Balance Issue / Game Report

[Meatbomb]

Using the "Barbarian Civs" aspect, "Barbarian World Challenge" and "Start as Minor Civs"...

OK, I know the easy solution is that I should just turn these aspects off, and I know I have complained about it in the past, but I wanted to show you an example of how incredibly overpowered this can be. There is also an issue of the player getting a HUGE overpowered boost by taking one of these civs after getting wiped out.

Game Report

• start game as Meiji, warrior as first build
• some minor exploring, two barb cities very close by... already see that this is going to be brutal and short-lived for the Japanese people...
• by about turn 10 or 12, the southern barb city becomes England, with about 4 spearmen and 4 warriors
• I can see my situation is completely helpless, and wait for my doom. England wipes me out maybe 8-10 turns later, and I take them over.
• with my spearmen army I effortlessly kill Carthage a few tiles to the east with my massive stack of spears. Everyone who hasn't been gifted stuff by the barb civ rules still has a force of 3 or 4 warriors at the most
• holy mama, I get the special "Golden Age" massive spawning event! It results in: the barb city to the SW becoming York and coming to my control; a force of three promotable spearmen and a ram spawning free in York; 6 promotable rams (one with GG attached), 3 spearmen, another unattached GG, and a couple other guys spawning in London; 3 rams and a promotable spearman spawning in Carthage; and on top of that a couple free workers and (I think) a free settler.
• see the attached picture

I mean, come on. It is 2260BC, and the game is without doubt already won by me, not due to skill but completely the result of highly overpowered random events.

I am not really sure what the solution is here, but thought I would share. Maybe at least there should be some trigger that if a player takes over a civ that came from barbs, as I did, that the great general / golden age event can no longer be triggered?

 

[BobTheTerrible]

In my own games, I set the city size needed to spawn a civ from barbs to size 3 or 4 (rather than the default 2) and also lower the base chances of spawning a barb civ. That should hold off on barb spawning from cities long enough to get a defensible empire together (although I also start the game off with 2 Settlers and 3 Warriors, so I'm not sure how a default start would work).

Also, if you're using a smaller map, there's a much larger chance that one of the "barbarian world" cities will start close to you.

Finally, it may be too early to say the game will be won - an empire that large in the early game is bound to have revolutions, some of which may cripple you for a while.

Anyway, I agree with you that it's overpowered, but people should play games the way they want. As you said, you can just turn off the Barbarian World option and this wouldn't have happened.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Finally, it may be too early to say the game will be won - an empire that large in the early game is bound to have revolutions, some of which may cripple you for a while.

Also, depending on the game options selected, some of the remaining barbarian cities *will* settle, making up initial civilizations killed. You have a strong position, because you got four early good cities - but with settling barbarians, you haven't done a lot in terms of eliminating opponents.

Cheers, LT.

 

[phungus420]

Great Report. Barbarian Civ has some balance issues for sure, and has had them since it's inception. You should really start a thread in the Revolutions sub forum that is this descriptive so jdog and glider can have a look at this. RevDCM is intending to implement the Barbarian World option anyway, so it'd be good for them to see the possible effects.

As far as my end is concerned, I will be bumping up the city size of barbarian civ to 4.

 

[scu98rkr]

I dont think barbarian civs can be used with Barbarian World Challenge it just doesnt really work.

 

[BobTheTerrible]

I dont think barbarian civs can be used with Barbarian World Challenge it just doesnt really work.

I like it, although I use some other small modifications of my own. I think it also works well if you're only starting off the game with 4 or 5 civs (Sumeria, Egypt, Babylon, China, India) on a huge map, because it lets the barb civs fill in nicely.