MeteorPunch
#WINNING
It's always good to see a new way of doing things. 
Using barbarians to get AI to use artillery
- Thread starter tom2050
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tom2050
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Oddly enough, the AI is running around with all the captured barbarian artillery pieces and using them 250 turns into the game. They are not upgrading them though. While I was testing something else (a paradrop unit), and declared war on neighboring civ, and there the AI comes with 10 captured artillery barb pieces, each escorted by units into my territory.
Since AI doesn't seem to upgrade them in My Situation (which is that there is very little units that have Artillery Strategy), perhaps the good alternative here, is to make these capturable units be artillery pieces.
Now, in my game there is hardly any open areas anymore, it's pretty much a packed world with cities, so it caught me off guard. I'll see exactly what the AI does with them when they get in my territory.
Since AI doesn't seem to upgrade them in My Situation (which is that there is very little units that have Artillery Strategy), perhaps the good alternative here, is to make these capturable units be artillery pieces.
Now, in my game there is hardly any open areas anymore, it's pretty much a packed world with cities, so it caught me off guard. I'll see exactly what the AI does with them when they get in my territory.
tom2050
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Well, damned amazing. It seems all the AI's are using these 'captured barbarian artillery' pieces through the whole game. AI brought every single captured barb piece up to my city and bombarded my with it, then attacked. All the artillery it can build though, it did nothing with.
Using these settings, and making barbs 'raging' will pretty much do this:
* Make the game run faster by having AI use it's excess units fighting the barbarians all around the map. Game times are unusually fast 250 turns in, most barb camps were destroyed finally about 50 turns ago. Since desert can't be settled, they still occasional pop up.
* AI seems to properly use the barbarian artillery pieces. I see other AI civ's using them in their own wars now that I turned back on movement animations to see what is happening in the debug game.
* As long as the barb artillery can be captured by all civ's, it will always be around, ensuring that the game will have great chances of active AI artillery throughout.
This is the best thing I've ever seen! Very strange indeed though. I declared war on a couple other civs to double check it. One moved it's captured barb artillery towards me since it was on the same continent. When I placed a few troops on another continent and declared war, those guys didn't move their artillery (maybe because I had no cities on that continent?).
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In fact, it would work just as well with regular basic barbs that can attack, and advanced barbs can be capturable artillery if one wishes.
EDIT: After the neighboring civ took the 1st city, they moved all 10 barb artilleries to the next, doing the same thing (bombarding with them), and when my 2nd city was taken, they continued to move them to the next city.
Using these settings, and making barbs 'raging' will pretty much do this:
* Make the game run faster by having AI use it's excess units fighting the barbarians all around the map. Game times are unusually fast 250 turns in, most barb camps were destroyed finally about 50 turns ago. Since desert can't be settled, they still occasional pop up.
* AI seems to properly use the barbarian artillery pieces. I see other AI civ's using them in their own wars now that I turned back on movement animations to see what is happening in the debug game.
* As long as the barb artillery can be captured by all civ's, it will always be around, ensuring that the game will have great chances of active AI artillery throughout.
This is the best thing I've ever seen! Very strange indeed though. I declared war on a couple other civs to double check it. One moved it's captured barb artillery towards me since it was on the same continent. When I placed a few troops on another continent and declared war, those guys didn't move their artillery (maybe because I had no cities on that continent?).
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In fact, it would work just as well with regular basic barbs that can attack, and advanced barbs can be capturable artillery if one wishes.
EDIT: After the neighboring civ took the 1st city, they moved all 10 barb artilleries to the next, doing the same thing (bombarding with them), and when my 2nd city was taken, they continued to move them to the next city.
Great Find Tom... I have not experimented as much as I would have liked concerning Barbarians.
The Barbarians cannot Upgrade because they have no improvement to allow that... Other than what we set in the Editor as the Advanced Barbarian Unit as far as I know.
The Programing seems to allow proper use of Captured Units even though the AI is programed differently for using the units it builds...this is Great
The Barbarians cannot Upgrade because they have no improvement to allow that... Other than what we set in the Editor as the Advanced Barbarian Unit as far as I know.
The Programing seems to allow proper use of Captured Units even though the AI is programed differently for using the units it builds...this is Great
tom2050
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Well, I may have not been clear enough . When the AI civ's capture the Barbarian artillery pieces from their camps, they never upgrade them in their cities. I initially wanted them to capture them and upgrade them to special offensive/defensive units. But they won't do it. Instead they use them as artillery in an active fashion (which is still great).
