Barbarian Threats

Kull · August 18, 2000, 22:33

At one time or another we've all received the "Barbarian Threat" - "Pay up or we Sack your City...Bwahaha!". An upcoming scenario will put a new twist on this old "feature" but first, of course, the subject had to be researched. Here's what I learned:

Ever wonder why sometimes you get "the Threat" while other times the Barbarians just conquer your city? Gold is the key. I ran a series of tests involving different numbers of cities and different amounts in the treasury and the results were pretty consistent. (Note: Tested using Fantastic Worlds and MGE at Deity.)

1) There are at least three minimum demand amounts - 50, 75, & 100 Gold. During the course of the test, the minimum started at 50, grew to 75 and ultimately reached 100 by the time the test ended. Unfortunately I have not been able to pin down what leads to this growth. It may be related to number of cities and/or types of Techs.

2 If your treasury has more than twice the minimum (and it doesn't matter how much more), the Barbarians will demand half. If you have an odd amount of gold, the Barbarian demand is rounded down. So if your treasury has 203 gold, they'll ask for 101.

3) If your treasury has less than the minimum (49, 74, or 99), there is no demand, just conquest.

4) Barbarians never demand tribute from a city with defenders. The "threat" will only occur after they kill the last defender and IF they have at least one unit with movement points.

5) Another puzzle was the list of Barbarian Tribe Names in the City.txt file. There's no such thing as Barbarian Settlers, and if you cheat them into existence they won't found a city. I think this is the answer - it's part of the "Barbarian Threat" message. The text box reads as follows:

"The Leader of the Barbarian [Tribe Name here] has sent us a message. "We shall mercilessly sack the city of ### unless you pay us ### gold at once!""

A test involving 10 different cities generated threats from 9 different tribes. The Burgundians threatened my capital, and then it was Avars, Frisians, Vandals, Huns, etc threatening the other cities. There was no discernible pattern. First came the Burgundians (9th on the city.txt list), followed by the Avars (10th), Frisians (15th), Vandals (11th), Huns (1st), Ostrogoths (3rd), etc. The first time a city is threatened, the choice of Barbarian tribe appears to be random. However, the SAME tribe will ALWAYS threaten the same city. Thus the capital was always threatened by the Burgundians.

This might seem VERY esoteric, but there are some neat things you can do with this. Trust me.

William Keenan · August 19, 2000, 00:22

With your permission Kull, I would like to include your finding into the Barbarian Paper.

As to what causes the minimum gold demand (point #1 above), I can offer and educated guess on the topic.

My experience is that all changes having to do with barbarians are tied to technological discoveries. The most profound changes occur with the discovery of Gunpowder, Industrialization, and Mobile Warfare. Therefore, I would consider those three techs the most likely canidates for effect on the barbarian's demand for tribute.

Kull · August 19, 2000, 01:11

By all means, William!

As to your Tech suggestions, none of those three had been researched during the period of the test. I agree that Techs are usually the driving factor behind Barbarian Changes, but I only had about 3 or 4 through the whole period of the test, and all were pretty primitive. So it's just as likely to be related to size of civ (# of cities), government type, the number of times they previously "attacked" the civ, or some ungodly combination!

It never ceases to amaze me that we can still wring new tricks from this ancient game.

William Keenan · August 19, 2000, 02:18

OK, no more guesses, here it is.

The minimum demand is the city size * 25. But, not less then fifty in any case. I also confirmed that barbarians will demand one half the treasury if the treasury is greater then twice the demand.

Sten Sture · August 23, 2000, 13:48

Great catch both of you!

This has been a topic of discussion on and off on the Strategy board for a while, but we hadn't picked up on the city size issue. More than one guy has been burned by spending cash down to 51 coins and moving defenses out of a size three city.

I don't recall if it is in the Barb Paper, but there was a recent thread countering the usual defender invulnerability in your capital city before you found other cities. I have linked that thread and this one in a new thread on the Strat board.
http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum3/HTML/001369.html?0#0

Again - great work!

Scouse Gits · August 29, 2000, 09:38

Well done guys - this is truly useful information and thanks to Sten and his cross pollination [grovel]those of us with such lack of taste as to not commonly frequent this forum[/grovel] we shall all learn from it - Definitely a candidate for the proposed Great Library

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Scouse Git[1]

"CARTAGO DELENDA EST" - Cato the Censor

William Keenan · August 30, 2000, 00:25

These finding are not yet included in the Barbarian Paper but will be included in the next version 1.14.

St Leo · September 5, 2000, 22:39

I once had a similar problem - more details, please.

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St. Leo
http://ziggurat.sidgames.com/
http://www.sidgames.com/forums/

Jim Winchell · September 6, 2000, 00:50

While playing the Crusades scenario the other day, I noticed "barbarians in limbo." The designer had barbarians appearing via events, but he mistakenly made the hex location: odd number, even number. Someone had pointed this out before that units appearing this way are invisible, but they can be seen moving. They can't attack, although they do have a ZOC and can be bribed.

What I noticed but may not have been mentioned before was that the barbarians were pillaging every thing in sight and there wasn't anything I could do about it, other than form a wall of units around the barbarians.

Could be useful to represent partisan warfare without being able to attack the partisans. Or an unstoppable plague or global warming?

Jim Winchell · September 6, 2000, 16:23

>I once had a similar problem - more details, please

In the Crusades scenario, the designer had barbarian units (halbardiers) appearing in Toledo. When that city fell, the alternative map coordinates for the appearance of the unit was an odd#/even#. Soon there were dozens of invisible barbarian units that were pillaging the map and blocking the movement of my units. You could only see them when they moved.

Apparently if you have an unit appear via events and put the appearance coordinates down as even#/odd# instead of odd#/odd# or even#/even# then the unit appears in "limbo." It is invisible except when it moves. It blocks movement through the hex it is in and has a ZOC. It cannot attack or be attacked, although it can be bribed. If it is a barbarian unit and it is bribed, then the unit is destroyed and gives the player the reward bonus for killing a barbarian leader. The unit in limbo can still pillage hexes.