GEM: Barbarians

[[to_xp]Gekko]

further thoughts: barbarians do not enter cultural borders in the very early game, correct? therefore they don't pillage. but there is nothing that clearly shows when they start to do so.

you could have animals spawn instead of barbarians early on, to clearly show that these units won't enter borders. after a short while they stop spawning, and barbarians start spawning in their place, able to enter cultural borders.

 

[Thalassicus]

In the current system, once barbs can enter civilized territory, they all head for the nearest opponent. This rewards us for seeking out and killing barbs before they can enter our territory, so we don't get overwhelmed. I think this active engagement makes the early game more exciting than relying on borders to protect us.

 

[DAKH]

Unsure if this is a feature or a bug, but as soon as I discovered Navigation in my recent game I saw barbarian frigates roaming the seven seas maybe two turns later. I was a bit in front of the AI in science, and I think I was the first one to discover it, which means the poor AI won't be able to defend themselves against these floating fortresses (and neither would I if I didn't start mass-producing counters). Shouldn't barbarians get new units some turns/technologies after the players?

 

[Thalassicus]

If a player has a tech, barbs immediately have it too. The only way to delay barb units like Frigates is to create a new and identical Barbarian_Frigate unit type. This involves a lot of work, so I only did it for the early game when barbarians are more abundant. Most land barbarians are gone by the halfway point. Sea barbarians still appear often, however, so I'll create a frigate duplicate to delay that specific unit for barbs. Thanks for bringing this up.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

"Delayed the tech level of most Barbarian units by approximately 1 tech (e.g. barbarian swordsmen appear when someone has Metal Casting) "

so this needs to be done for each unit individually? ouch.

 

[Zai]

you could have them ignore civilians like barbs do.

This is not the case. The barbarian attack civie priority is weighted a little lower with this mod, but they will still grab civies when there's nothing else closer or they just randomly decide to do it. Even setting it to -1 wont totally solve the issue because AIs often protect/escort their civies and barbs will go for the escorts and get the civie as a bonus. I'm actually noticing this crippling the AI right now on most maps, particularly pangaea or all land maps. They just can't expand or function with barbs turned on, they will sit there with a single city for 200 turns and every barb camp near them will have captured settlers and workers.

I mean I really love playing against harder barbs, it's something I tend to tweak myself, sometimes to an extreme, but the AI just can't deal with certain changes. A setting I've been toying with is the min distance to capitols for the camps, just to give the AI some room to drop a few cities early on before running into barbs, then I tend to make the camps closer together and a bit more defenders to create dangerous pockets of "barb lands" out around the fringes. This has the negative side effect though of making the very early game quite tame.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

I'm pretty sure camps more distant from capitols and closer together with a bit more defenders is already in VEM/GEM

 

[Zai]

They are 1 tile further from capitols than base game, 5 vs 4. Not really noticeable, I was talking more like 10-20 tiles. Camps are also only slightly closer, but the number of barbs in any given area hasn't changed. The big change in GEM (aside from the instant upgrading) is that the camps respawn pretty much instantly so the AI can't really clear an area or get a settler somewhere after repeat attempts. It's fun for the player to have that constant pressure, but the AI just flops around helplessly.

 

[Stalker0]

I have liked them so far, they are definitely more prevalent and annoying, and the barb land units will pillage land pretty regularly (however the ships do not so far, and the AI regular ships do pillage now).

 

[Zarggg]

Yes, they're extremely annoying. Every time I want to expand my territory or settle a new city, I have to take my entire army through and clear them out.

 

[Dunkah]

It has forced me to keep garrisons in my territory to keep them at bay. I like that a lot.