[vanilla] Dealing With Barbarians (vanilla)

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Dealing With Barbarians - Dealing With Barbarians

Dealing With Barbarians
keeping the hairy people from your door
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Introduction

Whilst barbarians can present an annoying problem to a young empire, by using simple methods you can keep them under control with little trouble. In fact with a little planning you can turn the situation to your advantage.

If you want to know more then read on.......

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Does anybody know the formula for the spawn rate of barb camps?

I dont think that every tile under fog has an independent chance of spawning a camp.
In some games on settler,huge,great plains i have seen barb camps spawn almost every turn while on other games on the same map the rate seemed far less. i have never seen 2 barb camps spawn at the same time.

Does the chance of a barb camp spawning at all on a given turn depend on the number of tiles under fog?

I can't say for certain but since I've been doing some conscious barb farming the last few games I can share my impressions. It's particularly interesting to observe by using a Tiny map but cutting down to just one AI and a couple CSes, on an easier difficulty than you are used to. This gives you plenty of room to observe. I've only done that once, and the goal was more a relaxed game during a turbulent time IRL, but it was accidentally informative.

I also have not gone hunting in the XML files, but there doesn't seem to be a clue in what the OP showed from them.

The chance of spawning a camp *seems *to be independent of the amount of fog present. I've had situations more than once where there are only a couple or a handful of foggy locations on the map, and on a roughly regular interval I'll get the Honor notification of a new camp in one of them. Reducing the number of fog zones from a handful to only a couple doesn't seem to change the interval much, though you have to be careful about whether an AI has busted the fog. There also seems to be some sort of minimum amount of fog in an area to get a camp - I don't think I've ever seen one spawn in a solitary fog hex, but I think I have seen one on the only fogged hex on a coastline where there were fogged sea hexes around it.

If there are camps on the map, it seems to be more likely that you'll get a new unit at an existing camp than a new camp, but I don't have a feel for how much more.

Nice article.

Two things that you may want to add for the sake of completeness:

1. Barbarians never heal. This allows you to potentially wear down an encampment with an equal or lower strength unit by healing in between attacks.

2. Newly spawned barbarian units do not act on the first turn. So if you see a brand new barbarian unit spawn next to a camp you will potentially have 2 turns to act (the current turn plus next turn) before that barbarian unit acts. This could allow you to clear the encampment and retreat before the new barbarian unit has a chance to attack.

Clouds and the "fog of war" refer to two different things. Camps tend to spawn in the darkened areas of the map which have been explored but are not currently visible by any units (AI or human units) nor visible from (or maybe just not in) any city's cultural borders. These darkened areas are fog. Clouds are the hexes which you have not explored.

The Honor opener might show you camps spawning in the clouds.

RonMar said:

Camps tend to spawn in the darkened areas of the map which have been explored but are not currently visible by any units (AI or human units) nor visible from (or maybe just not in) any city's cultural borders.

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in my experience barb camps spawn in both fog and clouds (to use your terms)

RonMar said:

The Honor opener might show you camps spawning in the clouds.

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that is definetly not true. the honor opener shows you spawning camps in the fog of war, not in the "clouds"

to my knowledge there are 2 methods how camps in the clouds are revealed:

- the reveal nearby barb camps hut
- quest to kill barb camp from a CS

bostich said:

Does anybody know the formula for the spawn rate of barb camps?...
Does the chance of a barb camp spawning at all on a given turn depend on the number of tiles under fog?

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there are a few things in global defines relating to barb camps:

"BARBARIAN_CAMP_ODDS_OF_NEW_CAMP_SPAWNING","2"
"BARBARIAN_CAMP_MINIMUM_DISTANCE_CAPITAL","4"
"BARBARIAN_CAMP_MINIMUM_DISTANCE_ANOTHER_CAMP","7"
"BARBARIAN_CAMP_COASTAL_SPAWN_ROLL","6"
"BARBARIAN_EXTRA_RAGING_UNIT_SPAWN_CHANCE","10"
"BARBARIAN_NAVAL_UNIT_START_TURN_SPAWN","30"
"MAX_BARBARIANS_FROM_CAMP_NEARBY","2"
"MAX_BARBARIANS_FROM_CAMP_NEARBY_RANGE","4"

deciphering what all those mean is a different story, the only two i know for sure are the minimum distances: camps can only spawn 5 tiles from a capital or 8 tiles from another camp.

i loaded up a nearly empty huge great plains map, which is i think 72 by 57, with about a 30x20 area covered in water. on the first turn about 27 camps spawned, and then they spawned about every other turn until i believe the map was full; that is there were no spots open that satisfied the 7 min hexes from another camp. then i reloaded the same map and gained visibility for about 5/6ths of tiles, and only 6 camps spawned initially, and a lot less total camps spawned over the next few turns.

so percent of area visible has a strong impact

i did a little bit of testing on a duel great plains map

I used a mod to reveal the full map at the start, get honor and get gunships as needed.

I played the first 20 turns 3 times on the same map:

- i minimized the number of camps(killeld almost all the same turn they spawned) and maximized the fog of war. the resulting spawnrate was about 1/2

- minimize the number of camps and minimize the fog of war while leaving enough of it that camps can spawn. the resulting spawnrate was about 1/3

- maximize the number of camps(didn't kill them at all) and maximizing the fog of war. resulting spawnrate was about 1/5 (if we adjust for the fact that in the last turns there was no place to spawn a camp: about 1/4

I realize that the sample size is small but this suggest that the spawn rate depends on the number of possible locations rather than only on the tiles under fow.

On a dual map the effect is much stronger than on bigger maps: a few camps coupled with the sight of the CS and players deny almost all spawn locations.

