What do you think of barbarians?

[nbarclay]

Does anyone else wish there were something in between no barbarians and standard barbarians? Playing on Monarch, I find the situation with barbarians really annoying, especially in light of how AIs get Archery free and I don't. It's one thing for barbarians to keep players honest about escorting settlers and defending cities. But it's something else entirely to face a situation where AIs get what they need to defend against barbarians for a long time for free, while I often have to either mess up my research path trying to get a second-tier religious tech (Judaism or Confucianism) or else be stuck defending against barb archers with warriors. And having a game ruined when a barb axeman shows up before I'm ready to defend against him is even worse.

I can see how a lot of players could find the amount of early fighting against barbarians enjoyable. But I'm a lot more interested in focusing on builder aspects of the game in the early phases, and I find it really annoyng not having a way to have barbarians be present without having to spend a huge chunk of my time trying to figure out how to deal with them. I liked the way barbarians worked in Call to Power, where they weren't a significant threat as long as settlers were escorted and cities defended, and in Civ 3, where the worst they could do once a city was established was a bit of pillaging, a whole lot better.

[Qwertqwert]

Yes I do, I mentioned this before.

The AI gets archery free?

[fed1943]

I think barbarians help to game balance.

They put us early the dilemma build/military, that is one of the very interesting component of the game.

Best regards,

[nbarclay]

The AI gets Archery free on Monarch and higher. It gets additional free techs on levels above Monarch, adding Hunting on Emperor, Agriculture on Immortal, and The Wheel on Deity. I don't know how the game handles it when a free tech duplicates a normal starting tech for a civ. (I got the information about free techs from the file CIV4HandicapInfo.XML, which defines the differences in difficulty levels.)

[LDiCesare]

I have problems with barbs too, thus I used the SDK to avoid them being spawned on ice terrain. What really bothers me is not their archers but the barbarian axemen who don't need copper, and, on the other hand, the rare occurence of barbarian horse archers.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by fed1943
I think barbarians help to game balance.

They put us early the dilemma build/military, that is one of the very interesting component of the game.

That's why I don't like turning barbarians off altogether. The problem is that even the normal barbarian setting shifts the balance too much in a military direction for my taste, at least on the higher difficulty levels. It's one thing to make the building/military balance an interesting issue, and something else to force players to divert a lot of attention away from building to military matters if they don't want to run a significant risk of suffering a catastrophic loss.

[Blake]

The main thing I REALLY don't like about barbs is galleys. The problem is the large random factor in sea battles and the expensive losses, there's no way to influence the odds, so every fight with a barb galley is a fair fight.

Now the main problem is there's a fair chance the barbarian galley will win without taking significant damage, after this has happened there's a fair chance it'll proceed to take on another galley and win, and then it has 2exp, promotes, heals half the damage, and the chance of it winning is still fair! As if the marauding unkillable galleys wasn't bad enough, at sea pillaging is also much more expensive, since it's a loss of workboats which need to be rebuilt, rather than just worker time (the difference between 30 hammers and ~6 gold, or free if below unit upkeep threshold).

Annoyingly these unkillable barb galleys of workboat apocalypse also spawn in the most bizarre places, such as from single tile mountain islands with no trees. Apparently they are made of rock and kept afloat by the god of the volcano.

I think there is a fair bit of the naval aspect which needs some tweaking.

For the spawning aspect, I believe they should only be built at barb coastal cities and never just spawn in any old tiny patch of fog.

The fix for their rampage of terror where they mow through galley after galley and keep healing - at sea all healing should be reduced, in hostile culture the base healing rate at sea should be zero. Boats also shouldn't heal when promoted - in a boat vs boat fight it's not as if either side earns the victory, it's pure simple luck. Luck shouldn't be further rewarded in a strategy game.

Furthermore I don't think workboats should be pillagable. "The barbarians are coming! Head to port!". That's what should happen. Hostile ships already prevent 9 tiles from being worked, which is a massive loss of food. If they just parked on the sea resources that'd be quite annoying enough (not to mention the fact you'd be forced to attack them, and they'd get the +10% bonus, altough I actually think that bonus shouldn't apply when in hostile culture).


I know there's the possibility I'm just unlucky, like in a certain challenge game I played recently where a barb galley bowled up, I met it with a galley (on defense), it won, it was badly injured so next turn I attacked it with my next galley - it won again! And healed of course. And I didn't have unreasonable force to counter it with (only reasonable: 2 galleys vs 1), and the blasted thing is free to go pillage 1-2 (more) workboats. And the most frustrating thing is I know that it's entirely possible for my next galley to also lose - the odds haven’t changed. At this point it's not outside the realm of probability that it'll kill 3 galleys and 3 workboats.
What's the difference between my game and a game where the barb galley bounces harmlessly off the first defending galley? It's a minimum of 240 hammers (epic costs), killing the blasted thing is going to set me back by somewhere around the cost of The Great Lighthouse, it's a freaking offensive wonder with oars, built from solid granite and powered by the fires of the gods.

