Oil wars

[wrestler235]

I was thinking about how much of a role oil trucks play in this game and I thought maybe adding a raider unit would add to that. They're like privateers in regular Civ. They appear as barbarians to the other civs, and you can attack or pillage anything with them, but they can't take cities. That way you could take and hoard oil, disallowing your enemies from having successfully running armies.

 

[davidlallen]

There's a game mechanic called "hidden nationality" that allows this. This ability is pretty powerful, since a unit with HN can attack anything without causing a declaration of war. So the unit would have to be either expensive, or weaker than a corresponding normal unit.

One of the other ideas I had was an ability to hire barbarians. In Fury Road, barbarians represent things like biker gangs. If you had a tough negotiator character, he could find barbarian units, give them money, and give them some kind of a mission. You could use that in the same way as HN raider units.

 

[wrestler235]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking of, the hidden nationality. I'm not sure about hiring the barbarians, but I know that thelopez has a mod that allows you to hire mercenaries. As for the whole thing about making the raider's weaker or more expensive, maybe make them just a little more powerful than, say a survivor. I see their main function as oil raiders.

 

[Vigilance]

On the subject of Raiders, I think a few raider cultures would be cool. Maybe they could have a slaver unique unit that has a chance to turn defeated units into slaves (low-quality workers).

Fall from Heaven has a mechanic like that for the Slavery civic.

In fact, maybe that's what there should be, an economic civic for turning your neighbors into slaves.

 

[davidlallen]

I should add the comment about slaves as a FAQ. I agree slaves fit into the theme. Probably I would add a UU which can turn defeated units into slaves. Others have also suggested it should be enabled by a civic, which anybody could choose. Both are good ideas.

 

[Vigilance]

Yeah, I could see a whole series of techs based on slavery... you could have a Slaver's Guild building that increased hammers maybe, while adding to unhappiness?

You could also have a slavery Civic increase the happiness of thunderdomes.

In general, I think the benefits of slavery should be greater than they are in vanilla Civ.

But I also think there should be more rewards for avoiding slavery. Maybe an abolitionist Civic that increases unhappiness in Civs with the slavery Civic, while hurting your diplomatic standing with them.

The abolitionist Civic could let you build an underground railroad building, giving you happiness and allowing for a chance at escaped slaves coming to join you from other Civs (maybe like refugees?)

But again, I think this would hurt diplomatic standing with the Civ the refugee came from, meaning you'd have to be careful, going abolitionist should eventually lead to war with slavery-minded Civs.

Just some ideas, I am not a modder and have no idea how hard these would be to implement

Chuck