Lonely barb chasing me ..

Moriarte

Immortal
Joined
May 10, 2012
Messages
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I have difficulty figuring out the all new and improved barbarian movement patterns and priorities in BNW. From what i gather, barbs are not interested in grabbing workers/settlers any longer. At least it isn't in their top 2 to - do list.

I made few experiments with moving around settlers and workers without escort in my games. Here are my findings, not so sure how consistent they are, maybe some one with code knowledge can confirm/dispute, but this is how things happen in my games most of the time:

1. Say you have an improved lux and a worker standing right next to it. The barb can either grab a worker or attempt pillage. The barb will never grab a worker, instead, he will jump on top of that lux and try to pillage it. So keep farming, farmer. If there are two barbs near your city, one of them can grab your worker. However, both barbs will prioritize pillage, if such opportunity exists.

2. If there is one barb inside encampment and no other barbs around the area, he won't grab settler, even if you move it to the tile adjacent to that camp. If there are two barbs, one of them can snatch your settler.

3. Barbs leave camps to look around sometimes. They can even abandon their camps, but if you move your unit at the turn barb abandoned it, he will likely flee back inside his hut. Unless your unit is heavily injured.

4. If there is one heavily injured barb inside an encampment and another healthy barb next to it, they might switch places.

5. If there is a worker and a unit standing next to a barb, the barb will attempt to kill the unit and will be chasing that unit to kill it, or die trying.

6. With raging barbs on, barb spawning goes in cycles. During one of the cycles barbs spawn every turn. :crazyeye: When another cycle switches on, it takes them 2 turns to appear. Sometimes 3 turns.

7. Few days ago i saw a roman scout fortified on a hill, next to encampment with archer in it and axeman next to archer. The archer kept firing shots at the scout, but it just stood there for 20 turns, healing. Axeman didn't care at all, even though he had opportunity to kill roman scout. When i approached, axeman tried to attack me. After i took my unit away, axeman assumed his initial position, next to barb archer.

8. If your units are attacking enemy city and the barb shows up, city defenders will likely prioritize killing a barb. Lucky you ;)

Well, you can share your own barb stories and/or comment about mine, i'd be interested to hear what other barb patterns there are in existence.

Personally, i feel barbs are a lot more manageable in BNW due to reasons outlined above.
 
Excellent work! I've observed some of what you describe, but wasn't daring enough to get in position to observe others (e.g., I haven't tried moving an unescorted settler onto a hill next to a barb camp).

As an aside, for conspiracy theorists, No. 7 is "proof" that the AI "cheats" => they are in cahoots with the barbs (except, of course, in the case of No. 8 :lol:).
 
If there is one barb and me and another scout, the barb will always attack me.:lol:
 
If the barb is not healthy enough to attack your scout/warrior, it will keep moving in front of you to force you in his ZOC :mad:
I think this is only true for brute, archer/axe will keep attacking since they are ranged
 
If the barb is not healthy enough to attack your scout/warrior, it will keep moving in front of you to force you in his ZOC :mad:ranged

I hate this. Once it took me ages to move one warrior, stuck between a mountain and forest tiles and this idiot barbarian (I didn't want to attack him first but I killed him afterwhile)
 
What is "raging barbs on"? I've seen that mentioned a few times here, but in the game settings the only thing I saw about barbarians is on / off.
 
a LOT more barbs is the difference.
When playing on Emperor and below you will notice a drastic change.
On Immortal and Deity the camps are cleared quite fast so you may not notice something
 
hm, have to check it out. What is the difference if this is on :) ?

The unit spamming ration is higher (I think *3), but the camps spawn at the same rythm
 
What is the spawning rate of barbs in normal setting and raging setting?

In some games, I noticed that barbs spawned more frequently if I continuously attacked the barb at the camp.
 
To the OP - your time investment is going straight to the memory banks for me! Well, at least to as much capacity as I have left... :) Thanks for posting.


edit: BTW is that Johnny Ringo in your avatar? Nice...
 
To the OP - your time investment is going straight to the memory banks for me! Well, at least to as much capacity as I have left... :) Thanks for posting.


edit: BTW is that Johnny Ringo in your avatar? Nice...

Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen.
 
Nice work. I've seen some of your points in my games and i think a good difference between GnK and BnW is that they appear more often in group of 2 or 3. They can be pretty annoying when they do.
 
all barbarians on the map act as a single faction - they will use vision/intel gained with a unit to set up multi unit ambushes on your units ..

Also they do like to sync up and emerge from the fog of the war with 3-5 units at once making it hard to escape without pillaged tiles...

They also like to set up a goals - once they have a mission (say go pester city state X - along with 2 more barb units ) they will ignore "distractions" on their way (such as unescorted settlers/workers) ...

Again with the goals - once they set their goal to kill one of your units they will fallow it till the end of the world ..(again ignoring distractions)..

-----------------------------------
Once a goal is set they don't re-evaluate often/ever ?
 
The not going after workers is a bummer in one respect: they don't steal CS workers as often. I had a frigate positioned where I could kill a barb once he took a CS worker and a scout positioned where I could clear the encampment. Hong Kong sends its worker to improve a sacked lux. It's two tiles from the encampment. I'm thinking, "Here we go, free influence with Hong Kong." Nope. Worker improves lux and goes on hs merry way. Barb just sits in the encampment the whole time.
 
I have personally witnessed (with two scouts with +sight) an AI settler walk through an area crawling with barbs (who had melee units with multiple chances to take the settler). My personal theory with how barbs and AI's interact is that the barbs generally play nice with the AI, but the AI generally does not play nice with the barbs.
 
i've noticed that a barbarian in a camp will kill a Great General even if it means leaving the camp undefended
 
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