forum.freeciv.org

Hi guys,

I'm doing a series of games and videos where I attempt to play as the Barbarians via cheat mode, fan editors, or hex hacking. Had great success with Civ 1, Civ 2 & ToT as there's some good guides out there and its amazing how many problems/glitches you can find your way around to get victory. But as I look to other Civ related games and fan games things start to get a bit harder haha!

Does anyone know how to take control of the Barbarians in FreeCiv?

This 2.1 manual might still work.

Ignatus wrote:This 2.1 manual might still work.

Wow! Thank you!! I'll have to give that a try. Hopefully it still works with current versions.

Wait, that's a possibility? And how do you manage your production, research etc? Does it get updated automatically when "real" civilizations discover this or that tech?

Note that there's barbarian players, and barbarian nations. Barbarian player is a special AI player, so human can't play that. Usually barbarian nations are played by barbarian players, but that can be changed. Most of the special handling of the barbarians are properties of the barbarian player, not nation.

Cipher_F15 wrote:Wait, that's a possibility? And how do you manage your production, research etc? Does it get updated automatically when "real" civilizations discover this or that tech?

If you're asking about FreeCiv Barbs I don't know yet. But if you're asking about good old Civ 1 & 2 then yes its possible using either cheats or hacks. You can't research anything and your cities are stuck building cr*ppy units. However using editors you can give your barb cities buildings and change their build ques to better units like phalanx, chariots and catapults. Racing to kill all 7 nations (& their 7 respawns) before they get too advanced in tech is very fun. I've got some 'how to videos' in the making right now which will be released soon. I've recently managed to figure out how to take control of the alien barbs in Alpha C and the Barbs in CTP2 as well!

cazfi wrote:Note that there's barbarian players, and barbarian nations. Barbarian player is a special AI player, so human can't play that. Usually barbarian nations are played by barbarian players, but that can be changed. Most of the special handling of the barbarians are properties of the barbarian player, not nation.

Well the link Ignatus posted seems to talk about disabling the Barb AI & taking control of its slot via save file editing so hopefully that is is a good sign that you can hijack the true Barb player.

A moment ago, I updated the "manual" mentioned by Ignatus:
https://freeciv.fandom.com/wiki/Playing_as_barbarians

With recent Freeciv, you don't need to edit the save file. I wrote the first revisions of this wiki page in 2010, when I edited a save file to take control of sea barbarians in Freeciv 2.1.x.

Earlier this month (May 2019), I played a game in Freeciv 3.0.91-dev with civ2civ3 rules as the pirates (sea barbarians) and won a spaceship victory! I set server options barbarians = HORDES and onsetbarb = 1 to make it easy, and I took the pirates early in the game, when there were many vulnerable cities. My pirates quickly became the largest civ.

Barbs have several special rules. I don't have time to write all the rules, but here are 2 important rules:

1. Barb cities can build improvements and wonders (though the AI never builds them), but they can't build most units. They can only build Legions, Cannons, Dragoons, Musketeers (in classic or civ2civ3 rules). That left me with no way to build roads or irrigation, so I worked mostly ocean tiles. I built Harbors and eventually Offshore Platforms.
2. Barbs can research techs like other civs. They can build Legions without knowing the tech. They can build Cannons, Dragoons, or Musketeers if any one civ knows the tech. My pirates researched Cannons and Dragoons by themselves, but got Musketeers early because another civ got them.

Kernigh wrote:A moment ago, I updated the "manual" mentioned by Ignatus:
https://freeciv.fandom.com/wiki/Playing_as_barbarians

Thank you Kernigh! This helps a lot!!!