Using barbarians to get AI to use artillery

Using Barbarians to get the AI to actually aggressively use Artillery
*Edit, original post below, this is modified post with latest info.

Using this method will make the AI actually use Artillery pieces in offensive attacks (against ships, against other enemy units, and against cities). It's an amazing sight, and my observations on an epic map show all AI's using all their artillery pieces in this fashion. There may be some limitations that have not been explored yet, but so far, the method works.

*** Instead of the normal, barbarian 1 and deadlier barbarian 2... you make advanced barbarians (or even basic if you wish, for more artillery pieces) to be capturable artillery pieces.

This has been done in release of CoMM3, if you wish to see it in action.

Observations:

* Barbarian AI does not move it's artillery pieces around, they always stay in place (from what I've seen); but once captured by AI Civilizations, they will eventually stick a defender on the artillery piece when at war, and go crazy with it, attacking ships, units in the open, and cities.

* It's up to you if you want basic barbs to move around or be immobile. If they move around, there won't be as many advanced barbs (artillery) that becomes available. I recommend they are immobile and given strong stats, ZoC, Def Bombard.

* Speeds up game (if basic barbs are stronger immobile units) because AI expends it's high number of units on fighting the barbs.

* Reports that enslaved artillery units also behave the same way. Scenarios with pre-placed barb artillery that can be captured seems to have the same effect, although the results from my very limited testing were not as dramatic as on the epic map.

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The big unknown is WHY? When AI captures these barbarian artillery pieces, it uses them in an offensive, aggressive, and downright scary fashion. They constantly bombard everything, from cities, to enemy ships, to enemies in the open. They use them all, and as long as these barbarian artillery pieces are available to all civ's, they only disappear if a civ is destroyed (or if disbanded). This is probably how artillery is supposed to work, but a bug in the game has them broken.

This is a work-around to get AI using artillery how it is supposed to. NOTE: This does not make AI use buildable/auto-produced artillery any better AFAIK.

Also, it is Unknown if AI will continue to use these barbarian artillery pieces if they are upgraded. ?? Need more testing.



** I've seen massive artillery clashes (12+ pieces) from 2 opposing stacks, steady use of artillery to bombard ships, artillery and defenders sieging city to next city, to next city, use of this artillery to attack enemies in and outside borders. All the while, the map is full of cities, no open areas anymore.

** Watching in debug mode, I've seen hundreds of active AI artillery pieces all over the map (that were captured from barbs) at work all the way into the late game.

This has completely redefined CoMM3, because now there is an ancient race for artillery; and it looks to have completely altered the AI's ability to fight effectively with artillery, making it MUCH more deadly (when you have 8 catapults, 8 defenders, and a group of offensive units at your doorstep; you know there is trouble!).

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tom2050 Original Post said:

Just a thought I had on a different unique way to use barbarians in scearnios or epic mods.

Instead of the normal, barbarian 1 and deadlier barbarian 2... you could make barb camps more like peaceful tribes as well, which contain valuable resources, in which the player / AI can eventually collect.

I am considering doing this in CoMM3.

Say for instance, you have the basic barbarian set as an immobile defensive unit. This way it can't go anywhere, it just sits there (forever).

Then you have the advanced barbarian set to be anything valuable to player/AI. It could be many things, in which these come to mind:
1) A flag unit that player/AI can capture and cash in.
2) A capturable unit that player/AI can upgrade to usable units.

Now obviously for advanced barbs, if made to be such a unit, would have to be 'movable' so player can get them back to upgrade. I believe making them artillery works so Barbarian AI won't move them into harms way (has been semi tested). Plus other Civ AI will bring artillery pieces back to cities to upgrade them (works for sure).

Basic barb could be made strong enough so players would have a tough time taking them out. And players may want to wait until advanced barbs show up to take advantage of the loot.

It would be interesting to have a ancient era 'resource race' to try to obtain as many of these advanced barb resources as possible. Would introduce a little bit different gameplay than is normally. Just a thought, haven't tested it all out yet, but we know AI goes after barbs like crazy, so if anything, would force human player to really get out there as to not fall behind in these special resources.

Click to expand...

Good idea- as long as those advanced resources use my own gfx

Yes good idea especially the artillery trick to make the AI drag the things back to their cities instead of just leaving them there and sitting on them as they are oft to do with flag units.

AI might have a problem with Basic Barbarian as it'll throw units after units after them, wasting a whole bunch of units to kill an unkillable foe.

Well that would keep them occupied and cut down on the unit glut as the game goes on .. joking, but only half.

Potential AI problem aside, I think it's an ingenious use of the barbarian system. Definitely worth a shot.

It reminds me of Age of Wonders, where the Mills and other important buildings were guarded by neutral groups of soldiers

I like it. I'll have to check this out.

Perhaps the basic barb doesn't need to be made immobile, perhaps just setting it to defense strategy would work. Not sure how barbs act with only defense on. Conquests barbs (warrior/horse) are both offense strategy units.

Also, since non-expansionist civ's will often get barbs popping out of goody-huts, would have to check to see if ZoC works on a barb, so they can still get an occasional hit (if defense only, or immobile).

Might test the whole thing out tomorrow and I'll leave a post with the results.

Sounds interesting. I'm definitely interested in seeing if this works out as hoped, if so it could certainly be a good addition to scenarios. Or even just as a modification to the epic game.

Somebody here ever captured a barb ?
I don`t.

*Barbs act the same if set only to defensive strategy. They attack anyways.
*Immobile, ZoC, and Def Bombard works on barbs (which is what I have basic barbs set to in this test). -Raging

It is somewhat interesting. Although you do not have to worry too much at all about your settlers getting to where they are going; if you don't clear barbs out, alot of them build up all over the place. And you still need to take them out so you can use the land if they are within your city borders.

