Barbarians, neutral nations, criminals

I've a couple of ideas.

~~Barbarian Overhaul

I think Barbarians should be expanded and changed, drastically. I think ancient times should have the roaming hordes of destructive barbarians, but I think there should be a higher criminal element to CivIV

Barbarians.


Basic barbarians-
Similar to Civ3,but the barbarians should become gradually updated to reflect the changing technology and culture. You can communicate with groups of barbarians, you can bribe them to not attack you, they can make demands from you, you can bribe them to attack your enemies instead of your civ, etc. Also, barbarians would have the ability(albiet the unlikely one) to form new independant(neutral) lesser nations.(see below)

Pirates-
These will include naval units that will raid your ships(every sunk ship you lose some money), and have the ability to bombard coastal cities, and hold passengers. They will also include land units that will have amphibious assault, that will take gold from your city (if your defenders are defeated) and there will be the possibility that improvements will be destroyed, and an even smaller cahnce that the city will be razed.


Slave Traders-

These will include large-capacity transports. The salve traders will have a land unit that, if it enters your city, will capture 75% of its inhabitents and load them back onto the ship to be sent back to their camp. Slave traders will communicate with you to ask you for ransom for your captured people, or to try to sell you slaves from other nations.



Neutral Countries.

Neutral counties could be randomly generated at the start of games, depending on the size of map, and level (similar to roaming, restless, etc). These nations have their own borders, and start with a capital city. They can send out settlers and do everything a normal civ can do, except they are completly neutral and will only grow to a 4-city limit and will only defend themselves from attack. You can incorporate them into your Civ if you have an impressive enough culture and you are willing to pay out your ass.


What do you think?

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http://www.glodas.net

75% is a tad much. They'd really just kidnap/buy less than a single population point's worth of citizens. Incidentally, pirates spent most of their time raiding costal settlments; ships were incredibly risky. The cities you found represent major cities, the area in your cultural radius represents suburban-esque cities (including said costal settlements).

Mewtarthio said:

75% is a tad much. They'd really just kidnap/buy less than a single population point's worth of citizens.

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agreed, maybe more like 25%? and probably have a 1.1.1 sat w/ 3 hitpoints, and enslavement ability

I think they should just carry off 1 citizen.

barbarians should become insurgents/revolutionaries in the industrial age, perhaps terrorists (not a touchy subject in my eyes, i have suggested this to an american before who called it tasteless in the shadow of 9/11. i pointed out that in fact, terrorism has been going a good while before that, in many countries) in the modern age ?

barbarians > *?* > revolutionaries > terrorists... i dunno how difficult to implement it would be, but they could make a few new graphics/possibly make them into "regulars" in the later years, to represent training/organised resistance groups ?

Gwil said:

barbarians should become insurgents/revolutionaries in the industrial age, perhaps terrorists (not a touchy subject in my eyes, i have suggested this to an american before who called it tasteless in the shadow of 9/11. i pointed out that in fact, terrorism has been going a good while before that, in many countries) in the modern age ?

barbarians > *?* > revolutionaries > terrorists... i dunno how difficult to implement it would be, but they could make a few new graphics/possibly make them into "regulars" in the later years, to represent training/organised resistance groups ?

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I've mentioned this before elsewhere, but its worth saying again here. Barbarians, revolutionaries, and terrorists are fundamentally different concepts.

There's nothing inherently militant about barbarians: they're just people who live outside of civilized areas. Civ handles them very well by having both "goodie huts" (friendly barbarians) and encampments than churn out warriors (hostile barbarians). And the encampments crop up outside of civilization, in territory that isn't claimed by any civ. Once the entire world is claimed by civilized nations, its logical that there are no more barbarians.

Revolutionaries and terrorists, however, operate within civilization, and are inherently militant and hostile. Including them in the game isn't a bad idea, but they should not simply be modern versions of barbarians. The concept of revolutionaries should be tied into the concept of civil wars/rebellions, i.e., revolutionaries should come from cities that are trying to revolt, not from the middle of the wilderness the way barbarians do. And terrorists shouldn't even be military units: the whole point of terrorism is to have an effect on someone without having to directly confront them militarily. Terrorists are capable of causing only relatively minor damage (in game terms) to military units and population (even the 3000 or so people killed in NYC on 9/11 represent less than 0.05% of the population there: far less than a single population point even if NYC was a size 100 city!). The damage that they do (and the reason for their name) is terror: their success is measured not by the number of casualties they cause but by the effect that those casualties have on the rest of the population. Including this effect in the game would be tricky... I can think of two possible ways. One would be to make it a "random event" that would strike you and make your people unhappy. A better way would be to have terrorism be an espionage function: a variation on sabotage that would have the potential to dramatically decrease happiness in the city (or the civ as a whole) due to the people's fear and panic. I think that including it under espionage would be preferable since even if the terrorists themselves aren't the agents of some government, they have a hard time operating without some government support. This would allow the possibility of reprisals against the responsible government (such as the USA's invasion of Afganistan after 9/11).

