Zombie Mode

[Deadly Dog]

Playing Porutgal on a large terra map, emperor, Barb clans, Dramatic Ages, and Zombies.

As expected the AI is falling apart in the old world, from dramatic ages. I turtled with just 3 cities in a very defensible position until I could get to the New World, whereupon of course I discovered about 15 city states. But my 3 core cities are doing just fine, out on a peninsula safe from both Zombies (mostly) and loyalty pressure of the Free Cities.

Zombies are certainly around and making trouble but I can't say I've seen them attack any of the Free Cities or their units. And I never saw more than 2 in a group until I reached the New World. There are scattered zombies everywhere but the only "wave" of about 4 units, which seemed to just disappear when the last barb clan civilized itself. I may look for an autosave to see if the zombies were actually part of that clan!

They had reached over +20 mutation strength but with muskets and cavalry out now they aren't too tough. It may be that snowballing free cities works against the zombie spawning somehow, sorta like it does in Apocalypse (free cities don't count towards CO2 so comet strikes don't trigger).

With Portugals +1 sight I can spot Zombies from afar. Quite convinced they will sit still until there's a unit in their LOS. Between that and the 17 trade routes on water (safe from pillaging), Joao III is even better than I expected in this scenario.

I will try Zombies again and I will most definitely play Portugal again, just not together and certainly not on a Terra Map (its like stealing candy from a baby, all those city states you meet long before the AI)

 

[Kotofei]

What am I missing? They spawn in ones and twos and immediately suicide themselves against the nearest city. What's the point?

They seem to have a taste for Military Engineers, though.

 

[Rambo919]

This mode makes no sense, I thought the point was that a dying unit potentially gets converted to a zombie unit..... all I see is zombies randomly spawning around cities without walls.

 

[King William I]

This mode makes no sense, I thought the point was that a dying unit potentially gets converted to a zombie unit..... all I see is zombies randomly spawning around cities without walls.

It may not be instantaneous. There's a chance that a zombie will spawn on any tile a unit has dies at any point in the game

 

[lordhaw]

It may not be instantaneous. There's a chance that a zombie will spawn on any tile a unit has dies at any point in the game

It seems from what I've seen that any of my units that get killed by zombies become insta-zombies. But any normal combat seems to vary. I've had some areas where barbarians always came through and I killed them seem to be a frequent spawn point and then areas that were big battlefields a few turns ago suddenly start spawning. It seems to vary with the bigger the wars and battles the more likely at some point zombies will spawn in that area. This is just my observation though and bears no evidence in code or anything.

I have not seen them wipe out AI's though. Not sure in my current game with dramatic mode on (I've played three since the update and lost two) but I know France and Kongo got wiped due to free city loyalty issues due to dramatic ages, not zombies. But the Zulu's got wiped on another continent and I'm not sure about if it was due to this or zombies. Their military strength was zero prior to the message saying they were gone. Rome is also in this state right now with zero military strength. I'm in the situation where my Canada is the military powerhouse and has the most territory and I don't find the zombies too bad, more of an annoyance than anything though they are getting stronger as time goes on or so it seems.

 

[Socrates99]

When do they start to challenge the AI? I'm in the early medieval and most of them seem to be doing fine. I'm playing Portugal, huge map, continents with islands map, deity. Ambiorix surprise DoWed me early and the area we fought spawns the most zombies but they seem to pop up in other spots too. I'm assuming that's where barbs were killed. Gaul seems to be doing fine, even expanding to islands I had wanted to take. Most of the other AI are stable and I know Sumeria, Cree and Mongolia have all fought with each other. Only Kupe seems to be lagging but I think that's mostly because he's struggling to find good spots to settle.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

It may not be instantaneous. There's a chance that a zombie will spawn on any tile a unit has dies at any point in the game

That explains why I kept seeing it happen in the same tiles. Wonder if this means you can prevent them spawning if you plant a unit on top of the tiles.

But honestly, don't like the mode, I also had very few spawn, not sure what controls the spawn rate, but it felt more like a nuisance than a challenge on Prince.

 

[8housesofelixir]

Zombies are certainly around and making trouble but I can't say I've seen them attack any of the Free Cities or their units.

IIRC Zombies, Barbs, and Free Cities all controlled by the "barbarian AI player", so they are in the same camp with each other.

 

[pokiehl]

IIRC Zombies, Barbs, and Free Cities all controlled by the "barbarian AI player", so they are in the same camp with each other.

Barbarians and Zombies are the same barbarian faction, but Free Cities are their own faction

 

[Deadly Dog]

Barbarians and Zombies are the same barbarian faction, but Free Cities are their own faction

This is what I thought, though I can't be sure I've ever seen just regular barbarian units attack free city units even in the base game. In any case the Zombies ignore the free cities and their units, and vice versa.

Needless to say I may be winning this particular game but civilization is losing badly there is a lot of unsettled land and many little circular roads marking another city that went nowhere.

As for Terra Map, New World is no safer perhaps less so Mojo-Daro was razed and I barely saved Samarkand.

Also super weird just a few turns after a Barbarian clan evolved into Brussels, Zombies were walking right through Brussel's Khevsar unit like they were neutral/ at peace. Saw it twice with the same 2 units, since then new Zombies have been correctly hostile to Brussels.

 

[Francel]

I was critical of the concept before playing it, but at least my first zombies game has been interesting.

in the ancient era, three neighbors DoWed me (I play ultra crowded and only have 1 city). Survived in large part because of Vietnam.

