Terrorists

[kolezlaw]

To make the game more exciting and irritating

we can have Terrorist to replace Barbarians in the information age. Every civ and city is prone to Terrorist planes attack. Improvements such as Intelligence Agency in BTS would be able to prevent and lower risk of Terrorist attack.

This can be part of the story as we play. It would be random as well.

 

[Chalks]

I think you need to be careful that you're not verging on bad taste there.

Without some sort of system behind this I don't think it would be all that much of an improvement from random modern era barbarians. Just to rename the random barbarian system in the modern era would seem a bit of a cop out.

"Terrorism" isn't just random attacks floating in from unexplored terrain. It's much more complex than that with many different degrees and varieties.

If the intention here is to make barbarians more relevant in the modern era, I think pirates (similar to the Somali pirates that have been attacking oil tankers recently) would be a better evolution for the concept.

 

[kolezlaw]

that is a good one, chalks. I didn't think of that. That would be make things interesting too.


Terrorist maybe appeal better for mods and scenarios. Oh, and probably when a country is being invaded like Afghanistan, terrorist would appear like how guerilla infantry did.

 

[largedarryl]

Terrorist attacks are really more likened to modern age hidden nationality units (or spys in a very broad stroking description). Since modern day terrorist activity isn't "random" and doesn't affect everyone equally.

IMO, currently Civ IV correctly accounts for modern terrorism if you consider spy units as representing both Cold War era and post-Cold War era ideologies.

 

[Rusty Edge]

When we were playing Civ III we used to have guerilla camps in idle territory that would spawn guerillas that would attack you. My idea was that in the modern era these guerillas would attack targets in other countries based on civics ( if you were communist, they would attack democracies, for example). This might lead to war if you didn't destroy the camps .... which might be a good thing if you wanted your enemy to declare first and leave your diplomatic reputation intact. Anyway, it would provide a strategic element to those camps. They were replaced by city-building barbs in IV, so I pretty much forgot about the idea.

Terrorist plane attacks are not cool, would bring back unpleasant memories, and suck the fun out of the game. It would be bad public relations , bad marketing, and a bad idea.

 

[Colonel]

I could see this as being a good idea but, keep the attacks focused on military units\targets. Basically I don't want to see a pop up in the middle of the game saying a terrorist just ran a plane into a building. Something tells me our lovely game of civ would get some very bad PR.

 

[Ahriman]

When has terrorism ever actually had a major impact on a Great Power, in terms of actual lives lost or economic damage or stuff destroyed?

Yeah, it panics the population, but otherwise has little impact. A few thousand deaths are sad, but have no impact on national population levels.

Terrorist attacks (below the level of nuclear or major biological) just aren't significant enough to warrant showing up in the game.

 

[quintus5]

Terrorist attacks (below the level of nuclear or major biological) just aren't significant enough to warrant showing up in the game.

Agree

 

[Impaler[WrG]]

The game 'Balance of Power' which is essentially a cold-war simulator had terrorism as part of a continuum reflecting the intensity of conflict between the 'goverment' and 'opposition' each of which would be backed by one of the super-powers. Lowest level is terrorism, then Guerrillas, then Civil War. The two super-powers could 'fund the opposition' or 'fund the goverment' and escalate/suppress their activity up too Civil War, if a state was in Civil war long enough it's government would fall and the opposition would become the government and the government would become the new opposition and everyones funding stayed the same but simply changed names accordingly.

 

[silentounce]

Don't spys/espionage pretty much already fill this role?

 

[silentounce]

When has terrorism ever actually had a major impact on a Great Power, in terms of actual lives lost or economic damage or stuff destroyed?

Yeah, it panics the population, but otherwise has little impact. A few thousand deaths are sad, but have no impact on national population levels.

Terrorist attacks (below the level of nuclear or major biological) just aren't significant enough to warrant showing up in the game.

Economic:

http://www.google.com/search?q=impa...s=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

check out that first link, looks pretty significant to me

Not to mention the fact that it thrust the US and several other nations into a war that is still ongoing.

In civ terms it also hits culture: http://www.heritagepreservation.org/news/Cataclysm.htm

I think you're downplaying things a bit.

