Victory condition: Chaos awakening

[Ahriman]

I think there need to be 2-3 possible victory conditions available other than just conquest/domination. Religion is also likely to be very difficult given the mechanics of warhammer religion.

One I would propose is a chaos victory whereby the End Times arrive and a chaos nation builds enough gates and portals to allow the Chaos Gods themselves to enter the world, which counts as a win for the chaos player (not for anyone else).

Basically this would function like a cross between a vanilla civ spaceship victory and the Tower of Mastery victory from FFH. By keeping it simple, we can hopefully make it so that the AI will credibly be able to complete it, so there is a definite threat of losing.

At the moment, the chaos awakening tech lets you build a chaos gateway that functions like an airport. Rename this a Lesser Chaos Gateway, and make it a prerequisite for building some of the chaos demons. This building could also provide a few beakers.
I would suggest creating a Greater Chaos Gateway which is very expensive (800 hammers?). The Greater Gateway requires a Lesser Chaos Gateway in that city. There are 4 separate chaos Gateways, one for each of the 4 chaos gods.
The Greater Gateway acts like a Sheaim Planar gate, automatically summoning forth demons into the world. Each gate summons a demon of the appropriate chaos god.
The percent chance of a gate summoning a unit could be based on the number of Chaos Temples (or lesser chaos gateways) in the whole world.

Once you have built all four Greater Chaos Gateways, you can start constructing a Final Chaos Gateway to the rift where the chaos gods live. This would be a very expensive wonder (5000 hammers?), and would require the End Times tech. Building this final Gateway wins the game. If the Gateway victory is turned off, then building this gateway increases the demon spawn rate of the Greater Chaos Gateways by +300% and provides a -50% war weariness in all your cities.

The AI could hopefully do this better than the Altar or Tower victories from FFH. It fails at these because the Altar requires a very specific GPP strategy, and because the Towers require either mass vassalisation and tribute or mass building and then dispelling mana nodes. Here, all that is required is tech and hammers, which the AI is capable of getting eventually.

I assume from the End Times tech that something like this was originally envisioned.

There could also be some kind of Alliance/Apostolic palace victory condition for good civs; if members of the Alliance comprise 80% of the world's population, and you can get a 2/3 majority to vote you overlord, you win, peacefully.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

Now were talking Ahriman! wonderful ideas all round there! i honestly cant find anything to pick at...

though perhaps we should make eash of the greater chaos gates fequire a few lesser ones, like 4 lesser gates per greater gate. this way the chaos player must have at least 12 cities, plus a hell of a lot of wonders to win this way...

one thing that just struck me, is that this is a very 'builder' oriented victory condition, and chaos are meant to be conquorers... the spawning of chaos units from the gates helps this, but maybe we should add some more war- oriented benefits from building these wonders??

 

[Ahriman]

I thought about build requirements, but I think it is probably too much to expect chaos to have too many high-production cities (particularly on ~medium size maps or so, or on the Warhammer World map). Maybe make it 2 lesser gateways per Greater Gateway. I was thinking that we could require that each Greater Gateway had to be built in a separate city; jealous chaos gods don't like having their gates nearby.

We could add more military benefits to building the wonders, but demon spawning is pretty militaristic as it is....

 

[orlanth]

Nifty idea for gates.. How about if each of the Chaos Gates could be constructed over the ruins of the Great Shrine of each of the other religions? The Great Gate of Slaanesh on the ruins of the Shrine of the Elven Gods.. Great Gate of Khorne on the ruins of the Shrine of Destruction, etc. Hammer costs for these could be decreased, and it could become slightly more conquest-oriented rather than requiring high hammer output as a unique condition.

I've also been wondering where there might be scope for adapting the Armageddon Counter mechanic to represent the ebb and flow of the Winds of Chaos in the world. This wouldn't necessarily have to be totally linear or victory-related; it could change in a cyclic fashion with some secular/lasting component related to success of the Lawful and Chaotic religions.

 

[Ajidica]

Wouldnt the Gate of Khorne make more sense on the Elves shrine? Khorne is the elven god.

 

[Ahriman]

How about if each of the Chaos Gates could be constructed over the ruins of the Great Shrine of each of the other religions?

