How Are You Liking The Barbarians Game Mode?

[bonafide11]

Those city-states *were* the barbarians.

Well yeah, I know. But my point is it just wasn't fun to never actually play with any barbarians, they just were badly placed city states by the time I encountered them. It made the game pretty meh.

 

[CoconutTank]

Just finished my rough rider session with barb clan mode. It didn't seem to make a huge difference in the latter half of the session, but it was very impactful at the start, and I enjoyed the additional options allowed to me with the barb clans. Note that I was playing with standard settings and only standard Firaxis mods (if any) on Emperor.

Not sure if I'm just being delusional, but whenever I have a UI up, I expect that I can just cancel out of the UI by pressing Esc. However, if I have the barb clan UI up, pressing Esc brings up the main menu instead of closing the barb clan UI. Is this expected?

To reiterate, I really liked having the chance to bulk up my armies for less gold, and the opportunity to determine where CSes would be in some cases. I would like the innate clan-to-CS conversion to be much slower than it is currently.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

I've been experimenting a lot with various conditions & progressive effects through lengthy amounts of turns from Ancient to Information Eras while focusing on the Clans and how they react to whichever AI strategies + Mines ... i can honestly reach some nearly final conclusions.

-- Most of us are shocked by the immediate fundamental changes to the Barbarian patterns (we've been familiar with for more or less years!).
-- The actual gameplay situations are certainly strange if not slightly chaotic in terms of ruleset expectations we might have.
-- Essentially.. this Mode aims to stir up the generic balance by pulling a "Coup De Jarnac" spoof on us with twisted tactical mechanics -- obviously.
-- Everyone certainly has a right to --Hate or Like-- such drastic modifications even when some of it is as cool as can be in terms of their design decisions.

Soooooo.. in my mind, the concept works just fine and probably, as intended. The modular aspect of multiple modes is directly responsible for our reactions.. thus, we just can't blame them for going towards fairly innovative systems.

CIV-6 was simply turned into an hybrid gamble with tricky potentials & all we need to accept such challenges is to cope with the overall plans as designed.

Only time will tell if those complex elements would eventually glue together nicely.

I'd say -- let's give them (at Firaxis) a fair chance while still offering our suggestions for better contexts... as proven/demonstrated by this CFC thread.

PS; My answer to the poll still remains "meh" though. Ask me that question again in a few weeks or months. You'd be surprised!

 

[lordhaw]

Well I must admit I am liking the new barbarians mode. They do seem to spawn more barbs than usual and with some of them spawning more advanced units early it can be a bit of a problem. Overall though they have only been a real nuisance in one of my recent games, otherwise, just the usual barb annoyance factor really. It is nice to bribe them from attacking for a bit. In my best recent game I saw one in the polar region below me turn into a CS and one just above me on really good land turn into a CS. The rest I ended up clearing. I noticed that they seem to lose advancement if you build close to them or your civ expands the borders near them...I guess they give up. But overall I've been having fun with this mode. I rarely play with the heroes mode or the societies mode but this one I really like.

 

[Linklite]

But how does the Barbs mode affect your early game at all? SS and Heroes provide you with crazy amounts of extra yields in the game that will definitely help your snowball potential. On the other hand, the only real effect of the Barbs mode is that you might get some extra CSs in the middle game - but you still have to invest your envoys in them, and the only advantage that I can think of is that you might find more ideal CSs for your goals in a larger pool. Maybe in the late game, you will be able to gain more suzerainships than usual that translates into a more powerful ISS and Collective Activism but even that does not matter that much by that time.

For me, Barb affects early.game more. My gold was diverted from building whatever to paying Barbs for things. I'm also keen to get CS into the game so I'm no lo get preemptively wiping them out, resulting in other effects - in the game I'm playing at the moment as Frederick, I had a Fall of Rome period where I had three separate mass invasions from Barbs that would not have happened usually because proactively hunt and kill camps. Later on the effect dies down a bit as they convert to CSs, and they aren't as impactful as you said. Still, the map is majorly different. I just wish camps would keep spawning - preferably with progress paused until CSs get wiped out so the map isn't so ram packed.

I also find the envoy races more interesting. Usually, I have enough envoys that I'm suzerain of virtually every CS, but with Barb mode on, there are so many CSs that the AI can each grab a couple and I actually have to pick and choose which ones I actually want and which ones I just have to let go.

SS actually affects my early game very little. I haven't played Hermetic yet and Voidsingers only rarely. SP mostlynkudt providesna powerful unit, but it's not overly required - troops perform similar function and I still need siege weaponry which is my big hold up. Owls, my main SS, don't really get going until Vaults are unlocked, a good way into the game. They really do cause crazy amounts of gold, but still.

