How to improve the civs?

[Apepis]

I think it would be cool if Fury Road civilizations were more like civs in Fall from Heaven 2. That is: more diverse in gameplay and flavor. I also think that the community should help in design of the mods - and so I start this thread.

Have you got any ideas for new civs in post-apocalyptic setting? Or maybe you want to suggest some improvements to the existing ones? Some people will surely find all your ideas usefull, so post them here.

 

[davidlallen]

I agree that among all mods, FFH has the most diversity between civs. Way more, in fact, than vanilla; that is one of the strongest points of FFH. The first step is to establish Unique Units for all the civs. It is possible that a good second step is to make more "flavorful" government civics -- slavery is a very common suggestion -- and then have different civs prefer the different civics. I had attempted this way back in version 3-5, but I got tangled up between this mechanic and the capitol victory mechanic. Adding a set of civics for this would be a good enhancement for Fury Road.

Apart from UU's and more flavorful civics, what other categories of improvements do you think would be worthwhile?

 

[Avahz Darkwood]

Don't mention a media pack run: runs for cover as davidlallen releases the wrath of rabid rad scorpions that look like panthers )

 

[Jabie]

A list of the Civs and their backgrounds might help inspire ideas. As far as I can recall this is the current list of Civs and their theme.

Ares: B-movie director. Theme: Roman Empire

Brandi: Naive helper. Theme: Cooperation

Christopher: Minor government official. Theme: Order, Continiuty

Hallowe'en Jack: Rock Star. Theme: Chaos, Creativity

Ironhead: Ex-convict. Theme: Might is right, Vengeance.

Kilobyte: Worships tech, including flaky AI. Theme: Technology

Stein: Religious fascist. Theme: Religion

Viktor: Survivalist / cultist. Theme: Sun Worship (Aztecs?)

Peter: Gamer, Theme: Lost Innocence

Mick: Former white slave trader. Theme : Liberation, possibly Redemption

Martha: Overprotective Nanny, Theme: Childhood, Protectionism

Tinker: Junkyard gadgeteer. Theme: Exodus

Stevie: Hippy Mutant: Theme: Mutation, New Age

Trudy: Daughter of Thor or propagandist charlatan. Theme: Vikings

 

[davidlallen]

A list of the Civs and their backgrounds might help inspire ideas. As far as I can recall this is the current list of Civs and their theme.

Viktor: Survivalist / cultist. Theme: Sun Worship (Aztecs?)

Stevie: Hippy Mutant: Theme: Mutation, New Age

Trudy: Daughter of Thor or propagandist charlatan. Theme: Vikings

Thanks! A couple of corrections. I hadn't really thought about "Themes" specifically, but Viktor isn't religious, more psychotic. The "phoenix" in the name comes from rising from the ashes. Although I saw the movie "The Postman" after the mod was mostly done, the bad guy General Bethlehem is a good match. Perhaps the theme should be "Rising from the Ashes".

I would put "druggie" rather than "mutant" for Stevie. She is the only one without a written background yet. But more "Grateful Dead" rather than "Un Dead"

For Trudy, I guess you meant Debbie, "Guild of Steel". Some people may recognize "Brotherhood of Steel" from the Fallout series of games, this is a little more "politically correct" Her theme is "paladin", or "the strong must help the less fortunate".

 

[Jabie]

I would put "druggie" rather than "mutant" for Stevie. She is the only one without a written background yet. But more "Grateful Dead" rather than "Un Dead"

There's a couple of suggested backgrounds in the Leader background text for Stevie and Debbie / Trudy.

 

[Jabie]

Perhaps the theme should be "Rising from the Ashes".

Sounds good to me.

 

[Bahmo]

Shouldn't a fascist be given a less Jewish name? That seems pretty ironic.

 

[davidlallen]

Referring to "Stein"? This is a German name, meaning "Stone".

 

[Bahmo]

I speak German, so yes, I'm aware of that; however "Stein" has come to be considered stereotypically Jewish. Even if it isn't necessarily, the mod seems to be leaning in the direction of extreme characatures of ideologies.

 

[davidlallen]

Perhaps he has over-compensated for a Jewish-sounding name and that is one reason why he is such a determined Neo-Nazi.