Hmm... this wouldn't work so well IMO. The point of the victory condition is mostly for general random maps; in the Rhyes scenario, there are faction-specific win conditions. On a random map, you can't even guarantee the existence of all the religions (with random civ selection), making the condition unreliable.
And on the Warhammer map, I wouldn't expect a chaos faction to have to conquer the dark elf continent or the high elf continent in order to be able to build this. And if you have to conquer the world in order to get a tech-based victory, then it was really a conquest victory already.

Plus, I'd probably want to build the temples in my heartland, rather than in whatever capital cities I manage to capture (which are often of mediocre quality, since most of their structures are wiped by capture).

I'm definitely up with some kind of Armageddon counter. One suggestion a while back was to make a cyclical counter. Counter starts at zero. Goes up with probability x% each turn, and whenever a city is razed or even with y% chance every time a unit is killed. Events can increase or decrease the counter. Spreading corruption of chaos to new cities can increase the counter.
When the counter reaches z (maybe 40?) some kind of even is triggered at a random location, like an invasion of barbarian units; orks, demons, chaos warriors, pirates, etc., and the counter reverts to zero.
Each time an invasion is triggered, it is of higher strength each time.

You could give all demon units or something a promotion that gives them a strength bonus based on the counter value. I'm thinking of something a little like the Flowering Counter in the Planetfall mod.
The counter could also effect the general barbarian spawn rate.

This would take a lot of coding though - do we have coders available?

 

[orlanth]

The point of the victory condition is mostly for general random maps; in the Rhyes scenario, there are faction-specific win conditions. On a random map, you can't even guarantee the existence of all the religions (with random civ selection), making the condition unreliable.

Yeah that's a good point.. & I'm all for focusing on design for random-map playability first. Well it might be possible to have the gates be buildable from scratch, but be able to get one Great Gate for free (or at reduced build cost) if you manage to conquer & desecrate the appropriate Great Shrine (that should be a pretty significant feat to achieve, having just one in existence per mega-religion).

(If I'm not wrong, the WH canon is that the Chaos Gate is basically just the North Pole, but I don't see that as a particularly interesting condition lol, I think we can be justified in tweaking it a bit)

This would take a lot of coding though - do we have coders available?

I personally would be capable of only an extremely modest attempt (maybe a bonus to Chaos monsters, + to mutation rates..)
I think we need to work on getting our Armageddon Counter low enough for Ploeperpengel to perhaps one day return to active modding..!

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

more interesting ideas, but i dissagree with having the gates built on other religious shrines for the same reasons ahriman mentioned.

as for armageddon counters, the Chaos Invasion adaption sounds like fun, and could be tied to some other form of chaos victory. but i suspect it would be a ltae addition due to distinct lack of *real* coders....

 

[deadliver]

In my old roleplaying campaign based on Warhammer there was an adventure module called Shadows Over Bogenhofen. The plot was that a group of Tzeentchite cultists were unwittingly going to open a Warp Gate in the middle of the Old World. Opening up a warpgate would be a cool objective for the chaos factions.

 

[orlanth]

With one Temple type for each of the four gods, the old Lesser Chaos Gateways, the 4 god-specific gateways requiring the Lesser ones, and then the Big Kahuna that's getting to be a lot of buildings for civs that aren't too development-focused; the AI is especially bad at getting through multiple layers of buildings.

I think we could toss the old Airport Gateway; it's not that in-flavor to be hopping between your cities in these as going anywhere near the Realm of Chaos is often an unpleasant one-way trip. But there could be room for some cool events getting sucked into the Gateways of the Gods and coming back horribly changed (or not at all)..

The god-specific Gateways could require the appropriate Temple (or even 2 or 3 of those temples like vanilla civ Cathedrals) I was thinking about a second tier of Chaos techs to build the god-specific Gateways since most Chaos will have a lot of the later civilized techs blocked off, but hesitate at implementing too much at once since some people find the tech tree confusing.

 

[Ahriman]

I think the intention is that you can only have a temple to ONE of the four gods in any given city. One chaos temple, you just choose which type it is.
I'd be ok with dropping airport lesser chaos gateways (and make each Greater Gateway require the appropriate Temple) but I'd suggest adding their functionality to the greater gateways. Without Imperial Roads, and with only Trails, it is REALLY slow for chaos factions to move around a large empire.

I see no reason for a second tier of chaos techs; each gateway should just require the appropriate Chaos god tech, AND maybe the tech for Exalted Sorcerors (forget the name).
So 4 tiers of chaos techs:
1) Corruption of Chaos
2) The 4 individual gods techs
3) The tech needed for Exalted Sorcerors, and maybe the Gateway.
4) The End Times, needed for summoning a demon price world unit and creating the final chaos gateway.

