Barbarian cities in Civ 3

[Civinator]

Some days ago Blake00 posted, that he managed to create a Barbarian city by using Sima's Multiplayer tool: https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...-up-to-31-players.456432/page-3#post-15454665

As this tool is added to all versions of CCM2, I tried to reproduce this with a current test biq of CCM2 - and without any problems I managed to switch a game in Debug mod to 'a Barbarian Chiefdom' as the player. The game was able to allow its own save files as 'of the Barbarians'. I think the results are interesting enough to post them in this thread.

In Debug mod (of course) I was able to place any unit on the map, including Barbarian settlers and workers. As I was the Barbarian player in the game, my Barbarian settler was ordered to found a city - and bingo - there was a Barbarian city on the map. In Debug mod I was able to place every building of the biq into the Barbarian city - even city walls, that changed the graphics of the city.

As the Barbarian player I was able to give barbarian workers orders like irrigating tiles and building roads. These workers were even able to build colonies!

The Barbarian city was not able to build anything (no buildings and no units). Even preplaced CCM2 buildings with an autoproduction without additional perequisites were not able to autoproduce any units.

The Barbarian city had a culture of zero and even with some 'cultureproducing buildings" preplaced in the city in Debug mod, the culture of that city always stayed at zero. Therefore I was able to create a colony on a goldmine, one tile next the Barbarian city and to connect it with a road, but no resource was shown in the city screen of the Barbarian city. The Barbarian Civ was not able to do any research.

By placing additional workers or settlers into the Barbarian city and giving them the order to join the city, the population of that city can be raisen. I made a test, if this zero-culture-city with a population of two can be conquered without auto-razing that city and it worked well. I switched back in the multiplayer tool to play the Debug civ, placed a heavy tank in front of the Barbarian city, and conquered the city. This city now became a normal city for the civ that has conquered it.

So it was some fun to command all those Barbarian units that were triggered by other civs while stepping into goody huts, in my eyes at present there is no direct use of that finding - but if we will find a way to convert the save file and the map with the Barbarian cities in it into a biq, that can be reworked by an editor, the benefit of this finding for creating all kinds of maps with preplaced cities and the correct names of these cities, that should not belong to any (normal) playable civ of a mod, would be enormous.

Unfortunately it seems, that even the current Quintillus editor is not able to do such an operation.

Spoiler :

 

[Blake00]

Oh wow.. I didn't even know about the debug mode! How do you get to that?

Because I didn't know about debug mode I started backwards to you haha. I went into the map editor, generated a 7 player medium map, placed a bunch of barb villages, placed a number of barbarian units including 3 settlers into a corner of the map, placed terrain improvements around the area, saved as a barbarian.biq file, loaded the scenario in my CD install of Civ3 Complete, ran Sima's multiplayer tool, took control of the Barbs, and was able to create 3 cities and move around the armies while also taking control of the scattered tribe units around the map. Triggered a rather amusing bug where 2 of my cities displayed a giant angry head instead of the city graphic!

I'll attach my current test files (in a 7zip as it wouldn't let me upload the biq??). Will be a little while before I can actually play a proper game as I'm busy with CTP2 & SMAC at the moment (both which I've also managed to take control of the barbs in haha). So if you do any more experimenting let me know the results as it will help my plans to push all possible limits. Eg I hear barbs can't take over regular civ cities? Might be some creative ways around that hopefully.

And yes I'm guessing coverting a sav to a biq is the only way to have pre-exisiting barb cities in a scenario sadly.

Btw I realize I've been talking to you and other regulars here about my 'how to play old civ games in hd' and 'how to play as the barbarians' video series for over a year now with no actual videos posted here haha but they ARE made, and will be put on youtube very soon!

 

[Civinator]

Oh wow.. I didn't even know about the debug mode! How do you get to that?

