Are there any barbarian focused Civs

[steveg700]

In every civ game barbarians are a minor nuisance that can be dealt with with minimum effort for all but the most novice players.

A boost to fighting barbarians would just be completely unhelpful.

Not to rattle any ivory towers too much, but whatever metric one would apply to quantify someone as being amongst the "most novice players" would probably relegate 99% of the people playing Civ to that category.

Let's be real, the percentage of players who never visit forums like this one, whose default difficulty isn't Deity, who play Civ V the "wrong" way by committing such unthinkable transgressions as building workers instead of stealing them, or by building armies with more than just masses of archers, or by not fast-tracking a Great Library, or by not beelining to Education, or--horror of horrors--settling more than four cities....It's actually a pretty high number.

Most players don't have their game down to an optimized formula. For them, the game is very much a matter of experimentation. Maybe the 1% doesn't find a bonus against barbarians to be meaningful, but that still leaves plenty who would.

At any rate, aren't barbs getting their act together a bit more in Civ VI? Don't they send scouts out while amassing a sortie at their encampment?

 

[Leathaface]

In every civ game barbarians are a minor nuisance that can be dealt with with minimum effort for all but the most novice players.

A boost to fighting barbarians would just be completely unhelpful.

Ed Beach has stated that barbarians have been given a significant buff in Civ VI. The "Raging Barbarians" option has been taken out of the game due to this.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Ed Beach has stated that barbarians have been given a significant buff in Civ VI. The "Raging Barbarians" option has been taken out of the game due to this.

So "Raging Barbarians" is basically the default setting?

 

[EgonSpengler]

North Korea? ISIS? Boko Haram? Or a few years ago RAF, ETA, IRA? Some cartels/syndicates maybe?

That's what I was thinking. Modern-day "barbarians" are shaping the course of history for the world's leading "civs" and causing major trouble for today's "city-states." To your list, I might add al-Shabaab in East Africa and the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico.

 

[Nixalo]

So "Raging Barbarians" is basically the default setting?

Basically if you let a scout survive, its camp switches from Normal to Raging.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

That's what I was thinking. Modern-day "barbarians" are shaping the course of history for the world's leading "civs" and causing major trouble for today's "city-states." To your list, I might add al-Shabaab in East Africa and the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico.

The key thing needed for that is barbarian camps forming inside the borders of civs.. or at least CS

 

[CoconutTank]

Probably dumb, but if I could arse enough time to make custom civs, I was going to make a (entirely ahistorical) civ in Civ 5 that had a Dark Ages UA, which causes barbarians to spawn 20% more often and have 30% bonus strength against everyone else. Basically a way to make Honor more useful and also give the civ a way to annoy/harm any and all civs on the planet.

Back on topic, I'm actually hoping that civs won't be too dependent on barbarians this time around. I don't mind hunting barbs, and they're a way to keep players honest early game with a need for military instead of just playing wonder solitaire. But hunting barbs down is still a nuisance, and if one pushes too hard then barbs go extinct in one's part of one's world. This sucks for Germany or the Ottomans if one actually wanted to make a nice barbarian army/navy, but it super duper sucks for Honor because one basically halts any further culture income via Honor unless one is willing to leave camps alone (which one really can't do because barb camps are usually taking up residence on or near good city places). Minor barb dependent bonus that can be traded around or replaced I would be fine with though.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Back on topic, I'm actually hoping that civs won't be too dependent on barbarians this time around. I don't mind hunting barbs, and they're a way to keep players honest early game with a need for military instead of just playing wonder solitaire. But hunting barbs down is still a nuisance, and if one pushes too hard then barbs go extinct in one's part of your world. This sucks for Germany or the Ottomans if one actually wanted to make a nice barbarian army/navy, but it super duper sucks for Honor because one basically halts any further culture income via Honor unless one is willing to leave camps alone (which one really can't do because barb camps are usually taking up residence on or near good city places). Minor barb dependent bonus that can be traded around or replaced I would be fine with though.

I think the problem there is with the Honor foundation and with the Ottoman trait. I think Germany is pretty strong in Civ V, and the 4-5 free units I get during the barbarian phase have often remained in my army until the end (I usually name them so I can keep track of them - Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, etc). The problem with the Ottomans isn't that they rely on barbarians, it's that the naval & maritime parts of Civ V are so underdeveloped.

 

[Thormodr]

In every civ game barbarians are a minor nuisance that can be dealt with with minimum effort for all but the most novice players.

A boost to fighting barbarians would just be completely unhelpful.

Ever tried raging barbarians on cIV?

I still shudder thinking about barbarian axemen appearing out of the fog. Lol.

