Popping settlers from barb villages in early game.

[zagnut]

I usually play on Monarch and Emperor level. Recently I have come across several posts about increasing your chances of getting a settler when you attack a barb village. I had never heard of this before and would like some confirmation that I have it right.

"Edit": The reference to barb village should be to goody huts.

As I understand it you can get a settler 10% to 15% of the time if you are not currently producing any settlers in any of your cities. Therefore, just before you attack the village you should change production from settlers to something else. Then attack the village and hope you get a settler. Then switch the production in your cities back to settlers.

Now one thing I am not sure of is whether you just cannot be producing any settlers in your cities. What if you have a settler already built who has not yet formed a city. Will this also prevent you from having a chance to pop a settler?

I am always building settlers in the early game to expand my empire so I never seem to pop any settlers. However, this suggestion would be very easy to implement and would really help with expansion in the early game. Please let me know exactly what has to be done.

 

[Yzman]

If you have a settler already out then it will not give you a settler. Same as if you are producing one.

 

[DaveMcW]

Besides not having any settlers, you also need to have less cities than average. So it works best on higher difficulties or if you go for an early granary.

 

[Cartouche Bee]

Originally posted by DaveMcW
Besides not having any settlers, you also need to have less cities than average. So it works best on higher difficulties or if you go for an early granary.

Dave I think it's less than or equal to the average number of AI cities. So in theory you can get first get a settler in 3950BC. At Deity when the AI get two settlers to start you may get two fairly early settlers, never got two in one game that I remember, don't even get one all that often.

 

[Yndy]

I second the opinions above and can confirm that I got a settler before anyone built a second town. Chances are about 10% if you play expansionist (i tested this some time ago). If you don't have the expansionist trait the chances are somewhere between 6-8% but have not tested yet.

Edit: I quote chances for human. AI might have different chances with or without the expansionist trait.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Yndy- Also, doesn't difficulty level play a factor in what your odds are for getting a settler? I know the odds are better on the lower levels for getting techs, so I would think the same would apply for settlers.

And if you are playing PTW you can get cities from huts, and getting cities does not follow the same rules as getting a settler (you can get cities even with having/producing another settler and having more than the average # of cities).

 

[Darkness]

Originally posted by Yndy
I second the opinions above and can confirm that I got a settler before anyone built a second town. Chances are about 10% if you play expansionist (i tested this some time ago). If you don't have the expansionist trait the chances are somewhere between 6-8% but have not tested yet.

Edit: I quote chances for human. AI might have different chances with or without the expansionist trait.

This has happened to me a couple of times too. It's a great boost for your game if you get a settler from a hut in the first ten turns of the game!

 

[zagnut]

Thanks for the answers. I always find it amazing that there are so many things about this game that "everyone" seems to know but me.

 

[Catt]

Originally posted by zagnut
I usually play on Monarch and Emperor level. Recently I have come across several posts about increasing your chances of getting a settler when you attack a barb village.

I'm sure it's just the terminology that is throwing me . . . but, in the interests of clarity, I believe the only thing you will ever get from attacking a barbarian village -- i.e., a barb hut that is guarded by a barbarian -- is 25 gold. The "get a settler" chance only comes into play when you "pop" goodie huts -- i.e., little villages that look like four or five huts clumped together and that are not guarded by barbarians. Barbs may still emerge from a goodie hut (which is not necesaarily the "goodie" you're always looking for ), but I don't think anything "goodie" other than 25 gold will come from defeating a barb and moving onto its village.

 

[zagnut]

That's my understanding also. Thanks for clearing up my sloppy terminology.

 

[Yndy]

Yes difficulty influences the outcome of goody huts. It seems to affect the percentage of barbarian huts for non expansionist, and empty huts for expansionist. As these two diminish on lower levels all teh others increase. The % I gave was for deity so you should have a larger percentage for lower levels.

 

[GerrardCapashen]

Hmm, I usually play as expansionist civs, and I have never gotten more than 1 settler in a game even though I pop 20 huts per game on average. I play on regent.

 

[kring]

The goody hut probabilities are a lot more complicated (probably more than they need to be). They are not strictly random as there are a lot of factors involved. The initial probabilities are based on difficulty level and whether or not the civ has the Expansionist trait. After that, though, it becomes more difficult to determine. Each particular goody hut result has several rules for whether or not it can appear from each particular goody hut. If one of the conditions is not met, a new result is chosen. Because of this, the probabilities are not something I can easily relate...

Mike B Post about Goody Huts and Settlers

A few posts further down in the linked thread, Mike B also added this:

It's not really that it's difficult; it's just that it was implemented by an intern . Here are the conditions:

Gold:
*The tile must not have any type of resource or luxury on it.

Maps:
--always available

Nothing:
--always available

Settler:
*Player must not have a settler (active or in production) or any unit with the Settle AI strategy.
*Number of player's cities must be <= (TotalCities / NumActivePlayers).

Mercenaries (skilled warrior):
*There must be a unit available to the Barbarians as well as the player and that unit must be able to be built (or have been built) by some player in the game.

Tech:
*Player must still be in Ancient Times.

Barbarians:
*Player must not have Expansionist trait.
*There must not be a city within a 1-tile radius.
*The player must have at least 1 city.
*The player must have at least 1 military unit.
*The unit popping the hut must not have the "All Terrain As Roads" ability.


__________________
Mike Breitkreutz