Is it possible to make new Commander types & abilities?

[Spiderbyte]

I am considering learning how to MOD for Civilization 7 because I am quite fond of the sandbox design and think it has huge potential. But before I invest time, I wanted to find out some things.

Can new commander unit types be created, with unique features and icons?

An example…

A Lich King with a packed army of assorted undead. Can be an Ai spawned event mob or playable.

The Lich King’s army killing enemy unit in range of the Lich King adds an undead version of the unit that can’t be healed, to the Lich King’s pack. Adding to exp skill trees can increase the power of these units and even provide some with an unnatural regeneration, when in range of the Arch Lich.

Can kill his own units to heal.

Increasing the skill tree for sacrifice can lead to combat or defensive bonuses for surviving undead units.

Can drain life via touching an adjacent unit using a skill.

Obviously it would be super cool if it was possible to add in game undead units that are custom made.

Is it possible? Dragons etc?

It seems the damage over time component opens up a lot of RPG elements that could make the player version of Civ 7, way more fun and lasting.

Anyways I hope to get some feedback as I don’t see any specific unit stuff being modded so far.

 

[Smayo]

I can say for sure it’s possible to make new commanders, and there’s someone working on custom promotion trees.

As for some of those abilities. Some might be harder than others:

- adding an new unit when you kill a unit seems doable, as the Corsair works, and in civ VI, there was a way to convert captured units to a different unit type

- the promotion based strength and regen, I think that would be quite easy to do

- not sure if you could sacrifice units via an action, unsure. Or granting experience from it

- adjacent draining touch, you could probably have it be a ranged attack with one range and heal on attack? Not sure if you could do healing to the same amount as you dealt damage those.

- for visuals currently we cannot add new 3d Models, hopefully that will come with steam workshop support.

 

[Spiderbyte]

I can say for sure it’s possible to make new commanders, and there’s someone working on custom promotion trees.

As for some of those abilities. Some might be harder than others:

- adding an new unit when you kill a unit seems doable, as the Corsair works, and in civ VI, there was a way to convert captured units to a different unit type

- the promotion based strength and regen, I think that would be quite easy to do

- not sure if you could sacrifice units via an action, unsure. Or granting experience from it

- adjacent draining touch, you could probably have it be a ranged attack with one range and heal on attack? Not sure if you could do healing to the same amount as you dealt damage those.

- for visuals currently we cannot add new 3d Models, hopefully that will come with steam workshop support.

Nice! The plan was to make the Lich King use the blizzard effect 5% of turns, while he is active.

As for the spawning a unit inside the Lich King pack, it would have a cool down timer, like the reinforcement feature except it would automatically happen. The higher the level of the target killed, the longer it takes by 1 turn. Skill tree promotions could reduce that.

I just like to get the creative juices flowing.

Ty for the response.

Another one would be a Demon lord who captures enemies he defeats in combat to his pack (lost souls) who are trapped inside and add all their combat and defensive stats and abilities stack to the demon lord. He can't unpack the units and when he dies, the units respawn under the command of the victor, with 5% health.

I think these type of events would be fun in game. They had vampires in Civ 6, so this wouldn't be a stretch.

Defeating such a commander would unlock it for your account so you could create and grow your own.

The same could be done for Arch mages etc.

They really created quite an amazing sandbox game but launched it so poorly, I almost asked for a refund on my Visa.

 

[LilBudyWizer]

It would cetainly be interesting to turn the game into Heroes of Might & Magic. A zombie apocalypse crisis would certainly be more interesting than the plague. I wish you the best of luck. I think it would be a bit ambitious as a starting point. If you wanted to do Civilization does Heroes of Might & Magic there's a whole lot of details you have to work out. Personally, just introducing a unique unit that is neither overpowered nor irrelevant would be quite an accomplishment. It doesn't have to be a zombie. When it comes time to add a zombie you'll have a far better idea how, or more why, to do that. There's checkers and then there's chess. Checkers has one type of unit, chess has six. What is a zombie? Is that a pawn? That process of increasing complexity by introducing more complex units applies to every game. Look at cards. Thirteen cards, four suits and nearly an infinite number of game to be played with a deck.

