Wake me up when they fix the barbarians
- Thread starter Sherlock
- Start date
No Tomahawks yet, but you might be surprised by the extensive list of sophisticated weapon systems used by the Syrian opposition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_equipment_used_by_Syrian_opposition_forces
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I completely agree that the barbarians are too strong too early.
Saying 'drop a level' is the worst that can be said. I understand the needs to compensate the lack of analytic skills by arrogance , yet It simply shuts down the whole point of the thread
(</rant off>)
Now, I 'm very much a fan of those strong barbarians that forces you to get military units early on. But a turn 12 dble horse , one warrior , on scout , two mounted bows is not that rare, you can't be fully ready for this most of the time and you just end up crawling in a fight that ressemble the first world war in terms of strategy.
Granted , if you keep replaying instead of ' playing the map' , you can always start with hilly surroundings where you outsmart the barbs. But in plain start at turn 12 you are just zzzzZZZZ with your slinger in capitol slowly , too slowly shooting the barbs down.
That's the very definition of a flaw in game design because it is random. Get a plain start with horses barb and you have to wait , get late. You have zero control nor strat.
And don't get me started if you rolled a civ like spain -who needs a religion if you want the full spanish experience- and you get a barbarian start. So restart ?
(btw I'm talking immortal games , can't say much about lower levels )
Morality : You can not play the map , you need to restart until you have a very good start.
Now to be positive , how to fix it :
Well just get barbs a bit tone down for the first 25 turns so you can choose between preparation or risking to be overrun (as it should be)
Oh and also redesign the religion race at higher level , it's related to the early barb issue somehow but should be developped in another thread.
Fun side:
Barbs early are not always annoying. At immortal , the AI starts with a settler. In one of my games it was totally boxed , Teddy , trajan , the chinese and japanese whose name escape me right now all had their captial in a 30 hex radius (some being at 12 - 15) and forward settled. Saladin declared war to me with his four warriors and two archers just as my first slinger was out. The barbs arrived from nowhere on the back of its troop and completely decimated its tentative invading party. Thanks guys ! , I just had to kill a few survivors , finish learning archery and his land was ripe for my counterattack.
Saying 'drop a level' is the worst that can be said. I understand the needs to compensate the lack of analytic skills by arrogance , yet It simply shuts down the whole point of the thread
(</rant off>)
Now, I 'm very much a fan of those strong barbarians that forces you to get military units early on. But a turn 12 dble horse , one warrior , on scout , two mounted bows is not that rare, you can't be fully ready for this most of the time and you just end up crawling in a fight that ressemble the first world war in terms of strategy.
Granted , if you keep replaying instead of ' playing the map' , you can always start with hilly surroundings where you outsmart the barbs. But in plain start at turn 12 you are just zzzzZZZZ with your slinger in capitol slowly , too slowly shooting the barbs down.
That's the very definition of a flaw in game design because it is random. Get a plain start with horses barb and you have to wait , get late. You have zero control nor strat.
And don't get me started if you rolled a civ like spain -who needs a religion if you want the full spanish experience- and you get a barbarian start. So restart ?
(btw I'm talking immortal games , can't say much about lower levels )
Morality : You can not play the map , you need to restart until you have a very good start.
Now to be positive , how to fix it :
Well just get barbs a bit tone down for the first 25 turns so you can choose between preparation or risking to be overrun (as it should be)
Oh and also redesign the religion race at higher level , it's related to the early barb issue somehow but should be developped in another thread.
Fun side:
Barbs early are not always annoying. At immortal , the AI starts with a settler. In one of my games it was totally boxed , Teddy , trajan , the chinese and japanese whose name escape me right now all had their captial in a 30 hex radius (some being at 12 - 15) and forward settled. Saladin declared war to me with his four warriors and two archers just as my first slinger was out. The barbs arrived from nowhere on the back of its troop and completely decimated its tentative invading party. Thanks guys ! , I just had to kill a few survivors , finish learning archery and his land was ripe for my counterattack.
SirWill90
Warlord
I like some of the results of having to fight barbs early on, as I like the barb scout recon/return concept. Barbs can get too crazy too early though and I think a balanced way to reduce the frequency of that would be for barb scouts to simply not be able to spawn for a certain number of turns at the start of the game, say ten turns on Epic for example.
gettingfat
Emperor
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- Nov 7, 2003
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- 1,417
3 horsed units attacking in the first 15 turns cannot be handled by ANY build order (I even got surrounded by 6 barb units once).. this is not about playing style, this is purely RNG. In fact, I never start a game with monument or builder, but I would love to see this as a legitimate option. Your "playing as intended" is just a pretty way to cover up the monotony of the early stage of the game now.
