Barbarian Activity

I wanted to start a thread about barbs, since they behaviour changed time ago and now their activity is much lower than it used to do. I dont know if it was intentional, as i dont even remember when or why was it changed, but i think we should find a solution.

First, i should say that i know there is lot of people that dont want barbs to be a menace in their games. So, what i propose is, to clearly diferenciate ragging barbarians option from the usual mode, so that people that dont want to have big problems with barbs can just play their games as usual, and people that like how barbs worked in the past, choose ragging barbarians and care about them.

Feel free to post what do you think about this;
I believe barbs cities should be defended by more than one or two units, (they suicide troops till they have just one unit inside, which make it ridiculously easy to destroy). I think they should sometimes form small armies, i think they should send more units if map conditions allow it, and also, barb workers should move when you walk next to them (they usually stay in the same tile).

Those are just examples that can be introduced in the normal game or in ragging barbs option. Btw, I have nothing bad to say about cities spawning and everything related about it, i like it how it is.

Even with Raging Barbarians on, Barbarian activity just doesn't hold up to their ferocity in the vanilla game. Recent revisions have improved things sure, but it's not at the 1.75 or BTS levels still. I still very very rarely see naval attacks (And it's usually only enough to pillage a single improvement then die/suicide. Two units that are almost a full era out of date don't make for very exciting attacks) and they almost never use siege weapons except for the Battering Ram line.

Reason for not seeing many naval attacks is that you're close to other AIs. I had an isolated play where I met only 2-3 civs until Medieval, and there were a lot of 'em popping up.

Tolni said:

Reason for not seeing many naval attacks is that you're close to other AIs. I had an isolated play where I met only 2-3 civs until Medieval, and there were a lot of 'em popping up.

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Something similar here.

In my previous game there were a lot of islands. It crippled / confused the AI civs, but "helped" the barbs. I had barb galleys coming from a nearby island barb city every few turns. I had enough defense, so they were no real threat, but they were there

Yes, being near other civs makes a huge difference. If anything, I think what changed is that maps are more crowded by default now, especially with barb civs enabled. Have you tried playing with fewer starting civs? In the past I noticed a decent balance between crowded areas where civs have lots of competition, but few barbs, and sparse areas with little competition, but lots of barbs.

Yeah, in fact i delete about 5 civs when starting a new game by default. Its doesnt make a big diference for my point of view.

Based on your feedback, we could try to do this for ragging barbs:
- Boost barbarian cities production but make them produce less buildings and more units.
- Spawn more units in the fog.

Just to report that I've found the cause of the decreased barbarian activity. It is due to the flexible difficulty that use the player diff to calculate barbarian spawning. It will try to make it a real threat, no matter the current difficulty, when using raging barbarians.

dbkblk said:

Just to report that I've found the cause of the decreased barbarian activity. It is due to the flexible difficulty that use the player diff to calculate barbarian spawning. It will try to make it a real threat, no matter the current difficulty, when using raging barbarians.

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Since difficulty influences their spawning as well as their strength (And how much damage you do to them), Flexible Difficulty's always messed with Barbarian logic. If I start on Deity they'd be a threat from the beginning up until Civ reduces my difficulty down to Warlord, then world-wide they start becoming passive again. Having Raging Barbarians provide a constant threat regardless of difficulty would be good, but I hope that difficulty level would still at least influence how well you attack/defend against them

Yesterday I started a game wirh the latest version (990?) on Deity with Raging Barbarians, on a (slightly modified) Antarctica scenario, with only 5 civs me included. Barb civs are set to spawn late (size 7),so in the Ancient era the map is mostly empty from civs. Barbarians were a problem early on, after the few animals gave way to a bunch of Javelineers and soon after Archers, massacring my poor Scouts (and several decently promoted Javelineers as well).
Once I got Archers and Axemen, though, the few barbs that trickle into my territory (2 small cities, compared to the AIs' 6 to 8) are easy to deal with, and they don't seem to spawn in particularly threatening numbers despite the great amount of empty lands around.
I feel that in such conditions their spawn rate should be higher.

Even if I don't write long sentences on the forum, I appreciate your feedback
I think it's fine to keep the bonus again barbarians depending on the difficulty but it should be a threat; at least because of their number (because they are disorganised). We should hear your people saying "Winter is coming...".

Now it would be more like "Barbanormal activity" than "Barbapapa". Of course, I'll try not to break the balance of the game.

I'm still working on this. There is a LOT of potential here. The barbarians now floats in wild countries and then try to gather in form a small army. When they are enough, they can walk to overtake the nearest city OR form a large barbarian army and TAKE OVER THE WORLD ! Oppa Gengis Style.

Sometimes you just need to contain them, but if there are 2 or 3 cities in an isolated part of the continent, it can turn into a monster. My latest tryout was a giant army which took over two of three Monty cities then broke their teeth against a Mansa Mussa city.

Definitely a lot more fun for Barbarian lovers out there. Of course, you can still disable raging barbarians

dbkblk said:

I'm still working on this. There is a LOT of potential here. The barbarians now floats in wild countries and then try to gather in form a small army. When they are enough, they can walk to overtake the nearest city OR form a large barbarian army and TAKE OVER THE WORLD ! Oppa Gengis Style.

Sometimes you just need to contain them, but if there are 2 or 3 cities in an isolated part of the continent, it can turn into a monster. My latest tryout was a giant army which took over two of three Monty cities then broke their teeth against a Mansa Mussa city.

Definitely a lot more fun for Barbarian lovers out there. Of course, you can still disable raging barbarians

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Brining back fond memories of a Highlands map I played once some few hundred revisions back. The Barbarians took out six AI on their own before the Classic Era even finished. There was almost a hundred cities belonging to the Barbarians, and much of the wilderness had roaming armies of barbarians. The few leaders who survived to the gunpowder units still lost cities to sheer swarms of Light Swords and Longbows.

It was a very brutal game, and then when the three world powers (me and the two other AI) went to war with each other.... Very beautiful game, it was glorious warfare from start to finish

Im very happy to hear it! Willing already to "suffer" one of that games

This is nearly complete. Raging barbarians will give a +15 prod to each barbarian town (I know this is huge) but instead, we'll get -10% against barbarians (the AI still have -25%). This will be more spectacular, while being balanced. However, this option makes the game harder. But that's the way it was meant to be, nah?

It's almost perfect now. Barbarians behave like wound dogs. Combined with Revolutions, this is a lot of fun. Sometimes, an invasion can take over a civilization (this is quite rare, but it happens) or take enough cities to make it to collapse because people are feared and decide to revolt.

Before to release it, I'll try to implement a fix. When culture propagates on a barb city, defenders are automatically killed as it revolts. I would like this kind of city to join automatically the closer empire instead of being unprotected and unattacked by the AI.

The update is now live: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13984790&postcount=1631
Give your feedback here.

So, what is now the exact attack bonus against barbs on noble difficulty?(I don't use raging barbarians).

It's -15%, it was -10% before the update.