darkchild01a
Chieftain
- Joined
- Feb 8, 2007
- Messages
- 1
It seems you have a good model to go on in the Dawn of War games. I'd like to talk here about some general themes for the different Warhammer races and some strategies for building up textured game play. Unlike vanilla Civ4, the races in Warhammer 40k universe are quite diverse. I agree with you that it is good to start of simple, but the inclusion of other races (and thus new play styles) would make the game much more interesting.
I think the key here is to diversify the different races in terms of the Wonders and buildings, units, unit promotions and abilities, civic options, etc. The ultimate goal here is to restrict players from certain play styles based on the race they play. For instance, you wouldn't expect the Imperium to be throwing away their rare and precious space marines in hopeless battles so an Imperium based strategy should be build around using Imperial Guard troops as garrisons and slowly building up experience and selecting unit promotions for their expensive, highly trained space marine units.
Ways to effect this type of dynamic in game would be to make units like space marines and chaos marines national units that require a certain civic or religion to produce. Furthermore, they should be afforded better unit promotions than stock garrison units to reflect the highly specialized nature of these units. Lastly, limits need to be placed on the number of "elite" units a civ can produce or have in play at one time, forcing players to use them judiciously and find clever ways to use their abilities to maximum effect.
I was reading a blog concerning the development of the next FFH2 installment and saw some interesting ideas there that would lend themselves beautifully to a Civ4 recreation of the Warhammer 40k universe. One idea is the partitioning of unit strength into different spheres or damage types. In this way you can create a network of checks and balances whereby certain units are resistant to certain types of damage. For a rough example we'll start with a space marine inquisitor. He is a powerful and feared unit and has his damage split into the spheres of "physical" and "mind". His strong fortitude and force of will should give him resistance to mind damage and he should be able to better resist damage from the sphere of "chaos". Also, his best use should not be in attacking things, but in spell-casting. He should have the ability to purge heathen religions from a city or to instill fear in his enemies and loyalty and courage in his allies. He should stack up well against a chaos marine, who doesn't have the mental strength or conditioning to face his "mind" attacks. Thus, the chaos marine should be weak (negative combat modifier) against mind damage. Because the chaos marines were granted powerful mutations from the chaos gods, he should have a good deal of chaos damage (especially for melee Chaos units) that makes him a tough cookie for your regular space marine. Against the chaos resistant inquisitor, however, the chaos marine should be vulnerable and ineffective alone, as the inquisitor is resistant to chaos damage.
Powerful chaos units (casters specifically) should have the ability to corrupt other units and the success rate of this ability should be tied to their level or promotions. Similarly, resistance to corruption should also be tied to level/promotion. This will mirror the battle between sanctity and corruption that is waged between the forces of Chaos and the Imperium. In this way, the rare and expensive space/chaos marines can fight their battles through lesser men, with the forces of chaos seeding their corruption in the hearts of men and turning them into cultists to throw into the fray (as an idea here, maybe chaos players can have a city improvement and/or wonder that produces cultists every several turns). In turn, the space marines have the uphill task of fighting the spread of corruption in their territories. If you make it relatively easy for chaos units to spread corruption (you could use a similar strategy as the FFH2 developers are using in "fire" with their armageddon counter that passively spreads chaos when at a high value), but make it harder for them to engage the space marines in open combat (by making them very vulnerable to the mind damage heavy space marine units) you recreate an important dynamic in the Warhammer 40k universe by forcing a Chaos player to use deceit and subterfuge to weaken an Imperial player's forces as much as possible before engaging in open combat (the ability to for a Chaos player to produce "pirate" units that can attack without declaring war but suffer some combat penalty because they must hide their true allegiance would accomplish this).
The tech tree provides interesting challenges for a Warhammer 40k mod. Namely, the Warhammer 40k universe is like the stagnant middle ages and promotes fear, religion, and violence over social enlightenment and scientific progress. Thus at the beginning of the game (at the low end of the tech tree) both sides should be afforded the ability to construct your stock cultist/Imperial Guard, chaos/space marine units. New technologies should open up newer specialized units (like Gargants, Demon Summonings, Inquisitors, Terminators, heavy imperial tanks, air support units, etc). They should also provide access to new unit promotions that make your existing valuable units better, or make your weaker cultist/guard units not suck so much against more powerful units. Examples of this could be armor upgrades that make your space marines more resistant to physical damage or new spell abilities. It would also be useful to have technologies unlock unproducible units that can be upgraded from existing units once they reach a certain level. This allows players the enjoyment of carefully growing up a unit and protecting him until he can be turned into something more powerful that can be used to change the course of the game.
Units should also have requisite buildings to be produced (in addition to their requisite tech), which adds another level of strategy and city specialization to the game. For instance, space/chaos marine production facilities should be fairly expensive, as should be the units themselves; genetically designed super-humans take time and resources to build. This means that elite unit production will be limited to developed inner cities while garrisons can be drafted from local populations or produced at lower expense.
