How Are You Liking The Barbarians Game Mode?

[Kupe Navigator]

Later days Rome heavily relied on hiring barbarians, so many parts of this mode feel historical, cool and useful. Hiring a Barbarian is cheaper than buying a similar unit in your city. You can use them during the turn you hired them. They wont go home like levied troops. Not to mention you can hire Congo's unique unit as China! What's not to like? Even in Civ1 you could interact with Barbarians -- they asked for ransom and you could reply to them. Before this mode all we could do is kill them. But the history was always about interaction of more sophisticated civilizations with those they called barbarians, who became civilized or disappeared.

That is very true for China- some of these so called babarians even managed to conquer China- like Mongals and Manchu people.

 

[Deadly Dog]

I'm liking it. Learned quickly that I still want to clear the barb camps near me....but now I buy a unit from them first, and use 2 units to clear so I can Raid first kill another unit level up then disperse the camp for 10xp post-level2. I know, who's the barbarian? Well I am playing Harold Hardrada...

Speaking of which my Longships seemed to do absolutely nothing when coastal raiding a barb camp but use all their movement and lose their turn. Might work different with Privateers, idk.

Also, I ahem, deliberately populated a large world with 8 civs and 12 CS, the number for a Standard world. And a Primordial map, on Epic speed, just to see how many CS (I capped the pool at 38) would spawn. Its pretty crazy early Medieval era and all these CS popping up on islands and in snow. And Anshan had Phonecian biremes! Cool, that's how they got to the south pole.

Terra map is definitely on the to-do list again.

Can confirm the AI will sometimes raid camps instead of dispersing them and pretty sure they incited a camp against me. Gold icon next to them but no info on number of turns from mousing over it.

Want to see if the barb horseman I bought (3 move 20 CS) can upgrade to a courser. Sure hope so he's got 2 promos.

 

[onslaught49]

anyone know how many barb camps can convert into city states in a game? i usually play with 24 city states but if i can start with say 12 city states and have another 12 evolve through time it would be nice, anyone know if its possible to get this setup?

 

[Linklite]

anyone know how many barb camps can convert into city states in a game? i usually play with 24 city states but if i can start with say 12 city states and have another 12 evolve through time it would be nice, anyone know if its possible to get this setup?

In theory, there could be as many CSs total as there are in your CS pool. So by default, in theory there could be 48 CSs max, however, if you remove CSs from the pool in the game setup then you'll reduce the total number of CS you can have in the game. Each time a Barb camp upgrades, it picks an unused CS from the pool. Once they're gone, they stop upgrading. It should also be noted that the starting number of CSs is irrelevant beyond removing that number of available CSs from the available list. So in your examples set the number of starting CSs to 12, then use the CS picker to only have 24 CSs in the CS pool. That will leave 12 CSs for the Barbs to evolve into.

Now I say "in theory" for two reasons:

1. There are restrictions. You're never going to get 48 Barb camps and CSs ona duel map for obvious reasons, so things like that will act as an extra restriction.
2. There are a few bugs where things don't work as intended that may cause issues, such as if you set starting CSs to 0, no Barb camps will progress to a CS. Another I've heard (only seen the one claim though) is that once one Barb camp progresses to a CS, Barb camps stop appearing. That would naturally limit how many will appear and therefore how many will progress to CSs. You better hope that at least 12 camps appear before one progresses, and then manage to progress to CS before being wiped out.

 

[onslaught49]

ah ok well il give it a go and see how it goes, should be fun

 

[Abaxial]

My limited experience is that it's almost the anti-barbarian mode. In the standard game you are never free of barbarians - they keep popping up in new places. It seems that now there is a fixed number of camps that spawn initially, and don't reappear if you kill them. Leave them alone and they morph into city states or get wiped by city state units. (It's odd how city states are much more effective at clearing barbarian camps than AI civs.) If you want to clear them yourself, I have not found it harder than in the standard game. But raiding a camp seems like a bad idea, as it will immediately spawn a much more advanced unit.

So this is not at all what I was expecting, but since it removes getting new camps spawning in the mid-game, I like it and will stay with it.

 

[iammaxhailme]

I like it, although I'm only in my first game with it so I haven't seen the endgame. I am a bit woried it may cause too much land to be taken up by CS's eventually, although maybe that worry is unfounded.

Also, I see a lot of really bad city state placement like this:

 

[Linklite]

I like it, although I'm only in my first game with it so I haven't seen the endgame. I am a bit woried it may cause too much land to be taken up by CS's eventually, although maybe that worry is unfounded.

Also, I see a lot of really bad city state placement like this:

I'm.nit that fussed about them taking up too much land, to be honest. If they're a pain, just introduce them to catapult and fire. I'd rather have that choice than it remain bare land.