The reason I had to make the advanced barbs artillery is so that they could be captured. Setting them as Scouts (explore) is a possibility also. It may work that way as well, although AI will probably use them to explore the map, but may upgrade them later to offensive/defensive units.
. When the AI civ's capture the Barbarian artillery pieces from their camps, they never upgrade them in their cities. I initially wanted them to capture them and upgrade them to special offensive/defensive units. But they won't do it. Instead they use them as artillery in an active fashion (which is still great).The reason I had to make the advanced barbs artillery is so that they could be captured. Setting them as Scouts (explore) is a possibility also. It may work that way as well, although AI will probably use them to explore the map, but may upgrade them later to offensive/defensive units.
tom2050
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Here's a screenshot of in-game AI use of artillery in ultra-aggressive fashion (the Antagarich Catapults are the captured Barbarian Artillery pieces).
AI is relentless with it's use of this artillery. The Fortress just took this city of Emerald Frostlands with the help of 8 artillery pieces (2 are still in city in this screenshot, which have since been moved out) who bombarded the units there into oblivion, and then the offensive units wiped them off the face of Antagarich. They are now moving towards Decotta up north; in which the Conflux forces have 4 artillery pieces (as shown) which look like they will meet in an epic artillery clash.
Not only did the fortress use artillery against the city of Emerald Frostlands, but then used it against enemy units the next turn right outside of that city (which is where they are stationed now).
This is happening all over the map; and there are probably hundreds of these pieces on the map since barbs were set to raging. The pieces are never destroyed unless a civ gets wiped out, so it is incredible watching the AI actively use artillery. Thing is, this isn't just a random thing here, it's happening all over the map like crazy.
I'll try to get some video clips and put them up here.
Perhaps a mod can change the name of this thread to: 'Using barbarians to get AI to use artillery'.
AI is relentless with it's use of this artillery. The Fortress just took this city of Emerald Frostlands with the help of 8 artillery pieces (2 are still in city in this screenshot, which have since been moved out) who bombarded the units there into oblivion, and then the offensive units wiped them off the face of Antagarich. They are now moving towards Decotta up north; in which the Conflux forces have 4 artillery pieces (as shown) which look like they will meet in an epic artillery clash.
Not only did the fortress use artillery against the city of Emerald Frostlands, but then used it against enemy units the next turn right outside of that city (which is where they are stationed now).
This is happening all over the map; and there are probably hundreds of these pieces on the map since barbs were set to raging. The pieces are never destroyed unless a civ gets wiped out, so it is incredible watching the AI actively use artillery. Thing is, this isn't just a random thing here, it's happening all over the map like crazy.
I'll try to get some video clips and put them up here.
Perhaps a mod can change the name of this thread to: 'Using barbarians to get AI to use artillery'.
Underpaid
Multi units...
Indeed. I have one question, however: you said that the AI does upgrade these captured barbarian artillery pieces into special attack/defense units, as originally designed, but does the AI upgrade these captured barbarian artillery pieces into newer artillery units?That is Astonishing... Really Great Find as a way to use Barbarians and have the AI use Artillery as desired too
tom2050
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No, the AI does not upgrade the captured artillery pieces into offensive/defensive strategy units that I ever saw (tested up until around 250 turns), which I was hoping it would, as originally it was designed to upgrade to special units.
It's possible that the AI will upgrade them into other artillery only units (since it seems to treat these artillery pieces completely different than the rest), but it would need to be tested. Furthermore, the possibility is there that if they are upgraded, the upgraded artillery would become like most of the rest (dead/unused). We can only hope not, but to be honest, I have bad feeling about it.
This could be called a work-around... but after watching the AI for 500 turns, I've seen the AI do things with artillery that I've never seen before. Bombard-happy is a good word, and this is with 1-move, 0 att, 0 def, 10 bombard, 1 range, 3 RoF arty. Nothing special. I can imaging faster units, and with blitz?
I've updated the first post, and will continue to do so with known information.
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So, you come home to a thread like this and naturally you try it with enslave. The results are the same. With enslave being specific to the unit, you can choose exactly the type, era, and civ of the resulting unit (Roman ballista, French cannon, Russian artillery, etc.) based on what game you're using. They are used as Tom described: very aggressively. With a Civinator-style advanced auto-upgrade, the computer also upgraded a couple older bombard units into its own civ-specific modern artillery.
