Barbarian Strength = 1/Cultural Density: The solution to ICS!

[Juggernaut]

ICS style civs would get the **** beaten out of them in real life.

yeah? why...technically, there´s absolutely no impossibilty. if they manage to be unattacked, that is.

besides, i myself, consider ICS to be really fun.

i think the effort to make a real ICS should pay off. while you´re making a pathetic settler every turn, your neighbour civ builds Hanging Gardens and developing an effecient road network. if you notice a foreign civ are doing ICS, its very easy to attack and eradicate them.

both the perfectionalist and the expansionalist style should be encouraged, none of them disabled.

[Juggernaut]

ofcourse the ICS advantage should be reduced, but it should be done in a realistic way, and not with an dumb, obvious punishment.

if the idea of removing the max-1-unit production-per-turn idea becomes reality, we already we have a more realistic and fun way to reduce this.

[Jarouik]

I think the idea is in no way unrealistic... and I like it a lot: the lower the culture rating in an area, the more Barbarians will appear. Of course, I do not think Barbarians should constantly appear on continents not colonized by any of the civs, but if you start founding cities with a low culture rating on uncivilized areas, you would encounter some resistance - even explorers might encounter hostile native Barbarians, although that is already represented by the huts.

The point here is that culture rating in Civilization 3, according to what I've read, represents the cultural influence your civilization has on its surroundings. The more libraries, Wonders etc. you have built, the more civilized the people on areas surrounding your cities are and the more prone to be affected by your culture to such an extent that they would not attack it. Since the culture rating increases the range of your civilization's borders, it should also push back Barbarians - I think Barbarians in Civ, especially now that they have cities and such, represent the indigenous people of a certain area that are not a part of your culture.

It seems only logical that the further your culture spreads, the less Barbarians reside near your cities. In addition, it might even make sense that a high culture rating would increase your cities' growth, as more and more people from the surrounding areas are affected by the city and might move to its vicinity or otherwise be considered part of your population.

Of course, this does not count for rebels and such, which I feel should appear as Barbarian units even if your culture rating is high if there is too much unhappiness/disorder in your cities. I think Civ 2 had no such feature - only the random Barbarians appearing in the middle of nowhere would sometimes be called rebels in the message informing the player.

[Jarouik]

Oh, I only now noticed Polypheus already suggested the rebels/insurgents as well in an earlier, excellent thread of his, http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=21358...

[KrazyHorse]

The idea of a high "Culture Density" lowering the chances of barbarian attacks is in no way unrealistic. I would also like to suggest that it be non-uniform (as somebody else already has). The way I would envision this is by the following:

P=F/(C1/d1+C2/d2+...+Cn/dn)

where P is the probability of a barbarian army appearing on a given tile, C1 is the #of culture points from city "1", C2 is the # of culture points from city "2", etc., d1 is the distance from the given tile to city "1", d2 is the distance from the given tile to city "2", etc. (note that all cities on the world are counted, not just the player's, and that there are "n" cities on the world), and F is an arbitrary scale factor which can be altered to affect gameplay. What this means in ordinary terms is that, while it is possible for barbarians to appear even at the centre of well-developed empires, they are much more likely to appear on the fringes of empires or within an undeveloped ICS empire. "F", the scale factor, could even be altered so that it changes as the date advances. This way, it would allow an empire the chance to get some improvements built before they're attacked by numerous hordes of barbarians. F could be very low for the first few turns, but then begin to rise as time goes on, until an empire with very low culture in 0 a.d. or later would be virtually assured of barbarian annihilation. To get back to why culture rating affecting the frequency of barbarian attacks is not unrealistic, you've got to realize that the barbarians don't come from nowhere; they're derived from the indigenous, uncivilized inhabitants of a region. If a region has a high culture density, then its inhabitants are more likely to become peaceable farmers, artisans, or merchants than they are to become nomadic raiders.

[Urban Ranger]

If your empire starts to develop a culture, but not a very high culture, the neigbouring indigenous peoples will see you as a heretic trying to encrouch on their existence, thus the increase in "barbarian hordes." However, if your culture is high enough, these peoples will begin to see the benefits of civ advances, things that make their life easier and richer. Thus, instead of attacking they may well start converting to your way.


