Novice questions: barbarians and 16 civs

[planetfall]

Ok ready to change game play a bit and have 2 very basic questions:

1- how do you get 16 civs?
Present game I left all at random except my selected civ and only got 8 civs total.

2-what happens to game play when barbarians are very mobile?
Other than having stronger defensive strength and making goodies more expensive, what does activating barbarians do to the play experience?

[Arrian]

1) I believe you have to change the max # of civs for the map size you wish to play in the editor. 8 civs is the standard max # for standard maps. To get more you've gotta change it.

2) Well, I suppose the thrill of fighting off the barbarian hordes (you'll get a lot more uprisings). That, and more unit promotions from fighting the barbs. I don't like them much, and play with them "roaming."

-Arrian

[planetfall]

Ok, forgot about checking the editor. duh.

I have played with sedentary so far as I could not imagine how any of the other settings would improve game play. But...since option is there, though I should try it at least once.

[Sinapus]

Originally posted by planetfall
Ok, forgot about checking the editor. duh.

I have played with sedentary so far as I could not imagine how any of the other settings would improve game play. But...since option is there, though I should try it at least once.

Try "Raging Hordes" if you like pain. (And watching 24 horsemen repeatedly sacking one of your cities.) Of course, if you send out hunter-killer units to roam areas you haven't settled, you have a good chance of avoiding that.

[cracker]

Increasing the barb level has several effects that are not well documented and/or fully understood.

First, at the early steps it determines if barbs stay put in their villages or can leave the villages and wander around on the map after a second barb unit gets produced in the village.

Second, the barb activity level determines how quickly a second, third, and so on barb unit will get produced in each village. There appears to be some randomness to these timings but in general at higher barb levels, villages may start to appear with more than one unit present. "It takes a village to raise a barb."

Third, the activity level effects the size of the barb uprising that may occur. On Roaming, an uprising will generally spawn 8 units and on Raging the spawn will be 24 units. These uprisings have been horsemen in my experience but I am not sure that is guaranteed.

A programming decision that could be viewed as a bug by some players, has every barbarian village on the entire world go into uprising at the same instant. So if there are 10 villages and one of them gets old enough to meet the conditions for an uprising, then "bonzai" all the villages boil over at one time.

The barb level may also set the time limit on how fast the villages boil over but that is unconfirmed as of yet.

Many of these variables have some sort of a cummulative effect, so that the first barb village will rarely go into uprising right off the bat. As the game progresses and more and more barb villages are encountered, then the chance of them going mental goes way up. This could just be a factor of how the contact with barbs progresses over time and may not really be a case of barbs getting progressively worse until they hit the boiling point, but at this stage in time I have the feeling they get progressively worse until you begin to control the unsettled areas of the map.

You can get barbs at any stage of the game if the conditions are met for their magical appearance on the map. You can be in the modern age with armors and stealth bombers, and if you raze and clear a large enough tract of land barb warriors will beam in out of a time tunnel from 6000 years in your past and start running down the sidewalks of you major cities.

With the exception of the simultaneous barbarian uprising problem that really creates problems in a number of scenarios, I enjoy playing with lots of barbs and usually keep the level higher because the barbs can be an extra source of income in the early game that will give you 25 to 50 extra gold per turn. The barbs also serve as prime training ground to produce elite units before you wage a war with a real civ and that will set you up to increase the chance of a great leader earlier.

Remember also that the barb level seems to impact the frequency with which you will get barbs out of the goody huts and it also effects whether you will get one, two, or three barbs out of each hut. The exception is for expansionist civs (America, Russia, England, etc.) and these civs never get barbarians puked out of goodie huts.

One trick for dealing with barbs involves the locating of barb villages by reversing the AI players ability to cheat and see any units anywhere on the map even if the AI players have never seen those map regions. You can purchase or trade for a World map from any civ and it will currently reveal all the locations of the barb villages that are in areas of the map that are not "black" to you.

The second trick is to stay in frequent contact with your military schmo and he will give you a rough hint of the location of the nearest barb village.

A third trick is to remember that you can lead barbs toward other civs if you carefully plan your moves. Then let the barbs attack your enemy and soften them up before you move in and deliver the coup de gras.

