[BTS] Hesha's Random Questions

[Imperator Knoedel]

Makes you wonder what really makes you English these days? Is living here enough to make you say you are English?

I'd say being English is more a state of mind, like drinking tea, driving on the wrong side of the road, and having an irrational hatred for the European Union.

 

[Hesha]

All fair enough. My point was, that in my game I was colonizing virgin lands (not even barbs). Not displacing a previously inhabiting population. I just can't think of a historical instance where a narrow strait hindered the expansion of a realm. I mean... with this logic, Ancient Greece should have had tremendous difficulties maintaining connections to the Aegean islands.
It really makes no sense to treat an island 1 sea tile removed from the homeland as a distant colony. In my thinking, the colony-penalty should only be applied, if there is no coastline-connection between the landmasses, i.e. if you cannot cross over without optics or by utilising cultural borders (with other words: seperated by ocean).*

We tend to forget this, but even in ancient times, the sea was a connection more than a barrier. At least the navigable sea, e.g. the mediterranean.

EDIT: Of course this should then also apply to trade routes, which would be terrible

 

[Hesha]

All this is regressive , hesh. If you want to learn and understand this situation then it makes no sense not to post a save. What does a GM have to do with what we have been discussing. This is about perspective more than anything.

And now knowing you have GLH you really should be i great shape.

No, no, this is not because I am afraid of being given out to I just want to finish the game to see if I can beat it, then get the advice on my 10 turn increments to see what I could have done better.

EDIT: And why the GM made a difference for me: I had the feeling I would have to stop researching completely because of the high maintenance of my cities and didn't see, how I could maintain a tech lead this way. The extra money from the GM's trade mission then allowed me to research at 100% for a fair number of turns, by which time I had researched CoL and started building CHs. Once the Forbidden Palace was done, things became manageable.

 

[lymond]

I know what the GM will do for you. The point was getting advice and analysis at that specific time of the discussion point so we could see how dire or not your situation was and if there were things you could do better.

(I get your point on the costs but disagree with the colony aspect. Actually the Med in ancient times and even later was chock full of colonies everywhere. Basically, what the Phoenicians and their brethren, the Carthaginians - heck..Carthage was a Phoenician colony - were known for. Ofc, the Greeks and Romans too. )

 

[Hesha]

(That is not a contradiction to my points. Carthage (Tunisia) was half the known world away from the Phoenician homelands (Levante) - of course this is a colony, with all it's related issues. This is not an example of a 1-tile separation.)

Next random question: How much of a game changer are Portugese Carracks? Do you use it for early intercontinental invasions? Or only when iso?

 

[krikav]

Next random question: How much of a game changer are Portugese Carracks? Do you use it for early intercontinental invasions? Or only when iso?

In some iso situations, you can have some settlers&workers tag along with the carracks and might stumble upon some islands to settle along the way to meet the AIs.
But in practical play, almost irrelevant.
I did a nobles club game that was specifically tailored to fit Portugals uniqes, you could try it out if you like.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/nobles-club-198-joao-of-portugal.637581/

It's a terra map, which means all civs are on a large pangea like continent, but there is another large continent to reach with astro, as portugal you might have an edge in that race.

 

[Hesha]

I have two more questions. Actually I am pretty surprised nobody has dropped the answers yet... But maybe there is a reason for that, I am unaware of.

It seems obvious to me, that there are cutoff points with barbs, the three most relevant seem to be
1) animals disappearing (no longer have to worry about barbs moving 2 tiles)
2) barbs beginning to enter your borders (before they are just roaming randomly)
3) barb galleys appearing (not sure if there is also a grace period before they enter you territory)

I assume that these cut offs are fixed, not dynamic, so does anyone have an overview? Just to explain why I want to know:
Before 1 fog busting is completely irrelevant, before 2 you don't have to worry about garrisons and before 3 you don't have to fog bust coastal tiles.

 

[lymond]

I don't know exact dates or turns for this stuff, but I think it is relative to difficulty. Barb animals tend to disappear around the time the barb units start appearing. On Imm, around Turn 50, is about the time I expect barbs to start entering borders. Galleys start spawning sometime between 500 and 350 BC, I believe.

Regardless, fog busting is never completely irrelevant. As long as there are areas that are not busted, barbs can appear. Same for coastal tiles.

 

[Hesha]

Well, irrelevant is a strong word, but I really don't care how many animals spawn, since they will vanish on turn x.
Likewise, once I know the turn galleys appear, I can plan accordingly and not waste the hammers on additional warriors when there are other pressing things to build... I just watched AZ's deity 33 as Inca and I noticed he didn't garrison his cap until a certain turn, that got me thinking... I think I'll test this out for EMP and IMM. Deity I don't care about, if even you guys find it too stressful for casual play

 

[Donald Duck1]

DanF addresses your 2nd question here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...s-enter-cultural-borders.299483/#post-7461350
Barbs will attack after num_cities > 2*num_civs.