 

[blackbutterfly]

Speaking of which my Longships seemed to do absolutely nothing when coastal raiding a barb camp but use all their movement and lose their turn. Might work different with Privateers, idk.

Navel raiders with the coastal raid promotion will get 50 gold. Exploit.

I'm waiting for the Spiffing Brit YouTube

 

[joyodongo]

I played it once and that's it, it brings nothing special to the game IMHO.

 

[Deadly Dog]

My limited experience is that it's almost the anti-barbarian mode. In the standard game you are never free of barbarians - they keep popping up in new places. It seems that now there is a fixed number of camps that spawn initially, and don't reappear if you kill them. Leave them alone and they morph into city states or get wiped by city state units. (It's odd how city states are much more effective at clearing barbarian camps than AI civs.) If you want to clear them yourself, I have not found it harder than in the standard game. But raiding a camp seems like a bad idea, as it will immediately spawn a much more advanced unit.

So this is not at all what I was expecting, but since it removes getting new camps spawning in the mid-game, I like it and will stay with it.

Not sure about this, I find as long as there is empty land the camps spawn as normal. Haven't made it to the Renaissance yet.

 

[Linklite]

Not sure about this, I find as long as there is empty land the camps spawn as normal. Haven't made it to the Renaissance yet.

Have the spawned after a camp has progressed to a CS? That's what someone else claimed was the problem.

 

[NCC-1701]

I really thought I would enjoy this a lot but I just ended up destroying nearby camps. I suppose it's nice to have but if it means that map gen is a bit weird then I'm not sure.

 

[Hakan-i Cihan]

My limited experience is that it's almost the anti-barbarian mode. In the standard game you are never free of barbarians - they keep popping up in new places. It seems that now there is a fixed number of camps that spawn initially, and don't reappear if you kill them. Leave them alone and they morph into city states or get wiped by city state units.

I am having the same experience. I was hoping it was due to a mod I am using.

 

[rhetorician]

I am playing with barb mode on and no mods. After reading the comments about no additional camps spawning after a camp has turned into a city state--which I think would be awful and would ruin the mode--I performed a quick and simple experiment. In my game, one of the barb camps has turned into Preslav a few turns ago. I shift-entered through maybe 4-5 turns before the next camp spawned. So, it seems to me that the claim that no additional camps will spawn after conversion is false--thank god!

 

[SirWill90]

I like it overall. The extra turn after entering the camp before choosing raid or destroy, during which another barb unit can spawn, is annoying and seems counterintuitive, I'd prefer the choice to be given upon entering the camp.

 

[rhetorician]

BTW, I am playing with dark ages, monopolies, and barb mode. It's utter chaos right now with camps all over the place, and I love it. If you want to play with barb mode enabled, you should probably plan on having a sizeable military and/or enough gold to properly deal with the barbs.

I like it overall. The extra turn after entering the camp before choosing raid or destroy, during which another barb unit can spawn, is annoying and seems counterintuitive, I'd prefer the choice to be given upon entering the camp.

I have been able to raid/destroy a camp on the same turn I moved into it. I think the unit had 4 movement points and was right next to the camp.
Update: adding a little more detail. Just had a scout with 4 movement kill a badly injured spearman in a camp in flat grassland tile. That used up 3 movement points, leaving one point to interact with the camp on the same turn.

 

[8housesofelixir]

I like it overall. The extra turn after entering the camp before choosing raid or destroy, during which another barb unit can spawn, is annoying and seems counterintuitive, I'd prefer the choice to be given upon entering the camp.

Beside the possibility that you might lack enough movement points, the Barb Camp is being considered as an "improvement" in the game, so similar to all the other improvements, you need to stand right on top of the camp in order to do something to it.

 

[SirWill90]

Beside the possibility that you might lack enough movement points, the Barb Camp is being considered as an "improvement" in the game, so similar to all the other improvements, you need to stand right on top of the camp in order to do something to it.

Yeah I guess I should have said, I don't think it should be a case of remaining movement points deciding what happens when you enter it. Its fate should be determined when it is entered, whether the entering unit has movement points left or not. In normal mode you don't have to have movement points left to destroy it when you enter it. Just my opinion. Not a deal breaker for me.

 

[Linklite]

I am playing with barb mode on and no mods. After reading the comments about no additional camps spawning after a camp has turned into a city state--which I think would be awful and would ruin the mode--I performed a quick and simple experiment. In my game, one of the barb camps has turned into Preslav a few turns ago. I shift-entered through maybe 4-5 turns before the next camp spawned. So, it seems to me that the claim that no additional camps will spawn after conversion is false--thank god!

Thanks for putting that to rest. It would have been a bug that would have really, ah, bugged me.