Advanced start barbarian levels

[Ahriman]

Trying a few games on classical era, Advanced start, Emperor difficulty (which I ususally play FFH on), and by about turn 15 or so there are packs of 4-5 lizardmen and warriors and frostling cavalry rampaging through my empire pillaging everything in sight.

Is this really intended? All early terrain improvements keep being destroyed.

 

[Invoke_Shadows]

barbarians really only rampage and destroy improvements anymore they barely ever attack cities, It become redundant, Only hope you have is to build a fort on your land put a lot units on it, & they will suicide on it. but never cities anymore. they just run threw your land destroying all improvements then move on on & killing any workers they they happen to be lucky to get.

Then as soon you build all improvements back up they come right back and pillage again. It made FF more of micro management game then anything & very dull.

 

[Iceciro]

Granted I'm not a fan of the pillaging stacks, but with Advanced Start shouldn't you have enough troops to have a stack that can counter-attack pillaging barbs?

 

[Ahriman]

No, not really, you can't kill horsemen, strength 4 frostlings or lizardmen easily with warriors when you don't start near any bronze.

 

[zup]

I usually buy only the bare essentials, a city, a warrior to defend it, a worker, maybe one or two settlers and then tech, lots and lots of tech. Nothing is more fun than founding av on turn 2, in my capital. I only do advanced start in scenarios where I know the starting location is ideal for an über city.

 

[Ahriman]

I think I need to make myself clearer; the issue is not so much with Advanced Start, but with starting in an Advanced Era - the Classical Era.

This gives all the initial techs to all players - including, I suspect, the barbarians.

So, there you are, still starting with a single city (or up to 3 cities with Advanced Start), and very little production capability, while the barbarians spawn significantly nastier units that swamp your limited productoin ability and pillage everything into oblivion.

Makes this mod seem even more like pve, rather than pvp (ie vs the other civs).

In the early mid-game, I had large numbers of barbarian elementals storming into my terrain and pillaging. (Possiblly linked to someone getting the Elementalism tech and trading it around a lot, so the barbarian players got elementalism and started spawning them?).

 

[xienwolf]

Barbarians gain their techs by getting free research from each player who knows the tech. So an Advanced Era start means that ALL players have each tech, and the Barbarians blaze through the lower techs (effectively "researching" all of them at once). Adding Advanced Era to Advanced Start means that you'll also probably have more than 2 cities per player almost immediately, and thus orcs will spawn very quickly.

You should start with some bonus free units doing Advanced Era without Advanced Start, so I am not sure why you would have a serious issue with things. But the idea is to make the exploration phase of the game a PvE experience, and shift to a Pv(ai)P type of experience after most of the land has been settled.

Barbarian Elementals would have to come from a Lair, or possibly from the Demons, but that would require a decent AC and some Hell Terrain.

 

[Ahriman]

I think the advanced era start gave me an archer, 2 warriors and a scout. Hardly enough to hold off very much.

PvE is all very well for the human player, but the AI factions can't handle it at all. There are simply too many barbs and they kill the AI's workers, which further contributes to AI factions failing to develop their territory at all. Even after playing for 150-200 turns, I think most AIs had 2 cities, and maybe a couple of them had three, all with basically no terrain improvements at all.

This is a pretty core design issue; any PvE experience that is tough enough to challenge a human will either completely overwhlem the AIs, or use big cheats where the barbarians focuses much more on the human player. Or both, which seems to be the current experience.

There were way too many elementals to come from a lair, I probably killed 15-20. There was no hell terrain - I had either the No Hell Terrain game option, or Compact Enforced (don't remember which). I don't remember what the AC was at.
I'll also note that all these came at me after travelling *through* the Svaltar's territory.

 

[Iceciro]

As far as I remember, the barbs will focus on one target, try to kill it, then get bored and swap.

I think the human does have a higher chance to be the one target, though.