Build Your Own BARBARIAN KING !!!

[poppawoppa]

I had an experience last night which I have never seen before. Has anyone else heard about it or seen it yourself?
At Emperor level, I was rudely attacked by the Chinese. Having posted my own troops in fortresses I had built near their cities, I was able to put 4 or the five Chinese cities under my control at once.
Actually I depleted all the defenders of those 4 cities before actually taking them, to avoid getting a plea to please meet with our loving Chinese Emperor so he can propose a civil end to the hostilities before we lose any more cities. Since the cities were now empty and no engineers, caravans or other units near, I was then able to march into 4 cities one after another with no Cease Fire plea.
Now it gets interesting. Their last city was also in reach of my Spy, who proposed a revolt by its citizens in exchange for a sum of gold. They accepted and I had destroyed the Chinese civilization.

NOW COMES THE GOOD PART.

As I go into the city profile to change the menu for building units or improvements, there on the building menu is a BARBARIAN KING. Both in Beijing and in Shanghai. TWO chances to build a Barb King!!
Fearful of making a change to the provided menu, I did inquire what it would cost to buy this unit, since the shield box looked like the largest size available.
The pop up response said: Cost to Build would be 2,318 gold. If you assume a zero shield box would put a price of 4 gold per purchased shields, this would amount to 579.5 shields.
Now, having no use for a Barb King, I went to one of the cities and did trigger the change bar to see what the menu would show. I simply got the usual menu, and when I elected a city improvement, it did NOT give me the choice to stay with the current status, or forfeit half my shields to retain the choice of Barb King. I guess that stands to reason since there were no shields in the box.
Fortunately, I retained the Barb King choice in the other city, Shanghai, and a few turns later, looked in the City Status list to see what it said. The listing for Shanghai said: VIEW (57/880) In other words, the Barb King was just listed as VIEW, and I had now accumulated 57 of the necessary 880 shields to build.
Now, I have done quite a few additional turns, and the King is still being built, I may even have enough money to rush build it and see what happens.
I have a saved game for this, but have no clue what I could do to send it to Apolyton or any of the moderators, etc. If someone is interested, just send me your wishes, and I will try to get you a copy so you can see for yourself.
Likewise, if someone at Apolyton or elsewhere can tell me what I must do to send a screen shot to this forum, I would be happy to attempt.
I did try just to get a printed copy of it, but as soon as I tried the PrintScreen button, I got a message that I had to close the city window before I could continue.
THIS IS WIERD. Never before have I seen this. Comments? My email is correct in the profile.

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The man who dies with the most toys...is DEAD.

[poppawoppa]

Here is an update.
I have now accumulated 113 shields in the box, like for a WOW, really crowded together. The City Status menu says VIEW (113/880) and the cost to rush build now is listed as 1485. This is 1485 / 667 shields to complete = about 2.185 gold per shield.
Hope to hear from you. I will be out much of the day Tuesday, and try to post again tomorrow evening, or answer email or requests.


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The man who dies with the most toys...is DEAD.

[Theben]

I have never seen nor heard of anything like that. Take careful notes.

[poppawoppa]

Didn't watch too closely at first. Then began to check up from time to time.

First Year 0 shields cost to buy 2318
Next check 57 shields cost to buy 2744
Next 113 shields cost to buy 1458
1889 183 shields cost to buy 2746
1890 190 shields cost to buy 2247 My Gold= 5012

No rhyme or reason I can see. Now have started tracking my treasury. Will continue to make notes every year I can from now on.

Oh yes, when I first looked, the status appearong in the City Status Box said "View (57/880)", but now, the status reads "River (190/880)".

Curiouser and curiouser. I'll try to see if the cost will change as my treasury goes up or down.



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The man who dies with the most toys...is DEAD.

[East Street Trader]

Weird.

[Albert B]

How odd... Before tracking the whole cost to the end, make a save and rush build. I am most interested in what will pop out of the city once it is built. Also, please email me a copy of the save if you can. I would like to look at it. I have been doing a lot with hex editing and would like to see how this shows up in the save file.

(my email is correct in the link above)

Thanks,

Albert

[Ming]

I'm with Albert... tells us what happens if you rush build it. One question, will the barb appear outside the city when it is built... or in the city.

