This was over the Christmas holidays of 2015. I had recently gotten Civ V was really into it. When I realised that there were so many custom civilisation mods in the workshop, I decided to make my own too. It was inspired by the stuff I liked the most at that time, which was this Youtuber called Life of Boris and the STALKER series.

I wanted to make this civilisation really capture the feeling of these inspirations and be really unique, so I added a bunch of stuff as you could see above. They also all have unique mechanics that tie in together. The gopniks are slow workers to start, but once you build the Mayonez and Kompot buildings, they become really good. The Zone wonder is really risky, giving a few negative penalties and literally creating a nuclear blowout, but it also attracts a new unique unit called Stalkers. This unit cannot be purchsed or produced, but while instead be attracted to the zone and spawn from time to time. It also has a combat bonus in fallout areas. Additionally, they have a completely redesigned promotion tree inspired by the iconic artifacts of the STALKER games.

Overall, I think I managed to pull off the STALKER and gopnik vibes pretty well, while creating a civilisation that is fun to play with a completely different playstyle from all the other ones.

All the game design and graphic design was done by me, I had huge help with the coding from a friend, some of the images used in the buildings and units are from Life of Boris and the STALKER games, and the music I got online.