BarbarianCivs - an unbalanced Game breaker

[poncratias]

I don`t know if it`s just me, but right now i can`t use the barbarian-civs- feature as it is, as it completely breaks the game in terms of unbalance!

Whenever a barbarian city grows to be a civillization, it gets a number of "bonus gifts", like a lot of new techs (that nobody else has discovered yet), lots of strong units and even new buldings. -all at once!

I don`t know WHY they get this, because it`s complete unrealistic and unbalanced imho.

This even get`s worse as the game develops:
So right now my game is in like the early medieval era, there are 3 barb. civs (of 13 total civs), each of them only has like 2-3 cities (compared to my 15), but are running around with riflemen and guns while everybody else is building their first knights!


so i took a look into the python file, and whoa, like 90% of the code is just about what all is to be given to them as "birthday present" when they settle as a civ!
And also there is an annoying part of code that forces them to attack the first player they get contact with. Why that?? They are a just a newborn civ and try to survive, not go on some crazy psycho rampage!
I tried to just delete parts of the code, as i don`t know how to recode it for the better, but this made the game crash.
Yes, there is a config file for that mod but it lacks of options to alter that stuff!

Why can`t it be just like that they have only the techs everyone else has got at the moment they become a civ (maybe also a little less), plus maybe only 2 workers or a setller extra to the units they already have?


This barbarian civ feature would be so cool and add just that extra diversity to the game, but it sadly fails because of over-featuring.

Could somebody PLEASE for the sake of this great mod either

.)make a "BarbarianCiv Slim edition"
.)tell me what to change in the file
.)add more options to the cfg file (to alter bonus techs/units and the attack feature on/off)


PLEASE everything else is great RoM is great you all are great but pleeeease......

 

[gramcrkr103]

Problem in my games is the massive stack they start out with. And its not just a bday present, they get a stack when they first "organize and form" but are still minor, and then more units when they grow up.
I just started a new game, all features turned on and Modern start, and the minor civs all started with a stack of, I you not, macemen and technicals .
While a new society should start out with a army to protect itself, it shouldnt start with enough to crusade across the continent
I usually just WB them out though

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

The reason they do is so they have a chance of continued existance and of expanding. My strategy is to destroy any barbarian cities near my civ preventing a huge stack coming my way. It does not always work. I wont play with out this option on any more.

 

[zoommooz]

I don`t know if it`s just me, but right now i can`t use the barbarian-civs- feature as it is, as it completely breaks the game in terms of unbalance!

Whenever a barbarian city grows to be a civillization, it gets a number of "bonus gifts", like a lot of new techs (that nobody else has discovered yet), lots of strong units and even new buldings. -all at once!

I don`t know WHY they get this, because it`s complete unrealistic and unbalanced imho.

This even get`s worse as the game develops:
So right now my game is in like the early medieval era, there are 3 barb. civs (of 13 total civs), each of them only has like 2-3 cities (compared to my 15), but are running around with riflemen and guns while everybody else is building their first knights!


so i took a look into the python file, and whoa, like 90% of the code is just about what all is to be given to them as "birthday present" when they settle as a civ!
And also there is an annoying part of code that forces them to attack the first player they get contact with. Why that?? They are a just a newborn civ and try to survive, not go on some crazy psycho rampage!
I tried to just delete parts of the code, as i don`t know how to recode it for the better, but this made the game crash.
Yes, there is a config file for that mod but it lacks of options to alter that stuff!

Why can`t it be just like that they have only the techs everyone else has got at the moment they become a civ (maybe also a little less), plus maybe only 2 workers or a setller extra to the units they already have?


This barbarian civ feature would be so cool and add just that extra diversity to the game, but it sadly fails because of over-featuring.

Could somebody PLEASE for the sake of this great mod either

.)make a "BarbarianCiv Slim edition"
.)tell me what to change in the file
.)add more options to the cfg file (to alter bonus techs/units and the attack feature on/off)


PLEASE everything else is great RoM is great you all are great but pleeeease......