This one barb galley has really curbed my enthusiasm for the challenge game, it'll have permanent impact on the performance of my empire. It's not fun and it's not strategy - since I met it with a more than reasonable counter - two galleys, and the first fight mine had the defensive bonus.

Okay enough galley ranting.

I think in general the Barbs should act in a more credible way; they should get in, pillage/kill something weak, and get out. The barbarians should at least superficially have an objective of staying alive rather than dying. They could still mount city sieges, but only when their numbers build up in the fog (if you keep letting barbs sneak in, pillage, then sneak back out, they'll obviously build up). They should be deterred by strong stacks and not stick around to die, actually killing barbs should be a matter of using roads and mounted units effectively.
I also think the barbarians should be custom units with custom strengths (generally slightly weaker than player units), or that all barbs should have a penalty on defense (especially on flat land), enough to give better than even odds when you want to root them out. Heck, give them a bonus on attack. IMHPO, when the player proactively deals with barbarians with reasonable force, the barbs should be quite reliably defeated, with the barbs only being a menace to the negligent.

An example of what I think would be a good barb unit would be a 2str 2 move mounted unit with the all-terrain costs 1 movement promo, it has the AI logic of staying away from anything stronger than a warrior, it tries to pillage as much as possible.

Later there could be a 4str barbarian berserker with +50% vs cities and woodsman, it mainly tries to attack cities. Easy to kill in the open with anything better than an archer, an Axeman can take it in most situations. These would be quite dangerous as they’d automatically use forests as roads, thus giving them 6 defense unless forced to leave the forests.

Barbarians could perhaps train real units if they have a city connected to the resource, but the wilderness barbs should be low str custom units with interesting abilities.

edit: Aftermath of the marauding galley in challenge game: It nearly survived the battle with my 3rd galley (ie it didn't survive it), thankfully. Still took down 2 galleys and 2 workboats.

[LordShiva]

Can someone summarise Blake's post?

[Blake]

amg! barbarian galleys are overpowered! nerf!

[Silver14]

Sure can!

Basically = Fire bad!

[MasterDave]

Bread good! FIRE BAAAD!!

Barbarian galleys can be annoying, especially when they show up hundreds of years before I intended to learn sailing and start trashing my precious clam farms.

On the other hand, by having this threat, it forces players to think about navies earlier in history than they would otherwise, or on pangea type maps. That is a good thing, adding strategic depth.

What I feel is missing are the more modern barbarian (aka pirate) ships from previous civs. I would love to see occasional pirate frigates, caravels, and galleons show up in the appropriate ages to wreak some havoc. I don't care if they spawn from mountain islands, open sea or whatever. I would also really like to see the return of player-built privateers that can attack (and capture) foreign shipping during peacetime.

Having pirates and privateers to deal with on the high seas would make those peaceful periods of certain games a lot livelier IMO.

[Schtix]

In my latest noble game, I set the speed on marathon, because I've never completed a whole marathon game from start to finish. So, what I found was that there are many, many more barbarians on marathon compared to epic. What's most annoying is that when other civs are off building granaries, libraries, and so fourth, I'm stuck mass-producing barracks and archers, and still fighting to stay in second and third as far as points go.

I think the barbarians are fine on noble, but this is the highest difficulty I've gotten to, so I'm not sure how bad it is on prince and higher up. I *do* think that the game needs to make sure all civs get a fairly equal amount of barbarians though, it's just not fair for me have to deal with a horde of barbs while my next-door neighbours thrive safely.

Edit: and, forgot to mention that I *did* read all of Blake's post, and thought it made a lot of good points. It's very annoying when the game does things like making ships from granite and such. =)

[Urban Ranger]

Re: What do you think of barbarians?

Originally posted by nbarclay
Does anyone else wish there were something in between no barbarians and standard barbarians? Playing on Monarch, I find the situation with barbarians really annoying, especially in light of how AIs get Archery free and I don't.

Give yourself free Archery to balance things out.

[Jaybe]

Schtix,
I have mentioned it elsewhere before, but what I do is give the player and the AI equal advantages against barbarians. That way the barbs will target the AI as much as you, and the AI will not have such an easy time wiping them out.

It is done in HandicapInfo.xml in the GameInfo folder. You would want to put the modified file into your CustomAssets folder, of course.
Personally, I set all of them to zero: iAnimalBonus (at Noble normally -40), iBarbarianBonus (-10), iAIAnimalBonus (-70) & iAIBarbarianBonus (-40). I also set iFreeWinsVsBarbs (2) to zero. By zeroing these out, you are putting barbs on an equal footing with other civs, and also getting "proper" experience when you are successfull in killing them.

[Urban Ranger]

That's a good idea as well, Jaybe.