 

[goatdeer]

I like the fact they are more aggressive, especially with other special units. I like a more challenging game.
But the diplomacy options seem a bit too situational for me. Although I can't really tell because they stop spawning after a while and the ones that do spawn are absorbed by other city states.
I was playing as Cyrus, waiting for me to get immortals, which took a while because of tech shuffle. And when I got them, I wanted to attack one of my neighbours and make use out of the barbs diplomacy, but they were all gone. Sad Face.

This is coming from me though, having only played one game with the mode on. Perhaps better luck next time.

 

[Linklite]

I like the fact they are more aggressive, especially with other special units. I like a more challenging game.
But the diplomacy options seem a bit too situational for me. Although I can't really tell because they stop spawning after a while and the ones that do spawn are absorbed by other city states.
I was playing as Cyrus, waiting for me to get immortals, which took a while because of tech shuffle. And when I got them, I wanted to attack one of my neighbours and make use out of the barbs diplomacy, but they were all gone. Sad Face.

This is coming from me though, having only played one game with the mode on. Perhaps better luck next time.

I like the fact they are more aggressive, especially with other special units. I like a more challenging game.
But the diplomacy options seem a bit too situational for me. Although I can't really tell because they stop spawning after a while and the ones that do spawn are absorbed by other city states.
I was playing as Cyrus, waiting for me to get immortals, which took a while because of tech shuffle. And when I got them, I wanted to attack one of my neighbours and make use out of the barbs diplomacy, but they were all gone. Sad Face.

This is coming from me though, having only played one game with the mode on. Perhaps better luck next time.

I guess that's part of the problem for me. In the early game, Barbs are plentiful but they want gold and what little gold I do have is being tugged at in a hundred different directions, so I'm reluctant to spend gold on Barbs. By the time my gold supply has improved to the point where its not sorely needed to help with other things and bribing Barbs is a strong candidate, they're all either CSs now or have been wiped out by AIs and none spawning for me to take advantage of. Shame.

 

[UWHabs]

I guess that's part of the problem for me. In the early game, Barbs are plentiful but they want gold and what little gold I do have is being tugged at in a hundred different directions, so I'm reluctant to spend gold on Barbs. By the time my gold supply has improved to the point where its not sorely needed to help with other things and bribing Barbs is a strong candidate, they're all either CSs now or have been wiped out by AIs and none spawning for me to take advantage of. Shame.

My bigger problem is I feel the "bribe to not attack me" tends to rise in cost way faster than I feel it should. Early on, it's similar cost to get them not to attack me vs recruiting a unit from them. But once I get a bit further in, it makes no sense to pay like 600 gold for them to not attack me (which I didn't actually care about since it would only be to accelerate their development) when I can buy a swordsman or musketman for cheaper.

 

[Linklite]

My bigger problem is I feel the "bribe to not attack me" tends to rise in cost way faster than I feel it should. Early on, it's similar cost to get them not to attack me vs recruiting a unit from them. But once I get a bit further in, it makes no sense to pay like 600 gold for them to not attack me (which I didn't actually care about since it would only be to accelerate their development) when I can buy a swordsman or musketman for cheaper.

I haven't done that particular interaction, just buying a few swordsman on the cheap so far. But I'm not keen on the scaling with a few things on Civ 6, and 600 is steep for a temporary measure even midgame. Ouch.

 

[tedhebert]

I'll wait for my second game to really form an opinion. My first was with Pericles, and suzeraining as many CSes as possible is key to playing him. So the fact that barbs crated many many CSes was very good for me. I wound up suze to over 15 CSes (playing huge map).

Going to try another game with a civ that has no special bonuses from CSes to see...

though now, I'm really wondering how OP Corvinius must have become

 

[FinalDoomsday]

Perhaps barbarian camps in harsh terrain should have a much slower CS growth? (Or no growth at all) snow and desert being the worst with a smaller penalty for tundra. That way barbarians that sit on grassland would have a much better chance of growing into CS but you would still need to contend with raiders from the deserts and the cold north.

 

[m_mus]

Am I understanding it correctly that as is barbarian camps only spawn up until a certain area if the mode is activated?

 

[Kibikus]

Perhaps barbarian camps in harsh terrain should have a much slower CS growth? (Or no growth at all) snow and desert being the worst with a smaller penalty for tundra. That way barbarians that sit on grassland would have a much better chance of growing into CS but you would still need to contend with raiders from the deserts and the cold north.

100% agree.

Am I understanding it correctly that as is barbarian camps only spawn up until a certain area if the mode is activated?

