Flavour: So what happened...

[Jabie]

Please set your imagination to overactive before reading...

So what happened to cause civilisation to come crashing down in ruins and who, if anyone is to blame? This will determine the technological level that the pre-disaster society had and thus the best tech level in the game. It'll also help shape the rest of the flavour of the mod and whether or not there should be a statue of Liberty embedded in sand somewhere in the desert.

* Mutual Assured Disaster scenario. This is probably the most realistic of all the scenarios. Two powers with nuclear arsenals obliterate one another. This might be a confrontation between America and Russia in an alternate earth where the Cuban Missile Crisis wasn't defused. Alternatively it could have been two smaller powers which launched nukes at one another and everyone else gets sucked in.

One possibility is that two opposing nuclear rivals (say India and Pakistan) start a confrontation with one another. A stray Nuclear missile strikes Russia or China, who in turn mistake the source of the attack and target Europe / North America, who then retaliate in kind.

There is a long standing urban myth that the commander of the Royal Navy is meant to the listen to the eight am pips and the News Headlines on the Today programme. If he does not hear Big Ben, he has sealed instructions from the Prime Minister as to what course of action he should then take. In a more paranoid era, a technical fault could easily lead to an over-reaction.

In a scenario like this nuclear winter is a real possibility. Events such Acidic Rain (damages all units by 20%) and Failed Crops (No bonus food from wheat, corn or rice for the next 10 turns) might occur.

* Skynet Scenario. Shamelessly stolen from Terminator: A rogue AI launches a nuclear strike. In the original movie, it struck Russia, knowing that it's Russian counterpart would strike back. In the altered timeline (Terminator 3) Skynet was created as an anti-virus program which swept the virus from the internet, and then went on to clear a similar infection from the planet.

There's also the matter of why Skynet (or equivalent AI) is keeping the remainder of the human race alive. Is it dead? Has it become corrupted? Did it launch a nuclear strike and was then obliterated in the EMP that followed. Did it capture one continent and believe that the other continent had been destroyed in a radioactive blast. Maybe the surviving humans are just some experiment it watches on a whim. If you want to get all Matrix, maybe the humans are all trapped inside a VR...

In this scenario, researching the Computers tech (and/or building some Reconnecting the Internet project) becomes a far more dangerous proposition... like supping with Mephistopheles. Perhaps, it offers Espionage points and the tech of any two societies, but at a cost of dumping dangerous units into the world at random.

This could lead to an end-game where the player conquers or unites one continent, only to discover that there's another content full of mechs and fusion tanks to be wiped out.

* Plague Scenario. A virus is let loose upon the world. Within weeks 99.99% of the population is dead. See The Stand, Aeon Flux or Freeway Fighter.

Where did the virus come from? If it was man-made, is messing about in research labs really such a good idea? What if you find Leprosy Bombs from 2155 (shamelessly stolen from Ray Bradbury's "The Fox and the Forest") Could you use them on your rivals without putting yourself at risk. If the virus is airborne, do your cities periodically lose population until you've found a cure? For that matter, will a reduced gene-pool radiation cause mutation in your population, possibly leading to psychic powers (See The Chrysalids by John Wyndham)

* Aliens Scenario. Aliens or an aliens influence are to blame. In the movie Phase IV, which was probably influenced by H G Wells "Empire of the Ants", a passing meteorite is responsible for ants gaining a hive-mind sentience. Where the film ends, it's possible to imagine the hive mind then deciding to infiltrate all the nucelar reactors and setting them to meltdown. If the influence of the meteorite is only periodic, expect to see the occasional unit vanish without reason.

Maybe the Cylons attacked and only one tribe remained, in which case you're probably looking at ramming a few allusions to the twelve tribes of Judah down our throats.

Or it could be brave suicide... In order to prevent the Body Snatchers from taking over, some brave souls launched a nuclear strike. If so, is there still a danger of an enemy within?

* Parallel universe. A small groups of individuals are sucked into a parallel world. This is how the world ends: not with a bang, but a whimper....

* Supernatural Scenario. It's Ragnarok and Armageddon all-rolled into one. Is this the judgement of God? Has someone finally decoded the ten thousand names of god? Has some crazed scientist or cultist opened the gates of Thirdspace and let Cthulhu and his pals free from Ryleh only for H. P. Lovecraft to discover that the words rugose, cyclopean and bachtrachian aren't suitable in the circumstances?

A second thought: The name of the disaster. In Terminator it was "Judgment Day", in Nebulous (Oh my Bod), it's called "The Withering" Personally I like "The Scourge" even though it does sound like a failed 80s heavy metal act.

Thoughts?

 

[davidlallen]

I like the idea of acid rain and failed crop events. I don't know if you have played the Gods Of Old BTS scenario, but they have a "plague" event I would like to steal. It's an actual brown cloud that moves around and spreads. I would use that for "radiation storm" or something similar.

