the more you kill the more they come back?
Yes, you become the living dead, long long turns repeated, groan.
I don't know... I would be going for a quick culture win and probably settle Kilimanjaro for ridiculous capital growth. Science bores me as long as monopolies give ridiculous tourism bonuses (please, please hit this much harder with the nerf bat. Much, much harder. I'll enjoy the fast wins in the meantime) that mean flight/radio/computers is irrelevant. Never considered Kupe for the 6-armed snowflake game. Cheat code just like Terra games with Kupe, obviously, but that may be my next game.
It is harder without. And it is harder on lower levels. AI with no bonuses is very fast reduced to capitals only and city states vanish one by one.
This answer is only based on my recent experience. But what I've seen so far (I use some mods BTW) is that with Barbarian Clans mode on and zombie mode on they weren't too bad. Most games were as you described, except for one where they were worse with high strength by the modern era. But two games in with Barbarian clans turned off and it's been a night and day difference in the size and frequency of the swarms. In both games I had 3-5 of them spawn by my capital with only the starting warrior to defend as I just finished my first scout and was working on my first settler. Further on still in the ancient era, they'd almost taken out two of my cities prior to walls and I had to sacrifice units and buy more with gold (with what I had anyway) to stop them which of course made more zombies. At the rate they are spawning and getting killed their strength is going to be nasty in the near future and I'm only in the classical age in my current game. Clearly the modes have an effect, at least the Barbarian clans one anyway. I am playing with the Dramatic Ages, Monopolies and Corporations and Zombie modes on and the others off. As for mods, well the ones I'm using don't have any effect on this from what I am seeing. And I gather the difficulty level does affect them too though I don't know what the cutoff point is between OMG and meh, zombies. I gather from earlier posts it's due to AI bonuses against them. But I'm just a casual player, not an expert so I'm just basing much of this on what I've read. The only stuff I can definitively say is what I've experienced and on King with the above settings they are getting quite nasty.
Well, I was in the really later eras and the only zombies I saw were two or three spawns that were spawning in THE SAME spot over and over again. There were no barbarians in sight since much of the map had been covered by either me or the AI, so IDK about that theory. One thing I did see was that when the AI attacked me, and I had trouble dealing with their hero unit, lots of zombies spawned at the same time in that same place and I did become a little overwhelmed. But when I'm at peace, it's nothing that threatening, lol. I didn't really find a use for the "Dark Signal" project or the other science one (that controls the zombies) at all.
I never thought the free cities might dampen them. I have had runaway free cities many times using dramatic ages and never thought of it being a factor in dampening the zombie effect. And yes, civilizing areas does over some time start to dampen the numbers. I'm pretty early in my current game so any dampening isn't occurring from this. And the amount of wars has an effect too. The one game where barbarian mode was on had the AI doing multiple wars with each other (two AI civ's were wiped out) and the number of zombies was heavier and their strength got quite high by the time the modern era came around. But it still didn't match what I am getting right now.
I've not once used the dark signal or turn undead stuff. Never think of it to be honest even in my current game. I got a zombie unit once from a goody hut but it was pretty weak.
I'll have to try those maps. I've never tried them all this time.
That sound fun actually
