The Role of Barbarians

[Asmodeous]

No, I'm far more worried about breaking something. Hehehe. Asmo + Code, even basic code = Danger! Danger Wil Robinson!!



I know enough to be dangerous, as they say.

Me.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Aside from agreeing 100% with Dominae, I would also note that your four categories don't include the Mongol and similar tribes pre-Genghis Khan (or during and post for that matter, though at that point I suppose they cease being barbarians and become a Civ). They raided regularly because that was what they did; tribes would raid each other periodically, taking herd animals and often women (to be wives), essentially as a form of trade. Not entirely unlike what the barbarians in Civ do ...

You guys are missing an important point. Barbs don't have to be suicidal maniacs in order to be dangerous enough that players have to defend against them. One of the barbarian behaviors I listed was pillaging outlying infrastructure. So if players want to keep tile improvements in their outlying cities, they would have to have units to protect against raiders. Another behavior I listed was attacking weakly defended or undefended cities. So if players wouldn't defend their cities, or would "defend" them with just a single token warrior, barbarians would come in and capture or destroy them. And even if players would defend their cities well, they would still face occasional barbarian attacks.

The result would be that if players want to be safe, they would have to maintain a level of military force similar to what they do now. But that result would be achieved without players having to spend as much time in actual combat with barbarians, and without players and AIs having to divert as many resources to replacing units lost to barbarians.

I think players should have the option of having the current style of highly aggressive barbarians if that's what they want. But I think players should be able to have barbarians play a role in the game without turning the entire early game into a continual war against barbs.

[nbarclay]

I found the XML settings snoopy369 listed a long time ago, and my first efforts to make barbarians less annoying were aimed at modifying those files. There are three main reasons why I switched from that approach to simply turning off barbarians.

1) None of those settings slows down the appearance of barbarian archers and axemen, both of which can show up earlier than I consider fun. I suspect that barbarians get those units (or at least the axemen) sooner on higher levels because of the head start AIs receive in the tech race. And I know that the penalties imposed on humans on higher levels slow down my ability to respond to them unless I'm lucky enough to have a convenient source of horses.

2) Even if I reduce the number of barbarians, the amount of time I have to spend managing a constant, low-level war against barbs is still greater than I generally consider fun.

3) Unlike a lot of players, I'm neither a dedicated slaver nor a chop-o-holic. Needing Bronze Working to fight against barbarians if horses aren't available is a whole lot less annoying to players who want Bronze Working early anyhow as part of their economic strategy than it is for someone like me whose early economic strategy is generally focused in other directions.

This third point is important from a game balance perspective. If Bronze Working were a tech with no economic value that it is a complete waste of time for AIs to research in games where humans focus on their economy instead of mounting a rush, it could be considered important for the game's balance to push humans not to wait too long to research it. But since the AIs integrate the tech into their economic strategy, it is harder to argue that humans need to be pushed to research it early in order to keep the game fair. And too much pressure for humans to research Bronze Working early undermines' players' ability to choose among a variety of different options for their early research. (That kind of issue came under the heading of "interesting strategic choices" back when we worked on the Apolyton University Mod for Civ III.)

[Supr49er]

Originally posted by Asmodeous
I'd love to see that "HAHAHA You're getting crushed by a stack of 8 Axemen 20 turns into the game when all you have is warriors, newb!" event go away.

Me.

You should have the option to bribe them like the Romans did? If you're too weak to fight them off, pay them off. They will be back, but you'll be ready for them.

[Yaga]

Originally posted by Supr49er

You should have the option to bribe them like the Romans did? If you're too weak to fight them off, pay them off. They will be back, but you'll be ready for them.

I did prefer the result from earlier Civs (Civ III, iirc) that Barbarians would pillage cities, but not take over their control.

As for Buckley's primary concern regarding having too many Barbs too early on to contend with, I would recommend upping the number of actual Civs on a given map. I typically play Fractal, Large, Low, 16 Civs and *rarely* have significant Barbarian activity.

[joncnunn]

A couple of things: Bronze Working is adviable a very long time before the Alphabet (and tech trading) is adviable so the argument "I don't have to reserach it because everyone else is" is invalid.

On certain maps, playing with Open Borders will help because the AI will fog bust for you when the closet unowned land to them is even closer to you. On the AU course "Size Matters" so many AIs were partrolling the Tunda lands south of me that I didn't need to patrol it myself and could keep those units in border towns. Most of these AI wouldn't have been able to get there to patrol if I had closed the borders because it was on the far side of my lands compared to them.

I might also mention that Axes are even more useful against regular AI Swords invading than the barbs. And prehaps more importantly having some Axes will help keep the peace more than Archers.