Barbs & Bad RNG

[Lisan al Gaib]

The more I play this game (I have a lot of playtime) the more I notice bad and lazy mechanics in this game. I have absolutely given up on trying to understand some of the Barbarian mechanics. I play with disaster intensity on low because I can't be bothered to extend my games by 80 turns just to keep pace with bad mechanics. Even in cases where you are proactive the game just throws random things your way to hinder your progress. Example: Fast researching Buttress to build an early dam. Even if I do this on a river that has NOT flooded ONCE all game, lo and behold once my Dam is 1-5 turns from completion a massive flood will hit destroying all districts. That same river also won't flood a single time after the dam is completed--how convenient.

It's the same with Barbarians. Even with a proactive approach the unexplained mechanics just hurt the player. Barbs are a crucial part of the game and I think ultimately their purpose is valid. But having broken mechanics based on weird RNG is not how to implement them. STOP HURTING PLAYERS PLAYING CORRECTLY. They constantly contradict their own logic so I've given up trying to predict barbs in this game. And this is coming from someone with a LOT of experience in this game. This game is too filled with inconvenient RNG that just slows game play. Even in your best playthroughs the same natural disaster will hit you over and over and over and over. Just about to boost Feudalism???? NOPE. Multiple consecutive droughts. Early craftsmanship? NOPE. FLOOD your tiles you LITERALLY just improved. No reward for the player that goes early builder. This isn't fun. I understand disasters & barbs to some extent need to be "random" but this is such a detrimental way to implement these mechanics.

Unexplained Barb Mechanics:

1. Spawning units despite me killing the scout correlated to the camp. This happens all the time. I kill the scout immediately & before my empire is scouted. Attack the camp with my warrior. Fortify for a turn or 2 and then BAM another unit spawns. No Scout has spotted my Civ or alerted the camp but now my warrior has to retreat from the camp because a random unit spawned for no reason. Sometimes it's multiple units.

2. Barb camps are supposed to spawn in fog of war and not within a few tiles of your empire yet this CONSTANTLY happens. A barb camp shouldn't spawn 3 tiles from your borders and have a scout instantly alert his camp before you can react.

3. Clearing a camp causes another to spawn--sometimes instantly & right on your borders.

4. The AI will quite literally do nothing to aid you in fighting barbs. Often it's the opposite and a city state that offered no help in killing the camp will then run in at the last minute to steal the camp clear. Why? Why does the AI do this? I've watched city-state units do nothing with barb camps in their vicinity and then become super motivated to ONLY move their units once I'm about to clear the camp.

5. I'll use the "Reveal all" console command from time to time to reveal an entire map on turn 1-10 to see how the AI and Barbs play and I've seen barb scouts run straight from an Arctic spawn to my empire. With no information at all the barbs can run straight to your boarders through fog of war.

6. I won't even mention the convenient timing of being 1 or 2 turns from clearing a barb camp and the fortifying unit upgrades into the next level of unit. Now you can't clear the camp, have to retreat and upgrade, etc.

7. I could go on an on honestly. Barb Galleys are broken and beyond understanding. Their only purpose is to hinder your exploration/settling even if you are effectively fighting them. Kill 2 Galleys, here are 4-6 more--randomly.

[Oaks]

As far as I know, there is not a game mechanic that causes floods right before a dam is built. In my games it seems generally pretty random.

I've done a lot less research into the barbs than you have, but I recall them generally working as intended in my games. The they spawn for me in the fog of war and don't swarm me unless a scout sees me. I position my troops in a ring around my cities, which keeps the scouts from even getting close. It's been at least a few games ago when I had my last barbarian uprising.

I'm not saying that I doubt your experiences; I don't and they sound frustrating. My intention was to just provide a counter point and say for me they do work as intended.

Running any weird mods perhaps?

[pitonsnaboca]

Barbs are great, I adore them!

[grognardgary]

You do realize that city states and other civs can trigger camps to produce units right?

[Lemurian1972]

Killing the Scout doesn't prevent a camp from spawning units at all, it just prevents it from raging. The camp still spawns units over time, or when it's attacked. It's just not spawning the 3 unit attack waves that head off toward the target city.

[Lisan al Gaib]

Originally posted by Oaks:

As far as I know, there is not a game mechanic that causes floods right before a dam is built. In my games it seems generally pretty random.