In C3C a biq can beplayed in Debug Mode, when the red marked box in the next screenshot is enabled. It is a kind of a 'cheat mode' allowing modders to test settings in their mods or scenarios. Different to Civ 2 in Civ 3 you cannot switch to that mod during a game. You have to start the game with a biq that is set to Debug Mode. If you have started such a biq, you have several options, shown in screenshot two, to manipulate the game to seewhat settings are working well or what settings should be improved.

Spoiler :

I didn't know about debug mode I started backwards to you haha. I went into the map editor, generated a 7 player medium map, placed a bunch of barb villages, placed a number of barbarian units including 3 settlers into a corner of the map, placed terrain improvements around the area, saved as a barbarian.biq file, loaded the scenario in my CD install of Civ3 Complete, ran Sima's multiplayer tool, took control of the Barbs, and was able to create 3 cities and move around the armies while also taking control of the scattered tribe units around the map. Triggered a rather amusing bug where 2 of my cities displayed a giant angry head instead of the city graphic!

May be it was something like that?

It seems you did run into some of the symptoms I described in the thread The 6th Culture Group

attach my current test files (in a 7zip as it wouldn't let me upload the biq??). Will be a little while before I can actually play a proper game as I'm busy with CTP2 & SMAC at the moment (both which I've also managed to take control of the barbs in haha). So if you do any more experimenting let me know the results as it will help my plans to push all possible limits. Eg I hear barbs can't take over regular civ cities? Might be some creative ways around that hopefully.

Unfortunately Barbarians in Civ 3 work completely different to Barbarians in Civ 2. In Civ 3 Barbs cannot conquer and - normally - even not hold cities and I´m not aware of any existing work-around for that problem.

yes I'm guessing coverting a sav to a biq is the only way to have pre-exisiting barb cities in a scenario sadly.

Barbarian cities on a fixed map would offer a cornucopia of very important options for Civ 3 scenarios, especially for scenarios where civs should spread over existing free rooms on the map, allowing to set locations for cities with the proper names in the proper locations. I tried a different methode for such a worldmap in the past with a special terrain, setting it to be the only terrain where cities can be founded, and preplaced resources showing the proper names of those cities, but here I run into a limit of only 256 different resources allowed on a Civ 3 map while there are 512 cities allowed on the map.

At present here I work with some 'hybrid solutions'. Barbarian cities could become a big part in these settings. To preplace all cities on the map of a scenario and assign them to different playable civs mostly is a very bad solution for the game mechanics of that scenario and to split the role of Barbarians between some not-playable civs is also problematic.

 

[Blake00]

In C3C a biq can beplayed in Debug Mode, when the red marked box in the next screenshot is enabled.

Oh wow, thanks for this!

Does turning on debug cheat mode invalidate your score like it does in Civ 2?

May be it was something like that?

Yup those are the same big ugly heads that are in my picture haha.

Unfortunately Barbarians in Civ 3 work completely different to Barbarians in Civ 2. In Civ 3 Barbs cannot conquer and - normally - even not hold cities and I´m not aware of any existing work-around for that problem.

Yeah that's what I'd heard. Unfortunately it's been 15 or so years since I last properly played Civ3 (I'll be playing a serious game soon for my video series) so I'm very rusty on things. What happens when a barb unit attacks a city then? Just steals some gold and then the unit disappears? Is there any population drop?

Eg in SMAC when you take control of the aliens you could not capture a city but repeated attacks would bring down its pop and once at 1 an attack would kill the city. I'd then create a alien barb settler (colony pod) and recreate the city with the same name so it at least appeared that I'd captured it haha. When the city fell all nearby barb units disappeared too so I'd have to recreate my attack force again which was a bit annoying lol. But point being you can find the craziest ways around barb road blocks haha!

Also I can't remember if diplomats and spys work the same way in civ3 as in civ 2.. cause I'm wondering what a barb controlled version of them could do.. eg bribe city.

 

[Civinator]

Oh wow, thanks for this!

Does turning on debug cheat mode invalidate your score like it does in Civ 2?

