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World Domination General Discussion

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World Domination is a diplomatic sandbox game about nukes, zombies, and world conquering taking place in the 21st century. It features a unique system for custom airplane and missile movement, extensive options for diplomatic interaction between players, aswell as its own AI. It is currently in alpha development, but available as early demo below.

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This map uses a custom resource system with flux economy, inspired by Supreme Commander. Resources are spent and gathered in real time, where draining your stockpile of a specific resource will cause your production to stall. The available resources are:

  • Oil, harvested from oil refineries which can only be built on oil patches.
  • Iron, harvested from iron mines, which can only be built on iron vein.
  • Currency, which is accumulated from taxes. You can manually set your tax rate.
  • Power, which is produced from power plants. If your power consumption is greater than your output, buildings will start powering down.

Tax income is gathered from your cities. Each city has a wealth value, which periodically increases from economic growth. The tax income is a percentage of this, ranging between 5-30%, which the player can adjust at any time. Low taxes will mean higher growth, while high taxes can result in negative growth, reducing the citys wealth. Everytime a city changes hands, its wealth is also reduced by 25%.

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Players can sign trade contracts with eachother to trade resources for currency in real time. Since resources are spread unevenly across the map based on real-world mineral maps, some players will be forced to import or export certain resources. City wealth is also based on location, divided into first, second, and third world areas. Third world areas generally have lower town wealth but more natural resources, making them inclined to exporting these. It is also possible to trade researched technology through lease contracts. Signing a lease contract means the other player benefits from the tech for the duration of the contract, in exchange for constant payment. If the player fails to pay up, the technology will be disabled until he can afford to pay again. For instance, a player who has researched napalm bombs can lease the technology to someone else, allowing him to also use napalm bombs until the contract is broken.

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Apart from physical resoures, it is also possible to export your power surplus to other players. In these cases, the other player will only import the amount of power he needs, and only the power you can spare. This can be a good way to help a player who has just had his power production destroyed, but since it is possible to increase your power output through extensive research, it can also be a good strategy to let one player produce all the power for your whole alliance. Just watch out incase he decides to switch sides!

It is not possible to directly tribute currency to other players - however, it is possible to hand out loans. A player who has loaned from you will be forced to pay a periodical interest to you until the debt is repaid. If he fails to pay his interest, it will be added to his debt. A player can only loan from one player at a time, but it is possible offer loans to several other players. Having a large national debt is also a factor which may displease your population, so be careful of how much you loan.

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Diplomacy between players is primarily managed through a feature known as councils. Players who are members of a council can vote on important subjects, such as enforcing trade embargos, demanding a ceasefire, or ceasing a disputed city to another player. Any player can form a council, but you can only be a member of one council at a time. When a player submits a petition, the other members are asked to either approve or oppose the proposal. If a petition passes, the opposing players can chose to either accept the decision, or leave the council. At the start of the map, all players are members of the UN, but as new alliances form, it can be practical to have a council specifically for the members of your alliance. Enforcing policies, such as banning nukes or chemical weapons, is another practical use of this feature.

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Players can manage their internal policies through the politics tab. Here, you can see statistics over your tax rate, your nations poverty and education level, aswell as your public unrest, which is a measure of your peoples discontent with your rulership. High taxes or high poverty are some things which increases unrest, but also the use of unethical weapons such as nukes or gas, which can cause a temporary spike. If your unrest reaches critical level, it can cause strikes, riots, or even rebellion!

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Poverty is based on your nations average wealth. You can also compensate for it by increasing or decreasing your subsidies budget, which will drain from your tax income. In a similar fashion, the education level influences your research speed, and can be controled by increasing or decreasing your school budget. If you divert a large portion of your tax to education, your research can be boosted by as much as 50%. Since research is otherwise very time consuming, it can be a viable strategy to niche yourself into researching and leasing technology to other players.

At the start of the game, each player will select a government type. The government types include communist, theocracy, free market, militarian, and plutocracy. Each has their own pros and cons, and endorse different playstyles. For instance, plutocracies are run by the owners of wealth and industry. They will benefit from increased resource production at the cost of higher unrest and poverty. Theocracies, however, have a more humble population, due to their trust in the divine right of the ruler, and they can also train suicide bombers. On the other hand, they suffer from slower research speed, due to scepticism of science. Militarian governments are ruled by a grand general, and have a martial approach on politics. They don't suffer from unrest penalties when using nuclear weapons, and they can train National Guard squads, which are cheap meat shields.

