Specialized Barbarian Units

[Thalassicus]

I've been using your mod since October and never encountered any problems, so I don't think it's a problem with the mod. I think it's a combination of things:

• I set "AffectsSavedGames" to 0 for a while as I was testing out some things with enabling/disabling mods
• Forgot to set it back to 1
• When beta testing the mods I work on, I drop everything I'm using into a zip.
• Others download the zip.
• Chaos!

Other than the obvious "must have mod active to load" thing that flag does, I think it might also store some types of data into savegames, and having it disabled was causing problems for a few people. I really enjoy your mod and encourage everyone to use it.

 

[Lord Shadow]

Oh, I see.

Well, anyway, thanks! That's some high-level endorsement, coming from you.

 

[Ahriman]

I had a thought about some of the later barbarian units. Beyond the very early game, barbarians are never going to take a city, even these improved ones.

So maybe every barbarian unit could get the special ability the Sipahi have, where they can pillage at no cost, and then get AI where they focusing on pillaging?

That would make them rather more of a threat - particularly the barbarians created by rebellsions from extreme negative unhappiness.

 

[Xink]

I am glad that Thal has posted what he did here as I only used this otherwise excellent mod through Thal's package.

I will now "give it a go" again

Thanks for your hard work and sharing it Lord Shadow

 

[Mentos]

A reason why Barbarians leave cities alone could be their BARBARIAN_CITY_ATTACK_MODIFIER of -25% found in GlobalDefines.xml.
I also guess that the Barbarian-AI usually doesn’t gather enough units, especially without the "Raging Barbarians" game option, to calculate favourable odds versus cities.

BarbarianBonus (75-0%)/AIBarbarianBonus (45-60%) of players/AI-players depending on difficulty grade and possibly additional Honor policy isn’t also very helpful to give the poor Barbarians any chance in the long run.

 

[Ahriman]

A reason why Barbarians leave cities alone could be their BARBARIAN_CITY_ATTACK_MODIFIER of -25% found in GlobalDefines.xml.
I also guess that the Barbarian-AI often doesn’t gather enough units without the "Raging Barbarians" game option to calculate favourable odds versus cities.

I think its *good* that barbarians rarely attack cities, because given city healing rates, they will almost never be successful in capturing them.
That's ok.
My point is; we should endeavor to make barbarians an annoying hazard that pillage all your stuff, rather than just wandering around in your territory until your cities shoot them to death.

 

[Mentos]

Pillaging is indeed a nuisance but rather only in the first eras. Without "Raging Barbarians", it seems Player and AI-Civs normally remove those barbs and their camps too quickly that they never stay as a long-term problem or even threat.
If the AI fails and keeps units wandering in city bombardment range then you have to counter that with unit-mass, like the Raging option.

I've removed all Barbarian penalties and the difficulty-bonus against them for my next game. If I understand the setting correctly, "Raging Barbarians" gives a 10% chance to spawn a unit on every turn. I haven’t played a game with that option yet but will do now.
I'm curious how many civilizations are going to fall to the hordes of raging savages.

I like to have such aggressive neutrals around all the time because they give always something to fight without any fear of diplomatic catastrophes. It costs much less to fight them than any civilization.

 

[Ahriman]

Pillaging is indeed a nuisance but rather only in the first eras.

But pillaging would be more of a nuisance if medieval-era barbarians or later barbarians caused by unhappiness rebellion actually actively tried to pillage, rather than just wandering around aimlessly until they die.

Raging barbs isn't a great solution, because it can mess up the AI player who doesn't deal with the barbs well, and can lead to the AI player expansion being restricted too much.

One possible solution would be making barb camps give a defensive bonus, like a fort, or even give it a mild bombardment attack like a city, if it lasts long enough. That would make it harder to take out camps, so they'd be more of a threat for longer, and you'd have to use more than just 2 units to deal with a camp easily.

 

[kyuri]

If it's possible to do, camps could give bonus like a ruins, not only gold, but it would be harder to conquer.

 

[Thalassicus]

I like to have such aggressive neutrals around all the time because they give always something to fight without any fear of diplomatic catastrophes. It costs much less to fight them than any civilization.

