All right, considering the feedback on barbarians lately, this is my plan for the next weeks/months
1. I will make some XML changes to (1) tone down the effect high wilderness has on unit strength (2) reduce the amount of barbarians spawning, especially on higher difficulties and (3) even more reduce the amount of naval units spawning.
As I think 0.5 will take a while I will prepare this also for 0.4 and upload it here for everyone to try out.
I agree on all three points. Does that includes the "substitute raw unit combat for promotions" change?
0.5.0 is progressing faster than I initially thought. I already have all the major changes coded and either committed or being tested, except the Governor's Mannor balance change that could be pushed to 0.6.0. But, since 0.5.0 is going to include a
merge of the changes in recent Erebus in the Balance versions, I'm planning to test it thoroughly to identify any consequences that the changes could have in the new features that ExtraModMod introduces. In short, you are right; 0.5.0 should still take a while.
Because of all of this, if you prefer to get testing for these three points before 0.5.0-beta1 is released, I don't mind creating a 0.4 branch from the 0.4.1 tag and backporting to that branch any fixes I commit on the main branch that don't break savegames. That way, it would be simple to merge that branch with BarbsPlus when you are done and release 0.4.2. What do you think?
2. A "No Wilderness" option, intended for competitive multiplayer. Randomly spawning barbarians, lair spawns and lair defenders, but not spawns from dungeon exploration, would then completely ignore the wilderness value of a tile.
... would make the other features of EMM available to everyone who doesn't like the wilderness feature. I'd like to have "No Wilderness" ready for 0.5 if possible.
I agree; I like the replayability that wilderness introduces, but I'm sure that some players will appreciate the reduced randomness.
3. For beyond 0.5, considering what BobCW called "vast, endless swarms" I intend to (once again) redo how barbarians spawn. The idea is to disable normal random spawning (maybe partly, maybe completely) and replace it with a lair spawning system. There would be new lairs (see
issue, part 1) that would spawn randomly on the map and start producing units (up to a given limit, like normal lairs in BarbsPlus). You could either kill that units whenever they attack you, but you could also invest in a small party to destroy the lair (this type of lair would be razed automatically when stepped on (like animal lairs), giving some gold), what would reduce the amount of barbarians attacking you for a while.
I think that your idea of tying barbarian spawning to lairs is a good move. Besides addressing most of the problems mentioned in the feedback, it will also solve one of my problems with barbarians in Civilization IV: they come from random directions. The strategy for facing the barbarians will also be more clear; instead of trying to watch as many tiles as possible with scouts, it will be enough to patrol the civilization's surroundings frequently and attack any new lairs. This will reduce the "there is nothing I can do to stop them from coming" feeling that you get in some games.
The proposed system reminds me of the barbarian encampments Civilization V, and I think that you should borrow one of its elements. Since lairs are an important problem that the player should face as soon as possible, and they can appear on already explored terrain, it would be helpful to show a small notice to the player indicating that a new lair has been found.
Although as I mentioned I consider this to be an improvement, in my opinion random barbarian spawning should not dissapear completely, just have its chance greatly reduced. The wilderness would not feel very dangerous if you don't have to prepare for the unexpected
Edit: Oh, and the no-dungeons bug is fixed for the next version of MNAI
Great; I still haven't tested it but we will have this in 0.5.0 (not in any possible 0.4.2, though).
With regard to all the proposals as a whole, since ExtraModMod starts to suffer from
too many game options syndrome and all of these changes would mean adding another two, I wonder if some of the game options that control barbarians and animals could be unified somehow. With this addition, we would have:
- Raging Barbarians
- Barbarian World
- No Barbarians
- Wildlands
- No Lairs
- No Acheron
- No Orthus
- No Wilderness
- Barbarian Cultures (when it gets merged)
Proposal 3) makes No Lairs nearly identical to No Barbarians, so it would make sense to unify both of them into No Barbarians. I would personally unify Wildlands and Raging Barbarians too, but I don't have a strong opinion on this specific point and I believe some players will prefer them separate. I also guess that No Acheron and No Orthus should be kept the way they are. The other options should be kept too. I also wonder if game options (all of them, not only these ones) should be moved to have a more meaningful order.