Barbarians

[Gothmog]

Cracker, you slay me



I guess its your deadpan delivery.

I read somewhere that expansionist civs never get barbarians from their huts. In my experience this is true. Does anyone know if that improves your chances of getting something good, or do you just get more deserted villages?

 

[cracker]

Gothmog,

Perhaps I should begin every post with "Now isn't that special."

On your barb question:

Technically the expansionist trait does increase your chances of getting something good form huts, but you need to look at things from the perspective that goody huts constitute a pie that is divided up into pieces of different sizes depending on the outcomes that can possibly be obtained.

The general outcomes are:
Barbarians
You get a warrior
You get a settler
You get some cash
You get a very limited map
You get an ancient age technology other than the one you are currently researching
You get a deserted village.
(a variant where you get a new town instead of a settler when your boundaries consume the hut: note I have not confirmed much about this one and it is extremely rare and may just be an unacknowledged bug.)

When you are expansionist, the option of getting barbs is not available and all the other choices expand to have proportionately larger pieces of the pie. The relative proportions are still the same for the remaining choices, its just you have eliminated the dangerous outcome option.

Remember also that if you have a settler alive or a settler currently in any of your build queues, then the option of getting a settler is also suppressed.

If you have already researched all the ancient age techs of are in a position where the only tech you are eligible for is the tech that you are currently researching, then the tech from the hut option is also suppressed.

Another feature to remember is that no civ can get barbs from a hut if they do not have any military units yet. This applies even if you ar not expansionist.

 

[Gothmog]

Cracker,
you are the man with the details. You confirmed what I had suspected.

 

[hbdragon88]

Deserted villages usually happen on an empty island, out of the Ancient Ages, or when you defeat a whole stack of barbarians on an island w/ a goody hut in it. Too often that happens and I hate that.

Even with no barbarians in goody huts under expantionists is in my opinion no reason why you should choose that for a civ. And isn't it true that you can't get any GLs when attacking barbs?

 

[Gothmog]

I think that, as cracker implies, the choice is made by the RNG.

Yes, no GLs from barbarian battles.

I usually go with random civ, then restart if it is a civ I have played recently.

 

[dayfax]

man oh man I *hate* barbarians and the uprisings drive me absolutely crazy. At first I thought they were kind of neat, a nice spin on the Civ2 barbarian concept.

But when you've got city walls, a spearman, and two warriors -- one elite -- in a city (as I did last game) + those f*ck!ng barbs sack it with their lame horseman, raping your treasury, and worse you have to sit there twiddling your thumbs and watch the animation, then continually hit enter through all the pop up messages with that dumb@ss advisor telling you "Sire! We _must_ build up our military!" UGH.

Unless I'm playing an expansionist civ, I turn that off off off. It's just too annoying to deal with. I'll give up goody huts so as not to deal with it -- goody huts don't respawn but those damn barbs will.

 

[hbdragon88]

If you have spearman guarding your city against horsemen, it shouldn't be any trouble, unless the horseman is attacking from a forest or mountain. I've had to fight it out against barbarians under raging and I hated how they kept on raiding me. I haven't yet lost a Spearman to a horseman.

 

[cracker]

Hbdragon,

Your comment about "unless the horseman is attacking from a forest or a mountain" indicates you do not understand that attackers get NO (none, zero, zip, nada) attack bonuses for terrain.

The fact that you have not lost a spearman to a barb horseman attack may just indicate that you have never played with barbarians set to raging. When a horde of 24 horseman swoops down on your frontier town defended by a spearman then you will have to grow up tactically or die.

Dayfax,

Don't turn off barbs even though the horde thing is stupidly implemented. Just learn to play with it like you know what you're doing. Learn that horde spawnin gcan only occur at specific times in the game and then exploit it to your benefit.

Barbs are you best friend in the single player world. They give you treasure and promote your units to elite in battles that you are expected to when 90-95% of the time. With a little thought you will learn to farm the barbs just like raising your own crops and they will earn you an extra 25 to 50 gold per turn.

 

[Skyfish]

Hey Cracker,
I know this is a bit Newbie stuff but I think hbdragon means that if the attacker (the horseman) is on mountain/forest than he gets a DEFENSIVE bonus which makes it harder for your spearman to win the battle when he attacks you.
Or does it not work like that ?
Thanks for your help,