A new mod enters the ring - Introducing "Close to Home"

[naufragar]

https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...#pid652338Here is a description if not an explanation. Also note T-hawk’s comment a little later. Sorry for the brevity; on phone.

[NobleHelium]

Yes, I'm in favor of fixing the whip rounding bug.

[Charriu]

Yes, I'm in favor of fixing the whip rounding bug.

I have it on my todo list, but as of now I haven't brought up the courage to touch that part of the code.

[Charriu]

I find managing barbs to be an interesting part of the early game, especially with the CtH mechanic which lets you use Settlers to consistently clear them. Without barbs you also devalue Hunting, remove the possibility of accumulating Heroic Epic experience, and remove the tradeoff between fogbusting and saving gold on unit supply expense. Barb city RNG is still pretty unsatisfying, and barb Galleys probably should just not exist, but animals and roaming units are fine in my opinion.

Pretty much sums up my thoughts exactly. I'd love to see a future CtH options for 'No Barb Galleys' (seriously, has anyone ever enjoyed that?)

Isn't the settler thing pretty much just an exploit at that point? I'm not saying there aren't skill related elements involved with barbs, I'm just saying if you lose a 90%+ battle early with a barb unit attacking an early city and it train wrecks your 4-5 month long game..........

100% yes to no barb galleys. Have no clue if it is possible.

This came up in a recent game-start-up thread. I want to say that I am also a little bit worried about the exploit-ant element of the free wins. I also recognize the problem with the 90%+ battle loss on an early city. At the same time I want to point out that we have seen PBs in which a player had a loss towards the barbs in early turns and still came out on top of it. I think OH did that in PB46. I see three problems with the barbs in the early days right now, those are:

1. A loss of a settler due to bad dice role
   
2. A loss and raze of a city by a bad dice role
   
3. A loss without raze of a city by a bad dice role
   

With regards to those I think about doing the following

1. This is right now covered by the free win mechanic. But what about if I remove that free win and instead let the barb not attack if there is a settler with MP unit on a plot. Essentially the retreat that animals due with a 10% chance.
2. This is a similar problem compared to #1 my solution for this would be that the barbs never raze a city not even automatically. At the same time I could also prevent the automatic raze on a re-capture by the player.
3. I think this is the least destructive of all the 3 outcomes. The city is not destroyed and you can still re-capture it. Of course this is still bad for the player, but the goal is not to remove the barbarians (for that we have the no barbs option), rather I want to eliminate or diminish the bad dice roles.

[Mjmd]

Your essentially trying to do a fix similar to removing / changing events. I find it fascinating that we as players recognize that events are very swingy and almost every game choose to play without them, yet the same people who choose to play without 1 swingy rng element freely choose to play with a different swingy rng element.

My solution is to do a script to add barbs near players who voted yes .

[Charriu]

Well in contrast to the events the barbs do have an important purpose. Whenever contact between players happens later, like on larger maps, they ensure that nobody can run a farmers gambit for all of the time. The events on the other hand are way to random and you don't have as much agency towards them due to their total random nature. With barbs you know you can expect them at some point and you know what to do against them or to prepare for them.

[Mjmd]

I'm going to quote Scooter here and say "it is your opponents job to punish a farmers gambit". Say if someone settles a forward floodplain city. Your argument is that the barbs should take care of that right 

If one player gets 4 barb axes in various locations vs someone getting 6 warriors and a spear that is just not even close. One person is going to have to whip and the other person gets to farm free exp.

[Charriu]

Who should punish a farmers gambit if the players are say 20 tiles apart?

I absolutely get that barbs are an RNG factor. If you don't like it there is the "no barb" option for exactly that. For all the others I only try to diminish the worst effects of them and those are loss of cities/settlers to one single bad dice roles.

[civac2]

An emergeny whip in the face of a barb axe/archer is bad enough.

I wonder what would happen if you made Civ4 combat deterministic. Each combat is resolved exactly according to its expected value. Would probably suck very hard. Fascinating to think about though.

Who should punish a farmers gambit if the players are say 20 tiles apart?

In this case it's not a farmer's gambit but just correct play.

[Charriu]

I wonder what would happen if you made Civ4 combat deterministic. Each combat is resolved exactly according to its expected value. Would probably suck very hard. Fascinating to think about though.

As interesting as that thought is it will never happen or at least I won't do it. That code is way to complicated, integrated and connected with everything to mess with it.