Marathon Players- Where Did The Barbs Go?

[DrewBledsoe]

Just a question to all fellow Marathon players, do you think the level has become too watered down, through the lack of Barbs now appearing? Those that do, seem to have the motto "Ooh A city, RUN AWAY!!RUN AWAY!!"....

What do ya think?

 

[Spearthrower]

Not for me, I always play raging barbs, fairly often play extra huge maps, have modded the GW to require a large number of walls.... generally 1 couple of civs die from Barbs, a couple more get stunted..... I tend to get my barb defences up quickly and take it from there.

Can't say as I have any problem with them as they are!

 

[DrewBledsoe]

Not for me, I always play raging barbs, fairly often play extra huge maps, have modded the GW to require a large number of walls.... generally 1 couple of civs die from Barbs, a couple more get stunted..... I tend to get my barb defences up quickly and take it from there.

Can't say as I have any problem with them as they are!

Much as I like your style, thats rather "unvanilla" conditions

1) Raging...2) Gw Mod (love the idea, I claim it is mine still .....

So with "normal" standard rules marathon, the same question as in post 1.....

 

[jimbob27]

Seems about the same. The barbs have always seemed quite random to me..... sometimes I'll play a pangea, and expect to have tons, and there will be hardly any. Other times I'll play an archipelago, and I'll get hoards of them appearing from almost any foggy square there is.

 

[Spearthrower]

Much as I like your style, thats rather "unvanilla" conditions

1) Raging...2) Gw Mod (love the idea, I claim it is mine still .....

So with "normal" standard rules marathon, the same question as in post 1.....

hehe I do enjoy a "survival start" but I didn't realise you meant "normal" as in without raging barbs!!

Sorry, can't offer any insight - I always play raging barbs.


The GW modification was to stop me from grabbing the GW - in around 14 games I always managed to get it, never saw an AI get it and it was starting to feel unbalanced.

Now, the GW comes in the late classical / early medieval and it is still nice and useful (especially for colonising) but not so unbalancing.


Anywa... I shall desist from taking this off track!! Apologies

 

[Rusty Edge]

Yes, I used to consider the barb era one of the most challenging aspects of the game, and it does seem tamer now. It probably was too much Wack-a-Mole torment for most to consider fun.

1) I think I've noticed more barbs actually attacking my neighbors instead of crossing through their territory to get to me. I think that's one of those "no more penalty just for being the human " improvements, which are good things.

2) I suspect A.I with archers and axes,etc. instead of the old archers only city defense are killing off more barbs.

3) If the some of the A.I. civs are over-expanding/ over-arming & underteching they are probably beating back a lot of blackness and out-competing the barbs because the Civs use more workers. It's just that the Civs remain illiterate barbs in the process, although they have colored clothing & you can negotiate with them.


Which adds up to fewer barbs to sharpen my army's claws upon. Not as tough to survive, as Warlords.

 

[Spearthrower]

I'd definitely be up for more of a spread of Barb troops - it's so rare to get a variety.

Remember the old "Barbarian Uprising" from Civ 3 where HORDES of horses would suddenly appear on your borders.

That's the kind of Barb attack I most enjoy. Yes, it's back with events, but the unit variety is still lacking.

I'd love to see more horse archers and spears - even some siege would be nice!..... 95% of start game barbs tend to be warriors and archers.... a few axes and swords appear.... you see the occasional spearmen (aside from events).

 

[jimbob27]

1) I think I've noticed more barbs actually attacking my neighbors instead of crossing through their territory to get to me. I think that's one of those "no more penalty just for being the human " improvements, which are good things.

2) I suspect A.I with archers and axes,etc. instead of the old archers only city defense are killing off more barbs.

Some of it's probably a combination of these two. The "bypassing the AI to attack the human" was really stupid in earlier versions. I've done tests in world builder, and on pangaea maps with 18 civs..... almost every barb that spawn ON THE WHOLE MAP will bypass the AI and attack your civ. If given the choice of attacking the AI, or walking the entire length of the map to attack the human... they'd take the long walk almost every time.

I think some of the problem was in the fact that the game treats the barbs as a civ, just with special rules. The barbs have a map, and huge amounts of it get uncovered really quickly. The barbs that spawn on the other side of the continent know you're there, because they use the same map as the barbs that were spawned near you.

 

[Rusty Edge]

Some of it's probably a combination of these two. The "bypassing the AI to attack the human" was really stupid in earlier versions. I've done tests in world builder, and on pangaea maps with 18 civs..... almost every barb that spawn ON THE WHOLE MAP will bypass the AI and attack your civ. If given the choice of attacking the AI, or walking the entire length of the map to attack the human... they'd take the long walk almost every time.

I think some of the problem was in the fact that the game treats the barbs as a civ, just with special rules. The barbs have a map, and huge amounts of it get uncovered really quickly. The barbs that spawn on the other side of the continent know you're there, because they use the same map as the barbs that were spawned near you.

Very interesting. I suppose that makes programming sense , rather than treat them as an extra 30 minor civs.

 

[Spearthrower]

Same - Monarch.
This was my impression after my first few weeks of play.... never once lost the GW, so I modded it to make it at least come later so the survival part of the game is "fair".

 

[Game-God]

Same - Monarch.
This was my impression after my first few weeks of play.... never once lost the GW, so I modded it to make it at least come later so the survival part of the game is "fair".

