Wake me up when they fix the barbarians

[TheMeInTeam]

So long as you can get "scouted" before you can possibly produce units to intercept the scout, barbarians in the opening 20 turns are and will remain putrid design. That's not the kind of resource/expansion constraint variance on solely RNG a sensible designer puts in a strategy game.

After that, they're reasonable. You invest to stop them of don't and risk paying for it. In those opening turns, however, nope. If your opening build is slingers to intercept scouting it should at least be possible to do so.

 

[Rosty K]

So long as you can get "scouted" before you can possibly produce units to intercept the scout, barbarians in the opening 20 turns are and will remain putrid design. That's not the kind of resource/expansion constraint variance on solely RNG a sensible designer puts in a strategy game.

After that, they're reasonable. You invest to stop them of don't and risk paying for it. In those opening turns, however, nope. If your opening build is slingers to intercept scouting it should at least be possible to do so.

That's sort of what they designed for - to keep you at home until you can protect it.

You should remember, that during those opening turns they can't do any real harm except killing your first unit if it wanders into a wrong place. No improvements to pillage, no workers to capture, and they can't do anything to your capital. By the time you build your first worker to start improving tiles (that's when real harm becomes possible) you should be able to deal with barbarians (have enough units and that +5 strength card).

 

[chazzycat]

for what it's worth I only played 1 game since the patch, but I opened builder first and still had no probs keeping the barbs at bay...

 

[gimper42]

for what it's worth I only played 1 game since the patch, but I opened builder first and still had no probs keeping the barbs at bay...

That's not really helpful without more information. What type of map? Game speed? Mods in use? Difficulty level? Quick rundown of early game experience?

 

[chazzycat]

sure, my bad. It's on king level, standard size/speed, continents, no mods. I managed to block the scouts with my starting warrior just long enough that my slingers had popped by the time they showed up en masse. Every turn I had to carefully consider the movement options, terrain etc. but was able to prevent them from pillaging or killing anything. It's just about very careful unit management...knowing when they need to move and when they can take another hit and survive, taking advantage of promotion timing, etc. After upgrading to archers it was super easy. Also, I had a river around my cap which helped with defensive positioning, and the barbs didn't have horses.

 

[Inhalaattori]

It really has little to do with difficulty level. Its pure luck. I had game on prince where I was immediately surrounded by barbarians coming from 3 camps and I believe 2 of them were horse camps. There was nothing to do. All the hexes around the city were occupied by barbarians. I couldnt even get units out of city because of this. This was extreme case, but if you have several barbarian camps around you at the start of the game it can make it impossible to win at least on higher difficulty levels. The situation is usually clear pretty fast so in these kind of situations you just start a new game and pray for a better star.

 

[Tacgnol]

There really just needs to be something in the game to inform new players that if a scout sees your city and returns to a barb camp, it will spawn more units.

I had no clue that this was the case at first and got rekt by barbarians a few times until I read about it here on the forums, there really is nothing in the game that indicates this and it isn't an obvious or intuitive feature. It's cool, once you know that that's how it works it makes barbs pretty easy to manage because 2 slingers or 1 and a warrior is enough to kill the scout and cut off 4 horsemen and 2 horse archers from spawning but when you don't realize that's the case (or if you are unfortunate enough to have a scout see your city in the first 8 or so turns before you can do anything) it's just like, why are they spawning such an insane number of barbarians with no chance for me to do anything about it.

 

[Tacgnol]

So long as you can get "scouted" before you can possibly produce units to intercept the scout, barbarians in the opening 20 turns are and will remain putrid design. That's not the kind of resource/expansion constraint variance on solely RNG a sensible designer puts in a strategy game.

After that, they're reasonable. You invest to stop them of don't and risk paying for it. In those opening turns, however, nope. If your opening build is slingers to intercept scouting it should at least be possible to do so.

Turn 8 dude. That's long enough to get a slinger and move it out to fend off barbarians, if you see a scout notice your city and get away, get to spamming more units. 2 slingers + a warrior is enough to fend off a barb horse invasion. I've heard stories of it happening before that on the forums but never seen it, once I get a slinger up I can fend off barbs and 3 slingers and a warrior within my first 6 builds is usually how I start anyway.

 

[Pietato]

I had horsemen at my capital on TURN 3. As this was deity, it is game over. You will not recover from that.

 

[Agent327]

I'm 15 turns in, there are 8 barbarians on my screen at the same time, both my two units have been killed.

Time to rage quit.

What. The. Frak.

Barbs don't actually attack your cities though. And killing a unit with a Slinger gives the Archery Eureka.

