[GS] Dear developers, please add these as a Civ6 game expansion feature!

[karakzorn]

I’m a huge strategy game fan and I’d love civilization to be even better than it already is. I’m not sure if the developers are still looking to develop a new game or look to make any more expansions however, I’d be happy to buy another civilization game or expansion. I tried to keep things compact, so I’ll keep it to a top 5 wishlist of new features that I'd absolutely love to see.

I’d love to see a sort of DLC that adds a ton of horrifying last stand of humanity apocalypse map evolutions. With an appropriate soundtrack to really play into the depressing world ending or heroic last stand theme.

1. Waterworld

I am an absolute HUGE fan of the climate mechanic in civ6, however I thought it was very tame so I added a mod that makes the water level submerge the entire planet, which felt amazing to play and I'm obsessed with this style of civ6 endgame. In this version standard flood walls are not allowed. Meaning you get waterworld. The idea is that there is no more land, and the world has turned into one huge ocean.

This event enables the construction of unique flood walls that only protect your districts from flooding. These look like offshore drilling platform tiles under your district and cities.

2. Post nuclear fallout world

Another event I’d love to see is post nuclear war world. Which is basically RED DEATH, but then as a map evolution, meaning if enough people launch nukes, the entire map starts to turn into a wasteland desert and each tile gives 1 less food with each escalation, and there are 3 escalations, meaning the maximum is 3 less food per tile. The idea is that the world is genuinely coming to its end and survival must be extremely difficult.

This event enables the construction of the fallout bunker district that provides food and cannot be damaged with nukes.

3. Zombie apocalypse

A zombie apocalypse event would be awesome too, which means at a certain point in the lategame every unit that dies spawns a zombie unit. Zombies replace barbarians and spawn at a very high rate. Zombies also regenerate fully at the end of each turn, meaning they are extremely difficult to get rid of. Zombies are naturally highly aggressive and are extremely slow. It would be cool if the zombies leave a dark stain behind where they go, meaning a world overrun by zombies looks darker, until the event ends.

This event enables the construction of the zombie walls, which are standard city walls, just for the modern era, being more powerful.

4. Alien invasion

Aliens will deploy UFO's (reskinned barbarian camps) around the globe that spawn very dangerous units, attacking cities. I hope they are themed in the stereotypical alien style, so little green men and tripods. They’re basically super-barbarians hell bent on destroying your cities. It would also be cool if aliens left some kind of alien ground stains where they go, meaning if the world is overrun, the world also looks more alien, until the event ends.

This event enables the construction of the XCOM project (building), which allows the recruitment of XCOM units, which have bonus damage against aliens. This building also makes it so you get into an alliance with others who have built this building, for as long as the alien invasion lasts.

5. Second ice age

This event develops very slowly and give a warning that the second ice age is coming, which gradually turns the map into one big ice planet. Slowly every tile becomes colder, meaning desert tiles eventually become tundra tiles, grassland tiles become snow tiles and snow tiles become glacier tiles (sea ice on top of snow tiles). This map evolution gradually builds up from the poles. This means the world will starve.

This event enables the construction of the seed vault district (Svalbard Global Seed Vault), which provides a large amount of food.

 

[pokiehl]

All of these things are basically already in the game...

1. Apocalypse game mode, Primordial map
2. Red Death
3. Zombies game mode
4. Red Death again
5. There are plenty of modded maps that are ice age themed

I personally would not be interested in much more elaboration on this sort of thing. I'd rather development efforts get focused elsewhere.

 

[karakzorn]

All of these things are basically already in the game...

1. Apocalypse game mode, Primordial map
2. Red Death
3. Zombies game mode
4. Red Death again
5. There are plenty of modded maps that are ice age themed

I personally would not be interested in much more elaboration on this sort of thing. I'd rather development efforts get focused elsewhere.

These are maps, not map evolutions, red death is just a battle royale, but part of the fun in strategy games is making a story, and having a map that can significantly evolve due to player actions is what makes me love strategy games.
Ice age map is just a map, it has no story, no history, it didn't evolve into that from a lush green earth.

I played some multiplayer with friends, and nothing was more fun than each player realising the world was flooding because they were burning too much coal. And tiles and areas that had a history was suddenly lost to the sea, and the entire gameplan had to be re-thought.
And let's be honest, who doesn't want to play a game that starts on a healthy planet, you build up and expand normally, and then through coal the world floods over, you learn to adapt to that, and then the world enters a nuclear war, and the entire world is one big green toxic ocean and your last hope of survival is to colonise space because the planet is doomed.

I also built a very rough sketch of the waterworld platform concept, ofcourse you can still build fishing boats to keep up food production, and if you have the waterworld platform building built, you can build districts where ever you like anyway:

 

[pokiehl]

I think there's certainly a way to make sort of apocalyptic conditions more interesting.

With Gathering Storm, I initially shared your disappointment in the limited world flooding. I too modded it to make the world flooding even more extreme, but surprisingly I just found it to be unfun and frustrating to have the map quickly become totally unusable. I don't know what the solution to improving it would be, but that was my experience.

