Zombie Mode

[OmegaDestroyer]

I'm almost at the end of my Portugal Zombie run and I doubt I will try the mode again. While it has been interesting and kept me on my toes, I find the never-ending spawning zombies really tedious in the later eras when I'm waiting to meet a victory condition.

 

[lordhaw]

So as an experiment I started a game as Maori on a Terra map, with eight chosen civs (aggressive ones) to fight it out on the old world like cats in a sack. I thought it might produce a lot of zombies, but it didn't. Presumably because Barbarian Clan mode was on. As was secret societies, heroes and monopolies.

Eventually I invaded to see if I could go for domination. I actually got to 1814 before the inevitable cultural victory kicked in. Just two civs still had their capitals intact. But zombies were few and far between.

Turn off Barbarian Clan mode if you want more zombies. This for sure works (well it has for me for the most part anyway), though not necessarily huge swarms every game but there are a lot more of them in general.

From my experience of games so far, either the Zombies snowball, or they whimper.

It rarely strikes a decent balance, like say Dramatic Ages mode. IMO Zombie Defense is in need of more playtesting and balance.

Yup I agree.

 

[Dedrytus]

From my point of view the most annoying thing is that zombies can rise deep inside of your territory. It does not matter how good your defences are, enemy is behind. The only solution I found is to remove tiles they can spawn: by wonder, district or unit. There can be a city that no one fought nearby for years - and boom three zombies 100+ appear - when all your strongest units are on the other side of map cleaning small penisula to place a city to gather resources. This mode is fun but very chaotic: constant danger, defenses in wrong places, some cities are not attacked for centuries because zombies can not see them and they just stand, while the other cities are on constant siege. And the worst enemy is a lost barb unit that somehow can sneak by zombies and steal my worker and open gate to my territory

 

[walkerjks]

Gorgo is kind of fun at marathon speed with zombies. Very fast political philosophy is possible with a pretty mediocre starting location.

 

[blackbutterfly]

Gorgo is kind of fun at marathon speed with zombies. Very fast political philosophy is possible with a pretty mediocre starting location.

But the Hoplite is weak to Zombies.

I suspect all the anti-cav UUs may get rebalanced or changed up in the Apr update, in light of the 2 new melee units.

In Civ VI the Hoplite, the Impi and the Carolean are meant to be defensive units perhaps against Cavalry assaults but the AI rarely if ever send invading forces of cavalry. Not even Genghis.

But the Zombies do swarm. And Zombies are melee.

 

[Pietato]

Gorgo is kind of fun at marathon speed with zombies. Very fast political philosophy is possible with a pretty mediocre starting location.

Do they only ever give 10 culture, though?

 

[Abaxial]

Zombie mode feels a bit like masochism. Turning it on is essentially saying "Come hit me!"

 

[MrRadar]

From my point of view the most annoying thing is that zombies can rise deep inside of your territory. It does not matter how good your defences are, enemy is behind.

Yes there is this aspect. It makes you have walls everywhere, but also it makes you keep a sizeable force of ranged troops scattered all over your lands and develop a good road network for their fast redeployment. It becomes sort of a "whack-a-mole" game, which reminds me something.

Remember Civ III pollution mechanics and squads of workers you had to keep late game? So that you could send them instantly over railroads to the sites of fresh pollution to clean it up? Zombies spawning deep inside your territory are basically the same - pollution that requires prompt cleaning up by mobile and efficient units in sufficient numbers. Only Soren got rid of such mechanics in Civ IV as being quite 'unfun'. But now it's back in this mode.

While playing this mode I wondered, why apostles, inquisitors or a new type of religious unit - exorcist of some kind or so, couldn't remove the taint from the soil in friendly territory, so this constant headache would stop and you could concentrate into pushing them back on the outskirts? You would still be vulnerable to zombies raised by a spy action, but at least cleansing the ground would fit into this common loop in games, where you have a constant and nagging problem which must be dealt manually at first ,but then you do some progress and automate and remove it or solve it to a significant extent.

 

[walkerjks]

But the Hoplite is weak to Zombies.

Warriors and archers do fine (as long as you use good defensive terrain). By the time zombies are tough enough to give them problems, you can upgrade to swordsman and crossbows. My culture games don't last long enough to need to go past those

Do they only ever give 10 culture, though?

30 in marathon mode. Through most of ancient era, I was killing a zombie every 3 turns or so, along with other miscellaneous barbarians (I would raid a camp and then disperse it), rinse and repeat as new camps showed up. I might have only had a base 4 cpt from my capito, but I was generating 15 cpt from barb and zombie killing.

Marathon speed is the key as the culture gain from kills is tripled, but things to kill are spawning as if it's normal speed.

 

[tzu]

Zombie mode feels a bit like masochism. Turning it on is essentially saying "Come hit me!"

Sure, Zombie mode is a bit flawed. But is the rest of the game in this aspect anything less than awesome?
You are begging again: "Please, please tantalize me." And the game takes you tenderly in its arms and gently whispers in your ear: "Noooooo!!"

