Steppe Warfare

[Palaiologos2]

Has anybody ever tried implementing Steppe warfare in a scenario?
I've been trying to find a formula to represent it, but for the life of me Civ2 mechanics are not meant for this. If the nomads are meant for AI only, one can try spawing units at certain "Ger/Yurt" camp sites so an ambitious enemy can try occupying them to stop the nomads from spawing. The steppe is vast so getting to all those Ger sites would simply be a waste of resources-let alone risking obliteration against the willy horse archers(Carrhae etc). But what about their raids? The civ2 mechanics don't allow ransoming of cities or tributes. And what about research? If events give the player the units and techs then the gameplay experience is essentially non-existant since there is no way an AI could occupy any Ger site. The only "formula" i've found is to have them as "settled" civs researching and building units normally, but with their own tech tree and terrain types to give the player the flavour of nomadic life. As for the raids-hell, the Hunnic invasion of Europe was nothing more than a large scale raid- i was thinking of using a tribute technology given-tribute technology taken system, but that wouldn't work.

Thing is that the raid mechanics is already in the game-The barbarians can ransom or sack a city. Has anybody thought of manipulating that mechanic? Can one hex edit a civ's units to be treated by the game as barbarian units? Or even better give a civ the barbarian "flag"?

 

[Torbk]

I'm not an expert at all but; If one were to manipulate that I am afraid one would have to have the access code. Not sure, but I believe that is in that hard to reach place. Making it work would probably take a lot of programming, not only making the ransom/conquer choice (which happens as a contact before the unit attack/move when the computer notices the active barbarian unit is next to an undefended city) but then putting that into either unit abilities or as.. some sort of message choice..

I see two ways to actually make Raiding partially possible:

-Make a Loot unit with only 1 or 0 in defense that cannot be built. Two events attached to it. When it is destroyed the attacker gains gold. Second event, if unit is destroyed, spawn new unit. Drawback is, this would make the town impossible to capture, but without city walls it would eventually be destroyed instead, leaving its attacker very rich. Also, for each city/town/village there would have to be an individual Loot unit with an unique name. And each one would need the same two events. Also, when the city/town/village is destroyed, you might want the spawn loot unit event to stop.

One could simplify this by not respawning the unit. Then you would only need the loot unit and place it once or as many times as you wish within any number of cities. Only one unit is then required. The reason you couldn't loot the city more than once or "X" times is simple, "the people has already been looted". All they have left is their clothes and lives, if even that.. they might be dead now.

-Second way, easier on unit capacity, when a city/town/village is captured, it spawns a number of caravans for the attacker. Enough caravans equals wealth and building capacity. That said, you would still not have the ability to only sack a city. You would have to conquer it.

One could again solve this with trigger units as in the first way, outside the cities, and if their not meant to respawn, but as a single action, you can have one trigger unit. If you want the triggers to respawn, you will need multiple units.

 

[AGRICOLA]

From waaaay back, I recall that Barbarians sometimes asked for tribute in order that they not sack a city. Also, I found the following option in the TOT Game file:

@RANSOMCITY
@width=320
@title=Defense Minister
The leader of the Barbarian %STRING0 has sent us
a message: "We shall mercilessly sack the city
of %STRING1 unless you pay us %NUMBER0 gold at once!"


You would have to experiment to see what triggers the Barbarian message.

In Red Front, the Yugoslavs are in the Barbarian slot and all Events commands can be used on their behalf. Also, if I recall correctly, Barbarians do not build city improvements or do research, they only build units. Their cities remain small and primitive. You should be able to control their civ through events.

 

[CurtSibling]

Actually, if you use civtweak and civcity applications to give the Barbs a government like
communism or democracy, and allow their cites to grow (improvements, good terrain, etc)
they will research and grow large cities...

Naturally, this does not apply to steppe nomads...But might do for their victims!

 

[Palaiologos2]

Well i suppose i'll figure something out.
Since i have 2 nomad civs(representing western steppe nomads and eastern steppe nomads) i could have the western scythians as semi-nomadic and the eastern Turks as purely nomadic.

 

[Tanelorn]

For the nomad civs you can use a paralel map (map2) in ToT.
1) You could have nomad "cities" in the paralel map, isolated by impassable terrain.The map2 cities will be able to produce units normally, which cant go anywhere in map2 but jump to the main map (map1). And map2 would be nomad accessible only.
2) Although the nomad civ cant build cities on the main map, he can occupy them. But even all nomad occupied cities on map1 are captured/destroyed, the nomad civ will not dissapear. And in contrast to event spawning nomad units, the player/AI nomad production be under control/interaction with the actual game development, rather than random.
3) Economy wise, the nomads can be made mostly independent of growth through cities in map1 as in a normal civ2 game, because will only occasionaly control them. Instead, you can have only them getting event awarded cash or units when they kill event spawned wild horses
or goats or elks, whatever it is that your nomads do/did in the real world.

So even if the nomads are down to nothing they have time on their side to build up forces for horde after horde, without the need to hold ground on map1

Unless the US cavalry builds forts on the great plains and exterminates the bison.
Or tsarist Russia builds kremlins on the steppe tribal grounds and goes after the herds.

Or you can have "civilized" missionaries jump maps to convert (bribe) the nomad map2 "cities" to Christianity, Islam, Marxism etc. and neutralize them.

Just a thought.

 

[Palaiologos2]

Actually thats rather ingenious.
I could have a Central Asia secondary map.
And see how that goes.

 

[Palaiologos2]

Actually, if you use civtweak and civcity applications to give the Barbs a government like
communism or democracy, and allow their cites to grow (improvements, good terrain, etc)
they will research and grow large cities...

Naturally, this does not apply to steppe nomads...But might do for their victims!

So i can give barbs the industralization tech to make their cities appear like...they have the industralization tech?

 

[Catfish]

I tried that a long time ago by hex editing. No effect. The Barbarians take the city style from the first row of @LEADERS in rules.txt. It's possible to change this slot - also by hex editing. By default, the Barbarians are given a tribe number of 0, the same as the Roman tribe in the standard game. You can give them one of the other 20 slots by editing byte 2958 (ToT 1.1). However you rig it, the Barbarians are restricted to the first 4 city styles. Really, it's not that difficult to shuffle around your techs to make full use of the city graphics options.

 

[Palaiologos2]

I tried that a long time ago by hex editing. No effect. The Barbarians take the city style from the first row of @LEADERS in rules.txt. It's possible to change this slot - also by hex editing. By default, the Barbarians are given a tribe number of 0, the same as the Roman tribe in the standard game. You can give them one of the other 20 slots by editing byte 2958 (ToT 1.1). However you rig it, the Barbarians are restricted to the first 4 city styles. Really, it's not that difficult to shuffle around your techs to make full use of the city graphics options.

Yeah i knew that about them only using the classical city style. Problem is that the Barbs are only gonna make an appearance strong enough to occupy cities later in the scenario after all the other civs have moved on to "industrialize". Will figure something out though.