Changing type of barbarian units?

steve.wray · October 22, 2001, 18:25

(oops I posted this to the other group accidentally, I guess it belongs here. Don't flame me its warm enough already for this time of year!)

Has anyone got any pointers on how to change the type of unit that barbarians turn up with?

I note that the unit type changes thru the game; can this be hooked into?

My idea is that in the modern age, barbarians are (ahem) 'terrorists'

barbarian infectors, spies, corporate branches (?) and worst of all eco rangers appearing within the borders of ones civilisation would be quite the challenge!

The Big Mc · October 23, 2001, 08:32

hello

Nice timing

I have a question is this for a scenario or the main game, if it is for a scenario you may want to look at the script file for The Magnificent Samurai. they have a small amount of slic coding which means that a group of barbarians appear when you move.

you can select what kind of barbarians you want and the chances of them appearing.

I hope this is helpful for you.

THE BIG Mc

steve.wray · October 23, 2001, 18:10

hey cool! I'll look at that!

Maybe a scenario, maybe a game.
I just think the barbarians should be a threat in any age;
they just have to change their manner of operation,
just like in real life!

player1 · October 24, 2001, 02:06

Yes, it must be done through SLIC.

Normally COMP. select barbarians depending of their Attack Bonus (look in risks.txt), but special units don't have one (Attack 0).

The Big Mc · October 25, 2001, 05:22

I had a Look at the slic again but could not find anything of use.

At the moment I am making a future scenario after 2300 I have built up a set of new units and had an idea. I made a unit which could carry land units around the place ( like the cargo helicopter in ctp2)
the idea I had was at random intervals the enemy could get reinforcement using this capsule.

It may improve the AI aggressiveness if the capsule land near one of my cites I think you may be able to use this for the barbarians
if you use the monsters of the magnificent samurai scenario you may be able to have a barbarian attack like a space raid with the capsule landing near one of your cites and the monsters attacking it.

If you like this idea let me know I will let the capsule be available to you for download.

any way I will look at the slic agin and again until I can get my idea working .

will you put the slic on line when you have finished I may be able to use it on my scenario

The Big Mc:

steve.wray · October 25, 2001, 05:26

Thanks for the offer!
Actually, I'm really not much of a programmer, and the thought that I'd have to get into the scripting puts me off... I'd hoped it might have been a simple parameter somewhere

I guess what I'm hoping now is to be able to inspire someone who has the appropriate skills!

The Big Mc · October 25, 2001, 05:49

I will have a go. it will be a good thing to put in my scenario so i will possibly post it to you. actually i am a bit scared of slic too.

Have you had a look at my question yet.

The Big Mc · October 26, 2001, 06:03

I had a look at the magnificent samurai scenario it looks so easy all I have to do is take out the by movement bit and replace it with the start of the turn bit.:d

Then I Decided To be clever and have a hippy van come up after a bit and steel your city or make all the citizens really up set.

what I want to now now is how do you get a aircraft carrier full of planes to appear, or put some real hippy in the car,(using the Indians sprites from ctp 1)

I will be away next week so I will try to get to a computer no promises)

the Big Mc

steve.wray · October 26, 2001, 06:50

This sounds great!

Do you think that its possible to set it up so that the type and number of units is easily configured? ie: in a config file rather than in a slic script?

The other thing I wonder is if the AI can do anything useful with barbarian 'special' units!

The Big Mc · November 5, 2001, 09:05

I am chasing all the bugs out of the script at this moment.the number of units that will be done by a random Command so it will be any number the computer likes.and what they are are also random you pick 4 units and the probability you like.

the number of units that will be done by a random Command so it will be any number the computer likes.and what they are are also random you pick 4 units and the probability you like.

as for the units these are easy to change even in slic I will give you a help file so it won't be so hard

What I want to know from you is what four units were you thinking about,

The Big Mc

steve.wray · November 5, 2001, 17:16

I was thinking infector, corporate branch, lawyer, ecoterrorist maybe cruise missile... clerics and televangelists. Spy could be good to incite rebellion.

Thats more than 4 but just chew it over.

Couple of thoughts spring to mind;
Some special attacks make no sense for the barbarians (eg spies stealing tech, corporate branch stealing productivity).

I tried editing a barbarian infector into the game but it just stayed where it was, so I gave the barbarians some cash, and it just walked around.

These attacks do cost money and the barbarians typically have none. Maybe they can be scripted so they can do the attack with no money or maybe script the barbarians some cash?

