playtest feedback

[arkham4269]

Regarding "lack of safety" for outlying villages and farms, countjackula has recently suggested that maybe animals should be allowed to pillage these improvements, only. I think that would add a lot to the feel of the game. You would want to keep more units nearby to patrol. It was also suggested a while back that maybe the actual safety level of your city could be set back if there is a pillage event. Each city could have a sign: "Number of days since last villager eaten: NN", and when somebody gets eaten they reset the count to zero.

Okay, here is an idea I thought you might want to look at. I know it's a FfH idea, but stay with me. One of the issues I have with this mod is that you can create settlers very early on. To me, that seems a little odd considering the time scale of 3 months to a turn as well as the one of the over-riding concerns is safety. I mean why would you want to leave a City with a population of only 2 with practically nothing in the way of buildings that is guarded only by a Survivor unit or two? I mean it makes no sense.

So, what I think could be done is this. In FfH, there is a Civ called the Kuirotates that can only have 3 cities and the rest are 'settlements'. What I'm thinking is that at the beginning of the game you have your initial city and cannot build settlers at first. Instead you build a settler type unit that creates an outpost that mimics these settlements. Originally in FfH, these settlements could only build certain buildings, usually only one.

So the idea is, at the beginning of the game, you have your one city. You send out your recon units and find vital resources or areas you want to claim for later cities. So you crank out the settlements/outposts that are basically a limited 1-ring city that can only build barricades and maybe one other building. However, since your Civ controls that area, you can still build improvements.

Now when you original city reaches a size (maybe 4 or 5) and maybe a certain safety level, then you can build colonists which you can then use to either build new cities or 'upgrade' your outpost to a city.

Now I'm sure many might howl and think this is going to slow the game down. Another way you might use this idea is to make it to where you can either build a settler that only can build these outposts and doesn't cost any population, or you could build a colonist that is more expensive and also subtracts from your population like the old Civ III settlers did. So then you have the option of claim land, but not being able to build units in that outpost but not having to strip your city do it, or wait a bit, build the more expensive colonist and get a new city.

Whether or not outposts would grow to cities after a certain amount of time by themselves is also another idea so even if you don't send out more colonists to upgrade it, some time later, the outpost will get bigger on it's own. Plus, you could also have that outposts could be upgrade by the addition of refugees since they are living on the road and a fortified outpost is a definite step up from what they're used to. (Plus, if you think about it, the 'city' you see in "The Road Warrior" was really just an outpost that was there because of the oil. As a site for a real city, it sucked.

 

[davidlallen]

So, you suggest (1) a new improvement "outpost" which spreads culture in the eight adjacent plots; this might be created by converting a unit, or built by a worker; and (2) disallow creating real settlers until the city has population 4. Right?

On point (2), I don't see a strong reason to disallow creating settlers. It is always a tradeoff between putting food towards the city's population or creating a settler. If I had an "outpost" type unit to stake out a claim, I might be more likely to delay making settlers. But I should still have the option.

On point (1), that is an interesting idea. I tend to use a settler to do what you describe; at least it will get the culture spread there. Sometimes it's a while before I can get a worker there to build farms and such. In fact, sometimes I work on something else for a while, and by the time I come back to that "outpost" it is already up to population 2-3. Unless I am playing a vigilant leader, it won't spread culture to the second ring; the worker is needed for that. So I am not sure the "outpost" unit would really change play that much. What do you think?

 

[arkham4269]

On point (1), that is an interesting idea. I tend to use a settler to do what you describe; at least it will get the culture spread there. Sometimes it's a while before I can get a worker there to build farms and such. In fact, sometimes I work on something else for a while, and by the time I come back to that "outpost" it is already up to population 2-3. Unless I am playing a vigilant leader, it won't spread culture to the second ring; the worker is needed for that. So I am not sure the "outpost" unit would really change play that much. What do you think?

Well I was thinking these 1-Ring Outpost would represent a fortified outpost that was mostly put there to secure resources. As I said, if the one of the overriding aspects of Fury Road is that it's 20 years after The Big One, the initial cities aren't going to have much. So it doesn't make sense that after building a survivor or two, you can build a settler capable of creating a city. I mean in basic Civ in 4000 BC it's one thing to move away from your initial city since all you have to worry about is animals in a mostly empty world at first. This is definitely not the case in Fury Road.

