Wake me up when they fix the barbarians

[cll3]

LOL WTH is there some kind of stealth update or something since last week?

So I take Delhi early (around turn 50) and Barbs immediately swarm from all directions, ignoring cities and units of other civs, straight at me, as if they're allied with India.

I've included a screenshot of turn 52, and the save file of turn 50. You can see the barbarians' previous location around Madurai (with siege icon on Madurai since it was surrounded by barbarians), and in screenshot on turn 52 they're all over Delhi. I guess you could load turn 50 and see what the Barbs do in the next couple turns.

They literally went through Madurai to get to me, not to mention it has an archer on turn 50 in marathon? I've played a lot of times, and this is the first time I've seen this happen. It's like barbs were changed to ally with enemy civs or something. While I was sieging Delhi there was also a random barbarian warrior that attacked my warrior and ignored an exposed Indian slinger right next to it...

 

[Forster]

You sure they are not rebels?

 

[MrRadar]

Also, I've seen that barbarians spawn even in tiles you are actually seeing.
Such tiles should be excluded, so that barbarians can only spawn in unseen tiles. (so that you can fogbust to prevent them to appear. Fine and realistic.).

These must have been the cases when a barb camp is triggered after the return of the scout and you see it spawn units around the camp, which is intended, or rebels spawning due to amenities problems. I've seen no other barb spawning in visible tiles.

LOL WTH is there some kind of stealth update or something since last week?

So I take Delhi early (around turn 50) and Barbs immediately swarm from all directions, ignoring cities and units of other civs, straight at me, as if they're allied with India.

I've included a screenshot of turn 52, and the save file of turn 50. You can see the barbarians' previous location around Madurai (with siege icon on Madurai since it was surrounded by barbarians), and in screenshot on turn 52 they're all over Delhi. I guess you could load turn 50 and see what the Barbs do in the next couple turns.

They literally went through Madurai to get to me, not to mention it has an archer on turn 50 in marathon? I've played a lot of times, and this is the first time I've seen this happen. It's like barbs were changed to ally with enemy civs or something. While I was sieging Delhi there was also a random barbarian warrior that attacked my warrior and ignored an exposed Indian slinger right next to it...

This is a fascinating screenie! By the way, I almost wish barb camps near particular nation could also spawn that nation's UUs. Imagine dealing with a swarm of barb Varus, when you only have archers. Oh, the trample!

Anyway, after the Aussie Summer patch I noticed, that AIs have their minds set on taking capitals. In my first post-Aussie patch game on Immortal, Trajan caught me a bit off-guard with a surprise war. He sent a decent force which bypassed a walled frontier city and went for my heartland. While main forces were engaged around my second largest city, he also sent two horses to my unwalled capital and took it melee only in two turns. It was a bit of a wow moment for me. In further games I've seen plenty of similar behaviour - AIs going for each other's capitals no matter what. In my last game AI Kongo sent a force of mech infantries and whatnot, including sailing them across a large bay, only to bypass a large chunk of AI America's territory and take Washington in their very heartland.

It just might be that barbs - another AI, only without a leader, are also "primed" to go for original capitals first. In one of my recent games I've seen barbs from a triggered camp wreck havoc around AI Paris, keeping it down to zero walls and health for dozens of turns. So, coming back to your screenshot and game, what might be happening here is, the barb camp to the north is triggered and spawns a wave of barbs every few turns, and with their mind set for the nearest original capital, they're coming right onto Delhi. You are its keeper for now, so the burden to defend falls onto your shoulders. I've been into a few three-way fights me-AI-barbs, and I did not notice, that barbs would target the player in particular. In fact, in one of the games camp spawned barbs saved my skin from an early AI rush .

 

[cll3]

It just might be that barbs - another AI, only without a leader, are also "primed" to go for original capitals first

Hmm that does make a lot of sense. At first I thought it might be a knee-jerk reaction to settler stealing (ai always has 3 settlers to start and 1 leaves base around turn 10 so I pretty much always steal it). But it would make sense to code them to go after capitals, which was also consistent with the random warriors that showed up outside of rome after the majority beelined for delhi.

I played another game today, as America, where I took scythian non-capital first; the barbarians started rampaging and didn't beeline to me, but they didn't go for pokrovka either though... I killed the barb camp after issyk and then I took pokrovka with no problems. Idunno it could be a coincidence still, having only 1 additional sample/observation and all hehe.

 

[GIO888]

I use that buff that reduces Barbs by 30%.

Still gotta look out for them, but no ridiculous spawning.