An Improved Barbarian/Insurgent Model

[polypheus]

After reading various threads on Infinite City Sprawl (ICS), Civil Wars, and "Rise and Fall of Civs", it became clear to me that a much improved "barbarian" model could solve all three of these issues. With this improved model, fun, gameplay and realism are all increased with little in the way of complexity or difficulty in implementation.

This is what I propose:

1) For Anti-ICS: Many great empires have been brought low by barbarians, especially those that were overextended. Therefore, barbarians should be programmed to look for and seek out such empires. An spawling empire of lots of villages of low population and culture and weakly defended would attract more raids of greater ferocity as such an empire is an attractive target. (Think "Western Roman Empire")

2) Rise & Fall of Civs: Throughout history, "barbarians" have taken over pre-existing Civs to start a brand new Civ in its ruins. Almost always, barbarians that took over cities would start to become "civilized" and found new Civs. The various barbarians that sacked the Western Roman Empire created new civilizations. Franks built the foundation for France. Angle-Saxon barbarians founded England, Visigoths started Spain, etc. This has happened as recently as the late middle ages! The Ottoman Turk "barbarians" took over the Byzantine Empire in 1453 and started a new Civ in its ruins called the Ottoman Empire.

Therefore, I propose that under certain cases, "barbarians" instead of just taking over a city as a Civ2 style "barbarian city", that the barbarian actually transforms that conquered city into a brand new, proper Civ. Just as the Ottoman Turks, Angle-Saxons, Germans, Visigoths had done historically.

3) Insurgencies: Even in Civ2, in some cases, "barbarians" are called "peasant uprisings" although in reality they are nothing more than barbarians under another title. However, this idea could be refined so that the underlying barbarian model could be used to simulate civil wars/insurgencies Basically the mechanics of Idea (2) would be used except that these "barbarians" would be called "rebels" and conquered cities would immediately give rise to a new rebel Civ.

These are just some ideas.

But the bottom line is that "barbarians" should play a much more prominent role in the game than they have in Civ1/Civ2. Historically, "barbarians" have been much more than just the "raiders" that are depicted in Civ1/Civ2.

With a more refined, more historically accurate barbarian model, many issues of balance, gameplay, and realism are simultaneously solved! I hope that Firaxis considers updating and improving the barbarian model that was used in Civ2.

[MORON]

Sounds good

Should we get gold if we kill barbarians?

[TechWins]

Polypheus I actually like a lot of your ideas. Such as

An spawling empire of lots of villages of low population and culture and weakly defended would attract more raids of greater ferocity as such an empire is an attractive target

. It would be another disadvantage for a large empire. Although towards late in the game (modern era) the barbarians should be looking to attack the smaller civs and stay away from the powerful civs. This way it would balance things out a little more because there can't all be disadvantages just for large civs.

Good job on becoming a Chieftain, not that it really matters.

[Rollo_CH]

Nice idea's Polypheus!


The many faces of the Barbarians is intriguing. Remember the Huns and the Mongols, they must be the most famous "raiding" barbarians, while Goths and Franks may be the ones cultivating an occupied city. Of course it doesnt need to be 100% historically accurate.

[hexagonian]

Using Barbs to slow down ICS is a workable solution (the key word is slow down, not completely stop) - though it works much better in the early game.

I did a lot of Mod work for my CTP2 Cradle setup. One of the things I did was bump up the frequency of barbarian incursions to triple what it was in the default game. The computer would generate a lot of them and form them into stacks, which would park outside of my cities, and then occasionally attack them. I had programmed the barbs to place a higher priority on attacks on units than on cities - the reason being that from a gameplay standpoint, I would rather have a set of competitive civs rather than a bunch of fractured civs. As much as I like the game to reflect realism, I believe that civs popping up in mid-game will not be able to be competitive at all, especially at the expense of other AI civs. I still think that the barbs should present a threat to cities, so it is important for them to attack a city from time to time, but their main priority is to destroy units - especially if those units are straying outside of a city. And remove the unit's healing ability out in the field until later in the game - this is a huge way to make the barbarian threat even more of an issue in the early going.

It effectively tied my hands for a good portion of the game because I would have to expend a great deal of military resources to deal with them, rather than expand at the expense of the AI civs. And when I wanted to build a settler, I would also have to build several military units to accompany that settler to make sure that it reach its destination, since barbs were generated in the fog of war areas of my empire and often fortified in those hidden areas, so you would often stumble on them by accident. And this had the effect of preventing me from merely building a slew of settlers and not worry about defense in the early going. Make sure that settlers are expensive enough, and you will want to protect your investment.

