Barbarians: Are they too weak?

star mouse · December 6, 2001, 18:38

IMO, barbarians are too weak! I play raging hordes all the time, and ONCE have I seen hordes of barbarians riding out of the wilderness and wreaking havoc. Usually, the encampments make ONE barbarian at a time. And why do they disappear after they do damage to a city? Dammit, I want barbarians to be FEARSOME!

How barbarians are now:

How barbarians should be:

Most of the time, the encampments spawn one barbarian at a time, and occasionally spawn lots of them. I think there should be an intermediate step as well, when the encampments spawn four or five of them. This would occur fairly often. A single conscript barbarian warrior with a combat penalty against anything that's not a barbarian is no threat to anything except an unprotected worker or settler. Having four or five of them would make the barbarians a real threat more frequently on the most challenging barbarian setting.

Once all the map is covered in cities, there's no more barbarians. Perhaps at this time barbarians should start spawning as Privateers on the ocean. All privateers look alike because their nationality is hidden, so this would make privateers more interesting to use.

Perhaps barbarians should have an advanced naval unit as well, so we can have some barbarian privateers spawned from encampments in the mid-game.

Someone also suggested the return of barbarians landing on the coast and unloading, in the style of CIV and CIV2.

Alex 14 · December 6, 2001, 19:51

Play the game on diety with raging, then you will want them to go away...

Alex 14 · December 6, 2001, 19:56

Civ Fanatics Difficulty Level Information

adaMada · December 6, 2001, 20:52

I think that Barbarians aren't that bad -- even on Chiefton, they surve an important purpose. That is to make you protect your settlers at the start of the game. It makes it a lot harder to rapidly expand at the start (I tend to rapdily expand at the start and then slow down later) when you have to wait an extra five turns or so to churn out a defensive unit. I've had several cases of (at the start of the game) loosing major pop points through settlers lost to barbarians (because I was too stupid to protect them well)...

Anyway, just my two bits...

-- adaMada

star mouse · December 6, 2001, 21:07

We've been discussing land-based barbarians, but what about barbarians at sea? I've suggested letting Barbarians spawn privateers as an advanced naval unit in the mid-game. Chances are, few privateers will be spawned because all the land is usually covered by then, but it would definitely add to the game to give Barbarians an advanced naval unit in addition to the advanced land unit they already get. No longer will the player see an anonymous privateer and think "Aha! some AI is up to no good". Instead, there will be the question: is it an AI or a barbarian?

adaMada · December 6, 2001, 21:33

Quote:

Originally posted by star mouse
We've been discussing land-based barbarians, but what about barbarians at sea? I've suggested letting Barbarians spawn privateers as an advanced naval unit in the mid-game. Chances are, few privateers will be spawned because all the land is usually covered by then, but it would definitely add to the game to give Barbarians an advanced naval unit in addition to the advanced land unit they already get. No longer will the player see an anonymous privateer and think "Aha! some AI is up to no good". Instead, there will be the question: is it an AI or a barbarian?

Would probably be a positive, but there really aren't many barbarians around when you get to the time you can build privateers, so I don't know how much practical value it has...

-- adaMada

simwiz2 · December 6, 2001, 22:04

the privateer idea is good IMO. esp when MP comes out, privateers will be better because the other person wont know if its you or barbarians (if barbarians dont get privateers, and its a 1v1 mp, its going to be ovbious its you) since there wont be any more camps, maybe they should spawn randomly (pirates)? then even a peaceful country would need a small navy to fight the pirates and keep them from killing their transport/explore ships. also maybe they should get a kind of guerilla warrior (2.1.3?) so that killing pirate ships can prevent them from landing on your shores and killing workers and pillaging

Nadexander · December 7, 2001, 00:44

Quote:

Originally posted by star mouse
No longer will the player see an anonymous privateer and think "Aha! some AI is up to no good".

The AI is never up to any good. We need some randomized AI leader personalities. Sometimes agressive, some times cooperative and trusting, some times erratic, etc etc.

Quote:

Instead, there will be the question: is it an AI or a barbarian?

Whats the difference?