I just think that without refugees, a city shouldn't be able to really afford to have a bunch of their people leave with enough goodies to make it worth it to them. I mean in a really low population world, it would be smarter to stay in one big cities rather than spread out. I mean from a safety stand point it makes defense easier. The outpost concept allows the Civ to stake a claim on land, especially in areas with vital resources. So for game play, I'm thinking that there should be a bigger penalty for trying to form new cities, at least early on.

Perhaps you can break up the settler units to something like.
Level 1 Frontiersman: Can only create outposts which can only build a barricade and maybe one other building. They would grow really slowly and could only become cities if a refugee units is added or a Level 2 or 3 settler. These Level 1 types wouldn't slow the growth of your city and would be relatively cheap.
Level 2 Settlers: These would be expensive and perhaps would also cause your city to loose some population like the old Civ III settlers use to.
Level 3 Colonist: Only available to be built in a city with a population of X (6? 8?) or more. These would be 'standard' settlers in that they cost what normal Civ IV settlers do and they just cause the city to stop growing when they are being built.

Having the flexibility to be able to create outposts would help Civs in food poor start positions. It would also give an advantage to players who work hard to boast food production/population over those who just pump out lots of combat units since, more/larger cities will give them a production edge.

Plus, it also boosts the importance of refugees who I think are the most important unit on the board since I think population shouldn't grow very fast for the first 60-120 turns so attracting refugees is critically important.

 

[jefmart1]

I agree with limiting city growth in the beginning. People should be congregating to where there is a working society rather then spreading out.

If there is a cap on barb XP I would remove it and make the first "part" of the mod about battling for survival in a dangerous world, rather then growing. I would also move the Visions later in game as well.

 

[davidlallen]

Civ 4 is the only civ I have played, but I have played many other builder type games. I believe in Civ 3, a settler decreased the population of a city by one, and in Civ 4, they changed the settler to suppress population growth while it is building. So your "level 2" suggestion may be against whatever design philosophy that was.

For the outpost, I guess it is clear what happens if you put a settler there, the same thing that would happen if there is no outpost there: you get a city of pop 1. I am not sure the outpost should ever grow in rings or population. If it did, then it really is just a cheap settler.

But it is interesting to think what happens if you put a refugee in an outpost. A refugee cannot found a city, but maybe it could also convert an outpost into a city. To me, the difference between a refugee and a settler is that the settler has enough equipment and resources to found a city. OTOH, a refugee just has the clothes on their back.

Another possible idea is to give a city an action button of some kind which *creates* a refugee type unit. This is "forced resettling". It does not have enough stuff to found a city, but it could add to population in another city, or possibly convert an outpost.

So, outposts plus refugee conversion to a city may be an interesting mechanic. Any comments?

 

[arkham4269]

If there is a cap on barb XP I would remove it and make the first "part" of the mod about battling for survival in a dangerous world, rather then growing. I would also move the Visions later in game as well.

I agree. First off, I think it might take a bit for a Vision to take hold of the entire culture otherwise all we're talking about is Cult of Personality.

In some respects I think generically spawned barbarians shouldn't be that tough. However I think that barbarians cities should form to represent local warlords that lack Vision and thus pretty much stick to one city. However, these cities would spawn nastier barbarians and much more dangerous in the long run. I mean except for the animals, the idea that there will still be very dangerous nomadic bands 50 years after the Apocalypse, capable of defeating troops from a settled Civ seems a bit hard to conceive.

That being said, however, I think it might be cool if the Mongolian mobile yurt from the old Warlord scenario could be used to a Horde that moves around, sustaining itself by raiding and plunder, especially since it spawns random units depending on the terrain it's in. That way you have a group of barbarians that are tied to one important unit that wander the map but can act like a mini-civ instead of a bunch of unrelated barbarian units. Perhaps when they contact your Civ, you have the option of paying a bribe to keep them from entering your borders. Obviously these raiders would be more interested in raiding infrastructure then necessarily going head to head in combat.

 

[arkham4269]

Civ 4 is the only civ I have played, but I have played many other builder type games. I believe in Civ 3, a settler decreased the population of a city by one, and in Civ 4, they changed the settler to suppress population growth while it is building. So your "level 2" suggestion may be against whatever design philosophy that was.