A possible question to all this is whether the increased Barb settings also effect the AI civs. From what I could tell in playtesting my CTP2 mod, the answer seemed to be that the game was wired to generate barbs more toward the human player. So Civ3 could also be programmed this way. Players may complain that its just another AI cheat, but face it, this is how the most difficult levels are programmed anyhow.

But I believe that it could be accomplished, and it would go a long way toward making the game even more of a challenge.

[Earwicker]

Sounds like a good way to encourage civs that develop home cities instead of continuous expansion. In some ways, an ICS stretegy is like you're playing as the barbs.

[BigRich]

Great idea - I like it

Couple of questions - not really relevant to your post but more personal curiosity. Would city walls be a deterrent to the 'wandering raider' barbarian. Sure they will help defend but would they actively scare off the barbarians. Not relevant for the 'civil insurgency' barbarians. Also do you think that barbarian spawning will be possible within a city's Culture Radius?

Rich.

[rah]

polypheus, when you posted similar in another thread, I liked it. I like it here too. The barbs should play a more important role. In our MP games (deity,raging) the barbs can make the difference between winning and losing. (especially for those that emphasis expansion over defense)

I don't see them being real influential late in the game but early on maybe they can slow ICS. I would like to see them appear inside an empire (similar to them popping off boats in one hex oceans) This will deter people from leaving there core cities undefended. I love it when ICSs are trashed by barbs and the whine about how unlucky they were. My answer is always, try building a few defenders.

I'll reiterate my one concern here also. That they shouldn't appear too soon. 3200 bc is early enough. And in some games, I really like seeing barbs if I'm ready for them, because the money generated from barb kings can do great good early on. I would hate to see the larger civs get all the money. So maybe every group shouldn't have a king.

Rich
Too bad it's so late that this type of thing probably won't be included. This could have been the best way to deal with ICS without wrecking other aspects of the game.

[polypheus]

Originally posted by hexagonian
As much as I like the game to reflect realism, I believe that civs popping up in mid-game will not be able to be competitive at all, especially at the expense of other AI civs.

The key would be for the barbarian conquerors to inherit all the technology of the conquered Civ. (Or the barbarians can be given a starting set of technologies that is up to date with everyone else). Once this is done, the newly born Civs which result from barbarian conquests can be competitive.

This would both be historic, realistic, and would do well to simulate the desired "rise and fall of civs" phenomenon that many people have expressed they want to see implemented.

[TechWins]

I think if the barbarians take the one civ city that all other barbarian encampments on that same continent should be turned over to the newly created civ and turn into cities. I think this should happen because it's not very likely that a new civ can survive with only one city. Especially because of the fact that they will most likely be getting attacked by the other city lost civ and maybe even by the barbarians.

The technology this civ should be given is simple to figure out. If the civ that got attacked just got over the ancient times and they were in the middle ages that new civ would learn all the technologies of the ancient times. If that attacked civ was even towards the end of the modern times in discovering the technologies the new civ would only discover all the non modern technologies and would have to start learning all the modern technologies. I think this would be fair to not give the new civ such a huge start but just enough so they would have a chance to survive and maybe even rise to greatness.

[polypheus]

Barbarians and Cultural Density

One refinement I'd like to add to enhance realism and make ICS very risky is to implement the idea of barbarian strength (i.e. the number and strength of assaults) being inversely proportional to cultural density.

Cultural Density=Cultural Points*Population/(Num of Cities)

Barbarian Strength (number and strength of raids) = 1/Cultural Density

Thus if you perform ICS, then your cultural density will be low and the more ICS you perform the closer to zero it will get. Eventually it will becomes so low that the barbarians strength will increase to such a point that your entire ICS empire will collapse from overwhelming barbarian attack.

This would not make ICS impossible but extremely risky and more ICS you do (i.e. the more closer to zero is your cultural density).

On the other hand if you perform a more perfectionist strategy by building a smaller number of high population, high culture cities, barbarian strength is lower.

This is both extremely realistic, historic and is the ultimate solution to ICS!

Under this formulation, 8 out of 10 times, ICSers will crumble under the assault of barbarians "re-assimilating" their low-culture cities back to barbarian lands!

[KrazyHorse]

This latest idea of yours is really a good idea, polypheus.

[polypheus]

For those of you who want to comment on the "Cultural Density" idea, please do so at the new forum thread: Barbarian Strength = 1/Cultural Density

For comments on my original ideas for improving the barbarian model, especially in the areas not relating to ICS, however, please continue in this thread.