 

[gettingfat]

The barbarians aren't broken in accordance to the game design. They want the barbarians to be a challenge to the early game and structure your opening build. No longer can we do builds like in civ 5, (early scout/monument/perhaps shrine). The best course of action is to utilize slingers and if you see a barbarian scout then you will want a few more.

You could turn them off but then of course you miss out on some eurakas.

Perhaps find a mod to adjust the spawn rate? In any case, they are not broken, they were designed to be a pain if ignored.

You exactly revealed the problem, i.e. it forces the players to start the game in similar manner, and if you don't want it you have to turn it off, so it''s all or nothing.

To sum up, there are a number of issues about the setting of barbs at the moment:

1. The camps spawn on turn1 and can get very close to the capitals. There is no way to produce enough units so early and not enough time to clear the fog enough to know where they are, so it's purely about luck.
2. If the camps spawn horsed barbs and your city is on flat landscape, good luck, they'll kill all your slingers within seconds. Once again, it's about luck.
   
3. The barb scouts get alarmed by merely seeing the border, not the city center. You may prepare well, but the scout may find your city 2 tiles from the border and then run away and your units have no way to catch it.
   
4. It pretty much makes the "scouts get double experience" card nearly useless.
5. As mentioned, you either change your way of playing primarily for handling the barbs or turn it off. There is no middle ground.
6. The AIs can't handle the barbs, still.

If I were the devs or I have the ability to mod, I will give a 10 turn grace period to start the game, and the barb scouts need to see the city center to get alarmed. They should beef up the scouts at least when facing the barbs so it becomes a legitimate option instead of just slinger, slinger, slinger and always choosing the +5 bonus vs barb card. They should also tone down the barb activities by one notch and then allow the players to choose barb level as: no barb, normal, high (=activity right now), raging. If you really enjoy barbs, then go for the higher level options. Also please give a bit more bonus to the AI military units vs the barbs.

 

[blasto]

I love how people just keep saying to just stop the scout. Its almost impossible unless you already have the scout surrounded. Yeah, lets chase that scout down with my warrior or slinger, like that's likely to work. Or if you happen to have a scout out already who can keep up with another scout you're not likely to kill it before it gets back.

In fact, unless you already had it surrounded, I find chasing that scout down right dumb... sending your precious opening game units off on some goose chase and more likely than not you get there late and have to go running back to escape the approaching horde. Usually by this point you'll have more barbs coming in from the other direction too and your units are way off in the wilderness so now you have no protection at all.

But, I like all the barb mechanics as is. I have more fun, luck letting that scout do his thing and bring me some fodder to kill in my opening city. Then mop up the camp once I have more units to do it safely. Just saying..

 

[rschissler]

I think the worst thing about the barbarian implementation, is that they have access to the latest units available. Why is that? Why should they be more advanced militarily than other AI civs? It makes no sense in the history of the world. I mean, they are supposed to be barbarians, not elite soldiers.

 

[MooFreaky]

• The camps spawn on turn1 and can get very close to the capitals. There is no way to produce enough units so early and not enough time to clear the fog enough to know where they are, so it's purely about luck.
• If the camps spawn horsed barbs and your city is on flat landscape, good luck, they'll kill all your slingers within seconds. Once again, it's about luck.
• As mentioned, you either change your way of playing primarily for handling the barbs or turn it off. There is no middle ground.

I disagree with these 3 points.

This doesn't sound like luck to me, it sounds more like you have picked a way you are going to play and when it doesn't work then it's the game's fault.
It's not luck because you KNOW that barbarians are probably going to be nearby, you KNOW that you are going to be dealing with them and you ac accordingly. If you choose to go monument opening then you are deliberately running the risk of getting attacked. You know the risk, you have acted accordingly and it didn't work out. That's not luck to me.

Same with flat terrain. Sure you might not get a perfect run, but that doesn't mean all is lost. Deal with it as best as possible, make choices based on that and go.

It's not a matter of changing your way, it is playing the way it is intended. It is different to older versions as you need units earlier. That's like saying you have to change the way you play because I don't want to build cities, I just want my capitol to do it alone. Why can't just use my capitol?? It's not fair!!!

Barbarians are supposed to be annoying. They are supposed to challenge you. It's a risk/reward decision of do I make more units or do I go for that building. Lots of people want to go for the building (it was the same issue that many people learning to play Deity in Civ5 had), whereas units early is very important.
It also makes sense to me as a representation/abstraction of history. I see the barbarians as representing the smaller neighbours Civilizations faced early on. For example they are the equivalent of the Etruscans, Iberians and early Gauls for Rome. While the other Civs are the big boys like Persia, Carthage and Egypt.
Also historically, military was vital for early civilizations and was around well before more cultural pursuits.

