Thought of a variant for handling the villages later in the game... What do you think about the barbarians matching the lowest unit level of all the players? Most of the time (especially early in the game) this won't mean any changes, but once everyone gets a couple unit upgrades (especially the same ones) it won't make the barbarians quite as much of a pushover.

Thoughts?

Normally when i play it there aren't that many villages to start of with(but i play it 2 player so less map tiles)meaning that they are all gone in a few rounds. We normall play it so that villages are just bonus resources at the start of the game and then you just harvest stuuf.