[Civ2] Update to Paul Cullivan's "Bronze Age Collapse"

[Dupuire Unaru]

Quite a long time ago, Paul Cullivan (Kull) made the superb "Bronze Age Collapse" (1200-300BC) and "Ancient Empires" (3500BC-0AD) scenarios. He did a fantastic job of taking modern age civ mechanics and reapplying them to make a deeper and more enjoyable ancient age. For example, he reused the Communist form of Government as "Empire" for when your civ is big enough to need it.

User RobRoy, at Apolyton, used hexediting to create the "Barbarian Wrath" variant for "Ancient Empires" scenario. He also the hexeditor to rig up barbarians with Democratic government, so they couldn't be bribed. He notes:

This excellent scenario becomes extremely difficult, but not impossible, I think. Yes, you do see small pirate bands almost every other turn. And, yes, you do get rebel hordes 80-100 strong (I've only seen hordes composed of Bronze Inf I/Battering Rams, so far, but I'm just barely in the Bronze Age in my current game). But the rebel hordes seem to be somewhat more random. At times they seem to rest and let you deal with what they've already thrown at you. Between attrition, dispersal, and disappearances, you actually have a chance against the three-four units that reach your vulnerable cities each turn (usually just a few are directly in their path).

I can't remember a civ game that has been more challenging and more fun! Yet it flows along reasonably historical lines. Defensive play gets a whole new dimension, especially in those early phases of Kull's game where there are few good defensive units.

At one point, my mighty Hittite empire reached from the homeland, down to Syria (along surprisingly historical lines), and had several outlying cities in western Anatolia, Messepotamia, and the Levant). When the first rebel horde appeared, I was forced to write off many of the outlying cities. At one point the barbarians gave no rest and were dispersing units from three 80+ hordes near my capital, forcing me to abandon many of my heartland cities and head for the hills (literally). The Hittites looked more like a fledgling Aegean power by the time that round was spent.

I've played the "Ancient Empires" scenario several times. Like RobRoy, I love the intensity of Barbarian Wrath. The earlier scenario "Bronze Age Collapse" would also benefit from these improvements to barbarians but I can't get the old hexedit editors to run on my modern PC. Anyone have any idea how to do this?

 

[Blake00]

I recently used the modern and free Hxd Hex Editor with the old Civ2 hex editing guide and posted the links here:

Heroes of Might and Magic Civ2 & ToT scenarios development

Excellent work! Hopefully it can work for ToT too.

forums.civfanatics.com

However the CivTweak 1.5 editor allows you to change the Barbarian government without needing a HexEditor:

Civilization II: Utility Programs - CivFanatics

Name Description Author Civ2PBEM Diplomacy v3.0 This utility allows agreements between human players in a Sid Meier’s Civilization II e-mail game. o You can offer/demand a city or a group of cities. o You can offer/demand gold. o You can offer/demand technologies. o You can offer/demand some...

www.civfanatics.com

Although much like those old hexeditors you were trying to use it's a 16bit windows app that won't run on modern 64bit systems. However you can run them in either a VirtualMachine or using a lovely little program called WineVDM:

[Civ2] - Using WineVDM to play classic versions of Civilization II or old Civ2 fan programs

Been meaning to post about this one for a while & I think I've seen others mention it here in comments but it's time to post something more obvious and official about this! Even if you're not a regular Linux user many of us have probably heard of Wine before which allows Linux users to play...

forums.civfanatics.com

 

[Dupuire Unaru]

Thank you. These are helpful links. I got CivTweak working. While it allows me to switch Barbarians to democracy, it does not enable the "barbarian wrath" setting for barbarians. You can only take them up to raging, where they were anyway. Opened the scenario in hexedit but don't know which fields to edit or where to start looking. According to the guide in your links, the barbarian setting can be modified at "45" but I don't know what that means. If you know which field to edit, I'd be grateful.

 

[Blake00]

hmm yeah I'm not great with this stuff either as it took me forever to figure it out last time haha.. @Prof. Garfield can prob give better advice but firstly I'm pretty sure that hex editing guide is for savegame files not scenario files (I can see in your screenshot you've loaded the scenario file instead of a savegame). So if you don't already have a savegame for this scenario that you're working on then you'll need to start the scenario in Civ2 (selecting to play as whichever Civ has the first move to ensure no one moves around), save the game, then hex edit that save file, load it up in Civ2 to make sure it's all good and then save as a new scenario file using the cheat menu once you're all finished with everything.

As for following that guide when editing a save game I know that I needed set the view to decimal mode instead of hex to get the matching position numbers for what that word doc describes. Then on the bottom it tells me what position number I've selected which because its in order I'm able to quickly find my way to position 45 which was column 13 and offsite line 32.. however as for what value to put into that field.. I'm not sure.. the save game I loaded below currently has a 2 in it.. and I think I set the barb levels to a mid range aggression/spawn so maybe that fits.. so maybe changing it to a 4 or 5 might up the level.. but argh.. I'm probably wrong... so the safer thing to do is to start a brand new game, set the barb levels to the aggression level you want (I don't see a wrath one btw but you prob want raging hordes), then save the new game, then load up that savegame in the hexeditor and see what value is in position 45.. that'll be the value you'll want to put in your other scenario savegame you're working on. Oh and make sure you backup that save file you're working on as one can easily destroy it messing with this stuff haha!

 

[Dupuire Unaru]

Found the setting and switched it up. Very much appreciate all the help, @Blake00. Haven't seen any unwholesome barbarian hordes yet but they should show up sometime.

Barbarian Wrath is a special barbarian level not available in the main game selection menu. Have to use various tricks to access it. The correct hex number seems to be "04."

 

[Blake00]

Glad to hear. Oh wow.. so there's a secret even more hardcore barbarian level I didn't know about.. fascinating!