[Not a bug]Not getting consistant results with same game settings.

[JayThomas]

I only have a sample of two games.

Settings for both:
Big and small
standard size
standard # of opponents
Barb world
Raging Barb
The animal option
The bonus resource option
No settlers
Playing as Cardith of Kuiritates (however it's spelled).

First time time, I start on a moderate sized island. Two barb cities spotted by my initial settler. Eventually, 5 barb cities on the island with me.

Second time, I start somewhere on a sizable landmass. No initial barb cities spotted. Settle and explore about a 15 plot radius around the capital. Meet other civs but haven't located their capitols yet. It's around turn 80 and no barbs or barb cities detected yet.

I guess the expectation is some consistancy in settings. Starting on a large land mass with others should result in a race to grab barb cities (remember, no settlers selected) but so far that isn't turning out that way.

Just curious if others have experienced this inconsistancy.

 

[Alchemistor]

Yes I have noticed that barbarians go missing in large maps.

Also if you select option for barbarian cities at the start of game, the cities are all placed in antartica region bunched up together rather than spreading them out over the whole map.

 

[DeaExMachina]

I'm fairly sure the players are placed first before Barbarian World selects where to put the Barbs. This means that the more players you have the less suitable area for the barbs and its why they often get sent to arctic regions where there are no players.

 

[Alchemistor]

The problem occurs for me on huge maps with just 9 players.

There are plenty of land to place Barbarian cities but they are still placed in arctic regions. Might be a problem on specific maps though. It not as much of a problem in say central sea map but it is a problem in say Big and Small map.

I'll try to investigate further and put a report in the Bug thread.

 

[JayThomas]

In my first example in post 1, the island was actually attached to the southern artic region. My location was not near the polar regions in the second example.

 

[BeefontheBone]

I think it only puts barb cities on one continent, a bit like how Terra scripts work. The logic might need a bit of looking at; as it stands it works well on Pangaea or regional maps but is very hit-and-miss on maps with continents and islands.

 

[JayThomas]

Oh, that would explain some of my earlier experiences. In .25 I used WB to look at where the barbs were. Like you said, they were on another continent (I was using big and small).

But doesn't barb cities show up during the game? That's what suprised me too.

 

[BeefontheBone]

Should do, but that option doesn't make that happen earlier AFAIK. The ones already present may also slow the appearance of new ones, not sure how the code works.

 

[KaNeaGE]

Ive played with settings similar to yours for awhile and ive noticed a few things about the way barbs work. DeaEx and Beefon are both correct in their observations.

More civs = less room for Barbs.
The game picks a continent at start of game and populates it

On Big a Small this is killer as often times one of the islands has 6-7 barb cities on it but the rest of world is bare. To counter this i go in the old fashion way and put barb cities down where i think they should go. It sux but meh....

Another thing ive found out is it seems that random appearing barbs appear less (if at all) if there is a barb city nearby. instead it defers to the city to build the barb invaders. This seriously lessens the difficulty as random appearing barbs can pop up every 10 turns or so but the barb city must take 20+ turns to build them.

 

[JayThomas]

Another thing ive found out is it seems that random appearing barbs appear less (if at all) if there is a barb city nearby. instead it defers to the city to build the barb invaders. This seriously lessens the difficulty as random appearing barbs can pop up every 10 turns or so but the barb city must take 20+ turns to build them.

Well, that's kindof of catch 22. I figured raging barbs and barb world would kick sum butt. It might, but not on this map style. Will have to play around a bit more.

 

[KaNeaGE]

Well you are right it would kik some butt, but isnt that the point of turning them both on?

 

[Maian]

Do barbarians periodically disappear? I was fooling around with the world editor, creating a barbarian "civilization" and I noticed that lots of units were just disappearing. IIRC lack of money causes units to disappear, but I gave the barbarians the max amount of money, so that shouldn't be a problem. Is there like a cap on the number of barbarian units?

 

[snarko]

Do barbarians periodically disappear? I was fooling around with the world editor, creating a barbarian "civilization" and I noticed that lots of units were just disappearing. IIRC lack of money causes units to disappear, but I gave the barbarians the max amount of money, so that shouldn't be a problem. Is there like a cap on the number of barbarian units?

AI civs can disband units if they are in financial trouble. They are considered to be in financial trouble if they are spending much of their income (science and gold) on expenses. It doesn't matter at all how much money they have.
Personally I excluded barbarians from the disband if financial trouble .25. Expect I'll do the same thing in .30.

*edit*
There's another way around it without going into the SDK. The barbarians are playing on chieftain (set in GlobalDefines). Change <iUnitCostPercent> for chieftain to 0. Now the barbarians won't pay unit upkeep and therefor won't disband their units. Just don't play on chieftain yourself

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Barbarian sometimes disband units if there aren't player units nearby. Probably to save performance, but it sucks if they are special units. Kael put a block here for world units that should help keep Acheron around.

 

[snarko]

Barbarian sometimes disband units if there aren't player units nearby. Probably to save performance, but it sucks if they are special units. Kael put a block here for world units that should help keep Acheron around.

I can't find anything like that. If it was true then terra maps wouldn't have a continent of barbarians once you reach it.

I did find a few more cases where the barbarians might disband units.

The AI might disband units in a city if the city can provide units of that type more experience than it has. The AI will not disband units this way if they're not paying upkeep for units. (There's a check I'd like added here, making sure the city can actually build the unit. Not needed in BtS but useful in FfH2.)

The AI might also disband units with UNITAI_EXPLORE if they can't find anything better to do. Lizardmen may get disbanded this way. Again, they won't do this unless they're paying for their units.

There are many other cases where the AI will disband units but most of them, like for settlers and workers, doesn't really matter for barbarians.

 

[JayThomas]

Does selecting no settlers effect the founding of barbarian cities?

 

[snarko]

Does selecting no settlers effect the founding of barbarian cities?

Simple answer: no.
More complicated answer: it can have an indirect effect but most of the time it won't.

This was true in .25 and I'm guessing it hasn't changed.

 

[onedreamer]

playing the Kuriotates with no settlers on is wicked, that's why the games are "fubar".

 

[Nikis-Knight]

I can't find anything like that.

Okay, perhaps I'm losing something in the translation. Anyway, we were having trouble with occasionally Acheron dying mysteriously in testing, some fixes were added.