Well I've been playing since Civ II, and yes the reason they changed it was that if you tried to build a settler to early, it basically trashed your game because you couldn't build the unit because your population was to low. It was an easy mistake to make. I know I did it quite often. However, if you have an option to build a cheaper 'frontiersman' that only suppresses growth while it's being build as opposed to a more expensive settler that will knock down your city in population, I would hope that the player would be a bit more astute in building it. Also, in Civ II & III, if you where building one thing and you changed your mind, you lost that previous build instead of in Civ IV where it's just put on hold. So even if you accidentally try to build a settler without enough population, you can just build other things till you city grows enough.

For the outpost, I guess it is clear what happens if you put a settler there, the same thing that would happen if there is no outpost there: you get a city of pop 1. I am not sure the outpost should ever grow in rings or population. If it did, then it really is just a cheap settler.

Well how the 'settlement' works in FfH is that there is no limit to the size of influence that it can grow too, it's just it won't ever go beyond a level 1 population. So while you could build farms in it's zone, it doesn't count until you upgrade it to a city. Mostly they are used to secure vital mana nodes, important resources and the like. So if you have a bunch of ruins that you'd like to control, you set up an outpost there and all it really is, is a semi-self sufficient Fort. Again, whether they are allowed to grow is up to debate, but I would think the would have to grow, REALLY slowly.

But it is interesting to think what happens if you put a refugee in an outpost. A refugee cannot found a city, but maybe it could also convert an outpost into a city. To me, the difference between a refugee and a settler is that the settler has enough equipment and resources to found a city. OTOH, a refugee just has the clothes on their back.

Well I see outposts being used to secure resources for the now and acting as the 'advance team' for the preparation for eventual settlement. While I agree with your views on refugees, I think for game play, you'd have to make refugees 'activate' outposts into cities since otherwise it would slow things up to much. Plus as I keep harping on, I believe that Civs that push for a boost in culture & safety should reap a benefit in refugees and thus they'd be able to grow quickly and thus have a production advantage they'll need to fend off the player/AI who builds a lot of early combat units and tries to blitz the other players.

Another possible idea is to give a city an action button of some kind which *creates* a refugee type unit. This is "forced resettling". It does not have enough stuff to found a city, but it could add to population in another city, or possibly convert an outpost.
So, outposts plus refugee conversion to a city may be an interesting mechanic. Any comments?

I can see that. One thing I miss from Civ II (I think it was Civ II) was that you used to be able to build these caravan units that could move resources from one city to another. So if you had a city that was mostly in the mountains to mine a cluster of minerals, it would never grow past 2 or so because it didn't have enough food (this was before windmills, mind you). Conversely you have cities out in the plains with rivers and wheat and they'd grow to like 18 but had squat for production since they didn't have enough hammers. So you could set up a caravan that would transfer food units to the one city in return for hammers. It was a nice system.

While I can't see that being possible in Civ IV (Since I'm not a coder) it would seem that pushing out refugees like that would allow cities with ample food to 'jump start' cities that are growing slowly.

That being said, in Alpha Centauri, you had the option of using a settler to add to the population of an existing city. Why they never picked up this in Civ, I don't know because it was often useful when playing games on Epic or Marathon and you'd run out of things to build so you could at least build settlers to boast up smaller cities.

 

[davidlallen]

In some respects I think generically spawned barbarians shouldn't be that tough. However I think that barbarians cities should form to represent local warlords that lack Vision and thus pretty much stick to one city. However, these cities would spawn nastier barbarians and much more dangerous in the long run. I mean except for the animals, the idea that there will still be very dangerous nomadic bands 50 years after the Apocalypse, capable of defeating troops from a settled Civ seems a bit hard to conceive.

One of the things I struggled with a little in the beginning is which enemies are "barbarians" and which are "other civs". I decided I wanted barbs to be unorganized, with no home bases, and limited to the less complex unit types. Any group with more organization, in particular anything with a city, should be another player (obviously including AI players). The key reason is that you should be able to negotiate with any such organized group.

So, barbs are limited to marauders and catapults, and no cities.

 

[davidlallen]

Well how the 'settlement' works in FfH is that there is no limit to the size of influence that it can grow too, it's just it won't ever go beyond a level 1 population. So while you could build farms in it's zone, it doesn't count until you upgrade it to a city.

I am thinking of an outpost as a distant military base, which would not *grow* population. Maybe FFH settlements are different. Given a non-growing population, I can't see any game reason for an outpost to expand its influence past ring 1.