PrairieDad
Chieftain
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- Feb 25, 2017
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This was my point exactly. See, in particular, the section on their sources of armaments.
While many of the ideas in the thread have real merit, the notion that "barbarian" fighters should necessarily lag behind their "civilized" contemporaries is simply not supported by the historical record, nor should it be by Civ.
CaptainUnknown
Warlord
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- Sep 19, 2010
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- 263
Outside of Tomahawk missiles however history does back up the claim. You are making a black and white statement when it''s simply not the case. "Barbarians" do have mechanisms to get modern technology, just not every single tech. It's not black and white, so please stop saying that because they don't have Tomahawks in modern times so it's not possible for them to field a modern force now or equivalent force throughout history..... Because frankly, a lot of 1st world countries don't produce tomahawks (they buy them from us, or plainly don't have any) and yet they are still considered civilized nations. I don't have a problem with tuning barbarians as other posts have suggested, but comparing to history it does make sense. Additionally, Civ is not a history simulator so if the designers want them to have missiles then they are in their right to do that.
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PrairieDad
Chieftain
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Sorry, but that's exactly what I just said, twice. You and I are in complete agreement. Maybe you're replying to the guy I was replying to?
CaptainUnknown
Warlord
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MooFreaky
Meatbag Destroyer
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There are always going to be situations that mean the game is unwinnable on harder difficulties. That is unavoidable in 4X games.
Any spawn will have a RNG factor in it. That doesn't mean that it is broken, it is unavoidable. Every single Civ game has had that, and a couple dozen turns in you realise that the situation is unplayable. Sure it can be frustrating, but it has benefits too in that it stops every game from being identical. Sure your opening few turns might be the same (get a couple units and scout), but then once you are scouting you can readjust based on what is around, rather than blindly following an exact formula every turn.
I actually think Civ6 has considerably more variety than any other Civ games early on. I was playing the other opening stages of the previous games by exact steps. Look at spawn, unless something is particularly unusual follow these exact same steps. Same build order, buildings and units were always in the same order. Once you have scouted for a few turns, pick one of three paths to victory. That's not to say it was perfectly identical, nor that it was boring, but Civ6 has more to do early on because of the barbarians force you to change when you build units and buildings far more than previous titles did.
Unconquered Sun
Emperor
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Once the forums operated by "start a game - lose - post save ask for better strategy" and now it's "start - lose - cry". Personally, I've yet to see a game where barbarians inconvenience me, let alone make it unwinnable.
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Just playing a game where Monty DOW me just as I had my 5th slinger up, a few turns later my archers wasted him amd I proceeded to his cities where I found a steady stream of barb horseman from 2 camps coming in amd all the land looted. This was an inconvenience but also was fun and challenging,especially when Peter the DOW'd me from behind.
I have had games where barbs earlier in horseman number just wreck you which is fine on emporer ut deity not
I have had games where barbs earlier in horseman number just wreck you which is fine on emporer ut deity not
Stevanovic
Warlord
I'm new to this game although I am at 500 hours playing time now. I've just finished a game at king difficulty with barbarians turned off. Four times during the game barbarians spawned, but without encampments. Three times around AI cities so I presumed rebellions, but the last time there were two mechanised infantry units just outside one of my city borders. They were easily dealt with and they weren't rebels as I was playing a reasonably peaceful culture game.
Why am I seeing barbarians when I have them turned off?
Why am I seeing barbarians when I have them turned off?
Barbs off only turns off barb encampments and indirectly the chain of events that depend on that.
It does not turn off rebel spawning from unhappiness. Nor does it turn off rebels spawned as a result of a neighboring civs unhappiness crossing the border.
Stevanovic
Warlord
Thanks for the explanation. My cities were happy, they had plenty of amenities and no war weariness. I've no idea what conditions were like in the AI cities, but it's the logical source and the sudden appearance could easily be explained because they got there under the FoW.
Jonathan
Prince
Recently I started turning off barbarians, and so far I feel no urge to turn them back on. Just an annoying nuisance.
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