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Unique research system
Research is conducted through a centralized system, where only one technology is researched at a time. However, any progress made when researching will be saved, even if you decide to swap to another project before the first one has completed. Research speed is also dynamic, and depends on your peoples education level and government bonuses. This means that your research speed depends on how much money you are willing to put into educating your population.

Espionage
A central feature in this map is the use of espionage and covert operations. Spies are invisible, and are produced at a structure known as the Intelligence HQ. They can be equipped with an array of items ranging from suitcase bombs, to viral canisters and portable radar devices. The items are produced at a cost from the Intelligence HQ. It is also possible to produce stealth bombers, which are great for reconnaissance or hit-and-run tactics.

Dynamic weather
Weather effects and natural disasters will randomly spawn across the map, to make the world as dynamic as possible. Tornados, storms and volcanos are some of the disasters which can wreak havoc for players.

Missiles
World Domination features a fully custom missile system used by some units such as MLRS rocket launches and Destroyers, but most specifically by the intercontinental ballistic missiles launched from the missile base. To protect yourself from enemy missiles, you can construct anti-ballistic laser turrets, which will attempt to shoot them down before they hit. Recon planes can also be equipped with these lasers, providing a more mobile missile defence. Nuclear missiles will irradiate the ground where they strike, damaging units in the area for a long duration of time. Players can reduce the damage taken from radiation by teching up their radiation shielding.

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Airplanes
Airplanes in this map have all their motion simulated, even taking account of inertia, which makes for very realistic movement.

Zombie apocalypse
Players can choose to develop tactical viruses, which will be infecting and slowly killing any targets exposed. These can later be refined into disastrous zombie viruses. However, once a zombie outbreak has begun, it can quickly spiral out of control, and zombies exposed to radiation may mutate into even deadlier variants. "It seemed like such a great idea at the time..."

Nuclear Weapons
Nuclear weapons utilize a custom shockwave system, causing epic explosions where players looking directly into it will also be temporarily blinded. The blast will generate radiation, which will linger for a few minutes damaging nearby units. Players can research radiation shielding to protect their units from some of the damage, and it is also possible to produce dirty bombs, which generate the same amount of ratiation as a nuke, but with a smaller explosion and at a lower cost. Excessive use of nukes will eventually trigger a nuclear winter, causing global snowfall. Note that nuclear powerplants will also explode catastrophically when destroyed, unless "safe reactors" is researched, so make sure to place them outside of your base.

Nukes are the only weapon capable of ruining cities. If a city is ruined, it's wealth will be lost and it will not be able to produce units. Rebuilding a city is very expensive and time-consuming, and it will take time for it to fully recouperate.

Orbital Satellites
Upgrading a missile base into a space center allows you to produce satellites for espionage and combat use. Satellites are invulnerable, but are also connected to the space center they were built from - if it is destroyed, the satellite will crash into the ground, dealing damage to nearby units. Orbital laser satellites can channel a scorching death ray, incinerating any units in its path.

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Aliens
It is rumored that UFOs have sometimes been spotted in the sky, roaming around, and even kidnapping soldiers for their experiments. Retrieving a wreckage from one such UFO could provide some invaluable insight to their technology - let's just hope their mothership won't come to revenge its fallen comrades...

AI
Fight alone or with friends against clever bots, who will send and evaluate requests, conduct research, manage their own taxes and policies, and even launch strategic missiles! Supports all three difficulties.

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World Domination is currently available as an alpha demo version. There are still many things missing, such as the option to select your ruler and government type - this will instead be randomized at map start, and you will be able to notice your government type on the title of the nation leader (visible in the politics tab). Most features related to biological warfare are also still not implemented.

Known bugs are:
  • The AI will not use transports.
  • Airplanes can sometimes get caught in a spin when turning to a new target.
  • It is possible to select missiles.

Any reports on bugs or errors will be much appreciated.

Please note that most models are placeholders and that the terrain is still WIP!
 

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Level 8
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Holy, Jaysus. This, is probably the second best game I have seen around (With the first being Throne of Gods). If you finish this, PM me instantly so that I can vote it 5/5 (After I play it of course). Also, how about if your people has too many unrest, they will start a Revolution?
 
Holy, Jaysus. This, is probably the second best game I have seen around (With the first being Throne of Gods). If you finish this, PM me instantly so that I can vote it 5/5 (After I play it of course). Also, how about if your people has too many unrest, they will start a Revolution?

Thank you. What is Throne of Gods? Do you have a link? I could not find it on google, but i'd like to check it out.
Yes, if your unrest somehow goes above 80 ( roughly) rebels will spawn. This would only happen in very extreme circumstances though, since the strikes and riots (which damage structures) are usually incentive enough to do something about it.
 
