Barbarian Groups

[Gedwyn]

This is especially prominent when you're the elves and every area the barbs walk into gives them defensive buffs.

Which - and this leads into the other Ljosalfar thread going on - leads me to think that perhaps certain races shouldn't suffer fighting units on tiles/areas they are really familiar with.
Elves fighting an enemy in a forest shouldn't have to deal with a defensive bonus the enemy gets in a forest. That is the elves favourite type of terrain, and they should be better in a forest than everything else.
Ditto for Dwarves in hills. Lizards in jungles, Orcs in jungles etc.

I guess it might be too hard to split that up though...ie Elves fighting Barbs who are on a forested hill...Barbs would get 25% from the hill, but not the 25% from the forest. Could be too much coding in there if it's even possible.

 

[VSPavlov]

That is the elves favourite type of terrain, and they should be better in a forest than everything else.

I suppose, it's covered with Woodsman promotion, which already gives greater attack bonus, that tile defense from forest is.

 

[zup]

Which elven archers cannot get.

 

[xienwolf]

I'll have a look after feedback from the next patch. I've adjusted Barbarians a little bit since last patch so want to know for the current setup before I nudge anything more. But right now there is a 50% chance of a barbarian deciding to pillage anything he can reach that turn as the very first choice that they make. It may be better to introduce a decent chance that they attack a city where they have decent odds (say 60%) of winning before any other checks are made at all. But as I said... I'll hold off on such a change until I have seen feedback on how Barbarians work with the next release we make. Ideally they have learned some new tricks to confound all of you

 

[Anathema]

I like the roaming barbarian stacks, although I too wonder why they don't attack cities. Stacks and stacks of them keep marching through my territory, pillaging everything in sight, but they won't touch my nicely fortified city so I can actually kill them. This isn't a big deal in the mid/late game when you have a bunch of promoted offensive units to eliminate them, but it's really making the early game drag to have a stack of frostlings camping out next to my capital, refusing to attack the city and preventing me from sending workers out to build improvements. Not that I'm against the barbarians preferring to pillage improvements or kill units outside cities, those are smart moves and I approve of them, but when there's nothing else left for them to do I wish they'd just suicide on the city walls like good little barbarians instead of hanging around doing nothing indefinitely.

 

[zup]

Is becoming Hyborem's vassal supposed to make you permanently at peace with Agares? I had to finish off Capria myself because she went av, and my buddy Basium declared a war. I forced her to capitulate before. Buboes and hordes of random demon creeps never touched her.

At least I won the game. I was rapidly on my way to a maf.

Why did I ever summon Basium...

 

[Iceciro]

I'd think so, Zup. When you become someone's Vassal you swap over to their diplomatic agreements - you take on their wars and by extention, their peace agreements. So anyone capitulated to Hybie is going to be demon-peaced as long as he is.

 

[zup]

But Capria was at peace with demons long after she was no longer my vassal.

Yes I know, dumb of me to spread av and summon Basium, both.

 

[Iceciro]

Yeah, I generally leave AV unspread in some tiny corner of my empire if I pick it up - ideally I let some other AI found it and go on a holy crusade to smash it mostly off the face of the earth.

 

[BrasucaJoe]

I LOVE what you did with the barbs....it was a deal maker for me. Either I continue to focus on FFH2 or FF, no time for both. The barbs being more realistic (goblin's always hang out in a horde), and much more of a challenge. The fact that they rather chase around my workers and prevent me from upgrading my terrain.....well, I had to adopt another play style not so risky.

Now, if you could just add some form of bonus for workers being escorted by warriors or something.

 

[notque]

I haven't played FF in awhile, how do you guys find Orthus? With the AI's aggressive barb changes, I find him killing whole continents on occasion.

 

[BrasucaJoe]

Well, instead of having the 1-2 warriors in my city before building another settler....I now make it 4-6. And every time Orthus would step into my city limits I would just lure him to a -25% defense spot, with my builder, and kamakazi them all. Usually the last dude, or the second to last, survives. You may say that you would have more left over if you let him attack the city...but...you get more EXP from attacking then defending. Last I checked. But yeah, I look FORWARD to Orthus coming to see me. I want his axe. Nothing like cleaning out a whole city with your hero + axe + Mobility II

 

[ICanHasName?]

