Let's talk Barbarians

[Remos]

I love playing on Raging Barbarians, but sometimes I wish there was a middle-ground between vanilla and Attila's horde:

Spoiler :

 

[Bryan317]

Well the thing is that single Spearman of yours could probably take them all on simultaneously, from both screenshots lol And leaving a city undefended? That's on you

 

[epicivfreak]

I was going to create a thread about barbarians, but since you beat me to it, I'll add my thoughts on Barbarians here - with that said, I understand your complaint. There is a huge difference between Vanilla & Raging. I could totally get behind a middle ground. Personally though, I love playing with Raging because it forces me to build up a sizable army, rather than simply sitting back and developing my empire/cities.

As for what I'd like to see with Barbarians overall, I'd really like to see a return to Civ3's Barbarians and what that allowed. For example, unique units were allowed for Barbarians. I had customized a version of the Rhye's of Civilization mod back then, which included unique units for Barbarians and it worked extremely well.

I had added a unique unit for Barbarians & named it a Raider. It treated all terrain as roads (or it could move 3 tiles per turn if it had a move of 1, I gave it 2 moves,) it could pillage well, and it also had a retreat bonus so it could survive attacks better, but the point overall was that with a move of 2 (6 tiles per turn,) it could move into any Civ's territory & pillage or attack a Civ & then retreat. This slowed exploration (just in case nobody here knows, back then, Scouts had zero defense, so any hit would kill them, just like any hit now will capture Civilian units) and also forced a player to go seek out and destroy these units, as well as seek out and destroy the camps which spawned them. There was no need to put a huge pile of gold in the camps, it was already necessary to destroy them. Unfortunately, back then you couldn't customize the AI at all, so the AI didn't use the unit as well as it should have.

Civ3 also allowed an "advanced" Barbarian unit, or basically a second unique land unit for barbarians. For this, I created a unit called a Marauder. It was slow (only had a move of 1,) but it was strong. It would take multiple units to destroy just one of the things. However, again, the limitations of Civ3 caught up with me here, because there was a mechanic back then, known as barbarian hordes, which forced camps to spawn 8 of these advanced units, so I couldn't make the units as strong as I really wanted to. I wanted a Marauder showing up near you to be a reason to recall your entire army to defeat these things.

If we had these two things working properly, which Civ3 didn't allow, I don't thing Barbarians would need any other land units, especially if we took away any bonuses against barbarians. That was another thing Civ3 lacked, so everybody had to deal with barbarians equally.

As for sea units, Civ3 only allowed one, so I created a unique unit called a Sea Raider, which mimicked the land version, except it could do both ranged attacks and melee attacks. Unfortunately, Civ3 didn't allow an "advanced" sea unit for barbarians, otherwise I'd have added a Sea Marauder, which would mimick the land version.

 

[epicivfreak]

Well the thing is that single Spearman of yours could probably take them all on simultaneously, from both screenshots lol And leaving a city undefended? That's on you

There's a Spearman in the first screenshot (Japan is the Civ,) but the second has no Spearman (Babylon is the Civ). Just FYI.

 

[Bryan317]

There's a Spearman in the first screenshot (Japan is the Civ,) but the second has no Spearman (Babylon is the Civ). Just FYI.

Ah I hear you. So you wouldn't be building Spearman at that point. But even a Pathfinder could take care of those on Fortify mode. I mean I wouldn't argue against another Barbarian option if it were possible.

I do suppose I could have been a bit more articulate instead of sounding like a troll. I guess my point is you make a choice to leave your city undefended. I like raging barbarians too and I have to accept that I need to keep my pathfinder and warrior close to home. I'd like to do more exploring but even that Pathfinder can turn the tide. Even against a major civ.

 

[greenfieldpark]

I also usually play with raging barbs.

Would love the ability to toggle off naval barbs.

Also would love it if we turned off their ability to retreat to water tiles.

Other than that im really happy with how smart they are.

 

[Stalker0]

Your playing raging barbs and building a wonder first instead of 1 additional warrior. Not sure what to tell you, you need at least a few guys to hold the barbs at the gate.

 

[Bryan317]

Naval barbs are the actual threat. But this is again something that forces me to build a naval unit. Other than that you wouldn't need one right away.

Land units are basically zero threat IMO. The brute force promotion gives you constant advantage. The only time they get me is when I'm exploring and crossing the ocean. A naval Barbarian shows up out of nowhere.

 

[Remos]

Playing on 4.4.2 some more and I think barbarians are broken. I turned off Raging Barbarians, but they keep spawning non-stop (I eradicate one camp, and on the very next turn another one spawns right next to it), even in areas fully visible.
They also seem excessively powerful. --Anyone else getting this?

