Barbarian camp spawning issue

[46thCharlemagne]

Hi everyone. Long time occasional player, casual modder.

I know full well the rules for preventing barbarian camps from spawning, or at least I thought I did.

Used to be that some of my games, as long as I kept all the wilderness land under watch, i.e. no fog of war (but with military units, watchtowers alone never seemed to work), I would never get more barb camps in that area.

Now it seems that even with both watch towers on mountains as well as military units on those same tiles, barb camps keep spawning in the wilderness.

I know that filling the land with cities and pushing out the borders with culture is the best cure for this, but lately I've made some maps I enjoy where desert tiles are not habitable (no city placement on them allowed), and I create large swaths of desiccated no man's lands separating my civ and the others, with strategic choke points using lakes and defensible bottleneck locations. Just something I enjoy on some of my maps. I strategically placed mountains so that I would be able to "see" all of the desert tiles on my half of the no mans land strip, thereby preventing barbs there even though it isn't within my borders.

But the barb camps keep showing up even in places well within the line of sight of both the military sentry unit and the watch tower. I could have sworn in the past that this never happened. What gives?

Just to save some replies to this thread that I anticipate- I know full well I can set the barb activity to sedentary or no barbs at all but I actually like having to deal with them (and the AI having the same issue) in the ancient era.

If there is no fix for this I will have to settle for having no beloved barbs at all I suppose. Rather annoying having warriors and horsemen challenging my mechanized infantry...at that point in the game I want all primitive units to be nonexistent.

 

[justanick]

I sense that you are leaving out at least one detail, that is crucial to understanding the situation. A screenshot could alleviate that problem.

Is every tile either covered by culture, directly adjacent to culture, covered by a fighting unit(mechanized infantry works, artillery and workers donnot) or directly adjacent to one?

 

[46thCharlemagne]

I sense that you are leaving out at least one detail, that is crucial to understanding the situation. A screenshot could alleviate that problem.

Is every tile either covered by culture, directly adjacent to culture, covered by a fighting unit(mechanized infantry works, artillery and workers donnot) or directly adjacent to one?

Excellent suggestion. Here are some screenshots.





In the first one, that is a large desert patch in the middle of my own lands that I created to reduce the number of cities I end up with, for the tedium of being big in the late game. You can see where the barb camp spawned and it is within three tiles distance from two different watch tower / mech inf. locations.

The second shot is the border region with my eastern neighbors, with the choke points and towers I mentioned. Barbs were spawning near that main north-south road usually, despite having military units on those mountains with watch towers since the ancient era. It's been something I've had to deal with every few turns for the entire game, including the massive uprising thing.

 

[46thCharlemagne]

It has occurred to me I could use freshwater tiles or inland seas to fill in areas that I want to have possession/control of without needing to plant cities there, and I've done that before. But in the first image for the post above, at the bottom of the shot you'll see there's already an inland sea there for part my southern border, as well as a large oceanic inlet. I don't want to have to create even more "coastal" cities along another even larger inner sea. Was going with the uninhabitable desert them for fun and variety. I'm starting the campaign again with barbarians turned off, sadly.

 

[justanick]

You can see where the barb camp spawned and it is within three tiles distance from two different watch tower / mech inf. locations.

So in other words the barbs spawned within sight of the watch towers, but outside the sight of military units.

You should try again without watch towers, as they seem to have no value in preventing the spawning of barb camps.

So you need less distance between military units. It is not clear if 4 tiles between military units suffice due to the extra sight from mountains, or if 2 tiles between military units are required. The later would imply that both military units and culture have a 1-tile-range in preventing the spawning of barb camps.

 

[46thCharlemagne]

So in other words the barbs spawned within sight of the watch towers, but outside the sight of military units.

Excellent, you figured it out! This immediately jogged my memory from when I was last playing the game and knew what the trick was (2016), which is just that. All tiles not within someone's borders or adjacent to the edges of them, must be within sight of a combat military unit in order to not possibly spawn a barb camp. The towers are useless, other than lighting up more of the terrain than otherwise would be, for when you move your sentry units around for upgrades for example, or temporarily moving them. I do still like to build the towers in key locations anyway, with captured workers, especially when it extends my view into the sea.

The Civilopedia states that the view range of a tower built on a mountain is 4 tiles. Saying 4 when it makes much more sense to say 3 (and not include the very tile you're standing on or put the construction on, which, why would you include that in the viewing range?), reminds me of people that start verbally counting seconds from 1 instead of 0. Sun Tzu say, attention to detail get you labeled OCD, but win you many battles.

The situation that comes to mind where knowing the viewing distance of units is important is when I tear through an enemy civ in a rage and destroy all their cities, leaving sudden vast tracts of wilderness. If it's gonna be awhile before my settlers can fill in the land with cities, I leave plenty of knights for example, arranged at just the right spacing and ideally on elevated terrain to prevent barbs.

Much thanks for solving the problem, sir!

 

[tjs282]

The Civilopedia states that the view range of a tower built on a mountain is 4 tiles.

The text-based entries (as opposed to the autofilled information, e.g. the unit-statistics) in the Firaxis Civilopedia are not 100% reliable.

You may need to be particularly wary of the pages about concepts/elements which were added later on during development, and/or which were changed in patches (not sure if that includes the Outposts, though: it's a long time since I played Vanilla/PtW, and I rarely build them in my Conquests games anyway).

 

[46thCharlemagne]

The text-based entries (as opposed to the autofilled information, e.g. the unit-statistics) in the Firaxis Civilopedia are not 100% reliable.

You may need to be particularly wary of the pages about concepts/elements which were added later on during development, and/or which were changed in patches (not sure if that includes the Outposts, though: it's a long time since I played Vanilla/PtW, and I rarely build them in my Conquests games anyway).

Thank you for the reminder. I tend to forget that much of what is written is not necessarily correct.