How Are You Liking The Barbarians Game Mode?

[Deadly Dog]

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.

It seems you have to be in the camp with some or all movement points. I took the time to promote but stayed in the camp and had the choice come up every turn. I even switched occupiers so my scout could get the xp from dispersing. And yes meanwhile another unit spawned I only did this because I had 3 units in good shape plus there were CS units around

Anyway it actually seems quite possible, though not always easy, to exploit this. You can buy a warrior from the camp, then kill off the spear and take it, raid for some gold back, fight some more then clear it for 10xp to the unit of your choice. In the end I get a warrior, 2 or 3 era score a bunch of training and 10 free xp on a promoted unit for 1/2 the cost of a slinger. Deal!

Double-edged sword though. Pedro incited a camp I was trying to farm against me just when the game decided to give the barbs swordsmen. Yeah I didn't wait for the official "Defeat" entry in my HoF lol.

 

[Deadly Dog]

Also TIL that the Bribe option only stops them from moving into your territory they can and will happily shoot into your tiles if you give them a target . They = the barbs you bribed, of course.

Sad because they were spawning a war party and had no other target than Pedro and I wanted to at least spectate from a hill on my border...nope, no media allowed

 

[Starwars]

Seems like city-states (and maybe other civs?) don't need to take an action to clear a camp. They can move and clear in the same turn (when the camp is on a hill).

EDIT: Also can't clear, or raid, them using Viking Longships. Just ends the turn.

 

[Disgustipated]

After my first game was bugged out due to the massive city state spam (despite me limiting it to 13 I had at least 25 with only less than half the world discovered) which was too buggy to finish, my 2nd game is insane with barbarians. I wanted to make sure there was no city state bug, so I set city states to 0, but added 3 or 4 more extra civs. With this much space on the map, barbarians are insane. My first game barbarians were a non issue due to so many city states. I couldn't even interact with the new feature because there were no camps after I eliminated the first one near my capital at the start of the game.

I'm seeing a barbarian crossbowman even before any civ has a crossbowman. I have no way of dealing with this. It's not too close to me at least, but it may thwart my plans to attack America.

 

[iammaxhailme]

After my first game was bugged out due to the massive city state spam (despite me limiting it to 13 I had at least 25 with only less than half the world discovered) which was too buggy to finish, my 2nd game is insane with barbarians. I wanted to make sure there was no city state bug, so I set city states to 0, but added 3 or 4 more extra civs. With this much space on the map, barbarians are insane. My first game barbarians were a non issue due to so many city states. I couldn't even interact with the new feature because there were no camps after I eliminated the first one near my capital at the start of the game.

I'm seeing a barbarian crossbowman even before any civ has a crossbowman. I have no way of dealing with this. It's not too close to me at least, but it may thwart my plans to attack America.

With CS set to zero, have you noticed any barbs actually transforming into CS?

 

[TreVor_ish]

To prevent spawning to many City-States from barbs, You have to reduce their pool.

Also at this point You can't start with 0 CS, if wanting to have any CS transformed from barbs, because mode does not load it's pool. You have to start with at least 1 CS.

 

[Chris41336]

A few thoughts I had:

1) Way too many city states if you, like me, play with a high number already. Moving forward I will have the game start with only 1 or 2 city states and have the rest fill in from barb camps.

2) I think the camps are becoming CS too quickly. In my game I am not even at the medieval era yet and started exploring with my galleys, and have found CS who may or may not have interacted with major civs as barbs cropping up all over, arctic, etc. The passive rate to change should be reduced to the point of near zero. Player interaction should be the main driver of evolution. I want to reach the new world with some camps still in tact that perhaps I can use to attack fellow colonial powers.

3) I absolutely think that there should be some form of memory when the camp turns to a CS of who helped get it there. If one civ does all the effort to a barb camp to evolve, they should at least get an extra envoy or perhaps a one-time bonuses of the camps unit.

4) Maybe others disagree with this, but I think that a clan should have a random chance of becoming a full-fledged civ instead of just a city state. There could also be an interesting mechanic where if a barb clan takes a city from a civ, they keep the city and immediately upgrade to a civ, in addition to random chance. Perhaps there could be a modifier to increase the chance for a more well funded barb camp.

5) alternative of point 4, I think this mode should allow barbs to "raid" cities and reduce loyalty each time.

 

[blackbutterfly]

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.

In my game by the Renaissance there are no more barbs!

Unless you're playing a TSL map (for which Barb mode is particularly unsuitable cos of the fixed number of CS) or a super large map (which are barely supported) barbs will be out of the game eventually. You end up with city states instead.

I thought this would be a real people pleaser especially as people complain of barbs.