Yes, and additionally you see some disturbing control writings in the top of the screens.

happens when a barb unit attacks a city then? Just steals some gold and then the unit disappears? Is there any population drop?

The barbs plunder the city (steal gold) or sabotage production. If they don´t find anything to plunder, the population of the city is reduced by one point. I have never seen, that they razed a city.

Also I can't remember if diplomats and spys work the same way in civ3 as in civ 2.. cause I'm wondering what a barb controlled version of them could do.. eg bribe city.

Diplomacy in Civ 3 is working completely different compared to Civ 2. Unfortunately in Civ 3 there are no spy units. Espionage and diplomacy in Civ 3 are handeled abstractly - and in my eyes very boring. So spies in Civ 2 were overpowered, I really miss these units in Civ 3. They were the perfect jedi knights in my Civ 2 space scenario.

 

[Kyriakos]

Very interesting finds

 

[Quintillus]

Indeed, very interesting. All of my attempts to find something new involving barbarians have been along the lines of what Blake00 described, and with similar results. Trying to switch the player in Debug Mode is something I'd never thought of doing before! And it's great that it does something different!

The next question along this line of inquiry I'd have is, does the barbarian AI station a few units to defend the city? If not, can you place a barbarian camp on the same tile to have them defend it? Or perhaps placing some immobile defensive units? Or a Victory Point Location perhaps? I'd expect at least one of these to work, but that probably is required for it to work well in the interesting "expansion into "minor civ" territory" scenarios you describe. Which I would agree is something that's missing from Civ III - and proper names would add to that as well.

You're also correct that as of the most recent version, my editor doesn't have anything to help with that. The restrictions on Input From SAV are due to the editor not currently understanding the parts of a SAV file that relate to what's happened since the game started - it can extract the unchanging rules, but not what's gone in in-game, including cities that have been founded. That's largely a legacy of the focus of the editor for a long time - first editing scenarios across operating systems, and then making certain aspects of scenario editing more convenient.

But while it may look like I haven't been updating the editor this year - and it's true that there hasn't been a public release of it - behind the scenes I've changed focus to "what new features could be enabled through SAV modification?" Thus a lot of the work this calendar year has been the non-glamorous, but essential-for-that-focus, work of adding the ability to read (and more recently, write) SAV files. Having realistic city names was on my short list of "compelling features that could be the first among the newly added ones". I'd thought of having a third-party program (the editor, or a separate one more focused on that task) update the SAV - ideally in real-time - using a configuration file that would say something like, "Tile X, Y is Wittenburg" and then using some sort of algorithm so you didn't have to name every single tile. But right now, I only have code to read the CITY part of a SAV, which is among the most complex parts of it, and not to write it with new info. It's slow and relatively tedious and error-prone work, although I learned a smarter way of doing it last month that should speed it up overall, despite requiring some re-work to sections that have already been done.

This idea suggests an alternative direction. If the barbarian city mechanics work acceptably in terms of gameplay, I could read in the CITYs from the SAV - which is already working, at least in the limited testing I've done so far - and convert them into BIQ CITYs, which are much simpler and already fully supported, both reading and writing. Thus it could potentially be written with the code I already have, and likely wouldn't have to wait for full SAV reading and writing support.

This is definitely an interesting new discovery, and if the mechanics in Debug Mode look good, it's a good candidate for something I could work on adding support for this summer!

 

[Blake00]

Oh wow! I didn't know about your editor @Quintillus ! That looks really good and looks perfect tool for greater customization of a playable Barbarian scenario.

Also if you're the man around here ensuring the preservation of great Civ3 fan content at civfanatics then there's a few things I wouldn't mind chatting to you about over PM!

The barbs plunder the city (steal gold) or sabotage production. If they don´t find anything to plunder, the population of the city is reduced by one point. I have never seen, that they razed a city.

Well that's a good sign! The AI won't use debug mode to keep bringing in another attacker to drop the pop but we certainly can haha. I wonder if spam attacking a city can actually kill it off like in SMAC.