Plus as I keep harping on, I believe that Civs that push for a boost in culture & safety should reap a benefit in refugees and thus they'd be able to grow quickly and thus have a production advantage they'll need to fend off the player/AI who builds a lot of early combat units and tries to blitz the other players.

Even though you have mentioned this several times, it gave me an idea this time. Maybe a building like "refugee center" which is only available once your security gets above a certain level (not sure if that's possible). This would either directly generate refugees, or better, increase the chance of refugees occurring in the "area". You would still be responsible for guiding them in safely.

 

[arkham4269]

I am thinking of an outpost as a distant military base, which would not *grow* population. Maybe FFH settlements are different. Given a non-growing population, I can't see any game reason for an outpost to expand its influence past ring 1.

Well in FfH, the Kuriotates Civilization was limited to 3 cities so their outposts had to be able to have a city like influence, but they remained stunted in population. In Fury Road, I agree that an outpost would just be a 1-Ring since it's just a pre-city plunked down due to important resources.

Even though you have mentioned this several times, it gave me an idea this time. Maybe a building like "refugee center" which is only available once your security gets above a certain level (not sure if that's possible). This would either directly generate refugees, or better, increase the chance of refugees occurring in the "area". You would still be responsible for guiding them in safely.

That is a good idea since processing refugees would be important. Clean them up or they might spread disease, do they have skills? Do they have relatives already in our Civ? Are they potential spies form a rival civ. Hving a dedicated group to address these issues would defiantly be a boon to a Civ.

In that vein, I do believe that Fury Road needs disease. With medicine tech so bad and hygiene tech crappy as well, you'd have a lot of problems with things like Tuberculosis or even just the flu. While a group of refugees would be good in one sense, they'd be a real disease risk. Perhaps refugees could carry a chance of starting a plague, although probably one that would just affect that city. That would be a risk for players playing the "open door' strategy.

 

[arkham4269]

So, barbs are limited to marauders and catapults, and no cities.

You know, I wonder about catapults. Does anyone know how to build one? I think you'd have a better chance of finding the specs for a working steam engine 50 time over finding out how to build these outside people in the SCA.

Perhaps you should have the car bomb. One shot weapon that really does a whack on a cities defenses.

 

[jefmart1]

I could build a catapult or trebuchet, its pretty much common sense. People would experiment until it worked. Plenty of people outside the SCA build punkin chuckers and the like.

What I would add would be a fire bomb promotion and perhaps have a weaker version and/or a larger version that uses elastic or rubber like a giant slingshot. Also maybe a chlorine gas bomb promotion. You can make chlorine gas easily and freeze it. You put that in glass bottles and throw it. As it melts it releases the gas...

I would think car bombs would be unlikely since cars would be to valuable to blow up.

 

[arkham4269]

I would think car bombs would be unlikely since cars would be to valuable to blow up.

Depends: If you had a vehicle that was damaged beyond making it worth while to fix, but could run for a short time, it could be packed with a lot of stuff.

Of course depending on your Vision, perhaps suicide bombers might be a unit!

 

[jefmart1]

Good point, plus maybe you could roll them or push them with another vehicle to get them there.

 

[jefmart1]

Another thought, truck based catapults. A flatbed truck with a catpult on it making it more mobile. You could also add a promo for existing catapults making them towed by Utes, Towed = +1 Movement.

 

[Jabie]

On point (2), I don't see a strong reason to disallow creating settlers. It is always a tradeoff between putting food towards the city's population or creating a settler. If I had an "outpost" type unit to stake out a claim, I might be more likely to delay making settlers. But I should still have the option.

There's a post in the FfH Mods forum by Lutefisk Mafia that expains how to set up claim flags.

Outposts sounds like an interesting idea, but I think it should be an option that supplements Settlers not replaces them, otherwise culture/safety victories will be nigh on impossible. Maybe all workers built in a location with a capital building could have the sacrifice for claim flag. Worker dies and is replaced by 0 move Survivor type unit in a fort/ ramparts with a claim flag radius of 1 square.

 

[davidlallen]

I looked into that a little. The claim flag stuff is python but it's built upon hooks in the FFH dll, so I can't directly use it. There is a reference in the thread to another custom dll, JCultureControl. But, since I already have one custom dll for route specific movement, I can't directly use that either. The good news is that the claim flag python looks pretty simple. So I can probably re-implement it. I'll keep the idea on the list.

