Barbarians are back :(

it wouldn't be the same if they weren't back.
It's OK, I dont want it the same. Civ has changed many things since Civ1, why not remove barbs.

I dont care about political correctness, it's OK if we have Rome as playable civ and Celts as barbarians. It's not OK if we have Rome and Celts as playable civs and some mysterious barbarians on top of that. That's from historical perspective. From gameplay perspective I dont need barbs at all, or at least they should be radically changed.

That said, I do play with barbs on. Always. I want to beat the game as is, without adjusting anything to my favor. I play with many things I dont like because removing them would affect balance in very bad ways - and I have no time to rebalance whole Civ, thats a huge work. But it doesn't change the fact that barbs (as they are in Civ4) add nothing but annoyance if you play at Emperor+. Especially if you dont abuse spawnbusting.

Ofcourse it's too early to judge barbarians of Civ 5 but I have a feeling they wont be much different. Although I really like Aussie's idea about civ states with different aggression levels.

Edit: Thanks to Greg, its nice to know they wont have cities at least :)
 
How does not playing with barbs effect the gameplay balance? Actually you are helping the AI out a bit, because often barbs are tougher on AI civ's than the human player... so you are making the game a bit more difficult for yourself by allowing easier AI expansion.

It's kind of like self-torture to do that to yourself when you hate barbarians. The option is there for a reason.
 
How does not playing with barbs effect the gameplay balance? Actually you are helping the AI out a bit, because often barbs are tougher on AI civ's than the human player... so you are making the game a bit more difficult for yourself by allowing easier AI expansion.
There's a huge difference between spawning settlers like no tomorrow and sending them unguarded to take all good spots insanely early. And building settlers _and_ army and carefuly guiding guarded settlers to spawnbusted places to find the cities and hoping that barbs wont find the cities in non-spawnbusted places.

You are wrong about barbs being tougher to AIs, quite the contrary, to my knowledge AIs get huge bonuses against barbs. With barbs off it's far easier to outexpand AIs, not the vice versa. It's about AI intelligence too, even with barbs off AIs would not send unguarded settlers but a player would. I played with barbs off once or twice (continuing from other players saves) and it was so much easier it wasnt even funny.
 
For the sake of political correctness, barbarians could be retagged "Rebels". AFAIR Medieval2:TW had such a mechanic that rebel armies were spawned (I believe it was connected to unhappy cities, but I'm not sure).

An additional idea (probably more for a mod): if those rebels manage to conquer a city, they found a new Civ/City State that is automatically at war with the previous owner of the city - however, they might engage in diplomacy with their opponent's opponents.
 
I so didn't want barbarians to be back :( It's a stupid term. Celts were legitimate civ in Civ4 but they were "barbarians" to Romans

Just to nitpick a little. Barbarians are barbarians to Romans, Celts are barbarians to Greeks.
 
I remember a movie/book where the Persians were barbarians to the Greeks, and they got treated like barbarians also.

I don't see how calling barbarians barbarians should ever be changed. If it is due to political correctness, that will be a pathetic sad day in the history of the world. I mean, who is actually offended by calling a small little pixel in a game a barbarian? Barbarian's don't even exist anymore in the sense that they are depicted in the game.

I mean look at Conan (the Barbarian); he was a cool sucker! No one to mess with. And he got the ladies also. And he destroyed evil as well.

Is anyone going to be offended that City-States aren't given their full respect because they are not Civilizations? It just doesn't make any sense! :)
 
Interesting.
I was always a big fan of Terra maps, and if all you can find in the new world are small city states then that will change the flavour of Terra games significantly; unless there is a way to spawn actual Civs at later start dates to spread and provide some resistance (and diplomacy options) for old world Civs discovering the new world and flooding it with colonists.

WANT! WANT!! WANT!!!

I totally sign the the request for a more meaningful and historically more accurate colonial gameplay on terra maps.

Please add an option to assign civs to the new world (choosable in custom games) that start later or have a malus on research times. The malus could be reverted into a bonus when they meet a more advanced civ for the first time.
Meaning for example that they research at half speed till they meet the "normal" civs, then get a bonus like 500% research for 50 turns, and after that they are normal civs (usually still less developed than the colonial powers).

What do you think?
 
literally it meant one who only talks blah blah, as they werent speaking the clearly only real language in the world.
 
Barbarian: rpg class which consists of a character carrying no armor and doing frenzy attacks.
 
literally it meant one who only talks blah blah, as they werent speaking the clearly only real language in the world.

Exactly, the phrase says a heck of a lot more about the Greeks than the people they hit with it.

Namely that they were a bunch of snotters! They were asking for it, what with their culturally insensitive stereotypes, ethno-centric world view and discriminatory use of an arcane script rather than the hieroglyphs we all know to be superior.

So I razed their cities.
 
This is literally true; the old Greek word from which 'barbarian' is derived meant 'stranger' or 'foreigner'.
Exactly, this friggin barbarian's got it right! :D There's nothing politically incorrect about using the term as the Civ series has. Sure the Celts were barbarians to the Romans, but then again so were the Scythians and they were definitely a civilization.

P.S. Nice avatar!
 
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