In typical AI fashion, it did take a number of artillery units home to base to either fortify or disband to make other crap. But it still used many more to invade enemy territory. With enslave, things can rapidly get out of hand, most especially with blitz units. It's probably best limited to a few unit types per era.
Tom, you're getting my early vote for Modder of the Year.
In typical AI fashion, it did take a number of artillery units home to base to either fortify or disband to make other crap. But it still used many more to invade enemy territory. With enslave, things can rapidly get out of hand, most especially with blitz units. It's probably best limited to a few unit types per era.
Tom, you're getting my early vote for Modder of the Year.
Why not use barbarian defenders with 0 attack strength?
timerover51
Deity
Hmm, since I hate to give the AI anything at all which might help him, I am glad that I held off experimenting. I might go with an immobile advance Barbarian unit that will be very hard to kill, just to cause the AI lots of problems. Just have to position the pre-positioned Barbarian camps so that the AI cannot kill them early.
Moosezilla
Grognard Warlord
OMG! I can only wait to see mods that use this "work around". Oh, what fun!
tom2050
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If the AI doesn't make good use of upgrading the 'captured barbarian artillery' (still unknown); here's an easy working additional alternative that can be used:
Make the 'artillery that is captured' graphics change in the pediaicons by era using the tags:
_ERAS_Ancient_Times
_ERAS_Middle_Ages
_ERAS_Industrial_Age
_ERAS_Modern_Era
so it can be a catapult in ancient, a trebuchet in middle, cannon in industrial, and artillery in modern, etc.
Also, if it is a big deal for artillery damage staying the same throughout the game, this can be overcome by making the unit a charm artillery, so that it halves enemy unit defenses instead (which is useful throughout the entire game).
Charm artillery doesn't need to be strong anyways, and usually if a mod is setup right, these pieces won't be around in bulk until somewhere between turn 150-250 on larger maps.
A charm artillery of bombard 2 and RoF 1 is quite potent, even to high defense units e.g. Get a stack of them, and you are highly likely to score a charm hit on many units, which could be seen as vastly more helpful than damaging hitpoints.
Might be scarier seeing the AI bring up 10 defenders with 10 trebuchets' and attackers, knowing that they will halve your defenders defenses.
Make the 'artillery that is captured' graphics change in the pediaicons by era using the tags:
_ERAS_Ancient_Times
_ERAS_Middle_Ages
_ERAS_Industrial_Age
_ERAS_Modern_Era
so it can be a catapult in ancient, a trebuchet in middle, cannon in industrial, and artillery in modern, etc.
Also, if it is a big deal for artillery damage staying the same throughout the game, this can be overcome by making the unit a charm artillery, so that it halves enemy unit defenses instead (which is useful throughout the entire game).
Charm artillery doesn't need to be strong anyways, and usually if a mod is setup right, these pieces won't be around in bulk until somewhere between turn 150-250 on larger maps.
A charm artillery of bombard 2 and RoF 1 is quite potent, even to high defense units e.g. Get a stack of them, and you are highly likely to score a charm hit on many units, which could be seen as vastly more helpful than damaging hitpoints.
Might be scarier seeing the AI bring up 10 defenders with 10 trebuchets' and attackers, knowing that they will halve your defenders defenses.
wolf_brother
King
Been away for awhile, coming into this discussion late, but Tom this seems to be a great work around. It appears that you're using methods I discovered last year, and by using the Barbarians to provide a way to 'mass-produce' artillery units for the AI in a consistent way, you might have finally found a way to bring proper artillery into the game.
timerover51
Deity
I must admit to being puzzled. I simply cannot get excited over a way to apparently get the AI to use artillery, and cannot understand why some seem to be so excited over it.
MeteorPunch
#WINNING
Well it's not solving world hunger or anything...but for modding Civ 3, it's pretty nice.
Ideas like this that can potentially massively change the way the game is played don't come along very often. As a modder I'm not sure this is amazing, but there is a lot of potential.
My main concern is finding a good way to get the AI enslaved artillery without allowing the human player to capitalize on this to a massive advantage. Also, I don't want to shift the game play so that the whole time you're playing "capture the catapults."
Ideas like this that can potentially massively change the way the game is played don't come along very often. As a modder I'm not sure this is amazing, but there is a lot of potential.
My main concern is finding a good way to get the AI enslaved artillery without allowing the human player to capitalize on this to a massive advantage. Also, I don't want to shift the game play so that the whole time you're playing "capture the catapults."
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