Barbarian Cities

[Kull]

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.

[Saint Marcus]

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"

[Michael Daumen]

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.

[St Leo]

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
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Member of the AUP!

[Kull]

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?

[Gothmog]

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.

[Miner]

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.

[Kull]

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!

[techumseh]

Permanent barbarian units are specificaly provided for in ToT. If you can figure out how to use the Rules Txt, that is.

[William Keenan]

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.

[Kull]

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!

[DarthVeda]

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.

[Kull]

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.

[Miner]

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?

[Hendrik the Great]

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