The Big Mc · November 6, 2001, 05:57

A bit a go I did some research into making new orders (this was only a Small success)

I managed to find a way to delete, add and modify (to a limit)
Any special attack I can remember something about the cost of an attack some wear.

I will send you the terror glider the nexts chance I have on going online this is a unit a bodged together from a spy plane.

It has the basic controls of slaver bio infect and a few others.

The other type of unit I developed was the siren a kind of hi tech spy.

When you did your experiment did the barbarian unit have a city?
For some of these special events a unit needs a city to make it happen.

I Think I have already got past your so called problem what we have to do is set it up so that the unit does not use the barbarian nation flag but a national flag of its own and then change the nation to read terrorist or (dark green peace) or something like that.

I will have a look to see if they work.
Why a cleric when you have a televangelists?

Me Big Mc

steve.wray · November 6, 2001, 07:06

No, in my experiment there was no barbarian city.
I hope this isn't a real problem! They usually don't have one...

> Why a cleric when you have a televangelists?

Depends on whats available to other civs; it would seem daft to have the terrorists showing up with televangelists when no actual civs have them.

The Big Mc · November 6, 2001, 10:46

I thought this was going to put it on a scenario not the full game if your trying to put it in the game that's a few more lines of code and I hate doing slic.

It's taken my a week to get this far

any way it is easy to do but i would need a start advance to start this up like the ecotopian advance or something.

any way ill try to set up two versions for you.

the big mc

Ps am i in a time warp or is it 2000 were you come from because its 2001 over here.

The Big Mc · November 6, 2001, 10:53

I thought this was going to put it on a scenario not the full game if your trying to put it in the game that's a few more lines of code and I hate doing slic.

It's taken my a week to get this far

any way it is easy to do but i would need a start advance to start this up like the ecotopian advance or something.

any way ill try to set up two versions for you.

the big mc

Ps am i in a time warp or is it 2000 were you come from because its 2001 over here.

The Big Mc · November 7, 2001, 08:22

sorry double post just can't be bothered to waste time deleting it.

I had a look and your problem is just getting bigger I just can't seam to get any enemy to attack with anything good

Something has just hit me (probably a book)

when you tried the attack on what setting did you have the AI on easy or hard.

I always mod in easy what if to get the special attacks working you need rock hard on.

The idea for the capsules is coming on I recon I could have it up and running shortly I finish this one.

problem is that I can't seam to get pas one error diplomacy 40 syntax error.

the big mc :

player1 · November 7, 2001, 09:43

Some hints for you guys:
in order to make barabrian unse those special abilities, you need to cheage values in strategies.txt (it is in ctp2_data\default\aidata folder)
there is an entry for barabarian strategy. There are some goals which are set to 0. You should chage goals like soothsay, sue, convert, enslave, etc... to values in defeult strategies. That way barabarians specail units would use their abilities

Note: This doesn't work for franchisnig (I don't know why)
also in these following abilities goals are not suppeorted:
-Plaque city (infector), Advertise (Corp. Branch), Incite Uprising (Abolionist)

Other abilities will do fine.

Also there is a thread in last few weeks, where I added those missing abilities for AI (franchising still doesn't work for AI)
Don't remember the name of thread.

steve.wray · November 7, 2001, 16:56

I'll have to try changing those values!
Thanks for the pointter!

Do the barbarians still need cash to launch those attacks?

As for it not working on franchising;
well, that is all about draining productivity, right?
If the barbarians don't have a city, wheres it gonna go?
Maybe thats why...

On the other claw,
Did you get barbarian slavers to do anything?
If so, I wonder where the population went!

As for the difficulty level, I'm at 'hard'

It sounds as if we are getting close!

player1 · November 7, 2001, 21:04

I didn't tried all of those, but they surely need cash.
About slaver, I don't know, I haven't experimented that much.

Franchising still puzzles me, since it also doesn't work for other AIs (not only barbarian).

The Big Mc · November 8, 2001, 06:19

thank you player one it's a same you are stopping moding.

I got past the diplomacy problem I think it's a problem with the code I'll mod it a bit and then get it working right.

the next problem

money

how do modern terrorists get it. Advances, I will put in a bit of code so that a spy will come along every so often steel an advance and then sell it to the AI players for lots of gold,

steel stuff

in my mod slaving is back because it is a future mod you steel robots and parts for robots.

I will launch this code after I finish tinkering with this mod.

also whey are all the dates and clocks on this site off.

the big mc

Immortal Wombat · November 8, 2001, 07:25

Quote:

Originally posted by The Big Mc
how do modern terrorists get it.