 

[Slaughter]

UU suggestions for New Rome:

Chariots. Cavalry/Vehicles for Ares to command. Bonus against early gunpowder (muskets, flintlocks, weak pistols, etcetera...) and archers. They should have multiple versions of them:

1st version (early game): Moved by horses. Cavalry. Look pretty much like vanilla chariots, except that the soldiers look more post-apoc. Vulnerable to good guns. (not muskets and flintlocks)

2nd version (mid-game): Moved by steam power. Vehicles that don't need to refuel. Not vulnerable to guns. Van Buren (BIS' cancelled Fallout 3) had a group of humans with chariots moved by steam power. They look like this: http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/thumb/a/a1/Legion.jpg/800px-Legion.jpg

3rd version (late mid-game): Perfected second version. Maybe mounted heavy weapons on a wagon, or a lot of shooters in a chariot? Not as good as normal vehicles, but superior to late cavalry and doesn't run out of fuel.


Legion: Powerful, disciplined melee formation. Uses roman tactics and formations to defeat other melee units and crossbownmen, so they get good bonuses against both. Can't do much against guns, though, so they get a penalty against them. No penalty or advantage against cavalry and no chance against vehicles.

1st version (early game): A bunch of guys with spears, big knifes and junk shields and maybe some armor. Disciplined, if compared to other melee troops. Perfect for a rush along some gunpowder and crossbows for cover.

2nd version (late mid-game): A rag-tag mix of spears, shorts swords, strong shields and armor.

3rd version (mid-game): Good swords, some spears, best shield and armor of all melee units. Pretty brutal with proper cover by ranged units. They totally kill other melee units.

What do you guys think?

 

[Seven05]

I agree that among all mods, FFH has the most diversity between civs. Way more, in fact, than vanilla; that is one of the strongest points of FFH. ...

Apart from UU's and more flavorful civics, what other categories of improvements do you think would be worthwhile?

I think one of the strongpoints of FfH's diverse civs come from the unique mechanics that some of them have. Even then, it's a shame they aren't a bit more different in some respects, primarily with the UUs.

What I think would be fun for variety is to have more generic technologies with the benefits of them being different for each civ. For example, why must everybody have the same units unlocked by the same techs as every other civ? I can understand the need for a few basics such as the generic survivors to start with but beyond that some variety in the units could make for completely different tech strategies between the civs. Expanding this to include buildings and improvements could give more of a 'one man's junk is another's treasure' feeling to the game.

Don't mention a media pack run: runs for cover as davidlallen releases the wrath of rabid rad scorpions that look like panthers )

Should I release my tweaks then? I have a full set of new terrain textures (including water, rivers and a jungle replacement), new music (Ripped from thw Witcher game) and modified versions of a few other map scripts (Great_Wastes, a modified GreatPlains.py and Wastelands a modified Highlands.py and one custom script based on my 'Erebus Continent' map script for FfH).

 

[davidlallen]

What I think would be fun for variety is to have more generic technologies with the benefits of them being different for each civ. For example, why must everybody have the same units unlocked by the same techs as every other civ? I can understand the need for a few basics such as the generic survivors to start with but beyond that some variety in the units could make for completely different tech strategies between the civs. Expanding this to include buildings and improvements could give more of a 'one man's junk is another's treasure' feeling to the game.

I agree that would add a lot! There are two parts: first, coming up with good concepts with sufficiently diverse stats. Second, coming up with good art. We have had a few suggestions for UU's, and we could probably come up with more. If we get lucky, we can get some artists (re-) interested in the project.

Should I release my tweaks then? I have a full set of new terrain textures (including water, rivers and a jungle replacement), new music (Ripped from thw Witcher game) and modified versions of a few other map scripts (Great_Wastes, a modified GreatPlains.py and Wastelands a modified Highlands.py and one custom script based on my 'Erebus Continent' map script for FfH).

Do those map scripts generate ruins and highways? That would be really cool. If not, I'm not sure how well they would work for Fury Road.

 

[Seven05]

Hey, nice to see you still poking around in here

Yes, the both add the ruins and roads, for the two converted civ maps I just ripped your code and dropped in it them. The modified Great Plains map suffers from the same thing you commented on in your script with regards to the quantity of plains vs grassland, it has a LOT of plains so it can be tough to grow. I like the effect personally but it can really cripple the AI. The Highlands script is also heavy on plains but the dispersion is a bit more even so it works out more evenly between the different civs. Both are flat maps with minimal water which works well with Fury Road's lack of naval units My custom script has code that I wrote specifically for placing ruins, it's a lot like yours and the road code is merely re-arranged cut & paste work from your script. I was actually considering making some new terrain types to use specifically on that script since it uses a height map rather than fractal generation. That one isn't really usable right now, starting plot placement is horrible (using defaults) for the map and I still have some FfH specific rules for terrain & feature placement that need to be adjusted to better suit Fury Road's gameplay.

