News: GOTM 11 Pre-Game Discussion

[bio_hazard]

Also, if this map is not edited, can anyone tell about the expected resource distribution in this map? I played 2 test games last night and in none of them I was able to see copper, even though I had scouted a lot. Iron was also scarce: some 8/9 tiles away from starting plot. OTOH I had stone or marble in fat cross.

Yikes! I had a similar experience last night. silver deer and sheep in fat cross, but no copper within 15 tiles and iron was not that close either. Lots of goody huts though, although i did pop meanies from them three times I think. Found a couple with garrisoned barb warriors guarding them too...

 

[Shillen]

Yikes! I had a similar experience last night. silver deer and sheep in fat cross, but no copper within 15 tiles and iron was not that close either. Lots of goody huts though, although i did pop meanies from them three times I think. Found a couple with garrisoned barb warriors guarding them too...

There was no copper in visible range of my test game. The iron was in my capital's workable radius, though. But unless you can read ainwood's mind I don't think understanding how resources show up in the map type make much difference. I think strategic resources are something that ainwood probably manually places on the map where he wants them to be, instead of going with what the map gave him. I could be wrong, but I'm taking the safe route and getting archery. It's a really cheap tech anyway.

 

[Mad Professor]

Lots of goody huts though, although i did pop meanies from them three times I think. Found a couple with garrisoned barb warriors guarding them too...

Higher incidence of barbs coming out of huts, and barbs guarding huts I believe is a feature of the raging barbarians setting. I'm not sure what the exact chances of huts being good or bad are, but they are more likely bad with this setting than on the normal barbs I believe.

 

[Shillen]

Whenever a barb encounters a hut it will move over to it and fortify on top of it. With raging barbs the chance that a barb will wander by the hut is greatly increased, especially since the barbs come earlier before the huts can be popped.

I'm not sure about raging barbs increasing the chance of getting barbs from huts. I haven't seen the issue brought up in some goody hut articles I've seen, but then maybe they just didn't think to test it. The chance to get barbs on monarch is decently high anyway.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I'm not sure about raging barbs increasing the chance of getting barbs from huts. I haven't seen the issue brought up in some goody hut articles I've seen, but then maybe they just didn't think to test it. The chance to get barbs on monarch is decently high anyway.

Civ4HandicapInfo.xml looks like it defines the probabilities for getting barbs from huts (25% on monarch). Also seems to indicate that barbs appear after 25 turns, not 30 as was previously suggested. Barb cities appear after 30 turns, creation prob of 7 though I have no idea what that means (7% chance of a city instead of a unit?).

However I can't find anything in any XML file that suggests what might get modified by the raging barb setting. (@ShannonCT: Where did you get your info about raging barbs from?)

 

[Déja]

I'm going to look into the SDK to see if there's any good info about what AggressiveAI and Raging Barbs does, but as far as plan of attack, I think I'm going to go up to that circled hill NE of the start. With sooner barbs, I'd rather have that defensive bonus. I'll probably drop another city down on the warrior's start to work those clams and get the trade from the coast, though that may be my third or fourth city depending on what scouting reveals.

I'll probably go for quick early expansion doing a settler->worker->archer in my capital (or worker->settler if there are good resources that should be gotten asap)

What I wouldn't give for the great wall (this is my first vanilla CivIV game since I got the expansion pack last month)

 

[ShannonCT]

Civ4HandicapInfo.xml looks like it defines the probabilities for getting barbs from huts (25% on monarch). Also seems to indicate that barbs appear after 25 turns, not 30 as was previously suggested. Barb cities appear after 30 turns, creation prob of 7 though I have no idea what that means (7% chance of a city instead of a unit?).

However I can't find anything in any XML file that suggests what might get modified by the raging barb setting. (@ShannonCT: Where did you get your info about raging barbs from?)

I just entered the Worldbuilder every turn after turn 20 and searched the map for barbs. I know that I couldn't find any barbs before turn 30 and after hitting enter for the 30th time and checking the map again, I suddenly found many barbs all over the map. I'm pretty sure I had all of the right settings (speed, difficulty, etc), but you can try it yourself to confirm whether the number 30 is accurate.