The Civ wiki has a table with an entry BarbarianCreationTurnsLapsed which I guess indicates the #turns when human barbs start spawning, but I'm not sure. https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Barbarian_(Civ4)

I don't recall ever seeing anything related to your 1st and 3rd question.

 

[Gumbolt]

Are all these random questions helping your actual game? The thing with online video is all the tweaks the player makes that you might miss.

What level are you currently winning against? Monarch? Emperor? Immortal?

 

[Hesha]

I think they do. Some are just out of curiosity though.

I know, both Lain and AZ do a lot without explaining it, which is a pity, but I pick up a fair amount of it.

I just beat my first attempt at EMP and had the tech lead all throughout the game with a mediocre leader whose traits I didn't even take advantage of. I think EMP is "my level" atm

 

[Kaitzilla]

I have two more questions. Actually I am pretty surprised nobody has dropped the answers yet... But maybe there is a reason for that, I am unaware of.

It seems obvious to me, that there are cutoff points with barbs, the three most relevant seem to be
1) animals disappearing (no longer have to worry about barbs moving 2 tiles)
2) barbs beginning to enter your borders (before they are just roaming randomly)
3) barb galleys appearing (not sure if there is also a grace period before they enter you territory)

I assume that these cut offs are fixed, not dynamic, so does anyone have an overview? Just to explain why I want to know:
Before 1 fog busting is completely irrelevant, before 2 you don't have to worry about garrisons and before 3 you don't have to fog bust coastal tiles.

Someone should really write a complete guide on barbarians one of these days.

Most of your questions are answered in this guide here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/barbarians.324961/

1) Animals start spawning between Turn 5 and Turn 6 on all game difficulties.
They spawn later and in smaller numbers on easier game settings.

They start to vanish 1-animal-per-turn once both of these conditions are met.
1st Condition: The average number of cities in the world per civ (including the human player) is greater than 1.5 cities.
So a standard map with 6 AI will reach this point once the world has 11 cities. (Barb cities don't count)
2nd Condition: A certain number of turns have elapsed based on game difficulty and game speed.

So on Deity difficulty, the first animals will appear on Turn 6, and will begin vanishing one at a time starting on Turn 11.
This frees up room for barb Warriors and barb Archers to spawn in the vacant areas they leave behind as soon as Turn 11. (Thanks Anysense!)

Animals are more limited than normal barbarians.
When wandering the wilderness, they will not move onto resources such as wheat or dye or even bronze which you don't have the tech to even see yet.
But if they see a Worker or Settler or player Scout on that resource, they will pounce and kill!

Thankfully, animals are not capable of entering player borders under any circumstances.
If you settle a city next to an animal and get them inside your borders on purpose, their only valid move is to move out of your culture.
Once I pinned a bear next to a mountain range doing this, and he was stuck there until he vanished.

Animals are also nice enough not to stack up like regular barbs can do.
Imagine 2 bears on the same tile.


2) Regular barbs start entering your borders for only 2 reasons in my experience.

One is to kill something.
A warrior or settler or worker standing on the edge of your borders is going to get killed if a barb archer or warrior is standing next to them.
Non-animal barbarians don't care about borders if they can immediately kill something.

The second is when the average number of cities in the world exceeds 3.
Like a switch, the barbs go from wandering to charging directly at cities and murdering everything.
On a standard map with 6 AI, this occurs when the world gets its 22nd city.

There are 2 thresholds:

A) NumCities > 2*NumPlayersAlive:

• Barbs will enter your territory if they can pillage an improvement on their next turn, so the common 1 barb Warriors and Archers will intrude to pillage improvements in your border tiles. I'm not certain about 2 mounted barb units (do barb Chariots spawn regularly?). I know about a random event which places barb Horse Archers on the map, but they demonstrate "special" behavior (they directly target the barbs' TargetCity of the area).
• Barbs will enter your territory if they can attack a city on the same turn --> this should only be possible for the uncommon 2 units.

I know DanF tends to be right 100% of the time , even about arcane STRIKE knowledge, but I just have not seen this kind of behavior.
Make a test game, give everyone 2 cities, then add 1 more city.
Put improvements on every city tile and then surround the city with barbs and press next turn.
They all just ... leave.

All the border improvements remain unmolested until the NumCities > 3*NumPlayersAlive threshold is breached.
The barbs go crazy until a few barb cities get founded and then they calm down again.

