*Spoiler* Qsc18r2 - Barbarian Insanity Game progress

Hi,

I just noticed I haven't posted my save file yet. Somewhere I must have screwed my count, since I save 150BC as my 120th turn save. I hope you guys don't mind.

So here it is.

I haven't posted for a while because I have PTW now and enjoying the multiplayer mode with tout-la-famille! Even my daugther who is seven enjoys taking part. We have a small local network and I have reason to believe my husband who hadn't touched CivIII (altough he by far outplayed me in civ2 Apple style) will be hooked again soon .

So it likely I'll spend less time at the board but more time civvin'!

@ Mad-Bax

Great game, you have a very comfortable empire at turn 120. Concerning your comments on barbarians in PTW, I totally agree. It would be interesting to see the calculations coded into the AI barbarian behaviours. In short you're safe from the barbarians as long as you avoid to get them into your borders. However, once they're uprising in the middle age you better be ready with roads and a mobile defence to defeat them from whereever they should choose to come from(you don't get the warnings allways in PTW). Or they could wreak havok on your improvements in your terrain. Now that the AI don't suicide into your towns; 8 horsemen is a real threat to your empire if your main force is at war leaving you with a token defence force at your borders.

Singularity:

Yes. It appears that barbarians in PTW are opportunistic. If they see the chance to kill something easily (including pillaging) then they do. If there is a significant risk, they do not commit suicide as you say. The AI controlling them seems to me to be poor in that their ability to explore is poor. Yet there is an explore mode for the human player units. I would assume the same code is used for the barbs as this. Why expend the effort doing it twice?

I agree with you. Barbs in PTW are only a problem once they get in amongst your towns. Once there they pose more of a problem than in vanilla. However it appears (from my very limited experience) that Crackers penchant for barb islands means that PTW players and vanilla players may be able to play quite different games. It'll be interesting to see a comparison of games and scores for the two game versions for the Celts GOTM.

I think your game showed more imagination than mine. I particularly liked the city placement between the cows with the irrigation from the river. A really strong move. I wish I had thought of it. Also I liked the way you placed the bottleneck cities.

Did you give them away in the end?

Guess I'll see you in the spoilers (if I get there this month )

has everyone submitted?

Cracker - if so, when do you think we might get some feedback (qsc style scoring erc.) ?

ciao

(I know you're busy cracker - I hardly expect this soon , just a rough guideline as to date.

Thx

As soon as we start getting the Qsc18 and Gotm18 results up, then I will be back here to do some more with you. There are several very interesting things that you have revealed here that can be applied to other games.

I had very interesting barbarian behavior in the regular GOTM18 using PTW 1.21. Initially the barbarians came through the choke point. After a while they stopped attacking and just milled about.

Here is the image:


The city at the narrow point absorbed the barbarian hordes during the change of ages.

This situation existed for hundreds of years. The barbs neither advancing or pillaging. The towns on the barb island were a suprise to me. The barbs didn't make any attempts to stop settling near their base camps. In fact I had one gallic swordsmen take out almost all their camps nearly unmolested. This unit was dropped off by boat after I found it impossible to beat back the sheer number of barbs to get there by land.

After several hundred years of milling about aimlessly at the top, they suddenly swept down into the area to attack my city (Curovernum) until each and every last one was destroyed. I barely held them off and needed to rush musketmen to do so. This sudden exodus may have been triggered by a city being built in the top area - maybe when the last land on the island was claimed by China building a city so every square belonged to some civilization. It was not triggered by switching ages.

GOTM 18 was the only game I have ever felt the need to turn off enemy moves. There were enough barbs up there that their "turn" would take at least a minute to complete.

There are definitely rules they follow. I am unsure what they are however. Here is a save if anyone want to play with it. Enemy moves need to be turned on to see the barbs do anything. This save is 170 years after the image above was taken.


Barbarians Milling About

cracker - did you ever get a chance to review the "games" we played here ?