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Level 12
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WoW so you created a thread about your map , very nice , i wish you all the best to finish this map !
 
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Thank you. What is Throne of Gods? Do you have a link? I could not find it on google, but i'd like to check it out.
Yes, if your unrest somehow goes above 80 ( roughly) rebels will spawn. This would only happen in very extreme circumstances though, since the strikes and riots (which damage structures) are usually incentive enough to do something about it.

I think it is this http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/map-development-202/throne-gods-260410/

I love this kind of map and doing by my self open world middle earth map.
I have a lot of fun with World in Flames and after I saw the screenshots of this new project I have a felling that it will not be much different from WiF ?
 
I think it is this http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/map-development-202/throne-gods-260410/

I love this kind of map and doing by my self open world middle earth map.
I have a lot of fun with World in Flames and after I saw the screenshots of this new project I have a felling that it will not be much different from WiF ?

Thanks for the link, looks promising.

I'd say this is similar to WiF in some way, but extremely different in others. This is a much more balanced game, where each player starts off with only his capitol. It is also more focused on diplomacy, rather than historical accuracy. WiF was also quite spammy, while units here are more durable. I'd like to think this map has everything i felt was lacking in WiF.

The idea is that you will endup in a game of technological escalation, where grabbing resources is the greatest soruce of conflict. You will never really have enough resources - when your incone increases, you should use it to increase your budgets, or lower taxes to stimulate growth, as contested cities will become poor quickly. There is always something more expensive to research where you can spend your resources, and high-tier units such as trident submarines and destroyers are very expensive in raw-materials.
 
UPDATE!

New features for alpha version 1.2e include:

  • Added viruses.
  • New upgrade, "Antiviral Pills", causes the medic heal ability to remove any infections from the target.
  • Added Zombies(!). When Zombies are exposed to radiation, they will not take damage, but instead have a chance to mutate into a more powerful zombie, twice as strong and capable of spitting acid on airplanes.
  • Banning biological weapons through council vote will successfully disable all virus-related weapons.
  • Viral canisters for spies now work as intended.
  • Several hotkey and balance fixes

The new version has been attached to the main post.
 
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Level 5
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As I said on Diplo, this map looks amazing. Cannot wait for it to be released. I would love to help you test.
 
Level 22
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Looks promising and the description is nice :)

P.S. played the demo map just now, I've dominated the whole planet as China! And I've started a few Zombie Outbreaks in the world!

P.S.S. I saw some AI bugs. AI like Australia AI don't build transports and the Australia AI's units are just sitting ducks which attempted to and think they can cross the sea.

The Zombies will not attack enemy buildings on several occasions. I noticed them only attack buildings on sight when they are newly created.
 
I have tested this alone, I love this, its remind me old Sim City and Comand and Conquer =)
I like that oilsttion and ironmines can be build only in aproprite places, this will push people to fight for the territory ... Good job! Realy good product!

Thanks! I took a lot of inspiration from Sim City when designing this, so i am glad to hear that.

No Hydrogen bombs ?

No, but the Atomic Bombs research has three tiers, where each tier will increase the blast radius and damage. I guess i could reduce it to two tiers and rename the second to "Hydrogen Bombs", but it would be an aesthetical difference only. Nukes are pretty damn satisfying as it is, imo.

Looks promising and the description is nice :)

P.S. played the demo map just now, I've dominated the whole planet as China! And I've started a few Zombie Outbreaks in the world!

P.S.S. I saw some AI bugs. AI like Australia AI don't build transports and the Australia AI's units are just sitting ducks which attempted to and think they can cross the sea.

The Zombies will not attack enemy buildings on several occasions. I noticed them only attack buildings on sight when they are newly created.

Yeah, the AI has no logic for using transports yet, that is something i plan to add later. It is difficult, because there is really no good way of finding out wether a unit will be able to travel from point A to point B - the solution i had in mind was to simply see if the unit is on one island and the target on another (using regions), and then order it to take a transport if this is the case. The AI also doesn't work as well for Indonesia, where it will usually entomb itself in structures due to the limited space.

Another kinda cheap thing about the AI is that it will always declare war on the closest player, if it has no enemies. This means that the AI is quite predictable when it comes to alliances, and i plan to change this somehow later. There are also cases where the AI will become very passive after long games, and not take a lot of initiatives, which i need to look into.

About zombies, i am pretty sure they do attack structures, at least it did so everytime i tried them. Perhaps they prioritize units before buildings?
 
