Barbarians!

What about approaching this issue from the opposite direction? Cities in Civ 5 should be very weak when founded and it is this period of time that the Barbarians need to exploit.

For example, when a new city is founded, perhaps it could start out as a hamlet. A hamlet would not be able to build city walls or a barrack or be able to defend itself. A unit could still occupy the Hamlet, but that is all. Barbarians should be able to attack en masse.

Once a city grows to a suitable size, it could then add walls and with the construction of a barrack it would gain its original ranged attack. Barbarians would be weaker against these better defended cities.

The period of time that a city would require to grow large enough to defend itself would be the ultimate window of opportunity for Barbarians to sack cities. It would also force the player and AI to make sure that new cities are properly accounted for when looking at overall realm city defense strategies.

Is something like this possible now, or would it require the DLL files?

-Hrnac

If you do some test runs with Raging Barbarian option then you can nicely watch how much civilizations will suffer by Barbarians.
I once had Babylon in a longer game session with Raging option that was still reduced to the capital after more than 100 turns without any units defending. It got hammered by 3-4 camps all the time, stealing settlers and workers.
Raging option isn’t really necessary anymore and cripples AI civs too much anyway. It is already challenging - or should I say entertaining? - enough with normal spawn rate.
It can still sometimes happen that superior, experienced units get pawned by 2-3 Barbarian units in one turn.

I do tests with the Have Fun! mod revealing the map. I often watch cities with no HP left, in particular City States, so I think there isn’t really much else needed to do. Changing City Defense or the general AI settings isn’t also part of this mod’s focus, so there won’t be any change like that.
Newly found cities are already very vulnerable to Barbarians. It all depends where and how many camps are around. Later, stronger Barbarian units will have it even easier versus new cities.

The new invisible city-attack bonus can’t be taken over by Germany’s and Ottoman’s conversion traits, so a balance is there. It’s like a unique civilization trait bonus of the Barbarians now.

If I got the time then I will do more tests with all these Barbarian AI settings. Most modders, like me, still don’t really know for what all these AI settings are for and how they best work in conjunction.

The city tweaks would definitely need to be a stand alone mod. I may start taking a closer look at what can and can't be done with city defenses.

-Hrnac

I would start tweaking with the settings in GlobalDefines.xml.
The small bonuses of Wall, Castle, etc. can be neglected compared to settings like Population Change or those Tech modifiers.
For example, you could put more emphasis to population than tech, so in Modern Era, new cities only start with 25 or less Defense instead of 50 or something.


Barbarians! mod topic isn't really the proper place to discuss such, but feel free to talk about combat stuff in my Unit-Tweaks topic. The Barbarians! mod is also included in my Unit-Tweaks mod.
I also do tweaks to cities there if it has something to do with combat. The units alone already take so much time, that's why I haven't dealt with City Defense yet. Experimenting with parameters takes time.

v9
- Barbarian Mech "Rogue" removed
- Barbarian Chariot Archer "Harasser" added
- Unique icon for Barbarian Naval units if DLC02 "Spain and Inca" installed
- Unique Barbarian Frigate "Privateer" model and portrait if DLC02 "Spain and Inca" installed
- Barbarian Encampment: +25% Defense
- Minimum distance between camps decreased from 7 to 4
- Odds of new Barbarian camp spawning decreased
- Availability of Barbarian units delayed to one technology tier later
- Experience cap of fighting Barbarians set to 100
- Incompatible to v8 saved games


Download

v10
- Update to patch 1.332
- Removed Ironclad "Raider"
- Minimum distance between camps and capitals increased from 4 to 7
- Incompatible to v9 saved games

Download

bah, i just use this mod with "unlimited barb exp" - i love it, hopefully it works with all the mods i like to use.

Mentos, does this Mod work with G & K?

I downloaded this MOD and started a game with nomal barbs, ancient era start.

At turn 2, I travelled 4 hexes with my scout. Suddenly a Modern Era Infantry Barb Unit (I'm guessing str 50+) one shotted my poor Scout.

Turn it off the Mod.

it's not updated for G&K

Any chance someone want to update this for G&K?

Acoustics, if you are just after the experience factor Blou Blou has created a Mod called Barbarians- Unlimited Experience (Version 2) that works with G & K.

Mainly interested in the AI changes to it, thanks though!

Ah, okay. I generally set the game to raging barbarians and with unlimited experience get a nice handful of experienced units by the time the AI attacks me. (it also gives a bit of polish to the first policy in honour- nice getting a bit of culture for killing a barbarian).

I just need barbarians to be smarter and actually try to attack cities.

I keep having crashes whenever a barbarian ship attacks a city or an embarked barbarian attacks a city or unit. Is this compatible with bnw? I really enjoy this mod and wouldn't much like going back to vanilla.

I'd love to play this but a power 36 partisan walking around before turn 20 is a little extreme.

Same problem. I do not know a thing about modding or I would try to fix problem. This is the type of mod I have been looking for. Apparently in a very small minority.

I love the mod, but being that the Barbarians are so over powered early on, much less they leave you to the brink of ruin and leave, this mod definitely needs to be fixed. I still love, and use it, though.

Some suggestions/ideas I have:

-Barbarian Marines could be called "Insurgents".
-Barbarian Workers could be "Slaves"
-Barbarian XCOM could be "EXALT Troops"
-Barbarian Tanks could be "Highjackers"
-Barbarian Death Robots could be either "Alien Invaders" or "Rogue AI"
-May I suggest calling a Barbarian knight a "Black Knight"?