Barbarians (Trait) who are really Barbaric

[jimi12]

well right now the barb trait is really meant to be somewhat of a benefit to the civ since they dont have the threat of attack by the barbs. this is basically the same thing as the "always war" game option since it doesnt matter if you declare war or if you have open borders or even def pacts, you will always be attacked by everybody. is that right?

i do like the idea of using it for animals though. that would fix the current issues with them not spawning babies.

 

[xienwolf]

Yes, if placed on every unit, then it results in the same effect as Always War.

Possibly place it only on the Melee Line? Then you can scout without fear of attacks from barbarians, but you can also send out some warriors to harass your neighbors.

 

[Demus]

i'd rather give them some type of early game melee/recon privateer, called "raider"(or something along those lines). Used for raiding (obviously), given a chance to enslave units they defeat etc. would be tough to balance though, eighter
1. 2 str, 2 movement, no terrain penalties, 25% enslave chance
2. 3 str, 2 movement, costs somewhere between a warrior and an axemen, 25% enslave chance.
both would obviously start with some form of enraged/crazed, giving them a chance to turn barbarian each turn, but doesn't remove this on combat.

 

[feydras]

I love the idea xienwolf. My concerns would be...
1 - that the AI doesn't spam the technique and hit you with a constant drizzle of free XP.
2 - that the AI recognizes the threat and gets angry at you (the dip penalty you mentioned seems to handle this)
3 - that there would be a way to ask/threaten the AI to stop in the diplomacy menu. This is the problem with AI spies in BTS vanilla. You can catch their spies constantly but have no way to threaten them to stop.

Flavorwise it is great. Implemenationwise i'm not sure it adds much. As a player if another human player did this to me i'd consider it an act of war whether or not they state this. Of course i view the gypsy wagons in the same way but that's why i have been urging they give some + benefit to the occupied player.

- feydras

 

[Seven05]

It wouldn't be the same as 'Always War' at all, nor would it be the same as hidden nationality.

Unlike 'Always War' other civs could only attack your units that were outside of your borders without declaring war. In this specific case the advantage is that your units could enter their territory freely, although at some risk of being attacked. If applied to every unit this would mean your scouts could potentially explore the entire world, assuming they don't get killed walking past somebody else's city. If anything, it's more like being able to enter rival territory than anything else, with the added bonus of being able to blow things up while you're there.

How does the AI handle it? Fairly well. I tested by just making a bunch of specific units with the bAlwaysHostile flag set. The AI that can build them builds their units as they do now, with no war plan they don't actively act as aggressors so they aren't sending in waves of units to kill units and pillage your land. Any units that they can/do explore with will pillage tiles and occasionally attack units, unprotected workers in particular. The other AI players treat them like they treat the barbarians, it's a hostile unit so they attack it if they think they can win.

For human players it's a lot of fun, but really no more potent than hidden nationality. The pact of the nilhorn is still valuable because the stooges are strong units for that early in the game, they're even a touch better since you can declare their nationality and stack them without loosing the ability to get in there and stir up some trouble. The only 'difficulty' comes from people you have open borders with- they can attack your units in your land and will continue to attack your units in their land. Not a bad thing, but if implimented any civ with this ability would need a quick fix in the leaderheads file to make them much less willing to open up their borders.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Wouldn't this make Rantine's special ability completely worthless?

 

[xienwolf]

No, because with this tag you cannot capture a city (well, maybe you can if at war, didn't try that), and obviously you wouldn't set this tag on Rantine so that he can move onto a Barbarian city without having to fight everything first.

 

[Rex rgis of Ter]

It would make an interesting promotion. It could require Orchish and Combat I.

With this can they enter cultural borders without an OB? If not I think it's a good idea. The orcs should rule the wilderness.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Does the unit show as an enemy with a balloon? It'd worry that if I wasn't at war and I saw some guys wander through, I wouldn't know to attack.
But then, I guess it just comes down to kill all orcs, which is easy enough to remember
though a little sad...

