The .34 Barbarian Hordes

[cabbagemeister]

Kael stated in a recent post (can't find it now) that the Barb AI has been changed so that all the barbs in the world try to swarm a single AI, until that AI is dead, and then they move on to the next one. I'm wondering what people think of this change?

In my experience, the AI cannot handle this change in Barb behavior. I've played 4 .34 games (on large Eberus maps, standard number of civs, standard barb levels), and in each one I've seen at least 2 and usually 3 or 4 AIs bite the dust very early. I wasn't sure it was the fault of the barbs until the most recent game, where 2 AIs died around turn 100, and then it became abundantly obvious that I was next on the list. Suddenly I went from fighting one barb every 3 turns or so to seeing four attacks per turn, all streaming in from one direction. I fought them off--barely--but my growth was severely hampered.

For me, the problem is not so much that there's a lot of barbs; it's the suddenness and unpredictability of the change from low-level barb attacks to massive unrelenting assaults. It's impossible to prepare for an assault which may or may not ever come, at any time, triggered only by the death of another civ. And then there's the fact that my lategames have been a little boring lately because so few AIs survive the waves of barbs.

My opinion is that this "one target at a time" code needs to be a little better thought out. Maybe it's fine for Orthus (though we have heard stories of him crossing a continent and ignoring 3 civs to reach his "target"), but I'm not convinced it's the best option for the main barb AI. What do other people think?

 

[Rod]

I had no idea about this new kind of Barbarian AI.

However on paper I just love it.

Certainly it needs more playtesting before I can give a valid statement.

I played one game and indeed AI Civs are biting the dust in regular intervalls. I was not aware that this was because of the AI code change. But the effect is nice. Less crowded maps....

I will certainly only be able to give a valid statement when I was on the hitlist early on.

In order to address your issue. Maybe a statement would help,like : "A massive Barbarians Uprising is gathering at your borders. Prepare for war !" that triggers in the moment when you enter the hitlist. As the Barbarians need some time to reach you it would give the required time to prepare the defenses...

 

[Kael]

The barb AI has always picked a target (more or less, we are talking vast oversimplifications of thousands of lines of code). Thats a vanilla civ4 thing.

The change I made in 0.34 was to change the aggressiveness of how the barbs pursue any attacks (if they are ganging up on one member or handling just an individual unit). Before the barbs just milled around in the woods for a while before working up the courage. In essence civ4 was trying to protect the newly formed empires by having the barbs wait until they had a chance to develop some defenses before attacking. FfH is no longer that nice.

Note that I dont like responding to to issues by handicapping the Ai. I want the ai to be as effective as possible. If the barb player kills every player in the game because it uses its units exactly as it should then that is awesome from an AI standpoint. We may need to look at lowering the amount of barb spawns or giving the AI players a bonus vs barbs, or another way to deal wioth evening things out. But I dislike programming non-optimal behavior as a solution.

 

[das]

I am not noticing much of a difference just yet, but I have always played with Raging Barbarians and Barbarian World, with all that implies, and I suppose I haven't played .34 enough to say if the barbarians are much more lethal now. I do ofcourse have to fight off barbarian hordes in just about every game, but I think that's a good thing.

 

[BillSeurer]

I think the way the barbs work now is great.

 

[Zobo]

I do find it odd that barbarians work together between "tribes".

The close barbarians should form stacks and beeline to the player near them, but the co-operation of barbarians 50 tiles from one another does not sound logical to me.

 

[Aroldo]

Kind of what Zobo says. I don´t like the barb AI concentrating on one target, but perhaps most others think it´s fine, or it´d be too complicated to fix.

 

[Ankhman]

I believe the concentration onto one target is much like what would be done if any of the early barbarous groups from our own history wanted to attack. I personally like the challenge and always play with 'raging barbarians' turned on and at times wished there were more attacks (that's probably when the barbarians are attacking another civilization)

 

[cabbagemeister]

Hmmm. I guess for me, fighting barbs in the early game is fun, but fighting / trading with / making friends with / backstabbing / getting DOWed out of nowhere by lots of other civs later in the game is MORE fun. I'm fine with smarter barbs attacking me, but I dislike AI civs dying because of it and depriving me of friends and foes later on.

Obviously I do have the option of making the map more crowded, both to decrease barb spawns and to increase the number of AI civs that survive into the midgame. And I do think I'll do that from now on. I'm just wondering if an average of 6 out of 9 civs surviving long enough to make contact with each other is "working as intended". If so, that's fine and I guess I'll just adjust my game settings to account for it.

 

[hbar]

I believe the concentration onto one target is much like what would be done if any of the early barbarous groups from our own history wanted to attack. I personally like the challenge and always play with 'raging barbarians' turned on and at times wished there were more attacks (that's probably when the barbarians are attacking another civilization)

That's true to a point, but the implementation in CIV is like if the Germanic Hordes and the American Mohicans teamed up to dogpile China. I think it would make more sense if it were at least separated by continent.

 

[xilr]

I dunno, I think barbs are now overpowered (gah, did I just use that word?)... I was happy when they blitzed cities and ignored improvements because its just such a pain to go back and rebuild all the time (and its not practical to have one unit per improvement)...

In their current state they are too "smart". They like to attack when they have odds in their favor and move around when they dont. They of course pillage, often... Since none of us have ever met a barbarian in real life, I suppose we all could have different mental images of how a barbarian would behave. I guess how I see a barbarian I would see a complete lack of brains and over the top aggression. I would see them as seeking only to eat and to kill.