I've done a lot less research into the barbs than you have, but I recall them generally working as intended in my games. The they spawn for me in the fog of war and don't swarm me unless a scout sees me. I position my troops in a ring around my cities, which keeps the scouts from even getting close. It's been at least a few games ago when I had my last barbarian uprising.

I'm not saying that I doubt your experiences; I don't and they sound frustrating. My intention was to just provide a counter point and say for me they do work as intended.

Running any weird mods perhaps?

My experience comes from over 2k Hours of gameplay. All in all Barbs aren't a problem for me in majority of games, but I've had great games ruined by barbs and their unexplained logic. Just random camps spawning repeatedly on the edge of my empire defying the "fog of war" logic among other things.

If you consider all of the mechanics I described, and add to that that they aren't sufficiently explained, how can a new player adjust or how can we even consider these "good mechanics?" A new player finally musters an army to clear a camp and then the camp upgrades to the next tier of unit. This isn't explained to the player nor can they calculate when, why, or if this will even happen at all. This game is littered with bad logic. Ever had a Great Bath City NEVER flood?? I have. It makes no sense. How many times has sea level risen right as you're building flood barriers despite you being 1-2 eras ahead of your opponents in science and contributing no environmental impact? I'm fine with "random" mechanics but don't just throw that at me for no reason especially if I am proactively playing to mitigate these things.

As for mods I only run UI and QOL mods, nothing that drastically affects gameplay.

[Lisan al Gaib]

Originally posted by Lemurian1972:

Killing the Scout doesn't prevent a camp from spawning units at all, it just prevents it from raging. The camp still spawns units over time, or when it's attacked. It's just not spawning the 3 unit attack waves that head off toward the target city.

This is exactly my point. This is never consistent and it is not explained. Entirely random and usually harms the player. AKA "Bad mechanic."

[Lisan al Gaib]

Originally posted by pitonsnaboca:

Barbs are great, I adore them!

I too adore barbs in theory. The player should have to fend off barbs as they expand but the unexplained and random mechanics make absolutely NO sense and only serve to hinder the player.

I don't know your experience level with this game but can you explain to me how Barb Galleys work and how and why spawn? What triggers it?

I have over 2k hours and I'm not sure even I know the answer to that, and that's my point.

[Copernicus]

Originally posted by .:

I don't know your experience level with this game but can you explain to me how Barb Galleys work and how and why spawn? What triggers it?

A barbarian camp adjacent to a coast (or a lake) can generate a galley instead of a scout. I believe it should work in the same manner as a scout, reporting knowledge of cities back to the camp.

This makes a lot of sense with island maps, where barbarians without naval units will be stuck helplessly on whatever little landmass they start out on. It keeps them a threat from the very beginning of the game.

[Lisan al Gaib]

Originally posted by Copernicus:

Originally posted by .:

I don't know your experience level with this game but can you explain to me how Barb Galleys work and how and why spawn? What triggers it?

A barbarian camp adjacent to a coast (or a lake) can generate a galley instead of a scout. I believe it should work in the same manner as a scout, reporting knowledge of cities back to the camp.

I understand this is how it "should" work however that's not the case. Even when I encounter a barb galley that has never spotted my empire it will still spawn 3-6 units repeatedly. Either the mechanic is consistent or it isn't but having a mechanic exist simply to make it harder for the player with no logic to follow is just bad implementation.

[Copernicus]

Originally posted by .:

I understand this is how it "should" work however that's not the case. Even when I encounter a barb galley that has never spotted my empire it will still spawn 3-6 units repeatedly. Either the mechanic is consistent or it isn't but having a mechanic exist simply to make it harder for the player with no logic to follow is just bad implementation.

The barbarians will spawn an assault team (a couple of infantry and a ranged unit at normal difficulty) to attack you if they spot you with a scout (or galley). But they will also spawn the assault team if they spot another player. And they will also spawn the assault team if they spot a city-state.

It is far more common for me to stumble upon a barbarian encampment already engaged with another target (and inevitably lure them towards my own units) than to have a scout escape my perimeter and kick off an assault wave directed towards me. Not that that is uncommon (I can't catch all the scouts), but there are lots more city-states out there at the beginning of the game than there are my own cities.

[Lisan al Gaib]

Originally posted by Copernicus:

Originally posted by .:

I understand this is how it "should" work however that's not the case. Even when I encounter a barb galley that has never spotted my empire it will still spawn 3-6 units repeatedly. Either the mechanic is consistent or it isn't but having a mechanic exist simply to make it harder for the player with no logic to follow is just bad implementation.

