I do think the game is missing an early game threat.  It would make an early peasant militia more useful!

Yes, we need something like Barbarians in Civ games.

yeah, because monsters tend to attack people.  you would think that a group of trolls might want to attack a settlement and run off with some people to have for dinner every now and then.  after all, if the world has gone to hell in a hand basket then food should be scarce for them as well.  they should get desperate and attack settlements.

this would go along way towards reducing the population of the settlements.  so that you need to protect them from roving bands of monsters to keep your population up.  every now and then they also destroy an improvement as well.

it seems to me that in beta 2 they have gotten rid of the monster lairs.  i don't know if in beta 1 the monsters spawned from there or not.  i have seen some monster type locations, but i think a single monster guards it.

creatures should have their own faction AI controlling them as well. they could have 3 types of AI.

Passive: monster tries to keep to itself for the most part. this would be similar to mundane animals.

Defensive: monster  attacks if units, settlements or other threat comes within their territory.

Offensive: these creatures seek out targets and attack, they are predatory, or conquerers.

triple post lol! forum rezed then died again i guess.

... fivetuple post or whatever.  this is getting ridiculous.

i don't like that idea so much. At least, not all monsters should attack settlements. Barbarians/orc hordes or whatever should definitely show up later in the game, but it would be really frustrating if that sand golem a a few ticks away from my town prevented me from doing anything for a good 20 turns (I mean it's bad enough he kills my sovereign every time I try to sneak past). 

I liked the idea TW had. Have warriors stationed to avoid riots. ANd im kind of for have a happy gauge. Churches and entertainment to stop rebellions and avoid destruction of your own town

I wouldnt mind a few Independent cities to take over as well. MoM had rebel cities and random monsters attacking in small groups to keep you on your toes. I enjoyed taking over cities without making a big deal taking on other wizards.

It shouldn't be too tough, in the early going, that a small peasant force couldn't hold off.  The idea is to give you a reason to at least make some sort of minimal effort to defend your early settlements.  After all, protection is one of the primary motivators for people to congregate and form towns and settlements.

In any event, Civ always had a "Raging Barbarians" option which could be selected or deselected to make the early threat more or less challenging.

As the amount of reclaimed land increases there should be a bigger reaction to it from the "barbarians."  The reason for this is as the wasteland recedes, and more land is claimed by actual nations, the small groups of barbarians are gradually forced into smaller lands, and forced to survive on fewer resources.  As they are compressed, they begin to organize on a greater scale, and you the players are forced to deal with massive hordes of barbarians coming out of the wastes and/or mountains.

Hopefully means barbarians.

From here.

i am hoping we could at the very least mod some of this stuff in if its not in the game already.  i want the standard RPG sterotypical necromancer that makes an army of the undead and tried to take over my cities.

i also want to be raided by giants. maybe the tile editor will allow you to create your own monster lairs and assign them an AI type.  that would be good.

Keep in mind though that we are still only seeing very partial betas.  And a lot of the things we discuss aren't actually that hard to change from a game mechanic perspective.  I mean really, what we describe here isn't that difficult, and even my questionable modding skills with python should be adequate to bring a lot of this into the game.

Hmm, maybe it would even be possible to permanently rally them to your cause and make them part of your army. Be it through influence, promising them some portion of a newly conquered part of the world or because you act like a barbarian yourself through reckless warfare, intimidation or such...