Post-Patch Barbarians - Pattern?

[King Patrick]

I think after a few games I'm seeing a pattern to the post-patch rampaging barbarians folks have noted. When I start out fairly isolated, it seems like there are a lot more barbs. More camps, camps springing up faster, and more units running around. Also they seem more aggressive, with multiple units coordinating to take down scouts, capture civilians, and even storm cities. But when I have lots of close neighbors, the barbarians seem a lot more like the pre-patch version - a nuisance, but not an overwhelming threat. Perhaps that's just a function of more targets plus fewer camp spawn sites available, or maybe it's a switch in the patch to keep isolated empires from turning into unstoppable runaways and/or to liven up the game for isolated human players.

Thoughts?

 

[Ddude97]

IMHO, it probably both, as the first makes logical sense, and the second would make it more intersting/tone down runaways

 

[Lyoncet]

Camps can't spawn in any tile that any civ has sight on. So if there are lots of civs close together, the number of cities (illuminate a sizable radius constantly) and units (killing barbs, destroying camps, and being mobile spawn-blockers) will always keep the number of barbs lower. As far as I know, that hasn't changed at all, although the frequency at which camps spawn and units spawn from camps does seem to have increased, which would be what you're seeing.