Regardless of how (and whether) revolutionaries and terrorism are implemented, my main point is that they aren't the same thing as barbarian activity, and should not by treated as such.

EDIT: corrected spelling.

dylanhatesyou said:

Neutral Countries.

Neutral counties could be randomly generated at the start of games, depending on the size of map, and level (similar to roaming, restless, etc). These nations have their own borders, and start with a capital city. They can send out settlers and do everything a normal civ can do, except they are completly neutral and will only grow to a 4-city limit and will only defend themselves from attack. You can incorporate them into your Civ if you have an impressive enough culture and you are willing to pay out your ass.
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I don't understand the point of this one. Neutrality is a choice not to get involved in a war between other civs, not an inherent characteristic of any country. If I invade you, you're in a war, whether you want to be neutral or not! And why would any nation handicap itself by arbitrarily deciding never to attack someone else, only to defend. Sure, this has happened for certain periods of time in RL, but never for the entire history of a nation! It doesn't make any sense at all to put countries in the game that are inherently "neutral" when you can end that "neutrality" simply by attacking them.

Maybe the term "Neutral countries" was just a poor choice of words, and you really mean just adding minor countries that are somehow limited from becoming full civs. If the point is just to increase the number of nations on the map, why make them minor ones - why not just increase the number of full-fledged civs? If these countries would be able to do everything a normal civ can do, what's the point of limiting them to only 4 cities or having them only defend themselves, not attack others? You'd just be adding a bunch of artificially weakened civs to the map... I don't get it.

The only thing I'd like to see, in the way of minor civs, is a more sophisticated and abundant barbarian presence at the beginning of the game. Currently, uncivilized people come in two flavors: the friendly kind from goody huts that teach you techs, give you maps, etc., and the hostile kind (from goody huts or from randomly appearing encampments) that attack you. I'd like to see more of a spectrum, with people in between friendly and hostile. One example would be barbarian villages that don't go out of their way to attack you, but who do defend themselves when you expand into their territory. Another would be barbarian tribes that you could ally with against another civ (or vice versa), i.e., they'd be friendly to one civ but hostile to another. Including this kind of "minor nation" would make the initial expansion period of the game more interesting, and also slow expansion down a bit, and there wouldn't have to be leaderheads, UUs, or anything like that for the barbarians.

Once the whole world is civilized, then that's that - certain civs shouldn't be artificially handicapped or limited. In real life, there are well over 100 nations on Earth, but Civ is a game - it does not and should not try to simulate real life perfectly. I understand that increasing the number of opponents can make the game more interesting, but why make the extra opponents artificially limited?

Two very well written posts, Judgement. I agree with you in full.

Here is how I think Barbarians should evolve:

Barbarians (Like Civ 3) -> Theives (Think Robin Hood type guys) -> Laborers (Industrial Revolution caused a lot of violence from workers) -> Terrorists (Big problem in modern day)

CIVPhilzilla said:

Here is how I think Barbarians should evolve:

Barbarians (Like Civ 3) -> Theives (Think Robin Hood type guys) -> Laborers (Industrial Revolution caused a lot of violence from workers) -> Terrorists (Big problem in modern day)

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Maybe my post above was too long and you didn't read it, or maybe you disagree? IMHO, Terrorists and barbarians aren't related! If you disagree with what I wrote above, I'm curious where you think I've gone wrong...

Terrorists, from a Civ III perspective, are simulated by the Espionage action, Sabotage.
If you wanted to have a unit version of terrorists, then you would used the Civ II equivalent of spy/diplomat, which had the option to commit sabotage.
The chance of unit destruction; the chance of determining the responsible nation; the anxiety caused by the possibility of sabotage, or loss of population; the cost of training/carrying out a mission; all these things are present in Civ II and Civ III.
Whatever method Civ IV uses to carry on the tradition of Spies will pretty much include the simulation of terrorism with it.
Unless Civ IV drops the concept completely. Something that seems very unlikely.

Criminals are already an integral part of the city happiness screen, and cause plenty of trouble until proper city improvements are added. Who do you think the corruption is caused by, honest citizens?

