I can't tell if I got lucky or not..

[craney1987]

Firstly sorry but I don't have screenshots, I may go back to some autosaves tonight and grab some.
And secondly sorry for the novel, there are four questions for everyone at the end, maybe skip there to avoid the eye strain?

I loaded up my first ever deity game last night. I chose to play as Nubia because... OP. also because I went in expecting something of a perma war with the AI, so I figured those early archers would be my best shot at keeping the masses at bay and also because of perma war this was how I expected to expand rather than pumping out settlers. It was a continents map everything else standard. No mods.
When I started I moved my settler one tile north and grabbed some tea that was in the fork of a river and backed onto the beginning of what I would later call (for the Aussie's out there) the great dividing range). This and a hattusa which I found in a few terms gave me a two point science bump early and helped me keep a reasonable tech pace.
On the entire continent I found only 4 CS and America who gave me friendship. And only three barb camps. Gorgo sailed up shortly after meeting America and also offered friendship.
My questions are:
1. Where were the barbs? Isn't deity supposed to have hordes of them?
2. Why is everyone so friendly ? Is it just this playthrough, or the latest patch?
3. Considering my original strategy going in was to capture my way to expansion, did I get lucky in having half a continent to my leisure, or unlucky because no-one wanted to fight me?

Is all this normal? It seemed quite surreal.

 

[Archon_Wing]

As for barbs, it really depends on your spawn. If you spawn far away from everyone else, the barbs will most likely go to you. However, if there are people nearby or your land is some kind of peninsula which funnels them. , the barbs tend to make not as big of a deal since the AI has bonuses that makes it easier to fight them.

Regardless, I don't find barbs to be trouble on any difficulty unless they spawn horse archers which does mess things up.

The AI has been unusually friendly at the start now. Maybe to avoid early war, but it's hard to say.

 

[craney1987]

It's a wide open continent with the mountain range splitting it in half and two narrow gaps at the top and bottom. Plenty of room to spawn. I thought maybe the lack of major civs might have led to there being less barbs?

 

[UWHabs]

Might just be random chance. Or if you get lucky and kill their scouts (or have someone else kill their scouts), then sometimes you just have a few random barb camps that really don't cause troubles. I've had some games where you have hordes and hordes of barbs try to destroy you, and other games where I actually have to go hunting to see them.

 

[Victoria]

If you were playing Gorgo I would call it unlucky so I am surprised she was so friendly.

The initial spawn is random and the chance of spawning after that is not difficulty based (but should be)
Also a camp having horses with 6 tiles is not difficulty based but makes a big difference.
What is difficulty based is the number of barbs spawning from a camp.

The civs friendliness is random but the first impressions modifier is higher on high difficulties (degrades 1 point per 10 turns). Also agendas and in particular secondary agendas make a big difference to how civs feel about you as likely does the agenda of the civ you take because the AI seems to take that into account.

... so you got lucky but I guess no bronze working or military tradition eurekas and you can always attack a friendly civ but they are less likely to attack you, especially with a lot of room.

On deity I have such starts quite often. It's harder to win with a lack of civs and CS around you to feed off initially. How you treat that luck depends on your preferences.

 

[craney1987]

. It's harder to win with a lack of civs and CS around you to feed off initially. How you treat that luck depends on your preferences.

I feel that has been the most difficult part of the playthrough. The isolation. I've since met everyone else and am not at all surprised to see that I am trailing in science and culture. I'll probably lose this run, which is OK, I just wish now, that I'd have had some neighbours, as @Victoria put it... To feed off so that I could have put in a good challenge.

 

[Japper007]

Barbs is pure chance, you can have entire empty continents without civs or barbs...
...Or you can have a cramped start with several civs and a few horsebarb camps all within six tiles of your capital.
Neither of those is any fun, it's incredibly frustrating to have a match completely spoiled due to randomness like this, which all earlier versions of civ managed to avoid.

 

[Canadian Bluebeer]

Barbs are weird. They will go through a period of non-stop spawning. Then suddenly stop.
Then start again.

Difficulty makes no difference it seems.

I wonder if it has to do with clearing barb camps in the unexplored areas.
I'll have to try it with observer on to see.

Latest game (lvl 2, testing the summer patch for Linux), I had nonstop spawning in my continent for a while, then nothing.
Many turns later, suddenly they started up again on my continent.
No clue why.