New mechanism for BarbarianCiv

The discussion in the 'Rev BTS' thread about BarbarianCiv got me thinking while I was wandering around the National Museum of Scotland ...

Currently, when barb cities settle down into a full civ 1-3 cities will immediately flip to the new civ. They'll then be considered either peaceful builders or militaristic warriors and given an initial batch of units or buildings depending. While there are several factors which adjust the odds, which type of settling a particular BarbCiv does is fairly random. For militaristic settling, the size of the army and target for invasion are also fairly random. While it works fairly well in producing a nice variety of situations, I think I've figured out a new system which will produce similar ultimate results more deterministically.

New Scheme:

Settling will now happen in two phases. First, individual cities, when they reach a certain size, will flip from the barbarians to a new, minor civ. These little city states will have a their ultimate culture, but given the Minor Civ tag which means they can't engage in diplomacy and will be at war with everyone. They'll be set up with some initial units techs, a toned down version of the current setup without any builder/militaristic specialization at this point. Then, when this minor civ has achieved something noteworthy, they will organize into a full blown civ and given some extra perks to help them on their way. If they acquired a city by conquest, they'll be militaristic. If they built a wonder or reached a high level of culture then they'll be builders. If they built another city, founded a religion, or had their city grow to some large size, then they'll have a chance at both styles.

Since they will have been around for a little while before this second phase, things like who they've met and who they've been fighting with can be used to determine victims of militaristic civs. They will also build up more gradually, rather than exploding on the scene with no warning allowing players to react and prepare. Even if the little city states are conquered before they become full civs, their culture will still be planted in the area and give a more natural basis for choosing rebel civs for different areas in the future.

I've hesitated to use minor civs before with the reason that why use a limited no diplomacy civ when you could use a full fledged civ. However, having this little transitional minor period seems to work fairly well. When the minor civ settles, your status and the outlook of the other AIs with respect to the city won't change ... you're still at war. However, the new minor civ will now be at war with the other barbarians around it. Instead of having groups of barb cities settle together, the biggest city will now form a minor civ and try to conquer one of the others. If they succeed then the result will be like before, a full-blown civ emerging in the area based in those cities. Another minor civ could emerge from one of the other cities in the mean time, however, and they might have to fight it out for supremacy. Regardless, when they transition to being a full civ their initial setup will be determined by how they got to that point and what they've done, giving more of a sense of meaning to any barbarian hordes that may assault your gates ...

There are several things to figure out and balance so that these minor civs get a fighting chance in the world they're born into. Beyond that, with this new system I think boosting the appearance of barb cities (and maybe units to cut down on early exploration) is certainly worth exploring.

Anyway, let me know what you think!

I was actually thinking something similar the other night. I kept thinking about how occasionally you'll get the "such and such has formed the _____ civilization" message, and they'll just have one backwater city, and it's laughable that they'd be considered a full civ. So my idea was to require that there must be 2 unified cities in order to be considered a civilization, and anything below that (1 city) would just be an independent state (obviously a few problems with that). If you look at Rhye's mod, he has a whole mechanism for cities breaking off and becoming independent, or entire nations collapsing into a mass of independent cities. You declare war on each city separately, and I think you'll become peaceful with them if neither of you do anything for a while, but this is the only diplomacy you can conduct with them. This is all without requiring a civ slot or needing a leaderhead, so maybe you could incorporate this somehow so you don't have to "waste" a full fledged civ for a minor tribe. And once, as you said, they achieve something noteworthy, they'll develop into a full civ.

Anyway, I'm getting off topic. I think this would be a great idea.

I think this is a great idea.

I was just wondering what would be considered an acheivement, for this minor civ, because of course if it was something like founding a religion, you might not get any barbs settle own at all.

Perhaps a whole new dynamic could be added, so if a leader had just been ousted from power in a revolution (and replaced by another leader), in a nearby civilisation. This leader could escape and take the reigns of power in this new kingdom? Would this be implementable? Because i think It'd be really intersting to see, expecially since you might see Hannibal fighting Hannibal II, but both form different civs.

What do you think?

Dnomal said:

I was just wondering what would be considered an acheivement, for this minor civ, because of course if it was something like founding a religion, you might not get any barbs settle own at all.

Click to expand...

I'd imagine the achievements to be something like either: Capture a city, reach a certain culture threshold, found another city or two, have a certain number of military units, build a wonder, reach a certain (high) population level, or found a religion.

EDIT: I came up with those off the top of my head, and they so happened to be exactly the ones jdog mentioned in his post. haha.

Yeah, those sound about right

If a minor civ's achievement is founding a religion, it seems like it could be interesting to give that civ some kind of "missionary zeal" advantage, where they get a whole bunch of missionaries for that religion right off of the bat.

An interesting idea! They probably won't have very many places to send them immediately, but in their first turns not having to build missionaries would help get them started.

