One thing I discovered last night after updating with your latest mod version, is that early barbs now outgun my starting warriors. With rather large bonuses to their damage, like *double attack*, it's quite tough just to take on a single barb- but when you stumble up on two of them at once exploring through the fog of war, or a second one spawns right next to you while you're taking on another one... you gotta run like hell and escape to heal up, and hope you can catch them apart when you're healthy enough to come back. It takes way more time to deal with the varmints than it did before, a lot more time wasted running away and healing.
The first time i encountered this, was when i came up on a single barb warrior in a fortified camp, and as soon as i moved up next to him and the fog cleared, I saw another one right next to him and also in a tile right next to me, but across a river between us. It was the end of my turn and i had no chance to attack or back off, so I thought "ok, one of them is across the river, so with the penalty for attacking me across the river, i should survive both of them unloading on me once before i can either hit back or run away"... so first I got hit by the one in the fort, and he dinged me pretty good, and then the one across the river attacked, and I was down to about 1/3 life left, and I'm thinking now I'll get a chance to run away, at least, and heal up... when BAM! The first barb runs out and gets a *SECOND* attack on me, killing my one and only warrior right near the start of the game. I didn't realize you'd given them superpowers, so when he ran out and did that, I about crapped my pants!
So I got no defense, no exploration, and a new city with no worker yet, and I'm screwed.
I gotta say, i DO NOT like having barbs right off the bat that kill my warrior like he was a girl scout. It's hard (and tedious) enough taking on one barb with a noob warrior in civ5, and if you're playing without taking the Honor SP (which I usually don't unless I'm planning on launching right into Domination, which I usually am not), and especially if you're not lucky enough to get an advanced weapons upgrade right off, then your civ is more at risk of perishing to a couple of caveman barbs, than to any other civ. Some may like that excess challenge to their existence right off, but I can do without the extra headache.
This part of the mod changes is rather of an imbalance against starting civs, in my opinion. If you are starting out as a non-aggressive civ, you can't get by without being forced to buy or build extra warriors for protection against these super-barbs, where you didn't have to before.... stalling your progress quite a bit early on, when it is most critical. Please remove the double-attack feature from them at least, thanks. Or let ME have it as a 1st round upgrade, too!
Too imbalanced to let players have as an upgrade? Yeah, I agree... and way too imbalanced for barbs ever to have, either!
(and i'm on normal barbarians setting, not crazy-spawning barbs)
) and the spec force to do the spying and the dirty job.