The barbarians will spawn an assault team (a couple of infantry and a ranged unit at normal difficulty) to attack you if they spot you with a scout (or galley). But they will also spawn the assault team if they spot another player. And they will also spawn the assault team if they spot a city-state.

I understand this. I understand barbarian mechanics. What I don't understand is why it is inconsistent and seemingly revolves around RNG. That is the point of my post. Also the in-game tool-tip on barbarians doesn't mention any of what you are saying which is my point, none of the deeper barbarian mechanics are explained in this game nor are they consistent enough for veteran players such as myself to figure out. If you kill a scout before it scouts your empire and you then kill the 2-3 units correlated with that camp, it shouldn't then spawn 4-6 more units beyond that because you did the before process too efficiently.

[Copernicus]

Originally posted by .:

If you kill a scout before it scouts your empire and you then kill the 2-3 units correlated with that camp, it shouldn't then spawn 4-6 more units beyond that because you did the before process too efficiently.

That's not the mechanic. If you kill the scout while there is just the one barbarian unit garrisoning the camp (and, importantly, you have killed it before it managed to get adjacent to the camp), you've made it in time. But if there are already more than one fighting unit (infantry or ranged) associated with the camp, you're too late; the camp had already been alerted to somebody's presence (yours or someone else's).

Once the camp has been alerted, it will continue to pump out units until it has been conquered.

Note that if you start attacking a camp that has not been alerted, but do not succeed in defeating it, it will eventually begin generating some sort of defense for itself (either more scouts, or possibly more of the garrison unit).

[Lisan al Gaib]

Originally posted by Copernicus:

Originally posted by .:

If you kill a scout before it scouts your empire and you then kill the 2-3 units correlated with that camp, it shouldn't then spawn 4-6 more units beyond that because you did the before process too efficiently.

That's not the mechanic. If you kill the scout while there is just the one barbarian unit garrisoning the camp (and, importantly, you have killed it before it managed to get adjacent to the camp), you've made it in time. But if there are already more than one fighting unit (infantry or ranged) associated with the camp, you're too late; the camp had already been alerted to somebody's presence (yours or someone else's).

Once the camp has been alerted, it will continue to pump out units until it has been conquered.

Note that if you start attacking a camp that has not been alerted, but do not succeed in defeating it, it will eventually begin generating some sort of defense for itself (either more scouts, or possibly more of the garrison unit).

Again I hear you but none of what you're saying is referenceable beyond your experience playing. And the important part I'm trying to make is those mechanics are not consistent. As I've said once killing the scout, and the 1-3 units associated with that camp, sometimes the game will STILL spawn additional units. And if we're really getting into semantics, a camp should not even be spawning units if the scout never makes it back. The mechanic as I understand it is the scout has to return to the camp or adjacent for the additional units to start spawning but again we also can't know that because barbarian mechanics aren't explained in the game. Again, this happens unpredictably even when the scout is killed and I kill the first 2 additional slingers that spawn.

[grognardgary]

Originally posted by Lemurian1972:

Killing the Scout doesn't prevent a camp from spawning units at all, it just prevents it from raging. The camp still spawns units over time, or when it's attacked. It's just not spawning the 3 unit attack waves that head off toward the target city.

Well not exactly immediately after you kill the first scout it will create another and send it in another direction And if that one spots another city state or civ it will then start spawning as well

[Copernicus]

Originally posted by .:

As I've said once killing the scout, and the 1-3 units associated with that camp, sometimes the game will STILL spawn additional units.

Again: a barbarian camp that has NOT been alerted should have a scout, a garrison unit, and nothing else.

If you see other units associated with the camp, you are too late: it has already been alerted.

Originally posted by .:

And if we're really getting into semantics, a camp should not even be spawning units if the scout never makes it back.

As grognardgary noted, a camp will spawn new scouts as it loses old ones. The only way to completely stop an encampment is to destroy it.

Originally posted by .:

Again, this happens unpredictably even when the scout is killed and I kill the first 2 additional slingers that spawn.

If the camp is spawning additional units such as slingers, it has most likely been alerted. (Although the assault team is normally a collection of both infantry and ranged units. It is possible that the other units are moving towards another target or have already been eliminated.) This behavior has not occurred with encampments I've assaulted before any scouts make it back to alert it.