Barbarian production

[Snog]

Does anyone know why on the very same map, some Barbarian cities will proceed to build units while some will reset their production to zero and build nothing?

[Miner]

As far as I know, Barb cities (all of them on the map), stop producing when there are a certain number of them. I don't know the number. But this should effect all of them.

[Snog]

In this case, some are producing units while others are producing nothing.

[Miner]

Are you sure? I have looked in Barb cities on cheat mode and it looks like some are producing, but the shields has just 'frozen' when whatever number it is has been reached. If you really are getting some to produce and others not, then do a bit of investigating. This might be useful for the Barbarian Paper.

[Panda]

I've seen this as well. I think it might be connected with the ciy number index, those cities founded earliest will produce; those later won't, sort of thing. Didn't really investigate to much though.

[Gothmog]

I believe I may have discovered the answer to this while reworking a scenario with a lot of barbarian cities. I observed the same effect of some cities producing and others not. Wondering why I took a closer look at the rules.txt. It just so happened that the cities were building offensive units and not building defensive units. To see if it was that simple, I changed the role of some defensive units to offense. That caused those units to be built as well. Therefore, I think the reason some cities produce and others do not is that the barbarians only like to produce offensive units, i.e. the role is defined as offensive in the rules.txt.

Another factor seems to be the amount of cash barbarians have. When it gets low, they don't produce anything regardless of role. I believe this is true because they started producing again after they had stopped when via hex editing I gave them cash. When they exhausted that cash, they stopped building again. BTW, giving barbarians cash via events does not work.

[William Keenan]

Funny, I have never observed barb cities' stop production. Perhaps that is because I use Raging Hordes. What option had you guys used?

[William Keenan]

Originally posted by Gothmog Another factor seems to be the amount of cash barbarians have. When it gets low, they don't produce anything regardless of role. I believe this is true because they started producing again after they had stopped when via hex editing I gave them cash. When they exhausted that cash, they stopped building again. BTW, giving barbarians cash via events does not work.

The only time I have seen the Barb treasury change is when they lose a city. The seem to pay no upkeep and accumulate no gold from trade. Am I wrong?

[ravagon]

A followup question if I may,

Does anyone know whether or not barbarian city production is affected by the "civ# can't build" flag being active? This is for ToT of course...
Otherwise, is there any easy way of regulating unit production to prevent Barbs from building civ-specific units (in FW/ToT) assuming one is using tech prereqs or tech caps for the other (non-barb) civs?

[Thoddy]

See this scen.

Independence Day Borg

http://apolyton.net/cgi-bin/civ2/db/review.cgi?ID=92

Author uses the Barbarians to create an Barbarian civilisation. You can see the effects described in this thread.

The Barbarian AI is not a normal AI.
Barbarian units generally walk randomly. If distance to the next city falls below a special value the unit attacks the city. I think this value drops with the number of cities owned by Babarians.

A raising number of cities owned by Barbarians has also the effect that the last citys in the city queue dont produce any units. The more cities the Barbarians own the less cities will produce units.

If a Barbarian city grows in size a square in cityradius sometimes (ever?) will be irrigated and an Improvement will be build sometimes(ever?).

Production: since the Barbarian gouvernment is a despotic one they never have to pay upkeepcosts. On the other side no taxes and Beakers are collected.

If the Barbarian government is a democratic one, some cities grow(civ tweak) by WltxD.

[William Keenan]

Originally posted by ravagon
A followup question if I may,

Does anyone know whether or not barbarian city production is affected by the "civ# can't build" flag being active? This is for ToT of course...
Otherwise, is there any easy way of regulating unit production to prevent Barbs from building civ-specific units (in FW/ToT) assuming one is using tech prereqs or tech caps for the other (non-barb) civs?

Barbarian cities never change production. They build the unit type that captured the city. If you change the unit type manually it will produce only that unit.

[Gothmog]

After further observation, I have come to aggree with the idea that if there are a lot of barbarian cities , the barbarians end up producing nothing. When you look at the barbarian cities, they appear to be producing, because some shields have been allocated to a unit. If you look at a barbarian city, 1 turn later, the number of shields allocated will have actually gone down. I guess they are just getting in each other's way.

Now in the course of a normal game, barbarians do build units. However in that case they seldom have more than 1 or 2 cities.

[ravagon]

Originally posted by William Keenan

Barbarian cities never change production. They build the unit type that captured the city. If you change the unit type manually it will produce only that unit.

Thanks. I've had situations where barb cities have upgraded the units they produce though (presumably in line with the tech tree?).
In one I remember the city in question was captured by an ancient mounted unit of some sort and started producing barb units (don't remember the type exactly) which eventually became dragoons then cav then armour. This was a much older version though (possibly pre CiC).

So if I have the attacker as a specific barb unit outside the normal tech tree, with no possibility of an upgrade, I shouldn't have this problem?
*crosses fingers*

[Henrik]

Originally posted by Gothmog
I believe I may have discovered the answer to this while reworking a scenario with a lot of barbarian cities. I observed the same effect of some cities producing and others not. Wondering why I took a closer look at the rules.txt. It just so happened that the cities were building offensive units and not building defensive units. To see if it was that simple, I changed the role of some defensive units to offense. That caused those units to be built as well. Therefore, I think the reason some cities produce and others do not is that the barbarians only like to produce offensive units, i.e. the role is defined as offensive in the rules.txt.

Another factor seems to be the amount of cash barbarians have. When it gets low, they don't produce anything regardless of role. I believe this is true because they started producing again after they had stopped when via hex editing I gave them cash. When they exhausted that cash, they stopped building again. BTW, giving barbarians cash via events does not work.

Ok, I don think this is true, while I cannot say anything about the cash, they certainly build defencive units as well as offensive ones.
In fact in my scenario some barbarian cities are producing defensive units from start, and later as time progresses these units are upgraded(!).
They don't use this units for defense though, but rather wanders around in the general area where they where built (which suits my needs excelently as the cities building units are the ones on Ireland and scotland (my scenario takes place in the 1500s on a giga-europe map) which saves me a lot of random unit creation event work).

[Thoddy]

Barbarian cities never produce settler units even such a unit capture a city, or the unit stats will be changed to a settler.
In this case the produced item will be changed to the slot 20 unit (slot 0 - settler).
The same for the fanatics unit. Only if barbarian gouvernment is fundy the city produces this unit.


Creating my scen i saw also some other strange effects. In some cases, when a barbarian settler capture a city none of the existing improvements were destroyed. Dont ask me why.



And a little question: Is there a solution for longlasting barbarian ships. If I create them via cheat menu they disappears after one or two turns. I try to use the random movement for naval warfare.