When do barbarian units enter cultural borders

Seems like I've gotten a "the villagers are hostile!" on the 2nd or 3rd turn before, but I could be mistaken.

Note that barb cities CAN appear 2 tiles away from my units if the tile is in the fog though.

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Assume the special case of a lonely heart start. So does this mean that even though I've got barb-busters within 2 tiles of every land tile on my continent outside my cultural borders, a barb city can still spawn on my continent if the tile is in fog?

What about workers and settlers, can they spawnbust as well?

Hah, and I had already assumed that this rule was old news, since nobody responded.

So lot's of questions:

FlyinJohnnyL said:

So basically the range around a unit is just a BFC but with the corners as well? And this may be a dumb question since we already have a way to exploit them but...does this count for barb galleys as well?

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Yeah, maybe we call it BFS = big fat square or barb f....forbidding square . The rule applies to the infamous barb galleys as well --> it's nice to barb-bust in barb galley breeding areas with those 1-tile offshore islands using work boats which can be sent into the fishing grounds later. As mentioned above, the barb units (warriors/archers) stationed in spawned barb cities do the same job.

TheMeInTeam said:

I really, really doubt cities can appear under conditions where units can't, but I've been wrong before.

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Although MIN_BARBARIAN_CITY_STARTING_DISTANCE = MIN_BARBARIAN_STARTING_DISTANCE = 2, the rules are different. Barb cities can definitely spawn in a units BFS as long as no non-barb player has active vision for that tile. (That's also why the AI sends there GUARD_CITY units out to the chosen city sites.) It has happened to me before.

Yamps said:

Another question:

Is it possible to pop barb warriors from a hut at the very beginning of the game? If there are no barb animals at all before turn 5, I'm guessing that barb warriors can't pop so soon either. Is this true?

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It's not possible if you haven't founded your capital yet or if the hut is at a PlotDistance < 8 tiles away from your capital. So if you move your settler and your warrior diagonally away in opposite directions and found your capital first on turn 1 to achieve a great enough distance, you can then pop barbs from a hut that early. (Try it with random seed in a deity WB-scenario.)

huerfanista said:

Assume the special case of a lonely heart start. So does this mean that even though I've got barb-busters within 2 tiles of every land tile on my continent outside my cultural borders, a barb city can still spawn on my continent if the tile is in fog?

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Yes, I recommend actual fogbusting in the juicy areas with high founding values (lot's of resources, often coastal) where you plan to get a city up via a settler. It's interesting to note that the likelihood for an early barb city spawning on your LHC island is rather low -- the game prefers to spawn them on the continents with the highest number of owned tiles, even if these places are much crappier than the sites on your continent.

Gliese 581 said:

What about workers and settlers, can they spawnbust as well?

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Absolutely! Missionaries, Spies, Great People ...

Cool, fogbusting with coastal barb cities to prevent barb galleys ...

I've been applying the spawnbust knowledge in a few recent games and I have to say it makes a big difference, especially for busting jungle areas. Where I used to always escort workers and settlers I can now fearlessly swarm the jungle as long as I have a fogbust choke and spawnbusters between it and my borders. Vast territories can be debarbified in this way.

Gliese 581 said:

... Vast territories can be debarbified in this way.

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There's your new term Gliese, debarbification instead of fogbusting.

Deckhand said:

There's your new term Gliese, debarbification instead of fogbusting.

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I'm glad you liked it!

It's absolutely incredible what knowledge and abuse of the DanF5771 barb rule is capable of accomplishing. Completely owning barbs in an Immortal/Normal LHC with nothing but warriors is pretty fun. As recently as LHC Freddy I really got my face kicked in by them...but now? Haha!

I did eventually have to use an axe or two thanks to a barb city spawn, but that just saves settler .

DanF5771 said:

A quick tip on fogbusting:

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How close can barbs spawn to a city's cultural borders if there are no units anywhere nearby?

Edit: Never mind. I tested it. They can spawn in the closest fog.

outside line of sight.

When do barbs stop spawning/attacking?

