Minor civs

[stachnie]

Barbarians rising into Minor civs are one of my favourite features of C2C. However, in my recent games (v. 32) they do it MUCH slower than before (at least v. 30 and previous). In the meanwhile I have installed an unofficial Polish patch so I do not know if this small rate is due to changes in V. 32 (or v. 31) or maybe by something in this patch - and (possibly) how to revert/control this.

In my current game I have conquered all AI civs at my continent, there are some Barbarian cities and only one turned into a new Civ, only when I manually increased the size all Barbarian cities to 3. Usually at this time (me in the middle Renaissance era, AI civs in the middle or late Medieval) there would be 2-4 more.

S.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

The size of the barbarian city when it turns into a new civ is controlled in the BUG options. They should be size 3 at least. Some changes in C2C was supposed to mean than any small near by barbarian cities would join the new nation. I have not seen that happen.

 

[stachnie]

The size of the barbarian city when it turns into a new civ is controlled in the BUG options. They should be size 3 at least.

Yes, I know that - and that is why I had increased sizes of these existing cities to 3. Are there any other variables in configuration files that may influence the probability of emergence of a minor civ?

S.

 

[God-Emperor]

The controls are on the Revolutions tab of the BUG options.

There should be a modifier setting which is a multiplier (1.0 = default, 0.5 = half as likely).

The minimum population required is bumped up by 1 in the 3rd and 4th eras (Classical and Medieval) and by 2 in all later eras.

Some things that change the odds of a barb civ forming:
Extra population over the minimum increases the odds.
Having generated enough culture for border pops increases the odds (each border pop counts as much as 2 extra population).
If the city was captured by the barbs the chance is increased.
If there is only 1 city on the continent/island the odds are reduced (and it is impossible unless one of the other factors which increase it has come into play).

In some cases it is possible for the calculated odds to be less than 0, in which case it can't spawn one until the odds improve.

Game speed has an effect which actually looks to have been implemented backwards. Right now it looks to me like the slower the game speed the more likely it is for a barb city to generate a new civ on any turn.

The modifier it is using for game speed is 300 divided by the sum of the growth, train, and construct modifiers for the speed you are using. For the slowest speed of C2C this works out to a multiplier of just under 0.09. Oddly, it is applying this by using it to modify the range of the random number generated to check for getting a new minor civ. It is generating a random number with a range of 100 times this modifier rounded down to an integer and seeing if that is below the calculated odds. So this seems to be being applied backwards, as a smaller range here will increase the odds of getting a new minor civ. A random number from 0 to 7 is much more likely to be less than the calculated odds number (which has a base of 3, and becomes 8 if the city is 1 over the minimum required population and no other modifiers are used) than one that is from 0 to 99.

To fix that, the random number range should be using 100 divided by the game speed modifier instead of multiplying. (Line 989 in Python\Revolution\Gameready\BarbarianCiv.py is the line in question.)

 

[strategyonly]

To fix that, the random number range should be using 100 divided by the game speed modifier instead of multiplying. (Line 989 in Python\Revolution\Gameready\BarbarianCiv.py is the line in question.)

So the BEST settings for a Snail game would be??

 

[God-Emperor]

So the BEST settings for a Snail game would be??

I have no idea. It depends on what you mean by BEST.

If you want to counteract the bug then setting the modifier for the barbarin civ generation to the 0.2 setting is about the best you can do, although that will remove the possibility of getting some when you should have a small chance to do so. Because of that using the 0.4 setting might be better even if it will still result in more minor civs popping up from barbarian cities than there ought to be (relative to the number that was apparently intended by the author of the code).

 

[stachnie]

The controls are on the Revolutions tab of the BUG options.
There should be a modifier setting which is a multiplier (1.0 = default, 0.5 = half as likely).
[...]
Some things that change the odds of a barb civ forming:

Thanks a lot. So the reason may be that barbarian cities develop very slowly. I will do some testing with WB


S.

 

[strategyonly]

Thanks a lot. So the reason may be that barbarian cities develop very slowly. I will do some testing with WB


S.

If you do figure it out, let me know, because i dont like that they are slow either. Especially from scratch.

 

[stachnie]

If you do figure it out, let me know, because i dont like that they are slow either. Especially from scratch.

Now I may only confirm that this is due to the size of barbarian cities - after I had sizes of some of them, they started to form new civs almost immediately. I do not know the reason of so slow growth yet - maybe they concentrate on military units instead of infrastructure?

Edit: yes, it seems that they keep producing units (sometimes Workers) and do not take care about buildings.

S.

 

[stachnie]

After some testing: it seems that there are some balance issues due to the game speed. At Marathon Barbarians produce a lot of units and their cities grow very slowly. At Eternity they build even more units but their cities develop relatively faster, so they may form new civs and sometimes even destroy existing ones (it happened in my present game, I play first time at Eternity).

S.