Barbarian raids imbalanced

[tu_79]

The Pathfinder staying at home would make next to no difference

It buys you time for the warrior. But it could find a treasure or be upgraded by exploring.

I've succeded against horsemen with just warriors and archers, but it's tough. Probably, right now fighting against barbs in an isolated start is tougher than the rest of the game, at least in king and emperor. The fact that you have something looking like an army (or you are dead by then) when you meet your neighbours may help smoothing the rest of the game.

Again, I'm not being attacked that early.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

Wasn't there some mechanism in previous versions of the game that prevented barbarians from entering your territory for the first x turns? If so is it possible to bring that back in some form? .....

I think this mechanic is still active. But also with RNG like methods. Sometimes I see barbarians wandering in circles around my capitol doing nothing, sometimes I didnt see any barbarian at my capitol for 30 turns, and another time 3 barbarians attack my capitol in less than 20 turns.

This is too random for me.

And staying with the pathfinder at capitol to defend 2 or 3 barbarians in 20 turns is first impossible and second not the reason we changed from warrior to pathfinder.

 

[void_genesis]

I just rage quit a game where every single barbarian attack for the first 100 turns stole a whole turn of production. Must have been about 20-30 attacks. It is incredibly annoying both because of the amount of production taken (very large compared to when gold or culture goes) but also that it is only taking production. There is something malfunctioning with the RNG for this function.

 

[Moi Magnus]

I just rage quit a game where every single barbarian attack for the first 100 turns stole a whole turn of production. Must have been about 20-30 attacks. It is incredibly annoying both because of the amount of production taken (very large compared to when gold or culture goes) but also that it is only taking production. There is something malfunctioning with the RNG for this function.

The "Chill barbarians" option may help you as a temporary solution.

 

[civplayer33]

Sorry to semi-necro this thread, but I just want to gather some more opinions on barbarian Production theft.

In my current game (large, epic, emperor, Communitas, Japan) I have been raided by barbarians 5 times now (I have @Enginseer's and Hokath's events active and a barbarian raid event triggered) and every single time they stole Production from my capital; this is between turn 50 and 60. The amount stolen is greater than what I produce in a turn with the city (13 Prod. stolen per raid) and thus actually SETS BACK the progress on my currently producing entity, which is a settler and thus prevents my city from growing despite actually "unbuilding" itself (the number of turns to completion doesn't just stagnate it actually increases). I have a warrior in the city but it takes a while to kill the 4 barbies that spawned; this is so annoying that I was thinking of loading an autosave to switch production to something else so that at least my city can grow and things are not "unbuilt".

I recall barbarian raids from my last game only stealing production as well; please state here if you guys have the same experience with barbies and Production or if in your games they steal other stuff so I can have some confirmation and post to Github as a potential bug.

It has also been pointed out here that these raids are incredibly random and they can also be incredibly damaging:

I think this mechanic is still active. But also with RNG like methods. Sometimes I see barbarians wandering in circles around my capitol doing nothing, sometimes I didnt see any barbarian at my capitol for 30 turns, and another time 3 barbarians attack my capitol in less than 20 turns.

This is too random for me.

And staying with the pathfinder at capitol to defend 2 or 3 barbarians in 20 turns is first impossible and second not the reason we changed from warrior to pathfinder.

While some luck is fine, I think the Production stolen is far too much and, again, so far for me at least only Production has been stolen; if Gold is available they should be stealing that instead.

Edit: Just reloaded and made some different moves...only Production stolen again; even barbarian archers will come to the city (instead of shooting at it) and in the same turn as crossing a river loot it and steal production -.-
wtf...

Comments?

 

[Dawnpromise]

But I don't get what stealing production means. Did they destroy the building that was on production? But what are they carrying away?

In game the flavor-text reads as them 'kidnapping citizens setting production back' which is kinda reaching a bit IMO but I suppose barbarian slavers had to be represented in some manner. Still think the production loss needs to be properly scaled.

The Pathfinder staying at home would make next to no difference. It's not just the warriors... it's that they're soon followed by axes, then horses. You just about have to beeline bronzeworking -- and even that won't help in the first 20 turns. A game can be literally crippled in that span.

I'll also agree that hand-axes are a disproportionately large power spike for barbarians, unless you've got several warriors out or archers they WILL ruin you.

 

[civplayer33]

In game the flavor-text reads as them 'kidnapping citizens setting production back' which is kinda reaching a bit IMO but I suppose barbarian slavers had to be represented in some manner. Still think the production loss needs to be properly scaled.

