Scum of the Earth at the gate

[Fabio1701]

While the victory where you have to settle the earthling vagabonds is slightly more entailing than Other build&wait victories, it can be so much cooler. Other people have already mentioned the tediousness of every turn remembering to click for a setler and that it should be auto generate. (and why not? When would I never click it? Because They may be walking into a war zone? Who cares if they die we just click another!)

But the calm and orderly process of getting these settlers through the gate does not reflect IMHO what is happening on the other side of the gate. It is absolute chaos on earth! There is war and death and plague and all that hellishness. Instead of a leasurly airport boarding pass the gate on the other side would probably be people killing each other to get off earth. If you look at war torn countries in africa and the middle east, refugees do indeed risk anything and everything to get the hell out of there. Including risking drowning in the sea, being raped or killed by people smugglers, anything, so dire is their plite. And these people would not be well healthy peaceful tenants, they would be mentally and spiritually scarred from the ravages of centuries of dark ages. Think madmax.

my implementation would be this:

-The gate generates an earth unit every turn without fail. This represents the push of the throng which will not take no for an answer.
-The unit comes through with random amounts of health, sometimes full, sometimes almost dead. This represents not only the violence in the vicinity of the gate on earth, but that most people would not be in the best of health to begin with. This also give the player added reason to provide military escort and not just plop them down any place.
-not always do settlers come through, sometimes it can be military units which are aggroed. Basically civ5 barbarians of the modern age. This represents the roving militias of war torn earth who fought their way through the gate guards and either think they can conquer you or just want to rape and pillage. This means the player needs to be on their guard and if many strong barbs come through concequatively there might actually be a risk that they take a city! Graphically, these should be madmaxed civ5 marines, Xcom, tanks, paratroopers, etc. would make a nice link to civ5 players too, bringing some nostaliga.
-sometimes these barbs come through but they declare to want to work for you and you get a free unit.
-all settlements must be in your territory, and if another faction conquers (not destroys) a settlement, it actually counts to their victory, even if they have not build a gate. This means that players can literally steal a victory from each other.
- a building 'refugee enter' can be built in a city and you can plop up to 6 settlers in a city. This is necessary because I have had it that on a small map there was simply no space for a earth settlement 3 tile away from anything.
-if another player has built the gate where you have to put in military units, it increases the amount of barbs coming out your end! If you build the military gate at the same time, you can decrease the amount of barbs. This means that players will pay more attention to what they are doing and give you a reason to attack and destroy the other players gate while you are settling earthlings.
-the gate tile is automatically treated as a road improvement. So roads and maglevs in ajacent tiles automatically connect.

What do you guys think?

 

[Manannan]

Addressing your implementation points:

#1 Yea, that's a no brainer. I don't understand why that wasn't the first thought at Firaxis versus making people manually bring settlers through. THE FEWER CLICKS THE BETTER FOLKS.

#2 Uh, do settlers not already die in one hit? I haven't had mine attacked by weak units, so I don't know but I do know that I've killed off settlers with Dragoons in one shot. I thought they were civilian units, no?

#3 No. No, no, no, no, no, no. This game is RNG dependant enough, I do not want more RNG added to the game of "will a random barb unit spawn on my gate and slow down my win progression for no good reason", especially when you're never going to be suddenly overwhelmed by a single random hostile unit when you're sitting at 13+ purity affinity (ie: you'll have strong units one shotting the barbs anyway). Besides, how would it make sense that random marauding gangs and militias are getting into this gate anyway? Your sponsor from Earth had to have built the gate for this to work, surely they're protecting it adequately. Suspension of disbelief in a sci-fi game is going to come up on occassion sure, but asking me to believe they had the resources to build a frickin warp gate but not to hold off some roaming thugs is more than a bit of a stretch. Even if they didn't why wouldn't the more obvious solution be to send your own workers and military units through the gate first to maintain things on the other side? Or does this gate now magically follow terminator rules (one way, no going back) because reasons?

#4 Why? Why would I care at all to have some jerks from Earth popping up in my game to join me when I can build magical floating tanks? Why would your sponsor back on Earth not just send military units with the settlers if this was going to be a thing? Again this sounds like nothing but slowing down a victory in the least fun way possible.

#5 Absolutely not. Explain to me how having to play chicken with other players trying to snipe your settlers would make this game more fun in any way, shape, or form. The threat of settlers getting destroyed is enough for me to want to protect them, all you're doing is adding needless punishment for someone who has their settlements sniped. And how does this give me any incentive to actually make progress towards victory when I can instead just build up speedy military units and phasal transporters to snipe settlers from the AI who never does a good job of defending it's stuff?

#6 This idea I like. I always wondered why settlers had to go off into the wilderness (well, off on their own anyway) and build their own cities; seemed like the opposite of what you'd do with newly arrived refugees to anywhere. I would want to see a low cap on settlers you can settle in your own cities mind you, as it would make killing off settlers far more difficult.

#7 Again, no, this makes no sense and adds 0 potential fun.

#8 Yes please. Nothing more frustrating than forgetting to put down a road/magrail under the tile your gate is on and watching settlers get so confused walking onto the adjacent space-movey-fastey-system that they have to stop and gape at it for a whole turn. I mean, we're building a magical portal that lets people get here from a planet light-years away, you're telling me we don't have the resources or foresight to pave some roads around the thing while we're building it?

 

[Ryoga]

I don't dislike the idea, but I like when things are balanced, and if you get this for the purity victory, there must be some kind of negative stuff for the other victory conditions as well.

For example the emancipation gate could be hijacked by rogue terran as well, and the mindflower might cause angry siege worms to spawn in the faction territories.

But what do you get for the already easy and uneventful contact victory?

 

[Ayeshteni]

I don't dislike the idea, but I like when things are balanced, and if you get this for the purity victory, there must be some kind of negative stuff for the other victory conditions as well.

For example the emancipation gate could be hijacked by rogue terran as well, and the mindflower might cause angry siege worms to spawn in the faction territories.

But what do you get for the already easy and uneventful contact victory?

Progenitor Invasion DLC, coming to a Steam Store near you.

Aye

 

[Fabio1701]

Indeed all th victories should have more negative stuff, or i would call it more risk factors. The other gate could have something to, like if you miss a turn putting a unit in then an angry barb should pop out. While on that subject, the other gate should auto suck up any unit coming on the tile.

The thing is that these gate would create an incredible amount if deatabalization on earth but that is igbored in the game.

 

[DioAurion]

Progenitor Invasion DLC, coming to a Steam Store near you.

Aye

Set it up like the hell spawn from Fall From Heaven II and I'm sold.

 

[Lglenhaber]

My suggestions:
-You have to build the refugee camps with your workers (1 pop per camp)
-refugee camps with citizens count as worked
-You get these 2 quest decision as soon as you build the gate

Spoiler :

Before building the gate, we did not foresee how chaotic earth is. We can try to restore order into some small parts of earth, or we can just let more people into the gate
Continue as planed (quicker spawn rate of people, occasional barbarian)
Try to restore order (slower spawn rate of settlers, you need to send 100 before reviving people

Spoiler :

Before now, we have not decided who to let in, and now it is time to decide
Scientists (extra science)
Farmers (extra food)
Artists (extra culture)
The people who pay the most (100 per person through)

 

[silvertuerk]

Madmaxed XCOM? Scary.

 

[Guide-on]

What you are talking about would be good for a hybrid VC for P/S Other civs are attacking yours on earth. You must send 500 points of military might in order to get 10 settlers to come through. You would build the Earthgate, which would require probably P8/S8.