Barbarian upgrades makes sense, and the ability to use a captured city, even if only for resources, makes more sense. If nothing else, cities captured by barbarians should be able to conscript military units, and/or, build their own units, depending on the barbarian's equivalent level of technology. Maybe even upgrading units they already have, if appropriate city improvements survive the capture, and the barbarian's tech level justifies unit upgrades. Even American Indians managed to switch from bows to rifles when they successfully raided a settlement.

maybe barbarians should be upgraded in the industrial age to geurilla's or partisans these units could just pop-up in to your territory just like civ 2 barbarians

the likelyhood of those units poping-up may depend on: how long you are at war or civil disorder.

EDIT: never mind

I think that most of those who wish to see "minor" countries involved are looking for a more interesting game play. The main problem to "minors" seems to be how to incorporate them. Some advocate that minors be barbarian-controlled. Others advocate hand-cuffing minors with poor expandability. Most agree that minors should not be a major source of goodies (i.e. beat up on the minors to get all your techs and lots of free money because they can't possibly compete with your army).

Those who post further on this, should keep these points in mind when coming up with more ideas. Btw, the post on Civil Wars has a lot of similar ideas in it as well.

judgement said:

I've mentioned this before elsewhere, but its worth saying again here. Barbarians, revolutionaries, and terrorists are fundamentally different concepts.

There's nothing inherently militant about barbarians: they're just people who live outside of civilized areas. Civ handles them very well by having both "goodie huts" (friendly barbarians) and encampments than churn out warriors (hostile barbarians). And the encampments crop up outside of civilization, in territory that isn't claimed by any civ. Once the entire world is claimed by civilized nations, its logical that there are no more barbarians.

Revolutionaries and terrorists, however, operate within civilization, and are inherently militant and hostile. Including them in the game isn't a bad idea, but they should not simply be modern versions of barbarians. The concept of revolutionaries should be tied into the concept of civil wars/rebellions, i.e., revolutionaries should come from cities that are trying to revolt, not from the middle of the wilderness the way barbarians do. And terrorists shouldn't even be military units: the whole point of terrorism is to have an effect on someone without having to directly confront them militarily. Terrorists are capable of causing only relatively minor damage (in game terms) to military units and population (even the 3000 or so people killed in NYC on 9/11 represent less than 0.05% of the population there: far less than a single population point even if NYC was a size 100 city!). The damage that they do (and the reason for their name) is terror: their success is measured not by the number of casualties they cause but by the effect that those casualties have on the rest of the population. Including this effect in the game would be tricky... I can think of two possible ways. One would be to make it a "random event" that would strike you and make your people unhappy. A better way would be to have terrorism be an espionage function: a variation on sabotage that would have the potential to dramatically decrease happiness in the city (or the civ as a whole) due to the people's fear and panic. I think that including it under espionage would be preferable since even if the terrorists themselves aren't the agents of some government, they have a hard time operating without some government support. This would allow the possibility of reprisals against the responsible government (such as the USA's invasion of Afganistan after 9/11).

Regardless of how (and whether) revolutionaries and terrorism are implemented, my main point is that they aren't the same thing as barbarian activity, and should not by treated as such.

EDIT: corrected spelling.

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Interesting points you make - and I agree (and understand the concepts of terrorism/revolution etc from extensive education/reading on the subject )

I'm not saying terrorism or revolution should be catgorised or worked as a barbarian function - but be the modern day equivalent. I'm not sure how terrorism would operate, certainly not thorough your nations espionage, as there is also a clear difference between spying and state sponsored terrorism.

Revolutionaries, for instance could come as a result of cities in long term civil disorder - perhaps in ungarrisoned or weakly defended cities particuarly afflicted by corruption and unhappiness, pop points could be lost to regular riflemen say - who make a beeline for the capital, or the nearest large city - based on the same principles you lay down.

Terrorism, i'm not sure - it was more a point to get ideas churning in peoples heads - and also you seemed to misconceive terrorism as Islamic based terrorism - Germany, France, Britain (and other countries to boot) have all suffered over the years at the hands of terrorists - mostly affiliated with political/religious/indepence movements, but certainly not sponsored by states (except in the case of Moscow, Tripoli, Kabul et al).

Perhaps one way of looking at it would be incorporating terror from cities of other civilizations which are "annexed" (for want of a better word) inside your civilization raising specialist units who exist solely to damage your pop points in the capital/large cities/annexed cities. Again, you could limit or quash the effects of this by keeping up happiness and avoiding disorder levels, or having large garrisons - but I for one feel that modern age terrorism cannot go hand in hand with espionage/or the action of your country.

