[NFP] Are Barbarian Quadriremes a longstanding bug no-one realizes?

[Leucarum]

It is kind of irritating... Not so much a challenge as a galley tax for building your first coastal city. It's turned me off naval civs and archipelago maps at the moment

 

[aieeegrunt]

Interesting thread, just found it today after I got my second city wiped out by a barb quad and barb galley double teaming it.

I hate to turn barbs off completely but that kinda stuff really makes a case for just that. I don't understand how, from a dev standpoint, it is ok for barb camps to spawn seriously powerful units in such quantities. It's really not fun. I mean, if the little league football team is beating the other little league football team really badly, you don't bring in an NFL squad on 3rd down to even things up...

Sorry for the terrible metaphor. Lol

The game absolutly improves by removing barbarians from it.

 

[canadamufc]

The game frankly just seems more annoying and irritating with barbarians turned on. I don't see the fun in a scout/galley finding your city in the first turns of the game, and forcing all your city's production to units to fight off the invasion. It's very difficult to stop a scout/galley to actually see your city as well. On naval maps, the problem just gets so much worse as stated by other posters here. Your city's get wiped out so fast if you don't go for sailing and build a galley quickly.

Just not fun all around, even if it hurts the AI more than me.

 

[tsf4]

But with no barbs, the AI has no opposition. I just got beat up on settler because they didn’t have to contend with them.

 

[Leucarum]

There's a load of Eurekas which depend on barbs, and they are an important source of early era score/promotions/cash so it's hard to tout turning them off as a good thing. I think civ6 is basically missing a naval scout unit...

 

[aieeegrunt]

There's a load of Eurekas which depend on barbs, and they are an important source of early era score/promotions/cash so it's hard to tout turning them off as a good thing. I think civ6 is basically missing a naval scout unit...

I only play the basic game now. The expansions are just a jumble of utterly broken, stupid or outright gamey mechanics that don’t mesh well and that the AI absolutly does not know how to deal with.

Not having to do stupid gamey stuff like deliberatly delaying completing a district to minimax era score is absolutly worth it on it’s own.

 

[Leucarum]

I only play the basic game now. The expansions are just a jumble of utterly broken, stupid or outright gamey mechanics that don’t mesh well and that the AI absolutly does not know how to deal with.

Not having to do stupid gamey stuff like deliberatly delaying completing a district to minimax era score is absolutly worth it on it’s own.

Hmm... I don't think I could go back to playing without loyalty... And GS/NFP added almost all my favourite civs

 

[aieeegrunt]

Hmm... I don't think I could go back to playing without loyalty... And GS/NFP added almost all my favourite civs

The civ thing is unfortunate, but loyalty definitly qualifies as a broken mechanic, and the AI absolutly cannot handle it

 

[Leucarum]

The civ thing is unfortunate, but loyalty definitly qualifies as a broken mechanic, and the AI absolutly cannot handle it

Is there anything the AI does handle well? That said, prior to loyalty the AI would by midgame just settle random cities in my territory which they can't hope to defend... And that situation was probably worse for the AI than having them occasionally lose border cities, while simultaneously being an irritant to the player. I have to disagree and say that loyalty is the mechanic I don't think I can any longer imagine civ without...

 

[Victoria]

I don't think I can any longer imagine civ without...

Humankind has an embedded mechanic that could make it work but has not done it, just felt so wrong settling next to massive cities on another continent and surviving. You are forced over time to adopt the other civs civics in that city but you do not flip. I agree 100% with you, it’s a sound mechanic.

 

[Leucarum]

Humankind has an embedded mechanic that could make it work but has not done it, just felt so wrong settling next to massive cities on another continent and surviving. You are forced over time to adopt the other civs civics in that city but you do not flip. I agree 100% with you, it’s a sound mechanic.

Interesting, I tried the humankind opendev but just couldn't get into it. Given the sprawling city sizes it feels like a tiny outlost in humankind would feel even more egregious.

 

[SirWill90]

But with no barbs, the AI has no opposition. I just got beat up on settler because they didn’t have to contend with them.

Yeah things are just out of balance. Just quit a game on King after about an hour and a half, no barbs but the AI just spammed cities and got way ahead of me. If I play with barbs, it seems that any coastal start is pretty much trash bc of the amazing barbarian quads/galleys, or if a regular start the AI gets destroyed by barbs and it's kinda too easy.

