Barbarian Cities
Since you guys are the scenario creation experts, hopefully you can help me out here.
1) How do you build palaces in all your barbarian cities? This is the only sure-fire way I know of preventing "Bribe City" (other than by eliminating diplomats/spies, which is not an option). I've seen this in other scenarios (the names escape me), so it appears to be doable.
2) How do you turn the Barbarians into an "8th Civ"? In "Alba", Jesus Balsinde refers to a method which involves hex editing, but it didn't work when I tried it. Anyone else have success with this? What am I missing?
3) Has anyone been able to change the Barbarian Leader's movement points? I'd like to increase it, but haven't seen anything editable in the usual CivII text files.
4) "Change Production" crash: I've tried to change production inside my Barbarian cities, but it always crashes the program. Anyone else have this problem? Maybe it's just a bug peculiar to my installation (FW on top of basic civ II).
5) If I create scenarios using MGE, are they playable with the FW version of civ? (I have MGE in a separate directory, and it DOESN'T crash when changing production in Barbarian Cities!)
Any help would be greatly appreciated! I've been developing an "Ancient Empires" scenario system for over a year now, and this is the last item I need to resolve. The basic system works fine, but I need fully tweaked barbarians to jazz up the scenarios.
1. sorry, I have no idea...
2. Don't knwo much about hex editing either
3. :-(
4. You can't change the production of a barb city. They will only produce the unit that conquered the city, nothing else.
5. nope, MPG scenarios aren't playable with FW.
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Editor of the Scenario League.
"Screw you guys, I'm going home"
Re 1, the person to ask is Harlan. I would probably try
making a tribal city with a capital in it
then attacking with barbarians.
I haven't tried to do this trick before.
1) Change the Palace prerequisite to Nil and build it the regular way.
2) I have no idea, but their name can be changed in labels.txt
3) Barbarian leaders are diplomats with a different graphic(Try creating a barbarian diplo!) and the same stats.
4) Yeah, it happens sometimes. The best suggestion is to try clicking Ignore continuously but that doesn't always work.
5) No, neither MGE nor FW is backward compatible.:-)
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St. Leo
www.sidgames.com/imperialism/
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Member of the AUP!
Here's a couple more questions in line with this theme:
6) When you create Barbarian units for a scenario, do they "live" longer if they have a home city? (as opposed to "none")
7) Carrying that thought even further, does anyone know what controls the lifespan of a barbarian unit? Can it be modified?
8) I used the events.txt file to create a Barbarian transport (ship) and several land units in a sea hex, but they never appeared. Has anyone else had success with this? If so, what am I missing?
4. Barbarian change production ALWAYS crashes for me too in FW.
6. It seems to me that they last forever if they have a city to sit it. Another thing that seems to make barbarians last forever is to put them in fortifications. This is useful for making barbarian cities harder to attack.
7. If they are too far away from cities, they seem to go away. Don't know of any direct way to control their lifespan.
8. I've tried to create barbarian ships, but have never been successful. I've never been able to create ground units of any tribe at sea on a ship. The AI doesn't seem to realize the ship is there.
Have you checked the Design Tips section of the Scenario League? The Barbarian Paper (mentioned elsewhere on this forum) and the how to work with barbarian units should answer nearly all of these questions.
Yes Miner, I did check the Design Tips section.
Question #7 is discussed to some degree. Apparently modern units "live" longer than ancient ones, but there were no specifics on actual life spans or whether they can be modified. It's noted that barbarians in cities and fortifications "live forever", but I'm interested in building large Barbarian field armies that don't vanish after a few turns. The other questions aren't specifically addressed.
I realize of course that the answers may well be "No" or "Never seen it done", but a guy can always hope!
Permanent barbarian units are specificaly provided for in ToT. If you can figure out how to use the Rules Txt, that is.
1) I would copy another cities improvements to get the places there.
2) No idea
3) I dont think it is possible.
4) Gotta use MGE if you want to change barbarian city production.
5) Can't play MGE scenarios with FW I have been told.
6) Don't know
7) The only way I know of to control barbarian life span is to use ToT.
