Barbs!

[Master Zen]

Lots of talk on CIV but no threads on those pesky BARBS


How would you people prefer them, Civ1/2 style in which they were like regular units and could capture/destroy cities? Or Civ3 style where they were just nuicanses which captured gold or destroyed builds but had no city-capturing capability?


Personally I'd like to see them go back to the Civ1/2 style especially since they would also land from the sea. They should perhaps be considered "minor civs" with the ability to turn into "major civs" after causing enough damage to their neighbors. Like in Civ3 they should have some "origin" which could be destroyed and pillaged as well.

-MZ

[Tassadar500]

I voted for the wrong option. I wanted to vote for a combination. As MZ said, they would come from a camp, can capture cities, and even possibly become an empire/real civ.

[Drachasor]

Having them act as Minor Civs and in a Civ2-like way sounds really cool. That's the combination of both, right? (that's how I voted).

Nice idea.

-Drachasor

[Daz]

I agree. In Civ3 you can always gamble by having weak defenses and loosing ocasional gold and prod to barbs...

[Max Sinister]

A minor Civ that can go up, that's good. And you'd have to destroy all of their units (except workers, maybe) to defeat them.

[Arrian]

I voted for a combo.

I think barbs should wipe out size1's. Just raze 'em.

Size2-4, maybe, could be taken over, ala CivII. If they manage to pull 2 or 3 cities together, maybe that could result in graduation to "major civ" status.

With larger cities, they should steal some gold, carry off some people and/or destroy some structures.

It should be nasty. Barbs should be able to land from boats, and I definitely want them to increase in power over time like in CivII. The early barbs can be warriors/horsemen, but as time passes they should get beefed up (though I'd say they shouldn't get knights but rather a CivIV equivalent of ancient cav - something strong but not ridiculous). In the early medieval, they should get amphibious ability - barb 'zerks, weakened a bit but still nasty enough to make you scramble. For clarity's sake, the reason I don't want their units too strong is that I'd like to see little to now combat bonus vs. barbs. In fact, barbs should probably be regular or vet units, not conscripts.

Barb encampments should be much more difficult to take out than they are in CivIII. Not only should they accumulate defenders (spawing them regularly over time), but simply building a city nearby should not "dissolve" the encampment. I could see allowing cultural conversion of the tile (easier than flipping a city in CivIII, but requiring at least some investment in culture by the player) after some time, but not right away. In the meantime, developing that city should be difficult with barbs spawing right next door.

-Arrian

[Brent]

I want them as in Civ2.

[Aramis]

Civ2, also.
Unless those bananabarbs work out.

[Fosse]

I voted for the combonation. I liked having named barbs come from someplace... but nothing was cooler than seeing the barbarians get a foothold someplace.

However, I would love to see barbarians abandoned in favor of those minor civs that keep getting brought up. They would have cities, build units, maybe attack neighbors, and have a chance at "promotion" when a free civ slot opens up.

[Tassadar500]

Then wouldn't you have to eliminate the minor civs first or the game will last forever?

[lajzar]

I'd like to have 3 levels of civs.

major civs - this is the player and the main computer civs, much as we have now.

Barbarians - these spawn randomly in wilderness areas. Their technology advances over time as per civ2, and their ai may be either for razing or for capturing cities.

Minor civ - a barbarian tribe that captures a city becomes one automatically (along with all barbarian units in, say 15 tile radius). They also appear at the start spread evenly over the map and with a few extra concentrated near major civs. Minor civ ai is usually aimed at very slow expansion and survival. They never start wars, but will finish them.

Any minor civ that ever becomes significantly stronger than the weakest major civ gets promoted. This will usually happen as a result of a major civ taking a pounding.

Any time the number of major civs drops below the original number, the strongest minor civ gets promoted.

Major civ status is never lost.

major/minor promotion status should be controllable for scenarios.

[Fosse]

Originally posted by Nuclear Master
Then wouldn't you have to eliminate the minor civs first or the game will last forever?

I'm not sure what you mean here. Do you mind explaining your concern further?

Thanks

[Tassadar500]

Well let's say there are twenty minor civilizations. That means, until all twenty are eliminated, your game will last an extremely large amount of time, and almost impossible if you plan for a military victory.

[Fosse]

Okay, thanks... a couple of thoughts on that spring to my mind:

Firstly, a complete conquest victory should be hard. Really hard. The minor civ to major civ style leaves lots of room for domination style victories.

We will be dealing with a finite number of cities on the map. Eventually the land grab will end and you'll have the major civs owning the big chunks of the world, and minors filling in the cracks. So if a particular map that has 200 cities in it is what you're playing on, then it won't make a difference to your conquest victory if they are owned by minors or majors. You have X cities to take, not a particular number of nations to kill.

Lastly, it doesn't strike me that making one type of victory less easy is a sound justification of writing off a game feature. With all the lusting over minor civs that goes on in the fan community, it could really be one of the "killer features" that Soren seems to by living for right now.

Completely remodeling the idea of "barbarians" to be many small civs who don't play on the major diplomatic stage and only know techs that they slowly absorb from the major civs nearest to them could add so much to the game. Several isolated minor civs could represent an aborigne population on an undiscoverd continent, powerful nations could srping from truly humble beginnings, and diplomacy could gain a huge boost.

You could have limited diplomatic contacts with barbarian minor civs, paying them to attack an enemy, agreeing not to kill them in exchange for tribute, or living peacfully with them long enough to purchase their annexation to your land. Two major Civs could decide amongst themselves who will "own" the less powerful (of course, actually getting the minors to see it that way would be a less diplomatic matter)


"Barbarians" being simply random units was nice for a while, and helped to make the game feel like it was taking place in a hostile, untamed world. But computer games hardware have come to the point that actually having that untamed world be a living, breathing collection of small nation-states is entirly possible.

And that sounds like a lot more fun, to me, than an easy conquest.

Regards, Fosse

[Kuciwalker]

They should have their own quasi-cities, and be dangerous to your actual empire. They should raze most cities.