Later Era Barbarians

[Ironwood]

I've never had the pleasure of seeing a barbarian unit during the middle ages (or later), but I'd like to ask those that have: do the barbarians ever produce anything better than horsemen? I should hope they produce the best mobile non-wheeled unit of the era (meaning I could even see them using cavalry during the late middle ages). The reason I say non-wheeled is because barbarian tanks just wouldn't make sense (though barbarian infantry, or at least riflemen, do).

So does anyone know the answer to my question?

[ixnay]

I believe the only barbarian units you'll see (without modding) are horsemen, warriors, and galleys. Once most of the territory is settled they'll disappear.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by ixnay37
I believe the only barbarian units you'll see (without modding) are horsemen, warriors, and galleys. Once most of the territory is settled they'll disappear.

Its too bad that they didn't allow the barbs to have different levels of units. I have modded mine to have archers instead of warriors. Wonder how it would play out if the barbs had tanks in 4kBC. Too bad they can't capture cities, wich this would be toggable.

[Ironwood]

Well, I recently played a game on a huge earth map, and there were large portions of Asia (Mongolia, Siberia, and much of Russia) that went uncolonized until well into the industrial age (when people from all over the globe started colonizing the area). I never got a chance to see any units (I was based in South America) aside from triremes that had probably been there for thousands of years), and I wondered if there were ever anything like knights, or even maybe cavalry, both of which I consider perfectly reasonable.

Personally, I don't think having them capture cities would make a whole lot of sense (unless there's the potential for them to become "new civs" upon getting acclimated to the settled life), but one thing I would like to see is destroyed villages (particularly if the settlement they enter is size one, and there isn't much gold to be had, and the production has already been hit that turn). Of course, if they did capture towns, I think they should be pretty quickly reassimilated (cultural reversion).

[Spiffor]

My standard barbs are swordsmen, and advanced ones are knights. It hurts at 4000 bc, but not that much. It's good to have a kind of challenge with the barbs.

But I sure would like to see them much more developed. The idea of barbarian camps is good, but still incomplete. I had some ideas about this in this thread

[Ironwood]

I just skimmed over the thread you referred to, and have suggested many of those very same ideas in threads of my own, back when I was on alt.games.civ2. In Civ3, particuarly with the ability to have more than seven civs, and a number system that discourages endless settlement, I don't think it's quite so necessary to have "barbarian settlements" (an oxymoron, in my opinion). Besides, to have a system that captures this, while also being able to handle nomadic peoples, would be difficult and complex.

Where we disagree is in what the "barbarians" of Civ3 represent. If I read correctly, you consider them to be simply peoples not of the established civs. I believe they represent *hostile,* and moreover unorganized (without a powerful enough leader to negotiate with) peoples not of the established civs.

The civs represent more or less stable, agriculturally based peoples, which, if you look at the way ancient history is taught, is all that really mattered to most people. Various people were said to have conquered "the inhabited world." This was not literally true; there were many people outside the regions dominated by these superstates. These were, however, the only people they felt mattered. (This lazy mode of thinking was, of corse, challenged time and again when "barbarians" managed to conquer the more "civilized" nations).

I think that, as of the beginning of the game, the entirity of the map is actually inhabited by people, but the only ones with a real sense of communal identity (beyond the family, clan, or, at best, the tribe), are the ones in the locations denoted by the existance of a "civilization." "Goody huts" represent the ability of explorers from those "civs" to have adventures by going out and meeting the people of the unaligned tribes. "Barbarians" represent groups of the unaligned who, for fun, profit, or for rectification of percieved wrongs, go out to fight, specifically against the "civilized" people. So long as there are areas that don't identify culturally with an organized nation, there will be people on the fringes, whether they be indigenous, renegade criminals, or, more likely, mixed groups of both, that will raid the settled areas.

Just because there is neither hut, barbarian camp, or civilized settlement, doesn't mean there aren't people living there. Just because, within a city's border's, there isn't a city population unit working a square, doesn't mean there aren't people living there. However, the people living there just aren't significant enough on the stage of history to warrant simulation in a game that already taxes my machine's resources. There are likely hunter-gatherers, isolated farm folk, hardy mountain men, and such, living on those spots. They just don't contribute to the life of the communal center, and in the case of nomads, they probably move around a lot (and there's not a whole lot a city governor can do about it). However, if there's enough food, there will be growth in the city.