This is why I eventually removed the mods I had raising the XP cap against barbarians. While it was fun, it was basically free XP and only the human player could really take advantage of it fully.

One reason barb camps are so easy to take is their units alternate between fortification levels 1 and 2 each turn. I just wait for the lower bonus, attack, heal the next turn, attack... nothing we can do about this behavior of the AI.

They currently do try and pillage, but I always kill them before they can do so.

From a wishlist-perspective, perhaps one thing that would help out barbarians is if they ignored zone of control. It'd let them bypass defenders fortified on hilltops and zip straight to the sacking and burning. Also would make it much more difficult to slow them while our city pokes at them.

 

[Lord Shadow]

While I could entertain the idea of allowing my barbarian units to pillage freely, reinforcing barbarian camps and other deeper measures might be outside the scope of this mod. Not to mention I don't know the first thing about implementing them. If they can even be implemented, considering Civ5 seems disappointingly less moddable than Civ4.

I like the idea of unbinding barbarians from the ZoC concept, but I don't know if that's even possible.

 

[Ahriman]

Easy, just give them the skirmisher ability!
Oh, wait, that's Battle for Wesnoth. Dang.

Fair point about changing barbarian camps being beyond the scope, but some way to make pillaging happen more would be fantastic. The existing promotion that makes pillaging not take a movement point just seemed like the easiest way to potentially accomplish that.

 

[Mentos]

Uh, pillaging on the fly for all barbarian units? By all the love for barbarians, that’s truly too mean for my taste!
Consider that true barbarians also have to rape all village women during pillaging. That takes a while!

Anyway, I did some testing with my barbarian friends.
They actually attack cities but only in numbers of 3-4 units with most likely ranged units available to safely decimate the city's health. Such scenario is obviously hardly the case in a normal game session, especially without the raging game option, and only really possible if you actually refrain from attacking with your own cities!
The invading unit stole 200 gold and vanished afterwards.
Another sad discovery is that they don’t seem to gain experience/promotions. Those 2 ranged units which shot at my city for at least 30 turns didn’t receive any promotion.
They also seem to stupid to fortify until fully healed.

 

[Mazdek]

I liked the sound of this mod so I added it to a game where I was going to be Bismarck/Germany. I've captured a few Brutes from their camps, but when I researched Iron Working I was unable to upgrade them to Swordsmen alongside my Warriors, or the Barbarian equivalent. They sulked and now get left behind on raids or are given away as gifts. Would it be difficult to implement upgrades to captured ones?
Another civ has the same abililty for the ones in boats, I think its Askia/Songhai.

Edit: Turns out, the Brutes are upgradable to Pikemen/Landsknecht. Sweet, now I don't have to build any!

 

[Lord Shadow]

That's true. Brutes upgrade to Pikeman-class units, which for the barbarians is the Brigand. All barbarian units upgrade according to their own tree, to similar successors.

 

[Mazdek]

Its kinda weird that the Brutes (who look like Warriors) and the ones who look like Spearmen both upgrade to Pikemen, but whatever. Works out great for the Germans because of their specialized unit. Next question, what do the Bandits upgrade to? Apparently its not Crossbowmen.

 

[Lord Shadow]

They skip to Partisans, once they're available. And both Brutes and Ambushers upgrade to Brigands because that's the only melee foot unit the Barbarians get during the Middle Ages (though those are supported by mounted Raiders).

 

[Hulfgar]

why not upgrade the brute to a housecarl ?

This is exactly what Nordmen were for Europe from 789 to 1017 : barbarians with pagans gods pillaging the cities and churches!

 

[Mazdek]

I'm having alot of fun with this mod playing as the Germans with the Rampaging Barbarians option set. One thing I find myself reluctant to do is to upgrade them because then they are no longer Barbarians. Would it be possible to set it up so that they upgrade within their internal hierarchy as you gain the appropriate technologies? With the exception of the special unit the Landsknecht, 'cause they're way cooler than regular Pikemen. Though I guess if I want them to be able to become Landsknechts, there's probably no way to remember that they were first Barbarians and upgrade back into that tree. Darn.

 

[Lord Shadow]

Once nationality changes, I doubt it's possible to have the units stick to their old progression tree.