Barbarian Nonsense

[Magil]

There should be a grace period before barbarian camps start appearing imo. Though unfortunately it seems the Eureka system was designed with hunting barbarians from turn 1 in mind.

 

[PYITE]

If you use the YnAMP mod, barb camps can’t spawn a scout until turn 7.

 

[Atwork]

After R&F came out, I quit my first good game due to being overrun by barbs. But, part of the problem was my bad decision to send 4/6th of my army to take a city far from my capital. too far from my capital.

An even bigger problem was my game set-up on a huge map; not enough civs and/or city-states, thus leaving way too much space for barbs to spawn.

Now that I've experimented and have a good sense of the right number of civs and city states for the sort of set up I prefer -- and now that I've learned to build a larger military early on -- I've had a lot of fun with the early wars against the barbarians.

It feels like a real challenge to gain a foothold in the early game, but not rage worthy and not impossible.

 

[REDfeller]

Thanks for the feedback, playing on emperor, but as suggested, it doesn't really matter.

I guess it always comes down to playing the map.

If I haven't got decent tiles I usually open with builder. I was just annoyed over the super power navy from a wooden camp with latest tech.

 

[SxSnts9]

If you open with builder and you get overrun why don't you try opening with a scout/slinger? Or build walls early if they get to alarming levels. Honestly if you are rage quitting over barbarians then you lost because you didnt prepare. Much like in history you need a defensive force before you go off conquering or settling other cities.

 

[Disgustipated]

I prefer scout, slinger, builder settler. I can usually get by with just the slinger and the warrior (and maybe the scout to help out though it's better for him to explore). Often times I cash buy another warrior.

Only one game I have rage quit over barbarians. It wasn't the best starting location anyways, so I wasn't that upset over it.

I should also mention I tend to lower the city states by one, and add one or two civilizations to the game.

 

[earlc]

Yeah, 0 here too, and I'm typically a small-army player.

My build order tends to be scout, slinger, then a builder or a settler depending on the way things are going. Using these three units (including the starting warrior, which I set out to explore in a small radius before bringing him back home) I virtually never have trouble with barbs.

If I somehow miss the barb scout or get hit by an invasion that's supposed to target someone else, I'll switch over to building either more warriors or slingers, by which time the eureka for archery is available and you can start sniping them into oblivion. On a very rare occasion I'll purchase a warrior or slinger, but rarely need to.

I don't think you need any more than that to handle barbarians. Just be diligent in getting rid of them, and try to nab that scout before it returns to camp.

 

[Rotomagus]

it depends. There is definitely something wrong with Barbspawns. I ragequit once or twice because of them.

Had several occasions where Barbs got in the way of my early invasions. As they tend to only go for the human player if they can, I count this under the usual AI cheats. It's civ standard though.

But I also witnessed ridiculously unfair game behaviour. Insane spawn rates at insane places. I clear out a barbcamp, next round one tile in the currently unseen map the next one spawns and pumps out unit by unit every round. Cleaned it out, next round immediately the next camp spawned and so on. Of course happens on large maps mostly. Point is, that this is no fun at all, it's just anoying.

I play on Prince, mind you, cause I don't want to fight too many ridiculous AI-Cheats and Bonuses. Poorly designed as it is since Civ3...

 

[nzcamel]

Until you have any improvements up, there's nothing to protect from barbarians anyway. I used to keep my initial warrior close, but then realised that it didn't matter at that stage; so I wander much further with them now.

 

[Disgustipated]

I should note one online speed game I didn't finish that was for achievement purposes only, barbs were kind of out of control. But that's because I was ignoring them. You can't ignore barbs LOL. I also think online speed is much more difficult to handle barbs, I normally play epic speed which gives you more time to move around your units.

 

[Melliores]

A wise man once said "As much as you would like to ignore barbarians, they will not ignore you. "

All in all, if you remove City States and Civs during map creation, you will leave gaps in the land that will be filled by a barbarian horde sooner rather than later. You will have to play to the map and not ignore it specific features, especially the ones you chose yourself.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

As they tend to only go for the human player if they can, I count this under the usual AI cheats.

Is this true? I've not noticed a preference for barbarians to attack my units or cities versus city states or other civs, but I haven't kept a running total to assess the percentages. Does anyone have data on this, or extracts from the XML to confirm barbarian preference, or even anecdotal confirmation of a preference?

I have noticed a tendency (again, no data to support, just anecdotal) for city states and other civs to ignore my units and attack barbarians, but I assume that's a fall out of the normal target priority list, since barbarian units tend to be weaker and therefore softer targets.