You've got a pretty complete list of possible reasons. I have one in mind, but it's a big expansion and I don't want to spoil the surprise. You can see there's lots of radiation, so it is nuclear rather than biological. Also, this is taking place on one continent, theoretically Australia.

One item I may add in the future is a "ruined bio lab". This would have a different effect than the ruined silos, etc. Instead of giving units, it would give technologies, or some more random effects. One idea is accidentally releasing a small plague, either uncontrolled (a bad event that happens to you) or controlled (you get a single usage unit that can travel somewhere and then release a plague). There are also possible biological technologies like cloning (extra +food for sheep) or supermutants -- possibly large and green in color

I like "The Scourge" as a name for the event. I'm sure most of the obvious names have been used in one book/series or another; are you aware of anything which used "The Scourge" before?

 

[Jabie]

The Scourge: Atilla the Hun was also known as The Scourge of God. His germanic tribes constantly raided the Roman Empire, and, as such, he was a factor (although not the only one) in it's fall.

 

[thomas.berubeg]

I think your safe with "the Scourge." (though personally, i don't like the name) I googled Postapocolyptic the scourge, and got no hits.

 

[Uberslacker]

The tabletop rpg Earthdawn also uses the term Scourge in reference to an invasion of the game world by Chthulhu-type creatures, referred to collectively as Horrors. Funnily enough, this then left the place in a fairly apocalyptic state.

It's a great term, pithy and evocative. I say use it.

 

[Rock_Harder]

I have to wonder about limiting the scope to a single continent - if one continent was to be devastated, what happened to their opponents and more importantly their allies? While the survivors might fight amidst the irradiated ruins, eventually someone would come to claim the land. You're better off with a more or less global focus, imo, although there might be scattered pockets of relatively pristine areas.

Future MAD: Technology advances past that of the present day to technologies we can reasonably assume will exist: armed and unarmed drones, automated weapons platforms, powered exoskeleton armors, advanced ablative infantry armors and weapons using ultrasound, radiation and ECM's.

Then it all comes down to a standard confrontation, say the United States and China, with the world ending in a blaze of nuclear fire.

The technology to create these types of units could be the end of the tech tree, or could be restricted from building but be found in old abandoned military silos and storage yards. Perhaps they are defended by pre-war automated defenses, effectively preventing early retrieval.

Beijing and Washington (or whatever) would always appear on the map as ruins and have a single pre-war UU waiting to be claimed - an American advanced sort of heavy gunship helicopter and a Chinese nuclear tank which explodes when destroyed. These could be defended by 'barbarian' cannibal hordes with improvised weapons, requiring a full scale assault or significant firepower. These units could never be built ensuring only one of each per game.

These old UU's would confer a significant advantage to any player who secures one, enough to turn the tide of a war if used carefully, but are still quite vulnerable to ordinary weapons and especially to other pre-war advanced weapons. The nuclear tank would simply be a heavily armored normal attach tank with a built-in nuke used on self-destruct or death, the gunship a highly mobile and destructive yet fragile unit.

This same idea of technology or unit recovery could be used with the SkyNet backstory as well, where the human race presumably had more advanced weaponry than it does in the real world - to help ward off the powerful AI the humans could secure weaponry from ancient caches.

 

[Rock_Harder]

Heh, oops.

 

[davidlallen]

The idea of unique high-tech units is a good idea. I already have a few unique units which can be found in the ruins. I will think about adding a few of these. A gunship and tank, maybe a high strength, mobile artillery unit.

However, I am not sure about the playability of introducing a single ruin like Washington or Beijing. On a medium to large size map, some of the players will be very far away from it, and will have a much smaller chance to reach it. As a scenario, with a fixed map and start positions, you could make it fair. It's a good idea but I will keep it on the back burner for now.

I have made a few attempts to get the mechanics for what I see as the real explanation, but (a) it isn't working yet, and (b) I am hoping to surprise players, including by leaving the relevant units out of the civilopedia.

 

[Refar]

The idea of placing "Named Landmarks from the Past" on the map does sound great from flavour point of view. Your script already does place ruins in "clusters" - perhaps it could add landmark names to some of those clusters from some list (Once we replaced the Civ City lists with flavoured ones, we will have some "free" city names). Would give each map a more unique feel.

I am not fond of those "One Per Map"-superunits (Even if they are only slightly super).
This is something that goes well with premade, objective driven scenarios, but has rather negative effect on standard open random games (which i prefer to play).

 

[davidlallen]

In 0.7, I have added three unique units, similar to FFH heroes I guess. One of them is just the ultra-light fighter submitted by The_Coyote, although I hope he makes it into a gunship so I can use it as a scout. The other two are ute variants. But, they are equivalent to what you get when you pop a Great General onto a single unit: 20 XP, basically five promotions.

One of them is called "tankbuster" (weapon mount, antitank, road warrior 1&2, heavy armor) -- 24 strength against tanks, not quite equal to a tank without fortification bonus but close. The other is called "wanderer" (offroad driving, commando, radimmune, morale, sentry) -- basically a super scout.

