Civilization IV: Barbarian Onslaught

[zeeter]

I take issue with everyone who wants this and that changed. For some reason that annoys me. This is the game. If Civ's 1 thru 3 hadn't existed nobody would even care about the barbs or the long early build times or the lack of early settler abuse. If you don't like the way the game was programmed, then don't play it.

Then there's the people who learned how to exploit Civ3 and they can't do it in Civ4. Learn new ways to exploit if you have to.

If anything, this is a MORE accurate representation of history. One city did not just put out a group of settlers every couple of years and build the Sumarian empire. In truth it was very difficult to expand BECAUSE of barbarians such as the Germanic tribes. Heck, even the romans built a wall accross present day England because they couldn't control the barbarians to the north.

 

[The Tollan]

So…..barbarians can use fighters and most other modern units? This is very great. I liked the fact that in Civilization II barbarians gradually gained more powerful units. It was a problem that they could not get tanks or air units though. Can barbarians build ships of any sort in Civilization 4 (I still do not have the game however that will change very soon)? Raids coming from a barbarian continent would be interesting.

 

[PriestOfDiscord]

I love the new barbs, I hope they aren't nerfed. Civ 3's barbs were outright pathetic, and they finally made them the threat they should be.

 

[Wlauzon]

There are problems with barbs, especially on larger maps, regardless of what some people have said.

There are also a lot of myths posted here about barbs.

First of all, if you look in the XML file you can see how the barbs are set up:
The cut below is from NOBLE difficulty.

<iUnownedTilesPerBarbarianUnit>60</iUnownedTilesPerBarbarianUnit>
What this means is that for all UNOWNED tiles (NOT "fogged" tiles or dark tiles), you will get a limit of 1 barb per 60 tiles. That is unowned tiles worldwide, not just where you are. On a large or huge map, that can be a LOT of barbarians.


<iUnownedWaterTilesPerBarbarianUnit>2000</iUnownedWaterTilesPerBarbarianUnit>
This is the same but for water units.

<iUnownedTilesPerBarbarianCity>130</iUnownedTilesPerBarbarianCity>
This is the max number of barbarian cities per unowned tile.

<iBarbarianCreationTurnsElapsed>35</iBarbarianCreationTurnsElapsed>
This means that the game will NOT create any barbarians at all (except for maybe goody huts) before turn 35. Period. You have a free 35 turns where you can build up, go without any defense, or whatever. But then the fit hits the shan.

<iBarbarianCityCreationTurnsElapsed>40</iBarbarianCityCreationTurnsElapsed>
This is the same as above but for cities. The barbs will not build any cities before turn 40.

<iBarbarianCityCreationProb>6</iBarbarianCityCreationProb>
This I have not figured out yet. I think it is a percent (6/100) chance that at any ONE turn, a NEW barbarian city will be created if room is available.
----------------------------

OK, now here are the problems:
1. The barbarians do not scale "correctly" with game size. In a normal game with 8 civs, there will be very little open land, and it fills up fast. Thus you have a minimal barbarian problem. However, if you play 4 civs (you and 3 others), on a Huge map, you can literally have 100's of barbarians and 10-15 barbarian cities by turn 120 or so.
In a recent similar game with 7 other civs on a huge map, *3* of the other civs were wiped out by barbarians. The barbarians were the largest civ in the game. It became almost impossible for me or any OTHER civ to start a new city after turn 150 or so unless you sent out 3 strong melee units with each one. My tiles were being pillaged faster than I could make new workers, and the other civs had the same problem. In that game I finally got disgusted and used Worldbuilder to give myself about 20 modern armor and went on a search and destroy mission. It took me almost 80 turns with modern armor to wipe out the existing barn cities, and even then they kept making new ones. Of the barbarian cities I captured (around 25), over half were ex-other civ cities that had been over run.

So in short, this needs to be either fixed by Firaxes, or modded. It is pretty easy to change the values in the XML file above to a more reasonable value, just make sure you save the original as a copy.

The file is here
C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Assets\XML\GameInfo
and the file name is Civ4Handicapinfo.xml

I made my version pretty much playable on large+ maps by changing the line
"<iUnownedTilesPerBarbarianUnit>60" from 60 to 150. Still very hard, but at least you don't get 10-20 barbarians just on your visible map in your territory. If I want to play a "normal" default game I just change it back to 60.

 

[zeeter]

deleted for stupidity - he answered in his original post.

 

[zyphyr]

I've been playing since the original Civ (still have the floppies around somewhere).

The Civ4 barbs really annoy me, since I have always prefered a minimal defense until I meet someone likely to be hostile and spend my resources on enhancing my empire. The new barbs mean that for all practical purposes I am dealing with real hostiles from turn 1.

As annoying as they are, I am glad they are there since it forces me into a more realistic development pattern.

 

[zeeter]

As to the XML file - first, there's not really that many tiles in the game. Second, if the game started with zero barbs, and they don't start creating them until turn 35, I don't see a problem. Again - theres not THAT many tiles. And by turn 35 you're looking at probably three culture upgrades. With eight civs you are really cutting down on the number of unowned tiles.