Fair... FAIR... I would think that any building or Wonder which makes things more difficult on the other civs (AI or otherwise) is going to make things more "UNFair", and isn't that the name of the game?

 

[ASL Veteran]

Just a question to all fellow Marathon players, do you think the level has become too watered down, through the lack of Barbs now appearing? Those that do, seem to have the motto "Ooh A city, RUN AWAY!!RUN AWAY!!"....

What do ya think?

Definitely, compared to Warlords they are watered down unless you go with Raging, then it feels about the same. Of course, the density of civs on your map has an effect as well. I played a Huge Global Highlands with Narrow Continents Low Water Level and the stock number of civs (12 I think) with Raging Barbarians. There was just way too much open space out there so I eventually ended the game since it wasn't much fun (and the AI civs were getting annihiliated). When I ended the game I went into the world builder to try and find out where all the AI civs were hiding (as I only made contact with two and one of them was overrun shortly after contact). I saw .. I think his name is Pascal ... anyway he had three cities with minimal garrisons and I saw a HUGE stack of Barbarian Swordsmen headed his way (probably like ten plus). Yes, they were stacked too, not running around individually. I think they came from the Dutch guy's city which the Barbarians overran and occupied earlier. Pascal wasn't much longer for that game. Even with raging though I was fighting them off from about 1600 BC up until about the early ADs then they just stopped coming all of a sudden (which is typically when they start settling down and building cities).

Normal barbarians though .. well they seem to typically be warriors or archers whereas in Warlords I would get Axemen starting at around ... oh I guess around 1400 BC IIRC. Now Barbarian Axemen don't seem to show up until the ADs and the warriors and archers are pretty infrequent. I used to plan my whole early game strategy around fighting off barbarians either raging or normal, but now I don't even factor them in unless I'm playing raging.

 

[Spearthrower]

Fair... FAIR... I would think that any building or Wonder which makes things more difficult on the other civs (AI or otherwise) is going to make things more "UNFair", and isn't that the name of the game?

You are right of course, but grabbing this wonder tended to mean that 1 or 2 AI's got wiped every game (probably due to all "my" barbs heading for them).... if I didn't want those civs in in the first place, i would have chosen fewer civs at the start.

I'm actually really happy with my solution - it works perfectly for me and it also stops that early, too-useful G Spy appearing.



ASL Veteran - remember that Highlands already increased Barb spawn frequency, so adding raging to that is going to be a significant challenge.

 

[Underdawg]

Too watered down? Those rival civs are still the main threat. Barbs are just annoying pests used for boosting your troops experience!

But yes, barbs have become more complacent methinks. I think pre-bts levels were higher and were all right, why the need for the nerf?

 

[Arlborn]

Too watered down? Those rival civs are still the main threat. Barbs are just annoying pests used for boosting your troops experience!

But yes, barbs have become more complacent methinks. I think pre-bts levels were higher and were all right, why the need for the nerf?

Because they only hated humans?

 

[DrewBledsoe]

Because they only hated humans?

Thats why I patched my own Warlords, so that ais didn't have much more of a bonus than the player. Now they just don't count. Apart from "the barb random event", no City ever built by an ai or me has ever been lost in BTS to barbs (I always do the replay option when I've finished/got bored of a game).

In warlords, it was around 1 city per game on average, by someone somewhere....

 

[Spearthrower]

Thats why I patched my own Warlords, so that ais didn't have much more of a bonus than the player. Now they just don't count. Apart from "the barb random event", no City ever built by an ai or me has ever been lost in BTS to barbs (I always do the replay option when I've finished/got bored of a game).

That is really odd Drew.... I regularly get entire civs wiped out - I'd say an average of 1 per game.

Perhaps they lowered the barb count but upped the effect of Raging barbs? At a bit of a loss to make that tally with my experience!!

 

[DrewBledsoe]

That is really odd Drew.... I regularly get entire civs wiped out - I'd say an average of 1 per game.

Perhaps they lowered the barb count but upped the effect of Raging barbs? At a bit of a loss to make that tally with my experience!!

That would make complete sense. It's just that I thought the warlords barb occurance was just about right. In warlords, marathon was all about finding a metal /horses, for early survival, and then thinking about development. In many a game, I've had a huge anount of "virgin" unfogbusted land ( there's as you know, far too much on huge maps to make any sense in doing this), but maybe get one barb wandering around once in a blue moon.

It makes for very simple rapid expansion for all civs.

 

[Spearthrower]

No, but as I said in my first post, I often play on extra huge maps - that's all the extra land necessary. I know how it all works Lord Olleus... I'm no modder, but I have ploughed through ALL the XML at some point or other. X no. of unclaimed tiles per Barb spawn.

However, that doesn't change the variable though when I was playing that same style prior to BTS!

Obviously if people use standard settings, the game is all balanced out. It's the extreme settings that lead to interesting results.

As I said initially, I personally greatly appreciate the survival period of the game... it works even better in BTS because the AI is so much slower at teching, I always get ahead..... with a load of barbs coming at me, I have more to do and can't charge ahead so easily.

 

[Rusty Edge]

3) If the some of the A.I. civs are over-expanding/ over-arming & underteching they are probably beating back a lot of blackness and out-competing the barbs because the Civs use more workers. It's just that the Civs remain illiterate barbs in the process, although they have colored clothing & you can negotiate with them.

So nobody is going to endorse, dispute or discuss theory #3?