I vote a mysterious anonymous backer...

Code:

AddGold(0, 5000);

Oh, and the dates and times are probably set up incorrectly in your control-panel options. Click on the "control panel" link up the top, and there should be some things you can change under "options".

The Big Mc · November 8, 2001, 08:47

nice one did not think of that .

I had this idea so that as well as the barbarians getting more evil you will also get the AI being so much more fun.

however I may add that line just to realy set the barbarians up on there long road to world anarchy

the big mc

The Big Mc · November 8, 2001, 09:25

does any one no how to pull up a random city so I can put the barbarians ne'er there

this is technically my first go at slic and I would appreciate some one helping me with this difficulty.

I was going to put them at a random location but to get it to work right I would need a month of Sundays.

Also it has come to my mind that we have a big problem about to make a stink.

underwater cities would be all but impervious to attack
so I am coming up with a new unit (yeah its another magic unit which can fly around the world 50 times and stay as a sub)

the terror sub (Patient pending) I will have to make it available and I would like ideas on what to it's attacks could be.

THE BIG MC

The Big Mc · November 12, 2001, 06:46

hello speak to me.

I finished it, I finished the mod.

all I want to know is the random values what percentage of attack do you want one out of a hundred turns or what.

also I had a problem getting the bandits to only attack me.

the mod works good I have also just finished half a mod on bank robbery for the bandits its good.

THE BIG MC

Immortal Wombat · November 12, 2001, 11:45

Cool

I think one attack every 50 turns should be ok, but only starting in the industrial/modern age.

Quote:

does any one no how to pull up a random city so I can put the barbarians ne'er there

Erm.. Get a random player:

Code:

int_t   NumPlayers;
int_t   randnum;
NumPlayer = preference("NumPlayers");
randnum = random(NumPlayers);

Then pick a random city:

Code:

int_t   i;
int_t   randcity;
city_t  tmpCity;
GetCityByIndex(randnum, random(PlayerCityCount(randnum)), tmpCity);

Sorry about all the nested functions

Btw, shouldn't underwater cities be impervious? It would be quite hard to get terrorism underwater, and then they'd have to get in. I imagine underwater cities would be quite heavily guarded.

steve.wray · November 12, 2001, 16:01

I'd say around the same chances as a normal barbarian attack?
And yes, starting in the industrial age.

Also, I think that it should preferentially target the top ranking civs. Not exclusively, just a bit more biased against them.

And, yeah, underwater cities could do with being impervious to them! For starters, the terrorist units would *have* to 'randomly arrive' on a piece of underwater road tubing

or else they would drown!

The bank robbery mod sounds interesting!

The Big Mc · November 13, 2001, 06:38

I sorted most the problems out I set it up so its a 1 in 100 chance of being attack per city per tern opening the chance up for multiple attack and possible some big attacks.

also I want to limit the attacks to the players civ.

Come on the AI needs all the help it can get after the industrial age.

and the underwater city aren't so safe any more. there is a shadow coming.

my brand new mod which is at about 20% at the moment is should allow terrorists to hold city for ransom.

and this mod is a 80% I got it working all the left to add is is a bit of code which will protect the AI and a different bit to enable the thing for the modern age.

I will mail steve.wray and the wombat the beta relish which is 80% so you can see how it will work to get an idea of the random values.

Bank raid works good again this is at 90% because again it does not protect the AI and it takes the same amount of gold each time.

THE BIG MC

The Big Mc · November 13, 2001, 07:05

lets have an experiment how many people who will download the beta version and then get back to me.
hers the first one tearor mod

The Big Mc · November 13, 2001, 07:06

and heres banck rob
just open them in the normal way

THE BIG MC

The Big Mc · November 15, 2001, 07:11

hello again I am taking to my self.

Shadow mod is coming on last night I was so close to getting it working but the pay and don't pay buts are so hard to click on for some strange reason.

I fell I did not explain shadow mod so good well her goes.

you get a message saying that terrorists are going to kill a random city. (including underwater ones)You then get the option of paying the ransom or saying no. if you pick yes you lose some money and that's it. (or is it) If you click no then the terrorist may or may not kill one of your cites (at random).You then get the chance of hunting the terrorists down for a small amount of public works. if you find them you get a small happy bones if you fail you lose them and your public works cash.

I thought about adding the last bit about hunting them down in bank raid If there isdemand I may just put it in.

The BIG MC

oh and terror mod has been downloaded 5 times and bank mod about 4 so go on tell me what they are like.