New Featurette

what is the CS being siege by siege tower at 0:21 is that a new CS? and the mountain (with tress) behind it it looks like a new natural wonder.
0:37 Malacca mercantile???

The barbarians attacking during the city-states turn could just be a graphical issue. The graphic at the bottom isn't updating as quickly as the units are moving.

What strikes me as odd is that, given the rather limited time they're allowing for showcasing BNW, they're giving a far greater look at barbarians than you would have expected. A curious Tomahawk barb, three run-of-the-mill caravels and two, almost unheard of, barbarian battleships; out of all the potential footage they could include in this they give us shots of these?

Edit: Is that a new icon for the barbarian turn at 0:37?

Stellarnight said:

Did anyone notice that the "barbarian ships" were attacking during the city-states turn rather than the barbarian turn? what does this mean?

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This is an interesting observation. If I recall correctly, there's this weird... thing currently where we only see the units moving AFTER their turn has passed in the indicator below.

To better explain it, let me give you an example:
Let's say I am playing with two other civilizations - the Greeks and the Romans, and they go respectively during the turn (so, I go first, then Greece, then Rome, then City-States, then Barbarians).
Let's also say I'm waging war against Greece.
In that case, one can notice that Greece's units will only move once it says bellow it's Rome's turn (since Greece had finished doing it's turn, the only thing being played are animations). Likewise, Rome's units will only move when it says it's the City-States turn.

EDIT: I tried getting a screenshot of what I was talking about, and this was the best I could do in a short time. In this screenshot, you can see the damaged Ethiopian Warrior is moving from the tile with the Fur Resource by the river to the tile South-West of that, with the Banana Resource on a hill. However, bellow it says it is "Processing Turn for Player 3" - were this Ethiopia's, it wouldn't claim to be unknown (after all, I had just declared war on them!).
END OF EDIT.

This has interesting implications - it means those barbarian Battleships might just belong to a Civilization, and not "actual" barbarians (and said Civilization played last, before the City-States). This goes along well with the Tomahawk "barbarian" unit we saw in one of the screenshots, too.
A Civilization that lets you disguise their units as barbarians (as an UA) could be fun to play as - you could raid Trade Routes, pillage other's improvements, and in general cripple other civilizations without declaring war. Other civilizations will obviously be able to destroy your units without repercussions as well.

Even if they aren't just manually adding barbarian units to show combat (which I agree is likely), they're almost definitely using late game starts, which would explain barbarian battleships. They're not going to begin a new ancient era game every time they want a 2 second clip for a new promo video. Also, some of the earlier promo videos showed the policy tree with no policies picked and 3 picks available, which also confirms late game starts.

JSMCAG said:

A Civilization that lets you disguise their units as barbarians (as an UA) could be fun to play as - you could raid Trade Routes, pillage other's improvements, and in general cripple other civilizations without declaring war. Other civilizations will obviously be able to destroy your units without repercussions as well.

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What repercussion can be worse than having constant war against all civs? well AI certainly can pretend not knowing it is human player's units, but definitely a nightmare in mp.

Was I the only one that thought that the battleships were Portuguese rebels rather than some super secret barbarian-lookalike conspiracy civ?

So...

• Barbarian Tomahawk
• Barbarian Caravels
• Barbarian Battleship (an oil unit)
• Barbarian plays before their turn
• Way too many barbarian on screen for nothing to be afoot

I can only see 3 solutions:

1. Some tech/SoPol/Tenet/UA allows some of your units to be viewed as Barabarians, which could be kind of cool. Kind of stupid to do that with a UU but why not.
2. A new civ takes the black and red color. Since it fits and the tomahack, I'd say Sioux. They make a good candidate for a tessaract civ too.
3. Barbs get new units, including ones from civs that aren't in the game à la military city states. That'd be sweet, barbarian Naresuan's elephants invasion

... or the devs are just messing with our minds!

Laxley said:

Was I the only one that thought that the battleships were Portuguese rebels rather than some super secret barbarian-lookalike conspiracy civ?

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Me too, and it's not the normal rebel, it's the tourism rebel, the sea trade may modify tourism output from the culturally aggressive civ and the coastal cities may be more vulnerable to tourism aggression.

Is that a Mongolian unit on the bottom at 0:59?

Tinker said:

Not of any particular relevance, but I love how the modern era caravans are trucks with a little camel logo on them.

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I agree, it's kind of adorable.

Avatan said:

So...

