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Sid Meier's Civilization V >  Workshop > gia's Workshop > War on Terror: al-Qaeda (alpha) > Discussions
War on Terror: al-Qaeda (alpha)
Description Discussions1 Comments3 Change Notes
gia  [developer] Apr 26, 2016 @ 1:42pm
Feedback for version 5
Feel free to leave balance feedback on this version. The following is the comments on mechanics of the civ.

Comments on the UA
  • During war, if an enemy unit is on your land, they cost +100% more, mixes with tradition/turtling as you'll have more buffer land between them and your city, I thought it would work on multiplayer, it would annoy rushers, not very useful/interesting otherwise.

  • At the cost of not scouting at the beginning of the game, and settling in place, you can try to snatch the first religion by garrisoning your warrior, later it mixes with wide liberty, honor and/or piety best, but still has some mix with tradition.

  • The unique unit is a bad missionary/inquisitor, but mixed with this you can expand your reach if you go wide enough, 0.1 pressure per follower (may display 0 ingame but it is working), 10 followers = +1 pressure.

  • 911... anyway, only during war, and only military aircraft, it does about 2-4x the damage of a regular attack but you lose the unit. If you hit a city you may also kill citizens/destroy a low hammer building (eg. monument)/a high hammer building (eg. medical lab)/or even a wonder, you'll also cause a couple resistance turns (capped at 3). No effect if you get shot down.

  • You are not a nation and the UN will not have you vote, no delegates. However you can pull strings (ally a CS and use their delegate, or lobby for votes with a civ or what not).

Comments on the UU
  • Stealth (like a submarine).

  • 2 land moves (can later be upgraded to 5, usually a priority upgrade).

  • Ignores open borders (can invade enemy territory).

  • Dies on contact (no capture).

  • Can gain experience (but dies as soon as he's used :3).

  • If you can manage to get an atheist extremist, it counts for the religion you started if any, otherwise your majority religion, and if it is atheism then ♥♥♥♥... but I think the game doesn't crash even if so.

Mission Immolate
  • May immolate, attacks all tiles of the same domain (water OR land) within 1 range, kills the extremist and generates 33% pressure.

  • Unprotected civilians die instantly, un-garrisoned military units receive 10 flat damage, cities receive 10 flat damage.

  • Generates 25% pressure for every casualty among followers of the true faith (whatever the true faith is)/atheists.

  • Reduces 25% pressure for every casualty among infidels.

  • Does not require war.

  • % applies over strength.

Mission Establish Terror Cell
  • May infiltrate a city as 1 citizen following the true faith, this establishes a Terror Cell.

  • Cities with a Terror Cell become eligible to gain terror progress. Upon reaching 100 a terror attack is unleashed and the Terror Cell is destroyed. In addition to Terror Cells, a city with terror level > 0 will allow the city to accumulate terror progress, provided it has at least one follower of the true faith.

  • If the city is yours, there is no terror cell active, and there aren't infidels living on it, the terror progress pauses regardless of terror level (no sense to terrorize your own city if its unified).

  • A terror attack may reduce the food kept by the city (attack on population), and/or straight kill citizens and that's it. However, if you have a spy on the city the effect is enhanced (more food/citizens) and may also destroy a low hammer building often, a high hammer building sometimes, and a wonder rarely (or reduce GPP if no wonder is present). Specialists present at a target building during an attack die from its destruction. Depending on the severity of the attack it may cause between 1 and 3 turns of resistance. The terrorists die/are killed after the attack (-1 citizen, -1 follower of the true faith) and the city increases its terror level by 1.

  • There is a 5% chance of the attack failing on its own, for no effect.

  • If the city has a counterspy and Counter Terrorists employed, there is a 5% chance per CT to prevent the attack, this lowers the terror level by 1 and prevents the terror attack.

  • Terror progress is obtained every turn from spies (+1), open borders with the target (+2) or target has open borders with anyone else (+1), promotions on extremists that infiltrate the city (+1 per extra terrorism promotion), and the city's terror level (+1 per level).

  • A target city may employ Counter Terrorists (specialists, +1 culture -1 gold +3 great general points). Each CT reduces terror attack progress by 2 per turn. In addition, a garrisoned unit, a counter spy, and security buildings (constabulary, police station, NIA, GF) each reduce progress by 1 each turn.

  • Extremists start with a +5 terrorism promotion and may obtain extra promotions by collecting experience (barracks and such).

  • If you hover over a city banner you can see the current terror attack level. Early game, 5-10 is great and you don't even need to infiltrate the city anymore to cause terror attacks often, at information era and such you need 7-12 because the AI gets police stations and the like to slow you down.

  • Does not require war, negative diplomatic effect.

Comments on Missions
  • If you have a big faith base (piety game most likely) you can spam extremists and target your main competitor (or everyone if you want to war the world). If you are turtling you want to target their capital to slow it down to a crawl and have a chance to destroy wonders... sending two or three extremists in single waves, to trigger a quick terror attack and increase the terror level quickly, once the terror level is high enough (5-10) that city is done for.

