Barbarian oddity?

[vik]

quote: Originally posted by William Keenan on 06-24-2000 08:45 PM I've learned something new today. Thanks for setting me straight on that. I thought the barbarian leader would have zero hp because I have never seen one get wounded, it's always one hit and over.

I've had the barb leader WIN several battles. If I send a warrior one or two squares and attack the Leader on a hill or something, I've seen my warrior get killed quite often. It really sucks.

[Ming]

Yeah... nothing worse than moving a warrior two squares out of your city down a river, only to lose a battle with a barb king... There you are, counting on the money, and instead, you lose a unit... bummer

[East Street Trader]

I have just read William Keenan's paper on barbarians for which he kindly provides the link above.

By a side wind, it put me right on a point I consider v. important indeed - namely that you get non units from goody huts when the nearest city is not your own. Not, as I have been casually assuming (for a good many years now) when you are far enough away from your own cities. I should have realised partly because William's revelation has explained some incidents over which I have previously just had to shrug my shoulders but also because I had worked out the corresponding situation which arises when you bribe a boat.

So, thanks William. My congratulations also on the clarity of your style and presentation.

However. There are two unresolved matters. First, the paper does not explain Smash getting barb chariots from a trireme. It implies this cannot happen when we now know it can. Further the paper would require the difference in the incidence of barb chariots as between Smash's games and mine to be explained by my simply having been consistently luckier.

I know how many hours of play I have put in and can tell from Smash's posts that he has racked up a goodly few himself. So that don't wash with me.

There is a mechanism at work over and above those described in William's paper.

Any ideas? I too usually have 7 civs so it's nowt to do with that. I get barb legions from huts early and often. Wonder if anything turns on which opposing civs you get to play against?

[William Keenan]

Thank you East Street for your kind words about the paper.

The research I did to discover all the triggers for the barbarains was all done using Civ2-MGE played on Raging Hordes at Diety level. There could be a difference between FW and MGE with chariots on the triremes that I don't know about.

The best way to test this is to play in cheat mode with the map completely revealed. This way you can see the trirems the moment they appear and check thier contents.

[DaveV]

All my experience, on both 2.42 and MGE, tends to confirm everything in Mr. Keenan's paper (a masterful job, by the way). It's possible that Smash has juggled the units in his rules.txt, or that the Mac does things differently.

Edited to specify the versions of the program I've used.
[This message has been edited by DaveV (edited June 28, 2000).]

[rah]

GREAT PAPER. Kudos....
While I learned a good deal of it through experience, they were a few things that I didn't know, and the organization of it was fantastic.

One thing.
"Beginning on game turn sixteen rebels bands begin to appear in wilderness areas on the periphery of settled regions. The owner of the closest city will receive a warning message when they appear."

While playing the no city challange yesterday, rebellions did not seem to start until I had captured my first city, (around 1800 bc) This was a Raging horde, Deity game. Coincidence? or does not having a city stop the rebellions similar to not getting barbs from huts before you lay down your first city?

RAH
Lord of the Ferrets

[William Keenan]

Rah: What the line that you quoted means is simply, Barbarians don't appear before turn sixteen.

Of course, they don't always appear on turn sixteen either. But they never appear before turn sixteen. This rule does not apply to huts, only pirates and rebels.

Many times I have heard the theory that barbs don't appear before you have established a city. I have never made an effort to prove or disprove it.

[Scouse Gits]

WK - Great piece of work, most helpful

To add a further note of confusion - I have played many hundreds of 2.42 games and would report that Barbarian Chariots are about as common as hen's teeth!! Maybe it's the air on this side of the pond?



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Scouse Git[1]

"CARTAGO DELENDA EST" - Cato the Censor

[finbar]

Well, I dunno. Maybe it's the Mac version, but I've had barbs appear before I've built my first city and I've had barb chariots. I always get barb chariots. I only ever play Deity, Raging Hordes.

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finbar
Mono Rules!
#33984591
[This message has been edited by finbar (edited June 28, 2000).]

[East Street Trader]

Finbar

You don't get a barbarian result when tipping a hut before you found your first city. That doesn't mean you don't run into barbs. Nor does the fact that you run into barbs at this time indicate that they have spawned. The A1 is tipping huts too and they will ineviatably have founded a city or two so the no barbs from huts rule won't apply to them. FWLIIW, based on memory only, my experiences support the notion that barbs don't spawn before the human player founds. From what William says on numbers there are just too few around. Would guess no pirates either.

But maybe someone's seen barbs spawn or pirates landing during this stage? That would resolve this point.

Making no progress on the disparity in incidence of barb chariots. Seems unlikely that it would be different for different versions/OS. That would suggest the designers intentionally built in the difference. Why would they do that?

Also bereft of notions on the ship borne chariots. Tempted to take to cheat mode and try to duplicate - trouble is can't help but think William's researches will have been thorough and time consuming.


<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by East Street Trader (edited June 29, 2000).]</font>
[This message has been edited by East Street Trader (edited June 29, 2000).]

[Ming]

Great job William Keenan...

I will add to the "no barbarians until the human player starts a city" theory. I've also been playing the nomad challange. And in all the games I played, I've never seen a barbarian appear until I started my first city. One game, I was on a large land mass, with no other civs, so I never got a city. It took me to about 500 BC to map the entire land mass, and I didn't see a single barb!

[William Keenan]

quote: Also bereft of notions on the ship borne chariots. Tempted to take to cheat mode and try to duplicate - trouble is can't help but think William's researches will have been thorough and time consuming.

Yes it took hundreds of hours to complete the research. The worst part was NOT playing the game. I could not allow myself or the AI to discover any techs since that would invalidate the tech I was testing. Production and city founding were like-wise curtailed as that would lengthen the whole testing process.

Two notes on the no barbs before the first city thing. [*]In my experience the civ engine does not differentiate between AI and human players when it resolves trigger occurrences. In other words, if the civ engine is waiting for something to happen like the founding of the first city or the discovery of a particular tech, it does not care whether it was the human player or the AI that triggered the event.[*]There are no rebels or pirates for the first 15 turns of the game.

Given that both points are 100% true it is extremely unlikely that no city will be founded in the first 15 turns. Therefore, if there is a rule in the civ engine that says no barbs until a civ builds a city then it is extremely unlikely that any such rule would ever be applied.

[Ming]

William Keenan

It has to be written in the program that random barbs won't appear before a "human" lays down a city. I find it hard to believe that it is just "chance" that my brother and I haven't seen any barbs before laying down a city in our many attempts at the nomad challange. Now granted, unless you are trying one of the strange challanges, you would probably never run across it... but I'd be willing to bet that that is the case

[Smash]

These games are with MAC single version.Manual says "contains all fixes and updates in 2.42".

[Ming]

I wonder if that makes a difference... has anybody using the MP PC version seen this happen?