Of course, all this is just theory and ideas - and would probably require the "barbarian" activity to be coded differently for the 4 ages. However, I feel it would add a new slant, and an interesting and realistic challenge to the game - particuarly later on when the only problems a well established Civ faces are usually from a rival Civ. Bleh, that contradicts my idea of state sponsored terrorism, and perhaps there is a case for it - but I feel you cannot (as a game concept) tie it solely to espionage, or a civ action - it's just not realistic by historical measurements.

Bleh, *faints*

@gwil: In RL, there is a clear difference between spying and state-sponsored terrorism, but I don't see what the clear difference would be in game-terms. Espionage already includes the "sabotage" function - how is this significantly different (in game-terms) from state-sponsored terrorism? In both cases, a foreign government spends some money, and you suffer damage from a secret, surprise attack on one of your cities.

I do admit, though, that not all terrorism is state sponsored, and making terrorism purely an espionage function would mean that the only type included in the game was the state-sponsored kind. To include terrorism perpetuated within a country, for political/religious/independence/ideological reasons that have little or nothing to do with the influence of outside nations, would require a different implementation. However, I still don't think terrorists should be units. Unit-to-unit combat represents military engagements, and terrorists (state-sponsored or not) are simply not in the business of fighting traditional military style conflicts. Like spies, terrorists work behind the scenes, not out in the open like traditional military.

Perhaps terrorism should be an event that can occur randomly, damaging some of your infrastructure and decreasing the happiness of your people. The chances that it would occur depend on several things: (1) the number of unhappy people in your empire (more unhappy people mean more people likely to commit terrible acts), (2) the number of police stations, courthouses, etc. (the more you have, the less likely a terrorist attack), (3) the number of foreigners in your empire (conquered people are more likely to want independance), and (4) the action of foreign governments (the espionage function "sponsor terrorism" would increase the chances of a terrorist attack in the target country). With such as system, terrorism would be more likely to happen if a foreign country sponsored it, or if it was linked to an independance movement within your empire, but it could also theoretically happen without either of those things: if there were lots of unhappy people and you didn't have strong enough law-inforcement infrastructure, people from your own civ might commit terrible acts, presumably because of political/religious/ideological motivations inflamed by their own unhappiness.

I hope I'm clear that I'm not against including terrorism in the game (or rebellions, either). I just think its a separate issue from barbarians and shouldn't be confused with barbarian activity (and I also personally think that, however terrorism is implemented, terrorists shouldn't be military units).

judgement said:

Perhaps terrorism should be an event that can occur randomly, damaging some of your infrastructure and decreasing the happiness of your people. The chances that it would occur depend on several things: (1) the number of unhappy people in your empire (more unhappy people mean more people likely to commit terrible acts), (2) the number of police stations, courthouses, etc. (the more you have, the less likely a terrorist attack), (3) the number of foreigners in your empire (conquered people are more likely to want independance), and (4) the action of foreign governments (the espionage function "sponsor terrorism" would increase the chances of a terrorist attack in the target country). With such as system, terrorism would be more likely to happen if a foreign country sponsored it, or if it was linked to an independance movement within your empire, but it could also theoretically happen without either of those things: if there were lots of unhappy people and you didn't have strong enough law-inforcement infrastructure, people from your own civ might commit terrible acts, presumably because of political/religious/ideological motivations inflamed by their own unhappiness.

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I like this concept. Perhaps terrorism could be reflected in losing city improvements to sabotage, people being unhappy, and decreased trade/ increased corruption. The last one is because terrorism drives up the cost of doing business and slows down economic activity.

Oh indeed, I can see the role of terrorism as a possible game concept needs to be separate from barbarian activity - as barbs certainly do represent a whole different idea within both history, and the game.

As you suggest, the random event theory does seem to be the best idea for it - also I agree with your proposals on measuring the likelihood of an attack

Increased likelihood -

Forced labour/excessive whipping (more so when done against foreign nationals within your civ)
Wars undertaken/wars undertaken repeatedly against the same Civ
Sanctions/Embargos against countries without good reason (harder to implement, too close to realism) - or possibly excessive embargos against civs who have nationals within your country.

Decreased likelihood -

The presence of :
Universities (representing education and tolerance)
Police stations (go figure )
Intelligence Agency P)
Overall happiness levels.

Perhaps if it were to be included as a game concept, they could have alternate specialists - intelligence agents, in the modern ages who do a dual job of the policeman specialist/anti-terror. That's a bit of a shaky idea though, and links into a thousand other discussions..

As a footnote to that and after reading a discussion based around the subject of slave workers, they could also perhaps be a referencing factor? Or even more so, they hold relevance to the revolutionary idea for the industrial ages.