How Are You Liking The Barbarians Game Mode?

[aieeegrunt]

I think if you set max CSs to the number of CSs picked, again no barbs will be able to convert to CSs.

I’m gonna try that on my next game and see what happens

Will barbs keep spawning though?

 

[Mesix]

My experience is based on a single game so far. This seems like an interesting mechanic. It would be more interesting if the game started with no city states and they gradually formed from the initial barbarian camps. I suppose the Political Philosophy civic would need a new inspiration, perhaps dependent on interaction with barbarian camps or helping a city state to form or something. The barbarian camps should also spawn at similar locations to city states, or perhaps the scouts from a barbarian camp could find a better place to found a city state rather than using the initial placement of the camp.

 

[Abaxial]

It would be more interesting if the game started with no city states and they gradually formed from the initial barbarian camps. I suppose the Political Philosophy civic would need a new inspiration, perhaps dependent on interaction with barbarian camps or helping a city state to form or something.

That's a basic problem with game modes - there is always some feature of the base game (like an inspiration) that gives an unintended effect.

 

[Mesix]

That's a basic problem with game modes - there is always some feature of the base game (like an inspiration) that gives an unintended effect.

Yeah, like the shuffle tech and civic trees game mode. I like to play with this because it mixes things up and seem less formulaic. There have been several occurrences where the shuffled tree resulted in eurekas and inspirations which were unattainable because the trigger (unit or building) came later in the tree.

 

[Tigranes]

My experience is based on a single game so far. This seems like an interesting mechanic. It would be more interesting if the game started with no city states and they gradually formed from the initial barbarian camps. I suppose the Political Philosophy civic would need a new inspiration, perhaps dependent on interaction with barbarian camps or helping a city state to form or something. The barbarian camps should also spawn at similar locations to city states, or perhaps the scouts from a barbarian camp could find a better place to found a city state rather than using the initial placement of the camp.

You can literally select 1 city state with the slider while leaving all city states boxes checked and selecting civ6 default option on how their are handled. These settings will produce the effect you desire (selecting 0 with slider somehow stops camps from progressing, so just chose 1)

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I've noticed that the "it's not a bug, it's a feature" different borders for city-states that evolved from barb camps disappear when you close the game, then open it again.

 

[Linklite]

I've noticed that the "it's not a bug, it's a feature" different borders for city-states that evolved from barb camps disappear when you close the game, then open it again.

Yeah. It was definitely a bug that they BSd us over. They should have just made it so that it stayed white or promised a fix.

 

[nzcamel]

The only part of the mode that I don't like is the UI's from other Civ's not in the game. I prefer them to remain ultra unique - i.e. only showing up when I play against that Civ/as that Civ.
As some others have mentioned it might be good to come up with a way to cap the number of city states that can be converted, as again, I like the uniqueness that not having every city state gives a game.

 

[Futumch]

Having played a few games now, the polar city states that evolve from camps are kind of wacky. I've also seen city-state territories that are some bizzare shape due to forming hard up on the borders of AI civs.
Cheap suzerainity is a nice bonus though.
I'm ambivalent about the game mode. If I forget to switch it on in game setup, I'd just carry on with the game (it doesn't add enough to make me want to restart with the mode on).

 

[James_Champagne]

Thing is I'm almost in the renaissance era in the game I'm on and I've still yet to see a single barb camp turn into a city-state... none of the status bars are even filling up at all...

 

[DanQuayle]

Unlike what was previously mentioned in this thread or what you might expect from the variable's name

BARBARIAN_CLANS_CIV_CONVERSION_INCREMENT_CHANCE

when set to 0 or 1 will BOOST the passive conversion point generation from barbarian camps to turn into city-states...
However, if set to 100, it completely nullifies the passive conversion point generation for camps!

If you run the following simple mod which only makes it possible for camps to turn into city-states from active diplomacy with barbarians (BRIBE and HIRE actions),

Spoiler :

UPDATE GlobalParameters
SET Value = 25
WHERE Name = "BARBARIAN_CLANS_CIV_CONVERSION_POINTS_STANDARD";

UPDATE GlobalParameters
SET Value = 100
WHERE Name = "BARBARIAN_CLANS_CIV_CONVERSION_INCREMENT_CHANCE";

you will find that AI interactions with barbarian camps are EXTREMELY limited. While running a game at Deity for 120 turns (where AIs should have plenty of gold at their disposal), I only found 1 interaction from an AI with a camp (ie progress bar increasing through diplomacy action). Interactions are so limited that I thought for most of the game that the whole system was totally oblivious to the AI.

P.S. One important caveat of 'this analysis' is that this only measures the impact of BRIBE or HIRE actions (which increase the conversion points) and not the impact of RANSOM or INCITE (which decrease the conversion points) since all camp stay at zero point and cannot turn negative.

P.P.S. Barbarian_ClansMode_Events.csv reveals that only one diplomatic action was undertaken by an AI: a BRIBE from Sweden which was not even remotely close to the barbarian camp targeted.

P.P.P.S. Barbarian_ClansMode_ClanStats.csv also keeps tracks of event counts, but it seems broken. Events recorded in Barbarian_ClansMode_Events.csv do not even increase the counts in Barbarian_ClansMode_ClanStats.csv. They always stay at zero.

