea of tiles at all, that is):
The wood parque tiles are grasslands; conceptually I imagined them as "outside" org chart boxes, where you would build improvements like "Recruitment camp." The marble tiles are internal departments where you'd build your "Legal Department." In between is desert (for land bridges). The water is meant to look like the night sky (coast) and static (ocean) though since I didn't fiddle with water settings they're too blue. That would be if you decide that water represents totally clandestine operations.
The graphics engine forces a blending of tiles, so unfortunately it looks like there will be hybrid tiles like you see there, unless you can figure out exactly how the engine cuts up terrain files (I have an inkling of how that might be doable).
Here's the board zoomed in. It doesn't look great because I didn't play with terrain textures (the "details" files) since I haven't quite figured them out yet. I'm sure they would be neat ways to get a "sheen" on the marble or whatever. The coasts also need to be edited to get rid of the rough edges.
I'd also toyed with the idea of leather instead of marble for the "inside" departments, for that more luxurious, smoky-room feel (as opposed to a "halls of power" feel).
(FYI these textures are all the standards ones included with GIMP -- thank you GIMP . I actually made them in Fireworks using 128x128 boxes layered over the originals for guides and then deleted the original. That's how I suspect I can figure out how to get them to tile properly if I had more time to play around...)
btw here are the image files if you want to play around: RAR (812 K)
The wood parque tiles are grasslands; conceptually I imagined them as "outside" org chart boxes, where you would build improvements like "Recruitment camp." The marble tiles are internal departments where you'd build your "Legal Department." In between is desert (for land bridges). The water is meant to look like the night sky (coast) and static (ocean) though since I didn't fiddle with water settings they're too blue. That would be if you decide that water represents totally clandestine operations.
The graphics engine forces a blending of tiles, so unfortunately it looks like there will be hybrid tiles like you see there, unless you can figure out exactly how the engine cuts up terrain files (I have an inkling of how that might be doable).
Here's the board zoomed in. It doesn't look great because I didn't play with terrain textures (the "details" files) since I haven't quite figured them out yet. I'm sure they would be neat ways to get a "sheen" on the marble or whatever. The coasts also need to be edited to get rid of the rough edges.
I'd also toyed with the idea of leather instead of marble for the "inside" departments, for that more luxurious, smoky-room feel (as opposed to a "halls of power" feel).
(FYI these textures are all the standards ones included with GIMP -- thank you GIMP
. I actually made them in Fireworks using 128x128 boxes layered over the originals for guides and then deleted the original. That's how I suspect I can figure out how to get them to tile properly if I had more time to play around...)btw here are the image files if you want to play around: RAR (812 K)
(Remember, at least the way I'm thinking about it when you build improvements on a tile it's the equivalent of building a mine, unless you also have resources that need special improvements. So maybe the equivalent of a generic mine is... a generic bureau? department? cell? ...and if you build one on a lawyer resource, you end up with a legal department (as you would end up with a gold mine) and then be able to build lawyer units?)
