Raging Barbarians

[pxpdoo]

It would be kinda interesting though, if instead of preventing Barbarians from entering at all, it:
Stopped them for X+Turns, while they try and siege the wall. Allowing you to choose to go attack or not.

I suppose, as well, I don't really agree with the great walls defense 'expanding with your borders'. The experience aspect for GG could still count for combat w/i your borders.

[EDIT]
A wall that has been sieged/breached, only stops the barbs for 1 turn. A worker can go repair the breach.

excellent observation.

 

[Asjo]

On Prince diffculty and up the barbs PREFER to attack the human over an AI. I have witnessed many times barbs spawning 5 tiles from an AI city but the barbs will walk about 20 tiles to my territory to attack me because of the altered values on higher difficulties. (Another reason why I wouldn't say the GW is cheating.)

I highly doubt that the barbarians let up on the AI on prince difficulty, especially since noble, one level below, is supposed to be completely neutral for both parties in terms of advantages.

Things that the barbarians do prefer or workers and improvements to destroy, weakened units and badly defended cities.

I tried Raging Barbarians for the first time last week. I had the perfect starting location and was setting up a great civ on Prince. Then the next turn there were 8 warriors on the screen. Then about 4 more added each turn thereafter. I had to shut down production on my two cities and start researching Archery. It was fun battling them while trying to build settlers and keep my workers and improvements protected. In the end I held off the barbarians but the other civs had passed me by in techs and cities. My 5 cities to their 10. Are the AI's not affected by Raging Barbarians?

Yes, it does indeed. If you read my post a bit earlier in the thread, you would see that I point out how it greatly hinders the AI development until people have grown together enough to prevent most barbarians from entering the lands. Of course, I play extremely big maps (279 x 186 normally, three times the size of 'huge'), on noble difficulty, so there will be more barbarians and more isolated players. Generally, a few AIs who have been close togther or develop good military early have done quite well, while most only have a chance to catch up later.

I suppose, if you play on prince, the advantage that the AI gets will have a much greater effect with raging barbarians on as well. When I play on noble, I see raging barbarians as a little too much help for me since the AI players will be badly developed and I will do well, just getting a little more starting experience. After a few games, I understood the importance of getting a horse or copper resource early, and after that they haven't ever brought me to the brink of extinction. Regardless of how I fare, they are still great fun to fight and there are moments where they are quite scare and the great wall looks awfully good.

 

[King Flevance]

I highly doubt that the barbarians let up on the AI on prince difficulty, especially since noble, one level below, is supposed to be completely neutral for both parties in terms of advantages.

Barbarian preference on Noble is tileted towards the player just slightly. It is not the same value. On noble if you put a scout of yours next to an AI scout and a barb, the barb will always attack you. And on prince I have seen the barbs bypass AI territory to march to mine. And that AI did not have the GW. On Monarch I see it more often yes. But it does happen on prince.

[/QUOTE]Things that the barbarians do prefer or workers and improvements to destroy, weakened units and badly defended cities.[/QUOTE]
Not always. I also notice waves on this as well. The first 'wave' will attack anything that it gets near. But by the second wave they begin avoiding confrontation to pillage. Although you can still manipulate their behavior by not sending uber troops into the field but rookies instead. As the barbs will have something around a 20% chance of victory or more which is more than enough to tempt them into attacking. Barbs usually attack if they have ~10% chance of victory or more from what I noticed. So if you are sending out Geurilla III archers of course they will avoid your sentries. But if you just send out some regulars or maybe Geurilla I's they will still attack your guys.

This is probably the biggest hinderance on the AI is not knowing how to fight off the barbs properly. But turn on Agg AI and it willhelp them a little more. I wish I could find Blake's old improved AI that had the AI unit spamming alot. That AI was awesome.

 

[Asjo]

King Flevance, I think you can put the slightly random barbarian attack behaviour down to the barbarian leader having the value iAttackOddsChangeRand set to 16, while the greatest for any other leader is 8, which means at there is a big chance of added likeliness for the barbarians to attack. One round, they don't attack, the next round, the attack with exactly the same odds.