 

[arkham4269]

Another thought, truck based catapults. A flatbed truck with a catpult on it making it more mobile. You could also add a promo for existing catapults making them towed by Utes, Towed = +1 Movement.

Well as I've commented on before, my experience in Afghanistan leads me to say that you really don't want to use trailers in bad terrain if you can avoid it. Better to use one of those longer bed trucks. Besides, I'm sure there would be plenty of the mid-size delivery trucks that you could cut away the top for the steel and have plenty of room for your weapon.

In S.M. Stirling's first book in the Island of Eternity series, the Nantucket types came up with a steam driven dart thrower that seemed interesting. Of course I still think one of the best weapons for many reasons comes from the Road Warrior in the way of dart throwers using compressed air. Air compressors are very common these days, and with Home Depots and the like all over, I'm sure there is enough for UTE's mounting such throwers.

 

[arkham4269]

So, barbs are limited to marauders and catapults, and no cities.

Have you ever given any thought to non-barbarian cities? A lot of mods have a AI Civ generally called "Minor Nations" I'm not sure how Civ IV works as I'm a literature major/intel analyst and not a coder (more's the pity) so please bear with me if things I talk about aren't possible to code.

Anyway, I'm wondering is there a way to '******' a Civ? In Strategy First's Europa Universalis they had tech acquisition set via religion with different religions progressing up the tech tree faster. If there was some sort of flag you could set for the Minor Nation so that it research really slow and perhaps set the Civ so that it wouldn't be all that inclined to build setters, but would just build workers and defensive units.

I think having some of the 'City States' out there would represent opportunities for players. For the aggressive Civs, it's a chance to take over a pre-made city. For cultural/safety oriented Civs, it's a chance to gain a new city via culture capture.

Another reason I think having these minor nations is that in reality, barring a MASSIVE disaster/war, humanity is pretty thick on the ground these days. As the Propellerheads sing about, Take California. Even if you nuked every city over 100,000, you'd still have huge areas of the state untouched. So there would be a lot of 'little' (a village today would be a metropolis in Fury Road) towns that would survive.

What these Minor Nations lack, however, is Vision. So they just stay small because they are filled with people just happy to be alive and don't care to do much more than just stay put and stay alive.

 

[arkham4269]

Regarding "lack of safety" for outlying villages and farms, countjackula has recently suggested that maybe animals should be allowed to pillage these improvements, only. I think that would add a lot to the feel of the game. You would want to keep more units nearby to patrol. It was also suggested a while back that maybe the actual safety level of your city could be set back if there is a pillage event. Each city could have a sign: "Number of days since last villager eaten: NN", and when somebody gets eaten they reset the count to zero.

Before I get to my main post: the above does illustrate that my point of having a "Safety Counter" similar to FfH's Armageddon Counter. This counter would affect people happiness and could be so that certain things/units couldn't be built until the counter was high enough or not.

Anyway, main post: While as much as I like giant mutated spiders, shouldn't you also have some form of cat? I'm not sure about Australia, but most places have some form of 'large' cat. I remember watching those "Earth after Humans" and they point out that animals like mountain lions and the like, if provided with lots of food, can grow by about quarter or more in size in a very short period of time. With humans gone, deer populations would explode. (I found out that one of the biggest killers of deer isn't hunters, but cars!)

I mean the wolves really are just feral dogs, but again, science shows that dogs reverts to basically wolves again in about 20-30 years.

This leaves a problem. Domesticated animals do not survive in the wild, so the resources of cow, pigs, or sheep don't make sense. In another thread I suggested that pastures for horse be something you can build on plains or grasslands after you build a stable. Perhaps pastures for cows, sheep or pigs should only be able to be built after a slaughterhouse building (for example) is built. These 'food' pastures would be expensive to build in time (livestock eats a lot) but would give a good food & happiness bonus. I mean who doesn't think life is better with bacon?

However, these pastures would attract animals. There is just no two ways around it. I don't know if there is a way to tweak how barbarian units decided where to go and what to do, but I would think that animals would go first for pastures, then villages and then weak units. So while building pastures would boost food and happiness, it might also be another magnet for barbarians.

Now that I think of it, regular human barbs would probably want to pillage in the same way since I'm sure they want fresh food first just as much as an animal pack would.