Barbarian order of appearance?

[DieHardGamer]

Has anyone ever fully researched how, when, and why barbarians appear?


I'm trying to finish my first modpack, but the appearance of barbarians is not happening like I believed it was supposed to. Does anyone have a definitive list of barbarian order of appearance?

[EnochF]

Er, okay, mind you, every time I try and help somebody who asks a question, I inevitably turn out to be wrong...

But all I can tell you is keep careful track of your units. Be careful to avoid putting powerful, late-game units into the "horseman" and "archer" slot, or else they'll wipe our your empire as barbarians. Be wary of putting air or sea units into these slots, too.

Barbarians can be:

Early game: Archers, legions (from goodie huts only), horsemen.
A little later in the early game: Chariots, elephants, triremes (at sea).
Mid-game: Crusaders, knights, caravels (at sea).
Later mid-game: Galleons (at sea).
Industrial: Riflemen, cannons, frigates (at sea).
Modern: Artillery, partisans, fanatics.

Let's see... as far as technology goes, the only one to be careful of is guerrilla warfare. That might make partisans appear too early.

Does that help?

(Oops, here come the experienced scenario designers, marching in to correct me...)

[Ecce Homo]

Seems most of this is right, but I have seen a lot of barbarian Dragoons and Cavalry, but never a Chariot.

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The best ideas are those that can be improved.
Ecce Homo

[mrtemba]

I've seen em.

[DieHardGamer]

We all know that at some point in the game uprisings change from horsemen and chariots to elephants, but what triggers the change?

I know it is definitely not polytheism and it doesn’t seem to be the Renaissance or the Industrial revolution either. So what triggers it?

Is it Twenty-five cities? A thousand dead pikemen? The invention of peanuts?

It's not just the elephants either. The elephants change into musketeers and cannons and then they change to guerillas, fanatics and cavalry. The pirates start as archers, then turn to legions, then knights and crusaders, followed by dragoons. The goody huts seem even weirder.

Not knowing would not be so bad except that when I design my scenarios, the first uprisings are the musketeers rather then the horsemen that I expected. In fact the horsemen chariots and elephants never appear and I have no idea what it was that I did to cause that to happen.

There are so many scenario makers out there that I can not be the only one to have had this problem. If so I would think at least one person must have figured it out, right?

[techumseh]

This is only my theory. When one of the civs discovers the prerequisite advance for the next type of barbarian unit, the game changes the type produced. I've never tested this, but it fits what I have observed.

[DieHardGamer]

I agree Techumseh. The only possible triggers for the barbarian unit change is tech advance and turn number. Most likley the truth is both.

[St Leo]

In my modpack which greatly accelerated the advance rate, the Barbarians were way behind the times. Therefore, turn number is the most logical conclusion.:-)

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St. Leo
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[Ken Hinds]

A while back in either the general or strategy forums we were discussing barbarian technology and the best that we could come up with was that they get whatever most advanced military tech has been discovered by any Civ either AI or human. Someone else also noted that they had been savaged by barbarian TANKS. None of the rest of us had seen this nor did we ever want to. If they get tanks somehow then they might get howies or nukes also.

On second thought, that might not be so bad after all. If you could allow Barbarians to acquire Advanced flight, nukes, and the automobile you might be able to create a scenario where some international non-governmental group obtains modern weapons of (Mass)destruction. Unlike Hollywood or many of the current novelists you wouldn't have to make them a member of any particular ethnic group. They could be like the SLA, Weather Underground, or Bader-Meinhoff oranization. You might have a real race to see who could take over the world first, the AI, the Human player(s), or the no longer barbarian Barbarians.

Ken

[DieHardGamer]

I think a group of us should research the whole tech tree during every epoch to see if we can map the complete order of apearance out.

[freakske]

i noticed that when you play on chieftain, and you're way before the others in tech and power,the barbarians appeare as knights,while i already have artillery and alpine troops.i think it takes the average tech(i mean the the tech most players own)so
if 5players can only build knights and maybe 2 others an build artillery, the majority wins, so the barbs ar knights.Or it might be a time trigger, so maybe xxxxAD triggers the partisans or something like that, this also explains why you can build tanks already and the barbarians stay in the stone age.

[freakske]

by the way , i've already played lots of scenarios with barbarian nukes

[Michael Daumen]

I have designed scenarios with a lot of barbarian cities, and sometimes I see messages saying the "barbarian" nations have developed technologies. I tried to experiment with the Great Library and Leonardo's Workshop to upgrade barbarian units, but it never worked. Maybe an events file can give a technology to the barbarian civ and Leo can then upgrade the units.

[DieHardGamer]

I have finished reseaching the topic. Mr. Temba will post the findings on his site in a few days.

By the way it is based on techs.

Thanks for your input guys!

[DieHardGamer]

Accutally one of the things I discovered was that barbarian cities do upgrade there production when players discover certian techs.