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Thanks! I took a lot of inspiration from Sim City when designing this, so i am glad to hear that.



No, but the Atomic Bombs research has three tiers, where each tier will increase the blast radius and damage. I guess i could reduce it to two tiers and rename the second to "Hydrogen Bombs", but it would be an aesthetical difference only. Nukes are pretty damn satisfying as it is, imo.



Yeah, the AI has no logic for using transports yet, that is something i plan to add later. It is difficult, because there is really no good way of finding out wether a unit will be able to travel from point A to point B - the solution i had in mind was to simply see if the unit is on one island and the target on another, and then order it to take a transport if this is the case. The AI also doesn't work as well for Indonesia, where it will usually entomb itself in structures due to the limited space.

Another kinda cheap thing about the AI is that it will always declare war on the closest player, if it has no enemies. This means that the AI is quite predictable when it comes to alliances, and i plan to change this somehow later. There are also cases where the AI will become very passive after long games, and not take a lot of initiatives, which i need to look into.

About zombies, i am pretty sure they do attack structures, at least it did so everytime i tried them. Perhaps they prioritize units before buildings?

Yeah. Im playing as indonesia and australia always declares war to me for some reason. When I negotiate peace it instantly starts another war with me again lol.
 
@hiphop4eva this happens to me as well.

@Fingolfin, maybe expand Indonesia a little? the space sorta killing players in it.
Also, AI seems to advance quickly, or maybe I'm the one which is too slow?

I will try to add some more space for Indonesia. I am also connecting Sulawesi with Borneo, for easier access.

The way the AI works is that after a certain amount of time, it will not accept having no enemies. So as long as it is not at war with anyone, it will find the player with the nearest capitol and declare war on it. Does anyone have ideas as to how the AI should be reasoning when dealing with diplomacy?

EDIT: I have an idea for this, based on a weight system. Basically, the AI will loop through all neutral players and give them a certain weight. Being close and having a stronger army increases the weight, while having an alliance or trade contract with the player reduces the weight. The player with the lowest weight will be the one the AI declares war on. How does this sound?
 
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Level 8
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EDIT: I have an idea for this, based on a weight system. Basically, the AI will loop through all neutral players and give them a certain weight. Being close and having a stronger army increases the weight, while having an alliance or trade contract with the player reduces the weight. The player with the lowest weight will be the one the AI declares war on. How does this sound?

Good idea there! Maybe if AI wants to capture a city or build a building on an iron mine or oil, but if you capture it before the AI, or if you request loan from them, your weight with them increases? Or maybe you will make a feature that allows you to give gifts to people so that your weight with them decreases?
 
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@Fingolfin: Well, there's no units nearby. They ignore the presense of player-occupied buildings. I started a Zombie Outbreak, in the beginning of the outbreak, the zombies will attack player buildings. However, sometime later they stop attacking player buildings.

Also, you should expand Indonesia's size as others said.

P.S. Also, after loading a saved game of World Domination, I can't see the city wealth, as well as city names, when selecting a city.

EDIT: I have an idea! How about some country specials to make each country more unique? Like USA will gain access to more advanced laser technology, Russia can build SCUD Launchers and MiGs, Arab League can research Nuclear Fuels to make unit speed faster, etc.
 
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@Fingolfin: Well, there's no units nearby. They ignore the presense of player-occupied buildings. I started a Zombie Outbreak, in the beginning of the outbreak, the zombies will attack player buildings. However, sometime later they stop attacking player buildings.

Also, you should expand Indonesia's size as others said.

P.S. Also, after loading a saved game of World Domination, I can't see the city wealth, as well as city names, when selecting a city.

EDIT: I have an idea! How about some country specials to make each country more unique? Like USA will gain access to more advanced laser technology, Russia can build SCUD Launchers and MiGs, Arab League can research Nuclear Fuels to make unit speed faster, etc.

I will look into the zombie thing, it might be something related to neutral hostile behavior. Right now, they are just randomly ordered to attack-move to some nearby point, so i don't see why they wouldn't attack buildings.

The problem with saved games might be related to how warcraft works. I think i've heard somewhere that warcraft saved games have a limit to how many strings they can contain. It is very possible that the map has surpassed that limit. Sad, but i'd say it's still acceptable seeing how this is priparily designed for online play.

I mean if will be mercenary camps to hire mercenaries to increese my army

I haven't thought about this yet, but we'll see.

Good idea there! Maybe if AI wants to capture a city or build a building on an iron mine or oil, but if you capture it before the AI, or if you request loan from them, your weight with them increases? Or maybe you will make a feature that allows you to give gifts to people so that your weight with them decreases?

