Escape From Zombie Island 2 ready for public consumption

[KingArthur]

I have tinkered with the existing map but nothing too radical.

A few more "cities" had to be accomodated and the nuclear powerplant was and military base have been moved.

A slightly bigger more spaced out map using the same locations and basic shape would be easy to achieve and I can release two map versions with the next update.

@themultitude - always happy to hear from long time lurkers

 

[Virote_Considon]

Wow! This is looking REALLY interesting, especially with hte docks! Also, with just one unit starting in the "Holdout", you will have to think more about when you launch your first attack!

 

[KingArthur]

unit placement hasn't been finalised yet so don't read too much into the map. I have to keep some surprises for you

 

[JuuL]

The new map looks great. When seeing it I had two thoughts that I would like to share with all of you:
1) Great terrain. Now I won't have to work in improving it. Only thing missing is some commercial buildings with the same scale of size as the residential ones. And maybe some small houses using hills or marshes or whatever terrain isn't used yet - for the western part of the map. And making roads into terrain instead of roads could still be a great thing.
2) "AAAAAAAAAARRRRGHHHH! Oh no, what am I going to do now? (and a lot of words that would just be replaced with *******)" Now my Survivors will have to take both the Graveyard and The Armory and make sure to have peace with Zeb's Farm, the Corporation and The Authorites before having safe borders to the north and west as they are used to. This must be one of the most evil changes ever. I will have to change my regular strategy completely. How can I rush two buildings within the first 10 turns? And what about Zombie Kings? We're so ******'ed! .... but then, maybe a good challenge is what I need.

 

[Vuldacon]

Juul... IF you want to create something, a very good addition would be New Cities for all. If not separate cities for each group, then just one Good set of Three Modern Cities from small to large could be used for all.
...concerning the size of Residential vs Commercial Buildings, the larger Commercial Buildings should be larger than the residential buildings IMO, however a variety of both Residential and Commercial Buildings would also be a good addition.

 

[Cloner4000]

I am completely out of it, but the map looks awe"some" not awe"ful" well lame joke. Yeee, I am now convince that I am not going to do any studing for the reminder of the summer vacation XD. Looks very interesting

 

[KingArthur]

The new map looks great. When seeing it I had two thoughts that I would like to share with all of you:
1) Great terrain. Now I won't have to work in improving it. Only thing missing is some commercial buildings with the same scale of size as the residential ones. And maybe some small houses using hills or marshes or whatever terrain isn't used yet - for the western part of the map. And making roads into terrain instead of roads could still be a great thing.

Vuldacon has made some grand changes and additions to the terrain. The roads are yours Juul but Vuldacon has put in nice curves at the corners and altered the borders. Roads as terrain could work but would roads on adjacent tiles join up neatly? Certainly, the idea we discussed before of having road as terrain and an "invisible" roads.pcx file has a lot of merit.

Weasel Op made some small houses based on LM Hills. Perhaps these could be incorporated?
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=4200390&postcount=23

2) "AAAAAAAAAARRRRGHHHH! Oh no, what am I going to do now? (and a lot of words that would just be replaced with *******)" Now my Survivors will have to take both the Graveyard and The Armory and make sure to have peace with Zeb's Farm, the Corporation and The Authorites before having safe borders to the north and west as they are used to. This must be one of the most evil changes ever. I will have to change my regular strategy completely. How can I rush two buildings within the first 10 turns? And what about Zombie Kings? We're so ******'ed! .... but then, maybe a good challenge is what I need.

Yes I am evil but it won't be quite as bad as it looks.

 

[Supa]

The new map looks good. Don't make it too big, though. I would hurt the ambiance, I think.

 

[Supa]

For the roads as terrain :

First, it would be quite difficult to transform one of the basic terrains (not the mountains, forest or marshes) in a road-type terrain. Not impossible, but not easy.

