Hut! Hut! Hike!

[Bleyn]

Sandman: Yes. The barbarian village is the new version of the goodie hut, so far as we can tell.

And maybe its just a mistaken impression on my part, but I was under the impression that those barbarian villages were not going to be simple huts to open, and get a free prize most of the time. That you would actually have to fight the barbarians and wipe them out to get the reward.

To me this will go a long way to balancing them. Before, at least in the early game, the reward always outweighed the risk of unleashing barbarians. Now, if my memory/understanding is correct, you have to think about it a lot more. Questions like "Can I afford to risk loosing this unit?" become a much larger factor.

And it appears to me that this factor of the new design is one that everyone here is ignoring. Another item that people seem to be ignoring is that right now, so far as I know, we have no clue what the goodie huts/barbarian villages are actually going to produce and in what ratios. Its entirely possible that the majority of them will produce only marginal rewards. Or they have come up with a range of possible new rewards. They may even have come up with some new negative "rewards" to complicate matters further. Unless someone asks them, and they actually answer, we just aren't going to know how balanced they are until we play the game.

Personally, I'm not going to worry about it too much, even then. I think they did a wonderful job of balancing the supply pods in SMAC. They were provided with a reasonable in game context for being there. They had a wide range of possible outcomes, including more than one possible negative outcome. The best positive outcomes were rather infrequent. And to utilize the best positive outcome, IMO, the alien artifact, you had to build a structure in your cities that could only have one of them linked, unless you built the secrect project, and even that required you to move the alien artifact to that particular city. I mean what more could you ask for in balancing it?

Ok, I can think of one thing that could be interesting, and that would be having the ratio of rewards on the huts adjusted with each play level. So that playing at deity you are much more likely to get barbarian hordes than at chieftain.

[Grim Legacy]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Metamorph, barbarians get a very high attack bonus on the higher difficulty levels (I believe it's 50%).

This bonus does not exist when a barbarian attacks the AI's units, however.

That is disappointing news. One more blatant cheat for the AI to chalk up.

I think such a strong bias in attack/defense matters is one of the most annoying type of cheats, and one of the ones that slap you right in the face instead of covertly stabbing you in the back like they should. :P

[faded glory]

From what ive heard. There are no huts. There are 'Barbarian encampments' that act as there own citys spawning Modern Rebel troops now and then. I havent heard of goodie huts in Civ3 yet. I suppose its possible there are some. But the encampment Idea was an awesome one!

[saracen31]

I would imagine there's some kind of "goodie hut" or the like, to keep in the spirit of Sid's fun factor.

I do like the idea of the barbarian encampments though - hopefully if you take one over, it will have some improvements in it (ie. barracks, temple, etc). I always hated taking over cities with no improvements whatsoever - had to play a lot of catch up.

[Marquis de Sodaq]

Re: Hut! Hut! Hike!

Originally posted by Metamorph
And neither of the games allow you to turn OFF the bloody things.

Actually, you can turn them off in CivII. It's not a simple toggle, but it's there for you to do. Start a game. Before doing anything, open cheat mode and save it as a scenario. In the scenario parameters popup, click on "wipe goody boxes." Voila! No huts. Save, quit, begin a scenario - the one you just created. In 15 seconds, you have a hutless game.

[Cyclotron]

And the makers of Civ, in their infinite uh... wisdom, grant a defensive bonus of some sort to units in funky terrain -- and no bonus whatsoever for the poor barbarians. Heck, sometimes I even get a veteran merit badge out of the deal. Whee! And then I capture the barbarian chieftain. Woohoo! Bring on the huts!

Did you know that RIVER *slobber* *drool* gives a +50% defensive bonus to units? Argh.

Uh, what???

It's called defensible terrain. Not only does this have nothing to do with the hut issue, but it's a pathetic attempt to discredit an entirely realistic and fair feature of all Civ games. Of course hills and rivers give you more defense! "Yeah, but I guess forsests are really funky terrain. I mean, who ever heard of a FOREST?!?"

Why the **** was this meaningless statement part of your rant?

[Harlan]

I think the big problem with goody huts is the giving of a free settler or city. If this were removed as options, they would not be so destabilizing. I've always especially disliked the free city because 99% of the time it pops up in a spot that makes a lousy place to build a city.

Simply replace the free settler with a free Worker. That will help your civ, but not in the same destabilizing way. One reason a free Settler or city could be so destablizing is because you could suddenly develop a new section of your civ several continents away. Whereas if you get a Worker, you'd have to bring it back close to your already existing cities for it to do any good.

Also Metamorph,
I admire your passion, but I think Krazy Horse' point is that you'll win more converts if you describe features of the game as nauseatingly idiotic, instead of people's comments as nauseatingly idiotic. Diplomacy will get you farther.

Oh, and you need not worry about river bonuses, because rivers now run between squares. Hopefully there is still a bonus if you attack across a river, but that will be less frequent, and maybe not even possible without a bridge.