V1.21 barbarian uprising bug

[cracker]

I am posting this problem as an independent thread because the bug or problem just happened to me againd for the third time in V1.21.

The conditions are Monarch level in Timy or small maps with the civ start positions concentrated on one continent with two or three other similar but un-civ occupied nearby. Continents are random generated by the CIVIII map generator with a few added tiles to make sure all landmasses are galley accessible in standard mode.

In this latest example, I am testing fighter aircraft capabilities so ALL four civs have the advantage of building fighters early in the game. I can use these fighters to monitor barbarian villages even though I cannot usually reach the barbs to to jungle, hills, coast, and mountain terrain in between.

We are circa 500BC and just getting out of the ancient age.

I have one know barb village that appears in turn timing -6 and another village that appears in turn -5. The - 5 village appears in the turn right after destroying another nearby village with mounted warriors. There is also a third village up somewhere near another civ, but it keeps leaking out an occasional warrior or horseman in my direction. I am using a scout to help monitor each barb village and am moving in two mounted warriors to terminate each village but because of terrain it takes 4 to 5 turns to reach the targets.

In turn 0, all three villages (each one a different tribe) go critical and uprise 12 horsemen each and within three or four turns the entire frontier is destroyed.

In one case, the village that went critical was actually unoccupied in the previous turn because I had used three fighter aircraft to kill the warrior defender even though I could not reach it with ground troops due to terrain. Then Whammo 12 angry horsemen.

This is the third time I have had the simultaneous worlwide barbarian uprising problem, so I think it is more than just a random event. I think that the code is using a single uprising random number generator for all existing villages and it is overwhelming.

I can deal with one or two of these events at a time but 3 or 4 is out of scale with any ancient age event.

 

[DaSilva]

Maybe all the barbs are just coming out to see the ' big noisy bird in the sky'

 

[Northstar5757]

When you created the game what level did you set barbarians at?

 

[cracker]

The barbarian level is set to roaming in this set of scenarios.

I checked the relative Barbarian strength issues with the difficulty level settings and verified that the difficulty level impacts the human player's ATTACK strength versus the barbarians. So in defensive cases all things should be unchanged by the difficulty level.

If I have a Veteran Spearman on a mountain being attacked by conscript barbarian horsemen, that spearman should stand up to hits from at least 4 horseman.

At Monarch level the player strength is at 100% vs Barbarians. The Barbarians have no attack advantage (supposedly).

The problem to focus on here is the simultaneous uprisings. We should not get simultaneous uprisings in multiple barbarian villages of different tribes all in the same turn.

It is not that we have too many barbarians in general in these game scenarios, it is just that they go into meltdown all at the same time. I actually would like to have more barbarians and more barbarian villages because that would facilitate testing strategies.

As it is, I am totally dominating the world and flood conquering a new continent, but even with a defensive/office frontier ploice force, the multiple simultaneous barbarian uprisings are wiping we off the continent and totally eliminating my treasury. A one turn spawn of 36 or 48 horsemen who do not need to supported by a city network just over whelms the whole game scenario. These hordes are two to three times the size of the entire military force of any of the four civs on the planet.

 

[Sanaz]

please ignore this post (i couldn't delete it)

 

[Hurricane]

The simultaneous uprisings have been there from the start. All barb camps will always "go critical" the same turn. This was easy to confirm with the multi-cheat (which was disabled in v.1.21).

I don´t think its a bug.

 

[stachnie]

Originally posted by Hurricane
The simultaneous uprisings have been there from the start. All barb camps will always "go critical" the same turn.

You are right - I've seen it about 6-8 times, under various patch levels (1.16f, 1.17f and 1.21f). It is irritating especially if I am just about to destroy one of these encampments.I always play with 'Raging Hordes' and it means that there are 24 uprising barbarians in each camp...


Regards,

Slawomir Stachniewicz.

 

[Park Ranger]

Like so much else in Civ3, there seems to be a snowball effect. If one barb village is giving you touble then you will fall behind in cleaning up newer ones. Eventually, if the player doesn't regain control of the situation, WHAM - Rome is sacked!

If they had uprisings one at a time, they wouldn't cause much of a problem (at least for me...). Now when I hear reports of uprisings, I break a sweat if there's lots of unsettled land nearby. Saves me from having to exercise in RL!

