The Barbarian and the MoveUnit Command

[techumseh]

Has anyone noticed a difference between how AI civs and barbarians respond to the moveunit command? I have far better luck getting the units of an AI-controlled civ to respond than barb units.

[Boco]

Funny you should ask

I haven't spent any time debugging it, but I do see this accumulation of units that should be moving north,



when the pertinent code is (Saudis = Barbs):

@IF  UnitKilled  Unit=Ikhawan  
Attacker=Anybody  
Defender=Saudis  
@THEN  
MoveUnit  
unit=Ikhawan  
owner=Saudis  
maprect  107,75,109,75,107,83,109,83  
moveto  
108,74  
numbertomove=All  
@ENDIF

108,74 = Ha'il

The Turks are eager to attack toward Jarab. In fact no MoveUnit action is needed.

[techumseh]

Re: Funny you should ask

Originally posted by Boco
I haven't spent any time debugging it, but I do see this accumulation of units that should be moving north,

But are they?

[techumseh]

Here's my experience. The minor warlord Zhang Zingchang (The Dogmeat General) of Shandong province, represented by the barbarians, initially controls 4 cities: Tsinan, Chefoo, Weihaiwei and Tsingtao. When I captured one of these cities (Weihaiwei), it triggers the creation of his army of Shandong in the remaining 3 cities. They should all move to recapture Weihaiwei, but over half move in other directions.

[Boco]

Lotsa semi-OT questions

Does the event (largely) fail regardless of the size of the conquering forces in Weihaiwei?

Have you played with the role of Dogmeat units?

Who's the founder of Weihaiwei? If it's not Dogmeat, maybe changing it to him will encourage him to retake it.

If the human controls a unit in any of these cities, what happens if he manually issues a 'go to' Weihaiwei command? Does it work on that penisula?

If a civ captures Tsinan, is Dogmeat programmed to retake it? Does that work?

How much of the map is visible to Dogmeat?

Btw, stay tuned, and I'll answer your question.

[techumseh]

I used one of the warlord civs to found all the barb cities, then used CivCity to change them to barbarian control. There are spawned units of various roles - there doesn't seem to be any difference in their movement.

Whichever city is captured first by a human player, the goto command is directed there.

Does the moveunit target coordinate have to be outside the maprect for it to work? That might be it.

Barbarian units seem to hang around barbarian controlled cities, of which there are lots in this scenario. Otherwise, my observation is that settler units attract barbarian units, whose movement otherwise seems random. I wonder if a barbarian settler was created, if it would attract barb units?

[Boco]

Originally posted by techumseh
Does the moveunit target coordinate have to be outside the maprect for it to work? That might be it.

Yeah, I think that may be the culprit. Can't remember now where I saw it, but IIRC it's necessary.

Originally posted by techumseh
Barbarian units seem to hang around barbarian controlled cities, of which there are lots in this scenario. Otherwise, my observation is that settler units attract barbarian units, whose movement otherwise seems random. I wonder if a barbarian settler was created, if it would attract barb units?

A barb magnet. That'd be a very useful trick. Have a slot you can use for that? I'd be very interested in the result of that experiment.

Btw, if you use the Diplomat slot for barb units, the Civ engine uses the last icon in units.bmp. Doesn't need to be the Dip role. I use both Sanussi and Saudi Ikhawan in EA. Same stats, just a different icon for each.

Finally checked that Saudi mob south of Ha'il. They do sort of mill northward, but they completely balk at attacking Ha'il. I'll try some of my own advice and change the founder.