[SPOILERS] Lurkers Rooting for More Destruction

[scooter]

I find the Guerilla I units off a hill amusing.

This was how I got them to not disband upon completing a Barracks.

[scooter]

Anyway, in a “normal” Raging Barbarians game, The Great Wall would be an excellent Wonder and worth building early. Building it in the capital before the first Settler would be a huge blow to the snowball, but it would likely be worth it. However, this is not a “normal” Raging Barbarians game, and in my opinion the known and possible changes from “normal” make trying to build The Great Wall so soon a bad gamble.
The Raging Barbarians might not be as aggressive as usual. Again, it is possible that Archery has been taken away from them. Also, we now know that they have between 1 and 8 cities, and those cities are probably well-defended, and if those cities are on our continent, then the garrison units might count against the Barbarian spawncap! There could be a lot less Barbarians spawning than normal if that is true. I also discovered on Turn 2 that Scooter has placed some Barbarian units on our continent in the wilderness, but set them not to move until Turn 120. This is really interesting and I will write more about it later. For now, the point is that those units might count against the Barbarian spawncap too. And they will definitely work as fogbusters for us, at least. The waves of Raging Barbarians might be a lot weaker.

Magic Science is right, and it's good to see someone piece this together. Based on my tests, the barbarian invasions will be quite limited. Given the additional restrictions on Great Spies, I don't think the wonder is all that great here at all. Not awful, but I think something like Stonehenge would prove to be much more valuable.


Humorously though, in one of my final barb tests, the barbs actually destroyed an AI player. I wondered why, and then I realized it was because I ran the test after setting the player difficulties to Monarch, which meant the AI was playing with far fewer tools than they have on their usual Noble.

[Qgqqqqq]

Hmm. Should I say this in other threads? I mentioned it because he was discussing spawn rates and as I haven't seen the map, I didn't think it beyond a global lurker to say, but a little concerned it's something I shouldn't have said to just one player:

• I'll tell you this for free: barb cities count as a certain number of barb units toward the spawn cap - I believe it's 20.

[Cyneheard]

No, it's too close to strategic advice if they're not talking about barb spawn mechanics. I think it's fine if they're talking about the spawncap to provide details, but telling Gavagai now would absolutely impact the game which is a giant no-no.

[Mjmd]

To be fair there has been a lot of unasked for lurker input in my opinion on mechanics already, which is why I think Q feels like he should share the same information with everyone.

[T-hawk]

No, it's too close to strategic advice if they're not talking about barb spawn mechanics. I think it's fine if they're talking about the spawncap to provide details, but telling Gavagai now would absolutely impact the game which is a giant no-no.

The flip side is that Q already impacted the game for one player so the fair thing to do is impact it for all of them. I'd vote for telling everyone as the less-objectionable option now.

[RefSteel]

I'm not sure I saw any unasked-for mechanics information, but actually, I want to note somewhere (I think someone - maybe Magic Science - asked about this too, but I'd have to dig up where) that the Great Wall will have a big potential effect: When barbs end up in your borders due to border expansion or city placement, if you have the Great Wall, they instantly vanish! It won't affect longbows in cities unless the cities flip, but it might be the easiest way to get rid of a random mace/Jan/etc and get at the tile it's guarding.

[Qgqqqqq]

Huh, that is interesting.

Yeah, I guess the thing is he was talking about spawn rates, and while Scooter has hinted at the Great Wall being less powerful, and that there might be barb cities, that wasn't really what I had in mind.

[scooter]

I would not share it further, personally. The comment was a bit borderline, but it's quite common for mechanics clarifications to come from lurkers when the players are already discussing mechanics openly. Offering it up openly in every thread for no apparent reason invites more questions I think.


Also, I think players who haven't (publicly) thought about this may do so soon anyway. It's T8 now, and no animals have spawned. Pretty soon players will start to wonder why they aren't getting any Animals on Raging Barbs. I would leave it be, but answer mechanics questions as they come up.

[Tarkeel]

Agreed. It's why I also encourage people to discuss in their threads, as lurkers are keen to take the opportunity to prove they are wrong.