Any experts on disease? Diseased minds?

[Boco]

How does the AI handle air missile units (range=1) in slots used by Barbarian 'rebels'? I'm thinking of using a disease unit (e.g. Acne) in the Cavalry, Fanatics, or Partisan slot (Guerilla Warfare Tech has been discovered).

1) Will the Acne unit aggressively attack units within range?

2) Will it run out of fuel within a turn or two and disappear?

3) Will it be destroyed like a missile after combat?

4) Any differences between MGE and ToT with this?

Anyone know of any previous threads or tip files on this?

Thanks

 

[Case]

Barbs use nuclear missiles if you give them some, so I *guess* they'll use other missile units corectly

 

[W.i.n.t.e.r]

Rocket units with a range of one will NOT be used if there is no target available in any adjacent square.

Barbarians will use them correctly, i.e. no shots into the blue where the "acne" runs out of fuel.

Yes, it dissappears after use.

 

[Morten Blaabjerg]

1) Yes. If the domain is land or air, but not sea.
2) Depends on the fuel you give it. It will stay around as long as you allow it to.
3) Yes.
4) I don't know.

I've had the most trouble with barbs using the sea domain, and especially the sub flag. For some strange reasons barb ships never seem to attack other ships, doesn't bombard, and the same appears to be true of subs, no matter the domain. The sub invisibility apparantly doesn't work either with barbs.

Pretty annoying, since if they get to live on, and are being produced by barb cities, you'll be watching their movements every turn. I'm having my headaches about how to prevent this.

 

[Boco]

You saved me a lot of testing.

Much to my surprise, I noticed that in Battle of Australia, Betty's (range = 2) often flew more than 2 turns if the AI gave them a 'GoTo' order. D*****d bombers made sure no city was safe. Case confirmed that it wasn't rare in that scenario.

Sounds like such fuel economy may not be inevitable with Barb rebel units (air missile). Maybe the key is to keep the range <2.

Morten, your crocs and hippos must be too well fed to attack. Does the cost of the unit have any affect on sea barb aggressiveness in your scenario? Would it fit to make them air/sub -- or would the AI keep moving them adjacent to land units that they can't attack?

 

[Morten Blaabjerg]

Hmm. I never thought about the price of the units. My first instinct tells me the barbs wouldn't care too much about the price, but it needs testing.

Actually, I've never had a barb sea unit attacking anything, regardless of the flags used. If you have seen it done, I would like to see the scenario you've seen it in. Hmmm. Well maybe I have seen it, but it is very vague, and I don't remember where.

And air subs definitely doesn't work. Neither does land subs. At least not for barbs. They can't attack and just move restlessly about.

For missile units, I haven't seen them moving about any longer than their fuel limits.

Maybe some experimenting with unit roles will provide more answers. I normally always use role=attack, but air superiority or sea superiority might do the trick. I have to test that.

 

[Morten Blaabjerg]

Aha. Testing revealed that it might actually be sea missiles that doesn't work too well. I looked back into my old scenario "Hammer of the North", where I used lots of barbs, and the following unit does provide very aggressive sea barbs.

Royal Warship,Exp, 2, 10.,0, 8a,5d, 2h,2f, 12,6, 2, NF, 000000000000001

Now I gotta dissect which parts can be changed for my purposes, and which that can't. -I don't want to tip the balance to the other extreme, and have deadly hippos being the cause of the expeditions failure.

BTW, does any of you guys know how to make land units fire at passing ships? Or will one need to make use of range 1 missile units?

 

[Henrik]

I think I've heard something about the slot mattering, use the slots that is used for ships that the barbarians use in the normal game (the frigate, galleon are the only ones they attack with, right? Use those)
The alternative is to give hippos, etc to a real civ (not sure how many you are using) if there is a native civ they could handle them as well, right?

 

[Morten Blaabjerg]

Oh boy! Does this give me trouble in the sound departement!