[NFP] Barbarian Clans Game Mode Discussion

[Pfeffersack]

The more I play with this mode, the more I like it. It might not be ideally balanced for every game setup and I don't like the CS polar stations, but on huge maps/Prince difficulty with a lot of AI opponents you get close to a fine balance of barbarian clans and them evolving into additional CSs even past the middle age. I also like that CSs have overall a lot more units around, which makes levying troops a great thing.

My biggest wish for this mode has now become an UI one: One huges map it is quite time consuming to find the active clans and click through to see if one offers a cool UU. A kind of "mercenary menu" somewhere would be good...any modders out there liking the idea (after having tested the sweet qucik deals mod probably my fantasy goes crazy, what can be modded )

 

[Timewarp]

Here is why I'll stop playing barbarians except for grins and giggles.

This is King, duel, inland sea, 4 civs, 6 city states, marathon mode, 168 moves puts us to one and a half culture thingies away from Political Philosophy (it was pretty far back in the culture tree).

Note that Shaka has no military, and his capital is now a free state. It was under siege for quite a while. I have barely enough military to keep up with the barbarians in my area, and yet I have almost as much military as all three combined (eagle scouts are AWESOME vs barbarian camps). Note how little science and culture each other civ has.

Playing with no barbs gives a MUCH better challenge.

I've played several games with no barbs. The AI is back to normal, and the only real change is that I can get away with sending out unescorted settlers to found cities. The AI won't declare war to capture them (or at least so far they have not).

When I want to play a defeat the barbarians mode, I will play as Montezuma in increasingly hard difficulties. I did a 1v1 duel on deity mode just to see what would happen. Most of the time I got bogged down fighting barbarians. One game there were enough nearby city states to protect me from the barbarians, and I was crushing Gandhi. I just flat out should not be winning on deity, I am not that good. However, I will play this scenario at higher levels to take a break from Civ vs the AIs, as compared to Civ vs Barbarians.

Spoiler :

Question: how do I put that in a spoiler tag so it does not show up for everyone just scrolling through the posts? And, how do I get a save file uploaded (I could not find where the save files are). Presumably once I do that, I'll be able to upload saved games and also play games that are linked here.

I honestly wonder if a game with nothing but barbs would actually be more challenging

It is much less challenging. Even at deity it's not. It is actually quite a bit less challenging, although there may be times on deity that multiple camps pop with one or more of them spewing out Barbarian Eagle Scouts. Now that is tough to survive!

 

[Zaarin]

Question: how do I put that in a spoiler tag so it does not show up for everyone just scrolling through the posts? And, how do I get a save file uploaded (I could not find where the save files are). Presumably once I do that, I'll be able to upload saved games and also play games that are linked here.

In brackets, spoiler.../spoiler.

 

[Timewarp]

In brackets, spoiler.../spoiler.

Thank you. It looks much better now!

 

[aieeegrunt]

It is much less challenging. Even at deity it's not. It is actually quite a bit less challenging, although there may be times on deity that multiple camps pop with one or more of them spewing out Barbarian Eagle Scouts. Now that is tough to survive!

Duly noted. My bext game will be a no barbs test.

Honestly considering a no City Stare thing as well

 

[Timewarp]

Duly noted. My bext game will be a no barbs test.

Honestly considering a no City Stare thing as well

Let me know how it goes, both no barb as well as no city state. It would be interesting to see if others got about the same result as I got.

 

[Timewarp]

My first impression is that the AI is not just a little tougher to beat without barbs, but quite a bit tougher. My current feeling is that if you want to make the game harder, remove the barbarians. They seem to hurt the AI MUCH more than they hurt players.

 

[aieeegrunt]

One other thing I was thinking about, given that the AI doesnt do (or repair) improvements much was Abundant Resources

 

[Jkchart]

So, this is easily one of my three favorite modes. However, they really need to fix a) snow camps and b) the fact that barbarians still seem to consider converted city states as barbarians, so they just ignore each other. (this is an issue also with Zombies, which end up doing the same thing if both modes are enabled. Really, as an aside Zombies should be their own faction and de-linked from barbarian camps, it would be interesting to have barbarians being overwhelmed by zombies which create more zombies instead of how it works now)

 

[UWHabs]

The more I play with this mode, the more I like it. It might not be ideally balanced for every game setup and I don't like the CS polar stations, but on huge maps/Prince difficulty with a lot of AI opponents you get close to a fine balance of barbarian clans and them evolving into additional CSs even past the middle age. I also like that CSs have overall a lot more units around, which makes levying troops a great thing.

My biggest wish for this mode has now become an UI one: One huges map it is quite time consuming to find the active clans and click through to see if one offers a cool UU. A kind of "mercenary menu" somewhere would be good...any modders out there liking the idea (after having tested the sweet qucik deals mod probably my fantasy goes crazy, what can be modded )

Yeah, I'd love there to be better UI. Most of the time I simply search for "Barbarian Outpost", sit there wait for it to search, and then click through to them. Even something as simple as having like a left and right arrow to talk to the "next" clan that you can see would be fantastic to quickly cycle through diplomacy for all of them.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

Customized (via Mod) Map-Tacks to the rescue, guys!

