A thought on barbarian civs

BobTheTerrible

Just Another Bob
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I'm not sure how focused you are on revolutions anymore, but I have an idea for minor civs - it seems that there's still often some issues they have establishing themselves. So, perhaps when a minor civ is created (and again when it turns into a full civ), it can add something to the rev index of other nearby civs. So, perhaps if the established civ was overextended or unstable, the newly created barb civ could gain a city or two from people looking to join a new empire. It would also be cool if a little bit of their culture was added to tiles around the capital, but I don't know if you can add culture to unowned tiles and keep them unowned.
 
Thanks for sharing the ideas! I've been focused largely on Better BTS AI lately ... it's really fun for me and has a direct carry-over benefit for Revolution (and other mods as well). I've learned a lot about the inner workings of the game which will have great benefits for Revolution in the coming months. Things are happening on Revolution though behind the scenes, I'll have some news I hope you'll all find exciting in a couple of weeks ;)

Anyway, back to your idea: I agree that barb civs can have a hard time getting a foot hold, particularly if they start too close to another empire. Once the major players in the game start building sizeable armies, a minor civ is in big trouble. I like your idea about spreading culture around their starting area ... it will help get them off to a better start and also cement the area with their cultural identity, so even if they do perish future revolts in the area are likely to come back with that identity.

Influence over nearby cities was something I had thought of, but I was only planning on having nearby, small barb cities consider joining the new civ. Perhaps we could combine your two ideas ... if a rival city is close to the new barb civ capital, then it gets a small dose of culture from the new civ and a small bump in rev index.

Thoughts?
 
Yeah, that's basically what I was thinking of (It would be cool if you allowed us to specify in the .ini how much the rev index was affected). I think there's also a lot with culture that can be done in the game - unfortunately, civ doesn't really distinguish between a people's culture and national boundaries, which is something I think needs to be addressed (not necessarily in your mod).

Ideally, I would love a system where the game lays down some broad cultures from the start of the game, areas that different cultural groups inhabit. Barbarians spawned in this area would still be barbarians, but would have the name of the culture (Dom Pedro already has a modcomp that includes basically this among other things, although I haven't tried it myself). If a minor civ happened to form in the area, that minor civ would be a civ of whatever culture was in that area. If another civ happened to form in a close area, it would be it's own civ, but still be a part of the original one's culture, and get positive diplo modifiers like "we share a similar culture." The maps of cultures should be visible, so you knew if you were founding a city in another culture, and holding onto cities in another culture would be more difficult but not impossible. Also, new culture groups could arise over time, so perhaps a distinct Spanish culture could arise out of a broader European culture.

Hmm, I kind of got a little off topic, but perhaps there's some usable ideas in there. I have a few other radical suggestions for the mod (fun!) which I'll probably get around to posting soon.
 
I would really like it if minor civilizations could get a better foothold on their competitors in the area. Planting their culture nearby and and seeding more rebellion in nearby cities sounds like a great way to do that to me. (I do know that the InfluenceDrivenWarfare mod was able to change a lot of culture values all over the place, even in unowned land.) Every time I see a civilization that wasn't at the game's start be very successful, it's because it was far enough away from existing civs to be protected (or the strong civs didn't have the time to mess with them because they were constantly at war with another original civ). But if history proves true, it's the existing civs that need to be protected from the new emerging civs. I'd like to see this game get to the point where you can start the game with 3 civs or so on a good-sized map, letting many new civs pop up, and still have no idea who will come out on top (right now most of my games guarantee those 3 starting civs to come out on top, as long as they have decent starting spots and are too far to be conquered by the other 2).

On a similar topic, I've noticed that the most influential civilizations at the end of the game are always the starting ones. I'd adjust the config to make revolutions more likely in those civs, but then I'd get balkinization everywhere. My settings right now give new civilizations sizable armies and more technologies than the average existing civilization, but they still seem to always come out on bottom for some reason. This ought to eventually be addressed (maybe sometime after the revolution overhaul). Usually, even in marathon time, I don't end up having any barbs settle before about 500bc (and often it doesn't happen until later). One idea I did have was to somehow make barb cities pop up a lot earlier (does the coding allow that?) so that they can settle sooner and have more time to make an impact on the world (without affecting the timing of the animal barb to human barb transition).
 
I'm attempting to do the same thing (barbarian civs being on equal footing with old ones) with my own modding attempts. Basically, I've done the following:

-Huge increase to Animal/Barbarian/barbarian city spawn rate
-Neither human nor AI has any bonuses fighting barbarians
-All civs start with 2 settlers (makes barbarians spawn faster, since they start spawning when avg # of cities for existing civs is 2 [actually, something like 1.5 for Revolutions]. To compensate the early drain on economy, I'm making palaces produce more gold (otherwise, science lags the whole game).
-Barbarian civs get 100% of techs known by all players, builder civs get more bonus techs and miltaristic ones get much more military
-Cities can't be founded on snow or tundra (helps get rid of those useless barb civs which form out of a lonely tundra city, plus since I'm using PerfectWorld there's sometimes an abundance of useless tundra area)

What I'm trying to get at is have barbarians keep the original civs in check (I've seen a few wiped out by barbarians alone) while the barbarian civs have more of a fighting chance. The balance still isn't perfect and I wish I could do more than simple xml work.