 

[Quintillus]

Thanks! It's been one of my main side projects for 10 years now.

I'm not the man around here ensuring preservation of content, but merely someone helping in one area - namely, preserving Stories and Tales. That forum has seen a lot of lost content due to external image-hosting sites going down over the years, so last year I started archiving (and in some cases, restoring) various stories.

The King of Kings of archiving Civ3 content is @Ozymandias . You can read about the destruction of his Library of Alexandria here, and also is restoration (which I'd somehow missed) here. At 1.75 million files, it's the largest Civ archive I know of, and a real asset to the community.

 

[Civinator]

Quintillus, thank you very much for your explanations about the current possibilities of your great editor and one more time thank you very much for all your work you are doing for Civ 3.

To clarify the functions of the multiplayer tool and a game in Debug Mode: The really important is the switch from the civ that is normally played to the civ
'A Barbarian Chiefdom' with Sima Qian’s multiplayer tool, that can be found here:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/multiplayer-tool-play-scenarios-up-to-31-players.456432/

Those who have downloaded the CCM2 expansion of the C3C mainfiles can found this multitool in the c3me folder. Here I gave a short instruction how to handle that tool (of course may be there a better ways to do this): https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/ccm2-epic-mod.625812/#post-14957615

The use of a biq in Debug Mode to do that switch, only had the purpose to test many of the settings quickly for answering questions about the consequences of doing such a switch without any loss of time by simply using the Debug functions. Here is the listing of those functions in the CCM2 civilopedia so everybody can do his own experiments with the save file I have attached to this post:

The next question along this line of inquiry I'd have is, does the barbarian AI station a few units to defend the city? If not, can you place a barbarian camp on the same tile to have them defend it? Or perhaps placing some immobile defensive units? Or a Victory Point Location perhaps? I'd expect at least one of these to work, but that probably is required for it to work well in the interesting "expansion into "minor civ" territory" scenarios you describe. Which I would agree is something that's missing from Civ III - and proper names would add to that as well.

With the save file below everybody can do his own testing of these and other questions. It is not possible to found a Barbarian city in the tile with a Barbarian camp (there is a preplaced settler in the save file to verify this easily). It is possible to place Barbarian camps directly in the neighbourhood of Barbarian cities. Of course it is possible to place Barbarian defending units (and attackers) at the tile with the Barbarian city. To answer the question if the Barbs will draw own units into that city, the played civ must be changed back from Barbarians to one of the other civs in the game with the multiplayer tool.

Attached to this post is a save file that I have done with a standard C3C biq set to Debug Mod and switched to 'A Barbarian Chiefdom' so I hope everybody can experiment with playing the Barbarian civ and doing changes easily by using the functions of the Debug Mode when starting that save file. When the save file is loaded, you should be able to play as the 'Barbarian civ' without a further use of the multiplayer tool. You can see yourself what happens when different buildings are added to the city or how new Barbarian cities can be founded if you add a Barbarian settler and give that unit the order to found a city, what will happen with culture, producing units, giving the Barbarian civ new techs by Debug Mode until the game crashes when the Barbs have completed the techtree of era 3 (by adding these techs in Debug Mode to them), as I described it in my thread about the sixth culture group many years ago. Different to setting a normal playable civ to culture group 'None', there is no need to add some not existing sound files to the game, when playing the Barbs directly - and I think the crash of the game when the Barbs are reaching era 4 in the techtree, in normal game-practice will not happen, as the Barbs 'normally' are not researching any tech.

If you want to change again as a player from the Barbarians to one of the other civs in the game, another use of the Multiplayer Tool is necessairy.

 

[Civinator]

The King of Kings of archiving Civ3 content is @Ozymandias . You can read about the destruction of his Library of Alexandria here, and also is restoration (which I'd somehow missed) here. At 1.75 million files, it's the largest Civ archive I know of, and a real asset to the community.

