Absurdly huge barbarian horde about to end my game... help?

MagisterMundi · Mar 10, 2009

So, I've been playing Siluri, and doing fairly well, all things considered. I finally got my civilization up to 50%, and I'm just waiting for the right ruler to lift me out of tribal status and into republic status. I have me some temples and walls and forums and other good stuff like that, two trade routes which are doing me quite well, and a good ally. It's taken me quite a while to get to where I am now, but hey, I'm here, right?

Then, out of the blue, along comes 52 (!) barbarian regiments from up in Scotland, evidently with the sole objective of obliterating me. Now, aside from the fact that I'm pretty certain that 52,000 soldiers coming from the Highlands of Scotland isn't particularly realistic (at that point in time, I think that it's more than the entire population of Scotland combined), I don't really want to watch everything I've accomplished so far go completely to waste, which is precisely what will happen if this super-stack of barbarian might shows up. I tried the usual EU3 tricks, but to no avail - tag BAR just forces you to resign, rather than giving you a chance to delete that massive stack from Hell, and nothing else really works, either.

So, a question to you fine folks that have plenty more experience with Rome than me - how do I keep myself from dying horribly? Save game editing? Something else entirely?

Dearmad · Mar 10, 2009

how many provinces you have? TO my undestanding if they take you over and you were only one province the leader of those 52,000 becomes your leader if he kicks your ass. Maybe you even get 52,000 new friends. Then you can do some serious stuff...

MagisterMundi · Mar 10, 2009

Dearmad said:
how many provinces you have? TO my undestanding if they take you over and you were only one province the leader of those 52,000 becomes your leader if he kicks your ass. Maybe you even get 52,000 new friends. Then you can do some serious stuff...

I'm a single province nation, so yes, if they take me over, the barbarian becomes the new chief. It also drops my civilization to something awesome like 19% and yeah, I have 52,000 new friends... and absolutely no way to maintain them. I go bankrupt in a single month.

Kasimal · Mar 10, 2009

you can bribe them to go home, when they besieging your province. At least if you got enough money, but you seem to have.

Btw. the size of such an army does not come from one sourceprovince only, such an armies grows with each barbarian province they pass. The only way to hinder such armies is to farm the barbarian provinces in the first place or to not have the highest Civilizationrate in a region.

Such events bring me in the mood to alter the savegame sometimes too, though.

unmerged(60148) · Mar 10, 2009

MagisterMundi said:
I'm a single province nation, so yes, if they take me over, the barbarian becomes the new chief. It also drops my civilization to something awesome like 19% and yeah, I have 52,000 new friends... and absolutely no way to maintain them. I go bankrupt in a single month.

I played a number of isolationist tribal games (Suebi is my favorite). You need to proactively "harvest" the barbarian provinces nearby(as far away as manpower allows). If you let them grow too much, you get the avalanche effect you experienced. The real benefit is of course adding to your slave population when you defeat them. By the time you get to 50 civ score, your population could easily quadruple. Of course this will slow down your research because the citizens% drops. But when you start colonizing, effectively slaves are being turned into citizens and free men in the process and the citizens % raises to some acceptable levels.

erthul · Mar 10, 2009

It's almost impossible for a single province minor to survive as such in EUR (without paying tribute or allying with a major) : if the Barbarians don't get you then the Romans or some other major eventually will (daft as it sounds even the Seleucids will launch out of the blue free DOW attacks on independent British minors who are just happily minding their own business). In order to last until the end of the game it's essential to expand as quickly as possible by conquering rather than allying with neighbouring minors.

unmerged(60148) · Mar 10, 2009

erthul said:
It's almost impossible for a single province minor to survive as such in EUR (without paying tribute or allying with a major) : if the Barbarians don't get you then the Romans or some other major eventually will (daft as it sounds even the Seleucids will launch out of the blue free DOW attacks on independent British minors who are just happily minding their own business). In order to last until the end of the game it's essential to expand as quickly as possible by conquering rather than allying with neighbouring minors.