Exactly. I am having a really bad day...Huns as neighbor and of course they declare war "just because" and of course the barbarians would rather loot my cities instead of attacking the 10 HP Hunnic warrior *sigh*.
On the positive side, the 10th or so raid did finally steal something other than production. It stole 1 Gold. One. Gold. While I have about 150 Gold. One Gold...and before that they were stealing 10-15 Production per raid.
Is this really me having the worst day with this game ever or is the looting mechanism completely bonkers? Since I have no idea how it is "supposed" to work viz. balanced looting, here is what would make sense to me: barbarians steal random yields (i.e. evenly weighted between Food, Culture, Science, Gold, Production) and the amount stolen is proportional to a percentage of actually produced yields.
For example, the barbarians shouldn't steal more Production than is produced in one turn (they did multiple times for me -.-) but rather about 20-80% of the per-turn-yields of that city.
Most importantly though, the stolen yields should be evenly weighted! It is EXTREMELY unlikely that this is the case right now; if I have listed all the things that can be stolen correctly, that would mean the chance that they steal Production 9 times in a row is 0.0000512 %....meaning it is basically impossible, so something must be broken (unless this is seriously intentional in which case I would be shocked, frankly).

 

[Gazebo]

Exactly. I am having a really bad day...Huns as neighbor and of course they declare war "just because" and of course the barbarians would rather loot my cities instead of attacking the 10 HP Hunnic warrior *sigh*.
On the positive side, the 10th or so raid did finally steal something other than production. It stole 1 Gold. One. Gold. While I have about 150 Gold. One Gold...and before that they were stealing 10-15 Production per raid.
Is this really me having the worst day with this game ever or is the looting mechanism completely bonkers? Since I have no idea how it is "supposed" to work viz. balanced looting, here is what would make sense to me: barbarians steal random yields (i.e. evenly weighted between Food, Culture, Science, Gold, Production) and the amount stolen is proportional to a percentage of actually produced yields.
For example, the barbarians shouldn't steal more Production than is produced in one turn (they did multiple times for me -.-) but rather about 20-80% of the per-turn-yields of that city.
Most importantly though, the stolen yields should be evenly weighted! It is EXTREMELY unlikely that this is the case right now; if I have listed all the things that can be stolen correctly, that would mean the chance that they steal Production 9 times in a row is 0.0000512 %....meaning it is basically impossible, so something must be broken (unless this is seriously intentional in which case I would be shocked, frankly).

The yields are already weighted, discounted, and randomized. If you don't have the defenses to protect your city prior to the barbarian release turn for your difficulty, either lower difficulty or build better defenses.

G

 

[pandasnail]

That early in the game, you should have just taken the -2 happiness if you can't protect your capital yet even with the free unit the event gives.

I, for one, kinda like that production is the most frequent barb city pillage, since its the most punishing and game altering one. If it was up to me, this barb release turns thing would go, can you imagine two actual barbarians deciding not to raid a settled city, because they weren't supposed to for the first 1000 years of civilization. Too silly. Actually didn't know it was difficulty dependent, which means difficultymod.xml prob has a value I can change. Delightful.

 

[Dawnpromise]

That early in the game, you should have just taken the -2 happiness if you can't protect your capital yet even with the free unit the event gives.

I, for one, kinda like that production is the most frequent barb city pillage, since its the most punishing and game altering one. If it was up to me, this barb release turns thing would go, can you imagine two actual barbarians deciding not to raid a settled city, because they weren't supposed to for the first 1000 years of civilization. Too silly. Actually didn't know it was difficulty dependent, which means difficultymod.xml prob has a value I can change. Delightful.

Indeed there is, it's near the bottom along with the rest of the barbarian values such as how much combat bonus players and AI get against them which I find is more immersion breaking then them taking a while to catch on the the profitability of raiding their neighbors.

 

[civplayer33]

The yields are already weighted, discounted, and randomized. If you don't have the defenses to protect your city prior to the barbarian release turn for your difficulty, either lower difficulty or build better defenses.

G

It was on turn 50-60 that this happened...what kind of defenses do you expect me to have by then? I had a warrior in the city...
I still think that the amount of Production stolen is absurd, especially compared to the laughable amount of Gold stolen; basically one "production-raid" hurt me as much as ten "gold-raids" would have.

That early in the game, you should have just taken the -2 happiness if you can't protect your capital yet even with the free unit the event gives.

Yes in retrospect I probably should have...of course a couple of turns later another event forced me to take -2 happiness; there were some other units close by so I hoped the barbs would go for them, which they did...but a then they came back^^.
I think I will just play without events from hereon out unless I start liking them a lot more as my current game develops.

 

[Gazebo]

It was on turn 50-60 that this happened...what kind of defenses do you expect me to have by then? I had a warrior in the city...
I still think that the amount of Production stolen is absurd, especially compared to the laughable amount of Gold stolen; basically one "production-raid" hurt me as much as ten "gold-raids" would have.



Yes in retrospect I probably should have...of course a couple of turns later another event forced me to take -2 happiness; there were some other units close by so I hoped the barbs would go for them, which they did...but a then they came back^^.
I think I will just play without events from hereon out unless I start liking them a lot more as my current game develops.

Turn 50? More than one warrior, that's for sure. At least one ranged unit and a warrior or two, I'd say.

G

 

[civplayer33]

Yeah well I'm Japan so I went for lower techs first to get walls and barracks...of course I missed religion anyway by 3 turns; tbh I think this might be the first game that I'm just gonna quit. Not that I'm doing super bad, I can still win no problem but this game is pulling me down much more than it is fun. Gonna take a break for a while.