There is obviously a hard limit of 1 barb camp per turn. The best possible spawn rates (killing the camps as soon as possible while leaving a big fog of war) seems to be in the range of 0.5 (dual) - 0.9 (huge).

P.S.: is there an easier way to test this stuff than with "cheat" mods?

download the civilization sdk and use firetuner

technology's is possessive, not plural.
but thanks for the otherwise well written and informative post

Needs some updating for G&K in the civ-specific stuff and the discussion of naval barbs. Still mostly accurate.

Since the earliest naval unit is now a melee unit, early barb naval units are much less annoying - they can't attack your land units. And since the barb AI doesn't ever seem to pillage water improvements (which in my mind is a good thing - defending them would be hellish) you can practically ignore them early on unless you are on an archipelago.

In the richer CS diplomacy model with its decrease in the importance of gold gifts, the influence gained from CS barb quests and barb hunting near CSes is a bit more relatively important than it was, but the mechanics are unchanged.

Is the positive diplomatic modifier still everlasting in G&K?

Anyone else find that Barbarians encampments rarely pop up in G&K? Once the abundance in the beginning are wiped out, they very seldom seem to pop up.

"Every time you engage a barbarian unit, either defensively or aggressively, you will earn experience points for the unit up to a maximum of 30. This equals two promotions. It is important to keep this cap in mind when dealing with barbarians because you could be wasting potential experience on units that can gain no more benefit at the expense of unprompted units."

Thanks for this bit of information. I noticed that some units did not earn experience from engaging barbarians, but I did not know why. Is there a way to tell how much barbarian experience a unit has earned, to avoid reaching the cap?

Alphons Rodulfo said:

Thanks for this bit of information. I noticed that some units did not earn experience from engaging barbarians, but I did not know why. Is there a way to tell how much barbarian experience a unit has earned, to avoid reaching the cap?

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It's not so much that barbarian experience is capped at 30 (two promotions), as barbarian battles cannot earn you XP that takes you above 30 XP total. So, for example, if you have a barracks in the city you use to produce a new unit, that unit starts with 15 XP and one promotion. If you then have a run-in with an AI (non-barbarian) unit that earns you 5 XP, you're at 20 XP. If your next encounter is with some barbarians, all you can earn is 10 more XP from your tangle with the barbarians.

Browd said:

It's not so much that barbarian experience is capped at 30 (two promotions), as barbarian battles cannot earn you XP that takes you above 30 XP total. So, for example, if you have a barracks in the city you use to produce a new unit, that unit starts with 15 XP and one promotion. If you then have a run-in with an AI (non-barbarian) unit that earns you 5 XP, you're at 20 XP. If your next encounter is with some barbarians, all you can earn is 10 more XP from your tangle with the barbarians.

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Thanks! That makes it clear. I will keep this in mind the next time I play.

Does the Furor Teutonic only trigger when entering the camp? Will killing "a Barbarian unit inside an encampment" with a ranged attack also grant the unit?

Also, how often do barbarian camps respawn? what is the radius from your your cities/other barbarians must they be farther from? How do we exploit the gold bonus?

cammcken said:

Does the Furor Teutonic only trigger when entering the camp? Will killing "a Barbarian unit inside an encampment" with a ranged attack also grant the unit?

Also, how often do barbarian camps respawn? what is the radius from your your cities/other barbarians must they be farther from? How do we exploit the gold bonus?

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Killing a barbarian inside an encampment with a German ranged unit does not grant you a unit. Not yet. Entering that now-empty encampment (or any empty encampment you find) will give usually you a free unit -- same percent chance as if you killed it with a melee unit.

I can't answer the second part.

BTW, if you have "raging barbarians" enabled, you need to send 2 units to safely clear a camp. One ranged unit can kill the fortified barb inside but a replacement will pop up before you can clear the camp. Or a passing AI scout is likely to clear the camp and steal the rewards of your labor. If you send 1 melee unit to clear a camp [with raging barbs on] he may find himself surrounded.

zxcvbob said:

Killing a barbarian inside an encampment with a German ranged unit does not grant you a unit. Not yet. Entering that now-empty encampment (or any empty encampment you find) will give usually you a free unit -- same percent chance as if you killed it with a melee unit.

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Additional detail: When a camp grants you a unit, the granted unit will be the same as the last barbarian unit that occupied the camp. So you can influence which units you get by killing the encamped barbarian unit over & over with ranged troops until the desired barbarian unit spawns in the encampment.

Also, how often do barbarian camps respawn? what is the radius from your your cities/other barbarians must they be farther from? How do we exploit the gold bonus?

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I'm not sure how often barbarian camps respawn. (Note: turning on "Raging Barbarians" doesn't affect the camp respawn rate at all. Instead, it greatly increases the rate that encampments produce units.)

As for the "radius" question, camp respawns aren't affected by distance from cities. Instead, any tile that is hidden by the fog of war from all players & city-states has a chance of spawning a camp.

Plumfairy said:

I'm not sure how often barbarian camps respawn. (Note: turning on "Raging Barbarians" doesn't affect the camp respawn rate at all. Instead, it greatly increases the rate that encampments produce units.)

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Chance of a barb camp appearing on a given turn is weighted primarily by land tiles invisible to every civ (including city states) and secondarily by water tiles invisible to every civ (including city states). A land tile in fog of war is worth several water tiles in fog of war as far as the formula goes.
Should one be generated it will be placed on a land tile within fog of war.

What this means is that maps with very few water tiles (such as some of the regional scripts) see a barb camp respawn rate several times higher than the more standard maps.

Reducing the default number of AI civs and/or city states on a given map size also has the practical effect of increasing the spawn rate for the first half of the game.