 

[Spiderbyte]

It would cetainly be interesting to turn the game into Heroes of Might & Magic. A zombie apocalypse crisis would certainly be more interesting than the plague. I wish you the best of luck. I think it would be a bit ambitious as a starting point. If you wanted to do Civilization does Heroes of Might & Magic there's a whole lot of details you have to work out. Personally, just introducing a unique unit that is neither overpowered nor irrelevant would be quite an accomplishment. It doesn't have to be a zombie. When it comes time to add a zombie you'll have a far better idea how, or more why, to do that. There's checkers and then there's chess. Checkers has one type of unit, chess has six. What is a zombie? Is that a pawn? That process of increasing complexity by introducing more complex units applies to every game. Look at cards. Thirteen cards, four suits and nearly an infinite number of game to be played with a deck.

Actually part of the plan was to link the Lich King event with plague events. If one plague event spawns, the Lich King spawns on a frozen tile.

But also opening a tribal hut in a frozen land could trigger Lich King as well.

Only 1 Lich King can spawn per era. No guarantees.

 

[Spiderbyte]

This is the only Commander mod I have found so far. It allows you to pack naval units and move them over land at a movement rate of 1 per turn.

I am guessing modding commanders must be tough.

Resource icon

Portage: Transport Ships on Land

Mar 24, 2025

Adds a new Commander type that can transport ships across land tiles.

• Smayo
• Civ7 - Mod Components

 

[LilBudyWizer]

I think the high fantasy in a historical game is going to be the biggest challenge due to the lack of any existing assets supporting it. It seems it would be easiest to translate it into historical. Think Xerces and his Immortals or the Wizard of Oz. You could do sort of a modern vampire mythology. They just want you to believe vampires are superstitious nonsense so you don't pay attention. You could do it episodic. As you work out how to do things you elaborate. Maybe start with a goodie hut that with a narrative about rumors of a Lich King. They have a couple of narratives where you reject the superstition you get a science reward, if you accept it you get culture. Just doing a narrative is a good starting point Evolve it into some guy claiming to be a Lich King as you learn to spawn units and such. Evolve that into, well, there might be something to it, they do have some strange and mysterious powers. As you get the assets to support it, oh no, that was someone piggybacking on the real Lich King, he's real.

Particularly any narrative is going to get old if you play enough. A new release of a mod doesn't have to be new features and bug fixes, it could just be more of the story. Particularly if you're using CivMods to update all mods. It doesn't have to be elaborate, just enough for them to say, wait, that's new. It would be rather unique among mods.

Edit: The easiest way to tell how hard is download it and look at it. Often the hardest part is how to do it and not the doing part. I might just take a few minutes to create an XML to make the needed changes to the relevant tables, but days to figure out which tables and what values. It may be there's only one because that's the person that figured out how to do it. Others can then just follow their example.

 

[Smayo]

This is the only Commander mod I have found so far. It allows you to pack naval units and move them over land at a movement rate of 1 per turn.

I am guessing modding commanders must be tough.

Resource icon

Portage: Transport Ships on Land

Mar 24, 2025

Adds a new Commander type that can transport ships across land tiles.

• Smayo
• Civ7 - Mod Components

Oh that’s me!

That mod is technically a commander mod, but I made it to be more like a Support Unit, I intentionally didn’t give it any promotions or ability to get experience. Just gave it enough so I could load units into it.

I do think it would be possible to do a custom promotions tree.

 

[Spiderbyte]

Oh that’s me!

That mod is technically a commander mod, but I made it to be more like a Support Unit, I intentionally didn’t give it any promotions or ability to get experience. Just gave it enough so I could load units into it.

I do think it would be possible to do a custom promotions tree.

Super cool ty I use the mod.

Is it possible to link weather events to a commander? IE : Blizzard?

 

[Smayo]

Not sure, there was a unit in civ VI that could cause natural disasters, but it wasn’t very moddable