Barbarians and Game Speed

[nbarclay]

Does anyone know whether the rate at which barbarians are spawned is adjusted with game speed to reflect the slower rate at which players can build units on Epic and Marathon? If barbarians spawn at the same frequency in turns, but players take more turns to build units, the result is that players have to waste a larger percentage of their production to replace units lost fighting barbarians on the slower game speeds.

[Adagio]

AFAIK it's still the same rate, can't say for sure though since I haven't play normal and quick games, and only a little marathon

[nbarclay]

I decided to do some digging in the XML files, and I found a variable iBarbPercent in the file CIV4GameSpeedInfo.xml that looks like it's designed to adjust the barbarian appearance rate with the game speed. It's set at 67 for quick, 100 for normal, 150 for epic, and 300 for marathon (as are most of the variables related to the length of each turn). So it looks like an attempt was made to adjust the barbarian appearance rate to fit the game speed.

That still leaves a question in my mind as to whether or not the apearance of new barbarians has any connection with the death of old ones. In slower games, barbarians can reach a place where a player (or AI) needs to kill them more quickly relative to the length of the game. So if the appearance of new barbs is connected to the death of old ones, that could bring about some increase in barbarian activity that adjusting other parameters wouldn't deal with.

[bahoo]

I started playing monarch after achieving victory in (i forget the one below it). I used to always play epic or marathon games because I liked how it seemed possible to actually conduct early wars without premature unit obsolescence. However, after a number of games where I spent 90% of my GDP building units to protect against barbarians (I actually lost a game without ever being attacked by the AI, only barbarians), I switched to standard speed. There certainly seems to be a noticable difference in both barbarian spawn rate as well as barbarian technological advancement rate at the lower speeds.

[Urban Ranger]

It appears that the ratio (unit building speed) / (barbarian spawn speed) is a constant for a level - unless you have "raging barbarians" on.

[mimi]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
unless you have "raging barbarians" on.

Oh I LOVE raging barbs...

OCC with raging barbs...

hahaahahah... great fun.

(would you like some sauce for your barb?)