This concludes my basic overview. I have ideas for specific units, spells, buildings, etc. and will post these in a more ordered fashion later.
I think the key here is to diversify the different races in terms of the Wonders and buildings, units, unit promotions and abilities, civic options, etc. The ultimate goal here is to restrict players from certain play styles based on the race they play. For instance, you wouldn't expect the Imperium to be throwing away their rare and precious space marines in hopeless battles so an Imperium based strategy should be build around using Imperial Guard troops as garrisons and slowly building up experience and selecting unit promotions for their expensive, highly trained space marine units.
Ways to effect this type of dynamic in game would be to make units like space marines and chaos marines national units that require a certain civic or religion to produce. Furthermore, they should be afforded better unit promotions than stock garrison units to reflect the highly specialized nature of these units. Lastly, limits need to be placed on the number of "elite" units a civ can produce or have in play at one time, forcing players to use them judiciously and find clever ways to use their abilities to maximum effect.
I was reading a blog concerning the development of the next FFH2 installment and saw some interesting ideas there that would lend themselves beautifully to a Civ4 recreation of the Warhammer 40k universe. One idea is the partitioning of unit strength into different spheres or damage types. In this way you can create a network of checks and balances whereby certain units are resistant to certain types of damage. For a rough example we'll start with a space marine inquisitor. He is a powerful and feared unit and has his damage split into the spheres of "physical" and "mind". His strong fortitude and force of will should give him resistance to mind damage and he should be able to better resist damage from the sphere of "chaos". Also, his best use should not be in attacking things, but in spell-casting. He should have the ability to purge heathen religions from a city or to instill fear in his enemies and loyalty and courage in his allies. He should stack up well against a chaos marine, who doesn't have the mental strength or conditioning to face his "mind" attacks. Thus, the chaos marine should be weak (negative combat modifier) against mind damage. Because the chaos marines were granted powerful mutations from the chaos gods, he should have a good deal of chaos damage (especially for melee Chaos units) that makes him a tough cookie for your regular space marine. Against the chaos resistant inquisitor, however, the chaos marine should be vulnerable and ineffective alone, as the inquisitor is resistant to chaos damage.
Powerful chaos units (casters specifically) should have the ability to corrupt other units and the success rate of this ability should be tied to their level or promotions. Similarly, resistance to corruption should also be tied to level/promotion. This will mirror the battle between sanctity and corruption that is waged between the forces of Chaos and the Imperium. In this way, the rare and expensive space/chaos marines can fight their battles through lesser men, with the forces of chaos seeding their corruption in the hearts of men and turning them into cultists to throw into the fray (as an idea here, maybe chaos players can have a city improvement and/or wonder that produces cultists every several turns). In turn, the space marines have the uphill task of fighting the spread of corruption in their territories. If you make it relatively easy for chaos units to spread corruption (you could use a similar strategy as the FFH2 developers are using in "fire" with their armageddon counter that passively spreads chaos when at a high value), but make it harder for them to engage the space marines in open combat (by making them very vulnerable to the mind damage heavy space marine units) you recreate an important dynamic in the Warhammer 40k universe by forcing a Chaos player to use deceit and subterfuge to weaken an Imperial player's forces as much as possible before engaging in open combat (the ability to for a Chaos player to produce "pirate" units that can attack without declaring war but suffer some combat penalty because they must hide their true allegiance would accomplish this).
The tech tree provides interesting challenges for a Warhammer 40k mod. Namely, the Warhammer 40k universe is like the stagnant middle ages and promotes fear, religion, and violence over social enlightenment and scientific progress. Thus at the beginning of the game (at the low end of the tech tree) both sides should be afforded the ability to construct your stock cultist/Imperial Guard, chaos/space marine units. New technologies should open up newer specialized units (like Gargants, Demon Summonings, Inquisitors, Terminators, heavy imperial tanks, air support units, etc). They should also provide access to new unit promotions that make your existing valuable units better, or make your weaker cultist/guard units not suck so much against more powerful units. Examples of this could be armor upgrades that make your space marines more resistant to physical damage or new spell abilities. It would also be useful to have technologies unlock unproducible units that can be upgraded from existing units once they reach a certain level. This allows players the enjoyment of carefully growing up a unit and protecting him until he can be turned into something more powerful that can be used to change the course of the game.
Units should also have requisite buildings to be produced (in addition to their requisite tech), which adds another level of strategy and city specialization to the game. For instance, space/chaos marine production facilities should be fairly expensive, as should be the units themselves; genetically designed super-humans take time and resources to build. This means that elite unit production will be limited to developed inner cities while garrisons can be drafted from local populations or produced at lower expense.
This concludes my basic overview. I have ideas for specific units, spells, buildings, etc. and will post these in a more ordered fashion later.
). The scenario proposed (im not sure if you have read the "template story", but go ahead 
) is basically just a smaller Eye of Terror type rip in the fabric, and hence Eldar and Orks would descend on th area before long , no doubt. Tyranids are usually eating the population in the local around and would smell food. And Tau are just warmongering Imperials at the end of the day.