The reason barbarians aren't simulated as diplomatic is because their origin runs the gamut from criminal brigiand, nomad turned raider, semi-agrarian angered by governmental policy, adventurers from faraway lands, etc. To simulate all of this would be unreasonable, at this stage. The one thing they have in common is that they don't answer to a master that isn't immediately present (they have no permanent government you can ask to tell them to stop) so, instead, the simulation just produce "camps" (places they come from, whatever it may be), so the player has something to hit when the "barbarians" come a-knocking.

As to their units, I think the barbarians ought to be able to produce the best units (not civ-specific... or maybe even that) the civ they're associated with can produce, rather than those that the whole continent can produce. Often, the leaders of "barbarian" raiders were former military men from the "civilized" area. Mind you, I think it should also be possible for them to conquer *other* barbarian camps, making it possible for a primative civ to have to deal with more military advanced nomads from halfway across the continent (as Europe did when the Huns, having migrated from areas north of more advanced China, where they were known as the Hsuing-Nu, descended upon the Roman Empire). This would be representative of such "nomadic empires" as those of the Huns, the Mongols, and other nomadic peoples of north asia. This would, of corse, mean that the "barbarian AI" would have to target other barbarians as often as their associated civ (a reasonable goal, if they want to plan something big).

[Grrr]

Another one of those wonderful feature of Civ 2 that have gone down the drain. Barbarians do advance.

[Rhuarc]

I think it would make things interesting if in the later ages they allowed the barbarians access to whatever technology they can steal from other civs, only in the later eras they would be considered terrorists, or some other such group.

[zulu9812]

Yeah - I always thought that the barbarians should be like rebel splinter groups, thus they would have the most basic units available in each age. They might not even belong to that age, e.g. Warrior and Chariot in Ancient Age, Spearman and Horseman in Middle Age, Musketman and Knight in Industrial Age and Rifleman and Cavalry in Modern Age. This would show the lack of resources available to rebels, as well as still making them a threat later on in the game.

[player1]

I WANT PIRATES BACK! (naval barabarian landings)

(that would be actually the only way to have late game barabarian in civ3, since all land is already setteled)

[wrylachlan]

Late Game Barbarians = Rebels

How about this?

Once a civilization is destroyed, for every one of the ex-civ's citizens still existing in other civ's cities there is a percentage chance that a military unit from the dead civ will pop up barbarian-style.

These barbarian/rebels will tend to attack cities with the greatest concentration of their own citizens. If they manage to take one over the civ comes back.

Going along with this, when you capture every city of another civ, currently all their units disappear. I think it would be better if a certain percentage of them turn into barbarian/rebels. And maybe the percentage is based on the relative culture of the dead civ. The soldiers of a dead civ with high culture tend to fight on.

I agree with the earlier post though that late-game barbarians/rebels should be limited to foot troops.

[Boris Godunov]

It seems to me the Civ2 barbarian scheme was far better, as not only did you have upgrading units (so they became guerrilas in modern times, which is a very realist threat--ask Spain!), but you had the naval landings (which would help simulate Viking raids) and you had Hordes that arose. Considering the dramatic effect barbarians had on history, I'd like to see them be stronger even in later times (As is, they really are only a nuisance, and their biggest threat is during the Ancient era. Once you get to medeival times, they are a joke).

[Spiffor]

Ironwood :
I consider Barbs as small nations because of their names in Civ : Hittites, Burgundian, Mayans, Khmer... These were sedentary people, with true authourity on them. But you're right there should be some purely nomadic tribes too. But Barb camps do mean some sedentarization (goody huts too : they sometimes turn into a town !)

[ALPHA WOLF 64]

can you imagine the damage a barbarian uprising of 24 riflemen could do? i tried once to make the barbs archers/riflemen not realizing that unlike civ2, the barbs didnt wait til someone got to that tech. I threw nearly my entire army of legionaires against them with no success. Ultimately, i abandoned a city, and spent all the money I had, so that when the barbs arrived all they did was kill and pillage but no gold was left for them to steal. Needless to say, I changed the barbs back to horsmen/elephants (the good old 1.17 days of changing on the fly) but there were barb riflemen walking around for centuries killing off passerbys.

[Inverse Icarus]

"BARBARIANS USE NUCLEAR WEAPONS"

boom.