When the Saints come marching in

[foolish_icarus]

Ever since I dropped the ball on my attempt at a Poly-CFC joint game, I've still had a hankering to mod a (poly only) post-apocalyptic or similar type game.
Now that I've tweaked the rule sytem to be sleeker and figured on an update standard more to my liking and have finally settled down enough to actually run a scenario, I want to gauge potential involvement, get some feedback, and see whether the crowd leans more towards a hard-core-the-world-hates-you-and-wants-you-to-die scenario or favors a (potentially) more benevolent humanity-done-screwed-itself-up-bad-now-but-there's-still-hope situation, or some other squirrelly dream of your own devising.
Also I like polls.

[appleciders]

I'm not exactly sure what the difference is between the two scenarios- elaborate?

[Cyclotron]

I know Jon Buchner; Jon Buchner is a friend of mine. You, sir, are no Jon Buchner.

[Cyclotron]

Oh, as for on-topic: have you ever read "A Canticle for Leibowitz"? That would be my image of the post-apocalyptic world. Not too much "the world hates you," but just enough senseless violence to keep things interesting.

[foolish_icarus]

Haven't read Canticle but I went and looked at the summary. It's similar in essence to what I had in mind for the harsher of the two scenarios--with the environment crippled and technology nearly wiped out.
The other scenario would not involve nuclear destruction, but decades of conventional warfare that destroyed infrastructure and fractured large states and stalled technology but did not eradicate it.
And of course I'm not Jon Buchner. Jon Buchner is a saint, and I am not. Q.E.D.

[Cyclotron]

Clearly my conception of a "hard core" post-apocalyptic future is somewhat more hard-core than yours.

Personally, nuclear > non-nuclear. Maybe that's just my predilection for low-tech, or my hankering for bizarre mutations. You decide!

[foolish_icarus]

Be careful what you ask for!

Here's more details on what I had in mind.

1. The post- slow birds setting that I had planned for the other one, with the special surprises I had in store modified to fit the new circumstances. It's several hundred (a thousand?) years after the end of a very long and very bizarre nuclear war. About a third of the land surface is glass, most of the rest has been swamp and desert, and the biospere is just starting to recover and you're moving back beyond basic agriculture into urban civilization, propelled by the occasional ancient relic you find buried in the sand. Would take place (initially, at least) on one continent, probably North America, due to the small number of players.

2. Post world war one, the communist bid for power triggers decades of global warfare, tearing apart every state on the planet. With food, medicine, industry, and a sizable portion of the population gone, the remainder of earth's population is taking a breather--but it's a sure bet that the fighting isn't done. Probably take place (initially) in Europe.

[appleciders]

I'm gonna go with Cyc and vote for option 1. I'm just not into industrialized NESes as much, and the more nuked everything is, the happier I'll be. As for small numbers of players, someone should tip off Lord Nuclear- this might be a little more up his alley.

[Cyclotron]

I also like inventing the "idea" of a nation more than following a continuation - with a nuclear "reset," there's no baggage from the last several thousand years of human civilization except for some out-of-context relics. I know this might be a bit ironic coming from the guy who's making you all play good Germans, but even there I started in AD 911 so there would be very little "pre-history" of Germany to consider. I vote for option one so I can build a people from scratch.

[appleciders]

I agree there- much more room to create alliances and betrayals, rather than have them forced on us.

[foolish_icarus]

Generally easier and more fun for the mod, too

[foolish_icarus]

Would you be interested in an ice age world, a high sealevel world, or just leave the coastlines as they are now (assume they've dropped and risen or vice versa and happen to have come back to present levels).

This is a take-it-under-advisement sort of thing: A high or low sea level world may or may not come to fruition depending on how grueling it turns out to be to research and edit the map.

[Cyclotron]

I suppose a different climate would be interesting; I don't really have a preference for hot or cold. I suppose in Civ I do usually play on archipelago maps, but that's just because I don't like having long, poorly defended land borders when Montezuma decides to swamp me with axemen.

[appleciders]

I'd probably rather have a high sea level world, and I think that's more realistic if we're really looking at several hundred years later- a nuclear winter would (I think, anyway) have mostly blown its course by that point. Don't go too in depth with the research for elevations- figure that massive glaciers, extreme rainfall, and elevated volcanic activity would change things a little.

And Cyc, the trick is fortified defensive types on hills (sometimes I cave and actually build the hills myself). Don't have to create a solid line; make those zones of control work for you. Or counteroffensives. I like counteroffensives.

[Cyclotron]

Originally posted by appleciders
And Cyc, the trick is fortified defensive types on hills (sometimes I cave and actually build the hills myself). Don't have to create a solid line; make those zones of control work for you. Or counteroffensives. I like counteroffensives.

While this works well in Civ2, in Civ4 there are no zones of control and you can't build hills anymore.

The best way to deal with it is to put several small stacks of troops and artillery near a flat region that the enemy is likely to pillage; when they advance in, set up a "killing zone" to hammer their stacks with artillery and then destroy them in detail. That's when the counteroffensive starts.