Playing a civ game as the barbarians

[yaroslav]

Originally posted by Mercator
Indeed it isn't free (but there are ways , if you know what I mean).

That is why I believed it was free. I downloaded it so much time ago that I didn't remember...

 

[SlowThinker]

Originally posted by funxus
Here's a VB-program that edits bytes 39, 40, 41 and 47 in a sav-file if you want to try it without hexedit-program. You might need runtime-files for visual basic though.

funxus, I think your program is wrong. It edits 46th byte in place of 47th.

 

[.:KNAS:.]

I tried it, and i became the barbarians, but i couldnt actually move anything.

 

[funxus]

Originally posted by SlowThinker
funxus, I think your program is wrong. It edits 46th byte in place of 47th.

I just checked it, and in my editor it's the 47th byte that is changed.

.:KNAS:., I think you have to play a few turns until the first barbs show up. So it's at least 16 turns IIRC. I also think you'll have to make sure that all AI civs have settled at least one city before you edit to barbs, otherwise they won't settle a city. So, settle the normal civ's cities, and press enter for some time, before editing.

 

[SlowThinker]

Originally posted in Hex-editing
46 enumeration of all civs still in play [binary]
eg. 1001 1101 means: barbarians alive, civ 3 alive, civ 4,5 and 7 alive.
47 human player played (can be more than one) [binary]
toggling this byte is great and allows Hotseat mode in FW!!!
eg. 0110 0100 means: human is playing as civ 1, 2 and 5.

But bytes are numbered from 0!

This is the start of a file of my game after running Barbplay.exe:

43 49 56 49  4C 49 5A 45  00 1A 2C 00  3F 00 70 74
0C 00 00 00  08 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  01 00 60 F0
FF FF 00 00  09 00 00 00  00 00 FF 00  05 03 80 00

Byte 46 is 80 and I think this is why civs don't build cities - Civ2 thinks they are not in play.
Byte 47 is 00 and this is why human can watch only. (In fact in my game I was able to 'control barbs' by pressing Enter (as end of turn} until first barb Trireme appeared.)

So I had to edit the file manually:

43 49 56 49  4C 49 5A 45  00 1A 2C 00  3F 00 70 74
0C 00 00 00  08 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  01 00 60 F0
FF FF 00 00  09 00 00 00  00 00 FF 00  05 03 FF 80

Now 46th byte is FF (all 8 civs in play), 47th is 80 for barbs. Everything works from the beginning.

 

[SlowThinker]

It looks it is hard to play as barbs, especially to take cities:

Result of tests: (Strategies against Barbarian Attacks )
AI units have doubled defense.
The firepower of the defender in capital (=a city with a Palace) is multiplied by 6 and in a normal city by 2.5 .
If a civ has only 1 city then the city defender always wins against barbs.
Don't forget a barb Archer has halved defense.

Some observation:
Map is refreshed after a mouse rightclick.
Units in cities cannot be awakened from the city window, you must press 'w' until they start flashing.
Units are always NONE.
It looks in cities you can build only Setllers, Warriors and Barracks. Or did I miss something?

 

[Marlos]

Originally posted by SlowThinker
It looks it is hard to play as barbs, especially to take cities

Hey, Mr. Duke of Marlborough, sir, are we going to play as the barbarians in a GOTM?

 

[funxus]

ST, thanks, I didn't know it started counting from 0. And in VB it apparently starts from 1, since the program writes numbers at position 39, 40, 41 and 47. This means the first three bytes written are also wrong. I'll change this later and try it out again, too bad I didn't save the source files...

 

[funxus]

I just had a look at it, and it doesn't work very well changing these bytes. First I am the barbarians, but can't move anything, when I then press enter, I become the indians.

01 seems to work better for barbarians, the first bit, and not 80, the last one? Or am I doing something wrong?

 

[SlowThinker]

Can you post a save?

 

[blunt3d]

Is there a way u can edit the file so that barbarians can attack with normal raitings(not halved)????

 

[SlowThinker]

I think the only way is to edit the stats (i.e. to increase Attack) of Archer and other barb units in rules.txt.

 

[la fayette]

You may also paint them white and call them the Romans

 

[rponton]

Question: Why would you want to do this?

 

[Count_Triple]

I had a fun time playing as the Barbarians. In case anyone still wants to know 16 years later =]
The fun in playing this way is in the challenge.
To do this:
Begin a game with raging hordes and set the difficulty to determine your worlds Barbarian attack strength:
Chieftan x0.25
Warlord x0.5
Prince x0.75
King x1
Emperor x1.25
Deity x1.50

When the game begins you will:
-reveal the entire map and find a nice place to start
-set the human player to none(one turn will pass)
-reveal the map for Barbarians
-create a barbarian settler and click on it
-press enter to pass the turn and gain control the barbarian settler

You can then found a city and produce more settlers or warriors. Your government will remain a Despotism. Your cities will produce neither tech points nor gold. All units produced will have (none) as their support city.
Throughout the game you will gain control of all barbarian units that spawn around the map. The best option for them is to attempt a safe rout to your country and aid in the impending attack on your homeland. Eventually as other civs develop military technology so too will your random unit spawns. The village huts wont offer anything and will be destroyed.

In my last game, I became Attila the Hun and with 3 of my cities on the Top 5 list I was a booming economy of the ancient world. I held control of my continent up to about 400 BC. As the Spanish forces invaded, my settlers and noblemen fled in ships to a distant land. Though conquered, my major cities grew into booming metropolises with the introduction of the Spanish sciences.

 

[Cassius Critzer]

It would be very limited to play as the barbarians. When building a scenario, you get up to seven civs, but you can create some basic size 3 cities without defenses and soldiers, place say barbarian legions next to them, and then in the next turn, the barbarians will take over those weak cities.

They won't do much if any research. They tend to act as spawning areas for whatever units took them over, so in the example above they would churn out more legions.

If you built them on tiny islands, then it would take amphibious unit like marines to ultimately control them as whatever space is on a tiny island would fill up with barbarians. The AI is foolish and often places units outside of fortresses and the city proper and no rational purpose.

 

[Cassius Critzer]

The whole point of including the barbarians is to upset the applecart caused by explorations and goody huts which then unleash barbarians upon everyone nearby, not just those encountering them. But it also adds a very limited 8th quasi civ to the mix.

A modder could make say the Vikings be enemies to everyone in a fixed relationship and thus be a nemesis to all and thus fulfill that role. They could become nasty pirates eventually before getting eliminated by having no allies.