I don't know if this will help, because to some degree it nerfs barbs altogether (though not completely removed). My problem started because I only play on the GEM map, and in the handicap XML, barbarian creation is directly related to unowned squares, so as you can imagine on a giganitc map there is an awful lot of those. It got to the point where I was the only surviving civ, OUT OF 37, with rest barbs, minors, etc. Anyway, my 'fix' was to alter the unowned squares required for their formation, the amount of turns per barb creation cycle (both for land and water). This had the desired effect, barbs are now a nusience--> trouble, as oppossed to dangerous--> destructive. So, the xml file you need to alter (if playing AND) is the Afforess handicap xml in modules/afforess/required. Also, this only works for one difficulty setting (I only play emperor, so I only had to edit one set of information) but if you like to play varied difficulty levels, you will need to modify each of the corresponding sections (this will make sense when you see the file). Hope this helps.

 

[poncratias]

hmm if i get it right this would change the basic barbarian towns to be much rarer, right?

But that wouldn`t fix it that once they become a civ they are completely over-powered, and that out of the nothing!
I really like the barbarians as they are, i wouldn`t like it if there would be less of them.
Also you can easily change the amount of emerging civs by setting a higher minimum rounds before settling in the barbarianciv-config-file, but there is no way of getting them to be more realistic equipped, without super-mega-bonus-packs. Also this doesn`t get rid of their psycho-attitude that the first contact they get is automatically their worst enemy....


The bonus stuff is nomore about helping them to survive, as they already only get a chance to become a civ if there is nearly nobody in the near.

My intention would be that they get nearly 0 bonuses or maybe a settler and some workers,plus the military they already have, but no new techs or anything above that.
Just like it is: a small group of barbarian folks that slowly develops to a civillization.
in small steps, not a big hyperspacejump.
As I stated above they are not in that great danger generally, and also if one of them gets crushed then this should be ok, as this won`t happen to everyone of them and is also completely natural.


I tried to get some sense out of the python code, but it just gives me headaches....

 

[zoommooz]

hmm if i get it right this would change the basic barbarian towns to be much rarer, right?

But that wouldn`t fix it that once they become a civ they are completely over-powered, and that out of the nothing!
I really like the barbarians as they are, i wouldn`t like it if there would be less of them.
Also you can easily change the amount of emerging civs by setting a higher minimum rounds before settling in the barbarianciv-config-file, but there is no way of getting them to be more realistic equipped, without super-mega-bonus-packs. Also this doesn`t get rid of their psycho-attitude that the first contact they get is automatically their worst enemy....


The bonus stuff is nomore about helping them to survive, as they already only get a chance to become a civ if there is nearly nobody in the near.

My intention would be that they get nearly 0 bonuses or maybe a settler and some workers,plus the military they already have, but no new techs or anything above that.
Just like it is: a small group of barbarian folks that slowly develops to a civillization.
in small steps, not a big hyperspacejump.
As I stated above they are not in that great danger generally, and also if one of them gets crushed then this should be ok, as this won`t happen to everyone of them and is also completely natural.


I tried to get some sense out of the python code, but it just gives me headaches....

Correct, my little ploy effect this, not what happens after they do form. However, because I already start my games now with 24 civ, I don't use barbciv mod anymore because on larger map, the was a few people who believed that too many additional civ (being born through this mod) were cause of CTD's. So as for the rest of your ideas/questions, sorry mate can't really help, and, sound like some indepth modding to me, which I hate, I want to play, not mod :--so good luck. Yos may want to post this topic in the RevDCM development forum as they are responsible for the barbciv mod.

 

[zappara]

You should post your ideas to BarbarianCiv - Barbarian cities settle down into full civs where the author of that mod component (Jdog5000) can read it. Though I doubt he'll make changes to this mod component because he's quite busy with Better BtS AI project ect. He has coded this part of the mod and I've only glanced it without making any major changes - the spawning has lot of code because there's multiple different type of civs that the newly formed civ can be (ie. builder, mounted, militaristic etc.).

In Rise of Mankind I've reduced the default spawn amounts to about 1/3 of the original defaults (yes, there has been similar complaints about this over the years). I could take another look the default values but there's always the possibility (depending on what game options you've chosen) that some barbarian civs will be very strong - which is the point of this mod component, to create civs that start with one city but who can also capture 1-2 cities in order get enough power to not to be wiped out from the map too fast. Historically barbarians were real threat and some of them even looted Rome!

 

[fireclaw722]

Sometimes the bad thing with the BarbCivs is that in later eras the BarbCiv that spawn end up being crushed in wars between me and my enemies. Also somtimes the fact that they are only one city and that slows research down majorly.