8) Why not set the barbarian activity to restless tribes and let the barbarian units appear naturally? It will solve your seaborne barbarian problem and it will save event space. If you decide to try it let me know and I will send you a copy of the revised barbarian paper (more user friendly version)that I've been working on.
WK - Thanks for the suggestions. Copying improvements from one city to another never includes the palace, for some reason.As for most of the other questions, I've resigned myself to living with the problems or trying less elegant workarounds.
I really liked your "Barbarian Paper, by the way. In fact just before releasing EotBA I placed all the units from that scenario into the appropriate locations in your document. It was a very helpful way to quickly identify "inappropriate barbarian units". And I'd love to see the latest version!
To build a palace in every city, select the palace and press "cheat" on the build bar. (Note: cheat mode must be on).
Pouf! construction complete. Because it was instant, the palace is built and the original stays put.
DV - That works for the regular civs, and you can even do it for Barbarians in MGE. But if you use FW and try to change production in a Barbarian city (be it palaces or anything else), Kar-rashhh!!!
The "Fun with Barbarians" Design tip suggests that this is possible with FW (see Allard's comments), but I've never been able to do it without crashing the game. Gothmog and others would agree. The $64 question is how come Allard can do it with FW, but others can't? I don't doubt his word, but wonder what's different about his installation.
How about this:
Palaces required in barbarian cities so much harder to bribe? easy enough at the start 'cos you can copy improvements.
But what about during the game? a captured city will not build a palace cos they only build what took the city. So...
Using the new events in TOT, use the if CityTaken, city=any, attacker=barbs, defender=any, grantimprovement PALACE.
This event places the improvement randomly, but if all tha barb cities have Palaces then the only place the improvement will go is in the newly captured city. The same could be done with the courthouse improvement.
Comments please.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own TOT (YET) and this suggestion comes as a result of reading various threads. Can someone try this and see, please?
Kull, one tip you may find useful.
You can use Diplomats in a scenario and still make sure they wont bribe a city.
How? Go into the game.txt scroll down to where it says @SPYOPTIONS. It lists all the possible actions a diplomat may do against a city. Now delete the line where it says
Bribe city and then leave this line empty.
You must leave it empty! Otherwise it wont work the way it's supposed to.
Bribe option disabled!
Alright, there has to be some problem with this, right? It only works for the human player. No matter what you do the AI will always be able to use all the options for diplomats/spies.
I hope you find this helpful.
Hendrik the Great
Nice idea Miner, but it will not work. There is no TriggerCity that can be referenced in the BestowImprovement command.
On second thought, it might work but only for the Barbarians if the InCapital clause was used with the BestowImprovement. I think each Barbarian city acts like an individual civ. I'll try it when I have some time.
Funny. I turned on cheat mode and had no problems with bringing palaces in barbarian cities.
BD: I assume you are running FW, not MGE? If you ARE using FW, then for some reason you and Allard are able to change production in Barbarian Cities (see my 10/16 post above). All I know is that I (and others) can't. Does ANYONE have a clue as to why?????
Hendrik: That's is a REALLY good idea! Unfortunately, I'd hate to eliminate city bribery from the scenario altogether.
Barbarian "Storms": I've got a cruise-missile type barbarian unit called "Storm" in my upcoming scenario. It works fine when created over land, and searches around for units/cities to hit. But the ones created over water just sit there. Anyone ever see this before? By the way, if you're thinking of creating similar units, the movement points CANNOT exceed 31 (or they refuse to move!). I have no idea why. I've also noticed that barbarian ships won't even appear in water (they can be created in a city), so maybe it's related.
Barbarian Diplomats: Hendrik's idea for eliminating city bribing got me thinking....what about placing diplomats INSIDE the Barbarian Cities? Sad to say, I tried 3 different approaches (Barbarian spies, diplomats, and regular units with a "6" Role.), but none of them prevented my diplomat from bribing the city. In fact, it didn't work for non-Barbarian cities either.
Barbarian Government: As long we're "blue-skying".......If it were possible to give the Barbarians a "Democratic" Government style, that would also eliminate bribing. Has anyone ever experimented with something like this?