There has been a ton of fighting. Correspondingly, there are lots more zombies (now in medieval era). I am hoping the whole map gets overrun and only I survive. (Because Vietnam).

 

[Deadly Dog]

Ok, so, this is very cool....extracting an artifact has a chance to spawn a zombie! It's happened twice now out of 3 digs. they don't go for my archaeologist though.

Sorry if this was in the patch notes or posted earlier just I did not expect it and I was very impressed.

 

[Roblord]

Zombies attack cities and have a chance to cause population loss on each attack. If they cause population loss, it spawns another zombie unit.

 

[Pietato]

A few things I have noticed:

- Zombies pillage trade routes, and will prioritise it.
- Zombies are linked to the barb camp which spawned them in barb tribes mode, and will stay linked after that tribe has become a CS. They will never attack the CS and will defend them.
- Archaeology is extremely dangerous.

Barb tribe mode is still bugged to all Hell. No more tribes spawn after the first converts, they have the wrong defense value as a CS (a few had -1) meaning they die instantly, and you can freely walk through their territory.

 

[Francel]

I made it to the industrial era, same game described above.

The zombies seem too weak or too few. There are actually quite a few usually spawning every turn or every other turn but they are no match for my state of the art voi chiens.

Retired to get a peak at the game state. I have killed around 130 units, and imagine at least half of those are zombies. The mutation strength is only around +40 though. That means the zombies are baseline 60 strength, for anyone who isn’t aware.

As usual on deity I am the luddite with half as many techs as the ai and no campuses. If my spears and swords and arrows can easily stop the zombies, I doubt they pose much threat to the AI either.

I thought every time a zombie dies mutation goes up by one, but that clearly isn’t happening in my game. Haven’t built any special traps or improvements. Heathen conversion works but they default to base strength of 20.

Anyway, I am very close to winning RV but waiting to see what else unfolds. My people march in armies and study our cultural heritage of days gone, but we have not yet fathomed the stars in the sky might guide us on our way.

 

[lordhaw]

I don't know for sure, but I'm in Industrial age now and there is a huge number of zombies coming out of an empty area where I razed a useless free city between myself and Macedon. Not sure if the razing is the issue or not. They are giving a CS a very hard time and keep swinging down to me and up to Macedon. And it takes a hit from a field cannon, a hit from a nearby city and an attack from a cuirassier to take each of them out. They are definitely getting stronger all of a sudden. A single attack is enough to take out almost half the health of a cuirassier unit (I'm using lots of horse units because of the mobility for zombie control). Not long before this a single field cannon would take them out easily but the waves spawning now are not as weak as before. This is the same Canada game as earlier. No AI's (well maybe that city state) are in danger but many of them have no military strength to speak of at this point. I am guessing either the AI is for some reason not creating any military or they keep getting wiped by the zombies...I'm not sure which is the case. But there are a lot of free cities and I see no free city units attack zombies nor do I see zombies attack free city units or cities. Only CS and AI civs and me. They may be different factions but they don't attack each other. They should in my opinion. But up until this point the zombies are no more than a nuisance really. Threats to units without support, sure but as of right now not a threat to the civs. With the strength of the current round of zombies though I'm not so sure.

 

[Pietato]

Anyone figured out what makes them actually increase in strength? Killed about 50 myself, while AI must have killed about the same combined, yet they only have +19.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

Seems a bit underwhelming so far in my experience. If you're going to add zombies to Civ then I expect them to cause total chaos and they certainly aren't.

 

[Laurana Kanan]

Anyone figured out what makes them actually increase in strength? Killed about 50 myself, while AI must have killed about the same combined, yet they only have +19.

Just spit-balling here, but I believe it increases by 0.5 per zombie killed. The relevant parts seem to be:

<Row>
   <ModifierId>TOWERDEFENSE_INCREMENT_ZOMBIE_DEATHS</ModifierId>
   <Name>Amount</Name>
   <Value>1</Value>
</Row>

This is part of a counter that keeps track of the zombie deaths.

<Row>
   <ModifierId>TOWERDEFENSE_ZOMBIE_COMBAT_STRENGTH_FROM_PROPERTY</ModifierId>
   <Name>Scalar</Name>
   <Value>.5</Value>
</Row>

And, this multiplies the previous value by 0.5.

There's also these two arguments, which I'm not sure precisely what they do, since I haven't been able to play around with them yet.

<Row>
   <ModifierId>TOWERDEFENSE_ZOMBIE_COMBAT_STRENGTH_FROM_PROPERTY</ModifierId>
   <Name>InversePlayerScaling</Name>
   <Value>True</Value>
</Row>
<Row>
   <ModifierId>TOWERDEFENSE_ZOMBIE_COMBAT_STRENGTH_FROM_PROPERTY</ModifierId>
    <Name>AdvancedStartMultiplier</Name>
    <Value>50</Value>
</Row>

 

[lordhaw]

Anyone figured out what makes them actually increase in strength? Killed about 50 myself, while AI must have killed about the same combined, yet they only have +19.

Now don't quote this as much evidence, but the ones now spawning in areas where I've had recent fairly heavy battles and where I razed cities (I razed another fairly useless free city as an experiment...my Canada is ruthless this game ) are much stronger. The ones showing up where I had battles a long time ago (such as in ancient and classical eras) are weaker. That's what it seems like anyway.