With the increasing enlargement of the map, Barbarian Hordes are becoming less of a danger to many countries. With the current rules [they appear at the edge of a map, or next to a population-zero territory], they are effectively useless against Crete, Assyria, and Iberia (except for Iberian cities in the British Isles, but possibly adding Illyria and Babylon).

Additionally, as the size of the map changes to accomodate the number of players, the effect of Barbarian Hordes will vary with the size of map.

A more scalable version of the calamity, that should apply more fairly to all countries would be to have the barbarians start at a coastal square. (Ie change them from representing the Huns/Mongols/etc, to represent Viking-like incursions.) I believe that every civilisation would have a coast region (and probably a coastal city), so the calamity would effect everyone equally.

An alternative might be to add coastal squares to the list of current start squares, but that might be introducing too much complexity...

The thought has crossed my mind. Perhaps I should explain fully why I changed this.

1) To make it easier to resolve.
but also
2) Because after you have played a number of games of Advanced Civilization you realize that those who have secure borders (i.e. map edge borders) seem to have an extra "step-up" against other empires. This seems to be very true with the latest incarnation where empires start on the map. Civilizations like Babylon and Assryia are pressed on all borders while Africa and Nubia are relativly secure.
This new resolutions was designed to make empires which would normally feel more secure worry, while giving a break to those that share %100 of thier borders by other players.

Hatti (another probable exemption) is not that bad off but will have a tougher AST track (coming soon). I doubt that Iberia won't be effected some how (If they limit themselves to Spain they are handicapping themselves). Crete, Assyria and Babylon however are three of the most disadvantaged civilizaions because of thier start areas. Hopefully this will help.

What does everyone else think?

I like the change (in general) to Barbarian Hordes - I think it helps. The anywhere on the edge and zero-pop areas is really a great idea.

I am thinking that the wording on the movement in the latest version of the rulebook could be more clear, though. For example, the next to last sentence of 30.5221 seems to indicate that Barbarians will trace to terrorities containing tokens, instead of tracing to cities.

I have a rules clarification question with regards to Barbarian Hordes. The 30.523 rule states that: "If barbarians enter an area shared by the victim and other players they will always remove the victim's tokens first."

Question: Does metalworking influence this? That is, if a secondary victim doesn't have metalworking, and the primary victim does, should one still remove tokens from the primary victim before the secondary?

Scenario: A force of 2 Barbarian tokens enters an area with a population limit of 4, containing 2 primary victim tokens, and 2 secondary victim tokens. The primary victim holds metalworking, while the secondary does not. In what order does the warring parts remove tokens? According to normal combat rules, the Barbarians removes one, and the secondary victim one, thus bringing the total population down to the sustainable 4.

My initial reaction is to resolve it normally. Basically saying... "if there is a choice as to which victum's tokens are to be removed by the Barbarian Hordes the primary victum's must be chosen".

Can someone poke a hole in that?

Well, in the normal rules there never are "choices" to be made when resolving combat. How about "If according to normal combat resolution the primary and secondary victims are to remove tokens simultaneously, the primary victim must remove his token before any secondary victims simultaneously remove theirs. This is an exception to normal combat resolution."

Heh, I'm not a native speaker (or writer for that matter), so you can probably word this better.