 

[Nigel_Tufnel2]

I can appreciate the idea of playing the game as the developer's designed - except that there have been so many problems throughout the history of the franchise. Civ V vanilla had almost no production. You just sat around waiting for things to build. The board is full of problems with 6. Sure, some is frustration that given playstyles are gimped, others are OP, etc. A lot of it is just poorly tested gameplay, or unforseen consequences of newly developed systems, IMO. I choose to assume the developers are a long way away from what they are hoping to achieve (better balance in a lot of areas). Thank goodness for mods and modders all these years!

 

[CaptainUnknown]

I think the worst thing about the barbarian implementation, is that they have access to the latest units available. Why is that? Why should they be more advanced militarily than other AI civs? It makes no sense in the history of the world. I mean, they are supposed to be barbarians, not elite soldiers.

Implementation in the game may be skewed, but "barbarian" tribes did have military might and in some cases technology. Nomadic tribes in the central Asian steppes had horse and bow (recurve) technology as an example. Barbarians in Civ games are more abstract and are just "uncivilized" tribes but uncivilized doesn't mean they are dumb. Another example is Germanic tribes (Visigoths) ended up sacking Rome. These tribes ended up gaining a lot of technology through their interactions with Rome. If you take that aspect and abstract it to the game then yes, barbarians can have similar military technology levels.

For Me, I see that abstraction of the barbarians in the game a number of ways. They can be people who fled from a civilization, or a new tribe that grew large enough to matter, and in modern times they are rebels or revolutionaries. I mean for I know they may be getting under the table funding from a AI to try and knock me out of the game.

 

[rschissler]

Implementation in the game may be skewed, but "barbarian" tribes did have military might and in some cases technology. Nomadic tribes in the central Asian steppes had horse and bow (recurve) technology as an example. Barbarians in Civ games are more abstract and are just "uncivilized" tribes but uncivilized doesn't mean they are dumb. Another example is Germanic tribes (Visigoths) ended up sacking Rome. These tribes ended up gaining a lot of technology through their interactions with Rome. If you take that aspect and abstract it to the game then yes, barbarians can have similar military technology levels.

For Me, I see that abstraction of the barbarians in the game a number of ways. They can be people who fled from a civilization, or a new tribe that grew large enough to matter, and in modern times they are rebels or revolutionaries. I mean for I know they may be getting under the table funding from a AI to try and knock me out of the game.

Yes, but barbarians, rebels and revolutionaries having the latest and greatest technology, on parallel with the rest of the world? No! Do the Syrian rebels have Tomahawk cruise missiles? No, but in Civ 6 they would.

 

[CaptainUnknown]

Yes, but barbarians, rebels and revolutionaries having the latest and greatest technology, on parallel with the rest of the world? No! Do the Syrian rebels have Tomahawk cruise missiles? No, but in Civ 6 they would.

For modern times you are correct, but in a more historical settings the rate of new military technologies were not that great nor as one off as a missile. You do realize that civilized nations traded with "barbarians" and that was also a source of their technology as well as the sacking of cities and plundering trade routes. Again, the implementation in the game may be skewed or flawed, but the abstraction of the barbarians can make some sense in the context of the game. It would be too messy to model barbarian technology accurately so you have to give them some arbitrary value and I'm fine with barbarians getting the tech level similar to the regional power. I do think that if an AI runaway from across the map has superior tech then it doesn't quite make as much sense though.

 

[PrairieDad]

Yes, but barbarians, rebels and revolutionaries having the latest and greatest technology, on parallel with the rest of the world? No! Do the Syrian rebels have Tomahawk cruise missiles? No, but in Civ 6 they would.

In fact, numerous guerilla movements all over the world _do_ often benefit from essentially equal technology to that of the US, Russia or whomever they are fighting. Not because they develop it themselves, but because if they are fighting the US, Russia is happy to supply them, and of course vice versa, too.
And remember, IEDs don't qualify as sophisticated, but they have, alas, defeated our 21st century armored vehicles time and time again, as thousands of dead and horribly maimed GIs can attest.

 

[rschissler]

In fact, numerous guerilla movements all over the world _do_ often benefit from essentially equal technology to that of the US, Russia or whomever they are fighting. Not because they develop it themselves, but because if they are fighting the US, Russia is happy to supply them, and of course vice versa, too.
And remember, IEDs don't qualify as sophisticated, but they have, alas, defeated our 21st century armored vehicles time and time again, as thousands of dead and horribly maimed GIs can attest.

Come on, that's a stretch. I'll go back to my "Do the Syrian rebels have Tomahawk cruise missiles" analogy for that. Also, when IED's were blowing up Humvees in significant numbers, they were hardly armored at all.

Sorry, but if I'm playing Civ 6 and I see a bunch of Mech Infantry barbarians, that doesn't seem balanced to me.