Easy way to use the Sub Bug to start wars

This is a quick tutorial on how to use a sub bug technique to start wars in a Civ III mod/scenario.

Using this method is easy if it is required to start a war between civ's very early in a scenario... but what if it is needed 100 or more turns down the road? This can be more of a complex situation, and sometimes may not seem easy to implement.

Well, there is a very simple solution (but does require that the map does have some areas setup properly to accomplish this, which will be shown below). Using this method allows one to make sure a nation declares war on another with absolute certainty and at a specific time in the game.

This example shows how a war will be started 98 turns down the road:
FIRST, the nation that will be declaring war will need to have either:
1. A small lake inside of it's territory with 2 cities near it (1 of these cities needs to be on the edge of the lake, the other needs to be within 1 tile or closer to the lake).
- OR -
2. This can also be done on the coast of a civ's territory, but it is best if it is on a location that will not be traveled upon by any vessels at all.

So to give an example, let's say you need to have Greece start a war with the Persians 98 turns after the start of the scenario, here's an example of how this can be easily accomplished:

For Option #1, the example will show how to do so with the below city placement example.

As you can see, Athens is 1 tile away from the lake, and Sparta is on the lake (this could be accomplished with Athens on the lake also). Note: cities are not in the correct spots, this is just an example!

Now, since this is a lake, the AI will not build ships (I don't think ever) so there is no fear of the war being started early or by another civ.
2 units will be needed to make this work:
1. A unit I will call 'War Starter'. This will be an invisible Barbarian Immobile ship (see below).


2. A unit I will call 'Special Unit'. This will be a Greek immobile land unit (see below).

The Special Unit must have the Unit abilities 'Immobile' and 'Detect Invisible'. You can also give the unit 'Radar' if the War Starter unit is 2 tiles away (If it is only 1 tile, this is not needed). The A/D values can be anything, just make sure to leave the action 'Load' unchecked so this unit cannot load a transport.

The Special Unit will need to have a prerequisite of an Unresearchable Tech (so that the nation cannot build it). A sample unresearchable Tech is shown below:

This tech has no era, so no nation can get it.

NOW, I have placed 2 War Starter Units on the map (in the lake). They are invisible so they will not be seen in the game.

The white colored sub on the right is the Barbarian War Starter. The Light Blue colored sub is the Persian War Starter. Both units cannot be disbanded, so they are safe from the AI/Human Player doing so.

NEXT STEP: Make 2 Pre-placed Wonders, one in Athens and one in Sparta.

The Athens Wonder will create the Special Unit we made above.


The Sparta Wonder will create any ship you wish, the ship it makes MUST NOT be able to detect invisible!!!!!! Very important.


Both Wonders must have the prerequisite 'Unresearchable Tech' so that civ's cannot build it. Now, preplace the Athens Wonder into Athens city, and preplace the Sparta Wonder into the Sparta city. Both wonders create their unit in 98 turns.

And Bravo! The war will be started on that civ's appropriate turn.

Here's what happens on Turn 98:


On Turn 98, Athens Auto-produces the 'Special Unit' and Sparta Auto-produces the 'Galley'. Remember that my Special Unit has Radar and detect invisible, so it's radar will spot the Barbarian sub. NOTE!!! The Special Unit must not be able to see the Persian sub, otherwise the Sub Bug will not occur! So make sure it is not within 'Spotting Range.
Once the AI sees the Barbarian sub, it will use it's Galley to attack it, and will run into the Persian sub on the way.

I have attached the BIQ file here View attachment SubBugStarter.zip , so anyone can analyze it if they need to get a better idea of how to do this. It's pretty easy to setup. This can be used past 100 turns (since auto-production cannot go past 100), but does not always guarentee that a war is started at the perfect time.
So to start a war 200 turns down the road (or even 900 turns down the road if properly setup), You would need to create a resource that 'appears' in a tech likely to be researched by the War Starting AI 100 turns down the road (from the start). Then both the Wonders (Athens/Sparta) would require this resource (so they will not auto-produce until it is discovered; just make sure they have access to it). Then you would hit close to 200 turns, of course you may need to make sure you fine tune it to work.

This same idea can apply to coastal cities (on the ocean), but you need to make sure it is a non-traveled area, to avoid wars starting prematurely.

Hope this helps everyone, that may need to use the good ole sub bug to start wars in a slightly easier and more consistent way.

Tom

 

I knew that already, but this is a really good tutorial that will help many modders.

Thank you!

