Raging Barbarians
Before Turn 5, Barbarians will not spawn. On Turn 5, Barbarian animals instantly all spawn. Panthers in jungle, Wolves in tundra, Bears and Lions (oh my), elsewhere. Enough to reach the maximum amount immediately. If any die, they will respawn. So far, so normal.
This situation will continue until two conditions come to pass.
1. A certain turn number is reached. On Normal Speed Monarch Difficulty, it is Turn 25.
2. (Number of non-Barbarian cities on the continent) (is greater than or equal to) (1.5 * Number of living players, truncated). For 5 players sharing a continent, that means 7 total cities, 2 non-capital cities founded. You can see the second condition is the limiting condition. Humans are not going to start founding our second cities before Turn 25.
When those two conditions are achieved, human Barbarians will begin to spawn. Normally, they will begin to spawn slowly, as animals die in battle or are killed in the extinction event one by one. Then it will take even longer for their aggression to increase, as the players found more cities and more such thresholds are passed. However, for Raging Barbarians it is different.
As soon as human Barbarians physically can spawn, they will instantly spawn in large numbers, coexisting with the animals. And they will instantly be at maximum aggression. Barbarians spawn, and start marching towards a target right away. No slow increase in numbers, and no aimless wandering, not for them.
On Monarch Difficulty all AIs, including the Barbarians, start with Archery, so the Barbarians will start attacking with Warriors and Archers at this time.
By the way, the Barbarian animal behavior does not seem to change when this new situation begins, but I do think they might be subject to a more lenient extinction event in some way. Not quite sure, but they seemed to hang around in larger numbers for a lot longer than usual.
Long-term: Barbarians learn techs at a trickle once civilized players know them. Maximum of 3% of the beakers for a tech per turn once all civilized players know the tech. I think their cities can contribute beakers too, but Barbarians have no Palaces, and they have to overcome the high unit maintenance and supply costs first (they don't lose units to strike).
So their units will improve over time, but Barbarians are outright barred from spawning
or training a lot of units, even once they do have the techs. The way it works in the file is that they have a lot of Unique Units called "NONE". Interesting. According to Charriu, the Barbarians need the tech enabling them to trade a resource before they can spawn any units requiring that resource. That is what was wrong in my test game. I gave them Bronze Working, but no Mining, so no Axemen. Anway, of course Barbarians can train Axemen and Spearmen and Galleys (don't forget, Water Barbarians On in this game).
Once the average era of the game is the Renaissance (every era for every player is a number value, average is truncated as always - all players but one being in the Renaissance is still not an average game era of Renaissance), then the Barbarians stop
spawning. But their cities continue to exist and train units.
Which brings us to Barbarian cities. I don't have much to say about them, actually.
. I think they can't spawn until Barbarian humans can, but I am not sure. And I know they can spawn on smaller islands than Barbarian units ordinarily can. I have direct experience of that with the Astronomy islands in Pitboss 40.
Overall, what does this mean? It means there is a grace period. I can get away with training a Worker first, not a Warrior, even on Raging Barbarians. But as soon as 2 players found their second cities, as soon as that threshold is passed, I need to be ready to fight the Barbarians. Lots of them. Until I die or the continent is completely fogbusted.
And the change in spawning and behavior is per-continent, not per-player. If you are slow to found your second city, fuck you, the Barbarians don't care, they will attack you anyway.
Basically, I cannot afford to be slow to my second city, and unless my capital already has a strategic resource, then the second city MUST secure a strategic resource. Unless you want to fight Warriors and Archers with Warriors and maybe Archers.
Last notes for this section: don't forget that Close To Home changes 2 things about Barbarians in our favor.
1. Barbarians will not attack Settlers escorted by military units.
2. Barbarians never autoraze cities.
And the single-player You vs. The Raging Barbarians scenarios that people have made over the years (ex. Barbarian Killer on CivFanatics, Rome vs. the Barbarians here on the greatest forum on Earth) seem to achieve their extreme situations by setting the difficulty to Deity (turn number for 1st condition is 10, not 25), and placing a bunch of AI cities behind Peaks on the same continent as the player (2nd condition is true from Turn 0). Also, on Deity the AIs found their second cities quicker than Turn 10 anyway.
Mystery Box
Our beloved overlord Scooter the Magnificent, The Great Lurker, He Who Raises Peaks and Sinks Oceans According to His Whims, may all manner of gifts forever shower upon him from heaven, has changed the world in mysterious ways. In this section I will explore some possible changes and what they would mean for the Raging Barbarians. Again, he clearly implied that there are some pre-placed Barbarian cities, at least.
If Scooter placed Barbarian animals with worldbuilder, they won't despawn. To be clear, before Turn 5, Barbarians can exist in the world just fine, it's just that there is no way for them to appear naturally yet. But neither will any pre-existing Barbarian Animals do anything unusual. This would be the smallest possible troll. A centi-troll, if you will, kept in the BIPM Headquarters in France. These animals might jump a poor Scout, I guess? So unimportant as to be very unlikely.