 

[iammaxhailme]

I wasn't exactly looking carefully, but in my (so far one completed) barbarian mode game, I don't think I saw any barbarians past the early/mid stages either.

 

[Chris41336]

In my game by the Renaissance there are no more barbs!

Unless you're playing a TSL map (for which Barb mode is particularly unsuitable cos of the fixed number of CS) or a super large map (which are barely supported) barbs will be out of the game eventually. You end up with city states instead.

I thought this would be a real people pleaser especially as people complain of barbs.

Why do you say huge maps are barely supported?

 

[Horizons]

I liked the option to play as the barbarians. Was that Civ5 or Civ4? It was a lot of fun.

 

[Disgustipated]

To prevent spawning to many City-States from barbs, You have to reduce their pool.

Also at this point You can't start with 0 CS, if wanting to have any CS transformed from barbs, because mode does not load it's pool. You have to start with at least 1 CS.

I found this out the hard way it seems. Doesn't look like any camps will turn into city states. I'm just glad to not be surrounded by city states this game. It's not a bad game, I'll finish it I suppose. The upside it gives a lot of barbarian action so I can get the achievements hopefully. Though the ransom one seems tricky seeing as I don't know how the ransom feature works.

 

[TreVor_ish]

It seems I found another bug. If You absorb barbarian transformed City-State before reloading a game (when still with white border) using Stamford Raffles, that City-State will still be in a list and You can still send Envoys to it. My god every mode ;/ It's tiresome.
EDIT:
Reload after absorbing does nothing. It's quite game breaking, because AI still sends Envoys to absorbed City-State that way.
EDIT2:
Another thing, when Tribe is on coast, You can use Coastal Raid on it endlessly.

 

[Hakan-i Cihan]

It seems I found another bug. If You absorb barbarian transformed City-State before reloading a game (when still with white border) using Stamford Raffles, that City-State will still be in a list and You can still send Envoys to it. My god every mode ;/ It's tiresome.
EDIT:
Reload after absorbing does nothing. It's quite game breaking, because AI still sends Envoys to absorbed City-State that way.

Does the player or the AI get (suzerain) bonuses if he sends envoys?
Would be quite interesting (?) if you could suzerain your own city and get bonuses...

 

[TreVor_ish]

Does the player or the AI get (suzerain) bonuses if he sends envoys?
Would be quite interesting (?) if you could suzerain your own city and get bonuses...

Yes, suzerain bonuses, and all bonuses from Envoys also still apply.

 

[Josephias]

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.

In my first playtrough I saw two additional camps spam in my borders, so I was finally surrounded by three clans (two I had to clean up, other was kindly wipped by a nearby original CS). Also, an additional camp spawned up north, so I have not seen a decrease in the spawn rate, at least at the game start. So far, I have met already 4 previously-barbarian CS (2 converted from camps I had seen before). Maybe it depends on set-up? (I reduced the number of starting CS to 1/2 in order to balance those created by barbarians)

 

[aieeegrunt]

It seems I found another bug. If You absorb barbarian transformed City-State before reloading a game (when still with white border) using Stamford Raffles, that City-State will still be in a list and You can still send Envoys to it. My god every mode ;/ It's tiresome.
EDIT:
Reload after absorbing does nothing. It's quite game breaking, because AI still sends Envoys to absorbed City-State that way.
EDIT2:
Another thing, when Tribe is on coast, You can use Coastal Raid on it endlessly.

Jesus I thought Bethesda’s QA was bad

 

[tedhebert]

It seems I found another bug. If You absorb barbarian transformed City-State before reloading a game (when still with white border) using Stamford Raffles, that City-State will still be in a list and You can still send Envoys to it. My god every mode ;/ It's tiresome.
EDIT:
Reload after absorbing does nothing. It's quite game breaking, because AI still sends Envoys to absorbed City-State that way.
EDIT2:
Another thing, when Tribe is on coast, You can use Coastal Raid on it endlessly.

Considering that after 2500K hours played on this game, I'd never heard of Stamford Raffles and CS absorption, I think we can all agree that this is a VERY VERY exceptional bug... While all bugs are annoying, we've got to nuance between obvious bugs that point to bad QA and exceptions like this. MHO.

 

[Dedrytus]

I changed my vote to "I won't use it' until is patched. Barb camps stop spawning after city states pull is full (I assume)

 

[Linklite]

It seems I found another bug. If You absorb barbarian transformed City-State before reloading a game (when still with white border) using Stamford Raffles, that City-State will still be in a list and You can still send Envoys to it. My god every mode ;/ It's tiresome.

What is "Stamford Raffles"?

I changed my vote to "I won't use it' until is patched. Barb camps stop spawning after city states pull is full (I assume)

Do they actually stop spawning after the CS pool has been used up?