 

[karakzorn]

I think there's certainly a way to make sort of apocalyptic conditions more interesting.

With Gathering Storm, I initially shared your disappointment in the limited world flooding. I too modded it to make the world flooding even more extreme, but surprisingly I just found it to be unfun and frustrating to have the map quickly become totally unusable. I don't know what the solution to improving it would be, but that was my experience.

It could just be a setting like any other, "waterworld" for those hardcore players who love to see the world drown.

I mean yes, sure you might not enjoy seeing your civilization turn into a nuclear wasteland or sink to the bottom of the sea. But I sure would, I'd pay big money to have a strategy game that could evolve into an apocalypse survival nightmare.

After all, all these apocalypse events affect each player, so nobody is better off than another. Aliens and zombies spawn and attack everyone equally, everyone equally drowns, nuclear fallout turns everyone’s land equally into a desert.

Sure, the ice age is less fair as desert territory becomes a paradise, but that also makes it unique from the rest and cool. Besides, you can always build more seed vault districts to combat the lack of food from the cold.

 

[aieeegrunt]

I think there's certainly a way to make sort of apocalyptic conditions more interesting.

With Gathering Storm, I initially shared your disappointment in the limited world flooding. I too modded it to make the world flooding even more extreme, but surprisingly I just found it to be unfun and frustrating to have the map quickly become totally unusable. I don't know what the solution to improving it would be, but that was my experience.

I think you would need more mechanics that directly engage with living on a Water World.

Like Barbarians show up on little Jet skis with an oil tanker

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

A Water World presupposes some other conditions.

Either a warmer world that melts the ice caps and fills the oceans with more water (what is, basically, happening to this earth now)
OR
Something that adds water to the planet, like a collision with a large icy comet (the premise of Niven and Pournelle's SF novel Lucifer's Hammer - old, but still not a bad read)

The alternative could be a new Ice Age, which locks up more water in the ice caps, covers more of the planet with glacier ice, and dries out more of the planet into cold deserts (Taklamakan or Gobi style) - another kind of apocalyptic map entirely.

Yet another alternative is what I call the Mini-Apocalyptic, in which 'climate change' or on-going/episodic geological events happen throughout the game, but largely on a less-than-planet-wide basis. Some examples:

Up until about 3900 BCE the Arabian and Sahara deserts were savannahs - grassy plains with open lakes, rivers, marshes, supporting a farming and grazing population and some substantial settlements with planned streets, 'henge'-type calendrical monuments, etc. When the African Humid Period (AHP) ended rather suddenly, both areas dried into deserts and the populations had to move or die

1628 BCE: Thera volcano explodes north of Crete, a VEI 7 eruption (the highest level recorded in human history). Aside from the 'local' effects, like burying the Minoan city of Akrotiri under thick layers of ash (sort of already modeled in the game) the explosion also spread wind-blown aash all the way to Egypt and the near east, which wiped out crops wherever it fell heavily - a regional disaster which, it has been theorized, may be reflected in the 'plagues' visited on Egypt at Moses' request.

536 - 547 CE - another 'regional' volcanic event: a set of eruptions in Iceland created a veil of ash in the atmopshere that lowered temperatures up to 2.5 degrees C from Europe through the middle east to western China. Crops failed all over that region, causing famine that weakened trhe population enough that millions succumbed to disease (Plague of Justinian and others)

1207 CE: The River Dee silts up, destroying the port of Chester in England, which now becomes an inland town.

Generally, changes in sea level at times and places all over the world change the map: The pass at Thermopolye, about 100 meters wide during the famous battle is now a broad plain because the coast has risen/gulf has receded. Also in the Mediterranean, the ancient port of Alexandria is now 10 - 20 meters below the waterline, submerged by rising sea levels over the centuries.

1282 - 1287 CE: the 'barrier dunes' near Texel in the Netherlands are broken by Noth Sea storms, flooding the area including a channel all the way to Amsterdam, until then a small inland village. On 14 December 1287 a flood broke through the last seawalls, forming the Zuider Zee or Southern Sea and killing an estimated 50,000 people. The geography of the Netherlands hasn't been the same since, but then neither has the history of Amsterdam as a major European port.

Fire: The 'man made' Disaster. Great Fires have at various times destroyed large parts of Imperial Rome, London, Moscow, Tokyo/Edo, in the last case several times. Sometimes they were caused by other events like earthquakes (otherwise not modeled in the game) but some of them, like the great fire of Rome in the first century or the Great London Fire in 1666, were used as occasions to remodel large parts of each city - a sort of District Rebuild/Replacement that might not have been possible otherwise.

Going on too long, sorry, but the point I think is made: 'apocalyptic' can refer to a whole range of on-going in-game events that affect only a region or a single city and that may, as in the case of the 'urban renewal fires' or Amsterdam's new-found Port, also have a gem of Positive effects in the middle of the 'disaster'.

 

[karakzorn]

A Water World presupposes some other conditions.

