DESIGN: More Barbarians

[Ekmek]

I saw in the altered files that CTP2 can now go up to 33 players. I'm wondering if anyone looking at the code saw a way to make morethan one player a barbarian.

My concern here is that different regions could have different barbarians to fight, like africa full of impis, Japan with Ronin. ANd possibly later day barbarians by allowing for guerrillas.

I dont think CTP2 currently allows for this even if you set more than one player to "wasteland"

[Pedrunn]

I realyy dont think this is needed. But since we are talkingt about barbarians we could give them some sea units too (pirates). I think the fact that they dont have sea units is a bug.

[MrBaggins]

I don't see why it shouldn't be something we can eventually include... insofaras the barbarians should be just another very specific personality of the AI, and we should be able to assign specific personalities to the AI actors at the creation of a game.

It is... however, way down on a list of things that I think we should consider.

[hexagonian]

You can currently program civs with the barbarian strategy settings - you merely have to give a civ the barbarian personality, and you can also mod their city names in the appropriate file.

Generally, Barbarians are programmed to be very low tech, so they end up being easy pickings.

I would rather have competent AI civs rather than additional weak barbarian ones.

And there are already ways to spawn additional barbarian units to appear in the game.

[Ekmek]

thats all good new to me

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Peter Triggs
I saw in the altered files that CTP2 can now go up to 33 players. I'm wondering if anyone looking at the code saw a way to make morethan one player a barbarian.

To be precise the game has now colors for 33 players but it just allows to start a game with 32 players, but you can't like in the game out of the box reload save games with so many players.

-Martin

[drulius]

Would it be easy to localize the barbarians so that each civ had its own corresponding "maurading hordes" that would spawn in wilderness near their cities? To the game it's always the same Barbarians; but to the players, it's impi to the Zulus, ronin to the Japanese, goths to the Punks. There would be two ways to approach it. If you are Zulu you always see every barbarian as impi. Or, if a Barbarian spawns as an impi, everyone sees it as impi.

On a side topic, I've often thought of the possibility of an "anti-civ" civ game where the player wins by, preventing the flowering of civilisation, playing to the Barbarian goal: generally slowing down progress all over the world, sabotaging research and developement projects, inciting revolt, taking over cities in revolt, pirating trade. But this kind of thing would only be fun if the AI personalities were VERY good at accomplishing the regular civ goals, and right now a "mod" that played this way would be like kicking them with their pants down. However, I hope that through the work of this source project, it will be theoretically possible to design a mod that plays this way and that the AI personalties will be up to the challenge (which means they would be extremely hard to compete with playing regular civ goals head to head)

[Maquiladora]

I have to say i hate Barbs, they annoy me and i havent played with them for a few months at least.

Maybe if units attacking cities didnt reduce pop points i wouldnt hate them so much.

[Tamerlin]

Rather than more traditional "Civ" Barbarians, I would prefer new civilizations appearing in empty spots of the map from time to time.

[RolandtheMad]

How about just making it so barbs can keep up with the times? Maybe turning into gurillas and insurgents later on. The only time barbs are even a minor theat is right when you start the game. After I get my hoplite/archer garrison their warriors aren't even a concern anymore.

It would be cool if they would start showing up with mounted archer barbarians and pikemen barbarians. Later on they could 'keep up with the times' like I said and produce infantryman barbarians or whatever.

Sea units would also be real nice like someone suggested.

[Maquiladora]

It would be cool if they would start showing up with mounted archer barbarians and pikemen barbarians. Later on they could 'keep up with the times' like I said and produce infantryman barbarians or whatever.

In SAP mod i think they do, i once had around 45 cities and Barbarian Artilley kept appearing from little pockets of fog of war throughout my empire, which was annoying.

There should be different sprites for barbs too, like the Horse Rider from the Magnificent Samurai scenario, its been used in a few mods, and it looks kinda evil anyway and theres some other quality sprites that should be used.

I also think Pirates would be funny.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by RolandtheMad
How about just making it so barbs can keep up with the times? Maybe turning into gurillas and insurgents later on. The only time barbs are even a minor theat is right when you start the game. After I get my hoplite/archer garrison their warriors aren't even a concern anymore.

It would be cool if they would start showing up with mounted archer barbarians and pikemen barbarians. Later on they could 'keep up with the times' like I said and produce infantryman barbarians or whatever.

As Maquiladora already noted they do show up with modern techs, the only problem I see is that the tech level of Barbarians if a city revolts and becomes Barbarian, then this city is technological downgraded a little bit unlogigical if it was before a modern city. So the Barbarians should rather have the avarage tech level of all civs or something leike this.

Originally posted by RolandtheMad
Sea units would also be real nice like someone suggested.

Yes indeed pirates need to be added.

Another thing I want to note is that if there is a slave uprising then I think the first unit in the unit db is used insread a mix of modern units.

-Martin

[Maquiladora]

the only problem I see is that the tech level of Barbarians if a city revolts and becomes Barbarian, then this city is technological downgraded a little bit unlogigical if it was before a modern city.

If they become so unhappy they stop producing anything and maybe if it gets too low, a garrisoned unit dies inside, and when theyre all dead in the city it turns into a new civ?

Basically im saying Modern cities shouldnt revolt to barbarians AT ALL, but if they do get so unhappy they form new civs ONLY, just like the Modern World.

[Peter Triggs]

Someone suggested in the Civ4 forum, that when a city gets really unhappy, it's people should start to emigrate to the nearest foreign civ. What do you guys think of this? I rather like the idea of having to keep my people happy or they leave.

[Maquiladora]

I imagine myself slaving a civ next door taking citizens as slaves, then their cities get uphappy and decide to emigrate to me aswell

[Peter Triggs]

Good point. I guess we'd have to decrease the unhappiness penalty for slave raids.

[Maquiladora]

Well it could have some other factors, like they only emigrate to civs that are in a different/peaceful government with the current civ's regime theyre leaving.

[Peter Triggs]

It stiil seems like an exploit: to counter it we could have it so that they only emigrate from cities that are not 'watchful'. Slave raids would then cause short term unhappiness but only the big political and economic factors would cause emigration.

[SMIFFGIG]

I would be happy with the following:

-Barbarian camps like in Civ3 (now this was a really nice idea)

-Barbarian leaders like in Civ2 (they where fun)

-Barbarian huge hordes (option of course) like in civ2 where they would appear in non city radius squares

-Large barbarian landing parties from the OCEAN (something the AI seems to currently be able to use)

-Barbarian specific units like previously mentioned would be superb

-Later in game the barbarians upgrade of course and later become terrorists and behave slightly different to barbarians (possibly doing more covert rather than overt operations like destroying city improvements and other spy like ablities)




There are some great features in Civ3 that would make CtP2 a much better game, but i believe there is just as much from Civ2 also

[Ekmek]

SMIFFGIG great ideas (havent seen you in awhile...)

I also liked in Civ1 when the Barbarian leader could bribe your unit (it happened only once or twice when I kept t he barb pinned somewhere)

The immigration idea would be cool, even if we used the civ3 worker to just walk accross the map as it immigrates.

You could also have refugees and when they sit on your tile you cant use it but attacking them creates a reputation hit and unhappiness (especially in late games)