I've been playing civ for a long time, and been reading these forums since before the merger... and I've NEVER heard of this before.

Have you made modifications to your files, or loaded any of the many mod paks?

Poppawoppa, if you can, please email that savegame to me as well. I'd appreciate it very much! My email is in the profile.

[poppawoppa]

Ming -- no changes to files, no mod packs etc.
Standard Civ II Gold Edition. Had no Civ Disk in at the time, was running off the memory...so no heralds, no WOW films at the time.
I did just recently add 128MB of RAM to my Pentium II computer.

If someone knows what I need to do to get a screen shot to send to you at Apolyton I would do that.

And just tried to send an email to my other address, (my wife's actually) and did not have success. Course I dont send a lot of files, usually just messages.

So, I will have to try again later, since I have to leave the house now.

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LONG LIVE THE BARBARIAN KING, and all his unloyal subjects who can so easily be bribed near competitor cities and thus add cheaply to my Army, and live unsupported as NUNs (like in the convent!) Love those little NUNs.

[Ribannah]

Poppawoppa, press alt-printscreen and a screenshot of the active window is placed on your Windows clipboard. You can then access it from eg MS Paint (by ctrl-V = paste) and save it. Note, however, that this is a .bmp picture, which takes up a loooooooot of memory. Change it into another format (.jpg or .gif) before you mail or upload it!

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If you have no feet, don't walk on fire

[poppawoppa]

Latest:
end of 1891 My treasury 5118
cost to rush buy 1752.
Saved this point in a new save file.
Open the new game file.
Rush buy.
Next turn?

A BARBARIAN KING in my city.

Opening the city screen, there he is.
Has a white shield, since I am playing as Celts.
In the side box titled Moving Units it says
Moves 3 (2/3) (3)
Dont know what that is supposed to mean.
Also lists its city, I had renamed from Shanghai, as
BarbarianKing Nice city name, huh?
Then shows its civilization as
Celtic

Then I clicked on the city to get the city screen
and clicked on him to see what it says, like Celtic Musketeer, Celtic Cannon, etc.
It says Celtic River.
Remember in the City Status summary that was what it showed was being built in that city.

Next I closed the screen, and HE was flashing in the city square ready to move.
I had Railroads between cities, so I cautiously moved him using the mouse arrow to outside the city toward another city using the railroads. After 4 railroad squares he stopped responding and shows a "G" in his shield.
I believe the movement information above means
He gets 3 moves, at 2/3 move point per square, whether roaded or railroaded or hills or mountains???
and may treat all squares as needing 2/3 movement point each regardless of the terrain.
That's all I have so far. Will report more as it comes up.

Meanwhile, I am bribing other barbarians, killing their kings for a reward of 150 gold per king.

I'll see how he moves on forest, hills and mountains.

Sometime later I may also disband him where I'm building a wonder to see if half his shield value (that is 1/2 of 880 shields) gets added to the box for building.

I'm having fun.......are you ?

[poppawoppa]

I will try to see if I can send this file (saved game) as an attachment to an email.
Yes, the thought occurred that I would try on even another saved file of the game, to rush build, so I could see what happens.
Also, I want to try to change to
1 another unit
2 a city improvement
3 a Wonder
in order to see what would happen to the shield accumulation in the box. Does it suffer a 50% penalty, where? and does it transfer 100% to a Wonder?

Then, if in fact a Barb King does get built, whether by rush or regular, what does he do? wander around and eventually disappear?

It might even be interesting to vacate a nearby city and see if he would make a demand for gold and threaten to "sack the city mercilessly", he he he

More as the Civilization progresses.


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The man who dies with the most toys...is DEAD.

[debeest]

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!

[Stuff2]

There is one thing you have to try.
Try to kill the celtic barbarian leader as a another civ and see if you get money from it. Just place him on a vulnerable spot and go in the cheat menu and play another civ.

Also, you weren't able to keep building barbarian leader after the first was built?

[East Street Trader]

If you bribe a barb king you get a diplo.

Wonder if your king has a diplo's capabilities? Kinda think not somehow.

If he has a river's capabilities I wonder if you get an extra arrow in any worked square in which you park him? Kinda guess not to that one too, though.


PS Always knew civilisation was only skin deep in the Celts.

[Shaka Naldur]

could you send me the sav file too?
it´s really weird, I´´ve never heard something like that before

[Theben]

Go into the units screen (F2) and see what it's stats are.

