Pleasant Little Suprises

[Silver14]

Lately my approach has been one of non-violence. Or laziness. I've been turning barbs off. When I try a game with them on I find them too annoying and disruptive. For instance I wanted to sack Delhi first in my screen shot above, but they beat me to it.

[Badtz Maru]

The AI gets big bonuses against barbarians on all difficulty levels to keep the computer players from being wiped out early in the game. The barbarians take this bonus into consideration when deciding who to attack - it may look like they are passing over an AI unit with a strength of 3 to attack your strength 5 unit, but in reality the barbarians see that 3 as a 6 (or whatever, can't remember the exact bonus), so the barbarian is just going for the unit it thinks it has a better chance against.

You can easily remove that bonus and the AI will have a lot harder time with barbarians, I made a post in the Creation forum a few weeks back about my attempt to make the game 'fair'. Found that removing all AI bonuses and letting them play by the same rules as the player is a lot easier than Noble, once you get past the early stages (the player gets bonuses vs. barbarians too, just not as big).

[Silver14]

Do the Barbarians spawn less often on slower speeds? I prefer to play on Epic/Marathon and there were times all my cities were doing were making units just to hold the barbarians back without much success.

I'd prefer if there were a time barbarian spawning ceased and they could only produce units from the cities they have.

[Zoid]

Silver, I don´t know if the spawn less on slower speeds. But they certainly spawn more on bigger maps (which makes sense when you think about it...) And the barbarian spawning gets more infrequent when you get to later eras. When you get past the renaissance it stops completely IIRC.

[Badtz Maru]

Originally posted by Silver14
Do the Barbarians spawn less often on slower speeds? I prefer to play on Epic/Marathon and there were times all my cities were doing were making units just to hold the barbarians back without much success.

I'd prefer if there were a time barbarian spawning ceased and they could only produce units from the cities they have.

I think all the barbarian spawning settings are in the difficulty settings XML file, not in the game speeds one, though I won't know until I get home. I do recall the following barbarian-related settings in the difficulty settings from when I modded mine:

1. Number of turns before barbarians spawn.

2. Number of turns before barbarian cities spawn.

3. Number of unexplored land tiles per barbarian spawn.

4. Number of unexplored land tiles per barbarian city spawn.

5. Number of unexplored sea tiles per barbarian ship spawn.

6. Chance that barbarians will attack (not sure exactly how it works, but it varies between difficulty levels).

7. Player bonuses vs. barbarians (vary between difficulty level, player still gets bonuses on Noble)

8. AI bonuses vs. barbarians (the same on all difficulty levels, which is the same bonus that the player gets vs. barbarians on Settler).

9. Number of "Free Wins" vs. barbarians - at first I thought this was a number of times where you would automatically win vs. the barbarians (it's 6 on Settler, 2 on Noble), but I've proven this wrong by losing units to barbarians on the first encounter with them. I'm thinking it might be a number of successes in each combat with barbarians - i.e. you might always win the first two 'rounds' of the fight, though this seems redundant with the other bonuses vs. barbarians.

Using these settings you can delay when barbarians show up, or make it so they only show up in very large unexplored areas, and possibly change their aggression level.

[GeoModder]

Wow. I just had a real barb spawnfest. They came in from 3-4 directions at once, all to my poor little capital.

[Yaga]

If y'all want some barbarian fun - I play large terra maps on prince with raging barbarians.

It is not unheard of to come across barbarian cities in the new world with 10-12 defenders, 8-10 population, and two-deep cultural borders.

Actually, it's fairly common to have two or three of those on each contienent, plus 3-5 smaller cities, and another half-dozen+ guarded huts.

I don't even attempt a landing on the new world until I have at least three galleons full of top-knotch units, and even then the first hundred years or so is very touch and go.

Still, it's a pleasant surprise over all -- conquering the new world while facing growing tensions at home is the best part of the game for me.

[Zoid]

Gotta love those barbs

[Nikolai]

Bah! Barbs, squarbs! Yesterday my totally perfect going game was ruined because of barbs... I had 4 cities, just perfect for the time and my resources at that time, but when I sat up the game, I must have checked the "no razing of cities" option by accident, because I was not allowed to raze the barb city...! So now I have 0 money and have to research at 50%, which is certain death...

[Zoid]

Give up and start again already

[Nikolai]

I think I will, but that game was going so well...

[Zoid]

Yeah, I´m quitting my current game as well. For the second time I might add...

[arcady]

Originally posted by Nikolai
because I was not allowed to raze the barb city...! So now I have 0 money and have to research at 50%, which is certain death...

My strongest cities in both of the (admittedly few) two games I've played were taken from barbarians in the 'mid early game'.

One on the northern tip of my starting island, and the second time it was two on the second island I landed on - one of which, had I been paying attention, would have been a machine to win me the game much faster. All I had been doing was letting the AI pick what it produced and sending workers over to its general region before turning away to focus my game elsewhere. With no wonders in it at all and being largely ignored it became my second top producer of both culture and production... finally beating my capital that had most of my wonders and great artists dropped on it, when I noticed and switched the production of a wonder over to it in mid process.

All three barbarian cities I've taken had better population growth than my own cities.

Raze them?

No way - those barbarian cities keep being major payoffs for me. Maybe the AI just has better sense than me about where to put cities, or I've started twice in less than ideal spots.

[afrodius]

I too have had some very valuable former barbie cities. One was founded in the exact spot i was planning to send a settler (and became my most productive port), and the other one ended up being number 2 of my 3 game-winning culture cities (even founding islam).

[johnmcd]

Barbarian cities are always founded in superb sites.