Either a warmer world that melts the ice caps and fills the oceans with more water (what is, basically, happening to this earth now)
OR
Something that adds water to the planet, like a collision with a large icy comet (the premise of Niven and Pournelle's SF novel Lucifer's Hammer - old, but still not a bad read)

The alternative could be a new Ice Age, which locks up more water in the ice caps, covers more of the planet with glacier ice, and dries out more of the planet into cold deserts (Taklamakan or Gobi style) - another kind of apocalyptic map entirely.

Yet another alternative is what I call the Mini-Apocalyptic, in which 'climate change' or on-going/episodic geological events happen throughout the game, but largely on a less-than-planet-wide basis. Some examples:

Up until about 3900 BCE the Arabian and Sahara deserts were savannahs - grassy plains with open lakes, rivers, marshes, supporting a farming and grazing population and some substantial settlements with planned streets, 'henge'-type calendrical monuments, etc. When the African Humid Period (AHP) ended rather suddenly, both areas dried into deserts and the populations had to move or die

1628 BCE: Thera volcano explodes north of Crete, a VEI 7 eruption (the highest level recorded in human history). Aside from the 'local' effects, like burying the Minoan city of Akrotiri under thick layers of ash (sort of already modeled in the game) the explosion also spread wind-blown aash all the way to Egypt and the near east, which wiped out crops wherever it fell heavily - a regional disaster which, it has been theorized, may be reflected in the 'plagues' visited on Egypt at Moses' request.

536 - 547 CE - another 'regional' volcanic event: a set of eruptions in Iceland created a veil of ash in the atmopshere that lowered temperatures up to 2.5 degrees C from Europe through the middle east to western China. Crops failed all over that region, causing famine that weakened trhe population enough that millions succumbed to disease (Plague of Justinian and others)

1207 CE: The River Dee silts up, destroying the port of Chester in England, which now becomes an inland town.

Generally, changes in sea level at times and places all over the world change the map: The pass at Thermopolye, about 100 meters wide during the famous battle is now a broad plain because the coast has risen/gulf has receded. Also in the Mediterranean, the ancient port of Alexandria is now 10 - 20 meters below the waterline, submerged by rising sea levels over the centuries.

1282 - 1287 CE: the 'barrier dunes' near Texel in the Netherlands are broken by Noth Sea storms, flooding the area including a channel all the way to Amsterdam, until then a small inland village. On 14 December 1287 a flood broke through the last seawalls, forming the Zuider Zee or Southern Sea and killing an estimated 50,000 people. The geography of the Netherlands hasn't been the same since, but then neither has the history of Amsterdam as a major European port.

Fire: The 'man made' Disaster. Great Fires have at various times destroyed large parts of Imperial Rome, London, Moscow, Tokyo/Edo, in the last case several times. Sometimes they were caused by other events like earthquakes (otherwise not modeled in the game) but some of them, like the great fire of Rome in the first century or the Great London Fire in 1666, were used as occasions to remodel large parts of each city - a sort of District Rebuild/Replacement that might not have been possible otherwise.

Going on too long, sorry, but the point I think is made: 'apocalyptic' can refer to a whole range of on-going in-game events that affect only a region or a single city and that may, as in the case of the 'urban renewal fires' or Amsterdam's new-found Port, also have a gem of Positive effects in the middle of the 'disaster'.

Oh haha, I don't require historical accuracy.
I just want the entire map to evolve into a dystopia because of player action.
I don't need it to be realistic or historically accurate.
But you did mention something interesting, lowering of water levels in an ice age, that's a good one, that could be cool too in the ice age map calamity.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Oh haha, I don't require historical accuracy.
I just want the entire map to evolve into a dystopia because of player action.
I don't need it to be realistic or historically accurate.
But you did mention something interesting, lowering of water levels in an ice age, that's a good one, that could be cool too in the ice age map calamity.

Everybody's focused on the Hot World, Rising Oceans scenario because of the current world predicament. They miss the converse, a colder world with dropping ocean levels. Your port city high and dry as the ocean recedes in apparent disgust while around you first the mountains, then the hills, then the valleys between them are covered in permanent snow and ice: unless you are a Mammoth, this is not a fun scenario . . .

 

[karakzorn]

Everybody's focused on the Hot World, Rising Oceans scenario because of the current world predicament. They miss the converse, a colder world with dropping ocean levels. Your port city high and dry as the ocean recedes in apparent disgust while around you first the mountains, then the hills, then the valleys between them are covered in permanent snow and ice: unless you are a Mammoth, this is not a fun scenario . . .

That's the idea, I want an apocalypse scenario, part of the fun is realising that the world is doomed, and you can only survive by sacrificing almost everything.

To solve the previously mentioned problem of having a player specific advantage where the centre of the planet is warmer, this could be solved by just making everything equally cold, meaning grassland, tundra, desert, all of it becomes snow. There is no desert spawn advantage or tundra spawn disavantage. Everything freezes equally over into just snow.
I should probably go back and edit my suggestion with this adjustment to everyone freezes fairly, but I don't want to make a mess of this forum post.
But in short: everything becomes snow, no matter what terrain you start on, everything just becomes snow. Polar start location or desert start location, all is snow.