I can deal with those barbarian stacks, but it involves lots of clever human things like convincing them to attack my fortified stack, or bombarding them with archers and waiting until they step on a flat tile and they still end up tearing up some of my land. The AI just cant properly deal with it. They end up getting their workers captured and improvements pilliaged, putting them even farther behind. The Malakim especially seem to end up with 1 desert city surrounded by stacks of hill giants, which I honestly dont think I could deal with until mages or champions. This gets worse when Samhain goes off, because now there are wolf riders rampaging around, and archers that like to fortify themselves on hills. I end up having to go into world builder and give out a couple of settlers and a stack of archers to each civ (on immortal difficulty with 2x normal civ count) just to keep them alive and competitive.

I like lots of barbarians but they are just too numerous and smart

 

[BrasucaJoe]

Aha...This may explain why every game I play...the AI is seriously way behind in tech, terrain upgrading, etc. The Barbs are pwning them!





Edit: Ok, not every game...

 

[Thunder_Gr]

If you want to give AI a chance against barbarians, increase your difficulty. The AI gets bonuses against barbarians which are greater as the difficulty indreases.

 

[PapaMonkey]

With Fog busting no longer helpful in eliminating barb spaws, it would be nice if forts spread some culture. I believe in one of Marnok's mods this was the case. A fort with a unit would generate a culture with a max of 9 squares (center and surrounding 8) This would be key for closing up those areas where you don't want/need another city, but want your culture to close up. And for getting those far-away, yet isolated nodes and resources.

For all I know this may already be implemented (can't remember building a fort recently). But if not, I think it would be a nice balancing factor to the change in spawns.

 

[Breez]

I like the roaming barbarian stacks, although I too wonder why they don't attack cities. Stacks and stacks of them keep marching through my territory, pillaging everything in sight, but they won't touch my nicely fortified city so I can actually kill them. This isn't a big deal in the mid/late game when you have a bunch of promoted offensive units to eliminate them, but it's really making the early game drag to have a stack of frostlings camping out next to my capital, refusing to attack the city and preventing me from sending workers out to build improvements. Not that I'm against the barbarians preferring to pillage improvements or kill units outside cities, those are smart moves and I approve of them, but when there's nothing else left for them to do I wish they'd just suicide on the city walls like good little barbarians instead of hanging around doing nothing indefinitely.

My resolution to this is to have 1 Defensive Unit (archer) and 1 offensive unit (axeman or Horseman etc) in each city. The archer 1st weakens the top defender with a ranged attack. Then the Offensive unit attacks out into the stack. In theory killing 1 unit and being damaged himself. I keep up the archer attacks slowly sandpapering down the stack as a whole while the offensive unit heals.

Once healed up, rinse and repeat. You can speed this up by adding additional units to your city. The nice part about this tactic is they can not counter attack your weakened unit with out first going through your fortified archer.

If they start to wander away, they tend to prefer the taste of Workers over anything else. ASSUMING they are move 1 units, I step my worker out the opposite side of the city from them and start building a road or whatever. They will turn around and go for the worker. Pick one or 2 off with the above mentioned tactic. Just before they reach the worker have him hid back in the city.

Speed 2 barbs makes this MUCH more difficult to pull off.

 

[Breez]

With Fog busting no longer helpful in eliminating barb spaws, it would be nice if forts spread some culture. I believe in one of Marnok's mods this was the case. A fort with a unit would generate a culture with a max of 9 squares (center and surrounding 8) This would be key for closing up those areas where you don't want/need another city, but want your culture to close up. And for getting those far-away, yet isolated nodes and resources.

For all I know this may already be implemented (can't remember building a fort recently). But if not, I think it would be a nice balancing factor to the change in spawns.

Orbi's mod does this also (and lets you buy a zero move unit, a fort commander to defend the spot) I found that change to make forts MUCH more strategic.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

seconded, that's a nice idea.

 

[BrasucaJoe]

Fort Commander....I like that a lot. I can definitely see myself actually using a fort if this is implemented.