KrazyHorse,

The original suggestion was to increase the "strength" of barbarian attacks. As I see it inceasing the frequency and strength (they are really mad) makes more sense.

[JamesJKirk]

Maybe an ambush multiplier and a chance for the barbs to destory a building or take money from the city's coffers would be more appropriate than a regular strength increase?

[polypheus]

It is good to see many people support this idea! I only hope that Firaxis can at least look into this.

Many people have raised various points so let me address them in turn.

1. The Meaning of Barbarian Strength
I did not intend barbarian strength to mean increased attack and defense ratings. What I meant by barbarian strength was the frequency of attacks and the size of the attacking forces. But the barbarians should be using standard units with standard ratings otherwise.

2. Is the model realistic?
I believe it is quite realistic! As others have pointed out, culture represents the amount of influence you have on the as yet to be civilized barbarian nomands. The more influence you have, the less nomadic and warlike and the more they want to settle down and become civilized themselves and join your your civ as the see the benefits of civilized life.

Also keep in mind that when you build these villages, you are building also in lands that barbarians might consider as theirs as well! Why should barbarians just let you take over all these lands with your sea of villages? So barbarians should consider it a threat to their very livelihood and resist you!

And if you look at the way the Roman Empire fell, you can see some correlation with "cultural density". Notice that the first regions to fall were Britain, then Gaul (France), Spain, and finally Italy was the last to fall in the Western Roman Empire. The Eastern Roman Empire (or Byzantine Empire) lasted for another 1000 years and Greece finally fell to the Turks. But if you look at where the barbarians attacked and which regions of the Roman Empire fell first you might notice that low population, underdeveloped area fell first (low cultural density) but high cultural density areas fell last.

Also look at where the Vikings attacked during the era of Viking raids. Notice they attacked low cultural density areas mostly such as Russia and Britain.

3. Model Refinements
KrazyHorse makes a good suggestion to regionalize barbarian strength since cultural density is not uniform, so let me take his idea and expand it further. How about this?

Regional Barbarian Strength =
n/(c1/d1 + c2/d2 + ... + cn/dn)

n is the total number of cities
dn is the distance of city n to a certain region
cn is the cultural points of city n

As KH suggests, the formula should include all cities of the world.

Conclusion:
I think it is a very good, realistic, historic model that will add tremendously to gameplay and solve the unrealistic and stupid ICS strategy from working ALL the time.

Since it does NOT require new game mechanics, it is also extremely easy for Firaxis to implement! So I hope that this idea is given some consideration!

[KrazyHorse]

Just a quick remark: Polypheus, I think you meant "cn" when you wrote "c3", but other than this, your refined model is exactly what I was trying to propose.

[KrazyHorse]

Or not. Just looked at it again...you also want to penalize for the total number of cities in the world. The only problem is that this would penalize everyone on a map for another player's ICSing. Maybe the "n" on top should just count your cities.

[polypheus]

After further thought and after reading KrazyHorse's comment that a far away ICS Civ should not affect local babarian hostility, I have come up with a new model which should address these concerns.

Define barbarian Hostility to be the frequency and the size of a barbarian attack towards a given city.

Then
Barbarian Hostility towards City i = n/(Ci + C1/D1 + C2/D2 + ... + Cn/Dn)

where Ci is the cultural points of city i
Cn is the cultural points of city n
Dn is the distance between city i and city n
n is the total number of cities
and only Cities closer than, say, 12 squares from City i are included in the Barbarian Hostility formula.

This prevents far away ICS Civs from having any affect on the local barbarian hostilty towards city i.

The actual formula might need to be tweaked a little based how cultural points are actually accumulated and such but this formula embodies the basic idea.

[KrazyHorse]

Fine with me...cities past 12 tiles away would make less difference anyway.

[Sabre2th]

I fell asleep while reading this thread. Too many formulas! I like the idea anyway.

[To_Serve_Man]

Maybe this is like communism, "It worked on paper"


The Romans had much culture, yet a major part to the Roman collapse was pressure from those vicious barbarians

and also I think that there are many new elements to the game added already to combat ICS. Such as Culture and luxuary items.

[KrazyHorse]

Yeah, but the barbarians came from the fringes of the empire, not the centre. The attacked from the outside, and since the Romans had let their borders grow weak, the barbarians were able to ride all the way to Rome unhindered.