Civilization Assault!

This is a beta version of my Civilization Assault map. The way the map works can be confusing at first but after you have played it, it's a very simple process.

This game is based off of the computer game Civilization, and as such you have to manage your army and empire growth. For now, the only way you can win in this, is total domination of every player (military victory), although alliances can be struck with other players if some one is to difficult to take out on your own.

The units and research options remains true to the game, and a huge amount of custom icons gives it the Civ feel. There are 8 differnt resources in the game so far that randomlly spawn when the game starts. Many units also require you to possess a certin resource to make. For now only Ancient and Medieval eras are finished, but it can still be played to the extent of them.

I would like anyones help in making this a better game. Pretty much anything can be reworked at this point, and one thing I want to focus on, is how to make a better playing field. As it is now, it's set up so to there are to many spots where you can expand, thus turning the game into a mass expoing fest. Also think of ways of decomplcating things, as Civ games are rather complicated.

As this map is now over 2megs, it is being hosted on the Hive:
http://www.hiveworkshop.com/resources_new/maps/5514

--Update--
Civ Assault has been updated to .212. Major changes consist of:

--A tech tree is acessible by typing -techon and -techoff
--A new diplomacy system makes alliances easy
--If you are dafeated, you are able to play as a Barbarian Horde

Wow! promising map.

At first, I would suggest you to focus on only ONE project, 3 strated projects = none of them ever finished.

Back to the topic - I love the concept, It could be really great map if finished. It needs a lot of work though. I was testing it for only a moment, so I didn't explore id really deeply. I came with this:

1) Tile separators should be only informational. These colorful things you use now are really awful. Use something less violent.

2) All tiles seem to be the same, in real civ every tile has its own stats. Plains generate only some food and some hammers, grasslands generate some more food, flood plains generate a lot of food, hills generate two hammers on their own... Try to implement it. You will probably have to create custom production system then to make build time variable (city on grassland is much easier to feed, but it has very low production). I think you could use abilities insted of build buttons - the capital would channel them until the trigger makes sure the is finished. There was some library which allowed people to insert pictures into floating texts, you could use it to display information about tiles.

3) Use only one building for upgrades. I know, one building can only hold 11 upgrades. Make it like in Civilization Wars (do you know that map? it is really great, get it, you could copy alot from it. PS: make sure you get the last version...i think it is something like 2.05b) - the last upgrade always upgrades the building itself (like town hall->keep->castle in melee) allowing it to show another technologies.

4) If I were you, I would hide the upgrade building completely -make it a invisible unit and place it under the capital unit. (in civ you can't research until you have at least one city). The add it the 'worker' classification - it will show as icon in the bottom left corner of the screen. Give it blue flask icon used for science in civ and you have won - you have an easy to understand but very unobtrusive solution instead of 6 stupid building hidden somewhere on the edge of the map. If you don't understand ge the "Pimp my peon" map - thay have solved researches exactly this way.

5) Building should not appear in the build menu until you can build them. I f you don't know how to do it, get Vexorian's spelbook experiments from the resources section. It is explained here step by step.

6) Barbs should wander! If you don't want to code such system on your own, give them the Wander ability critters in wc3 melee have. It is pretty nice and very easy to implement.

7) Do special resources show somewhere? Once I told my warrior to search and it found Iron, but I did't see it anywhere. You can use images or the library I pointed in 2). + i don't think it is goo idea to have to search for resources. In civ you can see them automatically once you have sufficient technology.

8) Units should have much wider vision radius - in civ every unit can see sorrounding tiles. In your maps, settlers even don't see under their own feet!

Uuuf, i think it's all. Good luck!

EDIT: I forgot to say: nice loading screen. Looks really good. I would replace it woth some simple tutorial later though.

Yea, these maps have been unfinsihed for over a year I think, I work on one and before it's done I have another idea and have to start working on that, ect. Thats a big reason why I put them up here, getting ideas from people such as yourself really help to bring maps along, so thanks for the input :0


I agree 100%, the runes are just a placeholder untill I get something better. I have put it off because I want to create differnt sized regions (whitch could be hard with rectangle rects) and I want a model of a blue line, like in the actual game. It could be flat on the ground, and wouldn't be very distracting.
If anyone knows where a "blue line" model is, let me know, that would be awesome.


Heh, those are channeling abilitys :0 I am just using the build icon to access the spell book. I'll have to look into the floating picture thing, it seams like a good idea.


One building could work and would simplify things a bit I think. And I know there is a way to add upgrades to buildings, like once they research all the prequestiments for something it pops up to research. In fact, I could put the tech tree in the quest log then.


I have played that map and it was very easy to play right from the start yea.


Yea I think I may of been planing to do that at some point, but just for lack of time I skiped that part for the moment.


I have the Barbs triggered to move in a random direction something like every 25 seconds 25% of the time. I could increase it, wouldn't hurt.


Well I have been making a system that allows the player to see what resource is in the square after they have searched it. Kinda like a Shade, only they can see it.
As of this playing field, sense there are so many spots to expand, I want the search thing in there to make it so you can't just put settlements down wherever you want. If you take the time to explore and find the resources you would get a boost early game.


Lol, I didn't notice that. Settlers are supposed to have a bigger sight raidus, thanks for pointing it out.

There is a little 2d sphere as model for some ability. If you made them small and maybe semitransparent, they should serve their purpose well.
It seemed to me that buildings are fully cripted, but units (the "main" screen of the capital) are produced normally...as units, aren't they?
The author of Civ Wars made the techtree in a bitmap. It was alright, better than describing it in Quests. You also should include Prequisites, Leads to and Enables into the tooltips. I'd also suggest you to use colors to make your tooltips nicer.

EDIT: Another suggestion: In Civ are Settlers really demanding to create earlygame. In your map they seem to be rather cheap and easy to create.

Testing it atm, will edit post when done.