I just updated the AI with the weight system - now it will consider trade agreements, distance, alliances, and how much weaker you are than them. The last part makes the AI kinda relentless though - if you are really nooby, the AI might team up on you and make it really hard. I am going to see if it makes sense to have the player do the opposite, and prioritize stronger players, to challenge whoever is the greater threat. The problem will then instead be of wether the AI will ever declare war on you at all.

About gifts - i am not sure about this, since i intended to have a loan system rather than a tribute system. Having a tribute system only to bribe the AI seems redundant, although perhaps you could have a feature to sign ceasefire treaties, where you have agreed to stay neutral for a set period of time, in exchange for one part paying money to the other. The only problem would be if one player can lob nukes at the other (which damage players indiscriminately) and thus cheat their way to defeating the other. The option would be to have nukes disabled during the ceasefire.

A new feature i just added is the option to surrender to another player and become his puppet. Puppets will have all diplomacy options disabled, and instead have whatever alliances his master is having. Puppets are also prohibited from using nukes and viruses, since these could be used to deal friendly fire. Oh, and i am also about to add a system preventing you from attacking allies.

EDIT: version 1.2g is now attached to the main post.
 
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P.S. Also, after loading a saved game of World Domination, I can't see the city wealth, as well as city names, when selecting a city.

I didn't see the code, but I fear it may be the use of certain functions which lose their functionality after the game is loaded, like Unit2String and some others. I remember it was pain in the ass in Godfall, but unlike Godfall this map isn't a campaign, so in theory save/load isn't that needed.
 
It appears the map currently has some pretty crucial multiplayer bugs, most notably server splits due to a loading spike at map start, the multiboard changing globally whenever a player changes tab, and players sharing other players "tab heroes" whenever someone leaves. This is all being immediately fixed, but please do not host the current version anymore until 1.2h is up.

Version 1.2h is now live and available in the diplomunion MMH map list and at the first post in this thread. Version changelog:

  • Capitols can no longer go on strike
  • Removed ministries for the time being
  • Removed city addons
  • Players now start with two turrets near their capitol
  • Capitols now generate 10TW power, to support the turrets
  • Fixed a bug that caused the multiboards to act weird in multiplayer
  • Fixed the lag spike on startup, which hopefully stops the desyncs
  • Tank factories, Airbases and Naval Yards now require the Draft Camp
  • Added an "Abbandon Structure" ability, for scuttling your own buildings
  • Marksmen can now attack structures (with reduced damage), to prevent them from running ahead of their squad
 
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I have some nice models to recommend: Illidan(Evil)x Warcraft 3 Models

Thank you for that link, i didn't know Illidan had uploaded them all like that. Pretty interesting to see his old Red Alert models, though not much of it that i can use.

I just uploaded version 1.3b to the main thread. Changes to this version include:

  • Added disasters, which will randomly spawn roughly every 4 minutes. These include tornados, meteor showers, volcanos, solar flares (causing radiation), and thunderstorms. Nuclear winter will cause disasters to spawn much, much more frequently (except for meteor showers and solar flares, because that doesn't quite make sense).
  • Increased the cost and build time of nuclear missiles
  • All air units have had their health reduced
  • Reduced cost of recon planes
  • Increased the damage and splash radius of all anti-air units
  • Whenever someone tries to type "-war" or "-ally", a message will appear to inform them how to use the diplomacy system.
  • You can now see your government type in the politics window (but still not select it, unfortunately).
  • Added another oil patch for Brazil

I have also done some more stuff to prevent the server split. I read somewhere that attempting to check a players slot state on map initialization can cause exactly this kind of split, which kinda makes sense, since the client will have no idea of the other players slot state while the map is loading. I changed this to do the check at map start instead, i am quite confident that it will fix the issue (fingers crossed).

In the next version, you will have some more cataclysmic events, such as alien invasions, and the awakening of the dark lord Cthulhu, which will be a pretty awesome and massive boss spawning in the ocean, then roaming around the world wreaking havoc and conducting mind control. I was thinking that this event would be spawned through an artefact appearing in the ocean which you have to approach to awaken him. I am also adding an upgrade called "Linebacker Launcers", which will give Main Battle Tanks a basic anti-air attack.
 
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Thank you for that link, i didn't know Illidan had uploaded them all like that. Pretty interesting to see his old Red Alert models, though not much of it that i can use.