 

[xienwolf]

Unfortunately right now the tag only exists in the UnitInfos, not in PromotionInfos, so cannot be done by a promotion, otherwise I would probably mod it myself and put up a file for people to try it out and see what they think

I do believe that it might announce them as an enemy, since the AI is smart enough to realize they are hostile. But if not, that kinda fits the flavor I was hoping for, where people have to decide to treat them like Barbarians, or give them some leniency and hope to convince them to become civilized.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

So, you are saying that this would require making essentially every unit a civ owns be a UU? That doesn't sound very efficient. Also, this means that it really doesn't have anything to do with the Barbarian trait, it just happens to be that the civs with this trait have a lot of UUs with the ability. It would be a little odd for the Doviello, as only one of their leaders is a barbarian but both would have to have the same ability.


It could be good to use for animals, but I still don't see this as a good change for the barbarian trait in any way.

 

[Sarisin]

It's been a while since I played a civ with the BAR trait, but it seemed like with the current version they could kill/capture animals without declaring war on the barbs. They certainly attacked me when I ventured out with Goblins and Beastmen.

OK, xienwolf, how does this work? Can we try it out, or should we table it until .31 is out and digested?

I am wrapping up a game, and would like to see what happens with it.

Thanks

 

[onedreamer]

So, the entire concept of a Barbaric Race is that they are struggling to come out of their natural inclination and START to be civilized. So why are the so Civil right from the start?

Uh ? Have you ever read the greeting message from the Clan leaders ? They clearly say they are civilized.

 

[Mewtarthio]

So, you are saying that this would require making essentially every unit a civ owns be a UU? That doesn't sound very efficient.

The Clan and the Doviello pretty much already work like that.

Also, this means that it really doesn't have anything to do with the Barbarian trait, it just happens to be that the civs with this trait have a lot of UUs with the ability. It would be a little odd for the Doviello, as only one of their leaders is a barbarian but both would have to have the same ability.

So Mahala doesn't start out at peace with the Barbarians (nor does she get the science penalty), but her people are still violent ruffians that attack others. Since Mahala has no 'pedia entry, I've got no idea how well this works flavor-wise for her, but it seems reasonable.

 

[xienwolf]

Clan leaders SAY they are civilized in their greetings, but that is their opinion

To try it out for yourself, you can just choose a couple of units to test it with and set them to have the tag <bAlwaysHostile> as a 1 instead of a 0.

I don't think that it ought to be done in this way for the actual use though, that is why I haven't released a module to try it out yet. I want to figure out the code to do it through Python, based on the trait. I konw that it CAN BE DONE, because the religious tag is set for certain units through Python. This will require essentially the same kind of code, just for a completely different tag which is thus far NEVER addressed in the Python, so I can't copy/paste anything to ensure that I get it right.

The ideal would be that it only sets this flag for Barbarian Trait leaders, and only on a limited set of units, so far looking like it would be Melee & Mounted units, and it would be nice to make it be that you have to have a certain fraction of the leaders in your game have Pleased or better relations to make it stop (instead of hard-coding it based off of what Tier the units are).

 

[Seven05]

It would be a very easy SDK change to work with promotions, unit & promotions infos are only a half-step apart in the code so enabling an effect from either of them on the other is pretty easy. The hardest part would be re-ordering a few lines in the xml schema file

In python it wouldn't be terribly difficult IF there was a method to change the bAlwaysHostile tag. Creating such a method in the SDK and exposing it to python is extremely easy in this case.

As an added bonus, no special code would be required to get the AI to understand it since it is already handled in the CVunit's canMove & canAttack methods.

For those with other questions such as 'can they enter territory without open borders' scroll up, I tested it and posted the results a few posts back.

 

[onedreamer]

Clan leaders SAY they are civilized in their greetings, but that is their opinion

You said they are struggling to come out from their natural barbarian homicidal condition. If in their opinion they are more civilized than this, then they aren't struggling

It makes sense since they are a playable civ and not barbarians.