Barbarians per camp.

[NiceOneEmlyn]

I have always been under the impression that a barb camp can only spawn to a maximum of three living barbarians. Recently, whilst playing an island map, I came across a twelve hex island with one camp and four barbarian archers. The island was too small to have ever contained two barb camps and besides I was the first player to discover said Island.

Has my assumption for the past five years been wrong?

 

[binhthuy71]

Not sure about the max number of living Barbs that can be spawned. The extra ones on that island may have come over from a camp on a nearby island.

 

[shaglio]

I have always been under the impression that a barb camp can only spawn to a maximum of three living barbarians. Recently, whilst playing an island map, I came across a twelve hex island with one camp and four barbarian archers. The island was too small to have ever contained two barb camps and besides I was the first player to discover said Island.

Has my assumption for the past five years been wrong?

In my 4 1/2 years of playing Civ 5, I have never witnessed, nor heard about, any limitation on the number of barbs that can be spawned from a camp and alive at the same time. I have always assumed it was an infinite amount if there's room and the camp isn't wiped out.

 

[LeeS]

It's a limitation only at the moment of spawning. If there are 2 Barbarians within a range of 4 tiles of an encampment, that encampment will not spawn another Barbarian. But since barbarians tend to kinda randomly wander a region, the limiting barbarians already near the camp will wander out of range, a new barbarian will be spawned, then one of the older ones will wander back into range, etc., rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. Over the course of a game on a 10-12 tile-size undiscovered island it will not be unusual to see the number of barbarians mentioned in the OP.

The values quoted are also adjusted somewhat as I recall by whether you have Raging Barbs turned on, and whether the encampment can spawn Barbarian Galleys.

 

[ThorHammerz]

The values quoted are also adjusted somewhat as I recall by whether you have Raging Barbs turned on, and whether the encampment can spawn Barbarian Galleys.

Barbarian Galleys affect this formula only in the sense that they can wander beyond the check-nearby-barbarian range within 1-2 turns

 

[NiceOneEmlyn]

If there are 2 Barbarians within a range of 4 tiles of an encampment, that encampment will not spawn another Barbarian. But since barbarians tend to kinda randomly wander a region, the limiting barbarians already near the camp will wander out of range, a new barbarian will be spawned, then one of the older ones will wander back into range, etc., rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. Over the course of a game on a 10-12 tile-size undiscovered island it will not be unusual to see the number of barbarians mentioned in the OP.

The values quoted are also adjusted somewhat as I recall by whether you have Raging Barbs turned on, and whether the encampment can spawn Barbarian Galleys.

Thanks very much for the info, this makes sense of my own assumptions, but with an extra dimension to be aware of.

Many a time I have come across a three to six tile island with three land based barbs already there. I have noticed on these occasions that no more units will be produced, this becomes very important if I want to send a cargo ship past the island, and I have always done so with confidence!

 

[shaglio]

It's a limitation only at the moment of spawning. If there are 2 Barbarians within a range of 4 tiles of an encampment, that encampment will not spawn another Barbarian. But since barbarians tend to kinda randomly wander a region, the limiting barbarians already near the camp will wander out of range, a new barbarian will be spawned, then one of the older ones will wander back into range, etc., rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. Over the course of a game on a 10-12 tile-size undiscovered island it will not be unusual to see the number of barbarians mentioned in the OP.

The values quoted are also adjusted somewhat as I recall by whether you have Raging Barbs turned on, and whether the encampment can spawn Barbarian Galleys.

I don't mean to doubt the knowledge of an esteemed modder such as yourself, but in a recent game as CL's Zapotecs I saw a 4-tile island with an encampment that had all four tiles filled with barbs as well as several barb ships surrounding it. I remember it distinctly because I took Heathen Conversion and was surprised to find that A) my embarked Missionary could convert the barb ships and B) after converting all the barbs on the island, I discovered that they didn't have embarkation and were just sitting there uselessly draining my economy. I wrote about it in some other thread. Anyway, I didn't have Raging Barbs on, so this shouldn't have been possible based on your explanation of the mechanics.

 

[NiceOneEmlyn]

Anyway, I didn't have Raging Barbs on, so this shouldn't have been possible based on your explanation of the mechanics.