Spawn: The spawning of new barbarian units will stop after the game has reached the Renaissance era (bNoBarbUnits = 1 in CIV4EraInfos.xml). The game's era is calculated by averaging the current eras of the individual players (including the usual rounding down to the lower integer -- if everybody has advanced to the Renaissance but only Toku is still power-teching through the Medieval era, the barbs will still spawn).

Attack: As described in the posts on page #1 of this thread, the behaviour of the individual units is a function of their UnitAI (which AFAIK is imprinted on them at the moment they are created), the barb's AreaAI (which gets recalculated for each area each turn) and the current situation in the game (average number of cities of non-barb players and game options). E.g. all of you will have noticed that the Warriors/Archers of newly spawned barb cities will not start marching towards the barbs' target city (very often the capital of the human player). This is because they are created with a UnitAI CITY_DEFENSE when the city pops up. New units built by these cities however can have different UnitAIs and will therefore most likely show a behaviour of active aggression. BTW, the UnitAI of any unit and the AreaAI can be queried in debug-mode (press ALT while mousing over a tile with barb culture for AreaAI).

DanF5771 said:

Spawn: E.g. all of you will have noticed that the Warriors/Archers of newly spawned barb cities will not start marching towards the barbs' target city (very often the capital of the human player). This is because they are created with a UnitAI CITY_DEFENSE when the city pops up. New units built by these cities however can have different UnitAIs and will therefore most likely show a behaviour of active aggression. BTW, the UnitAI of any unit and the AreaAI can be queried in debug-mode (press ALT while mousing over a tile with barb culture for AreaAI).

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Does this mean that they wont leave the city for any reason? For example to pick off a weak unit that enter their borders or are they free to move inside their culture/outside it?

The city defenders will test the missions AI_leaveAttack() and AI_chokeDefend(); if one of those missions gets pushed they will leave the city to attack weak enough units in the vicinity of the city. AI_leaveAttack() exclusively checks the tiles adjacent to the city, but AI_chokeDefend() calls AI_anyAttack() during which movement on roads/railroads is also considered --> the defenders will even leave their culture to attack a unit 2 tiles away if they can reach it via road. However, it appears these checks are only performed in the case that AI_getPlotDanger() returns true for the city plot --> since non-military units like Workers and Settlers don't "cause danger" it might be wiser to let these units scurry past the barb cities unescorted , than to escort them with weak but danger-evoking units like Warriors but I don't give any guarantees here ...

That's interesting Dan, I guess you can't send unescorted workers/settlers through newly formed barb cities though.

Thanx, Dan, great as always.

Can barbs remove AreaAI at some point?

Gliese 581 said:

That's interesting Dan, I guess you can't send unescorted workers/settlers through newly formed barb cities though.

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Certainly not directly through the cities, but sometimes barb cities pop up near choke points leaving only a 1-tile passage right adjacent to the city tile.

Lexad said:

Can barbs remove AreaAI at some point?

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Each team calculates an AreaAIType for each landmass according to the number and UnitAI of its units and the number and size of its cities located on that landmass -- so do the barbs (usually team 18). Thus, they cannot remove their AreaAIs but they continuously update them.

In general the possible types are: AREAAI_OFFENSIVE, AREAAI_DEFENSIVE, AREAAI_MASSING, AREAAI_ASSAULT, AREAAI_ASSAULT_MASSING, AREAAI_ASSAULT_ASSIST, AREAAI_NEUTRAL.

For the barbs the typical sequence over the course of the early game is:

• First non-animal barb unit spawns on the landmass, no cities yet --> AREAAI_MASSING
• More barb units spawn, no cities yet --> AREAAI_OFFENSIVE
• Barb cities with city defenders pop up and the majority of the roaming attack units get killed off --> AREAAI_MASSING
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• Barb cities on uninhabited islands (no civ-players) --> AREAAI_ASSAULT

How did we make it in this world of civ before Feb. 2008? Thanks as always Dan!

I have a question on that fogbusting, dan. I don't know if this has been adressed before.

Recently, EF told me about the 2-tiles-in-every-direction-fogbusting of units.

Now how is it with owned tiles? Does each tile count as a unit or does the line of sight work as a fogbuster? The former would make more sense considering the way fogbusting with units work, even though it looks quite overkill to me tbh