 

I knew this was nothing new (as I remembering reading about it from some discussion somewhere a long time ago), but figured it may help some that may not be completely familiar with all the nuances of creating it. Just a quick rundown really

Tom

 

And a well done one at that!

Best,

Oz

 

I didn't know about this before. Thanks for the detailed explanation of how to do it.

 

Good that you have compressed all these infos into a single thread !


btw: Like you`re writing by your own ,that`s a tutorial. As such it should be moved into the tutorial section of the forums.

Bye
General 666

 

Agreed, could a moderator please move this to correct forum.

Thanks

Tom

 

A similar set up can be done in an isolated corner of the map. I have seen this discussed in another thread on a specific mod, but can't remember whose. you may want to add that to your first post.

Also, consider adding a version of the OP as an article in the wiki.

Moderator Action: Yes, I will move it. In future, you can send any of the moderators a PM to request changes to a thread.

 

Another version of this (which I haven't tested yet!) would be to create, at the edge of the map, a one tile wide corridor, bounded by the map's edge and uncrossable terrain. This way: (1) multiple "submarine" triggers can be set and (2) if the corridor consists of terrain which cannot be settled, it can be used as a timer for entry of, say, barbarians into the Roman Empire.

It seems straightforward enough; my only caveat about testing is whether or not the Artificial Idiot would backtrack down the corridor ...

Best,

Oz

 

That's it! Thanks for posting what I couldn't remember the details of.

 

To make sure that the AI travels all the way down the corridor (land or sea), you can set up non-invisible immobile barbarian units along the path (usually about a screenlength apart), and you can use an 'invisible graphic' so that way they cannot be seen by the player (other than the health bar). Then the AI will follow them, killing each one, on the route to the civ unit that starts the war/or unleashes the barbarian hordes.

Doing it this way, the AI will always head towards the weakest / closest unit. So as long as the AI barbarian units (the 'path') are 1 hitpoint 1 defense units, the AI will go after them no matter what.

I used this method to get some AI units in the Atlantic (as a test) to follow the path all the way around Africa, up towards India, and over to Japan. The AI, as I found out, has a certain radius to which it knows where enemy units are. If they are out of range of this radius, then they seem to not be aware of the unit (sea units at least). I do not know how big this radius is though, and it also might be that the AI will just decide to go after another target.


In this pic, even though the barbarian sub is out of view range of the AI ship, it knows it is there anyways, and will destroy it, then proceed to next (which is about 15 tiles south) and so on around the globe. The same can be done at the bottom of the screen without a land barrier for sea units, or to make sure the land unit follows the path.

Tom

 

Good info Tom - thanks

Best,

Oz

 

Thanks Tom for a great thread. I wasn't aware of this at all, but I think it could be very useful in a scenario I'm working on. I had wanted to do things like this but didn't know how to before.

Nick

 

I've been thinking about the open waters version of the "follow the path" technique. While it would certainly work, there is the difficulty that other ships may stray across the path. This would disrupt the sequence, at the very least interfering with the timing.

This is why putting the run behind an inaccessible barrier was put into practice.

 

Yes, through open waters would have a higher chance of attracting unwanted ships.The good thing about the inaccessible barrier method, is that depending on map size, you can guarentee a war to start 300 turns down the road on the largest of map.

It would have been much easier, if they just included an option in the editor.

Tom

 

So many, many things would be easier about Civ 3 modding if they had just included a few more things in the editor (and if some of the things they did include actually worked). Though I sometimes think Civ 3's problems are a large part of what keeps hardcore modders going. Like the many small weaknesses, or large weaknesses the game and editor have present an intriguing challenge to modders. It's very gratifying when you do discover some way to implement an idea using some cunning method, such as the above.

Nick

 

True, but it still won't stop me from calling the game engine the "Artificial Idiot".

Best,

Oz

 

And well you should. ‘Idiot’ hardly seems to do justice to the complete inadequacy and predictability of the Civ 3 AI. Yet somehow the amazing creativity of Modders manages to make the AI's shortcoming fairly irrelevant with their fantastic scenarios.

Of course I would be ecstatic if it did every become possible to re-programme the AI. Imagine Civ 3 with an intelligent and unpredictable AI. Now that would be a fun game! But we all no that will never happen.

Nick

 

Can I download that editor, it looks a lot better than my verio of Civ3Editor

 

It it for Conquests expansion. The editor is latest versions of conquests editor. If you don't have conquests, I recommend getting it, it is far better than vanilla or PTW.