I'm also going to edit the random events so that each barbarian uprising is active in every game, and make them more powerful, perhaps repeatable, and perhaps create new ones. When I did this in an earlier version of Revolutions, it was quite scary to see repeated Hun invasions at all corners of the globe. The problem here is that this event occurs 1 tile outside national borders, so civs that are surrounded by other civs (most likely to be the starting civs, the very ones I want to target) are basically protected. I also want to be able to make all starting positions occur within a 20-30 tile radius to make more competition among early civs, but I don't think I can do this through xml at all.

Suggestions in general for Jdog (as toggleable options in the .ini):
-Barbarian cities can't spawn on a landmass that doesn't already have a city (to keep the cities in the Old World)
-Barbarian civs can only spawn on a landmass that already has a civ on it (to prevent them spawning on small islands in the middle of nowhere)
-Ability to specify the order in which barb civs form
 
Thanks for the feedback both of you! I agree that something needs to be done to make barbcivs more viable and to make military ones a bigger threat. Part of the reason it's less balanced now is the switch to having barb civs start as minor civs and the changes to how the transition from minor to full is handled in the newer versions. The culture changes and revolution changes we've discussed will help, but more is needed.

There was a fair amount of resistance to the idea that barb civs would popup with advanced tech as I recall ... but with weak infrastructure, small size, and often getting picked on by the other players they will fall behind quickly and have a hard time recovering. I'm thinking that maybe they'll start with the tech level they have now, but be given a lot of partial credit to the next level of techs. For military barbs I'm also planning a series of bonuses for capturing cities, so that they can sustain an early roll. Both types may also need some financial boosts for the first several turns as well. I think I already added free golden ages.

The timing and placement of barb cities is a big factor too. I'll have barb cities start a little earlier (there are several things which hold them back ...), and consider giving them free workers occasionally so they grow faster and have better infrastructure. Barb city placement is currently somewhat random, partly based on the normal city site valuation with a significant dose of noise. This means that even when there is good territory remaining barb cities are sometimes in suboptimal spots, just missing resources or water access, etc. And of course plenty also start surrounded by jungle or tundra ...
 
Alright, a few comments:

When the first barbarian civ spawns, there's usually 1 AI that is lagging a little in tech. So, the barbarian civ gets 60% of the lowest teched AI by default, which is hardly enough to compete. The next barbarian civ gets 60% of that, and the next barbarian civ gets 60% of the previous barb civ, ad infinitum, so the barbarian civs spawn farther and farther behind. This gets offset a little bit by the builders getting a few bonus techs, but it's not enough to put them up to parity.

To remedy this, I gave barbarian civs 100% of techs known to all civs, so that the problem is less pronounced. I also raised the number of bonus techs to 12 or 15, and although that sounds extreme, it doesn't really seem broken in the few games I've tested it with (and the military barbs have their strengths raised from 1.0 to 8.5 or so... it's lots of fun). Anyway, I just thought I'd point that out. I know many people may not like it, but perhaps you can add an option in the custom game screen for the barbarian civ lethality - levels like Pathetic, Annoyance, and Lethal.

Anyway, that was just a random thought. The main reason I posted was to make another suggestion. I'd like to be able to control the order that the game selects barbarian civs (with or without some noise), and I think this suggestion captures a way to do just that. When the game spawns a barbarian civ, it can do a check for which unused civs have a unique unit that fits into the tech area that the world is in, and spawn one of those civs. So, a barbarian civ to form in the ancient era will choose a civ with an ancient UU. This makes sense from a historical and a gameplay perspective. In game terms, this means that it would be rare to spawn a civ who would not be able to use their UU - for example, when the Babylonians spawn in the medieval era, they'll never get a chance to use their UU, while the Spanish who spawned back in the ancient era didn't get to use their UU right as they spawned.
 
Whatever way you guys decide to balance this, please make it so that New World civs that spawn, spawn very backwards. The game just seems more like a Terra Map should when you discover the new world civs and they are all minors still stuck 2 eras behind the old world.
 
Whatever way you guys decide to balance this, please make it so that New World civs that spawn, spawn very backwards. The game just seems more like a Terra Map should when you discover the new world civs and they are all minors still stuck 2 eras behind the old world.

There's an option for "new world tech reduction" in the .ini that puts new world civs a variable percentage even more behind the rest of the civs.
 