The other experiment I did was to place a barb right next to a unit in my territory during turn 2, and then hit enter. The barb attacked immediately, and then continued on toward my capital. So there is no grace period where barbs just mill about outside your territory. As soon as they appear, they will enter your territory.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I'm going to look into the SDK to see if there's any good info about what AggressiveAI and Raging Barbs does, but as far as plan of attack, I think I'm going to go up to that circled hill NE of the start. With sooner barbs, I'd rather have that defensive bonus. I'll probably drop another city down on the warrior's start to work those clams and get the trade from the coast, though that may be my third or fourth city depending on what scouting reveals.

Yeah I was eyeing up that city placement idea too. The hill the warrior is on would potentially make a great pop-rushing centre in the short term and a moderately good great-person farm in the long term, though I would be a bit concerned at the very low production you'd get there. My main concern though is I'm extremely reluctant to build cities in locations that don't have at least one food resource, so the city can grow quickly when you want it to. So if I move to that hill and don't see a food resource beyond it, I could end up retreating back to the start location, having wasted two turns.

I am also thinking that I'll end up building a palace somewhere else quite soonish, since this start location is unlikely to be centrally located once my empire is established.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Looks like this is gonna be an expensive month. After buying Warlords, my vanilla Civ cd has finally given up the ghost (It has a lot of scratches on it). Time to buy another copy of Civ if I'm to play GOTM 11 I guess (which means - sorry ShannonCT, I can't try out your suggestion, but I'm happy to believe what you found)

 

[kojimanard]

Looks like this is gonna be an expensive month. After buying Warlords, my vanilla Civ cd has finally given up the ghost (It has a lot of scratches on it). Time to buy another copy of Civ if I'm to play GOTM 11 I guess (which means - sorry ShannonCT, I can't try out your suggestion, but I'm happy to believe what you found)

Did you try washing it with windex? I just had happen with my Civ4 CD yesterday and windex worked (I watch a lot of DVD's from Netflix so I often have to do this.)

 

[Déja]

Well, here are my findings for raging barbarians. The only place in the SDK that it makes a difference is in the CvUnitAI::AI_barbAttackMove() function.

Before the option is even checked, the barbarian will:
1. guard a city, if it's in one
2. skip its turn if it's on a goodie hut
3. look for a square to pillage within 1 space of the unit

and THEN it determines what course of action to take based on the following three conditions:

If Raging Barbarians, then do X, otherwise if there are more than an average of 3 cities per living civilization then Y, otherwise Z

X is the most aggressive track and looks like this in the code:

Spoiler :

if (GC.getGameINLINE().isOption(GAMEOPTION_RAGING_BARBARIANS))
	{
		if (AI_cityAttack(1, 30))
		{
			return;
		}

		if (AI_pillageRange(4))
		{
			return;
		}

		if (AI_cityAttack(3, 20))
		{
			return;
		}

		if (area()->getAreaAIType(getTeam()) == AREAAI_OFFENSIVE)
		{
			if (AI_targetCity())
			{
				return;
			}
		}
	}

What this means is that raging barbarians are more aggressive right away than they are even in later-game.

For comparison, early game (which is Z above), the barbs do the following:

1. Look for a good pillage site within two moves
2. Look to attack a city within 1 move with a lowish threshhold (20)

Raging barbs results in the following train of thought:

1. Look to attack a city within 1 move with the highest threshhold for pain that barbs do (30, which means they're about 50% more likely to attack)
2. Look for a pillage site within 4 moves
3. Look for a city to attack within 3 moves with the lower threshhold for pain (back to 20)


So in other words, not only are they more likely to attack even against worse odds, but they look to attack a city before they look to pillage, and if they don't find good pillaging, they look 3x as far away for a city to attack.

Hope this helps!

 

[Mad Professor]

Raging barbs results in the following train of thought:

1. Look to attack a city within 1 move with the highest threshhold for pain that barbs do (30, which means they're about 50% more likely to attack)
2. Look for a pillage site within 4 moves
3. Look for a city to attack within 3 moves with the lower threshhold for pain (back to 20)


So in other words, not only are they more likely to attack even against worse odds, but they look to attack a city before they look to pillage, and if they don't find good pillaging, they look 3x as far away for a city to attack.

