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I've been complaining about barbarians in Civ IV in another thread, and that discussion has gotten me thinking about the role barbarians play in Civ. In Civ, barbarians routinely act like crazy people who are willing to throw their lives away against overwhelming odds in the hope of maybe causing a little damage before they die. That is totally unrealistic, and personally, I don't view it as fun either.
Before we move on, it is important to understand what barbarians actually are. Barbarians are people who speak a different language (which is where the term comes from), have different customs, and have a less advanced technology and culture. They have wives and children to care for, and they have the same range of emotions as other human beings. They aren't wild animals whose only reason for existing is to attack anyone they see. If their victims view them as wild animals, it is usually because the victims don't understand or refuse to acknowledge their actual motives.
In thinking about motives for barbarian attacks, I've been able to come up with four basic categories.
1) The barbarians face a threat that forces them to fight to defend themselves or to defend what they view as belonging to them.
2) The barbarians' leaders see a target that they believe (either rightly or wrongly) is sufficiently vulnerable that the benefits of attacking it outweigh the costs and risks.
3) The barbarians have been pushed out of their old home, and they think it makes more sense to fight for a new home than to fight to reclaim their old home. (My understanding is that at least some of the barbarians who led to the downfall of Rome were victims of this kind of pressure.)
4) If the barbarians have a culture that values bravery in combat, their culture requires at least some fighting so people can have a chance to prove their bravery. However, this type of culture is more likely to lead to raiding than to deliberate, direct attacks on full-scale military units.
So how should these four types of behavior be represented in Civ?
1) Most barbarian units should stay in the area where they are spawned (with a limit on how many can live in an area before new ones stop spawning). There should be some chance of their attacking units that are passing through, with the chance increasing with the number of units passing through. (The more units pass through, the more they are likely to be perceived as a threat.) And the barbarians living in an area should fight against any attempt to settle on their lands if they have any realistic chance of success (and maybe sometimes even if they don't).
2) Barbarians should generally attack if they have a shot at an undefended city, settler, or worker. There should also be a chance of their attacking defended targets, with the odds going down the more the balance of power is against the barbarians.
3) There should be occasional "barbarians have been dislocated from their homes and are looking for a new place to live" events that make barbarians more likely to attack than normal, and likely to attack in larger numbers.
4) There should be occasional barbarian raids on the infrastructure on the fringes of civilizations. These raids should become more frequent if civs rarely or never kill the intruders, and less frequent if civilizations routinely hunt down and kill the intruders.
This combination of behaviors would make barbarians a meaningful obstacle to expansion, and would force players to maintain a credible defense against barbarians. But players would not have to spend a lot of time and resources fighting barbarian maniacs whose only purpose in life seems to be to cause them trouble - unless the players want to.
In conjunction with this type of system, there could be two barbarian activity sliders: one that determines how numerous the barbarians are and another that determines how aggressive they are. There might also be a third that controls how strong the barbarians are, affecting how large a bonus the players and AIs get against barbarians and how quickly barbarians get access to more advanced units.
Before we move on, it is important to understand what barbarians actually are. Barbarians are people who speak a different language (which is where the term comes from), have different customs, and have a less advanced technology and culture. They have wives and children to care for, and they have the same range of emotions as other human beings. They aren't wild animals whose only reason for existing is to attack anyone they see. If their victims view them as wild animals, it is usually because the victims don't understand or refuse to acknowledge their actual motives.
In thinking about motives for barbarian attacks, I've been able to come up with four basic categories.
1) The barbarians face a threat that forces them to fight to defend themselves or to defend what they view as belonging to them.
2) The barbarians' leaders see a target that they believe (either rightly or wrongly) is sufficiently vulnerable that the benefits of attacking it outweigh the costs and risks.
3) The barbarians have been pushed out of their old home, and they think it makes more sense to fight for a new home than to fight to reclaim their old home. (My understanding is that at least some of the barbarians who led to the downfall of Rome were victims of this kind of pressure.)
4) If the barbarians have a culture that values bravery in combat, their culture requires at least some fighting so people can have a chance to prove their bravery. However, this type of culture is more likely to lead to raiding than to deliberate, direct attacks on full-scale military units.
So how should these four types of behavior be represented in Civ?
1) Most barbarian units should stay in the area where they are spawned (with a limit on how many can live in an area before new ones stop spawning). There should be some chance of their attacking units that are passing through, with the chance increasing with the number of units passing through. (The more units pass through, the more they are likely to be perceived as a threat.) And the barbarians living in an area should fight against any attempt to settle on their lands if they have any realistic chance of success (and maybe sometimes even if they don't).
2) Barbarians should generally attack if they have a shot at an undefended city, settler, or worker. There should also be a chance of their attacking defended targets, with the odds going down the more the balance of power is against the barbarians.
3) There should be occasional "barbarians have been dislocated from their homes and are looking for a new place to live" events that make barbarians more likely to attack than normal, and likely to attack in larger numbers.
4) There should be occasional barbarian raids on the infrastructure on the fringes of civilizations. These raids should become more frequent if civs rarely or never kill the intruders, and less frequent if civilizations routinely hunt down and kill the intruders.
This combination of behaviors would make barbarians a meaningful obstacle to expansion, and would force players to maintain a credible defense against barbarians. But players would not have to spend a lot of time and resources fighting barbarian maniacs whose only purpose in life seems to be to cause them trouble - unless the players want to.
In conjunction with this type of system, there could be two barbarian activity sliders: one that determines how numerous the barbarians are and another that determines how aggressive they are. There might also be a third that controls how strong the barbarians are, affecting how large a bonus the players and AIs get against barbarians and how quickly barbarians get access to more advanced units.
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