  • If you are playing with the goal of domination (eg. honor) you want to target the second best city, as you want to keep the wonders for yourself.

  • if your main competitor is extremely far and has few cities you may "infect" all of his cities with one extremist each instead, this will slow down terror attacks early on but over a long time it should have a better effect completely slowing that civ.

  • Defensively, extremists can immolate to quickly wipe a missionary squad or a pesky prophet.

  • While it is a missionary, I think the belief "30% cost reduction on missionaries" isn't working atm.

  • You need lots of faith (at least +100) to be able to spam extremists at a decent pace, so you usually want a mosque+pagoda combo with 6 or so cities.

  • Extremists benefit from experience, so going honor and getting a reduction on cost for barracks and such is a great boost as well as going for the domination side of the tech tree to have these buildings available as soon as possible, so you can have stronger units for a longer time, before you reach the next era and get hit by increased costs.

  • Cities you spy on get attacks faster but more importantly stronger terror attacks, so keep your spy on your primary target.

  • The first four attacks are close to free (-1 opinion each), if you hit five, they cost 5 opinion each, capped at 50 I believe.

  • If you happen to destroy a wonder it costs 100 opinion.

Comments on the Training Camp
  • It has a high maintenance cost so you can't spam them, turtles can focus their melee unit on one to get cover II or medic II, then train a catapult all the way to Logistics+Range Artillery. The AI should start building them once/if they get 1000 gold per turn (so you can automate workers safely), the default code for choosing what to build is crappy for dealing with gold maintenance so I had to basically cancel it as the AI just built these things instead of farms :/ The AI is not finished anyway, probably cant even use the UU.

  • Can be built on neutral territory, a good tactic I found is building them on the border as you prepare for war. That way you wont be missing exp as you prepare, when you declare war you can wait for the AI to come to you and still keep getting exp during lulls, and finally, the AI may grow into the tile, absorbing your costs. Then if you do peace out (eg. another AI attacks you) you can get open borders and try to leech exp for free.

  • The yields are just token values that may have a use if you reach future tech and have infinite gold without nothing to use it on, build on snow, tundra or desert preferably.

Bugs and what not
  • When you infiltrate a city you add one citizen, and you can infiltrate your own cities, I liked the mechanic, as a tradition game could use the extra pop to rush a wonder and then have the terror attack and lose the citizen and some food, but after the wonder was done, but right now you can abuse it by infiltrating 10 or so times in a single attack, and you shouldn't lose as many citizens from it, making it a net gain. Haven't come up with a fix for that that makes sense and isn't too convoluted, feel free to suggest, try to play without abusing that because it is not meant to be... unless you want to have fun with a super tall city :P

  • Because I haven't touched tourism and you get a strong faith modifier (the garrison) you can probably win with Sacred crap which is not very terrorist like I feel. I could cut Tourism in half for a quick hack fix, but need to think/get suggestions, maybe it's fine...?

  • Because I implemented terror attacks as great people (that way I didn't have to code a custom UI thing to show the progress, I haven't learned that yet), city states may request one :P If you want to fulfill that quest you have to infiltrate one of your own cities, I haven't made it so terror attacks on enemies count for you.

  • The Double maintenance thing was what I originally started working with and gave the name to the UA, but after my last playtest I realized this has become more of an offensive faith civ, and it is not THAT important, it could go away and not make a lot of difference (except in multiplayer, or maybe on deity, or the AI was the one using this civ and you had to attack, but I haven't focused on neither of those yet).

  • Should I make spies level up from attacks they help on? (execute/stop), I guess no because they'd level up super fast.

  • Should their level make attacks happen even faster? (turning a leveled up spy into basically a free extremist, instead of a minor boost speed wise).

  • When I get to the next civ, which I expect to be USA so the two can fight :3, I thought of including "security protocols" which would be like policies but another screen, and they would be the ones giving protection against terrorists and black ops in general (eg. "The Patriot Act" "Reduces terror level on cities if blah blah"), that would more or less be like anti policies, giving you a debuff in exchange of a different buff plus better security, and of top of it, if you apply them preemptively (before reaching a terror level), your population hates you, otoh if you wait until they are too terrorized, you get a small boost of gratitude. And of course the USA doesn't do terrorism, but isn't a sitting duck, it would be able to conduct black ops (sabotage), false flag ops (I think this one would be great because it would expand the diplomacy mechanics and possibly spies as well) or straight predator strikes on enemies/themselves to balance it out. Thoughts?

  • Right now the civ is like most strong in ancient era, and not in information era :/ mostly because the missionaries are cheaper then and faith doesn't scale up to pay for 1000 cost extremists (you go from 2 turn extremists to 8-10 turns, albeit more leveled up, but still), but otoh I am not sure I should touch anything scaling wise, because that would probably break things hugely, so rather have people playtest and give input. There is the 30% reduced cost belief, but when I tried it it didn't work and haven't checked the code/fixed it, and my trial of visual studio (the thing you use to code) is over so I am just releasing as is for now.

  • Do an antivirus check on the DLL just in case.
Last edited by gia; Apr 26, 2016 @ 1:48pm