By the way, what I said about barbarians skipping AI land on prince seems to be my mind playing tricks on my. I was thinking that it wouldn't make sense that the AIs would have a harder time against barbarians om prince, but it's the other way around. I'm sure you are correct in your observations.

 

[Balderstrom]

Of course, I play extremely big maps (279 x 186 normally, three times the size of 'huge'), on noble difficulty, so there will be more barbarians and more isolated players.

I'm curious why you would want to play on a map of that size? It takes long enough to get anywhere on HUGE maps. A map 3 times the size of huge pretty much guarantees a significant number of civs will be isolated, whilst having free reign to just build and expand and not worry about neighbours at all.

 

[Asjo]

Balderstrom, I actually end up with 4-5 neighbours playing with 18 civilizations normally. For me, no game seems worth playing if I cannot make up a comprehensive lasting universe. I think that the bigger the map, the more possibility there is for exciting situations, long wars and room for all 18 nations to be established. It's nice to see some nations grow big and powerful and others do their best to overcome being overpowered. So, I don't think I could play the game with a much smaller map.

Only problem is that in my current hotseat savegame where most of the land has been occupied and all techs have been finished, the game crashes after two turns due to memory error. So, it's a long and tiresome wait, but I hope a new computer will fix some of that. Right now the computer is running out of psysical memory (I have 2GB RAM) faster than my graphics card is running out of memory (512MB). I fear that that the new computer will still have troubles hardling the graphical memory use thoght, as graphics normally only crash one turn later than memory and very few graphics cards offer 1GB memory.

 

[Surreptitous]

Lol as I was reading this I was thinking (how can I fend them off of me) and then pops 6 swordsmen...I don't even have copper yet the resources are just too far out there. Thankfully I had 3 horse archers n' a bowman with 2 city garisons...as well as 2 of them warriors stationed in the city. I ran my horses at the swordsmen before they attacked to weaken them and managed to kill one of them lost the other two...then my archer took everyone else out. "PHEW" now i have to recoup that was basically all my extra military

 

[Lord Civius]

Thanks for the info guys. I tried to build the GW before going for Archery but the AI beat me to it. I don't know about that "The AI will stop attacking for 10-15 turns". I can remember a turn or 2 without one showing up but it stayed pretty continuos. Warriors for a while , Archers for a few , Axes for a little while, then came the Swords. It was, i must admit, one of the funnest games I've ever played and the most frustrating at the same time.

 

[Asjo]

This is probably the biggest hinderance on the AI is not knowing how to fight off the barbs properly. But turn on Agg AI and it willhelp them a little more. I wish I could find Blake's old improved AI that had the AI unit spamming alot. That AI was awesome.

You can easily edit this yourself increasing the number for iBuildUnitProb in CIV4LeaderHeadInfos.

 

[King Flevance]

Thanks Asjo. I may have to look into that.

 

[Balderstrom]

You can easily edit this yourself increasing the number for iBuildUnitProb in CIV4LeaderHeadInfos.

If thats the case, it would likely make more sense to have it be python so it would only increase the chances when raging barb's are selected.

 

[Asjo]

Well, having AIs go Montezuma-style on you is nice regardless of the situation if you like conquest-style ...

For modding, of course, I can see the problem, but for personal use, you could just have two files and swop.

 

[King Flevance]

Actually, it worked rather well in the BetterAI mod I thought. Blake said he actually changed it because people were shouting the AI was too hard. That is impossible for me. I like an AI that is not a pushover. As Blake put it a good AI means the player is winning 1 out of X games. X being equal to the number of civs on the map. But people don't think their "good" unless they win 9/10 games. I actually had games where I was rushed by the AI with that version. Wish I could find it again if it still exists out there somewhere.

 

[Surreptitous]

Lol take a look at the game I'm in now...All of the warriors except the one to the far left are barbs. Note the turn number...

 

[Balderstrom]

I just noticed looking at the reference guide, and Game Speeds...
Even without the "Raging Barbarians" option checked,
EPIC: x1.5 Barbarians
Marathon: x4.0 Barbarians

Quite the difference right there.
Almost everything else in Marathon is a multiple of 3, aside from Anarchy/GoldenAge x2.0