Barbarians and when they stay

[Stefan Härtel]

For about an hour now, I've typed, copy/pasted and saved/loaded myself crazy trying to keep some damn barbarian units in my scenario. I don't expect any solutions to this problem, but I thought I'd just share a chronology of my growing insanity with you:

Mid-September 2002: Added Barbarian villages to the scenario.
End-September/Mid-October 2002: Playtesters reported to me, after I asked them for several times, they saw no Barbarian villages.
Mid-October 2002: I thought I fixed the problem.
Mid-October 2002: Playtester still didn't see any Barbarian villages.
Begin-November 2002: Went back to the problem. Couldn't fix it, believed I used the wrong rules file, and deleted the correct one by 'oversaving' it.
Added barbarian whales to scenario.
Early Nov. 2. 2002: Received latest rules file from playtester.
Nov. 2. 2002 ca. 21.10: Got back to the problem. Thought it'd be a short while till I fixed the problem. Thought it'd be done before CD ('Queen') would end.

Problem wasn't fixed. Consulted SL design tips and William Keenan's Barbarian paper.

Problem still wasn't fixed. 'Queen' was over.
Started playing 'A Night At The Opera', believing problem would be fixed no later than end of The Prophet's Song.

Heureka! Got an idea! Changed barbarian units slots from Extra-7 and Extra-8 to Musketeer and Partisan slots, because I know of painful experience, that these units never disappear!

The Prophet's Song over. Still nothing.

Copied units stats from scenarios with immobile barbarian units that I know haven't disappeared. Used Mike Daumen's "The Great Game" and my own "Artaxerxes".

Nothing.

'A Night At The Opera' over.
Started playing 'Hot Space'.
At mid-Staying Power I nearly tossed my keyboard out of the window.

A short summary of the problem:

Immobile barbarian units will stay when loaded from savegame. Immobile barbarians will not stay when loaded from scn. Well, that's not true, sometimes they stay for one or two turns, but then disappear. From all slots tested. That is, from X-7, X-8, Musketeer, Partisan, Battleship and AEGIS. They will all disappear, although I got good ol' Blackclove's approval that they will stay.

It is now 22:28 CET. At the moment, Las Palabras De Amor is playing (I skipped Staying Power, Dancer and Body Language, because I can't stand these songs, and I can't forgive them that they used Body Language as B-Side for The Show Must Go On later on! )

[Kull]

Ah Barbarians - My Favorite!!!

Coincidentally, my current effort uses an ungodly number of immobile barbarians, it starts as a scenario, and they NEVER die. If yours are disappearing, this may be your problem:

1) You don't have any Barbarian Cities on the map, AND

2) You are using a CHANGETERRAIN event.

The combination of those two is the equivalent of "KillCivilization" for Barbs.

[Stefan Härtel]

1) Positive

2) Positive

So you're suggesting I should put a Barbarian city on the map?

I'm going slightly mad...

[techumseh]

Very interesting. And in Test of Time, there's a "barbarian unit does not expire" flag. Just in case you were wondering....

[Mercator]

Put the immobile ones in fortresses. Does that work?
Or, if they're immobile anyway, do you really need them to be Barbarians?

Originally posted by Stefan Härtel
It is now 22:28 CET. At the moment, Las Palabras De Amor is playing (I skipped Staying Power, Dancer and Body Language, because I can't stand these songs, and I can't forgive them that they used Body Language as B-Side for The Show Must Go On later on! )

Body Language I can understand... But Dancer and Staying Power???

[Kull]

Originally posted by Stefan Härtel
1) Positive

2) Positive

So you're suggesting I should put a Barbarian city on the map?

I'm going slightly mad...

Believe me, I know how you feel. This problem drove me COMPLETELY INSANE during the building of SoG!

If you plan on using Barbarian Units and ChangeTerrain events, you MUST place a Barb city someplace on the map. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. (unless, that is, you convert your scenario to ToT)

[Stefan Härtel]

Very interesting. And in Test of Time, there's a "barbarian unit does not expire" flag. Just in case you were
wondering....

I never got into ToT

Put the immobile ones in fortresses. Does that work?
Or, if they're immobile anyway, do you really need them to be Barbarians?

The problem with fortresses in this scenario is, that I want them to be in one place of the map only. Apart from that, some of these barbarian units are invisible, and having a fortress there would spoil the surprise.
As for the second suggestion, that is something well worth thinking about. In the end, that's perhaps the only solution, as I have no idea where I should place that Barbarian city (Bikini Atoll? Nauru? Rarotonga?)...

Body Language I can understand... But Dancer and Staying Power???

Well, Dancer is allright if I'm in the mood for it, but Staying Power... it was that "Hot&Spacey Horn" solo that convinced me of skipping it once and for all... I wish they'd kept that Non-Synthesizer policy at least till The Works... (BTW, can you believe, my brother has got an American Greatest Hits version that has Body Language instead of Bohemian Rhapsody!!!!)

Believe me, I know how you feel. This problem drove me COMPLETELY INSANE during the building of SoG!

If you plan on using Barbarian Units and ChangeTerrain events, you MUST place a Barb city someplace on the map.
No ifs, ands, or buts about it. (unless, that is, you convert your scenario to ToT)

Same as above. I'd love to place a Barbarian city, but I have none to place!
And I can't exclude the changeterrain thing, because that's one of the things that actually carries the scenario. But it's the same with the Barbarians!
Hmm... well, I could simply exclude the Native Americans... they play absolutely no role in this scenario at all and were included merely for polit... excuse me, historical correctness...

