[Mod] Civ4: Blood Gods - Planning / early coding stages

[jeff_vandenberg]

I have been charting out with a couple friends a way to combine two of my personally highly regarded games.

1) Civ4

2) Vampire: the Requiem.

It's a match made in hell.. I know. I have already made some design concessions, and am taking from other sources other than Requiem.

The basic idea of the mod is that instead of playing human civilizations you are playing vampiric civilizations that are trying to bring the world under it's heel and establish itself as the sole vampiric power. Sounds easy enough, right?

A major change to the functionality of the gameplay is that you will not be able to build settlers. Instead you have to infiltrate barbarian/unaligned cities and take them over by sending in a special vampiric unit which can be sacrificed to build a Vampire Warrens in a city. Once you have the Vampire Warrens in a city, that city is considered yours until either 1) the humans clue in that their new masters aren't exactly human or 2) another Vampiric civ eradicates all of your warrens from the city by having their own vampires infiltrate the city to destroy your warrens.

I am taking cues from the Fall From Heaven mod, as the guys who worked on it did such a fantastic job.

There will only be 5 playable Civilizations that correspond to the 5 clans in Requiem, but under each clan there will be numerous leaders (5+ eventually) and you would get a diplomacy bonus for interacting with other leaders from your same clan.

You can build Vampire Warrens in your cities. Warrens are non-unique buildings, that each cause 1 sickness per structure. You need to have 1 warren in a city for each vampiric unit you want to house in the city. There may also come to be other uses for Warrens. I simply haven't figured them out yet.

There will be an 'wonder' victory ala Alpha Centauri.. Where if you can build the artifact that was in the Blade Movie, then you've gotten to a transcended state and have truly become a Blood God and none can stand in your way, and thus you've won.

There will be Bloodline Wonders. The requirements for these, I'm uncertain of. But the basic jist is that these wonders will be specific to clans, and a civ can only build 1 bloodline wonder. Each bloodline wonder will confirm a special benefit and potentially penalty to all of your Vampiric Units.

Vampiric Units can potentially gain health from defeating their enemies. However, they lose health when they are outside of a city. Right now i'm eyeballing a loss of 10% health per turn, unless there are friendly human units, then the healthiest of which will lose 10% health. This loss is mitigated by having a non-combatant Herd unit in the square which will take the loss until it's dead.

The Requiem Covenants will be translated to be Religions in the game. The details of what each would do, i'm still uncertain of. I do like how FFH has religions having a very distinct effect on the game and your options.

I am uncertain of additional techs or modified techs. I don't intend for the game to go to the modern era. I am thinking of a timeline more along the lines of FFH.. ending in a middle fantasty era. Vampire and Tanks really don't mix well. Besides who wants to see a Vampiric Tank? ;-)

I'm still sketching out some civics.. but again that's an area that still needs alot of idea and development on my behalf as I try to plan this.


I have identified one huge hole in the plan, at least a potential one. i need to teach the AI somehow to use vampiric infiltration to destroy/plant Warrens to attack/take over cities.

If anyone has any thoughts, feel free to comment.

I've enjoyed reading some of the how-to's in the forums.

Jeff Vandenberg

 

[Kael]

It sounds cool.

You're right the alternative city capture method will be the most difficult. What about other forms of combat? Will units be able to take cities? Can they attack cities? Do they have to clear the city of defenders before one of the special units can place a warren in it?

The best way to handle the warrens is a special ai script for it, but that can be very complex. You may be okay with a pushmission python action to send them to cities that are ready for conversion, and block moves otherwise.

You may want to consider working on the aspects of the mod you are more familiar with changing first, then getting to facets like this later on. You might find that your implementation has changed after you have played with it a bit and the experience will only make it easier to do.

 

[jeff_vandenberg]

Re: Alternate combat.. That is something that I had talked about with friends.

You can't take another city through strictly military force. I may leave the option of razing a city, but I'm not sure. If you successfully defeat all of the units in a city you will destroy half of the existing warrens in the city.

Destroying all of the units in a city would have another more significant benefit, one that I failed to mention in my earlier post.

Infesting a city or sneaking in to destroy a warren: When a vampire moves to infest a city with Warrens or destroy warrens, there is a certain chance of failure. This chance of failure goes up when there are units defending the city. There would likely be unit upgrades related to being able to better prevent infestations or vampiric invasion.


There are still numerous questions related to culture in this game. My initial thought is that anytime you infest a city it's culture immediately goes down to 0 to be worked back up again. I doubt cultural conversion will work, though enough culture may be able to cause problems for vampires in a city in some fashion.


I am looking to implement the clans and leaders first and to be able to work on designating a unit as a vampire unit or a regular unit first.

 

[jeff_vandenberg]

A potential thought, as I start to code in some basic Civ info.. how does the AI handle Spies and their attempts to sabotage build efforts in a city? I could likely spin something from that for governing AI attempts to destroy Vampire Warrens.

 

[Vehem]

Lots of excellent possibilities here, drawing on Vampire fiction across the board for unit ideas...

I'm working on the assumption here that combat forces will be primarily human being manipulated by the "vampire masters", with a few vampiric combat units. Representing the "Masquerade" could be done in a similar manner to Civ3 "International Incidents" - breaking it could cause trouble in your cities throughout the empire with unhappiness and warren damage, plus diplomatic penalties ("Your rash behaviour threatens the masquerade -4").