Much more worryingly, if Scooter placed Barbarian humans IN THE WILDERNESS with worldbuilder, they also won't despawn, and they will IMMEDIATELY BE AT MAXIMUM AGGRESSION. They could march out of the fog and just murder someone in the cradle like it's 2012 and we still have starting Warriors. There is not much to be done about this. You could train a Warrior immediately instead of a starting Worker, of course, but that probably dooms you in the long-term against the other human players. And if the pre-placed Barbarian humans are close enough, or strong enough, then we are just doomed regardless. This seems terribly unfun, so I think it is unlikely. But it might be worth being careful about how long it will take the Scout to come back home, and I will keep perfect watch on all visible tiles for approaching Barbarians, so I can switch to a Warrior immediately if I see one. Once the capital's borders expand, then I can see Barbarians coming from far enough away to train a Warrior in time, in 3 turns, with the Plains Hill Start + Plains Forest Ivory. Another reason to be Creative, to hasten that border pop.
If Scooter placed Barbarians IN BARBARIAN CITIES, that is not so bad, I think. Even the Raging Barbarians will hold some units back to defend their cities, though they are quite willing to sally forth to kill your units and protect their improvements. That could be exploited.
. Anyway, Barbarians that naturally spawn with their cities will always stay to protect them, of course, and it seems that unnaturally placed Barbarians in unnaturally placed cities will also stay to protect their cities. So they will not bother us during the grace period. Excellent.
Also, I am not sure about this, but I think that Barbarian cities might have a larger effect on Barbarian AI. A pacifying effect? Not sure, but Barbarians really do make sure that their cities are defended, and pre-placed cities might make naturally spawning Barbarians more defensive and less aggressive. Also, I am not sure if pre-placed units in cities count against the spawn cap or not. That could help too.
Lastly, Scooter could have given the Barbarians more advanced technology. Again, they start with Archery on Monarch, but it is possible to give them any technology you want in the worldbuilder. If the Barbarian technology is too advanced, then we are just fucked. They could already have the technology to spawn, for example, Grenadiers, and there is absolutely no way to tell until we see Grenadiers attacking. Seeing Grenadiers pre-placed in a city is no guarantee. The only defense would be a weird One City Challenge to avoid triggering the human Barbarian spawns, or maybe exploiting CTH's Settler rule to defend cities with garrison Settlers.
. But we as a collective would never do that. We can only have faith that it is not so bad. However, if the Barbarians started with Mining, Hunting, and Bronze Working, it would be possible to survive, though a lot more difficult. So I think there is a very small chance they have been given those techs. Again, there is no way to tell (wait, maybe you could see a Barbarian city lose pop to the whip?), so let's just be ready for anything when the grace period ends.
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There are some other wacky possibilities involving the Barbarians I considered, but I have not worried about them as much because they would be irrelevant to the early game. For example, there could be advanced Barbarian naval units roaming the seas, but they can't threaten my cities, and my capital has no seafood anyway. Still, it's worth keeping an eye out for them before deciding to settle a city with seafood. Though submarines could not be detected in any way from the land.
Any number of wacky things are possible on another continent. Barbarian Mechanized Infantry aggressively roaming the wilderness, for all I know. That would be perfectly fair and even fun, since they can't cross the water to exterminate us in the early game.
Barbarians on the same continent behind walls of Peaks is an edge case. As isolated as another continent, but they could maybe influence spawns and behavior.
Mistake Not
MISTAKE NOT the Raging Barbarians for my true enemies.
For my true enemies number FIVE, and their names are:
DREYLIN
GAVAGAI
SUPERDEATH
THRAWN
and Scooter (honorable mention).
This last part is for my benefit. I have been thinking a lot about the Raging Barbarians recently, because I did not know enough about how they work. And of course they will be unusually important in this game, and the game might well be man vs. nature for a long while. But in the end the other players, and the bigger picture mystery map wackiness, are the true rivals that must be overcome.
MISTAKE NOT.
Next Up: the wacky snakepick!
P.S. I realize now I never mentioned fogbusting at all.
. I assume everyone knows how it works, but the thing to know is that
fogbusting works exactly the same against the Raging Barbarians too. Very important! And Barbarian cities are only blocked from spawning by actual vision and distance from cities, not distance from units as Barbarian units are. I guess that is bit more obscure and could be important.
P.P.S. Remember how Charriu used to humorously track the Barbarians along with the human players in his tracking reports? And how they apparently always abolish Slavery way sooner than we do? That sort of thing could be relevant if there are some big, rich, well-defended Barbarian cities out there.
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P.P.P.S. I just thought of the possibility of advanced Barbarian units placed to roam the wilderness, but very far away from the player. They would be aggressive and march towards us right away, but so far off that it would be fair and we would have time to prepare. Like one deadly Grenadier placed 50 tiles away in a maze of mountains. A time bomb. That seems extremely unlikely, but it is another possible edge case.
P.P.P.P.S. Last last thing. I just thought,
is it even possible with our Pitboss engine to place AI players, as they did in Barbarian Killer and Rome vs. The Barbarians? What I mean is, is it even physically possible with Pitboss to subvert the NumCities condition like that with pre-placed AIs in Peaks? Probably not, but it is interesting.
. I would at least be able to see the unusual number of rivals in the Victory Condition screen, I think, and on Normal Monarch I would still have a grace period until Turn 25.
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