barb galley ridiculousness

[Fei Kelei]

I know by this point in the game they're more annoying than rage-inducing like they can be earlier, but still, this has to win some sort of prize:



I'm mousing over a tile with two of them, so it's eight total, and there was even a ninth one in the barb city that I destroyed. Maybe that city was producing them in addition to the ones that spawned naturally, so that's why there are so many. Regardless, there are way too many of these things in this game.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Blame the 3.17 (and almost certainly untested on high levels where using intuitive means to stop them is impossible) 4x galley spawn rate adjustment.

Still, that's kind of funny.

 

[georgjorge]

What this game really needs is to have barbarian ships that, like the land-based units, move with the technological progress. Triremes and Frigates coming to pillage your sea-food!


And I think that picture IS worth a price.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

What this game really needs is to have barbarian ships that, like the land-based units, move with the technological progress. Triremes and Frigates coming to pillage your sea-food!


And I think that picture IS worth a price.

Only if they balance naval war properly, similar to how land battles are balanced. Barb triremes on immortal or deity before the player can possibly get MC in say, isolation, would be stupid as hell, although you could probably abuse spawn and entry mechanics to keep them away.

I'd rather see barb cities work themselves up more legitimately and stage offenses than have the game randomly generate 100's of sinks in the fog that have no true counter in the time they show up.

Even after you have triremes, barb triremes would fight at a minimum of 37% odds or so against them, and can appear indefinitely unless you know the spawn mechanics. Forcing the players into gamey solutions is not really the way to go IMO.

 

[obsolete]

I often get my HE through barb galleys when there isn't enough land to exploit off them. I wasn't aware about that PoS release 3.17 having a 4x jump in galley spawns, I'm used to seeing tones come around anyway when ever there's any chance one can spawn.

Unfortunately, it seems when ever I get triremes out, they stop spawning. I wonder if they adjusted that on purpose to prevent milking them for exp? Maybe it's just Murphy's law.

 

[Sisiutil]

I often get my HE through barb galleys when there isn't enough land to exploit off them. I wasn't aware about that PoS release 3.17 having a 4x jump in galley spawns, I'm used to seeing tones come around anyway when ever there's any chance one can spawn.

Unfortunately, it seems when ever I get triremes out, they stop spawning. I wonder if they adjusted that on purpose to prevent milking them for exp? Maybe it's just Murphy's law.

No, it's probably just that by the time you get to MC, you and other civs have expanded significantly, reducing the amount of coastal fog where the galleys can spawn. I've played games where a significant amount of land has been left unsettled for some time and have seen enough barb galleys so an Explorer could walk along the coastline without getting your feet wet (if the barbs didn't kill, skin, and eat him first, of course).

I share TMIT's opinion of the barb galleys after the most recent patch. They appear early and in greater numbers than before and they're extremely irritating. And maybe it's just me, but they seem to win far too many battles against defending galleys than the odds should indicate.

 

[Cusanus]

Only if they balance naval war properly, similar to how land battles are balanced. Barb triremes on immortal or deity before the player can possibly get MC in say, isolation, would be stupid as hell, although you could probably abuse spawn and entry mechanics to keep them away.

Oh, they'd spawn anywhere on ocean tiles, of course.

 

[Ghpstage]

What this game really needs is to have barbarian ships that, like the land-based units, move with the technological progress. Triremes and Frigates coming to pillage your sea-food!


And I think that picture IS worth a price.

and for extra lolz why not improve the barb ship AI. Make them use blockade, both if theres nothing else to do and if winning a direct attack on an enemy ship is unlikely, forcing the player to attack it in coast

But alas, we shouldn't discuss such things, lest Firaxis see it and make a patch just to include things like this!

 

[obsolete]

And maybe it's just me, but they seem to win far too many battles against defending galleys than the odds should indicate.

100% spot on! I have noticed this for quite sometime, even with defending bonus human galleys are useless against barb galley attacks. Often I have to use two just to think about it, despite odds are SUPPOSED to be highly in my favour on defense. And often that single barb galley will take out both. This is happening time and time again.

I know in past versions there used to be hidden BATTLE-MODIFIERS that barbs would get on higher levels. Did they sneak that back in? I don't think these hidden modifiers are reported in the battle log. We all know by now that the interface LIES in many aspects.

 

[Ghpstage]

100% spot on! I have noticed this for quite sometime, even with defending bonus human galleys are useless against barb galley attacks. Often I have to use two just to think about it, despite odds are SUPPOSED to be highly in my favour on defense.

I'm pretty sure the odds are that you lose around 1 in 3, which is in line with what I experience. On defense you don't get particularly good odds as coast is only +10%.
A second really big problem comes from how XP is calculated, if your defending Galley wins it gets 1XP, if an attacking Galley wins it gets 4 so C1 and some healing for the next fight . One barb Galley lucky enough to win 2 or 3 fights can be a serious PITA. This wouldn't be so bad if they didn't spawn so much as to make this a pretty frequent occurance

 

[TheMeInTeam]

WB test with 100+ barb and human galleys should tell the tale roughly, especially if you random seed and rerun the 100 a couple times (maybe sets of 50 or so would be less effort). I feel like it too sometimes but I always thought it was murphy's law there. ~40% is a lot when the other guy is fog-pulling the hammers after all. I rarely get starts where I can't spawn-lock them or work-boat train them away, though. Gamey moves for a scrappy mechanic.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I set up a worldbuilder test for this!

I gave human 50 galleys, and placed 50 barb galleys right next to them. No promotions on either which is realistic (and nicely easy to set up). I was playing immortal, and had "new random seed on reload" checked.

I quick saved, hit end turn, then tallied human galley and barb galley wins. I'd then reload and repeat. 10 iterations = 500 battles, the results:

Human wins: 371 = 74.2%
Barb wins: 129 = 25.8%

Barb expected win rate is 32.2%, so in this test the human actually won more than it would be expected to win on average.

While 500 is a little small to prove that the 32% is accurate, if there were any large bias against the human galleys in this situation, the likelihood of it showing by now is extremely high.

In other words, the real screw job from the barb galleys is not that they win more than they should, but that they come earlier and have no hammer-effective counter ---> you will lose well over 1/2 the time if you fight two consecutive battles defending against barb galleys with either side lacking promotions. So long as the barbs have fog, they can easily and rapidly regenerate their galleys, while humans have to produce them.

This is why land units, culture and workboats are usually the real counters to barb galleys; although gamey, they are the only hammer-efficient option at high levels.