My lunch with the Barbs

[johnmcd]

So, I started a custom game with me, some raging barbs and a huge archipeligo map. No other Civs. (You win by conquest on about turn five with a monster score, for the record).

I got Polytheisim in quickly and set research to nil and pressed enter a lot until I hit 1AD. At that point I'd been regularly assaulted by barb warriors but there had been no archers or axemen. In my only city I had Stonehenge some barracks and lots of warriors with 10xp.

There were no AI cities on my massive continent, truly the biggest I've seen in archipeligo game by chance, at this stage. I whacked down a second town in case that was the trigger for the AI founding towns but nothing happened for another hundred turns or so. So I researched masonary and that seemed to do the trick with one town appearing on my continent and another on a island just off shore.

I then let the barbs take my capital, which also had the holy building and the Parthenon in it at this point. Stonehenge gave all the other barb cities oblisks but Hinduism did not spread to any of them. After a hundred turns or so I took the city back. The barb cities came with free archers, though at this point none had spawned and I had neither hunting nor archery.

Anyway, much mucking around later the barbs were way ahead of me techwise, they founded the other religions, though none spread that I could see and built wonders up to the Hanging Gardens and the Collosus. They were starting to threaten my cities with feudal units and generally menace me so I got back on the tech race.

I also founded a city right next to, and with road contact to the barbarian Confucian holy city, it never 'caught' Confucianism.

No idea if this is interesting to anyone, feel free to ask questions on the elements of interest if it is.

[johnmcd]

A few hours further on (with a pub break) I've found that Buddhisim has spread amongst Barbarian cities, but no Barbarian religion has spread to mine. The level of tech in Barb world seems similar across the globe making me think that they are maybe in a "state of permanent" alliance or similar? The wonders are dispersed amongst them, as are the religions, so it's not as if one of the barb cities are competing against each other (the Confucian town is in the middle of a farmed tundra desert). Also, when I first meet a Barbarian city it seems to have defensive units and then strat to produce aggressive units, but they aren't on standby that I've seen. Maybe they are exploring the hinterland and come back to base when they see caravals.

Also, I founded some cities, some good, some awful, next to barbarian cities. Once they hit size two I moved off my defenders. The barbarians razed them when they got the chance.

Probably the end of this game though for me though. It's great to know that barbarian religions spread between themselves but, it seems, not to 'civs' (and vice versa) and also that once their cities are down, barbarians' have their own technological progression, not just pegged to humans. I'm miles behind.

[Aro]

Very interesting posts, johnmcd. It's good to see the old scientific method in action...

[EvilBob22]

If I'm not mistaken, the barbarians are basically another civilization with extra rules thrown in (always at war with everyone else, free units in fog of war spaces...) so I'm not surprised that they don't compete with eachother. That would also explain why they all have the same tech level. As far as religion goes, don't you need a trade route (and therefore open borders) to spread them? Maybe the religions would spread if you built the UN and got free trade passed... although the barbarians don't get a vote, so they might not be part of the agreement either.

Cool experiement...

[johnmcd]

I’m not sure you need to have trade routes, just the possibility of trade routes. I quite often have the Japanese get my religion without an open borders treaty, simply through their proximity. On the other hand, the city I founded right beside the barbs to try and get their religion into it never ‘took’ it.

Something else I should have mentioned above is that the Barbs never seemed to get great people, certainly none are announced.

[Last Conformist]

There was a thread o CFC yesterday about the barbarians getting a great prophet.

[Cort Haus]

Good work, John!

The best barb city I met had 2 or 3 towns - which nicely paid the bills when I took it. I think they are known in-game as The Barbarian State. Perhaps it would be good for them to turn into a fully-fledged AI when they get x cities, or if they build a wonder.

[johnmcd]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
There was a thread o CFC yesterday about the barbarians getting a great prophet.

That would be very interesting. I’ll recheck the event log on that game tonight and double check, the barbs have certainly had enough wonders for long enough to have several. Perhaps they can get them through specialists but not wonders? No knowing if they have specialists at all before Scotland Yard is build and I’m miles from that!

Do spies let you see the GP counter in a city? If someone has a late game save with a Barb city left it would be good to check it out with a spy.

[Cort Haus]

No knowing if they have specialists at all before Scotland Yard is build and I’m miles from that!

Don't wait for that! This is a test bed - so just edit in a Spy with Worldbuilder.

[LotharZ]

Wonderful experiment, John; I too would like to see further investigation.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by johnmcd
Probably the end of this game though for me though. It's great to know that barbarian religions spread between themselves but, it seems, not to 'civs' (and vice versa) and also that once their cities are down, barbarians' have their own technological progression, not just pegged to humans. I'm miles behind.

This confirms that barb cities can trade with each other.

[Apocalypse Cow]

Excellent research! I did something similar, with similar results. I also went an extra step, seeing if I could get the barbarians to build navies by removing caravels from the list of "forbidden" units in the XML file. No luck, as there were barbarians everywhere, but looking w/ Worldbuilder, not a single boat.

[Nikolai]

Excellent! Very interesting tale you have there, john! Just curious, how big was that monster score?

[johnmcd]

Well, I've been through the log, plenty of me getting great people, nothing of anyone else.

I would use world builder to set things up differently but I worry that the existance of a spy or something might change the way AI approaches the game. Equally, I've not tweaked any of the cities in case a world builder built improvement is somehow different to one that the barbs built themselves in some way. I have fully organic pet barbarians!

[johnmcd]

The score was the biggest I've managed, but I dont' think it managed to reach Augustus or anything, all the points were for speed really, not much for tech or wonders!

You win the first time your borders expand, so a creative civ would do even better!