• Barbarian Tomahawk - No good explanation that I've seen.
• Barbarian Caravels - These could just be a coincidence.
• Barbarian Battleship (an oil unit) - Potentially these are just rebels.
• Barbarian plays before their turn - Potentially a graphical glitch.
• Way too many barbarian on screen for nothing to be afoot - Quicker to plop down barbs than declare war and wait for AI to turn up.

Click to expand...

For any single one, or even two, of these I'd probably agree that it's just a coincidence and accept the most reasonable individual explanation(s). All of it together though, coupled with the latest 'hypercube' comment (which I presume builds on the previous 'pro-Civ' comment from an earlier article), seems to me to be sufficient to wonder about something else.

I can only see 3 solutions:

1. Some tech/SoPol/Tenet/UA allows some of your units to be viewed as Barabarians, which could be kind of cool. Kind of stupid to do that with a UU but why not.
2. A new civ takes the black and red color. Since it fits and the tomahack, I'd say Sioux. They make a good candidate for a tessaract civ too.
3. Barbs get new units, including ones from civs that aren't in the game à la military city states. That'd be sweet, barbarian Naresuan's elephants invasion

... or the devs are just messing with our minds!

Click to expand...

I like the idea of option 1 as a UA for a particular Civ and it would certainly be rather strange.

It's unlikely to be the second option, 0:37 in the vid confirms barbs as black and red. Sharing colours with the barbs is a possibility but not one I suspect with much weight in it.

The third option is a possibility, but why?

EEE_BOY said:

What repercussion can be worse than having constant war against all civs? well AI certainly can pretend not knowing it is human player's units, but definitely a nightmare in mp.

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Why would you need constant war against all Civilizations? You wouldn't be playing as the barbarians, but you could disguise your units IF (and WHEN) you wanted to.

This means you could have, say, a Pikeman, and you found a Trade Route which would be lucrative to pillage. Disguise it, go on a raid, and once you get what you want, move out of sight and turn it back. No constant war, not many suspicions were raised (barbarian Pikes are not that unlikely - I see them in every game). Sure, Human Players would know it is you by looking at the turn counter below, but that doesn't help them much (then again, I never played against others! ).

But I dunno, otherwise I don't really have much of an explanation for the weird barbarians that we have seen lately...

Avatan said:

So...

• Barbarian Tomahawk
• Barbarian Caravels
• Barbarian Battleship (an oil unit)
• Barbarian plays before their turn
• Way too many barbarian on screen for nothing to be afoot

Click to expand...

I figured I say that barb caravels show up all the time when I play, although the rest I have nothing to say about.

if a civ does have the ability to disguise their units as barbs, I'm 90% that everyone will hate the guy who chooses to play as them on MP (it's like picking that annoying character with the really small hitbox in a fighting game.)

Veneke said:

I like the idea of option 1 as a UA for a particular Civ and it would certainly be rather strange.

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so it's not a tenet, I checked on Arioch's site. Probably not a SoPol, have we seen the new honor?
It would be cool in SP for a UA but dumb in MP, so I hope not.

Veneke said:

It's unlikely to be the second option, 0:37 in the vid confirms barbs as black and red. Sharing colours with the barbs is a possibility but not one I suspect with much weight in it.

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Ah you're right . That was my fav explanation, but eh...

Veneke said:

The third option is a possibility, but why?

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It would add diversity to the brute/archer/trireme/pikemen routine I suppose?

Does anyone have other ideas?? I got nothing

Well, could it be a Civ with the Ability to hire mercenaries among the barbarians? That could fit Venice.

Red and black are the colours of the Timurids, but we know that Samarkand and Kabul are city states...Maybe the Timurids are just a fighting group of units that try to conquer cities?

I suspect there is a dev tool that allows them to assign any unit type to the barbarians, and to control them for demonstration purposes.

knightmare13 said:

what is the CS being siege by siege tower at 0:21 is that a new CS? and the mountain (with tress) behind it it looks like a new natural wonder.
0:37 Malacca mercantile???

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That does look like a new natural wonder, I wonder what it is

Avatan said:

Does anyone have other ideas?? I got nothing

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Maybe the revised economy cause more disbanded unit

bite said:

That does look like a new natural wonder, I wonder what it is

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If so, wow, Byblow has TWO natural wonders inside it's borders - I'm pretty sure the tile north of the mystery mountain is the Rock of Gibraltar! No wonder Assyria wants them!