Non-violent mod ideas

[Gojira54]

I thought I would open up this thread to see what ideas some of you might have towards making a non-violent mod.

I know this probably interests most people little, and I have to admit my preferred method of winning is almost always conquest, unless there is a very good story line behind one of the others.

A certain little helper of mine has been getting more and more interested in modding, and had expressed interest in helping me with one of mine or doing one on her own. After 12/15, her interest in this dropped like a stone. Last night she asked me if the Civs have to fight in this game, and my initial reaction was yes, but thinking more about it, I think you can make one that has no violence at all.

She wants a mod where nobody dies or gets hit, or has no weapons. She said if she can make a game like that, she really wants to do it.

You can do this I think by having the units have magical attacks, or even just talk to each other. One unit would win when the other just leaves (whether scared or happy who knows). You could even use the enslave function to convert units - for example if you are a Good Witch and you come across an Evil Witch, you could try to convert her to a Good Witch, which may or may not be successful.

You would also have to explore the non-Conquest victory conditions quite fully, especially if you removed the Conquest victory.

I was just wondering if anyone has tried anything along these lines?

 

[Kyriakos]

Well, you could keep "fighting" only set the world in a dream. No one dies, just goes away (supposedly either to the deeper realms of the psyche, or to awake state, if he is the human dreaming).
This way one victory type would be reaching the state of being awake.

The premise seems interesting, i hope you manage to make this mod

 

[Gojira54]

The dream premise does indeed sound interesting, but may be too intricate for a 5 year old - she will still see the dream violence as violence.

My modding plate is full so I don't plan on actually making a full mod, but we do have a weekly 2 hour date where I show her "Computer Stuff" every weekend, so if she wishes to mod then it might eventually get there - this is when we've done the resource work in the past.

She asked me this morning if instead of fighting, they could just play tic-tac-toe....

For now, I am thinking they will just 'argue', each side trying to convince the other to join them (enslave), and if not the just leave (disappear aka die). This way no new unit animations are needed, in fact I will just modify the ini file to not use the attack or death anims.

This might work as she seems quite keen on a Good vs Evil type of scenario, something with fairies and witches and princesses... and strangely farmers (?). Good Witch tries to convert the Evil Witch, the Knight saves the Princess from the Trolls, the farmers have to build all the additions to their farm as they unlock, the Evil Stepmother must take over 31 key towns to win, the Fae must spread their Gaian message over 67% of the map.... This kind of thing.

I was also told that while she will be the Good Princess, her little sister must be the bad... :/

 

[Balthasar]

King Arthur and I made a little mini-mod for his nine year old. We called it 'digg' and it is posted here. It's unfinished; I just never got back to it. Perhaps you could modify it to your purposes. For instance, you could hide resources in the space between the two civs, among the rocks and dirt that have to be removed. The first to get some combination of resources - any combination of two resources plus a tech - could build a wonder that allows a spaceship (or a Palace!). You could also try flagging the wonder victory or cultural victory (or both) as the only ways to win, and reduce aggression for each civ in the game to zero. Top that off with units that can only charm, build, wander, haunt, paradrop, airlift, rebase - or any other thing other than attack. All of your units could have 0 attack strength: that'd keep 'em civil!.

 

[Samez]

You could also think of some kind of capturing resources and prevent opponent from recapturing them. (A bit Like AOI or TCW50's)

 

[Blue Monkey]

Keep coming back to ideas for a "blues" scenario. Haven't actually made one , but the ideas keep getting refined as other people demonstrate ways to extend the game possibilities. Cities would become individual shacks/houses. improvements would be things like a franklin stove, victrola or an icebox. Small wonders would include juke joints. Combats would become cutting contests between musicians. Maybe some "down to the crossroads" possibilities for promotion with resources like black cat bone or John the Conqueroo. Terrain: coast becomes river bank, sea/oceans = deep swamps, etc.

Set it up so that culture (music style) is the main path to victory. GLs become legends (rush build or armies of followers). Maybe all combat units enslave.

 

[Jaguarkid140]

Most of the games I play I never declare war. Sure it may sound boring but I find it more satisfying to win by culture or space race or get the most victory points by building a huge territory. I am just too conservative with resources to fight unless it is a surefire victory. It is more enjoyable snaking settlers into cracks of another civilization's territory instead of losing your units that took 20 turns to construct to a spearman.

If I add have any suggestion that doesn't butcher gameplay, it would be robots. Sure they would be fighting, but it would be a non-living, non-sentient being. Most people only find violence bad if it is relatable and metal box crushing another one isn't.

 

[Balam-Agab]

Keep coming back to ideas for a "blues" scenario. Haven't actually made one , but the ideas keep getting refined as other people demonstrate ways to extend the game possibilities. Cities would become individual shacks/houses. improvements would be things like a franklin stove, victrola or an icebox. Small wonders would include juke joints. Combats would become cutting contests between musicians. Maybe some "down to the crossroads" possibilities for promotion with resources like black cat bone or John the Conqueroo. Terrain: coast becomes river bank, sea/oceans = deep swamps, etc.

Set it up so that culture (music style) is the main path to victory. GLs become legends (rush build or armies of followers). Maybe all combat units enslave.

Cool idea, although I think it work better as a 'music' scenario. The culture groups could be: Jazz, Blues, Rock, Hip Hop and Folk and each is vying for their place as 'pop' music (i.e. culural, spaceship or diplomatic victory) all the cultures could be sub-divided into smaller genres: west coast and east coast hip hop, Chicago and delta blues, big band, smooth jazz and Latin jazz etc.

 

[Plotinus]

Keep coming back to ideas for a "blues" scenario. Haven't actually made one , but the ideas keep getting refined as other people demonstrate ways to extend the game possibilities. Cities would become individual shacks/houses. improvements would be things like a franklin stove, victrola or an icebox. Small wonders would include juke joints. Combats would become cutting contests between musicians. Maybe some "down to the crossroads" possibilities for promotion with resources like black cat bone or John the Conqueroo. Terrain: coast becomes river bank, sea/oceans = deep swamps, etc.

Set it up so that culture (music style) is the main path to victory. GLs become legends (rush build or armies of followers). Maybe all combat units enslave.

This does sound fun, although given that all the blues songs that aren't about guns and violence are about either sex, alcohol, or drugs (or all of these), I'm not sure it would be entirely appropriate for what Gojira54 is after!

 

[Bengal Tiger]

I'd suppose that you might have to reconfigure all the units death animations to something more appropriate.

I don't think civ is the best platform for a non-violent game, however, depending on what you had in mind, there are likely lots of ways you could go about it. For example, as a spin-off of tic-tac-toe, you could have some immobile but airdroppable units(autoproduced 1 per turn by the capital building) that could airdrop to VP locations, but one would have to anticipate whether or not the "enemy" had already landed there, causing you to lose that unit, and by setting a certain VP limit to determine the winner after x turns.

That's just off the top of my head, but obviously there are plenty of options available, it would just require some ingenuity and hard work. That said, if your goal is simply to play tic-tac-toe...you might as well just use a pencil and paper.

 

[Blue Monkey]

Another idea -

Silk Road - trade / cultural expansion as only paths to victory. The version I originally had in mind was with defensive units to protect caravans & trading centers against barbarians, but even that could be limited.