Using culture to increase barbarian activity

[Grand Seeker]

Yes something like that, but I was maybe thinking of something more drastic in effect?

 

[PapaMonkey]

I forgot to add into that setup the 'No Razing' option, so it becomes:
- No Razing
- Raging Barbs
- No Settlers
- Barbarian World
And double the number of Civs

The setup generally works pretty well, but you are almost better off not taking too active a role in scouting as the barbs won't fill in if you can see the area. Once the barb activity really cranks up they build additional cities beyond the first few too. Resources can become more strategic this way as well as you can't just go build a city by the one you need. I've played only twice with these settings, but am starting another tonight

 

[Sarisin]

I forgot to add into that setup the 'No Razing' option, so it becomes:
- No Razing
- Raging Barbs
- No Settlers
- Barbarian World
And double the number of Civs

The setup generally works pretty well, but you are almost better off not taking too active a role in scouting as the barbs won't fill in if you can see the area. Once the barb activity really cranks up they build additional cities beyond the first few too. Resources can become more strategic this way as well as you can't just go build a city by the one you need. I've played only twice with these settings, but am starting another tonight

OK, then, you just gave me my settings for my next game. Love the ideas and the logic, so I'll give it a try.

I do play on a large land (Fantasy Realm) map, though, and I'm wondering if the barbs might get a little too much territory. They have a tendency when they get a lot of cities to 'squat.' They put a bunch of defenders in cities and the raging barb element of the game is lost. You just get a bunch of Bears wandering around and no barbs attacking as they are all on guard duty.

The other thing is that the barbs spawn cities on their own and, obviously, don't use Settlers and in the last few versions of FFH2 I've noticed they NEVER raze cities (if they have a pop. higher than 1) and, instead, capture them all. They have no maintenance costs or research % to be concerned with, so you can find 30-40 barb cities in the game.

So, maybe, just maybe, it might REALLY be too much of a good thing.

We'll see, and thanks much for your suggestion.

 

[wicshade]

Maybe the barbarians could be given a promotion that put the 'Warrens' (can't remeber name, it is the building that doubles the amount of units produced in the city.)

 

[Saien]

I forgot to add into that setup the 'No Razing' option, so it becomes:
- No Razing
- Raging Barbs
- No Settlers
- Barbarian World
And double the number of Civs

This with advanced start is pretty good. Note that the AI will mostly buy cities, so restrict the available points - and buy cities yourself so that you start with 3 or so.

Also you need to play pangaia or reset a fractal map until you have a single continent. Barbarian world places all the cities on a single continent.

 

[Mesix]

I like playing a variation of this with Wildlands instead of Barbarian World.

Standard sized map
12-15 civs
Emperor to Imprtal level

No Settlers
Wildlands
Blessings of Amathon
Raging Barbarians
Aggressive AI
No AI Build Requirements
Living World (optional if you like events)

The Wildlands tend to spawn animal barbarian units for the first 200 turns or so when orcs (etc.) start popping up. Barbarian citis start spawning about midway through the game.

Note on Blessings of Amathon: When playing no settlers, each player gets one city and expansion is only possible through conquest. Blessings of Amathon will produce more resources on the map to make up for a lack of expansion ability. Balanced Resources is necessary when generating a map using the Blessings of Amathon or else you are likely to get a map with no Reagents or Mithril resources.

 

[Ur_Vile_Wedge]

Generally, I like the ideas, but I find that upping the Barbs means that some idiot, (usually CoE with Rantine, or the Grigori with an early warrior hero or two) runs out and beats up the barbs, and expands faster than he would have had he been building settlers and there were no barbarians. In my last game, I had 9 cities before I decided to push against the other civs, and I grabbed 6 from the barbarians.


So maybe there could be a way of upping the barbarians power with some sort of raging barbs and Barbarian world, but make it so that you *have* to raze their cities once you take them, and then colonize over them yourself. (I'm kind of picturing barbarian cities as not being true cities that you can occupy, but rather just the ability of barbarians in general to expand and make troops and harass you.)

 

[Sarisin]

Generally, I like the ideas, but I find that upping the Barbs means that some idiot, (usually CoE with Rantine, or the Grigori with an early warrior hero or two) runs out and beats up the barbs, and expands faster than he would have had he been building settlers and there were no barbarians. In my last game, I had 9 cities before I decided to push against the other civs, and I grabbed 6 from the barbarians.