Regarding unit ideas;

• Knightly order Vampires (ala WHFB Blood Knights) - strong unit, armoured, "noble", can engage in direct combat without risk to the masquerade.
• "Great" and "Ancient" vampires that cannot be constructed, but only upgraded from an early (and obsoleted) unit that has sufficient experience, once a certain timepoint/tech/era is reached.
• Vampire "punk" gangs (ala Blade or the modern sections of the Anne Rice novels) - young vampires with modern weaponary/attitudes
• "Deathdealer" style special forces (ala Underworld) - invisible to all human units and adept at infiltration and elimination of other vampires

There would also likely be units that are purely vampiric, based upon the 5 houses. These could engage in combat with each other freely, but if they had to offensively engage human units, there would be a chance of breaking the Masquerade. The chance would be dependant on the house and specific unit - Gangrels and Nosferatu would be generally stronger with more chane to break the masquerade, whilst the Venture would be weaker with little chance of breaking it (making them useful more often, but less overpowering than a single well placed attack by the others).

 

[jeff_vandenberg]

Yes there would be something of a masquerade in the game. I hadn't thought of the diplomatic penalty, though that is a nice idea.

I had been thinking of something different. That if you have too many or too few warrens in a city then there is a chance that the city ends up revolting against you. If this happened the city would break away and found it's own human-centric "hunter" civilization. They would get a very strong unit that would keep that city basically impossible to infest, and as long as that hero existed there would be an enhanced level of unhappiness in vampiric held cities.

You are correct that the major focus would be human units manipulated by "vampiric masters".

I hadn't thought of doing Great and Ancient Vampire units in exactly that route, but that is certainly interesting and something to kick around once I get to that stage.

I am trying to avoid the modern era in the game, at least right now I am. Who knows what my thoughts will be like once I get deeper into the project. I can only think so far ahead.

Blooded Knights are intriging and definately can find their way into the game.

I hadn't considered the possibility of a masquerade breach when a vampiric unit attacks a non-vampiric unit.

 

[Starship]

Sounds like a very fun idea. From my time playing Vampire the Masquerade back in the day...a couple questions, and ideas.

1. I would make the clans civs...Ventrue, Brujah, Nosferatu, Gangrel, Followers of Set...all of the clans civs. They were individual entities in the beginning. Only later with the Sabbat split did they join up. That should be a second tech bracket UN kind of deal somehow. The split would leave independants, Sabbat, and the Masquerade ( I forget the exact name)

2. The game should start in the early middle ages and go to present imo, and vampires shouldn't have control of the city itself exactly...just influence. Say you have media 2, you break the masquerade...chance to avoid it. Etc.. Military contacts....ability to recruit a few choice military grade units for vamp combat. So while you've got the AI playing all civs, somehow, you've also got another layer of civs w/in civs. Getting this to work technically is going to be the real challenge. You should have direct control of your shadow civ, and be able w/ promotions to influence the AI human civ city that you are physicallly in.

3. This mod will play better as a scenario. It needs the mod, but would play best on a preplanned map of the world. That way you can get the Gaki, mummies, and others in.

4. Werewolves (Werecreatures) and Mages should be other rival civs somehow? Here is where I run into a problem in game logic...a werewolf/rival vampire should be able to enter the city without owners knowledge...with the option to give the prince knowledge. If you find out later through spy upgrades that a unit is in your city unbenowest to you...then that should lead to combat. How do you have combat in a city when two units are already there, and not explicitly at war? Another code challenge? Some sort of pop up window...with princely choices, and sub screens from new pop up window...or something?

5. It would sure be a lot of fun if the game was regicide. You are the prince seeking to spread your influence, and place subordinate princes in other cities. Ok so if taken from the late middle ages, you can pre lay out where certain civs have dominion. That shouldn't mean that if you are Brujah, another Brujah prince is friendly however, should it? Unless the rival Brujah submits...to be your vassal, conflict is inevitable. This raises the questions, of how to code shadow civs, how many are there, and how many could there be...EX you have an earth map w/the normal 18 civs...ok so you have your shadow civs somehow alongside the 18 normal civs...How would you program shadow civs, and not impede on the civ limit...Can you code a shadow civ, and how many could there be? Each prince in each city is a civ? Or would Ventrue as a whole be a shadow civ....so you control Ventrue himself?

6. Promotions should be pretty easy to come up with...Just take the character sheet, and there you go.

Kind of Rambling...

I ran WW games for a long time, and would be happy to chip in ideas. However, I am technically deficient, as far as programming goes. It seems that you have to solve primary game issues first....Shadow civ interaction, and layout foremost.

Alternatively...You could have a battle for Chicago (insert city)...Neighborhoods are cities...show a scaled down power grab. The different neighborhoods would give you control of other things...still rambling.

 

[jeff_vandenberg]

Starship: Some interesting ideas.. but I think i'm going with a base of Requiem rather than Masquerade, leading to 5 clans/civs which will then have numerous leaders under them. I had pondered using the Masquerade clans, but I decided to let that lie. I've played Masquerade alot as well, and really didn't want all of the added baggage.

Using the Requiem setup allows me to have Bloodline wonders as well, so that people can further refine their civilization choice later in the game.

I'm not sure how to reflect the civ in a civ mentality in a game, much less how to get the AI to cope with it. Though I do like the idea of being able to build 'influences' in a city. I'm not sure where I will go with that, but it is something I will kick around.

I'm not looking to throw in other supernaturals into the mix right yet. I have kicked around the idea, but that would be saved for a later project most likely, once I am more confidant in my ability to Mod and have other people who can help me mod the requisite files.

I have thought about a regicide option for the game as well. It's in the back of my mind, stewing.