Hope this helps!

OK, so it's number 2 which gives the effect of having them beeline for your area more readily under raging barbs - they've got their eyes on improvements more readily from further away? Even if you don't have improvements, they've got their eyes on your city from much further away too (number 3)

 

[Mad Professor]

I vaguely remember reading somewhere someone commenting about the number of babrbarians per fogged tile too. Does that vary only with difficulty level, or does it vary with raging barbs too?

To put my question another way, is NUMBER of barbarians expected in this game the same as any other Monarch game, or is it higher because of the raging setting?

 

[Déja]

The answer to your question can be found in this snippet of code from the CvGame::createBarbarianUnits() function:

if (isOption(GAMEOPTION_RAGING_BARBARIANS))
{
	iDivisor = max(1, (iDivisor / 2));
}

the iDivisor variable is the value that is used to divide the number of barbs the game thinks needs to be spawned to arrive at the actual number created. With raging barbs, this divisor is halved, thus resulting in, approximately, twice the number of actual barbs spawned.

 

[Mad Professor]

the iDivisor variable is the value that is used to divide the number of barbs the game thinks needs to be spawned to arrive at the actual number created. With raging barbs, this divisor is halved, thus resulting in, approximately, twice the number of actual barbs spawned.

Thanks That's crystal clear. Raging barbarians means twice as many barbarians than would be "normal" for that difficulty level, and these barbarians are more likely to make a beeline for your improvements and your cities, from further away.

At least with a bit of luck, we should all be using some level 3 (10xp) units not too far into the game...

 

[Mad Professor]

I don't think the barbarians are going to be as much a problem as they might otherwise be because of our starting position. It looks to me from the screen shot like we're near the western edge of the map, and we have water next to us as well which means barbarians won't be coming from that direction. This says to me that the BC years which might have otherwise been a struggle against barbarians more than anything else may in fact not turn out to be that. The expanding cultutre of any capital settled in the general area of that screen shot will not have to worry about barbs from the south or west, while hills to the north east give some help for defense. For that reason too, archers could be handy with their hills defense bonus. Especially if they get promoted with guerilla promotions. An archer fortified on a hill with guerilla II defends at +95% does it not? that makes it stronger than an axeman... Mind you, the RNG could make all that just theory and have the barb axe walk all over you anyway. It would still be nice to have more than archers to defend against axes.

 

[Shillen]

I just entered the Worldbuilder every turn after turn 20 and searched the map for barbs. I know that I couldn't find any barbs before turn 30 and after hitting enter for the 30th time and checking the map again, I suddenly found many barbs all over the map. I'm pretty sure I had all of the right settings (speed, difficulty, etc), but you can try it yourself to confirm whether the number 30 is accurate.

Interestingly, your date seemed early compared to some test games I ran so I decided to do the same experiment as you. In my first attempt I got to turn 30 and found no barbarians anywhere on the map. So I kept going and it wasn't until turn 34 (2680BC) that the barbarians showed up. I thought that was interesting so I decided to do it over again and see what happens. My next time doing it the barbarians didn't appear until turn 36 (2600BC)! It seems there's a random factor added on.

I also did some tests on whether to build worker->workboat->workboat, workboat->worker->workboat, or workboat->workboat->worker assuming that there are no resources or really good tiles behind the fog and assuming that you settle in place.

A. Worker->workboat->workboat:

(1) 4000BC - found in place, work grassland forest, research mining, build worker
(9) 3680BC - Mining researched, start Hunting
(15) 3440BC - Hunting researched, start Archery
(16) 3400BC - worker built
(20) 3240BC - mine on hill finished, work the mined hill
(22) 3160BC - Archery researched, start whatever
(26) 3000BC - Work boat built - fishing nets, work the clam, start second workboat
(28) 2920BC - Grow to 2, work clam + mined hill
(35) 2640BC - Work boat built, start archer
(36) 2600BC - fishing nets, growth to 3, work both clams + mined hill
(41) 2400BC - Archer built
(42) 2360BC - Size 4, working both clams and 2 mined hills, build another archer then a settler

