Tools against Too Much Gold

[philipschall]

Personal note:
This is why for over the past year and a half the Civics have not adopted these methods. If the AI is stunted by a Civic option change, no matter if the Player can overcome it, it will not be used by me in my continuing work on Civic balance.

Thanks! I think I just found a way that wouldn't cripple the AI, though. By using <iCivicPercentAnger> in civics, you can have civics that have super low maintenance costs but super high happiness costs from overpopulation. The civics with lower <iCivicPercentAnger> would in turn have escalating maintenance costs, making it very hard to have big cities in the late game without paying through the nose, while simultaneously giving a happiness sink! I'll test this out...

 

[Joij21]

This game I happened to be on a mid sized continent with 3 other AI and the barbs placed the majority of their cities next to me and inbetween my closet AI neighbor. That neighbor also lost 2 cities that I know of to the Barbs. Barbs razed them both then built a barb city just south of one of them. But the 2 Barb Cities next to me were the 1st barb cities built in the game. And being only a Monarch Difficulty game the barbs could keep pace with the AI. While I eventually, thru Culture expansion by city bulding to stop the Barb cities from growing and to shrink their territory thru culture, was able to outpace the AI. For a Monarch game the late Preh and Ancient Eras were quite entertaining and supplied game tension to add to it's fun.

Do the amount of barbarians increase with difficulty? I play on noble with raging barbarians option turned on and haven't seen that many barbs ever. I've even played into the ancient era and have never seen that many. But then again I also have neanderthals can build cities on so maybe the extra barbarian faction creating cities displace the amount of normal barbarian cities which then causes them to produce less units?

 

[Toffer90]

Higher diffs does make barb city spawning more frequent.

 

[JosEPh_II]

@Joij21 ,
Screenshots as this game progressed.
#54, My game set up used for this game.
#21, Next very early game screenshot. Barb stack next to Capitol city. It only had 14 units when it got next to my Capitol, had 13 Atlatl and 1 stone axe. I was building units as fast as I could.
#30, 2nd city that I lost twice to barbs before getting it going.
#35, 4 cities right before Sed Life reached.
#47, The 4th City that saved my bacon because it gave me Obsidian from the volcano(out of sequence but the only one I have of it.).
#38, The Artic landmass that gave me my next boost, Mammoth, which gave me mammoth herds and then Mammoth Riders. These were Very instrumental in taking those 2 barb main cities and holding back their stacks till I got mine built. It was only reachable because of the island city #4 was built on.

I wish I had taken screenshots of the barb stacks early game and then the battles for the Barb cities. But alas I did not.

 

[Joij21]

That stack of barbarians doesn't look too bad I've dealt with similar stacks before even with just normal stone weapons. You made it sound like there were gazillions of them in 100+ sized stacks.

 

[JosEPh_II]

That stack of barbarians doesn't look too bad I've dealt with similar stacks before even with just normal stone weapons. You made it sound like there were gazillions of them in 100+ sized stacks.

That was the 1st stack to reach my Capital when it was my Only city. Apparently you did not catch that from my screen shot short descriptions. There were over 60+ units in the later stacks <----as in multiple stacks. The barb empire only builds so many buildings all the rest of their city production is nothing but mil units, workers, and fishing boats.

#21, Next very early game screenshot. Barb stack next to Capitol city. It only had 14 units when it got next to my Capitol, had 13 Atlatl and 1 stone axe. I was building units as fast as I could.

I wish I had taken screenshots of the barb stacks early game and then the battles for the Barb cities. But alas I did not.

That stack in #21 with only 14 units that made it to my Capital was a threat because I only had 7 mil units in my Capitol at that time. And I had been trying to pick units off it's total as It made it way there. That is why a couple units in it were not full strength. It was a touch and go situation as my Capitol's defense was only 40%.