 

[MrRadar]

My first impression is that the AI is not just a little tougher to beat without barbs, but quite a bit tougher. My current feeling is that if you want to make the game harder, remove the barbarians. They seem to hurt the AI MUCH more than they hurt players.

You're not wrong. AI is pathetic in dealing with barbs:

Spoiler :

A buffet of free settlers and workers, shame my ships had no access to this ocean... however, the game was about to end anyway, so it didn't matter

 

[Socrates99]

Why are the snow CSs bad? I guess imo it's just another CS to Suze I dont care where it is. Is it just an immersion thing? Like, what's it matter?

 

[Pfeffersack]

Why are the snow CSs bad? I guess imo it's just another CS to Suze I dont care where it is. Is it just an immersion thing? Like, what's it matter?

Beside immersion, the bad location has some 2nd degree indirect negative effects - the CS will be overall weaker (producing less units for self-defense/levying because of weaker economy), is located at the edge of the world if you need access (levied troops, docking rights to heal your ships) and has likely overall less ressource access.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Why are the snow CSs bad? I guess imo it's just another CS to Suze I dont care where it is. Is it just an immersion thing? Like, what's it matter?

It’s terrible immersion
It’s terrible gameplay
It also underscore’s that this game’s makers do absolutly zero playtesting. It is one of an unacceptably long list of bugs and terrible design choices that show that they literally don’t playtest at all, as even part of a single playthrough would have revealed it

 

[Linklite]

Beside immersion, the bad location has some 2nd degree indirect negative effects - the CS will be overall weaker (producing less units for self-defense/levying because of weaker economy), is located at the edge of the world if you need access (levied troops, docking rights to heal your ships) and has likely overall less ressource access.

Those aren't really negatives so much as suboptimal. If the choice were between them being in polar regions or not existing at all, it wouod still be better to have them than not. Instead, it's just that they'd be better if placed more conveniently.

 

[Socrates99]

It’s terrible immersion
It’s terrible gameplay
It also underscore’s that this game’s makers do absolutly zero playtesting. It is one of an unacceptably long list of bugs and terrible design choices that show that they literally don’t playtest at all, as even part of a single playthrough would have revealed it

Terrible immersion I get but terrible gameplay how? How is it an actual bug? Players could settle those regions of they want. They're just usually not worth the investment. A CS doesn't have that concern. They tech up with major civs. They get free walls. They get free units when they spawn. In fact converted barb camps tend to have pretty big armies since they keep any units attached to that camp. They don't need to be "good." They exist solely to provide buffs to the major civs which they do just fine whether their tiles are workable or not.

Once good spots are taken barbs are only going to spawn in the polar regions or small islands where fog is persistent. Would it be better to just lock out the conversion aspect of the mode when prime spots are gone? Doesn't sound like good gamplay to me. New CSs provide new opportunities and replace captured or razed CSs the AI has crushed. Keeping a decent list of CSs is good gameplay. Where those CSs are at is pretty minor as far as actual gameplay is concerned.

A few players have decided it's immersion breaking and are labeling something functional a bug. Trust me, if they "fixed" this "bug" you'd have plenty of new complainers ticked off that no new CSs can form once prime land has been claimed.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Terrible immersion I get but terrible gameplay how? How is it an actual bug? Players could settle those regions of they want. They're just usually not worth the investment. A CS doesn't have that concern. They tech up with major civs. They get free walls. They get free units when they spawn. In fact converted barb camps tend to have pretty big armies since they keep any units attached to that camp. They don't need to be "good." They exist solely to provide buffs to the major civs which they do just fine whether their tiles are workable or not.

Once good spots are taken barbs are only going to spawn in the polar regions or small islands where fog is persistent. Would it be better to just lock out the conversion aspect of the mode when prime spots are gone? Doesn't sound like good gamplay to me. New CSs provide new opportunities and replace captured or razed CSs the AI has crushed. Keeping a decent list of CSs is good gameplay. Where those CSs are at is pretty minor as far as actual gameplay is concerned.

A few players have decided it's immersion breaking and are labeling something functional a bug. Trust me, if they "fixed" this "bug" you'd have plenty of new complainers ticked off that no new CSs can form once prime land has been claimed.

I said bugs in the general sense, as this game has a lot. I was referring to Arctic Station City States as terrible design and lack of playtesting

If there are no good spots left, barbs should stop spawning, this makes for both better gameplay AND immersion, as this is exactly how things logically should work.

I finished a game recently on TSL earth where what should have been a major war with Russia was a sad pushover, as Russia inexplicably had no military.

I found out why when I discovered that the Arctic circle had several ice cap barb camps virtually spewing advanced military units that had decimated Russia

The campaign to deal with them was way harder than dealing with the world’s largest power.

This is ridiculous. The Mighty Laplander Army was the world’s most powerful military force, presumably a mighty sorceror was making Ice Golems or something.

 

[iammaxhailme]

Why are the snow CSs bad? I guess imo it's just another CS to Suze I dont care where it is. Is it just an immersion thing? Like, what's it matter?

Another reason: The AI is terrible at exploring, never finds these CS's, which gives the player free reign to rake in the diplo favor for just two or three envoys, and the game is easy enough as it is.

 

[Zaarin]

a mighty sorceror was making Ice Golems or something.

What I'm hearing is "Bohemia confirmed."