Giving them ZoC means that you can't simply walk by without always taking damage (if set high enough). You could define something like this as: peaceful villiages that if disturbed, still mind their own business, but will skirmish (ZoC) if one of your units comes close.

It does get rid of the excess AI unit clutter for some time if made tough enough.

Of course, I forgot if Barbarians are actually capturable or not. I remember someone saying they were... but I haven't been able to get it to work.

EDIT: Crosspost General... that's what I'm having trouble with. Perhaps someone can enlighten us.

Nevermind, you can capture Barbarians; I had it set to 'Explore' and took the king ability off. All that really matters is that you must be able to build it to capture it, so setting it as 'artillery' would work fine.

In this case, I suppose you can make the barbarian available for everyone to build, require no tech or resources, but just need to have it upgrade to something everyone can already build (like a warrior e.g.), so it no one can actually ever build it.

If you do something like this, then you can upgrade the 'captured barb' into the most current unit of the upgrade line.

In Heritic Cata's My Mod you have missionaries that capture any unit (Barbarians too) and convert to missionaries. Perhaps a type of slaver (ala CCM) might do the job.

You do come up with good ideas and do good graphics. I have been playing around quite a bit with barbarians as well.

The question I have is what happens when you pop three of the extremely hard to kill Barbarian 1 units from a goody hut? Even if immobile, that would appear to pose some problems. Also, as barbarian units accumulate over time, those villages are going to get more and more difficult to deal with. Adding a Zone of Control to the Barbarian one unit will force you to take out the villages, along with making it that much more difficult.

Presently, the AI in my games is having enough trouble with Barbarian Swordsman and Barbarian Cossacks. I am not sure about something like a super-Hittite 3-Man Chariot and a Trebuchet or Hwach'a. Might go with the Hwach'a as I have never seen that unit. Should be interesting to test though.

Maybe not extremely hard to kill, but an equivalent of a pikeman or something is probably good enough (they are conscript at least, so it's only 2 hp blocks). Of course, to stop them from wantonly pillaging, putting them as immobile should probably be considered.

Hmm, I was thinking of making them a bit tougher if immobile, like a basic 4 to 6 hitpoint boost. I like tough barbarians, as that does tend to cause problems for the AI.

Works perfect like a charm. I decided to make the special barb resource be able to upgrade to an unbuildable unit.

Here's what I did.
Basic Barb - an immobile barb with ZoC and defensive bombard.
Advanced Barb - Hidden Nationality up to you. Made an artillery unit (1 bombard, 1 range, 0 RoF) with artillery AI strategy. 0 Attack 0 Defense. Available to everyone (so they can capture). Upgrade should be checked. It should upgrade to a unit that is always available to everyone. I made it upgrade to Scout.
Barb Boat - kept them as regular ships.

Scout - Made scouts available only to non-expansionist civs. These guys needed in my situation; they are made to be crappy versions of advanced scouts. Made these guys upgrade to Advanced Scouts. Upgrade button NOT checked.
Advanced Scouts - Available only to expansionist civs. These guys upgrade to the 'special civilization units' which are king units (under unit abilities, not AI strategy). Upgrade button NOT checked.

Special Civ Units - these are the units that your civ can upgrade the Advanced Barb captured unit into. These are king units (under unit abilities). This way they can't be built, and are special units available only if you capture the barb units. This unit can upgrade to as many civ-specific special king units as you wish (31 of them if you want a different one for each civ). I made 10 of them, so each special civ unit for each civ just upgrades to the next special civ unit (upgrade button checked).

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So basically it goes, You capture Advanced Barbarian resource unit and get it back to town to upgrade. Note: the Scout/Adv Scout don't have upgrade button checked to make it so they cannot upgrade to the special civ unit.

Advanced Barb -> Scout -> Advanced Scout -> Special Civ Unit (king)

I used scouts, but if you have another unit, such as Warrior e.g. make it that way:
Advanced Barb -> Warrior -> Special Civ Unit (king)

or if you don't want a special civ unit, but just to a regular unit, easy to do:
Advanced Barb -> Warrior -> Spearman -> etc -> etc... and the Adv Barb unit will upgrade to whatever the latest unit is in the line.

It's actually enjoyable! trying to get the damn things before the AI does to get a power boost! Especially if it is a special unit!

Just as a note, the only issue I have found is that the AI tends to actually use artillery pieces early in the game, before the map is filled with cities. When the map has no open space, AI keeps arty in it's cities (which it will likely upgrade), or brings it back very often. When map is still open, AI seems to more often bring artillery around with it's troops, or may fortify it somewhere in the open.

AFAIK, no other good way to make capturable units, since giving them explore option means they will use them like scouts in early game. Can't make them defense or offense because their values must be 1 or higher and they will be destroyed. Possible to make them workers (??), because then AI will run them back to town, but unknown if they will upgrade them or use them to work for the rest of the game (plus they will become captured workers, which I'm not sure if you can make those continue an upgrade path).

Somewhat of a drawback, but it does make it so many of the captured resources can be found around the map, introducing a possibility of going to war to capture them from the AI.

It does almost completely change the feel of early game in a huge way. It feels like some kind of ancient resource race; and not the normal kill barb camps for 25 gold. Also, can make it almost a necessity to get out there and explore the map, and gives expansionist races a huge bonus for ability to build scouts to more easily find barb camps.

Captured workers will follow the same upgrade path as whatever the regular workers follow, but will retain their nationality. But like you said, the AI probably won't upgrade them, just put 'em straight to work.