I'm assuming you mean certain era. That seemed to be the case in my game, but we have to remember that camps only spawn in the fog of war, and with so many city-states by mid-game, most of the land is in the vision radius of at least one unit or city.

Or, there might be some kind of internal limit to camp spawn rate. Maybe some of the more tech-savvy users here will be able to figure it out.

 

[Abaxial]

It really seems to be halfway between barbarians as they were and no barbarians. The new camps are interesting in the early game, but you can just wipe them out as usual. By the mid game there are no more barbarians, so you can safely send out a settler unaccompanied. It would probably be better if interactions with camps were much cheaper.

 

[Linklite]

Am I understanding it correctly that as is barbarian camps only spawn up until a certain area if the mode is activated?

Maybe. We don't know the cause, but there does seem to be trigger for them to no longer spawn, what it is isn't clear. It probably ideas that cause it so far are:

1. Once one progresses to a CS, they no longer spawn.
2. A certain time period is reached.
3. Once all the unique names have been used (others claim that this triggers the spawning of standard Barbs).
4. It could be something else.

All I know is that I started with 12 CSs, I currently have at least 26 and I know that at least 1 CS has been wiped out, so at least 15 CSs came from Barb camps. I'm now in the Modern Era and I hadn't seen a Barb of any kind for 2,000 years until a couple of turns ago when I saw a damaged caravel. I didn't see a camp anywhere, but I still haven't explored more than 70% of the map, a lot of the unexplored area being near where I saw it. It could be an orphan caravel (not much in the at of sea in the Highlands map and this is was by the North Pole, so no navies to hunt it), or there could be a camp somewhere.

We just don't know what's happening. We just know that after a short while, there is a massive dearth of Barbs, and logically it is probably linked somehow to old ones progressing into CSs.

 

[Oswald Bastable]

Don’t know if this is a Barb mode issue, but just playing my first run through with the mode enabled, randomly rolling Corvinius (which is fun with the amount of CS’s at my disposal!).

I don’t normally levy CS’s much in my games, but as it seems core to Hungary’s civ I’m doing it as much as possible (2 free envoys each time mean I’m well on my way to suzeraining almost all 20-odd CS’s in this game). However, at least a couple of CS (one religious, one militaristic) seem to have given up producing units over the past few hundred years. This is annoying.

Anyone else seen this?

 

[cain3456]

Not sure if playing right, used 12 city states out of pool of 24. I cleared out a couple camps at the start, but haven't seen any barbs since. They seem to turn to city-states way too fast. And I'm playing the Maori, so it's not like I didn't have access to them.

 

[Pfeffersack]

I'm still in my first game with this mode...and the irony is that it an extremly interesting and fun game, maybe even because of that mode - but without me really interacting a lot with it Sounds confusing?

Let me expain. Deity, Marathon, Huge Terra Map, 1 starting CS, 14 civs, additionally secret Societies and I&C activated. The first surprise was that I survived, as my last Marthon/Deity attempts always ended my either getting mopped up early by barbs or an AI player rushing me. This time, the changed barbarians and the AIs having fun with them save me here. The old world barbarians soon vanished, because the AIs cleared them out - but not before taking a healthy amount of units from them as it seems. The amount of AI units running around is scary for Marathon and the absence both of barb camps and CSs means less physical obstacles on the map. Which leads to AIs actually conquering cities. The game has progressed recently to MA only, so city defenses are not everyhwere in place...but in this particular game I have even seen AIs taking out walled cities. Including some capitals changing hands and at least 2 AIs got obliterated so fast. I assume that the additional maneuver room (the one big continent I enlarged with low sea level helps probably as well) the AI has suddenly allows them to bring their siege forces in a more concentrated form to the front. Usually, bottlenecks delay both the march to a target and make it difficult to bring the vulnerable siege equipment in position. Here is Spanish AI even suceeding in an emergency to liberate Paris:

Spoiler :

I still expect the game to go in the usual mid-game stalemate soon, but here at least the opening had more action. Not sure how much luck was involved, what the barb mode contributed and what is simply related to having more map space. Because of the latter, I'm tempted to try next simply a game without CSs, just to see if my "obstacle theory" has some foundation. And it's the perfect game to make use of the civ picker (to avoid picking AIs, which suffer from a game without CSs)

 

[KyivanRusCivPlease]

Hello all! Is it a bug that dispersing a clan causes 2 eurekas? Does everyone get this bonus?

 

[Laurana Kanan]

Hello all! Is it a bug that dispersing a clan causes 2 eurekas? Does everyone get this bonus?

I haven't heard of two Eurekas, but there is an undocumented feature where you can "steal" technology. See here. It's possible your second Eureka was due to some other event.