If people are really worried this is too builderish, one way to create conflict would be to make the Chaos gateways world wonders rather than national wonders, so if you want to win this way you might have to invade other chaos factions to capture their gate.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

How are you planing on coding this chaos victory?
You could use the vanila civ code for the Space Race victory.
In old civ, you only had to build the starship parts and launch the thing, not wait for it to arive. The same could be applied to chaos portals.

 

[darkedone02]

There is a Chaos Portal that you came out off from the beginning of your chaos faction character in Warhammer Online, if you plan on making the gates, I send a picture from the one in the game.

 

[Seten]

(first hi and good job so far on the mod )

Is a builder type victory for the chaos really needed?
I love the idea to simulate the end of time so far
But i see it like the illians in fall from heaven.

A serie of ritual wich ultimately lead to the spawn of a uber avatar (like Ulric ascended)

 

[Ahriman]

Well, its a hard to reach builder condition. I'm really of the opinion that there need to be a lot of non-domination/annihilation victory types; its really boring particularly on large maps to have to conquer most of the world to win, even long after you've actually *won* in terms of becoming the most powerful civ by far.

I'd like to see us making religious victory working for Good civs, where they have to spread their religion to X cities and rid the world of chaos or something; part of the problem with this is that building a shrine to start a religion doesn't seem to designate that city as the holy city, so a religious victory is impossible.

 

[mutant-enemy]

What about some kind of trade-goal like "gain access to every resource/luxury resource/or sth"? You would not have to conquer every single country, but you have to win access to resources and you have to hold them long enough to gather them all in your empire.

I could also think of a goal like "sea dominion", where you have to hold a fleet bigger than all the others combined. (Maybe 2:1?) Would be an especially interesting goal for Caledor, I think. (Ok, maybe too easy, especially early-game. Perhaps there could be a restriction like "10 ships must be lvl 6 or above". Don't know.)

 

[orlanth]

I agree it would be good to design some sort of victory condition to defuse the potential boredom that occurs when you become clearly far enough ahead of everyone else, and just have to wait to finish a long conquest or build a bunch of stuff. Perhaps you need to be the 1st to research and perform an apocalyptic Ritual of some kind, which in turn triggers an escalating series of intensely challenging/deadly Uprising events; if you can survive those and hold onto a certain amount of cities/Shrines/Temples etc then you've won. I think there could be precedent for this in something like:

- Someone reawakening the Dragons
- One of the Elven factions unsheathing the Sword of Khaine
- A Lawful faction creating the Vortex to drain Chaos energy away from the world, or some powerful ritual to close off the world from the Realm of Chaos; resisted by powerful Chaos incursions to prevent this from happening
- A Greenskin ritual unleashing a torrent of Waagh energy, after which part of their empire rebels in uncontrolled frenzy and must be defeated for a final victory
- The final Chaos "End Times" ritual creating hostile Demon Princes that must be defeated for control of the world

Something like this could create some late-game challenge to prevent ppl from abandoning the game in boredom when they become too powerful. I also liked the idea of a victory condition based on capturing and holding the Great Shrine of every other world religion, or getting some sort of bonus from desecrating an enemy Shrine.

 

[Ahriman]

The most difficult thing about such conditions is that they must sensibly work with a range of map sizes, a range of map scripts, and a range of numbers of civs in the game. Its easy for such conditions to end up being too easy to meet in a particular game, if for eg it turns out there aren't really any chaos civs or something, or there are only 2 religions present.

And victory condition needs to be a challenge *in itself* to complete, and ideally needs to be something that the AI could figure out how to complete for itself.

 

[Arexack_heretic]

just had a thought for a chaos wastes/ warpcounter feature.

how about:

units have a chance to be lost on warped tiles. (creating another counter B)
when warpcounter reaches Z, B number of units of chaos appear a barbarians.
alternatively via a great spell can be summoned by a chaotic player as allies.

as it would be ungodly to store the lost units individually, the timetravelling / re-appearing units will need to be random chaos units/demonic.

Thoughts?
I think it might be a cool endtimes / choasincursion / warpstorm mechanic.

p.s. sorry for my recent scarceness.

 

[Ahriman]

I dunno... seems like it would penalize the AI for moving into Warp tiles, whereas the human player would know to avoid them.