Ozymandias is not only the King of Kings of archiving Civ3 content. He is also one of the biggest friends and sponsors of the Civ 3 community. He financed a cornucopia of 3D models transformed by Wyrmshadow to wonderful Civ 3 units and later given for free to the Civ 3 community. Ozymandias also tried to buy the Civ 3 source code, but despite a special personal contact, this attempt unfortunately was not successful.

Later Ozymandias started an initiative about building an own company to create a worthy successor for Civ 3, but this was overshadowed by severe health problems (I don´t post here what specific problems, as this is not public). Some days ago I received the news, that his illness unfortunately has progressed.
Let´s wish that he will recover again and those civers, who believe in god, can do a prayer in favour of his health.

 

[nick0515]

I'm saddened to hear about Oz. He is an awesome human being. I wish him a speedy recovery. This forum is diminished by his absence.

This is an interesting thread!

 

[Kyriakos]

Ozymandias is not only is the King of Kings of archiving Civ3 content. He is also one of the biggest friends and sponsors of the Civ 3 community. He financed a cornucopia of 3D models transformed by Wyrmshadow to wonderful Civ 3 units and later given for free to the Civ 3 community. Ozymandias also tried to buy the Civ 3 source code, but despite a special personal contact, this attempt unfortunately was not successful.

Later Ozymandias started an initiative about building an own company to create a worthy successor for Civ 3, but this was overshadowed by severe health problems (I don´t post here what specific problems, as this is not public). Some days ago I received the news, that his illness unfortunately has progressed.
Let´s wish that he will recover again and those civers, who believe in god, can do a prayer in favour of his health.

Please communicate my regards to him. Indeed Oz is always a gentleman and I hope he can return some day...

 

[Blake00]

Yeah that's a real shame, poor guy, if he's too unwell to be on here then I guess there's not much point in me PM'ing him about my preservation stuff. I'm also guessing from his posts that his amazing archive of all Civ3 fan content is on a personal hard drive and not an accessible location for us.

@Kyriakos and @nick0515 I'm guessing you guys are Civ3 gurus too as I've seen your Civ3 mod packs..

 

[nick0515]

Haha thanks for including me in the same sentence as Kyriakos! Graphics-wise his work is the best of the best while I've just done a few cut and paste jobs

The few people who still visit this part of the forum have mostly been playing and modding civ 3 for a very long time. There are some here whose knowledge of how the games works still amazes me after all these years. There are even new discoveries about the game or new creative ways to use the editor from time to time. It really is a great game despite its obvious limitations.

 

[Quintillus]

I'm saddened to hear about Oz as well. He's done so much for the community over the years, often behind the scenes and always politely. I wish him the best of luck for another successful recovery

 

[Kyriakos]

Haha thanks for including me in the same sentence as Kyriakos! Graphics-wise his work is the best of the best while I've just done a few cut and paste jobs

The few people who still visit this part of the forum have mostly been playing and modding civ 3 for a very long time. There are some here whose knowledge of how the games works still amazes me after all these years. There are even new discoveries about the game or new creative ways to use the editor from time to time. It really is a great game despite its obvious limitations.

Thanks

@Kyriakos and @nick0515 I'm guessing you guys are Civ3 gurus too as I've seen your Civ3 mod packs..

I once tried to start the secret order of the Cyclopai - Civ3 gfx creators. It didn't take

 

[Quintillus]

Well, I'm back from vacation (to Germany and the Czech Republic). Haven't done anything Civ related since my last post, although this is an area I'd like to look at this summer.

I did, however, find myself at a monastery last week, and left a prayer for Ozymandias. It seemed like the fitting thing to do given the time and the location.

 

[Kyriakos]

Speaking of Oz, if anyone has his email, you could pm it to me. I would like to send him my wishes too
I hope he gets better soon.

 

[WildWeazel]

I was thinking, maybe @Civinator could compile messages from us to pass along?