How Are You Liking The Barbarians Game Mode?

[Old Victoria]

My King game they were aggressive towards me. Though my map settings were weird since I had city states set to 0 (which also bugged the camp conversion to city state, but maybe that's a design feature), which gave plenty of room for camps.

I'm now on my second King game and it's like they don't have an interest on me. I'm enjoying the fact that, for whatever reason (chance?), when they convert to city state, my Civ is usually the first to meet them, even if they're all the way across the map - probably because I'm more advanced than other civs and explored more? - so I immediately get an envoy there. Yay, free gold/Science/production/whatever!

Besides, at some point midgame the world became barb-free. No new camps, vast swathes of land and all the seas completely safe to traverse. Are all the barbs so eager to civilize themselves?
So my vote is meh.

I can confirm that was also the case with me. Although to be honest, it always irked me that we were still getting barb camps in the modern era. Seriously? :|

 

[Josephias]

I can confirm that was also the case with me. Although to be honest, it always irked me that we were still getting barb camps in the modern era. Seriously? :|

I've always thought of modern-era barbarians as Anarchist and Terrorist groups. The camp "modern" graphics reflect what you would expect of a rouge army.

 

[Old Victoria]

I've always thought of modern-era barbarians as Anarchist and Terrorist groups. The camp "modern" graphics reflect what you would expect of a rouge army.

Huh.... fair enough!

 

[Disgustipated]

But what about the balance in the Force? If some camps strive to the light of civilization, others probably are very happy with the status quo and sees interminable raiding and pillaging as their fulfillment in life?

Highlighting this. This needs to happen, and I hope they can fix this in the future patch. More variety would be good all around. Plus they need to fix the issue with new camps not appearing.

still getting barb camps in the modern era

I always saw them as a entity like ISIS.

 

[Melkus]

I have done some (inexact) experiments with the values Firaxis exposed in the BarbarianClansMode_GameplayData.xml file, so this thread doesn't have to stumble around in a dataless darkness. Here goes (caveat: this might possibly be more complicated):

BARBARIAN_CLANS_CIV_CONVERSION_POINTS_STANDARD (default 120) pretty much says what it does, it takes 120 points for a camp to convert . (This should - but might not - scale with game pace)
BARBARIAN_CLANS_CIV_CONVERSION_INCREMENT_CHANCE (default 50) seems to describe the chance that the counter for a camp goes up on given turn, so there's some (low) randomness thrown in.
If this event fires (about every 2nd turn, obviously), the counter goes up several points (possibly depending on the amount of food around the camp, I don't have the stamina to figure this out now). The fairly normal camp I experimented on seemed to go up three points, so an early camp would convert around turn 80 without interference, give or take some randomness. Should be less in the tundra, but those seem to convert pretty soon, as well.

Now, to keep modders on their toes, the increment chance seems to be inverted, so camps develop faster with lower values - with 0 they seem to count up every turn, while a value of 100 means that the camps don't develop at all without help.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the five points a camp gets when you buy a unit are counted more than once, but I might be imagining things, as the bar is hard to read. They might also get multiplied with the food value or something else.

Conclusion: the default values mean that camps disappear pretty quickly. So, we could adjust several things here: By lowerings the points total and lowering the chance to advance per turn (though again, this value is inverted!), the randomness of conversions would be higher and the interactions with the clans more meaningful. It might also mean that snow barbarians and other isolated camps convert later (would have to be tested)

We could also simply put the conversion threshold higher, late spawning camps (yes, they exist) and really tough survivor barbs do build some entertaining units later. Obviously the likelyhood that some camps survive to form a city state sinks exponentially the higher the threshold goes.

 

[walkerjks]

I like it and will have it on always. I tend to run minimum military. And occasionally barbarians kick my tail. This gives me an emergency out. Buying a UU like an immortal solves a lot of issues. I also tend not to build much of a navy, but buying a boat when needed is now an option (bought a bireme before I had sailing in my last game). This will require me to pay better attention to cash flow so I can deal with the barbarians.

 

[Abaxial]

One thought: this mode really devalues the apostle promotion that recruits barbarians (useless after they all go away) and the initiation rites pantheon.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Tell you what, though I definitely love the Clan Mode, there is now an added level of frustration when you've invested hundreds of gold into getting a Clan to evolve into a City-State.....only for your City-State Ally to come along and destroy the camp .

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

One thought: this mode really devalues the apostle promotion that recruits barbarians (useless after they all go away) and the initiation rites pantheon.