I just uploaded version 1.3b to the main thread. Changes to this version include:

  • Added disasters, which will randomly spawn roughly every 4 minutes. These include tornados, meteor showers, volcanos, solar flares (causing radiation), and thunderstorms. Nuclear winter will cause disasters to spawn much, much more frequently (except for meteor showers and solar flares, because that doesn't quite make sense).
  • Increased the cost and build time of nuclear missiles
  • All air units have had their health reduced
  • Reduced cost of recon planes
  • Increased the damage and splash radius of all anti-air units
  • Whenever someone tries to type "-war" or "-ally", a message will appear to inform them how to use the diplomacy system.
  • You can now see your government type in the politics window (but still not select it, unfortunately).
  • Added another oil patch for Brazil

I have also done some more stuff to prevent the server split. I read somewhere that attempting to check a players slot state on map initialization can cause exactly this kind of split, which kinda makes sense, since the client will have no idea of the other players slot state while the map is loading. I changed this to do the check at map start instead, i am quite confident that it will fix the issue (fingers crossed).

In the next version, you will have some more cataclysmic events, such as alien invasions, and the awakening of the dark lord Cthulhu, which will be a pretty awesome and massive boss spawning in the ocean, then roaming around the world wreaking havoc and conducting mind control. I was thinking that this event would be spawned through an artefact appearing in the ocean which you have to approach to awaken him. I am also adding an upgrade called "Linebacker Launcers", which will give Main Battle Tanks a basic anti-air attack.

You update it fast. And another Ctulhu reference. Then why not add cultist lol?
 
It seems like there are some issues with neutral hostile preventing them from attacking buildings. So i have to ask you this:

Should i scrap Israel as a nation and use the player slot for all neutral units? By that i mean zombies, aliens, and other aggressive units. It would make stuff easier for me, but also mean one less player.

Another question i have is about the starting economy. The last few versions i have been boosting the wealth of cities to make it easier to manage the economy for new players, who often don't understand that you're supposed to capture at least eight cities before you start researching stuff and training expensive units. The side effect is that people will have an abundance of currency once they have captured all available neutral cities. My other option was to make players start with owning maybe three other nearby cities, to spare them the trouble of capturing them. This may not be controversial for risk players, but it goes against my idea of a balanced, melee-like game where everyone starts off with only a capitol. What do you think?
 
Level 22
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1) My opinion: Scrap Israel as a nation, and use the seat for neutral hostile units. In addition, Israel is... very close to Arab League.
2) It will be more fun to capture cities instead of having pre-occupied cities at the start. Just increase the starting economy. And, have a tip saying that players should capture at least 8 cities.
 
Thanks for the advice, i did just that. Israel is now replaced with a neutral player, who is responsible for stuff like zombies and Cthulhu. Version 1.3c is now up and available in the main post. Here is the changelog:

  • Removed Israel, to use the slot for neutrals.
  • Added Cthulhu event, which is triggered by approaching the sunken city which randomly emerges and submerges throughout the game. He will randomly mind control units trying to fight him.
  • Added "Linebacker Launchers" research, which gives Main Battle Tanks a basic anti-air attack.
  • Buffed health of tanks.
  • Added some loading screen text, giving some basic advice about the game.
  • Fixed a few bugs.
 
I know it's barely been 24 hours, but i got some tips for a few great updates, so here comes version 1.3d! New features include:

  • Cities captured by zombies now spawn more zombies! The number of zombies depend on wether it is a town, city or capitol. There is a 20% chance for each of the zombiees to instead spawn as a Zombie Mutant, which have an extra acid spit attack, making them very strong vs air untis. Zombie infestations will now quickly go out of hand if they are not dealt with early.
  • Added new item for agents - the Zombie Lure. Deploying these creates an invisible ward which will attract zombies in a large radius towards it location. They last for 5 minutes, and require a new research called "Brainwave Manipulation". You can plant these in the enemy base to give him a tough time, or use it to make the zombies cluster, so that you can kill them all with a nuclear missile.

Perhaps it's just me, but it seems like the interest for this project is a bit low. Is there anything i can add to make the map more interesting, or easier to understand? And most of all - are people still experiencing desyncs at map start, or has this issue been solved?
 
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Hi :) I played the map and must say it's amazing, i especially liked all random events and stuff you put in :) Are you are gonna make your own models for the map? If you are it's gonna be even more awesome than it is now. I didn't play map online cuzz my friends are douchebags and wont play it because it doesnt have new models for the buildings xD in single player ai was pretty nice and i get owned a lot when i started playing :) But I'll just have to get better at it... I didn't find any bugs, but that's maybe because i suck at noticing bugs. Hope you continue working on the map and good luck with it. I forgot one more question, do you maybe plan to add few unique units for each faction?
 