I really like this idea, but even more, I think it could be used in application of the new world on Terra maps. Maybe keep civs that start there as minor civs until it starts getting colonized, and then maybe they can slowly turn into full-fledged civs. Maybe they can even be allowed to make achievements before colonization, and let them count afterward. But then again...if a feature gets put into place where you can later switch to new civs popping up, they wouldn't be too much fun to play. But I still really think that this could be used to nerf new world civs in a simple way.

Did this mechanism get impleted sounds good ?

It is being implemented now, will be in the next version (1.30).

cool sounds good

i wonder if this concept could be transformed into a good representation of nomadic tribes, like the north american navtives or african tribes. What i mean is maybe, as an alternate to a barb or minor civ, there could be nomadic tribes. u could use a cross between the camp unit in the warlords gehngis khan scenario, for movable city, and the batle station in final frontier, for a tile improvement that spreads culture. i know this is kind of vague, but if u r interested, im working out how it would work.
PS: love how this mod has developed, hardly play without it : )

Nomadic tribes would certainly add some fun flavor to the early parts of the game ... to a certain extent, now that I think about it, the roaming barb units in the early game can be thought of as such a tribe. However, having a few nomads that were more established could be interesting. I'd certainly like to here what you come up with.

the problem with the roaming barbarians is there is no diplomacy with them. My idea for nomadic tribes would make them basically movable civs. first of all, there is the camp, a unit that when fortified spawns other units every couple turns (but low tech units), and has small cultural borders. second, they would need to automaticlly have all resources in borders without tile improvments. third, trade must be possible and the nomads must be willing to trade all resources for gold/turn. the purpose of this being that upon getting x amount of gold they will be able to afford to upgrade the camp to a settler and then build a city. This would establish them as a full fledged civ similar to barbarians settling down. The nomads would also have to be very peaceful, as barbarians would rep agressive natives. Nomads could also settle down by conquering a barb city, if they happen to. Until settling down, nomads would be similar to the independents of Ryhe's and fall, but with trading.
So, could this be done?

Most of it sounds pretty good, and certainly doable. I'm not so sure about the trading part, without some fairly major overhauls ... how would connections between civs work with a camp unit? Roads would not really apply to the nomads (and there wouldn't be many at this early stage in the game anyway). Seems like they'd only be able to trade if they camped next to a river. Also, for a large part of the early game where such a civ would be viable GPT trades are not yet possible. So, some other mechanism would be needed to cause settling into a full civ ... thoughts?

Let's just say... don't worry about the nomadic camps

(But seriously, I'm currently working on a modcomp that adds nomadic civs to the game.)

So as I understand it, minor civs are just kind of like a civilization that you can't conduct diplomacy with, right? So if one of these minor civs does not do anything noteworthy, it will still be taking up a civ slot right? I'm not saying this to criticize you, since I think this is an excellent idea, but I am just curious how it functions in the game.

Yes, minor civs are always at war with everyone since they can't conduct diplomacy.

Generally what happens in my tests is that a significant percentage (~70%) do succeed in becoming a full civ. They will frequently attack outlying settlements of neighbors with a decent stack and take cities from other players regularly. Other civs will also launch stacks at them quite a bit, but their defenses are better than barb city defenses so they often survive unless the other civ is firmly established and can throw a lot at them. Those that fail to become full civs usually have spawned next to one of the early powers in the game and have the misfortune of being their only target.

Those that do survive and rise to full status seem to generally function like BarbCivs in the previous version. When they do get conquered, yes they still take up a civ slot. Often, they will be seen again as rebels at some point in the game which is one of the bonus side effects of this system I like. It sets up more meaningful "homelands" for smaller ethnic groups for later in the game. However, it does mean that their civ type will only spawn in that general region of the map (which is logical) but they won't be available for other revolts where their type would be preferable (ie America rebelling against British).

My main hope for this update is for the new world on Terra maps (which I prefer because of their similarity to Earth). Yet revolutions has the consequence of putting new civilizations down on the other continent that take up almost all of it. I'd like to see a feature that makes something like 50% of it be settled by natives, with small weakened empires, but a few with strong ones. (I've heard of some modding restrictions into the game that either keep them from settling down until other civs arrive there or limit them to forming only a few cities. I think this might go a bit too far though.) This would be like the different parts of the Americas on earth, like conquering the Aztecs and Incas (who were both actually quite strong but conquered by illness, treachery, and revolts from subjugated tribes, actually ) , or just settling down where there were few natives (like with the 13 colonies and Canada) and expanding further inland by slow war with divided natives (although having many different divided native civilizations would be nice, it would also take up a lot of civ slots). I'd like to see some better incentives for old world empires to take over the new world without having fierce opposition (and what are the current rules/restrictions for new world empires rising?). Any other ideas to consider?

What exactly are your plans for what to do in the new world with minor civs?

i've played a couple of games with the new version, and the minor civs thing is working good. i've noticed that a lot of them do not remain as minor civs very long, but instead quickly settle. very few barbarian cities cause they all become minor civs within about 20-30 turns, and then full civs in another 20-30. im not complaining, just wondering if this was the desired effect.