Zombie Mode

How are you liking Zombie Mode?

  • I'm enjoying it so far.

    Votes: 57 35.2%
  • It's not for me.

    Votes: 38 23.5%
  • Zombies in Civ? Never!

    Votes: 20 12.3%
  • Haven't tried it yet.

    Votes: 55 34.0%

  • Total voters
    162
Andrew, any strategy to avoid shooting them down and acting like they are not there?
Hmmm... There are others at Firaxis who are better at the game than I am. You, I imagine, are better at the game than I am, as are most people here. As I've said, my job is to make the words pretty and the history more or less check out - I'm a historian and writer, and not a designer or playtester. I don't play above Emperor, and normally play on King.

But they'll chase the nearest unit. Get some recon units to lead them away; get some city projects to grab them and toss them away. The last zombie game I played I made a fortified line of traps (remember they damage ON and ON ADJACENT tiles) in front of walls and let those lines damage or kill zombies that came too close - I got the It's a Trap and Hello Mr Fancypants achievements for doing that. I avoided settling near any place that had been a battlefield - ever - and kept a close eye on the one or two ancient battlefields behind my wall (there were one or two). I did not try to settle Beyond the Wall, and the one foreign capital (in other words un-raze-able city) out there (Harald's poor city) I had I had to pretty much abandon.

I had a safe heartland of about five (Khmer) cities which could produce things OK, whereas the AI was pretty destroyed (except for a peaceful Mapuche off in the distance). I waged a small war on Mapuche to cripple his growth and ended up with a science victory.

Looking at that screenshot... I would use the Ultimate Nuke, which is "Retire". That world belongs to the dead now. In the future, I might try to avoid provoking early wars. In my old game, the zombies mostly came because Harald, Eleanor and I got into a three-way fight that seeded the ground with Badness that eventually killed the world (pretty much). If we hadn't started that Ancient and Classical-era war, we would have a lot fewer (and thus a lot weaker) zeds walking around.
 
Not only can I confirm that zombies spawn on tiles that no unit ever visited nor died on (islands and ice-locked tiles) but I have experienced waves of zombies in numbers FAR exceeding units that died.

Then you have the added problem of changing era's and zombies suddenly being overpowered..... tying them to era not dead units.

It's the same kind of lazy coding as the teleporting tunnels where obviously it would make much more sense if the engineers could traverse mountains and lay down tunnels like roads.
 
I managed to get Zombies to +50 Mutation well before any of the AI or myself could get Cavalry out. I was trying to keep certain CS alive, and also settled into lands devasted by Aztec expansionism (they captured 2 cs early but then couldn't stop the Zombies). But I admit I was certainly pouring gasoline on the fire, having found the zombies pretty weak in my first game.

In any case Zombies can take down our walls in 2-3 shot. My best defence is to let them hit my own Zombie Corps first then move in and kill it with others. Voi Chien only do about 15-20 damage but unless I make a mistake they never get hit.
Spoiler :
Zombie44.jpg

On turn 253/750, I am starting to worry. Lots of lost production to repairing defenses. SO glad for the Thanh! It gets built in right after walls.


It became a game where I was constantly looking to raise my combat strength, kinda like playing Dramatic Ages and having to focus on Era score above all else. Also worth considering how to help AI raise their combat strength too. I gave Monty a few luxuries and he seemed to stop losing and turtled on the coast.

After I hit +50 mutation strength I saved and clicked RETIRE to see some kill stats:
Spoiler :
Zombiedeaths.jpg



I can see that easily just the major civs combined have killed over 500 units, and I expect at least 400 would be Zombies. In fact it could be much higher if I were to include the kill by City States the ones that have survived are constantly getting spawns. Having a large map and epic speed may add modifers to how fast Zombies gain mutation strength.
 
I did one zombie game as a test only on prince and was peaceful. I'm going to do another on emperor and play as Chandragupta or Alexander or something and do some early wars so the world gets messed up quick, so I can see how bad it gets.
 
I did one zombie game as a test only on prince and was peaceful. I'm going to do another on emperor and play as Chandragupta or Alexander or something and do some early wars so the world gets messed up quick, so I can see how bad it gets.

In my current game, emperor on huge continents map, Alexander was alone on a landmass. He suffered the worst. From the looks of it he lost two cities and his capital is in the red. So far for the great general. :p

Having a barbarian horse camp with zombie mode near your capital really hampers progress by the way... :deadhorse:
 
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Or, of course, do what you're doing there and just hold on - if you're that besieged, the AI should be paralyzed and you can inch towards another victory.

Of course, I see the timer on a lot of those zombies, which means that, honestly, you're in trouble. Good luck!

Thanks for the tips.

I'm actually chasing the "It's a Trap" achievement and thought The Maya on Snowflake would do the trick.

On my second playthrough, The Maya did much better. As I figured out what to do with those clocked Zombies. I plonked them on my allies doorsteps and let them loose :D

20210405155849_1.jpg

(You may be able to see from the mini map almost all the other civs are down to 1-2 cities).
 
I like playing this mode more and more. I especially enjoy being able to improve my lands a bit. The only negative is I get bored with making units which are killed in a turn by the zombies. I like building up, but run out of things to build that isn't units lol.
 
Thanks for the tips.

I'm actually chasing the "It's a Trap" achievement and thought The Maya on Snowflake would do the trick.

