Barbarians suck in C2C

[Dancing Hoskuld]

In regular BtS barbarians are a continuous but graded threat.

1. there is a 10 turn grace period so you can move your settler around to find a good place to settle.
2. wild animals that can't enter your territory spawn allowing you time to build up your first city a bit and build a small army. They also provide a small limit to exploration.
3. later some human barbarian units spawn these can enter your territory threatening your workers and improvements. They also provide a much bigger limit to exploration as they can easily kill your scouts.
4. later barbarian cities spawn
5. events start happening that provide invasions and pirates

In C2C we don't have the grace periods provided by 1 & 2 as wild animals and Neanderthals start spawning straight away. Neanderthals can be turned of completely to partially return the flavor of BtS but that has other problems.

In BtS the threat from barbarians to your nation has three levels

1. pillaging parties (2 above)
2. looting parties (2 above)
3. city destroying armies

In C2C 1 and 2 are provided by the Neanderthals almost exclusively with 3 being the aim of the barbarian cities with minor help from the events. This means that if you have Neanderthals off you don't see any barbarians until they are strong enough to destroy your nation!

I don't think the spawn rate for these barbarians is determined by game difficulty but it should be.

I would like to see us

• reintroduce the grace period, (getting rid of dates would make this much easier)
• reinstate the small barbarian parties in part by having the barbarian cities go back to mostly making raiding style parties and by increasing the invasion events.
• change the Great Wall so that it stops the raiding parties but not the invading armies.
• we should also add back in the slave (and like) revolts and add a few bandit events - assuming we have fixed the Great Wall for this already.

 

[Thunderbrd]

reinstate the small barbarian parties in part by having the barbarian cities go back to mostly making raiding style parties and by increasing the invasion events.

Pretty much that's what they do. Nothing's really changed there since maybe early Koshling stuff. That said, I suppose some a new AI effort could be added for barbs to make some of these first before building up their fairly weak attack forces.

change the Great Wall so that it stops the raiding parties but not the invading armies.

Nearly impossible. I say nearly because it MIGHT be possible to figure out how to 'define' the difference but that definition wouldn't necessarily include the readiness of the invading army so one that's on its way back to 'base' with few to no units left that may look like a raiding party would still be allowed through. I also just flat don't really think this is right since the owner of the Great Wall is supposed to feel some small sense of security against these threats, PARTICULARLY the invading armies!

we should also add back in the slave (and like) revolts and add a few bandit events - assuming we have fixed the Great Wall for this already.

We have and this would be very good to work in tangent with barbarian ruffian unit developments taking place now.

I'm also looking at autospawning barb criminals in cities which should help with some of what I think you're after.


The grace period issue would really be not as necessary with the Nomadic Start. In fact, it would probably be a bad thing there. But of course that's still a bit off in development.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I have not seen any (human) barbarian units doing raiding and pillaging since the Neanderthals were introduced. As I said the first thing I see is a huge stack of them coming at me! I have seen single units wander past my nation but they almost never stop by, I have just remembered that one did last game.

I will add to my to do list - reinstate the slave etc revolt events.

I have the idea of another similar event - "Robin Hood" where a band of bandits setup in an unworked/unimproved ancient forest inside your nation. It would be a bandit camp, the plot would be claimed by the bandits until you clear them out and new bandits would spawn there.

 

[Harrier]

I have the idea of another similar event - "Robin Hood" where a band of bandits setup in an unworked/unimproved ancient forest inside your nation. It would be a bandit camp, the plot would be claimed by the bandits until you clear them out and new bandits would spawn there.

I like this idea.

When working - could this mechanism also be used to spawn wild animals within a civs borders.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

When working - could this mechanism also be used to spawn wild animals within a civs borders.

The plot is claimed by the bandits so there would be the same problem as now with animals - they would not be able to leave the plot.

 

[strategyonly]

I have been wanting to do something about the Barbarian's since 17 Feb 2013

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=488753

i tried to set up a Mongol camp, but i am not good with python, and at that time nobody wanted to help out on this, not even in the python thread for Civ IV . .

 

[Thunderbrd]

I have the idea of another similar event - "Robin Hood" where a band of bandits setup in an unworked/unimproved ancient forest inside your nation. It would be a bandit camp, the plot would be claimed by the bandits until you clear them out and new bandits would spawn there.

Excellent. Wait for my next commit to determine the unit though... Cutthroats would be more appropriate for this (though bandits work too if its earlier in the game than Robin Hood would've been historically.)

Why would they be stuck there? Barbs can (usually) enter enemy territory. I mean... if there's only one unit, sure, but with more being spawned, those would be free to go cause trouble right?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Animals can't and that is what he was asking but if you have the Great Wall the bandits wont be able to either as you can only spawn animals, Neanderthals and other barbarians in wild areas and I would need to make the plot wild or maybe barbarian for it to work.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Animals can't and that is what he was asking but if you have the Great Wall the bandits wont be able to either as you can only spawn animals, Neanderthals and other barbarians in wild areas and I would need to make the plot wild or maybe barbarian for it to work.

Sorta. The great wall now successfully only stops Non-Animal barbs from CROSSING borders, not from moving about within them. If you didn't try to make the plot held by the barbarian but based the additional spawning on a 'breeder' unit that was instructed to avoid conflict but not leave the borders, then it could still work, just a little differently than originally proposed.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

The spawn system only works in unclaimed land and maybe barbarian land.

 

[Thunderbrd]

The spawn system only works in unclaimed land and maybe barbarian land.

I'd bet a simple bool could override that. Sounds like there could be some work to do to expand the utility of the spawning system in a few ways. I'll be looking at setting up spawns of barb criminals in cities very soon so I may have to overcome some of the same things - using and building out the spawn mechanism to do it may well be the way to go and may also give me an opportunity to at the same time work out something along the lines of what you're looking for.

Initially I was thinking the spawning would be something you'd initiate in python for this rather than just utilizing the spawn engine in the game.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Eventually having it in the XML would mean more modders could work on it. If it is in the Python it is just up to me at the moment.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Good point.

 

[Snofru1]

In C2C we don't have the grace periods provided by 1 & 2 as wild animals and Neanderthals start spawning straight away.

Are you sure about that? I never saw any animal or barbarian unit for quite a while after starting a new game (could check in worldbuilder, though).

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

They have appeared on the beginning of turn 2 for me.

 

[JosEPh_II]

They have appeared on the beginning of turn 2 for me.

Animals yes I've seen by turn 2 (dependent upon game speed). Usually see the 1st Neanders by turn 10-20 on Normal.

JosEPh

 

[JosEPh_II]

When you get to Ancient Era (especially on Normal game speed ie turn 150 ish) the Barbs are forming cities with multiple type mil units as fast as or faster than all civs combined.

JosEPh

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

JosEPH no need for a save for grape bug, I have managed to replicate it this time.

 

[JosEPh_II]

1 in the Bug SVN thread if you need it.

JosEPh