Second, the "real" invisible road would then be on every tile on the map, isn't it ? So the Monster Zombi and tanks would be able to cross buildings.. :-/

 

[KingArthur]

For the roads as terrain :

First, it would be quite difficult to transform one of the basic terrains (not the mountains, forest or marshes) in a road-type terrain. Not impossible, but not easy.

Second, the "real" invisible road would then be on every tile on the map, isn't it ? So the Monster Zombi and tanks would be able to cross buildings.. :-/

Good point as I wouldn't want wheeled units to do that. Initially, the idea was to enable road building again so roads would not start preplaced on all tiles. But the more I think about it now the less I like the idea. I'll need to go over the pros and cons again.

 

[Supa]

I don't like the idea of building road either.. In this scenario's context, I don't get it.

 

[KingArthur]

In this context roads were safety corriders i.e. secure a building or flush out an alleyway.

I think the idea arose a while back when I had some unreachable resources on terrain that was not connected by roads. Roads being an overlay completely obscure the underlying terrain and appear to "flatten" the tower blocks and flats.

My compromise was to restrict all non-bonus resources as well as roads to one type of terrain which I renamed streets. It works quite well even though you have less overall tiles available as resource spots.

 

[Virote_Considon]

What I've done in my scenario is placed some terrain (I think it was normal grassland) under the roads, and I had it so that roads could only get built on Grassland, and Grassland was only under roads. This means that if a unit bombards a road, it can get built again, but it would also hold up the "Traffic", as the grassland is impassable to "wheeled" units. With the few squares of grassland that I needed to keep, I turned them into bonus grassland.

 

[Vuldacon]

Supa... Yes, I think the General consensus is to keep the basic same size map and King Arthur is doing a Great job with the making additions and keeping the same basic map. The main thing I would like to see Graphically concerning the map is simply more Grassland and or trees in the Residential area so it doesn't appear the same as congested Cities. The Look and Feel of a Rural Neighborhood, "Alone in the Dark" with not many other people close by. I had thought that perhaps adding just a few more tiles of Grassland and trees to spread out the Residential area would be a way to accomplish this without changing the map otherwise. Having the ambience, look, feel and good game play all together are the desirable factors so dispite some difficulties or clashes trying to have these all work together in the Game, a "Happy Medium" that accommodates all is what is being worked on.
...I agree that Roads do Not really need to be buildable in this game.

Virote_Considon... Using terrain as the impassable factor is a good idea that could be used. LM Terrain could be used and the LM Terrain could actually be the Normal Terrain by copying the Normal terrain and then Renaming it with the LM Terrain Names. This way the same Graphics would be used yet the same Grassland for example would actually be LM Grassland and Impassable etc..

All is Going Very Well concerning the update and there are a Few other additions that will require a little more time to create and add for this Update but it will all be Worth waiting for.

 

[KingArthur]

@Virote_Considon - One possible exploit (or a good tactic). You could bombard all the roads around a city location and effectively stop wheeled units from leaving or entering that city. Would people be happy with that or would it be unfair to the AI especially as it wouldn't be logical to give zombies a worker type unit (unless someone made that unit)?

I like the idea otherwise and the fact that you can rebuild roads is a good thing especially as there are many late game units that have bombardment (F15, Tanks, Heavy Infantry, Exploding Sheep?, Missiles).

@Vuldacon - I might be wrong but I'm pretty sure LM terrain inherits the impassable flags from the parent terrain.

 

[KingArthur]

I just asked moscantnt if he would add a worker animation to his zombie unit

 

[Virote_Considon]

I was going to say that the zombies should "retain" their civilian abilities (such as building roads) when zombiefied.

Anyway, do the zombies have any wheeled units? I'm sure they don't...

 

[Supa]

The Monster Zombie is wheeled

 

[Virote_Considon]

Ah. That'd explain why my Chain Girl AND my Badass Hero didn't get attacked by a load of these today...

 

[KingArthur]

You wouldn't want them to be non wheeled would you? It'd get very messy very quickly if they were.