Animal and Barbarian spawn rates

[Lord Chambers]

Has anyone done any testing or examined the code concerning barbarian and animal spawns? I've always assumed that hunting animals or barbarians is relatively pointless in the early game, because if I kill one then another one will spawn to fill the space. In games where I slaughter hundreds, there seem to be just as many more waiting and, of course, the only solution is to remove their ability to spawn. This suggests the animal and barbarian spawning rates aren't proportionate to the unexplored terrain on the map, but time some other factor like time.

Sometimes barbarians build cities on spots you'd like. Sometimes they don't. I'd love to have a better understanding of the probability of barbarian cities occuring.

 

[ANewGuy]

I'd love to see these #s too...

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I have not examined the code. However, empirically I noticed that the spawn rate is drastically affected by even crappy fogbusting. As in, you can leave tiles of fog here and there, and the rate you'll see barbs is reduced.

This gives me the feeling that a barb is given a chance to spawn in every fog tile individually, varying by difficulty, for every turn there is fog. Uprisings seems to be limited by the existence of counter-techs or resources in 3.17, whereas random barb strength seems to be a factor of AI tech (and possibly your own accounted for also but it seems like the AI tech is what matters).

If anyone can look at the code and either support or defeat this it'd be awesome . I'm not too familiar with XML, although honestly I should probably start trying to look at the code because it's not like I don't wonder about it often enough or can't learn it.

 

[Jerrymander]

It might be like forest growth, where the chances of a barb unit spawn is affected by a tile having fog of war (1 if yes, 0 if no) but is further modulated by the tiles surrounding it. That is, more fog equates to more barbs. I do not have XML or SDK data to back this up, it's speculation.

 

[JackOfClubs]

I don't think there is a spawn rate so much as a certain percentage chance that any given tile in the fog of war will spawn a barbarian. I am not sure if there is a max number that will spawn per turn. I know I've seen an article that talks about this but I can't find it at the moment. Try doing a search on "barb spawn rate" or something.

EDIT: Here is an article on what factors contribute to barb cities spawning. The relevant point is that the global number of cities plays a role which, by analogy, seems to support TheMeInTeam's suggestion that barb spawning is related AI and/or player tech.

 

[Virtual Alex]

Do barbarian cities act like regular cities? What tech to barbs have? In my game I captures a barbarian level 5 city. Inside was a lighthouse and granary. The barbs also built a mine and a pasture. Yet the border never expanded. Did the barbs just choose not to make any culture buildings? Can barbs construct culture buildings?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Only certain buildings can be built by barbs, but I don't recall which. They DO seem to be able to get culture eventually, although since I've never cheated to see into them prior to taking them I don't know what means they use.

 

[Quotey]

Barbs will certainly build culture and workers (not allowed to build settlers)

They're very interesting to watch. Barb workers will link up cities (and they make a lot of workers for an AI) and they're a good source of pillage cash because they keep rebuilding. It's interesting to ally with the barbs (edit a wbsave to make yourself a part of Team18 IIRc). You can't win though, and IIRC barb cities only build millitary units if there is another unit in a cities corss or culture is touching theirs.

 

[Lord Chambers]

Here is an article on what factors contribute to barb cities spawning.

Thank you, that's a pretty good article. I'm surprised it slipped under my radar.

 

[SnowlyWhite]

any tile not seen by any civilization has a chance of x(where x is level dependant) to spawn a barbarian unit. same for animals, which are spawned until... they aren't spawned anymore

the animals go obsolete I suppose

 

[dutchfire]

I think there's a pretty good explanation of this in the SGOTM 05 Murky Waters thread, as that was a game where everyone teamed up with barbarians.Link

It's a huge thread, so you might want to ask your question instead of looking for it.