Besides - it's more realistic this way.

 

[Juhahu]

<iUnownedTilesPerBarbarianUnit>60</iUnownedTilesPerBarbarianUnit>

Well, by placing sentries, you will force barbarians spawning at least 10 tiles away from your towns. If amount of barbarians stay the same and they can't spawn near you, you opponent will have larger barbarian problem. Such a nice way to cause problems to your opponents in multiplayer

 

[Runriot]

Since I didnt see anybody mentioned it here, I will relate a small story that I posted on another forum regarding the barbs:

Holy batdroppings batman! I started a huge pangea game with no other civs, just so I could learn the techs, the religions, and the wonders ingame without having to fight others to them. Basically a go-at-my-own-pace kinda thing.

So there I was, just into the classical period when I noticed wonders kept disapearing from the work screen. Remember, this is without any other civs. I thought maybe it was a glitch, or maybe the ancient wonders like the Pryamids werent buildable in the classical era (still not sure on that one?)

Well anyways, I have 5 nice cities, fully outfited with multiple archers when the hordes start blazing out of the dark! Here I am, a moderatly advanced civ, and I am getting my butt consistantly handed to me by the barbars, comming at me from 4-5 diferent directions pillaging and swarming with axes, bows, and swordsmen.

I defended my cities protecting tiles where I could, but the barbarians tend to ignore units to pillage....

So after about 2000 yrs, I got a line of hillforts with hill defense pumped archers & axes holding back the hordes enough for me to rebuild my economy and produce a insergence force of axe's and catapults to take the barbars out completely.

Headed south east in the direction of the biggest barbarian city. First thing I noticed was an extensive network of roads connecting not just resources to the barbar town, as well as other barbarian towns, but also leading upto the end of the fog-of-war right before my borders for, I guess, easy and quick entry of raiding forces.

Anyways, I scoot on down the road and find the city Gual, barbar city extreme! SOB was 9 population, had worked ALL the tiles around the city and low and behold, in the middle of the town, built on a defensible hill is the freaking Pryamids and Oracle wonders!! The freaking raging barbarians built the wonders out from under me WHILE mantaining a military I could only hope for with NO RESOURCES in their "cultural borders"!

Just another OH WOW! moment brought to you curtesy of Firaxis newest and best AI

 

[Olleus]

lol. Barbarians building wonders. Its quite funny. Why did you play with barbarians if you wanted a no-war game?

 

[Runriot]

lol. Barbarians building wonders. Its quite funny. Why did you play with barbarians if you wanted a no-war game?

I didnt want a no war game: the idea was to have someone to test military units out on, so I could mix and match types for defense, or city sacking, ect ect

I figured I could keep them from overrunning me, and build city upgrades/wonders at my leaisure (without worring about other civs beating me to them) so as to allow me to get to grips with this games rather steep civ III unlearning curve. :shrug:

 

[zeeter]

I wonder what would have happened if he got around to building the United Nations? And what about "Barbarians in Space"?

 

[Olleus]

or barbarians with nukes!!

 

[King Jason]

I played a map where there was an empty continent and when I finally sailed to this continent there was literally a nation of Barbs.

there were around 6 cities, ony of them was size 12, all of the cities were connected by roads. Fortunately the barbarians don't seem to bother sending troops across the sea, so I just left them there the whole game, I didn't even want to bother with them

it was cool though.

 

[narmox]

I played a map where there was an empty continent and when I finally sailed to this continent there was literally a nation of Barbs.

Sounds like North America when the europeans found it, nations of "barbarians" (as seen by the Europeans anyway, I should add, before all the sensitive ppl jump on me).

 

[sgrig]

I actually think it's fun to have strong barbarians. You can go to war while maintaining peace and trading with "civilized" nations. This does however require a change of mindset from previous Civ games where barbs were just a minor nuisance.

I also like the fact that now if you have barbarians coming at you, you can find the source of the problem - the barbarian city. So it is less random than in previous Civ games.

 

[elderotter]

Instead of turning off barbarians I have set them to raging...I get more action from them than I do form any of the other civs. They keep me on my toes.

 

[lordrichter]

Yeah, with the AI Civs tending to want to sit rather than attack, it is fun to do some barbarian butt kicking early in the game without fear of diplomatic or war weariness concerns.

 

[Inflammatory]

I personally don't see the need to make them more aggressive or greater in numbers, but I do find their magnified imortance a welcome injection to the overall formula. It means that they will force you do do more than just send out a recon unit to dispatch of them and instead actually mount a full-scale assault involving several units in order to get to that site. What's even better is that you can keep the city after you've taken it (provided you like the site), sparing you a settler to send somewhere else.

 

[Art Vandelai]

I found a barb city on another continent in the 18th century - the city was fully upgraded and had a 3 tile culture border! The city name was not one of the ones that is usually associated with the other civs (the only civ to start on that continent was Germany), so it looks like barbs can actually build stuff in the cities too just like any other AI civ, although I didn't see any barb workers.

By the time I got forces nearby to take it, the Indian civ who had built a city next door was bombing the improvements around it.