 

[Pietato]

Warriors and archers do fine (as long as you use good defensive terrain). By the time zombies are tough enough to give them problems, you can upgrade to swordsman and crossbows. My culture games don't last long enough to need to go past those


30 in marathon mode. Through most of ancient era, I was killing a zombie every 3 turns or so, along with other miscellaneous barbarians (I would raid a camp and then disperse it), rinse and repeat as new camps showed up. I might have only had a base 4 cpt from my capito, but I was generating 15 cpt from barb and zombie killing.

Marathon speed is the key as the culture gain from kills is tripled, but things to kill are spawning as if it's normal speed.

Wow. Never done Marathon mode. Sounds like Gorgo is a lot stronger there.

 

[Yzman]

Did my zombie game to get all of the zombie achievements as Gran Colombia on the 6 snowflake map and while the mode was a little fun I doubt I will be doing it again. The zombies basically halted the whole game. I never got my initial expansion quite complete due to constant zombie worries so the game was really slow. Out of the other civs on the map, only 2 held off the zombies...all of the others had 1 city that was fully taken down but I assume can't be fully destroyed by zombies.

I eventually reached a point at the end where I would have won by score had I continued since I had an army of zombies protecting my land indefinitely due to just casting dark signal every few turns. Nothing could break it. As zombies kept dying, my zombies also got stronger and when a few died to other zombies...those just became my new zombies. Felt a little too gamey for me to do again but it was a fun little game for what it was.

 

[walkerjks]

Wow. Never done Marathon mode. Sounds like Gorgo is a lot stronger there.

I almost never do, either. I think it's popular with some domination-focused folks as you can get more done with your military, particularly in the ancient era. You can conquer more before your opponents get walls, for example.

Before zombie mode, I only played marathon when playing as French Eleanor. And I did that because most things scale 3x with marathon speed, but loyalty does not. Cities still max out out at 100 loyalty and the loyalty formulas remain the same at marathon speed. So Eleanor can flip a lot of cities in a single era at marathon speed.

Now, I will likely continue to play Gorgo at marathon speed because of zombie (and barbarian) spawn rates. Who needs a monument when you can just kill more zombies? Normally I run minimal military, but Gorgo and zombies screams for a bigger early military, even if you never plan to declare war against an AI civ or city state.

Otherwise, it's always standard speed for me.

 

[blackbutterfly]

Wow. Never done Marathon mode.

Me neither.

I used to play marathon in Civ V but not in Civ VI.
So how do Zombies scale in marathon mode? (I expect they become tougher, right?)

 

[Abaxial]

So, to get a better look, I set up an autoplay game on a standard size lakes map, with zombies enabled but not other modes. Russia and Japan got absolutely mobbed with zombies, the other players were barely touched. Russia and Japan were the two civs closest to tundra - I don't know if that is significant or not.

What was weird was the way that the Russian and Japanese capitals got repeatedly attacked down to zero health, and then attacks continued doing no damage at all. It think in this situation the capital should be taken and the civ knocked out of the game.

 

[lordhaw]

So, to get a better look, I set up an autoplay game on a standard size lakes map, with zombies enabled but not other modes. Russia and Japan got absolutely mobbed with zombies, the other players were barely touched. Russia and Japan were the two civs closest to tundra - I don't know if that is significant or not.

What was weird was the way that the Russian and Japanese capitals got repeatedly attacked down to zero health, and then attacks continued doing no damage at all. It think in this situation the capital should be taken and the civ knocked out of the game.

Have had that happen to my own capital. Three zombies show up right away after settling my capital and kill my lone warrior and quickly bring my capital down. It was just a series of endless attacks with my city still holding on while I'm trying to get more warriors. Personally I'd have preferred to have just lost at that point. I agree that civs should be taken out in this case. I don't mind if civs get wiped out by barbarians or zombies...even my own. Adds an extra early game danger.

 

[blackbutterfly]

It think in this situation the capital should be taken and the civ knocked out of the game.

Zombies are barbs.
Barbs can't take a capital, cos capitals can't be razed.

Paradox.

 

[IsabelBraganca]

I cannot delete the archer. Is that something related to the zombie mode, or is it part of the normal mechanic?

Spoiler :

 

[MrRadar]

I cannot delete the archer. Is that something related to the zombie mode, or is it part of the normal mechanic?

Part of normal. Deletion of damaged units was removed long time ago as a countermeasure to the exploit of denying the opponent a kill and xp, or in this case, a fresh brain and a fresh zombie. #nicetry

 

[Abaxial]

Zombies are barbs.
Barbs can't take a capital, cos capitals can't be razed.

It seems illogical and wrong, Furthermore, I think it is new in Civ 6, as I'm sure I recall seeing Spain knocked out of the game by barbarians once in Civ 5. In my latest game, the sufferer is Mali - for about 200 turns Niani has been besieged my a huge swarm of zombies, and battered each turn by multiple attacks. What's the point? Mali is never going to accomplish anything and might as well be razed out of existence.