Suggestion: Regicide Victory?

[Slaughter]

I was thinking... assassination of a enemy leader is a very common tactic in the history of warfare. What about a Regicide Victory where you win by being the only leader standing?

My ideia is that the enemy leader is represented by a "[Leadername] Guard" which is killable. Its a elite group of soldiers that can move fast and has high strength, but doesn't attack.

To kill said Guard requires a direct assault or a furtive assault. For a furtive assault, I thought about a stealth unit with Hidden Nationality to be used for stealthy assassinations.

Seems pretty clear, huh? Well, there's only one thing missing... and it is: What should happen with the nation after a leader is assassinated?

Their nation turns into barbarians? Their cities instantly fall to dust (Civ3, not a nice idea methinks)? They get many turns of anarchy? AI gets dumber? Their nation dies? Their safety drop? Something else?

 

[davidlallen]

Interesting idea. In the context of vanilla civ, turning a nation into barbs due to the death of one leader doesn't seem to make sense. I admit it is a little weird to have a Great Person who lives for hundreds of turns, corresponding to thousands of years. Same thing for that scout unit you created in turn 5 and sent off exploring the rest of the map; that same scout is still out there sending back reports a thousand years later.

In Fury Road, the timescale is shorter, and the impact of one person could be much larger. I guess the question here is, what happens if one of the AI civs kills your leader? Is it game over for you? How much fun is that? I think "game over" is too strong a penalty. There is certainly room for a unique unit with a small bonus, which has a small penalty if it is killed. A military bonus would be tempting to use in battle; an economic bonus leader would always just stay at home. It might be interesting to *capture* such a leader, like a super-great-person.

One thing I thought about (for another mod altogether, not FR) is adding a royal family. This makes more sense for a multi-generation game. You may have a small set of units like you describe, maybe each with different special abilities. Over the course of many turns, young ones may "mature" and increase their abilities, old ones may "age" and decrease their abilities, and any of them can die or be killed.

 

[Slaughter]

As a consequence, I was thinking: Maybe their safety drops across their nation (I would't feel safe if my leader was murdered like a dog) and maybe something related to the vision they choose? I thought about some barbarian uprisings around the cities of the victim to simulate a civil war between groups inside said faction, and also some banditry on the side.

Of course, its possible to defend against assassins. I was thinking of using spies to defend against them, or guard dogs. Another idea I had is that a certain level of Safety would deny entrance to the assassin.

 

[Jabie]

Not sure if the AI could handle king units, it'd probably leave them inadequately guarded. You could give Kings zero movement and Drill and City Defense promotions. As for "game over" when the leader is killed, how about a forced revolution / anarachy period. Painful, but not game ending, and it would fit in with the situation.

 

[Seven05]

As a victory condition Regicide is a lot of fun, the trick is to not even spawn the 'king' unless the victory condition is enabled so those that think it is to harsh can simply avoid it. Loss of the 'king' should be the end of that civ, human or AI. The actual 'king' units needs to be weak though, not strong, so maybe strength 1 and defensive only (with no bonuses) or even no strength. That (and the proper unit AI) will prevent the AI from using it for anything and ensure that you have to defeat all of the other units in the stack to get to it. It doesn't need any special abilities, it's just a tool for the victory condition

Anyway, regicide games in Civ3 were a lot of fun and having the same thing here would definately be a cool option, I would just encourage you to NOT water it down and keep with the spirit of the original version from Civ3 where losing your king cost you the game. In MP games it opens up whole new strategies, even SP games can be interesting since you have the option of focusing your military campaign on capturing one city to destroy one unit... if you can figure out where that unit is.

 

[davidlallen]

I've never played civ3, but it doesn't "sound" like much fun. Wouldn't you just pile your king and bunch of strong units into your capitol? Normally, losing your capitol is crippling but not fatal; this just makes it fatal.

 

[Jabie]

I've never played civ3, but it doesn't "sound" like much fun. Wouldn't you just pile your king and bunch of strong units into your capitol? Normally, losing your capitol is crippling but not fatal; this just makes it fatal.

Mostly yes, and the AI could make some dubious decisions, especially considering the RoP exploit. There were options for having multiple King units, and in the Sengoku scenario your King unit was a Shogun who got more powerful every time he won a combat, so you tended to field him rather than just leave him in your Capital.

 

[Randomness]

Prehaps autoamtic caputation to the civ that killed the ruler unit...

 

[Brugarin]

I'm not much into this regicide thing... But if you really want to implement this, you could simply lose the leader traits, like Basium/Hyborem in the FFH mod. But I would steer clear of this.

 

[Chusquero]

Really interesting.

The thing that you said about spies and guard dogs to defend against stealht assassins could be implemented as 'leader's promotions'. Also, the leader can have the hero promotion seen in FfH (less xp rate per turn of course).

Other idea that I have is: My king just died without heirs. Half of my cities become barbarians, other half stand togheder under a new 'second class leader' (like a nobleborn fighting to become the new king. Also this 'second class leader' can be chosen within the existing units when the king dies, so I can have some opportunities). I choose for example a 'tank unit' to be my 'second class leader' (the unit gains free XP to spend in 'leader's promotions'). So, if I conquer ALL the rebel cities my 'second class leader' is upgraded to king and I'm back in the real game. Also while I fight to reconquer my country I'm not able to enter diplomacy (obviously other countries don't see me like a leader yet). That looks quite complicated to program, I think.

 

[davidlallen]

I like these ideas. There are other *games* (not Civ mods) which have done quite a lot of this. As mentioned earlier in the thread, the problem is to teach the AI to use these effectively. There is nothing similar in Civ, so there is no good starting point.

 

[Chusquero]

the problem is to teach the AI to use these effectively.

Well... I don't really know how to program this. But the AI can have tons of simple extra scripts, for example:

'The leader unit will be moved ONLY if there is more than X units in the target tile. If the leader's tile has less than X units, the leader will flee to the nearest controlled city.'
'The leader unit will be able to attack (this doesn't mean that will attack allways) if the target is below 40% of his strenght and he is alone in the tile.'

Is that easy to teach the AI how to use the leader?

 

[davidlallen]

I am not sure if you have done programming in other languages, but a bunch of random "if" statements will only go so far. Yes, it is possible to write down dozens or hundreds of such statements. What if two of them, or a bunch of them are all true? What if none of them are true in a particular situation? It gets very complicated very fast. AI routines, including the ones for existing civ units, try to assign weights to different alternatives based on situations. Even picking which promotion to take next is hundreds of lines of code.

It may be interesting for you as an experiment, to write down a small number of these "if" statements, say 20 or so. Then pick any save game you have, assume you have a king unit in one of your stacks, and see what the scripts would say to do. Does it make sense? I bet you will find a bunch of situations missing. Add some more. Now you will start to see multiple "if" statements firing at once. Which one to pick? It will be an interesting learning experience.

 

[Chusquero]

Indeed, interesting learning stuff, but useless here. Sorry

I get the point. The AI script to control any unit looks like a tree of bucles and conditionals, then depending on 'external' variables (like nearby tiles properties) the behaviour of the unit is routed to one single action . Am I wrong?

 

[davidlallen]

Yes, that is correct as far as I understand. There is a lot about the AI which I do not understand.