 

[Anarcomu]

Normal behavior. They have been changed a while back to spawn anywhere except adjacent to units and/or borders. Not sure about units though.

 

[Remos]

Normal behavior. They have been changed a while back to spawn anywhere except adjacent to units and/or borders. Not sure about units though.

Makes sense, but even with Raging Barbarians off, they still spawn non-stop. I eradicate one camp, and on the very next turn another one spawns right next to it --Is this normal?

 

[Tekamthi]

Playing with 43 civ DLL allows somewhat of a middle ground:. If you have all 43 in the game, even raging barbs become negligible quite early, they're really only an issue during initial exploration phase. Sometimes I've wanted even more than raging, they get annihilated so quickly, though the recent changes have fixed this somewhat.

The brute force promotion gives you constant advantage.

I've always found the brute force promotion kinda gamey the way it's implemented, and as pointed out here it plays an important role in effectively managing barbs.

Might improve the OP concern AND make this feature more interesting if brute force availability were changed. Maybe something like it's available to all combat units, but somehow earned only via combat with Barbarian units ie it's not free your unit gets it after attacking a barbarian. If there are a lot of barbs, your army will adapt to deal with it; self fixing problem.

What does 'brute force' actually represent? if we're trying to pin down some real world concept it originates and abstracts from

 

[Remos]

Playing with 43 civ DLL allows somewhat of a middle ground:. If you have all 43 in the game, even raging barbs become negligible quite early, they're really only an issue during initial exploration phase. Sometimes I've wanted even more than raging, they get annihilated so quickly, though the recent changes have fixed this somewhat.

How are you not crashing every 10 seconds?

 

[Tekamthi]

Only a fraction of games I play make it to the later eras, but even then the crashes aren't THAT frequent. By late game, 43-civ is usually down to 22 or fewer civ's anyway

Also no eui -- I think all that screen clutter many of y'all play with is big source of these stability issues

 

[Stalker0]

what I generally see is the games where I am swarming in barbs are the games where there aren't a lot of civs near me. so its a tradeoff, the early game is harder because I have to commit more to military and take out all the barbs....but it also means I have more places to expand and less enemy civ pressure to worry about.

so when it happens, I just bite the bullet, build a number of military units, knowing that while I'm being slowed down in the short term, long term I will be very well positioned.

 

[rusbeh]

I think barbarians could be more of a threat. Currently they are just annoying that they frequently send one unit to pillage and die. I think if they would attack with like 3 or 4 units at a time, they would be more interesting.

 

[epicivfreak]

Ah I hear you. So you wouldn't be building Spearman at that point. But even a Pathfinder could take care of those on Fortify mode. I mean I wouldn't argue against another Barbarian option if it were possible.

I do suppose I could have been a bit more articulate instead of sounding like a troll. I guess my point is you make a choice to leave your city undefended. I like raging barbarians too and I have to accept that I need to keep my pathfinder and warrior close to home. I'd like to do more exploring but even that Pathfinder can turn the tide. Even against a major civ.

You were perfectly articulate, and I didn't mean to imply you were acting a troll - I was just pointing out a slight error. Leaving a city undefended is totally upon that player.

I also usually play with raging barbs.
...
Also would love it if we turned off their ability to retreat to water tiles.

I agree that the ability for land barbarians to simply retreat to water tiles is sort of annoying. However, it does encourage building a navy, so that's kind of a satisfactory result. I just would like the ability for barbarians to retreat to water would be more proportionate to a player's ability to build up a navy - which isn't really the case atm.

 

[Remos]

I'm starting to believe that the Raging Barbarians toggle is broken. I'm getting the same insane number of barbarian spawns no matter if Raging Barbarians is checked or unchecked. I did several runs and it's exactly the same on normal or with the option on.

 

[Zanteogo]

I'm starting to believe that the Raging Barbarians toggle is broken. I'm getting the same insane number of barbarian spawns no matter if Raging Barbarians is checked or unchecked. I did several runs and it's exactly the same on normal or with the option on.

I suspect it's been like this since it was made so they can spawn in sight and not just in the fog of war.

Granted, I don't think the ranging option is broken all together, it's just now we can get multiple camps spawning just outside on boarders all at once now.

 

[Zanteogo]

I love playing on Raging Barbarians, but sometimes I wish there was a middle-ground between vanilla and Attila's horde:

The thing with raging barbarians (how it used to work anyways, I suspect it's not working correctly now), is it gives the human a good advantage because the AI doesn't play any different with it on.

On the harder difficulties it just brute forces them. However on anything medium or lower I end up finding piles of captured units in their camps and will see multiple barb captured cities.