 

[Ahriman]

check out that first link, looks pretty significant to me

Nope, not really. There estimate of $17 billion is roughly 0.1% of US GDP for a single year. Not significant in Civ terms. That's like losing maybe 10 gold, in civ terms.

Not to mention the fact that it thrust the US and several other nations into a war that is still ongoing.

No it didn't. It allowed a government to start 2 wars. The attack didn't cause the war; people caused the war. In civ terms, an espionage action happened that cost the US a few gold, and the US player decided to respond by declaring war.

In civ terms it also hits culture

It destroyed a few paintings. Did US production of cinema, sculpture, painting, technology, plays, or any other form of drop significantly? Nope.
Again, we're talking maybe 1 less culture output for a single turn.

I think you're downplaying things a bit.

I don't.

Just because there was less of something doesn't mean that the loss was significant in Civ terms.

Terrorist attacks can be emotionally big, but they have little impact on aggregates.

 

[Chalks]

I agree with Ahriman - Civilization is on too large a scale for even the biggest single action to have more affect than you see from espionage in Civ 4.

The only change you would need to make would be to have an occasional prompt to say "Your intelligence services have discovered that civilization X may be responsible for the attack and this could justify war. Declare war?" to get reduced "you've gone to war" negative diplomacy modifiers.

 

[largedarryl]

I agree with Ahriman - Civilization is on too large a scale for even the biggest single action to have more affect than you see from espionage in Civ 4.

The only change you would need to make would be to have an occasional prompt to say "Your intelligence services have discovered that civilization X may be responsible for the attack and this could justify war. Declare war?" to get reduced "you've gone to war" negative diplomacy modifiers.

As in what I said earlier, BTS has almost this exact purpose of terrorism handled by 1 unit, a spy. There doesn't need to be anything new added to account for this.

 

[Crazy George]

So, here's the implementation without adding anything new.

When Barbarian City States get advanced enough, they start pumping out Spies in addition to the occassional Military Unit. If that's not reason enough to eliminate them from the game early, I don't know what is.

 

[Akkon888]

This is about Civ5, and as such, there would be no spies to initiate (espionage is out).

Going off of Ahriman, I think that the worlds in Civ5 are to be much larger than in the past - perhaps even double the size of maps in Civ4. I see no problem picturing a semi-large bomb going off and destroying an improvement. So, terrorists might seem feasible in Civ5 in my mind.

 

[Craxymaxy]

Will Civ V vanilla even have random events?

 

[globalempire]

so if they have no ecomonic or cultural value, then well they should cause lots of unhappiness.

in my opinion when you capture a city and you have very bad rep with a leader their rebel soldiers might appear outside it. They would go somewhere and nuild a guerilla camp which could spawn more soldiers. they could build more guerilla camps so you would have to put down the problem quickly.

other civs could fund them secretly though if you destroyed the camp you could find out, and this would create a unit right away for a certain amount of gold. so infantry like 40 gold, or something say.

so example

China captures an Egytian City. Mao and Hatshepsut have really bad relations so 6 infantry spawn when the city is captured. or razed or whatever. they spawn on the edge of the gather redius of city. as well as one rebel settler. it builds a guerilla camp in side of hatshepsuts territory.

The Vikings dont like china so they contact the guerilla camp and tehy put 300 gold into it. this buys the guerillas 4 infantry. the rest of the money can be put towards QUOTE ON QUOTE ACTS OF TERROR.

the terror attack gets carried out and a building is destroyed in a nearby Chinese city. 10 unhappiness is added in the city for 10 turns.

vikings come back and give more money to the guerillas giving them a rebel sttler. they build another guerilla camp. this can also happen naturally. then the Chinese destroy the original guerilla camp and discover that the Vikings have been funding the Guerillas.

yuo could also if a city was unhappy alot, alot , alot, that maybe you could fund unhappy citizens to create a guerilla camp. they could become a real problem

 

[Blkbird]

I'm sure we already have terrorists in Civ for a long time: They're called barbarians.

 

[Ahriman]

10 unhappiness is added in the city for 10 turns.

Again, this is way out of scale. The 9/11 attack (largest terrorist attack in history) did not suddenly make New York shut down for 10 years because its citizens were rioting in the streets.