On my second playthrough, The Maya did much better. As I figured out what to do with those clocked Zombies. I plonked them on my allies doorsteps and let them loose :D

View attachment 592845
(You may be able to see from the mini map almost all the other civs are down to 1-2 cities).
Good! Careful with that missionary - you've only got one city from how I can see it; a religious victory would be really, really easy like that. And you don't seem to have founded Buddhism.
 
you've only got one city from how I can see it; a religious victory would be really, really easy like that. And you don't seem to have founded Buddhism.

Yes, I'm kinda playing OCC at the start. I'm slowly taking out the city states, cos islands are safe from Zombies.

But no need to worry about a religious victory (or loss!) cos Zombie Defense makes a religious victory very difficult. Zombies kill religious units. The problem is the AI are trying desperately to convert me and getting all their missionaries killed. :lol:
20210405175252_1.jpg

(On the other hand, Snowflake is great for Monopolies & Corporations as you can see The Maya have cornered the worlds exotic luxuries).

Edit: I hit a bug -> [NFP] - [1.0.11.16] [Zombie Defense] Zombie Spawn On Top Of Each Other | CivFanatics Forums

Shame. Cos I was edging closer to a culture victory. :sad:
 
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When your back is turned and two strength 30 zombies turn up at an un walled city, say that.
To be fair though, I was playing Vietnam on a wet Wetlands map. :lol: So yeah, nobody ever was a threat, ever.
 
Yes, I'm kinda playing OCC at the start. I'm slowly taking out the city states, cos islands are safe from Zombies.

But no need to worry about a religious victory (or loss!) cos Zombie Defense makes a religious victory very difficult. Zombies kill religious units. The problem is the AI are trying desperately to convert me and getting all their missionaries killed. :lol:
View attachment 592855

(On the other hand, Snowflake is great for Monopolies & Corporations as you can see The Maya have cornered the worlds exotic luxuries).

Edit: I hit a bug -> [NFP] - [1.0.11.16] [Zombie Defense] Zombie Spawn On Top Of Each Other | CivFanatics Forums

Shame. Cos I was edging closer to a culture victory. :sad:
Did you try shift+enter to end the turn? It worked for me in other situations.
 
So I finally ended my Zombie gam with targeted strike forces to finish the last three capitals. My zombie bonus was 92. I had to finish because my tech wasn't keeping up with their strength and I was slowly being overwhelmed. it was pretty fun, turns took a long time just due to the number of combats every turn.
 
Did you try shift+enter to end the turn? It worked for me in other situations.

I forgot about Shift-Enter. Thanks.

...but that only gets you so far. You still can't move many of the units. Nor can the stacks be attacked either. So the game is pretty much horked from that point onwards anyway.
 
I haven't bothered playing this mode yet. Is there anything to it beyond essentially 'raging barbarians with traps'?
 
I haven't bothered playing this mode yet. Is there anything to it beyond essentially 'raging barbarians with traps'?

Yes.

Actually playing defensively is half of Zombie Defense. :)

If you forget you're dealing with Zombies for a sec, and focus instead on building defenses (for any land assault) it can be quite fun. China's Great Wall gets a boost in this mode. So does Roman forts and the Maori Pa.

Try it on 4-Leaf Clover or 6-Armed Snowflake for a bit of insanity :goodjob:
 
One thing commented on in a video by Marbozir which I have also noticed is that AI civs have a habit of bankrupting themselves in zombie mode. The assumption is that, beset by zombies, they are spending all their gold on more units.
 
One thing commented on in a video by Marbozir which I have also noticed is that AI civs have a habit of bankrupting themselves in zombie mode. The assumption is that, beset by zombies, they are spending all their gold on more units.
In two previous games I have totally seen this. They spend themselves into a hole they can't get out of. In my current game, not really. Current game they most certainly are not bankrupting themselves as they have lots of money but they are spending it on units. But they earn it back it seems. Guess it depends on a few other factors.

Current game the zombie hordes are getting overwhelming (on King in this one). But there is a lot of war in this game, the AI is warring quite a bit between themselves. Three AI's got taken out by other AI's (looking at the stats anyway it seems to be the case). It's an unusual game as they don't usually war this hard on King and due to this the zombie hordes are actual hordes, not minor annoyances. They are now at 70+ strength and it takes a hit from a ranged unit, a hit from a city and a hit from an encampment to nearly take them out. I've been using horse units throughout the game as a rapid response force to assist in zombie hunting which has worked well but now even they are struggling. Only works when combined arms are used to whittle them down. The AI seem to have some very high numbers of units and seem to have a good money supply which they seem to use to buy stuff frequently (usually units it seems from the military strengths of the AI's). I've got two major spawn points that spawn the things all the time so two cities in particular are always beset by zombies. Only reason I can think of is that those areas had barb camps I destroyed way back otherwise I have no idea why they are such major spawn points. They rarely spawn anywhere else in my empire. I've also noticed that if I leave them to attack my encampments in these areas without bringing in help (they do wear themselves down though they also nearly take out the encampment) then even more zombies spawn...a consequence I guess of that random chance when you lose health (population or in the case of encampments soldiers I guess) of more zombies spawning. The RNG doesn't seem to be on my side for this mechanic at any rate.

The only amusing thing is the AI's flood of religious units get taken out by the frequent zombie hordes. This is the first game I've had with zombie mode where the strength had gone up this high and they are actual hordes. But everyone is handing them for now. I want to see how bad it can get, which may happen in this game.
 
The irony of this mode is it seems to turn the player a bit zombie-ish

Do you mean it can be a little exhausting?!

It does get a little tiresome when the Zombies relentlessly pound your cities turn after turn.

Though this is not always the case on all maps. I still don't understand when/how they can snowball.
 
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