A forth trick/key point is to remember that barb tribes have no meaning, they are just labels for aesthetic purposes. Barb warriors and barb horsemen from different tribes can move in and out of each others villages and coagulate into mixed tribe barb hordes from hell. This is at first a bit disconcerting because you are so used to not being able to have units from more than one civ be in the same square at the same time.

A fifth trick is to make sure you spend ALL of your cash in you treasury by rushing units, buying techs or giving gifts to other civs, before the barbs can sack you and suck you dry. In many cases, you can get the gold back in just a few turns if you are a wise manager of the trade and the barb farms.

A sixth trick is to use terrain and movement wisely, often these bonuses will be the key to dying in a stupid attack at the wrong time versus slaughtering barbs by the billions on defense. (the same holds true when the A/D/M values are reversed. Know your difficulty level and the attack bonus that it may afford you against barbs.

Crank it up, live a little.

[Jethro83]

My current game, I'm playing as the Aztecs with Raging barbarian activity. The barbarian camps that continually pop up are a steady source of extra gold. The Aztec UU's mobility makes this accumulation of barbarian gold even more efficient. I'm certain the Zulu UU would do the same, only a little later than the Jag. Warrior. So I can tell you now, that when you have the right kind of approach, and hordes of troops roaming the countryside, raging barbarians is an excellent option. Without the gold I pilfered from them, I wouldn't have been able to buy my way ahead in technology.

[Sinapus]

Originally posted by cracker
A third trick is to rememebr that you can lead barbs toward other civs if you carefully plan your moves. Then let the barbs attack your enemy and soften them up before you move in and deliver the coup de gras.

Crank it up, live a little.

YM the "Oh my poor Scout/Explorer has broken his leg and is limping away... will those barbarians capture him?" trick?

[planetfall]

Ok, as a rule of thumb how many extra military units do you need to deal with raging barbs? I have been keeping inside cities light with 1 or 2 but guess is with raging barbs, I would be needed 2-3.

[Sinapus]

Originally posted by planetfall
Ok, as a rule of thumb how many extra military units do you need to deal with raging barbs? I have been keeping inside cities light with 1 or 2 but guess is with raging barbs, I would be needed 2-3.

3-4, to be cautious. As many as you can get there, to be paranoid.

(It's those 24 horsemen hordes that make me feel you should have a chance to get a Great Leader from a battle w/barbarians. If your units survive that sort of onslaught, it has to be due to leadership by someone.)

[cracker]

Originally posted by planetfall
Ok, as a rule of thumb how many extra military units do you need to deal with raging barbs?

That is not really the right question to ask. The number of barbs you will get to deal with depends on the terrain area that is unsettled but adjacent to your territory and just out of your main bright viewing area.

If you are totally surrounded very quickly by other civs, then you may never see that many barbs and your problems will be more obvious.

If you are on the outside of the doughnut, then barbs will be all around you.

I play lots of maps with all the civs starting in contact, but with separate landmasses that must be conquered to gain resources and win most of the game conditions. These maps can be big dog different if the barbs are set to rag-o-mundo.

Terrain determines your chances of successfully defending against a barb horde at the 24 level, but usually I do not try to defend if I can make sure the barbs are headed to the local saloon in a corrupt frontier town. Since I unload the gold, sell off any one or two improvements that might be lost, rush any units that might be gained and run away like a Monty Python crusader, then the barbs just whoop and holler and run into town stealing maybe 1 gold per barb per turn and killing off a few citizens before evaporating.

When you try to defend, the barbs will usually kill off most if not all of your 4 or 5 defenders and then just sack the village anyway.

Let them drink themselved to death and then go kill their village and get the 25 gold bounty on the bastards.

For perspective, the largest number of barbs I have had to deal with in a one or two turn period was on a Large map with 240 horseman (10 separate hordes) all at the same time the equivalent of thousands of miles apart.

The simultaneous uprising problem is really misimplemented when you see these larger map scenarios.

[Jaybe]

I DEMAND Equal Rights for Barbarians!!
NO Combat Advantage for "Civilizations"!

(Change it in the Editor, unless you are playing at Diety in which case it's already there)

Isn't it enough that AI hasn't got half a brain?? Do we have to have combat advantages over 1-and-2 strength units also??

Besides, this way the AI can also be victimized by the bloody barbs!