Glad you like it! Yeah, there will be custom models for everything. There will also be some unique units for the different nations. Fighter jets and tanks specifically, but also some units which depend on your nation and government combination - for instance, if the Arab League goes Theocracy, he will be able to train suicide bombers (hope that's not too controversial, lol). Special ops units will also be unique for each faction, and have different abilities.

Here are some WIP screenshots of the upcoming models:

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That doesn't sound very good, what country were you playing as? Not that it should be any difference, the camera triggers should apply to all players at once, they are not local. The cinematic works fine for me. Can you tell me some more details? Is the camera still locked to cthulhu, or can you control it freely? Does the problem happen every time you trigger the event? Can you see the UI?
 
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Wow this is so Command and Conquer Generals. I mean the units and sound sets. This is the first time i've played strategy games like this...I mean with those diplomacy and stuff involved so I might not be appropriate to provide valuable feedback. But as a player I think this is nice, the concept is good, appropriately balanced enough but I think this is a little bit too slow paced? I mean you can't do anything at the start but to focus on expanding resources and it will take time somehow before you can declare war against someone. I think adding a little bit of action in the beginning will be nice... lets say make cities somehow defend themselves? so that a single ranger will not be enough to capture cities because I think that is somehow unreasonable. Or somehow scatter hostiles in the map..lets say fugitives or something.

I will recommend this to my friends once this is officially released
 
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New meshes for models look really nice :) I'm hoping that you are gonna make town models similar to rise of nation towns. Btw couple times when i was playing against ai, african state was just massing units at the most western part of africa and it looked like it was trying to order them to move across the ocean to attack america. Dozen units just stood there while russia was destroying their buildings to the east... Maybe this happened because i used cheat to remove fog of war?
 
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6,232
That doesn't sound very good, what country were you playing as? Not that it should be any difference, the camera triggers should apply to all players at once, they are not local. The cinematic works fine for me. Can you tell me some more details? Is the camera still locked to cthulhu, or can you control it freely? Does the problem happen every time you trigger the event? Can you see the UI?

I was playing China, as always. The AI players can still send requests, build their army, declare war on another player, etc.

The camera is locked to cthulhu, I cannot move the camera. I only trigger the event once, and yes, I can see the UI.

P.S. how to end the cthulhu event and the cinematics? I actually also mean, how to skip the cinematic mode. Is the event supposed to be end game event?
 
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Messages
433
I was playing China, as always. The AI players can still send requests, build their army, declare war on another player, etc.

The camera is locked to cthulhu, I cannot move the camera. I only trigger the event once, and yes, I can see the UI.

P.S. how to end the cthulhu event and the cinematics? I actually also mean, how to skip the cinematic mode. Is the event supposed to be end game event?

Its not very hard to kill Cthulhu. I was playing as African Union with full easy AI and Cthulhu was destroying everything it encounters. It missed me, and when it was attacking Indonesia, Indonesia had a lot of ranger squads and it just killed Cthulhu.

Edit: Here for some suggestions.

1: Cities, towns and capitols would get the ability to attack nearby enemies. You could remove the turrets and power generation for capitols and add two attack types, one which is for ground, and the other for air. Cities would have the same with lower damage, and towns would not be able to attack air units. This will make the cities at least a little bit harder to capture, and only one unit like a ranger or a zombie can't capture your city.

2: More zombie types. Some interesting zombies would be cool, like a Trapper Zombie, who puts living mines, and a big zombie who has a lot of hp and is fast.

3: More events! Not only the bad ones, maybe some good events would be cool. Like a event where something happens and frienly aliens appear and start attacking every zombie, Cthulhu or aggressive aliens.

4: Religions. You can make your religion where you can choose 2 traits, like more money/oil/iron, allying with zombies or Cthulhu, or allowance of special units.
 
Its not very hard to kill Cthulhu. I was playing as African Union with full easy AI and Cthulhu was destroying everything it encounters. It missed me, and when it was attacking Indonesia, Indonesia had a lot of ranger squads and it just killed Cthulhu.

Edit: Here for some suggestions.

1: Cities, towns and capitols would get the ability to attack nearby enemies. You could remove the turrets and power generation for capitols and add two attack types, one which is for ground, and the other for air. Cities would have the same with lower damage, and towns would not be able to attack air units. This will make the cities at least a little bit harder to capture, and only one unit like a ranger or a zombie can't capture your city.