Barbs need toned down a bit. Make the current barb intensity like the old "raging barbarians" setting and give us a setting with barbs that don't spam high power/high production cost units and can easily overwhelm the players. If they spam at a high rate it should be lower quality units.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Is there anything the AI does handle well? That said, prior to loyalty the AI would by midgame just settle random cities in my territory which they can't hope to defend... And that situation was probably worse for the AI than having them occasionally lose border cities, while simultaneously being an irritant to the player. I have to disagree and say that loyalty is the mechanic I don't think I can any longer imagine civ without...

Settling random cities inside “your” territory means your cities are sprawling too far apart for you population and you are not securing your borders. Your empire lacks cohesion and thus you are getting ethnic enclaves of immigrants inside your borders. There is ample historic precident for this.

Seems like a working as infended thing to me with far far less issues than the Civ6 loyalty mechanic. Live by the forward settle, die by the forward settle.

The way loyalty works in Civ6 is far far worse, especially for the AI, and the giant self reinforcing “Free Cities” blob can easily dominoe them out of existence

Finally, this mechanic is grossly ahristorical. Loyalty pressure didn’t boot the US out of Vietnam and Afghanistan. Roman cities occupied by Goths didn’t magically flip back either.

Humankind has an embedded mechanic that could make it work but has not done it, just felt so wrong settling next to massive cities on another continent and surviving. You are forced over time to adopt the other civs civics in that city but you do not flip. I agree 100% with you, it’s a sound mechanic.

Macau says hello. Countless other ethnic enclaves do as well.

As far as a sound mechanic goes, it’s a no on every level the way Civ6 does it. Earlier iterations of Civ did this better both gameplay wise and history wise by spawning partisans.

 

[Victoria]

Earlier iterations of Civ did this better both gameplay wise and history wise by spawning partisans.

OK fair enough, there are enclaves a plenty out there, but I disagree they are the default and that earlier versions did it better.

 

[Leucarum]

Settling random cities inside “your” territory means your cities are sprawling too far apart for you population and you are not securing your borders.

Not so much, what I find in vanilla is that any suboptimal patch of snow the AI could possibly drop a city in becomes fair game at midgame onwards once their contiguous land has been claimed. The AI gets nothing from it and and it a minor irritance for the player at worst, free real estate to conquer at best.

Loyalty doesn't make enclaves impossible. A big enough city can hold out against quite a lot, while simultaneously being very vulnerable if you ever go into unrest. Seems legit to me...

 

[mdl5000]

I never would have thought Civ 6 would regress back to Civ 5 vanilla with its barbarian naval ranged units wreaking havoc on my coasts in the ancient era

 

[Laurana Kanan]

Moderator Action: Please try to stay on topic - this thread is not about Humankind, or Civilization mechanics not related to Barbarians.

 

[aieeegrunt]

If you do found a coastal city, it’s best to do it when you can spare an archer “bodyguard” to sit beside it. I find one archer per coastal city is a good baseline to defend your coast

 

[Tuvok694]

If you do found a coastal city, it’s best to do it when you can spare an archer “bodyguard” to sit beside it. I find one archer per coastal city is a good baseline to defend your coast

And even one archer is often not enough. Today I settled my second city (playing as Korea) on the coast thinking my archer could defend it. The next turn, two barbarian biremes and one barbarian archer appeared, and two turns later that city was detroyed. Rage quit. (...on level emperor which is of course even more embarrassing.)
Can't express in words how much I hate barbarians and the developers who did not fix this for years. Knowing exactly I can't turn barbs off because the AI will be unstoppable then.

 

[aieeegrunt]

And even one archer is often not enough. Today I settled my second city (playing as Korea) on the coast thinking my archer could defend it. The next turn, two barbarian biremes and one barbarian archer appeared, and two turns later that city was detroyed. Rage quit. (...on level emperor which is of course even more embarrassing.)
Can't express in words how much I hate barbarians and the developers who did not fix this for years. Knowing exactly I can't turn barbs off because the AI will be unstoppable then.

Just turn them off like I did

i just play the base game with zero expansions now, because that at least sorta works and the AI can sorta function