For Civs I was thinking about adding a few to play off of the post-apocalyptic genre, ripping some inspiration from the zombie apocalypse genre as well. So a 'government agency' civ and another for the 'evil corporation.' The basic idea being that the gov't civ is some hold-out that was burried in some underground bunker, probably second generation survivors so they'd be brainwashed beyond belief. The basic concept with them would be something that appeared more structured (uniformed militia for example) and completely intollerant of the 'barbarians' living on the surface in their disorganized cities full of misguided scavengers leeching off the decay of the past world. The evil corporation would be bent on taking over the world, in a sense, very underhanded and relying heavily on covert actions. They'd be more fitting in the zombie apocalypse scenario but even here if they are the remains of some large arms development corporation seeking to reclaim what was theirs and rebuild it they'd work well enough. I think you have just about everything else covered from the psychopaths to the hippies

I'll get the map scripts uploaded soon. It's pretty easy to convert any of the original Civ4 scripts so if there are any requests for things like Inland Sea or some of the others I could probably whip them up quickly enough.

 

[davidlallen]

Cool! I wil definitely try them out. Regarding the new civ ideas, I wanted to stay away from anything involving zombies. That's a whole genre by itself. I'm sure you know about Necro Cristi, the zombie apocalypse mod, but it is no longer in active development.

One of the current civs is already a government fragment which survived in bunkers: Christopher Lehman of New Australia. If you haven't come across it, I have a web page with summaries of the civs at this link. The evil corporation kind of fits Phoenix Army, or maybe Kingtown. This type of idea can help inspire more UU's, which is another good future area for development.

 

[Seven05]

Regarding the new civ ideas, I wanted to stay away from anything involving zombies.

Yeah, I saw you say that a few times, my thought was more along the line of stealing the idea for a civ, so something like 'Umbrela Corp' minus the genetic experiments leading to zombies but still greedy and hell-bent on running the world their way. They could have some fun UU's like corporate helicopters and black Chevy Suburbans just to make all the other players hate them if nothing else.

Let me take a step back for a minute and layout some ideas I had, they're not all specific to any particular civ but they open up some mechanics to allow for more diversity between the civs.

I'll start with bonuses (resources) since their behavior can impact a lot of gameplay aspects. There is a mechanic in place already to have them disappear over time, using this allows you to have pre-placed resource for man-made products that won't be around forever. For instance you have a munitions bonus already, allowing it to vanish after some time would have the effect of simulating limited but unkown quantities of these bonuses. Ideally, this would be followed up with a building (world or national wonder) that could then supply the same resource. From here you have an interesting new mechanic where the 'survival' phase is about making due with what you find and the 'rebuilding' phase is about becoming more self-sufficient. You could also increase the value of specific resources substantially, for example if you have an 'oil' resource represented by an oil tank that can expire over time and then later a new oil resource (but only say one per 3 or 4 players) becomes available working like the current oil where it requires a well and never expires.

For technologies, something a little more generic than the current set and more defined 'paths' to give the player a choice with some consequences. Continuing from the exmaples with bonuses above you could have one branch of technologies dedicated to survival, this branch would be the lease expensive (and perhaps used as prereqs for others) and focus on revealing bonuses and allowing improvements to access them. Another focus could be environmental type promotions (woodsman, etc) so the entire set of survival techs could provide some very good bonuses to a player that pursued the entire line while others cut short to focus on empire building or a more advanced military.

Since the techs would be more generic (e.g. 'Basic Weaponry' rather than 'Firearms') they could be combined with hidden, non-researchable, non-tradable techs given to each civ at the start of the game to produce a unique feel to the tech tree for each civ. This opens up the possibility of things like 'basic weaponry' opening up a mounted weapon promotion for one civ while another would instead get a new unit or perhaps a firing range building. This also makes it possible to have hundreds of unique units and buildings without needing list of hundreds of unique units displaying when you look at the civ info. It also makes it possible to abuse things like the relgions and corporations as extensions to a specific civ, for example if you get my religion but it's civ specific you wouldn't be able to build the 'missionary' units to spread it although I would be able to.

So when you take everything combined you can have variety through things like limited resources that can only be used by (or even seen by) specific civs, unique civ-specific improvements and units that are not only unique looking but completely different because the come with different technologies, require access to different resources and use their own unique set of promotions. Obviously using this to extreme levels would be unrealistic to try and achieve without a lot of help but using small portions of it can create a lot of variety. So instead of everybody having a completely different set of units they could each get a few of those and then some promotions that nobody else can access and maybe a few extra buildings or improvements, just enough to make them look and play different from the next civ. If you end up with one civ that is constantly getting new units form techs while another only has a few basic units to start with but opens up powerful promotions you have your different playstyles, and that's only one quick example.