[poppawoppa]

Theben, the F2 screen does not show the B.King. I have partisans, engineers, destroyers, etc. But the Barb King does not show up on the list of civ units.

I've now looked at his movement indicator as I move him along from square to square. He goes 4 moves in any terrain (mountains, plains, jungle, clear, road, rails, anything) as the moves progress the indicator on the right side of the map screen shows this:
3 2/3 (3)
2 2/3 (2)
1 2/3 (1)
0 2/3 (0)
this was to a plains square no road, a swamp square, a railroaded forest, and a unimproved forest.

After that, some turns later, I had him near the ocean.
Tried to make him go out into the ocean. And He DID!
Walked out a couple ocean squares to near an island, and I am sure he could have gone on to the island. But I figured to send him across the water to my mainland several squares to the right. Moved him those two squares, ending on an ocean square....
SURPRISE! I get a message:
Civ Rules: Triremes
Your trireme has been lost at sea, A trireme may be lost if it does not end its turn close to land.
And he was gone. King Neptune claimes yet another victim.
So, I reloaded the game from the saved file at the beginning of that turn, and (big sigh of relief) there he was a couple squares out to sea. Moved him back to shore to end that turn.
In answer to someones question, Yes, I am able to continue to build BK's in the city with that unit screen. And as I have tracked the years, my treasury, the shields built in the box, and the cost to rush build another King I found a year when the cost would be only 621 gold. So I built another King, and yes, the option for King building continues in my city aptly named BarbarianKing.

This King was sent (moved) to a Celt city which had just started building the SETI Wonder.
The Shield box had just 12 shields when the King arrived, and when he was inside the city, I disbanded this 2nd king. Checking the city status screen, I found the SETI WOW now had 452 shields total. In other words the barb King was disbanded for a total of 440 shields which were added to the WOW being built.
Since the BK cost 880 shields, that made perfect sense.

Another poster asked if since the BK is referred to as a Celtic River, would his presence on a city square be able to add a trade arrow to that square? No, currently he is on a roaded, irrigated plains square, and there is another roaded, irrigated plains square next to him inside the city area. Checking the city there are only 2 food, 1 shield and 2 trade on each of those squares. (I'm in Democracy government for the extra trade arrow)

Nice idea to send him to the Egyptian city and "allow" him to be "killed" by them. To see if the message of 150 gold being paid comes up. As you say, since the Egyptians and Celts are at peace, I may need to use the cheat menu to assume the role of the Egyptians and actually kill him myself. Since the BK has a white Celtic banner or Shield, the Egyptians may not attack for fear of riling up the Celts. So, I may have to do it myself...also to be able to see if there is a message about the gold ransom being paid.

Now the last few years statistics:
Year Treas Shields RushBuy
1900 3,075 00/880 2,318
1901 3,404 06/880 0,621
1902 3,644 12/880 3,362
1903 3,784 18/880 2,831
1904 missed this one, sorry
1905 3,710 30/880 1,694
1906 1,088 36/880 1,088
1907 darn, missed again
1908 4,319 52/880 3,167
1909 4,424 59/880 2,576
1910 4,295 66/880 1,989

So far it looks like the rush build cost is independent of the Celtic treasury, and appears to decline to some figure in the hundreds, then jump up again to over 3,000. Will continue to track this and maybe we will get an inkling of an idea how it is being calculated.

In his travels, he passes right through any of my cities, over white shield troops, and likewise my troops can run right over the same square as he is on with no effect.

Am still working on what has to be done to get this file attached to email so it can be sent to you who have asked for the copy. Needless to say, even tho this game is no longer a winnable challenge to me, as the Egyptians have only two cities...I want to play this out to the end, like maybe Alpha Centauri, so I can see if the BK can be disbanded for a space module on the space ship. Would he have to be designated the population module, or could he be fuel or habitation supplies? If population, would the population have other BK's (I mean barbarian kids?) he he he

How much are your Barbarians worth? Mine help build Wonders of the World!

Have fun....keep Civin'

[poppawoppa]

Posting of the table of years,treasury,shields and rush cost. I find an error in year 1906.
My treasury was actually 4,193 gold, and the cost to buy was the 1,088.
Just so the facts are correct.