A Barbarian in my mind (in terms of the game) would:
---------------------------------------------------
First, scan the tiles within his movement range.
If any living unit not allied with the barbarian is present in his movement range, pick one randomly and attack.
If no living unit not allied with the barbarian is present, then scan for farms within movement range.
If there is a farm within movement range, move to that square.
If there is no farm within movement range, pick a random direction and move to that square.
If standing on a farm, pillage.
Repeat sequence.
--------------------------------------------

Would it be limiting the AI? Yeah, but it seems more in line with what a barbarian would do. Right now the barbarians are a tad over the top. Maybe have "Genius Barbarians" as an option for gameplay but they are a bit silly in their present state.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

I really like barbarians acting smart instead of doing suicidal attacks.

however, I think the "pick one civ to throw stuff at until it dies" behaviour should be changed so they are more inclined to attack nearby enemies instead than travelling far and wide to stack up against a victim. which doesn't really make sense imho

 

[Sarisin]

I wrote several posts on this topic in the Armageddon Oddities thread.

I don't have a problem with the way the barbs target a civ/city and cross a huge map ignoring other easy pickins' on the way to their target. That makes sense.

However, what I am seeing in .34 is a difference from prior versions in that the AI barbs seem reluctant to break off their attack on their target and choose a new target at some point. For example, in my last raging barb game (played as Illians), I had over 250 turns of barbs attacking me.

I was able to defend my three cities and I had a ton of werewolf units and other units all with 100 XP.

However, while I am being pounded all this time by barbs, the remaining 4 civs were all expanding like crazy with virtually no barb threat to them.

I think this is definitely a balance issue.

Let the barbs target a civ/city until it is wiped out OR it defends a defined number of turns. Then, stop having the barbs cross the map to keep targeting the same civ. Let them move on to a new one.

Again, I always play raging barb games and didn't see this in .33. The barbs would attack and back off after awhile and go after someone else. Not so in .34.

In both of my last two games I have found it very difficult to get beyond 3 cities with the constant barb pounding.

My last game was finally a Conquest Victory, though, because I was able to free up a small army (mostly werewolves) to go out and wipe out the other expanded civs who mostly had only one or two weak defenders in their cities.

So, you can adjust your game to fit this, but IMO there is still a problem with the AI barb targeting a civ and not turning to new targets after awhile.

 

[Gigaz]

I liked the dumb barb AI much more
I used to play FFH on immortal or deity because the AI was too weak on emperor. Now the barbs kill 25-50% of the AIs (when I survive long enough to watch this) and many other AIs have never more then one or two cities. The survivors become ridiculously strong.
I'm saying that the barbs are too strong when they kill the AIs. When I set 18 AIs at start then I want to play with 18 AIs and not with 12.

 

[Imuratep]

I think it is better now. The early game used to be so boring without intelligent barbarians. Come on, if your cities wouldn't get unhappy by this, you could have neglected city defense till turn 80-100, because barbarians weren't interested in actually doing something. Now the game does not begin with turn 100, but with turn 20. The only reason to build units in early game were to conquer, to defend against the Doviello (the only ones attacking till turn 100) or to protect your settlers against animals.

 

[FireBlaze]

I guess this could be considered an incentive to actually have some defence. No more leaving cities with no defenders for 30 turns for me
Oh well, I haven't tested it yet, so Ill retain judgment untill I do.

 

[Xuenay]

I think I have asked this before, but I've forgotten what the response was - why can't the "gang up on one player" behavior be disabled? It seems considerably unfun - either you're the target of all the huge barbarian hordes and have to watch them just ignoring your foes, or alternatively you can rest safe from the barbarians and know that whoever they are attacking right now, it isn't you. It'd be much more fun if everybody had to fear the barbarians equally.

 

[Imuratep]

I think I have asked this before, but I've forgotten what the response was - why can't the "gang up on one player" behavior be disabled? It seems considerably unfun - either you're the target of all the huge barbarian hordes and have to watch them just ignoring your foes, or alternatively you can rest safe from the barbarians and know that whoever they are attacking right now, it isn't you. It'd be much more fun if everybody had to fear the barbarians equally.

That's right. Create more barbarians in general, but distribute them about equally among all players, because we yesterday had a game with three players and by turn 50 one of us got attacked by 20 soldiers while the others didn't get attacked at all, in fact had to search some barbarians to get some XP. If everyone has been attacked by about as many barbarians by the same time I'd be fine. But of course I have no idea if this is scriptable.

 

[loffenx]

Hmmm. I guess for me, fighting barbs in the early game is fun, but fighting / trading with / making friends with / backstabbing / getting DOWed out of nowhere by lots of other civs later in the game is MORE fun. I'm fine with smarter barbs attacking me, but I dislike AI civs dying because of it and depriving me of friends and foes later on.

Agreed. Give the barbs all the buffs you want, but help the poor AI:s! Give the barbs a larger propensity to attack the player, or something. I've abandonded many games since 0.34 simply because the number of intimidating opponents got too small to make it interesting.

 

[cabbagemeister]

I'm currently playing a game in which I put 12 opponents onto a large Erebus map (3 more than the default), and it's working great. It's turn 180 and only 1 civ has been killed by barbs, and everyone's expansion has been sufficient that I don't think the barbs have enough spawn area to be a threat anymore. So, this is a workaround to keep AIs from being killed by barbs.