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Park Ranger
Like so much else in Civ3, there seems to be a snowball effect. If one barb village is giving you touble then you will fall behind in cleaning up newer ones. Eventually, if the player doesn't regain control of the situation, WHAM - Rome is sacked!

That wouldn't be a bug, then. That's why it's called an uprising. They hear of some successful pillaging against the big, bad evil Roman Empire, so they want a piece too.

 

[Dralix]

Originally posted by Hurricane
The simultaneous uprisings have been there from the start. All barb camps will always "go critical" the same turn. This was easy to confirm with the multi-cheat (which was disabled in v.1.21).

I don´t think its a bug.

In that case, it was probably done that way so as not to disadvantage any one civ over another. If one has to deal with an uprising, then everyone does. Of course this would assume that the barb camps were placed such that each civ had equal access to them. Can anyone confirm/deny this? I suppose it's possible that it's only causing Cracker problems due to the nature of the test world.

 

[D. Boon's Ghost]

Originally posted by Dralix


In that case, it was probably done that way so as not to disadvantage any one civ over another. If one has to deal with an uprising, then everyone does. Of course this would assume that the barb camps were placed such that each civ had equal access to them. Can anyone confirm/deny this?...

Yes, Sir. In one of my previous games (I did not save it - wish I had, now) a barbarian uprising sprang up in a patch of no-man's land nestled between my and another civs territory. As the dead zone was rather small, I could see the barbarians pop out of the village. The horde, and I use the term loosely - it was a jaw dropping amount, literally split off into 2 packs. One of them went my way, the other his.
It was the only time this has happened.
Actually, it was the only time I allowed it to happen. The longer you leave those barbarian villages to themselves, the more likely it is that an uprising will rear its head. I try to wipe them out as soon as they spring up, if I can. 25 gold beats 25 1 hit point horsemen screaming down on you.

 

[Dralix]

Originally posted by D. Boon's Ghost
Actually, it was the only time I allowed it to happen. The longer you leave those barbarian villages to themselves, the more likely it is that an uprising will rear its head. I try to wipe them out as soon as they spring up, if I can. 25 gold beats 25 1 hit point horsemen screaming down on you.

That's why in the early game, before culture has dominated the globe, I talk to my military advisor often. He'll tell me where those barbs are

 

[cracker]

I have also confirm that the tribe names are only window dressing.

Since I have been gifted with this test scenario that seems to give me as many as five different barb villages to deal with at one time, even though we are only supposed to be "roaming", I have been able to observe how hordes of "Illinois" and hordes of "Saxons" and hordes of "Navahos" interact.

These tribes move in and out of each other's villages transparently. They also can all move into a single horde on a mountain top and then explode off the mountain as a mixed up jumble of barbarian bands that contain units from each tribe.

At first I though they would operate independently since they were just ignorant barbarians (but nooooooooooooooooo!!!).

One of the worst assumptions was that the last barbarian must stay anchored in his village. I had an Illinois conscript warrior and a Navaho conscript warrior chasing two of my scouts through the jungle. The only safe route of away from the warriors went past a Marcomani village with a horseman defending (because I had killed the defending warrior and then lost both my attackers against the horseman (don't ask about the probability of that occuring. When my scouts ran by the village, they then moved into the clear ground and I thought they would be home free because the pursuing warriors would only have one movement point to the scouts two movement points. The Illinois and Navaho warriors moved into the village at the beginning of the next turn and freed the Marcomani horseman to spew forth and terminate the scouts. Fairly sophisticated move for a bunch of disorganized barbarians. We can't even do that with our allies when we get sophisticated and advanced in government and technology.

With the new lethal bombardment of units, you can now kill off the barbs in their villages if you have enough cannons, artillery, or bombers (technically this would only occur in late game multi-continent scenarios. But watch out weedhopper, even barbarian villages with no people in them can spawn uprisings and hordes. Scouts cannot move into unpopulated Barbarian villages to pick up the left over gold, so you still have to send a true combat unit out to mop up the blood and guts before they reassemble temlseves into a new barbarian. it takes about 5 turns for brabarians to be reborn from the scattered DNA of their fallen comrades.