On of the problems with sci-fi 4X games is that we don’t know what future technology or future military units will look like, so games create “space archers” and “combat rovers” as if ranged attack or motorised transport were some shiny new tech. Attempts to extend the Civ tree suffer from this too: all it can offer is bigger numbers and, ultimate, the comedy-value of Giant Death Robots.
We all love our Giant Death Robots, right?
The other day I was reading an article in which a neo-con academic military lawyer charged leftist (American: liberal) academic lawyers with being a Fifth Column in a clash of civilisations between the West and the Islamist Caliphate. According to his thesis, the Critical Law school is actively engaged in PSYOPS (psychological operations) warfare against the United States, with the intent of creating sympathy for the Islamist enemy and undermining American military resolve.
There are numerous problems with this thesis – not least that it characterises academic disagreement as a form of treason and positively argues for opposing scholars to be treated as unlawful combatants. However, from a game-design point of view, it does suggest interesting possibilities.
Starting from the premise that academic and political activity could form a coherent psyops front intended to undermine the enemy, we could design new classes of Civ units for the current and near-future era. Consistent with the premise, these units would be non-military units (like Civ 4’s missionaries) that could cross national borders (usually) without declaring war, stack with military units despite 1UPT (but don’t stack with each other) and which could only be targeted by other psyops units. These units would apply debuffs to the civ they attack.
What might some of those units look like
- Military lawyer. Action: Prevent a military unit in the same tile from moving. Action: remove a unit promotion from a military unit in the same tile. Each time either action is used there is a random chance the military lawyer will be exposed and removed.
- Critical theory professor. Action: Expend the critical theory professor to make the university in the same city permanently generate +1 culture per turn for the opposing civ. Successive professors can target the same university.
- Keynesian economist. Action: expend the Keynesian economist to increase the inflation rate by a small amount. Can only be used in enemy capital.
- Green activist. Halves science rate in city in which it is stationed. Action: Expend the green activist in the enemy capital for a “Tech ban” – marks one of the most recent techs researched by the civ (i.e. a tech with no later techs that the civ has yet researched leading from it) as not researched.
- Pacificist. Military improvements in the same city do not generate experience promotions for units built in this city.
- Suicide bomber. Action: Destroy a random improvement in the same city. Kills the suicide bomber.
- Media pundit. Action: expend the media pundit in an enemy city to convert a random culture building to generate culture for the opposing civ.
- Blogger. A blogger can attempt an enemy psyops unit. Remove both the blogger and the opposing unit. Action: expend the blogger in your own civ’s city for a random chance to reverse the effects of a single media pundit or critical theory professor.
- Migrant. Can create culture bombs (just like a Great Artist, but is built with hammers). This is unit can be attacked militarily (and cannot be countered by bloggers), but doing so is an act of war with the civ that built it, and generates negative reaction from other civs.
This could probably be modded in easily, although it’s not clear that the AI would know how to use them. Perhaps only usable in multiplayer games?