B. Workboat->worker->workboat:

(1) 4000BC - found in place, work grassland forest, research mining, build work boat
(9) 3680BC - Mining researched, start Hunting
(12) 3560BC - Grow to 2, work both grassland forests
(15) 3440BC - Hunting researched, start Archery, workboat built, fishing nets, work clam + grassland forest, start worker
(21) 3200BC - Archery researched, start whatever
(25) 3040BC - Worker finished, start workboat
(29) 2880BC - Mine finished on hill, work clam + mined hill
(30) 2840BC - Grow to 3, work clam + mined hill + forest grassland
(34) 2680BC - Work boat built, start archer, mine finished, work 2 mined hills and clam
(35) 2640BC - fishing nets, work both clams and mined hill
(38) 2520BC - Grow to 4, work both clams and both mined hills
(39) 2480BC - Archer built

C. Workboat->workboat->worker:

(1) 4000BC - found in place, work grassland forest, research mining, build work boat
(9) 3680BC - Mining researched, start Hunting
(12) 3560BC - Grow to 2, work both grassland forests
(15) 3440BC - Hunting researched, start Archery, workboat built, fishing nets, work clam + grassland forest, start work boat
(20) 3240BC - Grow to 3, work clams and both grassland forests
(21) 3200BC - Archery researched, start whatever
(25) 3000BC - Grow to 4, work clams, 2 grass forests, grass hill
(26) 2960BC - Work boat built, start worker
(27) 2920BC - fishing nets, work both clams and both grassland forests
(34) 2680BC - Worker built, start archer
(38) 2520BC - Mine finished, work both clams, grass forest and mined hill
(39) 2480BC - Grow to 5, unhappiness
(40) 2440BC - Archer built, unhappiness gone

Worker first is clearly the worst choice. Worker second gets everything built one turn sooner than doing the worker third, but doing the worker third allows your city to be size 5 instead of size 4 at the end. Then again with the worker second you can already have 3 of the hills mined and a couple roads as well whereas with the worker third you're in the middle of mining the second hill. I think workboat->worker->workboat is probably the best. Of course with my luck there will be a resource behind the fog which will make this whole analysis null and void. I've done this a few times and never had barbarians show up before my archer is built but if they show up in turn 30 like they did in ShannonCT's game then that would be a problem. It might be better to put the archer in before the 2nd workboat.

This could most likely be improved if you opt to go with bronzeworking and whipping, but I don't plan to do that personally.

edit: As for research, it's pretty even between all 3 methods.

 

[Vynd]

I have played a Highlands/Seas map where the north was jungle and the south was tundra. I don't think there's any way for us to tell right now if we are closer to the top or bottom of the map. I'm willing to bet we're closer to the middle than either, however.

I would pretty surprised if we start in some sort of pseudo-isolated position. As others have said, what's the point of having Raging Barbarians on if we're in a position where they'll barely affect us? If we really are on some sort of island then Raging Barbarians would probably hurt the AIs a lot more than it does us.

In past GOTMs, the starting area often seems to have been tweaked to be especially nice. I'd be surprised if that was the case with this map. If anything, I imagine our start area will be poorer than usual.

 

[ShannonCT]

I've done this a few times and never had barbarians show up before my archer is built but if they show up in turn 30 like they did in ShannonCT's game then that would be a problem. It might be better to put the archer in before the 2nd workboat.

Barbarians can show up on the map at turn 31. They can only show up in the fog, so it would be a minimum of 4 more turns before they could attack your capital. But that could mean trouble if you're planning for your first defender at turn 39-41. You could always pull back your original warrior to be safe.

Edit: In another test, barbarians showed up on turn 33 (2720BC). I guess it is a little random. I am going to shoot for having defenses/fogbusting up by turn 35. Maybe workboat-worker-warrior-warrior-warrior.

 

[JerichoHill]

So I played the test map someone provided. I planted 4 cities on the island. I built every wonder save the pyramids. I founded the 3 late religions.

Seems like a cakewalk, honestly.