[yaroslav]

Stefan, I'm thinking on this problem: With Hex-editing, you can put a city on a ocean square, so there is plenty of room...

[Stefan Härtel]

It's even easier than that. I did this once in my [ad]Alexander Scenario[/ad], and tested it throughoutly. You can build a city on any terrain square, then go to the rules file, change the terraforming result to "ocean", and let an engineer do terraforming in the city. The greatest part of that is, the only type of unit that can take cities on ocean squares is the helicopter-type unit.
I will consider that.

[Kull]

Originally posted by Stefan Härtel

The problem with fortresses in this scenario is, that I want them to be in one place of the map only. Apart from that, some of these barbarian units are invisible, and having a fortress there would spoil the surprise.

It doesn't matter. Changeterrain is so powerful it sweeps ALL barbarians from the map. Fortresses offer no protection.

As for the second suggestion, that is something well worth thinking about. In the end, that's perhaps the only solution, as I have no idea where I should place that Barbarian city (Bikini Atoll? Nauru? Rarotonga?)...

In SoG I created an isolated Barb City at the top of the Caspian Sea, so it has no effect on the game. I'd recommend doing something similar - maybe place one in Antarctica or on a nonexistant island at the bottom of the map (surround it with impassable Barb units so no one can reach it). In fact, perhaps you could set this city to produce some kind of Pirate ship - that way it's not completely useless.

[Hendrik the Great]

As has been suggested before, place a Barbarian city somewhere on the map and you'll be perfectly safe. :-)

I never had the problem because all of my scenarios use several barb cities so I became never aware of it.

What is your scenario about? You talked about whales...I used whales as barb units in my Viking scenario.

[Stefan Härtel]

Allright, I placed a barbarian city in the northeast corner of the map. To make entirely sure that it has no impact, it produces a non-mobile unit and is surrounded by impassable units with the 'bomber' flag.

I never had the problem because all of my scenarios use several barb cities so I became never aware of it.

The same with me

What is your scenario about? You talked about whales...I used whales as barb units in my Viking scenario.

It is about the colonization of the south seas by the Polynesians, Melanesians and Micronesians. There is a thread somewhere in this forum with a couple of screenshots. But it'll not be long till I can release it, I hope...
(I attached a randomly chosen screenshot here...)

[klesh]

Will it be a size 0 invisible city?

-FMK.

[yaroslav]

It's invisible, but the city still cumulates food. When it cumulates enough food and reach pop 1, it becomes visible...

[Hendrik the Great]

Polynesia? Cool, I think you mentioned somthing about that to me a long time ago. Can't wait to see it!

[klesh]

Originally posted by yaroslav
It's invisible, but the city still cumulates food. When it cumulates enough food and reach pop 1, it becomes visible...

Settlers/Engineers eating the surplus? Certainly not foolproof if they are killed off or disbanded.

-FMK.

[Henrik]

Originally posted by Field Marshal Klesh


Settlers/Engineers eating the surplus? Certainly not foolproof if they are killed off or disbanded.

-FMK.

What about food routes?

[techumseh]

It's simpler than you think. Just balance consumption with a terrain which has just the right amount of food. A 0 size city gathers food from only 1 square, the one it's on. If the food production of the square it's on is 1, then the city is static - no settlers needed. You might want to look at Prince of Darkness for an example. There are 20-odd Stygian 0 size cities which don't grow. It's not perfect, however - there is AI cheating and I have seen cities grow to 1 or 2, but it takes a long time and is rare.

[William Keenan]

One footnote on barbarians vanishing: any barbarian unit with a domain of 2 (ocean) and a hold/carry > 0 disappears the turn after it is no longer carring any units.

[Panda]

I'd agree that food routes would be the best solution for your food surplus. Having the city on an ocean square to start with would be even better because then it can't be captured by ground units.

You still have the potential that the city could be bribed. Do you want Barb units bribable or no? If not, suggest you give Barbs the Democracy government.

Oo, oo: how about using an idea of Kobi's with an invisible Barb city in the middle of the ocean that produces pirate units. You could perhaps have this (and other cities) making Taifun or other "storm" units (at a slow rate).

[Stefan Härtel]

About the barbarian city: Though it's visible and land-based, no unit will see it, much less be able to take it, because it is surrounded by invisible impassables with the "bomber" flag (i.e. no unit can attack it except fighters, which don't appear in this scenario). Apart from that, it's a sizw 1 city that produces 1 food surplus.

One footnote on barbarians vanishing: any barbarian unit with a domain of 2 (ocean) and a hold/carry > 0
disappears the turn after it is no longer carring any units.

Well, barbarian naval units in this scenario are just whales, they don't carry anything... but that is a good hint.

You still have the potential that the city could be bribed. Do you want Barb units bribable or no? If not, suggest
you give Barbs the Democracy government.

Thanks for the reminder. I'll do that right away!

Oo, oo: how about using an idea of Kobi's with an invisible Barb city in the middle of the ocean that produces pirate
units. You could perhaps have this (and other cities) making Taifun or other "storm" units (at a slow rate).

That is a good idea, but the con is, that an enemy ship can accidentally bump into the city. I will think about it.