The way barbarians spawn in the latest versions is really frustrating and unfun

[osmuni]

I noticed that barbarians now spawn anywhere, except on land owned by a civ, and to be honest, this makes the game very frustrating and rage inducing. Instead of playing a Civ game, it seems I am playing barbarian whack a mole against the rng. Not fun at all. Compounded by the unit limits that penalize you for having too many units, you end up with 100% of your amy patrolling your borders and those thin slivers of hexes between cities, and even then its not enough. I even started ploping a unit in each hex a camp spawned, I end up with units everywhere, and even that is not enough. Forget defending yourself against a declaration of war, or think of even declaring war on someone else. A barb camp will spawn right in the middle of your four cities in that only hex that you dont own, of course in the middle of the road you have, and eat all your caravans in one turn before you can even react. Its like being in a constant civil war with rebels spawning everywhere there is a vacant hex.

Is there a way to revert to the old barbarian spawning system besides disabling barbarians?

 

[Boombar]

Dealing with barbs isn't hard. it is just so goddamn annoying I am considering going back to older version.
It would be nice to have more barbs related options in CommunityOptions.sql.

 

[Rekk]

- Encampments can now spawn on Snow tiles (apparently they couldn't?)
- Encampments can now spawn in visible tiles
- Encampments can now spawn on top of unowned roads and improvements, destroying them (except Embassies, due to diplomatic immunity)
- Encampments CANNOT spawn within 4 tiles of a major civ's capital
- Encampments CANNOT spawn within 4 tiles of another encampment
- Encampments CANNOT spawn within 2 tiles of a previous encampment that was cleared <15 turns ago
- Encampments CANNOT spawn on an owned or occupied tile
- Encampments CANNOT spawn adjacent to an enemy unit or city borders

 

[andersw]

I feel normal barbs are sort of similar to old raging barbs with the difference that they keep spawning.
Chill barbs are probably what you are looking for, the increased barb spawns are really good to hamper non authority AI and boost authority AI, evens out the field.

 

[Boombar]

- Encampments can now spawn in visible tiles
This is the biggest problem
We need an option to turn this off

 

[Recursive]

I'll add more options, including an option to revert the visible tiles change.

 

[azum4roll]

The visible tiles change is great.

Two things we can improve on:
1. Remove the additional barbarian spawn that accompanies a barb camp
2. Make camps unable to spawn within 2 tiles of city border/non-barb unit instead of 1.

 

[Stalker0]

2. Make camps unable to spawn within 2 tiles of city border/non-barb unit instead of 1.

Yeah this might be good, ensures that the barbs can't just leap into your city so darn quickly.

 

[Rekk]

1. Remove the additional barbarian spawn that accompanies a barb camp

When should the first additional barbarian spawn from each camp?

 

[dpshw]

for horsehockys and giggles i gave monti a try with raging barbs, managed to grab terracotta army for extra sparkles ... but the game was not fun at all still. normal barbs shouldn't spawn on visible tiles IMHO, it takes away strategic depth of positioning units on highground and replaces it with the chore of clearing units beaming down from orbit.

 

[glaivemaster]

I've been enjoying the new barbarian changes. I don't play with raging barbarians and never have, but I think the new change solves the problem that Raging Barbarians used to solve. Using both seems to be intentionally making life difficult and certainly shouldn't be the default.

Understanding how barbarians spawn is the most important thing here - once you know that they can't spawn next to any borders or any unit it becomes a case of placing a few units in the relevant gaps, which for me get filled fairly quickly anyway, except on weird islands. It's like fog-busting, but less about LoS and more about specific placement. A unit standing even in a 5-gap between borders prevents a lot of barb spawns - adjacent to any borders and the unit itself.

It's definitely annoying for barbarians to appear in LoS where you're not expecting them, and for units to have to be a bit more spaced out if you'd rather commit them to a war, but I've been finding it controllable once you get used to the change.

Just my experience

 

[cidk2000]

Barbarian changes are great much better and raging is nuts ! one minor niggle is that it slows the AI down a little

 

[Tekamthi]

i love the barbarian changes, personally; will be good to have advanced option for this

 

[AndreyK]

Barb change is great, that is also my thinking, and have no problem with raging barbarians.

 

[John.B.C]

I agree with the original post. Focus now is too much on barbarians. I pick the first tier authority now in each game since there is so much culture running around and since whatever policy tree you're about to pick you need to focus military early on (building many units to protect cities and traderoutes).

 

[Rosete]

I really like the new barbarians!

It makes the early game less boring because you always have to keep a look out. It keeps you honest, you can't skimp on military units else the barbarians will screw you over. It restricts and slows down AI so they can't expand as fast, allowing you to keep even with the AI in the early game. It reduces forward settling, because your army would be spread too thin to protect your cities. Overall I really like the change.

 

[Voremonger]

For the people who think that on the current version too many barbarian camps are being spawned: what map size are you using? Are you perhaps using maps with just 4 or 6 players? Since this was not mentioned in the patch notes it seems that the rate of barbarian camp spawns does currently not scale with map size. So on a tiny map with 4 players you would end up getting three times more camp spawns close to yourself than you would on a huge map with 12 players. When I initially played the current version on a huge map I felt like barbarian camps spawns were still too infrequent at standard speed though I was able to fix this by setting the game speed to epic (since barbarian camp spawn rate currently also does not depend on game speed).

 

[rkkn]

For the people who think that on the current version too many barbarian camps are being spawned: what map size are you using? Are you perhaps using maps with just 4 or 6 players? Since this was not mentioned in the patch notes it seems that the rate of barbarian camp spawns does currently not scale with map size. So on a tiny map with 4 players you would end up getting three times more camp spawns close to yourself than you would on a huge map with 12 players. When I initially played the current version on a huge map I felt like barbarian camps spawns were still too infrequent at standard speed though I could fix this by setting the game speed to epic (since barbarian camp spawn rate currently also does not depend on game speed).

Oh yeah I was thinking about that earlier. The barbarian spawning probably should scale either with the number of players or the map size.

and by "probably" I mean absolutely definitely

 

[CppMaster]

With mapsize.

 

[azum4roll]

With number of land plots.