I'm thinking of nicknaming him HeyZues, like the Mexican Jesus.....cause he walks on water! he he he

[jcarkey]

Have you checked to see if you can carry air units on him? His movement sounds like a domain 3 unit.
If you have Netscape then this is how to attach files. 1.Look at the area where you add the addresses of people.
2.There should be three tabs to the left of the aforementioned area.
3.Click on the icon that looks like a paper clip.
4.Click in the white main area.
5.That should bring up a screen that asks the location of the file.
6.Selecet that file and click ok or whatever it says.
7.Add text or a message, address it, and then send it.

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If Al Gore invented the Internet, then I invented the spell check- Dan Quayle

If someone doesn't agree with you, you haven't explained yourself well enough-Luther Ely Smith

She turned me into a newt...well I got better- Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail

[poppawoppa]

Thanks for the information, but I don't have Netscape, I am using Eartlink. Guess I should get up to date...or maybe just ask earthlink how to do this.

News on the BARB KING front.

Your thought about air units (is it a carrier or submarine "type" unit? May have some validity.
I have been going along building BK's for the third time, this time to get a table of rush buy costs turn by turn to see what makes for such funny numbers (see the post above).
In the meantime, my science keeps on making discoveries until I finish researching "Advanced Flight". This causes a box to come up with a message from the Domestic Advisor: Production order in BarbarianKing (name of the city) upgraded from River (apparent unit name) to Bomber.
So, the picture of the King in the unit building box has now changed to that of the 4 motor bomber, and the full 94 shields in the shield box have been transferred to the bomber accumulation.
As I said, I had discovered civ advances while building the king, such as Flight and Radio. Also some on another line, I think it was Guerilla Warfare or Labor Union. None of these advances tickled the production of the "Barb Kings" until the one for Advanced Flight.

Now, as to the BK abilities. He does walk on water, but must end near the shore or he drowns. He can go to a city (seaport) and be put to sleep in preparation for a nice ride on the troop transport. I don't know if it's because he's a KING, so he wouldn't ride on a common ship like a troop transport, but... when the transport leaves port, the KING stays put. I think maybe he is waiting for the QUEEN MARY or some other ocean liner.
Actually with the troop transport one square in the water, I can move the King on to the area of the ship.
Then I moved the ship another square out, and I could move the King on top of that square. Further advances were done until the 4th advance from a water square to the next square where the transport was waiting...... and then I got the dreaded Civ Rules: Trireme message. Cant wander too far out into the ocean or you'll drown.
I did retry and was able to finish the King on an ocean square adjacent to land. He stays out there just fine, thank you.....Maybe it's only knee deep out there so he's just like wading in the ocean.

Otherwise, I did get the King to move near the Egypt city of Edfu and ran out of movement points inside the city radius of Edfu. The next turn I got the message from the Egypt Diplomatic Corps. Your troops have violated the territory of the city of Edfu. According to our peace treaty you must withdraw or face the consequences,

Well, I left him there, and when the AI Egyptian turn came up again, the message said Your troops have violated...etc. And the choices are given: Yes, withdraw troops to nearest city. or No, we renounce this worthless treaty.
Here I chose to withdraw, and got the answer that one offending unit had been relocated to the nearest city.
I looked in the cities nearby, and sure enough there he is again.

I also reloaded the game with BK (HeyZues) near the Egyptian city, then triggered the cheat mode to select the option to be the Egyptians.
First time, the King was 2 squares from the city center and he did NOT show up on the map, nor could I find him when I opened the city screen to look at the map of resources where workers are assigned. No King.
So I reloaded again, and put the King on the square right next to the city. Changed to Egyptians, and now the Celtic BK showed up on the map view and on the open city view of work assignments. The Egyptians had a musketeer in the city. And since no movement was needed, I sent the musketeer toward the Celtic BK to see what would happen, I thought maybe the BK would be killed and the 150 gold bonus paid, or that the BK would be expelled like a diplomat. Not so, instead there comes the Message from the Foreign Minister:
We have signed a peace treaty with the Celts. Our reputation will be damaged.
And then the two choices: Cancel the Action or Break the Treaty. I of course wanted to attack the BK so I chose Break the Treaty.
So then I get another message from the Defense Minister of the Egyptian Republic: Senate chooses to allow the action under the guise of a U.N. "peacekeeping" mission.
Musketeer attacks, King (0 defense remember) dies.
Message: Celts and Egyptians cancel peace treaty.
Sure enough I go to the Foreign Minister screen and the status with the Celts is now Enraged, War.
I got no money for killing the Celt King.
There was no promotion of the Musketeer to Veteran.