 

[redwings1340]

Any civ with an early UU has a pretty good bonus against barbarians, Germany's extra military policy is almost certainly helpful against barbs, and America's home continent bonus should help. Sythia and the Aztecs in particular are probably going to be able to kill their barbarians quickly, then kill the barbarians near their neighbors, then kill their neighbors. There don't seem to be specific bonuses from killing barbarians that are civilization specific, but some civs will be able to make early barbarians an opportunity to give your units experience before waging early war.

 

[Lordkhan II.]

i think barb focused civs in civ 5 were the weakest.
songhai worked in every conquer. not really about barbs.
Germany was changed through patches so it kinda work in the latest versions.
Ottoman was pretty useless. just island maps. almost no bonus in a continent map.

 

[VicRatlhead5199]

Songhai, Germany and Ottomans' abilities scaled up as you slowed the game speed. Even on immortal and Deity you can have the AI fearing your army with Germany. On deity you tend to convert more archers than brutes and will often see compounds before you would normally be able to tech up to them so it actually gets better as long as the AI aren't beating you to every camp.

I get that people tend to only consider quick and standard speeds because that's what most people play but the barb focused UAs are pretty nice on slower speeds. I wouldn't mind seeing one or two CiVI civs with a barb type UA, especially since civs have more traits overall. It'll be easier to give them other traits that are useful the entire game.

 

[CoconutTank]

How do you handle unit maintenance in those cases though? I'm assuming your cities don't have many buildings, so that side of the upkeep is low enough for 1 or 2 trade ships to hold up the whole thing?

I was really happy to see one of the policies in Civ6 be a cost reduction for unit maintenance though Don't have to be a specific civ or wait till Mobilization in order to keep army costs in check, though I have no idea if that Civ6 policy in question is early or not.

 

[redwings1340]

Heathen conversion is still in the game, and with the way barb camps work, its possible a civ with a fast religion could also farm relatively early barbarian camps for early units. It's an interesting strategy, and could possibly work.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Heathen conversion is still in the game, and with the way barb camps work, its possible a civ with a fast religion could also farm relatively early barbarian camps for early units. It's an interesting strategy, and could possibly work.

Its not a belief...its a promotion that some Apostles may have (although you might need a quick religion to get Apostles before barbs are gone)

 

[VicRatlhead5199]

Do they ever really go away? Seems like most games still have plenty of fog at least into the industrial era. Curious to see if VI's less harsh approach to expansion actually makes barbs an early game only thing.

 

[joncnunn]

Do they ever really go away? Seems like most games still have plenty of fog at least into the industrial era. Curious to see if VI's less harsh approach to expansion actually makes barbs an early game only thing.

In Civ IV, for all practical effects, the barbs did eventually go away; and similarly for all previous Civ titles. (SMAC excluded due the equivalent being created from nowhere as a result of the equivalent of pollution) The Civ II manual in fact noted that eventually there will be no new barb camps forming.

Maps with a lot of hostile land terrain did result in them sticking around a lot longer than normal maps though.

For Civ VI, timing is going to be land mass type specific assuming default number of major civs & city states for a given map size.
On a pangaea, unless there's a region especially harsh within it, I expect all barb camps to be permanently cleared from the main land mass (baring a massive slash, burn, and raze cities campaign that doesn't found any new ones) by the middle ages.
For continental, the same thing should occur slightly earlier on landmasses in which major civilizations started.
Islands in which no body started though that also require crossing ocean to reach are likely to have barbs in the age of discovery.
Playing on something like a "Terra script" (all major players start on the larger main landmass and no one other than city states on the smaller land mass and not accessible without crossing ocean), will likely have carpet of doom barbarians by the time it's discovered.

I would tend to agree that if there's any vanilla civ in Civ VI that can recruit barbs like Germany / Ottomans in Civ V that of the remaining civs, Rome is most likely. But this mechanic may now be restricted to Apostles only (for any civ but only ones with that promotion).

 

[George Abitbol]

So "Raging Barbarians" is basically the default setting?

Very soon someone will add a "Raging raging barbs" mod.

Its not a belief...its a promotion that some Apostles may have (although you might need a quick religion to get Apostles before barbs are gone)

Bouddica, a classical era Great General now, has the ability to convert adjacent barbarian units. You can send her scouting alone in the fog and pick some units on the way.

 

[Ivan Hunger]

One thing I noticed from the various preview videos I've watched is that City States seem to be a lot better at fighting Barbarians. I saw several videos where a City State took out a camp on its own.

 

[Uberfrog]

I'm not sure I'd want them to be a huge threat - there wasn't an interesting mechanic associated with barbarian invasion in Civ V, and it doesn't look like there's going to be this time either. They can kill your civilians, and pillage your farms, but not much besides. The mechanic with the barbarian scouts is interesting, but it will depend on how many numbers they come back with.

I remember in Civ IV BtS, you had barbarian horde random events, and would sometimes find an entire civ wiped out by barbarians and their cities there for the taking. I'm not sure it's fun to have our empire wiped out by a dice roll though