Great Idea for Modpack- Criminal

[UnGenius]

:enlighten I have an idea brewing in my head, and I'd like some feedback/suggestions: Making Civ3 into a Gang/Criminal type game. The map would be of a large city-type environment. Some things that would be changed are:

Culture-->Reputation
Cities-->Bases/Hideouts
Roads--> City Streets
Railroads--> Alleys

And the city improvements would be changed into base improvements, like a granary would become a refrigerator, and barracks would become a training room or something. Some ideas for units are:

Bodyguard
Armed Guard
Gunner
Car
Armored Car
Arsonist
Lookout
Hitman
Convict

Government Types would be Criminal Structures, like Organized Crime; Barbarians would be the Police; Leaders and Armies would become Gangsters and Gangs.

What I really need advice on is the tech tree, sea/air units and the terrain. I was thinking, instead of a square that provides a lot of food, I could put a drug store, but that would look pretty dumb with 3 or 4 drug stores around every base.

Any thoughts or suggestions, please respond.

 

[sgrig]

Interesting idea!

Maybe the police, city authorities etc, should be a different civ, rather than barbs, so that they can have more weight in the game and maybe ally themselves with a mafia group against another one (these things do happen sometimes!). Possibly this civ could have a 'government type' similar to democracy, while the 'government types' used by the gangs more similar to communism or despotism.

Some of the units used by the gangs should have hidden nationality, so that they can conduct operations even when not officially at war with each other.

Also, tax collectors should be changed to racketeers, entertainers to strippers and I'm not sure what role scientists would play in a criminal world.

Maybe some of the civs should be just large companies, which are not necessarily criminal, again with a very productive 'government', and the criminals should be aiming to take over shops etc.

Currently it is difficult to make such a scenario, because there is ability to place cities, units etc, in the editor, but when Firaxis does release a proper scenario editor, then such a scenario will be great.

It would be great if the graphics for this scenario would be 'night-time', ie with dark buildings but with some lights on, etc!

 

[UnGenius]

I like your idea of making the police into another Civ. It'd be pretty cool to play as cops. But then they would have to have their own techs, their own units, their own diplomacy, etc. I'm sure someone out there has created a SWAT team unit or something, but still it would be a lot of work.

As for the night-time suggestion, I think that would have a nice effect. Maybe Fog of War could become Darkness.

Entertainers to strippers would be great, it fits into the game perfectly.

As for making corporations into playable civs, that would be yet another thing that would require new units, government, diplomacy, techs, etc.

To do this, I'd have to design new units with FLICster, edit some files in /Text, and change most of the game's terrain graphics. It's possible, and none of it is really all that complicated, but since it's such a massive project, it would take a lot of people and/or a lot of time.

 

[Umask077]

Unfortunatly the game system does allow for different technologies based on civ. All civs would be eligible for all forms of gov however you can make a civ despise others.

Id play the mod myself but I think alot of the way the game works would get in the way of implementation in alot of areas. Dan over at Firaxis was nice enough to explain thier position on modding the game. Most of the mods you'd need for outside the scope of there goals for upgrades and rightly so. They would require major changes to the game. Still be kinda fun to mess with.

-- The difference between corperations, goverments, and the mafias is only in thier means. - Me

 

[Lord CocoaBeans]

hey if this mod goes ahead count me in for helping as for the techs have a default line that everyone has to reasearch but lots on non-essential for era advancement techs that give units only to gangsters/cops/buisnesses.

 

[sgrig]

I wonder if in Civ3 techs can be made into "closed loops". I'll explain what I mean:

Say you have techs A, B, C, with B dependent on A and C dependent on B, then if it is possible to make A dependent on C, we'll have a loop and so none of these techs can be researched.

Now, if we use some kind of saved games editor, we could give tech A to a certain civ, and then only it will be able to research techs B and C. Of course tech trading will still be a problem...

But if this works, it goes some way to allowing civ-specific advances.

UMask: I agree with your quote! That's why such a scenario would be fun!

 

[UnGenius]

somebody was talking about the looped-techs thing a while ago, trying to prevent era advancement, and said it had caused a crash. what i was thinking was, if we can make each civ type (gangs, corps, and cops) start in a different era, each with techs that that civ would use, then we could put Useless Tech A at the end of the first era, Useless Tech B at the end of the second era, etc.. These techs would recquire a rediculous amount of research, and so certain civs would never even get to anything that is irrelevant to them.

 

[sgrig]

Yeah that's an excellent idea!

 

[UnGenius]

thanks, afaik, it'll work. do you have any ideas for units for the corps?

 

[Bjorn Bjornson]

looped techs only crash the game if they cross eras. so for the first era you could easily have civ specific tech trees, but i dunno how to limit them after advancing into a new era,

damn era system. like that one reviewer said, its too unilinear - and it can really put a crimp into mod ideas

 

[sgrig]

For the cops we could have the following units:

*Policeman - just a standard cop
*Armoured Car - similar to mech inf maybe
*Riot police - more powerful version of policeman
*Special Police force - something like SWAT or whatever, could be hidden nationality, all as road, paradroppable
*Helicopter - maybe for transport and recon
*Motor boat - water transport, etc
*Tear gas - weak 'cruise missile'

Unfortunately the AI does not seem to use ground transport units too keenly, otherwise we could've had a police car which can transport policemen, and similarly armoured car.

 

[Centrifuge]

Excellent Idea,

Aside from the police, I think that the FBI should also become involved... Just a thought.

 

[SubZero]

Terrain (grassland, forest etc) should look like city environment and the cities would be just HQ of criminal gangs.

Police and mafia could search same tech but they wouldn't get the same units...

There are plenty ideas for different resources for sure...

I thought that making mafia gangs to some sort of big companies that fight for the power against police and fbi civs...