Hmm... as long as we're commenting on barbariancivs and Minor civs, I'd like to add my own thoughts. I don't know if this is supposed to happen, or if this is a glitch, but I purposely set up a Huge game, with only 2 other civs starting with me. My hope was that on my continent and on the rest of the undiscovered continents that barbs would spawn up and fill out the rest of the map over time (I kinda got this idea from a RevolutionDCM map that sadly doesn't work for me, but the Earth map only starts out with 3 civs with the BarbarianCiv filling out the rest of the world over time). It started working fine on my continent, with a bunch of guys starting as barbs and carving out their own empires. But when I decided to go and discover the "new worlds", but when I got there, all of the civs I met were still in the minor civ stage, when I was hoping for at least some regular civs that were at least advanced. But then 2 turns later (after I met them), they all suddenly organized and became civs. But throughout their entire lives they were in the minor civ stage, giving them a huge disadvantage of being at war with everyone around them. Is it supposed to work this way? Does there have to be a regular A.I. civ that didn't spawn form barbs to meet them and cause those BarbarianCivs to organize, or is this all a huge coincidence?
 
It's an option in the revolution.ini file regarding New Word Policy. Open up the Revolution.ini file with notepad and scroll down a little, you'll see the following:

Code:
; New world policy controls handling of barbcivs starting away from the original civs in the game:
;    0:  New World treated basically like old world, New World will be basically full of full civs by the time explorers arrive
;    1:  Reduce settling, bonuses of New World barb civs but can form both minors and full.  Will probably be a mixture of states, with some free space when explorers arrive
;    2:  Like 1 but capped at minor civs in New World until the civs start to make contact with the old world.  Odds of settling into full increase with number of contacts.  Will be all minors when the first caravels pass by, full civs emerge as time goes on. (default)
;    3:  Like 2 this is capped at minor civs in the New World but the chance of settling into a full civ doesn't start until an old world civ lands units in the New World.
;    4:  No barb civs of any kind settle on empty island/continent until another civ lands an explorer
;    5:  No barb civs of any kind until another civ founds a city on island/continent
NewWorldPolicy = 2

Change the number of NewWorldPolicy to whichever option you like best.

The reason everyone cascaded into full civs after you contacted them is that A) in the default setting, they can't form into full civilizations until they contact the old world, and B) they need a minimum # of contacts with "full" civs (2 contacts w/full civs by default). Once you contact them, that's 1 full civ, and after another old world nation does, that's the 2. Once one of the minors goes full, it sets off a chain reaction of almost all the minors going full, since they probably know both you and the other civ who has become full.
 
Thanks BobTheTerrible! That makes a lot more sense (I had a vassal, which probably explains why they organized a couple turns afterwords). I'll go change edit that setting now.
 
There's a lot of neat stuff in the .ini file. You can make revolutions more or less frequent, limit the amount of barb civs that form, how powerful the barb civs themselves are when they form, and all sorts of other things.
 
I just had an idea: I think it would be interesting if whenever barb civs spawned and got their new techs, the techs that they got depended on the civs surrounding them. That way, if a barb civ spawns in an area of the world that has advanced civilization, it will get advanced technology in compensation for having to compete with some of the most advanced players. If it spawns in a relatively empty or backwards part of the globe, then it won't have as much technology, but it won't have to fight against the hardest players in the game, so it could expand more easily anyway. As the area fills up, new civs will be around the same level as the area is locally, so if the area begins to have dominance technologically, the new civs will be more advanced.

Another possible factor to include could be that the more civs there are in an area and the more powerful they are, the more military we could give them (if the players nearby are more advanced in technology, we could give more advanced units as well). That way, new civs won't be so easily crushed if they spawn on the borders of a strong region. That would let us see situations where there are barbarian civs trying to take chunks out of some of the strongest players in the game (think like with what happened to Rome).

Here's another idea to throw out there. It would cover the areas of the globe that are filled up with civs and can't experience the uncertainty brought on by new barb civs. This has a little bit more to do with the revolutions component, but it applies here too because these parts of the globe need some kind of event to replace new barb civs since "new civs" that were powerful in history didn't always come from empty areas or from revolutions. The idea is that if an unstable civ happens to lose a chunk of its empire due to civil war and the revolutionaries are having success, the revolutionaries might spawn a lot of extra units (similar to new barb civ unit spawns) and simultaneously declare war on surrounding empires (this would give civs an incentive to keep an eye on nearby foreign revolutions; civs in history were always very concerned when they had unstable neighbors). We could also give this effect to very small empires that recently have been able to conquer local areas. This could allow situations very similar to the French Revolution or the rise of Macedonia's empire under Alexander the Great. Of course, this would have to also be adequately balanced so as not to take everyone by surprise.
 
Actually, the rebels already do gain some military support if they start having some success if I'm reading the Rev events properly - but it may be that you think the amount is insufficient. Jdog, am I correct that the units spawned by rebellions depend on what was "damaged" in the first phases of the rebellion? If not, I'd definitely recommend making that part of the sequence.
 
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