2: More zombie types. Some interesting zombies would be cool, like a Trapper Zombie, who puts living mines, and a big zombie who has a lot of hp and is fast.

3: More events! Not only the bad ones, maybe some good events would be cool. Like a event where something happens and frienly aliens appear and start attacking every zombie, Cthulhu or aggressive aliens.

4: Religions. You can make your religion where you can choose 2 traits, like more money/oil/iron, allying with zombies or Cthulhu, or allowance of special units.

Good suggestions. I was thinking of maybe adding some Left 4 Dead-inspired zombies, like exploding ones, or really fast ones, which can randomly mutate ut of other zombies.

Adding positive events is another great idea, maybe not peaceful aliens, but maybe some other object that pops up which players have to compete for? For instance, perhaps an old science base could appear out of a snow/sandstorm, or at some remote place like the south pole, and that whoever holds it will have his research speed boosted by some percentage. Or maybe some stash of resources could appear, or some weapon you could control for a time.

About the city attack - maybe. I mean, there is a risk that this might discourage people from capturing cities early, which is what they need to do to get a stable economy. The point about them being harder for zombies to capture is good, but on the other hand, zombie-controled missiles would be able to shoot! What about if i make it so that cities have an upgrade, called "City Watch", which costs some money but gives it an attack? And this upgrade would be lost if the city is captured.


I was playing China, as always. The AI players can still send requests, build their army, declare war on another player, etc.

The camera is locked to cthulhu, I cannot move the camera. I only trigger the event once, and yes, I can see the UI.

P.S. how to end the cthulhu event and the cinematics? I actually also mean, how to skip the cinematic mode. Is the event supposed to be end game event?

Hmm, then it might be related to china being player slot 10 (the highest), which could have been skipped in some loop. I also think i found some other cause for it, next version it will hopefully be fixed. The cinematic is only supposed to last 5 seconds, and then the camera resets. Once Cthulhu is killed, the event will no longer appear (is this good or bad?).

New meshes for models look really nice :) I'm hoping that you are gonna make town models similar to rise of nation towns. Btw couple times when i was playing against ai, african state was just massing units at the most western part of africa and it looked like it was trying to order them to move across the ocean to attack america. Dozen units just stood there while russia was destroying their buildings to the east... Maybe this happened because i used cheat to remove fog of war?

Nah, the AI can see the entire map anyways, since it cheats a lot. The reason to this is, that the AI will set a target player from the players it is at war with, and focus all it's attention to this player. In this case, i am guessing you had an AI for Brazil or USA, and this AI declared war on Africa. Then, they will set eachother as target players. After that, the russians declared war on Africa, but will not be prioritized since they are not the main target. The AI has some exceptions, such as assigning some troops to defend cities whenever they are attacked. I am working on making it less dumb, or at least use transports so that it can finish fighting its enemies overseas. And yes, the cities will look similar to the ones in Rise of Nations, i can post some WIPs soon!

Wow this is so Command and Conquer Generals. I mean the units and sound sets. This is the first time i've played strategy games like this...I mean with those diplomacy and stuff involved so I might not be appropriate to provide valuable feedback. But as a player I think this is nice, the concept is good, appropriately balanced enough but I think this is a little bit too slow paced? I mean you can't do anything at the start but to focus on expanding resources and it will take time somehow before you can declare war against someone. I think adding a little bit of action in the beginning will be nice... lets say make cities somehow defend themselves? so that a single ranger will not be enough to capture cities because I think that is somehow unreasonable. Or somehow scatter hostiles in the map..lets say fugitives or something.

I will recommend this to my friends once this is officially released

Well, it is a bit slow paced, but mostly so that new players can have time to learn. While the power plant is building, you have some time to explore the build menu or read the game guide. I was thinking that maybe, instead of giving players a few cities at map start, i could give them a squad of rangers? That way they can start capturing things right away. In any case, thanks for the feedback! I hope i will get to play it with you at some point.
 
Level 8
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Jul 8, 2014
Messages
433
Suggestion Time!

1: What about the ability to upgrade existing units? Like you could upgrade your ranger unit to marines or something.

2: More units. Who hates more units? Like not only anti air ground unit or siege air unit but special units like vikings from SC2. The core idea is that the player wont be limited with those siege ground vechiles or anti air planes and all those stuff, but with more ''special'' units.

3: More gadgets for agents. How about Orbital Strikes, Turrets or maybe even Cthuhu Lures lol.

4: Increase the range of zombie lures. I want to start a zombie outbreak in S. America and put a lure in N. America to lure zombies.
 
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