For Kull, taken from the ToT readme:
19. In the Fantasy, Science Fiction and Midgard game types you may no longer bribe (incite a revolt in) barbarian cities if there is an unbribable barbarian unit in that city.
Therefore if you create a scenario based one of these games you can have unbribeable barbie cities. Another reason to use ToT!
A thread from long ago, but I didn't notice it earlier. Why I can change it? To be honest I have no idea; i just can. it never crashes. I use FW. I bought it in Holland but it should be the same as in the UK and the rest of Europe.The $64 question is how come Allard can do it with FW, but others can't? I don't doubt his word, but wonder what's different about his installation
I believe I've done it before but how, I'm not to sure. I remember messing around with the reveal map in the cheat mode. I was actually able to move the Barbarian units. I revealed the Barbarian map and entered a new turn. That new turn ended up being the barbarians. I've done this once but I have failed dublicating it. I was also able to change the production of the units which were being built. Some units were NIL and it built those.
Bump (for Benedetti)
Kull, perhaps this helps:
Turn on cheat mode > reveal map >BARBARIAN only. After that, I was able to change the production of barbarian cities. I created city walls with the cheat option, it works fine. But it CRASHED if I revealed the ENTIRE MAP.
I have installed only civ2 and FW, not the first addon CD (conflicts...?).
Note that I had another problem with the Barbs: after changing the production of a Barb-city, this city was NOT producing Barb-units any longer. I solved this with events that created the units directly in the cities.
I think this has been answered already here but if not, here it is. Preventing barb cities from being bribed just build palaces. To do this you change the preq of palaces to nil. reveal barb maps as said in brebro posts and follow his sugguestions.
wait, maybe thats why. After you reveal the barbarian map, you can now change the barb productions even if the entire map is revealed. reveal barb map first, then reveal any other map and it should work. gotta try it out.
p.s.
I've only had it crashed once when changing the production of barbarian cities. I think it crashes because theres nothing for it to build. Might make some units with preq nil and improvements nil and it won't crash.
[This message has been edited by Civfan (edited May 19, 2000).]
Civfan has hit it on the head with his last speculation here. Looking at the barbarian production queue crashes the game when there isn't at least one unit for the barbarians to build (even if they can build some buildings). So you need at least one unit with "nil,nil" as prereqs. There may be other factors, like which map you're viewing, but I've never had any problem with that.
As far as having an eighth civ, the only way to do that I've heard of is to have the human play as the barbarians. This can be done by editing the hex file. I've never done it myself, but I'm told it has some very strange effects, since the barbarian rules are still followed. For instance, you can't research anything, or even build anything if you control over 8 cities.
With all the new discoveries people are making in hex editing these days, I wonder if making the barbarians a Democracy to prevent bribing would work?
Yes, Harlan, that does indeed work!
Change byte 8FB in any pre-ToT saved game to 06, and you've got a barbaric civ with Democracy.
What's nice is, if you have no other civs with Democracy, that it gives a pop-up message saying "cities under democracy cannot be incited to revolt" which can be changed to something appropriate.
However, I'm not sure if the barbarians are able to change government. If they can, it is assumable that they do not follow the "forbid government" switching, which might cause them after all to go back to Despotism.
By the way, if you're thinking of creating similar units, the movement points CANNOT exceed 31 (or they refuse to move!)
Actually they cannot exceed 127/road modifier.
Thanks guys...this is some REALLY excellent stuff! Everytime I tune in to this forum there's a new "must-implement" piece of information! I am NEVER going to finish the @#$#$% scenario!!!!
Well, one out of two aint bad. The Palace building still doesn't work. Even with Palaces and Units at nil,nil, it still crashes.
However, the Hex Edit trick works great! I took the scenario through a 130-turn test drive, and the Barbarians stayed as a Democracy the whole time. It's really a far more elegant solution than the Palace trick anyway, since it prevents you from bribing newly captured Barbarian cities, plus you can't buy off individual barbarian units. And the customized message is a neat idea, Allard! Closer and closer......
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