No it doesn't, as the Apostle saves you spending gold.

 

[enKage]

In my games it looks like new camps are not spawning = mid and late game: no faith from god of war, no strong units from apostles

So I definitely don't like it

 

[Abaxial]

No it doesn't, as the Apostle saves you spending gold.

After camps stop spawning there are no barbarians for your apostle to recruit.

 

[blackbutterfly]

Tell you what, though I definitely love the Clan Mode, there is now an added level of frustration when you've invested hundreds of gold into getting a Clan to evolve into a City-State.....only for your City-State Ally to come along and destroy the camp .

You can protect your Barb "ally" by squatting a unit in its camp. Like so:

 

[Chris41336]

You can protect your Barb "ally" by squatting a unit in its camp. Like so:

Yes but I did this and they didn't convert to CS they just disappear when the bar fills!

 

[Atlas627]

Am I supposed to be getting Eurekas from clearing Barb camps, or is some mod interacting weirdly with the new "disperse camp" action?

 

[Jkchart]

I like it BUT it appears buggy with the lack of technological progress for city states turned from Barbarian camps. Also overpopulated snow is ridiculous...they should at LEAST require the Barbarians spawn near more sensible locations. Like, make Barbarian camps prefer decent food tiles to be adjacent to in addition to their terrain requirements. Idk I want to love it but they need to iron some stuff out.

 

[Pietato]

I can confirm that was also the case with me. Although to be honest, it always irked me that we were still getting barb camps in the modern era. Seriously? :|

Most of them are probably funded by the CIA.

 

[Earl of Pembroke]

No it doesn't, as the Apostle saves you spending gold.

I agree, actually think this apostle promotion is even better now, just walk up to a camp and poof, you save spending gold and even better having to carefully stage an attack with multiple units.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

A few things I've noticed.

1) Sometimes empty camps unassociated with a clan spawn. You can't raid them, only clear them for unit XP.

2) At some point Barb camps just stop spawning, even when there's room for them.

3) Eagle Warriors from barb camps are fun. I was playing as Mali and Genghis attacked me early in the game. I bought a couple Eagle Warriors from a barb clan and enslaved every unit he threw at me. I also bribed them to attack him. I'm unsure whether it had any effect, but it was a cathartic experience.

 

[Pfeffersack]

A few things I've noticed.

1) Sometimes empty camps unassociated with a clan spawn. You can't raid them, only clear them for unit XP.

blackbutterfly and me have runned into as well. See his report (and my accidental duplicate one) here:

[NFP] - [Barbarians Mode] Vanilla Barbarian Camp | CivFanatics Forums

 

[Vizurok]

On paper, I loved the idea of this mode, so I was eager to try this out. However, based on my very limited sample (one Deity Gaul CV), I found the mode somewhat underwhelming. That's not a problem at all, as I don't really fancy the yield and power creep of the Heroic and SS modes, so I feel like that the minor impact of Barbarian Clans adds just the right flavour for the game.

Some observations from my game:

• The reason that I find the mode underwhelming is that I just could not justify spending gold on the interactions. In the early turns, I just have so many better things to use my gold for, and by the time I can actually spare some gold, the prices scale quite heavily, and I simply don't find the value proposal of wasting that much gold on something that I don't really need (there seem to be arbitrage prices for unit purchases, but in a peacaful game, I could not care about that). A possible solution would be the introduction of favor purchases as an alternative: it makes sense thematically and game play wise.
• In addition to the dubious cost-benefit value of the interactions, I was not really interested in helping the clans develop into CSs. I mean, having an extra CS is nice and all, but there's a high chance that the given CS does not really help my victory condition, so why would I invest in them? This "problem" could be easily solved by displaying the name of the CS-to-be beforehand - knowing that a very good CS could enter game would definitely convince me to spend gold and maybe even protect them with my military.
• Also, having options is cool, but you don't really have the luxury of messing with camps near your core area. If you leave them alone after you conquer the camp, they just come back with vengeance, and you also lose the numerous beenefits of destroying the camp. I don't really know if adding the extra eureka for clearing the camp was that much neccessary, but I obvioulsy enjoyed a free boost.
• I felt that the civs and especially CSs handled the Barbarians quite firmly, so camps in the vicinity of the civilized world were always conquered easily, but remote camps did manage to get promoted - I think this is actually quite balanced.

All in all, I really enjoyed this game mode, and will try to be more active with the interactions in my next games, but knowing myself, I really fear that I will never find the money for this.