BarbarianCiv: I Know How Rome Feels...

I recently played an unusual game of Civ in RevDCM today. I played on Noble (a comfortable difficulty level for me) where I was the only player on a large Fractal map. I kept all the Revolution options on except dynamic civ names.

The fledgling city of Constantinople took off to a good start. The relaxed game pace from having no early rivals allowed me to plan very carefully my expansion and tech progress. It was after founding Adrianople that things took a turn for the worse.

Barbarian cities began springing up about 100 turns into the game. No problem, my military was capable of fending them of with ease. But then they settled into Minor Tribes.

The first were India and France. They were situated on either side of me, which meant dividing my main force to deal with their incursions. Still no problem, I can deal with them.

After thirty turns of intermittent border skirmishes against the two of them I came across a group of three more Minor Civs, England, on the other side of France to me, was attacking our mutual neighbour, and took Orleans. Ethiopia sprang up inside France (the French settled down around a seperate barbarian city and never took it). I thought this was fantastic, they could keep one of my enemies at bay until they began settling down.

But then there was the Holy Roman Empire. They were close to India, but closer to me. Now I was facing a much more focused attack from the East. My military wasn't too good by then, I had lost a few isolated units to small stacks so my numbers were low.

At this point I decided to convert all my cities to producing military units, I wouldn’t wipe them out but I would weaken them to the point where the attacks stopped. But then a Holy Roman Stack took Nicaea, a poorly defended border city of no real value. I sent a stack to take it back. My twelve Axemen and three Swordsmen against four Spearmen and a Chariot, this would be an easy battle.

Not a single one of my soldiers returned. And all five enemy units were still there. Obviously they already had some experience. Defeating fifteen of my units must’ve given them quite a few promotions.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, so I took every single unit I had (even the city garrisons) and mounted a massed attack against Nicaea. I retook it, at a price. I didn’t even have enough units left to garrison every city.

I immediately went about rebuilding my army so that there were two or three units in every city, plus some reserves in my Capital. I then went about building up my army, but by then my cities were crumbling due to Starvation and unhealthiness, there was no hope of defeating repeated attacks.

Now, nearly two hundred turns into the game, my only rivals are Minor Civs, not a single one of them has settled down. Worldbuilder shows that other islands and continents have got Barbarians two, but they’re not settling. Is this a bug, deliberate or out of this world?

Ah ... there's a feature in the mod config file defining how many full civs a minor has to have contact with before it can settle. It's currently set to two by default, but since there's only one major civ no one can settle down.

Sorry bout that, will make sure to cover this case in the future.

jdog5000 said:

Ah ... there's a feature in the mod config file defining how many full civs a minor has to have contact with before it can settle. It's currently set to two by default, but since there's only one major civ no one can settle down.

Sorry bout that, will make sure to cover this case in the future.

Click to expand...

I don't know whether it's possible, but it mght be an idea to have it so that having made contact with a Major civ, in 25 turns the Minor civ settles, if it meets a second Major civ, that time is reduced to 20 turns, a third civ then 15 turns.

Ok, that explains one aspect of my current game. I started a hemispheres map with 2 players, so we'd each have a continent to ourselves. The Zulu and Ottomans settled down near me, and I conquered them in fairly short order, but the Germans appeared on the other end of the continent. Berlin has grown to size 5, they've conquered a neighbouring barbarian city, and founded one of their own, all without becoming a major civ.

The other puzzling situation is that the only minor civilizations that have appeared have been on my continent. I checked in WB, and there are barbarian cities on the other continent (and much closer to the AI than the Germans are to me). However, 3 minor civs is a small sample size, so it's entirely possible that's just how it randomly turned out.