 

[Melkus]

@DanQuayle Thanks for pointing out Barbarian_ClansMode_Events.csv, had a look there as well, and it's now pretty clear how the points counter works (may include minor math and spoilers if you prefer the, uh, "mystery")

- The threshold for conversion does scale with pace. In quick, camps turn to city states at 80 points (standard is 120).

- The food value around the camp is tracked, but has no discernible influence. Hard to say why, it would make a lot of sense it it had. All camps will take the exact same amount of turns to conversion unless interacted with.

- At an increment chance of "0" (which means 100% for testing, keep in mind it's 50% at default) each camp ticks up by one point per turn until the count reaches 8 (this is on quick pace). It then accelerates to two points per turn until it reaches 22, then it starts to increment by three etc. (There's probably some sort of exponential formular for this) A lower increment chance ( = higher values for
BARBARIAN_CLANS_CIV_CONVERSION_INCREMENT_CHANCE
) of course means that the game throws a dice every turn before, well, incrementing.
So the count is actually accelerating the higher it goes. Now the kicker: If you buy a unit from a camp, the count goes up by five points times the increment value - let's say the camp has 24 points, it would increment by three per turn, so if you buy a unit the camp adds 5x3 = 15 points.

The "too much math" version:
- The rise to conversion is actually exponential.
- Given the default 50% incrementing chance, buying a unit gives 10 turns of progress.

- Can confirm the AI can interact with the barbs, they just prefer not to (at least on Immortal/Deity, despite the occasional bribe).

 

[Zyxpsilon]

Right now i'm fiddling with Nere's mod (( https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2412920721 )) which attempts to fine-tune most of the essential parameters.

The math of such configurable values is really intriguing as a few re-edited values seem not to react as expected most often than not. He says he will try to share details about basic facts or relative explanations for the average limits of whatever function(s). Give us anything, buddy!

To me.. that's the closest (easy) solution we presently have for somewhat better controls over the BC-to-CS dynamics. The trick is to figure out WHAT exactly must be altered (At +/- levels) to enforce any given specific flow of events.
Much slow(er) conversions would be ideal for me but this also still needs many ingame verifications though.

 

[Melkus]

Right now i'm fiddling with Nere's mod (( https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2412920721 )) which attempts to fine-tune most of the essential parameters.

The problem is that there are two components that just don't work -
- conversion rate is not dynamically dependent on food yields, like it's supposed to be. it would also be interesting if it were dependent on the number of civ contacts, but it isn't.
- the AI doesn't use the barb interactions, so playing around with those values does not do much.

it's too predictable right now to really make it interesting. Isolated snow barbs will mostly convert at the same pace as anyone else.

You can easily lengthen the conversion time - put the increment chance to 60 or 70 to slow it down and randomize a bit more. Otherwise we have to wait until someone at Firaxis cares enough to fix it.

 

[blackbutterfly]

Right now i'm fiddling with Nere's mod (( https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2412920721 )) which attempts to fine-tune most of the essential parameters.

The math of such configurable values is really intriguing as a few re-edited values seem not to react as expected most often than not. He says he will try to share details about basic facts or relative explanations for the average limits of whatever function(s).

In many cases, it seems lots of Civ bugs (incl. those I found in the map scripts) are math related. Firaxis needs a couple of math grads!

 

[Tuvok694]

Terrible, just terrible. Just lost another game against those insanely overpowered barbarians. Had not enough money to bribe them. Five eagle warriors and three archers in turn 40 was too much. How can anyone say that this is some kind of twisted "fun"?

 

[DanQuayle]

Terrible, just terrible. Just lost another game against those insanely overpowered barbarians. Had not enough money to bribe them. Five eagle warriors and three archers in turn 40 was too much. How can anyone say that this is some kind of twisted "fun"?

How can you "lose" to barbarians when they can't even raise your capital?
If they capture/raze one of your city, the bribe cost should go down as the bribe cost is a function of the number of cities that you hold (50+50n).

 

[Tuvok694]

How can you "lose" to barbarians when they can't even raise your capital?

You are right, my words were not fully "exact": I give up a game when it's hopeless. During my futile fight against the barbarians the AI got so far ahead of me in every aspect that it made no sense to keep on playing. That's what I meant by "I lost...".

 

[DanQuayle]

You are right, my words were not fully "exact": I give up a game when it's hopeless. During my futile fight against the barbarians the AI got so far ahead of me in every aspect that it made no sense to keep on playing. That's what I meant by "I lost...".

You didn't have 100-250g available at turn 40 to bribe the barbarians? Perhaps, you had already spent it elsewhere?
How many cities did you have? What difficulty where you playing at?
I am asking all these questions, because I am trying to figure out what would be a fair bribe price for the barbarians...

Perhaps, if it would have been possible to bribe the barbarians with luxuries (or maybe some other ressources such as bonus, strategic that you had), you would have paid them the bribe and kept playing that game?

 

[OzzyKP]

Grr. Has anyone experienced bribed barbarians attacking you anyhow? I was caught between a barbarian horde and Kongo so I figured I'd buy off the barbs but I just lost two units to barbarian attacks this turn. Grrrr.