Zombie World Brainstorming

[fuzzy_bunnies]

So the game I always wanted to play would have been similar to Brook's World War Z scenario (the book, not the what appears to be horrible movie version) where you've got clusters of survivors that have managed to find some stability and slowly work to take the world back from the zombies. I thought a colonization mod would have been great for this because it focuses on individual people rather than whole platoons or armies but without programming skills I was stymied until I read about the Civ 5 modding tools so here I am.

I've got most stuff down on paper and have figured out how to get the raw stuff (units, civs, techs, buildings etc without art yet) into Civ5 based on Kael's modding guide but had a lot of issues getting stuff to show up so am restarting and slowly adding stuff back into the mod a bit at a time to troubleshoot.

Preamble to explain some of the questions: Unique tech tree, Very limited culture, limited production, limited terraforming. Zombies replace barbarians.

A couple of questions:

1. Is there any way to set it up so its allied players vs the barbarians? Anyone have success with a win condition that involves clearing out all the barbs?

1a. Alternately, other ideas? Thought about maybe having an "evil" civ that can take over zombies (capture barbs ability) but then it starts to feel a little too resident-evilly

2. Having trouble getting units into the game, does each unit have to have a unique unitartinfo? I have everything linked back to barbarians right now and none of my units are showing up. Going to try and extract the unitartinfo files tonight if I can keep Nexus from repeatedly crashing.

That's it for now... oh, if someone can point me to some zombie art and models though, that would be fantastic. Alternately if someone has already done this, then let me know and I won't waste my time My workshop search has been greatly unsuccessful.

 

[General Tso]

In my opinion 1a would be the way to go. It could be done without any major changes. Just make all the other civs on one team. If you want to use barb units just add them to the zombie civ.

I haven't put a lot of thought in to it but with that said it should be relatively easy to duplicate current barb behavior using Lua.

I know nothing about art - I'll leave question #2 for somebody that does.

 

[whoward69]

You can do 1) by

a) Create a Barb civ
b) Make all other players as a single team vs the barb civ
c) (The important bit) Set the "Complete Kills" option to true (your Barbs can now run around trying to kill allied units and capture cities without a need for them to have any cities)
d) Set Always War to be true
e) Set the victory conditions to be only Domination - Barbs will win if they wipe out all allies, Allies will win if they wipe out all Barbs
f) Disable barbs (so the game won't try to spawn any) and then replicate the barb spawning code in Lua but using units from the Barb civ

You could probably replace the fort graphic with the barb camp graphic as Barb units should then fortify in them

 

[fuzzy_bunnies]

In my opinion 1a would be the way to go. It could be done without any major changes. Just make all the other civs on one team. If you want to use barb units just add them to the zombie civ.

I haven't put a lot of thought in to it but with that said it should be relatively easy to duplicate current barb behavior using Lua.

I know nothing about art - I'll leave question #2 for somebody that does.

Yea, I had thought about that. Ideally though, this "evil" civ would be working with the zombies or controlling them. By setting them to be able to capture zombies, it would be my fallback plan but then you have this civ also fighting against the barb zombies the whole time.

 

[fuzzy_bunnies]

You can do 1) by

a) Create a Barb civ
b) Make all other players as a single team vs the barb civ
c) (The important bit) Set the "Complete Kills" option to true (your Barbs can now run around trying to kill allied units and capture cities without a need for them to have any cities)
d) Set Always War to be true
e) Set the victory conditions to be only Domination - Barbs will win if they wipe out all allies, Allies will win if they wipe out all Barbs
f) Disable barbs (so the game won't try to spawn any) and then replicate the barb spawning code in Lua but using units from the Barb civ

You could probably replace the fort graphic with the barb camp graphic as Barb units should then fortify in them

Hmmmmmm good idea but nonideal, I know nothing about LUA and was trying to do everything in XML. Game-wise, it would be ideal though if I can get the enemy civ to spawn because I like the idea of "recapturing" a big city like in the book. I guess I'll have to look into LUA more, thanks!

 

[whoward69]

Without Lua, you're going to struggle to get near to what you want for control of the Barbs

 

[fuzzy_bunnies]

Without Lua, you're going to struggle to get near to what you want for control of the Barbs

Yea, my backup plan would be to just have the evil civ also fight barbs and take them over at the same time. Not perfect but it'll work for the time being.

Anyone have LUA experience that could give me a few pointers on where to start if I wanted to dupe all the barb actions to a civ?

 

[MisterBoomBoom]

Having messed around with all the zombie mods around...I would recommend that you allow zombies to enter all water tiles making movement between continents possible.

 

[fuzzy_bunnies]

Having messed around with all the zombie mods around...I would recommend that you allow zombies to enter all water tiles making movement between continents possible.

Hmmm I had actually decided against this in the original design... only because its not that realistic plus you'd have half your zombies wandering the ocean looking for something to attack (they only have a move of 1). With limited resources, expansion should be curtailed leaving lots of fog of war for zombies to spawn for a long time.

 

[fuzzy_bunnies]

Without Lua, you're going to struggle to get near to what you want for control of the Barbs

I actually ended up going with my other option. Created an "evil" civ but decided it would be more playable for humans if they didn't automatically spawn barbs.

Basically they get limited cities (only 3) but all of them to start and a single high level unit to start that can capture zombies. If the "good" players wait too long, the evil civ will get harder and harder to beat as they start gaining control of the high level zombies which let them capture even more etc.

Not my first idea, but starting to grow on me... and doable with only XML!

 

[Satansick]

Hmmm I had actually decided against this in the original design... only because its not that realistic plus you'd have half your zombies wandering the ocean looking for something to attack (they only have a move of 1). With limited resources, expansion should be curtailed leaving lots of fog of war for zombies to spawn for a long time.

If you make it able for zombies to cross water you should just make them invisible/invincible, in game you'd just make the excuse that they got to land via being dragged by the currents of the sea.

 

[Drawmeus]

It'd be possible via lua to do something like: whenever a coastal city is captured by zombies, the least defended other coastal city in the world (maybe the 2 or 3 least defended, even) spawn some number of zombies. As citizens panic and flee the city, zombies get aboard some of the fleeing passenger ships.

You'd need a firm concept of "Least defended" (combat strength would work reasonably well), and some understanding of lua, but it could be done without too much of a performance hit. More complicated logic is also possible, but the more complicated it is, obviously, the more difficult it'd be to implement.

 

[fuzzy_bunnies]

If you make it able for zombies to cross water you should just make them invisible/invincible, in game you'd just make the excuse that they got to land via being dragged by the currents of the sea.

Actually, I'm reading the book again, I may make them able to enter coastal waters because it would theoretically be shallow enough for them to be underwater and reach up and attack embarked units... but I'll hold off until I get the base mod fully working then start adding extra features. Still need a lot of artwork.