So maybe there could be a way of upping the barbarians power with some sort of raging barbs and Barbarian world, but make it so that you *have* to raze their cities once you take them, and then colonize over them yourself. (I'm kind of picturing barbarian cities as not being true cities that you can occupy, but rather just the ability of barbarians in general to expand and make troops and harass you.)

Some good points here...I am one of those who has discovered the power of Grigori Adventurers in the early game.

IMO the barbs have evolved a bit too much in FFH2. They seem more intent now on taking and holding cities, in addition to spawning cities and, if you choose the option, getting cities from the Barbarian World option. Add to this the ridiculous guard duty they pull on remaining goodie huts and Bear lairs, and you really don't have any raging barbarians on the map anymore.

Also, I still think the ai goes overboard with the barbs in treating them like another ai civ - building Great Wonders, having Golden Ages, and generating quite a few Great People.

I really think that, except for the early game, the raging barb option is pretty useless now.

And, getting back to the OP's point, a lot of it has to do with the way ai civs expand and push the barbs off the map. I dunno, maybe that is realistic as it goes, but I sure enjoy going out with an army, declaring war on ai civs and opening up some territory for the barbs to appear.

 

[Copper Golem]

Cadeveres's proposal was proposed (in a better form) quite a while back by Nikis-Knight (originally in a private team thread, but he later copied it in a public thread). This "Hinterland Mechanic" also involved adding several new types of terrain and features (trackless desert, deep jungle, etc), and making more existing features upgrade. For example, most of the forests in map generation would be replaced by new forests, which would upgrade to forests which would be impassible until a certain tech (except for elves) for most units. Some terrains would be not only impassible, but unownable (your cultural borders could not extend there, so you could not work those tiles) until a certain tech (with civ specific exceptions).

It has been implied that it will be implemented (one of the art guys said he was busy getting the new terrain/feature graphics ready), but I'm not sure when. (I'm hoping that both this and the Morale mechanic will make it into .31)

Right, there is no way to deal with AI settler-mania until city building limitation.
But maybe we should wait, when real Ice-Age would come, I mean everything would be frozen, and unfreezing from turn to turn. It would works.

Really raging barbs, barb world and wildlands doesn’t helps when you play monarch and harder, AI simply pushing barb to oblivion with ease.
Only super power barbs with strong def could help, such as Acheron and “cool lich”, also barb culture from Asheron works great. AI doesn’t building cities in Acherons culture zone.

 

[Grand Seeker]

Right, there is no way to deal with AI settler-mania until city building limitation.

With the current game, maybe... But I generally dissagre. There are multiple simple fixes. For example, is it hard to put a limitation that you can only place a city within your own cultural boarders? If not, that is a very simple fix and it would then take a much longer time before the world was filled with cities. This is maybe not the best solution, but maybe the simplest. This solution might maybe slow things down too much cuz you could not place the second city before a culture radius of 6 has been reached for your capitol. (atleast for none-overlaping placement of cities).

The other original suggestion was to fill the world with barbarian culture which you slowly have to transform into civilized terrotry by gaining your own culture before putting cities there. This has the advantage that you could have room for 2-3 cities before city placement limitations apply.

 

[Copper Golem]

With the current game, maybe... But I generally dissagre. There are multiple simple fixes. For example, is it hard to put a limitation that you can only place a city within your own cultural boarders? If not, that is a very simple fix and it would then take a much longer time before the world was filled with cities. This is maybe not the best solution, but maybe the simplest. This solution might maybe slow things down too much cuz you could not place the second city before a culture radius of 6 has been reached for your capitol. (atleast for none-overlaping placement of cities).

The other original suggestion was to fill the world with barbarian culture which you slowly have to transform into civilized terrotry by gaining your own culture before putting cities there. This has the advantage that you could have room for 2-3 cities before city placement limitations apply.

good idea, also It would made player to pay culture more respect.
Also, maybe I didn’t explained well, but powerful barb units works well enough.
Acheron and funny lich could make a strong barb enclave in the centre of civilized lands, terrorizing them greatly.
For example lich was keeping up to 2 barb cites from capturing, It was rather unpleasant enclave near my territory.