Ha Ha! Your four and a half years don't seem to have as much significance as my five years, I wonder why? Like someone else stated earlier in the thread, just maybe a barbarian crossed the sea to get there! I had already looked at all the scenarios that I could think of before I posted, there was no possibility of such a happening!

 

[beetle]

I don't mean to doubt the knowledge of an esteemed modder such as yourself, but in a recent game as CL's Zapotecs I saw a 4-tile island with an encampment that had all four tiles filled with barbs as well as several barb ships surrounding it.

I can think of two possibilities that might explain why your experience does not violate the no-spawn-if-two-barbs-within-four-tiles rule. (1) You are using mods (Zapotecs), so all bets are off. (2) Units loose promotions when gifted, so maybe that applies to barbs converted by Heathen Conversion? (But I had never heard of that rule before this thread.)

 

[dasaard200]

In many a game on water maps, it takes me a while to clear enough space to get to next island, then drop #3,4 cities, and then build up triremes to escort food ships, working up to Galleasses(G's); (using the Barbie+ mods) to do serious Barbie stomping for cities #5 and beyond .

The more barbs, the merrier !!; but if you're on a 1 city island, you're in deep doo-doo .

One quirky game had an 8 by 12 island close by my turf, 3 camps FILLED that island, and almost swamped my island of 2 cities with triremes and shipped brutes, until I got Cbows and Galleasses; then the tables turned. Starting at the pointy end of Mattel Island, I used my G's to clear a LZ to land Pike and Cbows, 4 turns later, city #3, and in 40 turns and 6 more cities later, Mattel Island was clear of Barbies, becoming my major base against the Ottoman .

Game was : Prince, tiny islands, high sea level, 3 billion years, Raging Barbs, huge map, 8 AI, standard speed .

SP's were T0, H0-5, L0-5,T1-5, and R0 . This proves that a rock-bottom start is winnable !!

 

[LeeS]

The "rule" comes from these in the GlobalDefines.xml file:

<Row Name="MAX_BARBARIANS_FROM_CAMP_NEARBY">
	<Value>2</Value>
</Row>
<Row Name="MAX_BARBARIANS_FROM_CAMP_NEARBY_RANGE">
	<Value>4</Value>
</Row>

It is also possible that for very small landmasses Firaxis created a Special Snowflake Rule that ignores these two defines. It is entirely possible, and since I cannot read the dll I have no way to directly investigate that issue from reading the game's code.

Based on Shaglio's comment upthread I am keeping a closer eye on Barb Spawn behavior in any games I play re: very small landmasses. Especially as this may require me to alter the code within the Barbarian Spawn Increase mod if I can see the same behavior on an unmodded Barbarian Behavior for very small landmasses: or, I may leave well-enough alone, as the quoted behavior is what I would want to see with the Barbarian Spawn Increase mod running.

The real challenge for all mod-makers is that while there are "Rules" that are "Set to Values" in the XML, there are also a slug of hidden and hardcoded overrides where Firaxis took the quick and dirty route to get effect-X rather than continueing to adhere to the policy of making the game as mod-able as possible. And as time has passed and Firaxis has issued expansions and patches, some things that were originally mod-able are no longer.

 

[ThorHammerz]

It is also possible that for very small landmasses Firaxis created a Special Snowflake Rule that ignores these two defines. It is entirely possible, and since I cannot read the dll I have no way to directly investigate that issue from reading the game's code.

I can confirm, the game code does not check (and therefore, it does not care) about the size of the landmass when checking for barbarians around a camp.

Code reference in

void CvBarbarians::DoSpawnBarbarianUnit(CvPlot* pPlot, bool bIgnoreMaxBarbarians, bool bFinishMoves)

if anyone is interested.

The real challenge for all mod-makers is that while there are "Rules" that are "Set to Values" in the XML, there are also a slug of hidden and hardcoded overrides where Firaxis took the quick and dirty route to get effect-X rather than continueing to adhere to the policy of making the game as mod-able as possible. And as time has passed and Firaxis has issued expansions and patches, some things that were originally mod-able are no longer.

Which is why if one is able to set up/compile the .DLL (which is a pain in and of itself), it becomes much simpler and straightforward to add/change whatever one wants (convoluted and/or obtuse Lua workarounds are no longer needed!) .

 

[joncnunn]

Moderator Action: OPs question is now answered.
Please take future discussion of challenges creating mods over to the Creation & Customization forum.