Quick expansion is one way to do it, but satisfaction wears off pretty quickly. If you are powergaming, any Celtic tribe can be used to blitz and obliterate the Romans by 520 or even earlier. Playing Suebi my house rules is to never attack or take lands from any non adjust countries. By 560-580 approximately when the Romans and I have a border, they would normally control all of the Gaul lands, possibly Carthage or Macedonia and in worst case be allied with Egypt and Seleucids at the same time

. A force ratio of 40K vs 300K is not much of a problem with the current AI. The game of course ends up with Suebi spanning through the whole length of Europe and the destruction of Rome. Played similar games with Pictii, Catuvellauni, Vaccaei using the same house rules and they were satisfactory enough, but less challenging.

erthul · Mar 10, 2009

Impressive. What setting were you on did you get by without cheats or reloads? In a recent game as the Suebi in which I tried to expand by controlling the Barbarians/peaceful colonization I was constantly attacked by the Macedonians, Seleucids, Romans, Carthaginians and all their allies one after the other and occasionally all at once. I was just about managing to hold them off until I had enough war-score from battle victories to 'win' white peaces when I made the error of colonizing the coast which provided another avenue of attack for the invaders.

MagisterMundi · Mar 10, 2009

Kasimal said:
you can bribe them to go home, when they besieging your province. At least if you got enough money, but you seem to have.

Btw. the size of such an army does not come from one sourceprovince only, such an armies grows with each barbarian province they pass. The only way to hinder such armies is to farm the barbarian provinces in the first place or to not have the highest Civilizationrate in a region.

Such events bring me in the mood to alter the savegame sometimes too, though.

I would bribe them, but they defeat me instantly, so I don't even have time to bribe them (I bribe them, they accept my bribe, and they still conquer me - because the day after they arrive, which is when they accept my bribe, I've surrendered due to 52,000 barbarians assaulting my wooden walls). Also, they only moved through one other province than the one they started in, and they still have the absurdly huge army that they have. Better still, I loaded up as the Pictii to see what causes them to form, and they evidently form for absolutely no reason whatsoever - they don't even have a horde %.

...unfortunately, this is sort of what turned me off about EU: Rome in the first place, when it first came out. Oh, well...

unmerged(60148) · Mar 11, 2009

erthul said:
Impressive. What setting were you on did you get by without cheats or reloads? In a recent game as the Suebi in which I tried to expand by controlling the Barbarians/peaceful colonization I was constantly attacked by the Macedonians, Seleucids, Romans, Carthaginians and all their allies one after the other and occasionally all at once. I jsut about managing to hold them off enough war-score to 'win' white peaces until I made the error of colonizing the coast which provided another avenue of attack for the invaders.

Normal difficulty, I disable the stability hit events for the tribes because they are annoying more than anything else. Also modify the provinces setup so the capital is a province on it's own - this is to handle the bug where the barbarians are not being absorbed in the capital province. And add an event for spreading the animism religion for some flavor. Other than that, it's a straight game.

out · Mar 11, 2009

grd said:
Also modify the provinces setup so the capital is a province on it's own

What do you mean by that? Can you elaborate?

unmerged(60148) · Mar 11, 2009

uly said:
What do you mean by that? Can you elaborate?

There is a file region.txt in the folder below.

C:\Program Files\Paradox Interactive\Europa Universalis - Rome\map

Lets say your capital is in region_germania_magna and this region contains few more provinces that can be colonized. The barbarians never gets absorbed for these provinces. So you take them from that region and move them to lets say region_germania_superior leaving only your capital province in region_germania_magna.

unmerged(138752) · Apr 1, 2009

grd said:
Normal difficulty, I disable the stability hit events for the tribes because they are annoying more than anything else.

Totally agree! How do you disable those?

Cheexsta · Apr 2, 2009

grd said:
Normal difficulty, I disable the stability hit events for the tribes because they are annoying more than anything else. Also modify the provinces setup so the capital is a province on it's own - this is to handle the bug where the barbarians are not being absorbed in the capital province. And add an event for spreading the animism religion for some flavor. Other than that, it's a straight game.

Another solution would be to make another event which is virtually the same as the normal event, but searches for provinces with the "is_capital_region = yes" trigger and looks at the ruler's stats instead of the governor's.

unmerged(99379) · Apr 2, 2009

They sound like Irish barbarians, crossing into Scotland and working their way down. Nice.

MagisterMundi · Apr 3, 2009

sgoconnor said:
They sound like Irish barbarians, crossing into Scotland and working their way down. Nice.

They probably are (in fact, they are - I loaded up as Scotii to see where they came from, and they all spawned in Ulster), but that's still one hell of a lot of barbarians. A few too many, in my opinion.