How strong will the Barbarians be??

[kolpo]

oh governments can be edited that is awsome I think that barabrians can then also be edited and I would like to do that because in reality wheren't the barabrians demons from hell who attack everyone they see, they where just primitive tribes who defended there lands, there was lot's of diplomacy between the Romans and the barbarians.
All civs have barbarians as roots, barbarians already exixts for 3 million years, civilization only for less then 10000 years. Those barbarians where certainly not mindless aggressive bastards who attacked everyone they see.

[Inverse Icarus]

tishco, having the game on "dont restart elininated players" doesn't matter with revolutions.

if there is a big enough civ (yours included), and its capital is taken, their civ splits in half.

i wish there was a better way of doing this in civ3, like it the culture of one area was less than the whole empire, or something.

you know, so certain "abused" cities (we all had those "war" cities that didnt have many buildings) would revolt into their own nation

[boca]

Regardless of how strong the barbarians will be, i think it will be cool if you could negotiate with them.
You know, maybe convice them to attack some neighbors for a little money or technology.
You can allways attack them without damaging your reputation, so this could be a new strategy.

[General Ludd]

You could negotiate with them in civ2, if they came to an undefended city, they'd often ask for a sum of gold for them to leave you in peace.

[Sabre2th]

That't not really negotiating. They could only make that one small demand. Besides, experienced civers should never have problems with that.

[star mouse]

mmm, barbarians ....

You must play differently with these guys wreaking havoc all over the map. Unescorted settlers are just asking for trouble. I usually send some defensive unit with them so they already have defense when they found the city. This is better anyway, because instead of having the new city use its own meagre resources to create non-veteran defense, you can get your better cities building veteran defensive units for new cities.

I remember when a barbarian raiding party found an undefended city one day and the barbarian leader said "we won't attack the city of ... if you give us 1300 gold". My choice was to give them most of my gold or lose the new city. But I actually HAD a choice, and I thought that was cool.

So you CAN negotiate with Barbarians sometimes, if they have a leader.

[Genghis John]

Hmm... Barbarians were always a minor annoyance at best, as long as you had some reasonable defensive units and or the Great Wall, you really didn't have to worry about them much at all.

I think it might be interesting if that changed in CivIII.

I'm not one of those historical accuracy obsessed civvers, but in reality for example the Mongols (who are not in the game damn it, so I'm using them as barbarians) were pretty much an unstoppable force, that had to be appeased and delt with, rather than ignored. Even the real Great Wall couldn't stop them.

A barbarian invasion should be a seriously threatening event to your civilization. And as such, should not happen randomly and frequently, but maybe once in a game. And the barbarian chief should have his own diplomacy, and separate AI goals.

Some suggestions:

simple pay off: I'll give you x$ to leave me alone (probably only good for a few rounds)

Bait and switch: Hey, you know the other civ on this island is incredibly wealthly, help me conquer them and I'll split the loot with you.

Etc.

All the while you would be building your own strength, in order to eliminate them from your civ. But make it so you HAVE to deal with barbarians, either militarily or diplomatically.

I think this would be a better gameplay solution, and more fun than simply swatting annoying mosquitos.

GJ

[boca]

And as i pointed out the beauty of this is that you can allways backstab them without affecting your reputation.