**Edit 2**
Huh, I've run a few more tests and now I'm seeing the barbs are a bit more aggressive when DanF's 1st threshold NumCities > 2*NumPlayersAlive threshold is breached.
About 1/3rd of them seem to gleefully cross the border now to pillage when a standard game with 6 AI reaches 15 cities.

Are barbs placed with world builder defective somehow and take some time to fix their AI scripts?


3) Barb galleys?
Deity barbs start with Hunting, Archery, The Wheel, Agriculture, and 1 per turn.

On a standard map with 6AI and a human player, they gain 1% of any tech per turn that 3 civs know.
Once 5 civs know the tech, they gain 2% of it per turn.
Once all 7 civs know the tech, they gain 3% of it per turn!
The math says you can breathe easy if only 2 of the 7 civs know a tech.

They can also found cities to slightly bump up their tech speed, but for the most part they are gaining in multiple techs each turn that most everyone already knows.

I would say that as soon as 5 out of 7 civs know Sailing, the barbs will have Sailing in 50 turns max and then start spawning barb galleys.


**Edit**
LowtherCastle used to advocate the knowledge of how many barb city population there is on a map.
Press F8 at any time to see the total population of the civilized world.
Click the Resolutions button.
If it says a vote requires 13 out of 27 votes, that means the civilized world has 27 population.

Then press the Victories button (Also inside the F8 Victory Conditions menu)
Go to the % population dom limit the human player has.
That % number is how much the player population has compared to the world total population PLUS barb population.

================
Let's say there are 5 votes in the world on Turn 1 of a small map.
There are 5 population in the world when all the civilized civ's add up their city populations.
The Victory button says the player (1 population) has 20% of the world's population.
That means there are no barb cities.

If the player has 16.66% of the world's population, that indicates the player has 1 pop, the 4 AI have 1 pop, and the barbs have 1 pop.

By comparing the % population dom in the victory tab vs. the member votes in the resolution tab, it is possible to monitor the barb city population at any moment in the game.
Barb cities tend to indicate that the onslaught of barbs after the >3 cities threshold will be winding down and stopping.
Barbs like to found cities in spots with lots of resources that nobody has direct vision on.

It is a bit crazy that barb cities can affect domination victories so blatantly, but it has already been a factor in one major SGOTM tournament.

 

[Gumbolt]

This is the thing with civ 4. Due to it's age most questions like these have already been answered and in details. Google really does answer many of these questions. Some of the Civ 4 SGOTM had links to many of these things in the first pages.

Congrats on beating Emperor. Immortal is not that big a leap. Even on immortal a tech lead is easily possible when you bulb and build a strong economy. The Ai tech so much rubbish techs you can almost ignore or trade for.

Micro is much more important on higher level. That and doing multi level planning.

 

[Kaitzilla]

I know that this addresses the "distance from capital"-maintenance, but colonial maintenance is a separate issue - do these buildings have any effect on that?

This one is difficult to get experience with, but a Forbidden Palace or Versaille in a city on another continent eliminates colony maintenance inside that city, reduces it 90% in nearby cities, reduces it 70% in farther away cities, and reduces it 50% in very far away cities, etc.

Basically they can make colony maintenance bearable unless you are trying to colonize a super-sized continent.

As mentioned by Krikav, if you want to settle large landmasses everywhere, then you want communism.

Or just play a game without vassals enabled.
Colony maintenance is no longer a game mechanic in a game without vassals in it.

 

[Anysense]

So on Deity difficulty, the first animals will appear on Turn 6, and will begin vanishing one at a time starting on Turn 16.
This frees up room for barb Warriors and barb Archers to spawn.

Those turns don't add up, that is barbs can spawn as early as t11.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Those turns don't add up, that is barbs can spawn as early as t11.

I just checked and there is a barb Archer on T11.
All this time I was wrong!

Thanks for correcting me Anysense and stopping any newbies' game from getting ruined.
I've removed the erroneous T16 from my post.

 

[Tobiyogi]

I think the only reason to watch out for barbs very early is some stupid situation where a barb unit kills an AI scout and lands on a tile next to your border. If he sees an improvement from there, he will enter, no matter what turn you are playing. So better build your mine or cottage next to your capitol, if possible.

 

[Anysense]

If he sees an improvement from there, he will enter, no matter what turn you are playing.

They only enter when they can kill someone, not pillage. And then they leave, unless they can attack another unit or city.

BTW, You want to watch out for barbs early on because you don't want barb cities spawn on your border around 2800 BC.

 

[Tobiyogi]

Well, fogbusting is obvious and there is no need to mention it. I was talking about a very specific situation that could endanger your capitol, just like it happened to me twice. Normally, in the very early game, barbs stay at 1 tile distance from any of your borders, but if they land accidentally closer, they are attracted by anything, be it an improvement or one of your units. When they can see the capitol tile from the place where they are, they will also enter.