 

[Vittra]

Raging barbs are nuts on creation mapscript. Unlimited amounts of rangers and then beastmasters attacking you from every direction is annoying.

As far as culture, is there a way to break it up so that there's like 12/14 levels (instead of the 6 or 7 there are now) so thats its still just as hard to get cultural victories (I don't play anything other than conquest, so I don't have enough experience with it to know the exacts), but so that you can get those extra cultural rings fast at first so you can expand, but slowly (so AI doesn't ruin it's finances) then have to really work at it if you want legendary?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

You can set the cultural threshold for each level separately, and can make them different for different speeds too if you want to, in C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Mods\Fall from Heaven 2 030\Assets\XML\Gameinfo\CIV4CultureLevelInfo.xml. I see no need of more levels, just reduce the requirements for the low levels and raise them for the highest few.

(Note: I just realized that this file does not exist in the normal mod; I had it in my modmod because without including culture levels for my custom game speed to work. Otherwise it would make all cities go to legendary the turn after it is founded, even if it has 0 culture. The file can easily be copied from the vanilla folder, and then altered.)

I just noticed that you can go ahead and reduce of eliminate cultural defense here too. I think that in the next version of my modmod I'll increase the level requirements for the higher levels and significantly reduce the cultural defenses, in addition to adding my custom game speed (which is between quick and normal as far as building and training is concerned, but as slow as Epic for research and culture.)






I still think that you should be able to found cities in rival territory (which would be an act of war). Perhaps homeland should be changed so that it gives its bonus based on the percent of the tiles culture is yours. That would be a huge improvement imho, as it would allow you to better recapture your territory but would not let you expand rapidly or defend your conquests as easily. It is really more thematically appropriate, plus would not let you exploit building cities inside your enemies borders (since the culture there would be mostly theirs at first).

 

[BeefontheBone]

That last bit's a fantastic idea - if you could do it, something like a % bonus equal to 1/5 or 1/4 the percentage of the tile under your influence would probably work out about right - more of a boost in your homelands than you get currently but less in newly taken territory.

 

[Copper Golem]

Raging barbs are nuts on creation mapscript. Unlimited amounts of rangers and then beastmasters attacking you from every direction is annoying.

Really? My barbs never survive for so long, AI busts them all in no time.

 

[Nefelia]

You want to give them the defensive trait? That would give them the Homeland promotion and make them stronger in barbarian territory.

I think I put that among the promotions the barbs have but loose with Orthus's death

Why make the Barbarians lose their traits upon Orthus's death?

I'd like to see Babrbarians have the Creative and Defender trait throughout the game. The defensive bonuses and expanding cultural borders would make their cities a little harder to capture, and could stall the AI's expansion. This would likely make for fantastic gameplay if Barbarian World were also selected. By turn 50 (on normal speed), all Barbarian cities would be sporting a +40% defence bonus, and larger Barbarian borders would force you to deal with them before settling the area.

 

[Cadaveres]

Cadeveres's proposal was proposed (in a better form) quite a while back by Nikis-Knight (originally in a private team thread, but he later copied it in a public thread). This "Hinterland Mechanic" also involved adding several new types of terrain and features (trackless desert, deep jungle, etc), and making more existing features upgrade. For example, most of the forests in map generation would be replaced by new forests, which would upgrade to forests which would be impassible until a certain tech (except for elves) for most units. Some terrains would be not only impassible, but unownable (your cultural borders could not extend there, so you could not work those tiles) until a certain tech (with civ specific exceptions).

Wow, I really love all these. It really makes a lot of sense, and I feel that it is the best way to slow expansion and let the "uncivilized world" last very long.

 

[Sarisin]

Really? My barbs never survive for so long, AI busts them all in no time.

Yes, I agree.

I do see barb Rangers, Champions, and Assassins, but in the 15 or so Shadow games I have played, I have yet to see any Tier IV barbs appear.

Vittra, what speed do you play on?

I used Epic and by the time the barbs get the Tier III units listed above, I have an experienced army of Tier IV units to deal with them in addition to some powerful magic units.

As Copper Golem said, the ai expands them off the map and they have no room to spawn. Their few cities not taken will have a lot of defenders, so no barbs roaming the map.

I think someone said that the barb units get tougher only as the ai units get tougher. In my games, the ai hasn't been getting many Tier IV troops, so I think that might be why you don't see any barb Tier IV units.