And one other little tidbit for the table of rush buy:
Year,Treasury,Shields,RushCost
1910**4,295***66/880***1,989
1911**4,590***73/880***1,409
1912**4,549***80/880*****832
1913**4,824***87/880*****261
1914 was when Advanced Flight was discovered and put an end to the building of BK's.
Just think of it, at its lowest point you could have bought 793 shields to complete the King at a cost of only 261 gold. Even converting to 440 shields for use in building a WOW would constitute a Major bargain.

Well, that is about all.

I'll continue to ask around for help so I can attach this kind of file to my Earthlink email, or possibly to my wife's Juno email. When I have that solved, I will send the file, or maybe a couple of the saves to those who have asked about it.

I just had a ton of fun doing this, as I'm sure each one of you would have had. Maybe when you get the file you will experiment and learn some more. Possibly even what it takes to trigger this being available. I can't see how it would be useful in MP or actually in SP either, except for buying 440 WOW shields to move to where you are building one of the Wonders. And of course, it would still be considered a cheat, or at the very least a programming glitch which should NOT BE USED IN ANY OFFICIAL GAMES.

Let me hear if you have any other ideas to be tried until I can get email with attachments to you.

Good Civin'

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The man who dies with the most toys...is DEAD.

[Albert B]

In any email program, there should be an option to "attach a file" or "insert a file" . If you can find this option, the rest is easy. Once you select the option, it will prompt for a file name to attach and should give you an option to browse for the file. Choose to browse and just go to your civ 2 folder and choose the .sav file that you created. I think the default folder is something like:

C:\Program Files\Microprose\Civilization 2\

but can vary depending on the options you chose at install and the version of civ you have.

I hope this helps because I would really like to be able to look at the save-file in a hex-editor to investigate both the building city and the unit.

[Lefty Scaevola]

The barbarians of Penzance:

"Oh, it a fine thing
to build a barbarian King"

[Thunderfall]

On my computer the barbarian king (Test Unit 1) only requires 40 shields to build, instead of 880 shields you mentioned...



btw, if anyone wants to download poppawoppa's barb king saved game, you can download it on this page.

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Thunderfall
Civilization Fanatics' Center
http://www.civfanatics.com
[This message has been edited by Thunderfall (edited February 16, 2001).]

[Ribannah]

Yes, on my 'puter as well. It's in the Settlers slot, and can perform as a Settlers unit (check the order command!).


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If you have no feet, don't walk on fire

[Richard Bruns]

I downloaded the savegane; here is the report:

My "Test Unit 1" has one movement point, cannot walk on water, and has normal movement on all raods, railroads, and terrain. It can board transports normally. It has settler functions, and costs 40 shields. It cannot attack; I get the "non-combat unit" message. The attributes listed for "Test Unit 1" in the unit editor were the same as they are normally, and the unit is acting exactly the way the editor shows it should.

The savegame did something funny to my city screen. The entire thing was shrunk down to about a fourth of its normal size, but all of the buttons and controls still worked perfectly well. Only this save file was affected.

I would assume that this barb king oddity came from a corrupted file, and is not reproducible. The fact that the game was running without the CD was probably responsible.
[This message has been edited by Richard Bruns (edited February 18, 2001).]

[arii]

can you attack the barb king to get some gold?
weird!

[poppawoppa]

I kind of thought there might be a file problem somehow because on reloading that save, I did get a computer error report and offered the chance to ignore or cancel the warning, I cancelled, and the game just went ahead as tho nothing had happened.
I since saved several other versions, later years of this same game (so the same corrput file problem, i suppose) but one file shows the shield box filled with 880 shields. What can I say, I see what I see, and if it doesn't transfer then as you say there has to be a file corruption problem. Sorry. My game does not give any gold for killing the King, my own civ can't kill it, and AI civs kill the King but trigger a civ war with the Celtic civ which is the home civ for the white shield King.

Keep on civin'



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The man who dies with the most toys...is DEAD.