Too hard?

[Cilpot]

First of all, thank you for the Wildmana modmod. It is truly an amazing addition to the best mod out there!

Just one (noob?) inquiry:

I started a Wildmana game for the first time yesterday, and I noticed the overwhelming amount of barbarians. Now, normally I like the challanging onslaught of any kind of mythical beast. Bring'em on! The problem was that all the other civilizations were struggeling immensely with the onslaught. Civilizations were dropping like flies, and after a while it was only me and one other Civ left. I opened the worldbuilder to see what was going on, and the map was practically full of various barbarian units far stronger than anything me or my fellow civs could muster. I had been lucky, the other (last) civ would fall within a round or two. Game over.

Am I doing something wrong? I really like the idea of strong and plentiful barbarians, but I don't really like my neighbor civs being killed off early. Surely there must be a way to get a good long epic game with many civs from this amazing modmod?

[MiKa523]

What difficulty are you playing?
Afaik AIs have (higher) bonus against barbarians on higher levels.

Also there are two options to reduce the wildland threat:
-tamed wilderness
-only spawn barbarians and animals in fog

[[to_xp]Gekko]

weird, I haven't seen civs destroyed by barbs in Wild Mana aside from a couple times. the only thing that imho spawns WAY TOO MANY barbs is acheron's city, I had to turn off the red dragon after I moved from Noble to Emperor after I realized that the guy starting next to him was utterly screwed.

are you playing with raging barbarians? and possibly no wildlands? that would explain it as the increased animals keep the barbs in check..

[Cilpot]

As I was new to Wildmana I chose the Prince difficulty. I saw the two lowest levels were removed, does that mean that Prince is actually Chieftain?

I started a new game (not custom game) with a huge Erebrus continents map, all default settings. I reloaded the game three times, each time the same thing happened. Once I even gave each AI six champions to start with, and still they were demolished.

[[to_xp]Gekko]

wow, that's weird. you are correct in saying that the first 2 difficulty levels were axed, Prince is still Prince

maybe you could upload a couple savegames for Sephi to check out? I haven't seen AIs die quickly to barbs, and I play with barbworld, raging barbs, pirate invasion, dragons and wildlands, both on noble and emperor. my gf though says that Alexis is always getting killed quickly in her games, so I'm wondering if there is some AIs or circumstances that are not working correctly.

[Cilpot]

I'll see if I can cough up a save or two later when I'm in the vicinity of my home computer.

Thanks for the replies, I'm glad it looks like it's "just me"

[Sephi]

for a strange reason there are a lot more barbarians on Erebus mapscript than on other maps.

[Skyre Noktis]

Erebus Continent isn't the same as the Erebus map script.

The main causes of early AI deaths seem to be:

1. Very, very early attacks before Civs have had a chance to build defences
2. Orthus

[Valkrionn]

It's not really that there are MORE, just that they're channeled straight at people. There are usually only one or two paths out of a 'zone' in the map, and if you lie on one of those paths while the Barbs pass through, you're screwed.

That's one of the many reasons I despise Erebus, and play ErebusContinent.

[graywarden]

[QUOTE=
That's one of the many reasons I despise Erebus, and play ErebusContinent. [/QUOTE]

I am totally addicted to ErubusContinent, only way I have played Wild Mana & FF2 Since I discovered it.

First thing to build is a defense of 4 units, send scouts out in pairs once the barbs appear.

Its hairy in the Erebus Wilderness .....

[Senethro]

The first time you run a mod you should use the Play Now! option to run a game. This clears some hidden game options that can mess with barbarians.

[Jabie]

Restoring the lower difficulty levels to Wildmana would help out a lot. Not all of us are good enough to play on Noble.

[Seven05]

Originally Posted by Valkrionn

That's one of the many reasons I despise Erebus, and play ErebusContinent.

Originally Posted by graywarden

I am totally addicted to ErubusContinent, only way I have played Wild Mana & FF2 Since I discovered it.

Now I feel all warm and fuzzy inside, thanks for the kudos (fuzziness jokes aside)

One thing that I found helps a lot at noble and prince (on my map script anyway) is to add an extra civ or two to the game and reduce the amount of tundra and jungles by a step each. This will reduce the amount of open land which will help keep the barbarians in check. At higher levels you can run with the standard number of civs and the AI will fair better with their increased bonuses to production and against barbarians. Using the 'tame wilderness' (or something like that) game option makes it too easy on ErebusContinent, for me anyway, but that's a good option on large and huge maps if you want to reduce the number of civs in the game.

[Senethro]

Originally Posted by Jabie

Restoring the lower difficulty levels to Wildmana would help out a lot. Not all of us are good enough to play on Noble.

Then play on a lower difficulty level.

[Valkrionn]

His point is that you can't. The lower difficulty levels were cut out from Wild Mana.

[tesb]

not anymore afaik

[Sephi]

with barbarian archers nerfed and early barb spawning tweaked, does problem described in the first post still exist?

[Seven05]

Today, in 7.41 using my mapscript on a large map with 10 civs, 3 of them were taken out by turn 75 (normal speed, monarch difficulty) and three others had lost a city to the barbs by the same time.

Looking over the map it looks like the barbs are getting axemen faster than the AI can field their own or anything better than warriror for city defenders and the combination of goblin archers and orc axemen are eating them up pretty quickly. They're losing workers to the swarms of frostlings and wolf riders and enraged animals very early and spending time building replacement workers while fairly constant stacks of 3+ barbarians whittle away at their defenders. Since the barbarians and the animals are both more powerful than anything the players and AI can get out in the field early in the game the barbs & animals are getting well promoted quickly and become virtually unbeatable.

The civs that do well apear to be those lucky enough to pop several free techs from the goody huts (graveyards for me since I can't get scouts out as quickly as the AI). This looks like it's compounding the problem, perhaps limiting the goody techs to just the tier one techs will help keep the barbs from advancing so quickly and not make the lack of free techs from unlucky rolls or placement so critical to survival.

This doesn't happen in every game so I blame it on the random numbers

The only issue I really see with the number of barbarians is that they appear in stacks and rarely alone. It's not uncommon to stumble upon a lair with a stack of 3+ skeletons on it that wasn't there a few turns ago, the same thing happens with the goblin forts.

[arstal]

That sounds like the problem. A better solution would be to just gimp the barb's tech progression until Turn 200 or something.

[Seven05]

Going a bit further in the same game, from turn 75-100 the Malakim were wiped out, losing four cities to the barbs (go Orthus!). If you're curious, Orthus died a quick death at turn 120 as soon as he stepped across the border into Grigori lands and they had Axemen and archers of their own by then.

The Malakim were producing a lot of Lightbringers while under attack when they could have produced twice as many warriors in the same time and probably survived the onslaught better. Perhaps when a city is in danger they should prefer units that can be produced faster a little more than they currently do? I did enjoy watching them plummet from a strong lead to dead in less than 25 turns though

The Grigori are almost unaffected by the barbarians despite being pretty much on their own now that their neighbors are all dead. They have numerous well promoted axement of their own and will probably do well until the barbarians get their next upgrade. The Lanun are also doing very well but their survival looks to be the result of a very nicely sectioned off chunk of land all to themselves with only two paths in for the barbarians. The Banor and Amurites are both struggling and have lost cities to the barbarians and it looks like the Balseraphs will follow the fate of their malakim neighbors soon now that they're getting hit from three sides.

I'm doing fine myself, the only thing holding me back is the desert (now full of barbarians cities) since I'm playing the tree-hugging elves and I hate sand. I've had a few surprise stacks appear on my borders but careful placement of a couple border cities on hills handles most of the barbs as they come.