 

[tedhebert]

Never !!! Ever !!! True that barbarians can sometimes slow down my start game a lot, but honestly it's quite rare... When it does happen, I choose to take it as a challenge... Especially at immortal level, it makes my games very interesting and tight when it happens... but rage quit ? no !

 

[DJ_Tanner]

Is this true? I've not noticed a preference for barbarians to attack my units or cities versus city states or other civs, but I haven't kept a running total to assess the percentages. Does anyone have data on this, or extracts from the XML to confirm barbarian preference, or even anecdotal confirmation of a preference?

That doesn't sound correct. Unless, of course, you are counting the difficulty bonus. The barbs have some rudimentary logic, like they will rush to the city the scout found, even if its not the closest, which can be weird sometimes. But for their attacks they, as far as I can tell, just attack the unit they have the best score against. So they will always attack the low defense ranged units but if there are 2 equal units, a player and AI, they are likely to always attack the player if you are on higher difficulty since the AI will have more bonuses to the attack score.

 

[steveg700]

I started a similar thread a couple weeks back and did not enjoy the commiseration demonstrated here.

Instead it was all "It's frickin' great!" and "I love it!" and "Shoulda killed the scout!"

One good thing that came of it was demonstrating that the code actually does favor the barbarian spawns at higher diffs.

Personally, I don't find the actual camp spawning to be problematic, because it's just a side effect of having an isolated start (which is beneficial if you're playing peacefully), but rather the sheer volume of units that a camp spawns, especially when it can spawn hordes of resource-dependent units in the ancient era (what kinda barbarians are these???).

I tend to think this should be balanced against proximity. The closer the camps are to a city, the slower their spawn rate.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

That doesn't sound correct. Unless, of course, you are counting the difficulty bonus. The barbs have some rudimentary logic, like they will rush to the city the scout found, even if its not the closest, which can be weird sometimes. But for their attacks they, as far as I can tell, just attack the unit they have the best score against. So they will always attack the low defense ranged units but if there are 2 equal units, a player and AI, they are likely to always attack the player if you are on higher difficulty since the AI will have more bonuses to the attack score.

That makes sense to me. Thanks!

One good thing that came of it was demonstrating that the code actually does favor the barbarian spawns at higher diffs.

I didn't know that. So how does this work? Do camps spawn more frequently at higher difficulty levels? Or are the number of units spawned by a returning Scout increased with difficulty level?

 

[steveg700]

I didn't know that. So how does this work? Do camps spawn more frequently at higher difficulty levels? Or are the number of units spawned by a returning Scout increased with difficulty level?

All of the above. Here's a select quote from the thread.

So the data from Barbarians.xml indicates it is just immortal and deity they spawn that fast, the number changes too. Not sure about the raid/attack diff
I guess this is one of the reasons I enjoy playing on Emp

View attachment 487673

You can check out the thread for more.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

All of the above. Here's a select quote from the thread.


You can check out the thread for more.

Thanks! I would have assumed from the patch notes that they made Barbarian combat strength scale with difficulty, like major civs' do. It was long enough between the patch notes release and the time I was able to actually play R&F, however, that I never thought about it or what it meant again. I've not noticed a difference in barbarians post R&F and I usually play on Immortal/Deity (I did drop down to Emperor at first), but that's a very small set of games so rather irrelevant.

I thought barbarians always spawned one unit per turn, but that may reflect my poor memory more than anything else. Anybody figure out how the number of units spawned differs now from previously? Top difficulty attacks spawn 9 units now. I'm going to guess based on memory (so in other words, low odds I'm right) that pre R&F all spawns aligned with the Chef-EMP line and were either 7 units (foot) or 6 units (horse). If so, the Immortal and Deity spawns are now 30-50% larger than before, and low difficulty spawns are 35-45% smaller.

 

[Mrmyx22]

My agent **** has reported that Cleopatra and Gilgamesh are meeting in Carthage tomorrow to discuss the ridiculous OP humans that keep attacking them and taking their cities and stuff. Heck..sometimes they can't get to turn 50 in one piece. I think they are going to complain to Fix Us.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Is this true? I've not noticed a preference for barbarians to attack my units or cities versus city states or other civs, but I haven't kept a running total to assess the percentages. Does anyone have data on this, or extracts from the XML to confirm barbarian preference, or even anecdotal confirmation of a preference?

I have noticed a tendency (again, no data to support, just anecdotal) for city states and other civs to ignore my units and attack barbarians, but I assume that's a fall out of the normal target priority list, since barbarian units tend to be weaker and therefore softer targets.

I haven't seen evidence of anti-human bias, but I have seen hard evidence of wrong-targeting (scout sees city belonging to one civ, camp streams units to attack a different civ). Presumably this is a bug when it happens.