These aren't strong enough to count as "super" units, since you could make them on your own. Maybe there is a threshold at which a unit becomes a super unit. I guess I agree that a single "super" unit would give too much advantage to the single player who gets it. But other interesting "sub-super" (?) units may be worthwhile.

 

[Jabie]

Possible UU Hero - The Interceptor.

Very fast car with ram bars, machine guns, can drop spike canisters, fire missiles and spread oil slicks. See "Freeway Fighter" by Ian Livingstone. Think KITT after Q has given it a makeover.

 

[Ajidica]

'The Scourge' was the name for the plauge in the book Dune: The Battle of Corrin by Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson. They might have called it the 'Deamon Scourge' though. As long as it isnt blatantly obvius where it comes from it should be fine. Mod looks cool to.

 

[westamastaflash]

These aren't strong enough to count as "super" units, since you could make them on your own. Maybe there is a threshold at which a unit becomes a super unit. I guess I agree that a single "super" unit would give too much advantage to the single player who gets it. But other interesting "sub-super" (?) units may be worthwhile.

I really like the idea of units scavenging for supplies, etc, and think that the primary "oomph" from a player's army ought to come from the scavenged units rather than the built ones.

Perhaps you could reduce even further the number of available built units - maybe just Crossbows, Bikes, Guardians, and Utes. I'd like to see crossbows be still around when infantry is, and the same with Bikes. If you increase the spawn rate of units in ruins slightly, you could have some very interesting setups (and the player would probably be much more careful with their "special" units).

Perhaps you could allow the building of gas-powered units with a very late tech (but you'd still need gas to refuel the units obtained from ruins)...

 

[davidlallen]

Interesting suggestion. I'd like more peoples' views on that. One early playtester (granted, on a version which is very different from today) commented that the rebuilt units were way too powerful and you hardly needed any units built in cities.

In my playtests recently, I find that four tanks and a couple of gas trucks can chew through enemy cities pretty quickly, while a stack of catapults and even AT infantry makes progress much more slowly if at all.

For most of the built units, the max strength is 14. The tank is strength 28. A fortified guardian in a decent city has strength around 24 (12 with 25% fort + 40% city def + say 25% from one promotion or another). You need a lot of units to defeat the infantry without tanks.

The SAM infantry (strength 18) and humvee (strength 20) are kind of in between. Both require munitions, so you could view these as "partly rebuilt", but they are only limited by your production instead of the depot hard limit.

 

[arkham4269]

Any chance of getting some Ape Civ's? Having them would also tie into what happened in the world, that being ape revolt coupled with the standard mega-corporations running the various governments going at it.

Their missionary for their "Lawgiver" Vision would be a Orangutan in the orange outfit. Their workers would be a standard "human slave" from practically any early period. A lot of the early units like the Salvager would be a mix of the apes, but the later military units would mostly be Gorillas. Or maybe (if the Art department types could swing it) the Jeep would have a Chimp in green driving and the Gorilla in Purple firing the gun.

 

[arkham4269]

In my playtests recently, I find that four tanks and a couple of gas trucks can chew through enemy cities pretty quickly, while a stack of catapults and even AT infantry makes progress much more slowly if at all.

I found this as well. Maybe you should fiddle with things to make it a bit harder (and later) for getting these units but maybe have 1 or 2 available as a 'hero' unit. So before you have the ability to make tanks, you still might have Tank Girl running around causing damage.

Plus, sorry to keep harping about this, but steampunk love aside, making a big, low tech tank isn't that hard if you have lots of metal (lots of broken buildings laying around to say nothing of totaled cars) and access to some cranes. The only problem is they'd be big and slow...but you could even make them bigger...say on the order of...

Now THAT would strike fear into the hearts of Man! Plus if you can't have ships, you now have a place to put some of those guns from the wreck ships lying around on your beaches! (Yes I know I'm showing my age by referencing a Steve Jackson game here)

 

[davidlallen]

Any chance of getting some Ape Civ's?

Cool idea! I have in mind an expansion to the game which will answer what happened to cause the apocalypse. But it's not apes. Maybe another mod ...

(Yes I know I'm showing my age by referencing a Steve Jackson game here)

The image doesn't come up for me, but surely you mean "Ogre". I guess that means I am showing the same age. It came out in 1979 or so IIRC.

I like the idea of singleton hero tanks. In fact I was going to call my first unique unit "tank girl" instead of tankbuster, but I wanted to use the ute body. Perhaps a bright pink tank ...

 

[arkham4269]

The image doesn't come up for me, but surely you mean "Ogre". I guess that means I am showing the same age. It came out in 1979 or so IIRC..

It's just a take on the original OGRE cover that someone gave to the original artist. It's a steam-driven OGRE. Actually if you do a google search for steam vehicles you get some interesting things.