Barbarians: the new Anti-Player Civ!

[MidKnight]

So I finished my first full huge-map game on dead-simple, resorting to war only when I needed to get a Level Five unit to build the Pentagon. Although I was playing the easiest level, I felt that with my previous experience with Civs I through III and all the expansions, I would be able to start formulating some of my own strategies (although I send thanks to Vel, Arrrian and others for their ideas.)

Thus I decided to do a little experimenting. Based on discussion about building settlers immediately vs. building units then the settler, I started a game with the intention of playing a 100 turns or so of each strategy to see how it worked out. I used the Russians, because I liked the early culture buffer. I renamed them "Canadians", with Catherine renamed "Mila Mulroney" and prepared to build a Civilization to stand the test of time, through two alternate realities!

I started out in a good location, although I had to build my capital on the second turn to take advantage of rice, flood plains and pigs. 25 turns later, I had my first settler, who moved off to a position to the northwest, where my scout had located dye, wheat and silk, all within the fat X. Both cities built warriors, then Settlers. Soon I had four cities, all with good resources, strong cultural borders and a unit or two in each, as well as several workers linking the cities (and resources!) Additionally, I had met 7 of the other civs and had peace/open borders with most (except the Japanese, who have never liked me in Civ 1, 2 or 3...)

With my expansive cultural borders, I could see a lot of land. All lions and tigers and bears (oh, MY!) were staying in the Great Northern Jungle and out of my land. RSE (Rapid Settler Expansion) seemed to be working well.

Then the barbarian hordes appeared...

In previous "training" games of CivIV, barbarians had been nasty, but this was due to less civs (I selected 4 or 5 rivals on huge maps) and more open space. In my full game, the New World (discovered around 1000 AD) had 7 barbarian cities ripe for the taking (okay, I had cannons and riflemen and they had axes and bows) so I felt the barbarians were balanced in the game.

No longer! I watched as barbarian units, equal or stronger then my own, walked right by other civ cities garrisoned with weaker units to attack mine. In one instance, a barbarian unit waited in forest for three additional turns while a weaker (and injured) Japanese unit passed by it, healed in my city and departed!

As I went from four to three cities, then down to two strongly garrisoned cities, falling behind all the other civs, I finally gave up! I'll be trying again, I just need some time...

After all this, I am wondering a few things:

For the developers: Why the experience point cap for victories against Barbarians? They have the exact same unit types as the other civs, as well as more! As has been stated in the forums, barbarians have been powerful instigators of historical events and continuous moulder of cultures. England is an amalgam of Barbarian invaders throughout history and one of the mightiest empires in history (the Romans) fell due to barbarian pressures. Even in CivIV, they are a force unto themselves, requiring warmonger preparations to neutralize or, the 7 Gods willing, defeat outright.

For other players: Has anyone else observed the selective attack of the Barbarians? While animals seem to demonstrate unbiased hostility, the humans only went after me! I even watched an arrcher ignore a foreign scout in plains to charge my warrior in the forested hills of Ottawa!

For the Modders, Tinkerers and "Under-the-Hood" guys: Are there triggers in Civ IV for Barbarian Hordes such as certain discoveries (Iron Working) or enough civs reaching new ages (ala Civ II and III) that I could be congnizant of?

While this might seem like a bit of sour grapes, I love Civ IV! I like dealing with other civs through thousands of years of peace without them hating me because I am human. I just want the Barbarians to be given their due - continual experience points and greedy gobbling of any weak yet wealthy civ, not just mine!

Death to BARBARIANS! (and the Civ IV versions of the Japanese and Mongols!)

[vmxa1]

Well barbs could be exploited as they were in III for XP, so they capped it.

Yes if you goof off, you can soon find barb town near you and they will send unit after unit. They will even improve the town.

Barbs are less of a concern with a std map and full amount of civs, becasue there is less land open and soon none.

The higher the level, the sooner the places for barbs if gone.

Now if you do not like fighting barbs when they are no stronger than you, you will really hate the other civs. They will muster up a lot more units and try to keep the pressure on.

Worse they may actually have better units than you at times.

So do as we did in III, get the land filled, get sentries out to prevent them from spawning.

[UnOrthOdOx]

I have not witnessed the selective attacking of barbs. In fact, I know I've seen barbs attack AI units.

I really don't care for barbs tendency to really throw off my plans. And, as in Civ III days, I've taken to picketing my borders with fortified warriors/archers. At the worst, I can see barbs coming long before they can hurt me. At best, I prevent them all together due to lack of fog.

Get those pickets out wide, beyond your border, leaving cities lightly/not defended. You can always pull them back if you need.

[BlackSeer]

I found the AI do the strangest things, sometimes the bandits compleatly ignore the ai towns and go directly for me, no matter if there are easier & closer targets nearby..

Othertimes it goes after the other nations, but most of that is out of sight I think.

[apostatedogfish]

I've found the barbarians to be especially violent towards the player as opposed to other civilizations.

When founding a city in the "New World" on a terrra map, I promptly lost the city and the 4 musketmen defending it to wave after wave of longbowmen and horse archers.

I retook the city and waged a war agains the barbarians to find that half the units had come from a city just to the south of mine, and the other half had come from a city three times farther away from mine than from an English city which was fortified with only a couple longbowmen.

If the barbarians could have put up that kind of assault on my city and didn't take the English city, I have to assume that either:

a- The English city was founded much later than my city, and that the barbarians didn't take it because ALL their units were engaged in taking/retaking my city (possibly the barbarian AI is more inclined to retake a city than capture a new one and will ignore a new "threat" in lieu of a recapture),

b- The English city had been massively fortified and the skeleton garrison that remained was all that survived the barbarian attack, or

c- The barbarians just decided to come after me instead.

What I really don't like is barbarians capturing my cities, setting up shop, and using it to launch an invasion of my empire.

(Note: I LOVE that it can happen in this sequel, but I don't like it when it does.)

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by apostatedogfish

I retook the city and waged a war agains the barbarians to find that half the units had come from a city just to the south of mine, and the other half had come from a city three times farther away from mine than from an English city which was fortified with only a couple longbowmen.

If the barbarians could have put up that kind of assault on my city and didn't take the English city, I have to assume that either:

a- The English city was founded much later than my city, and that the barbarians didn't take it because ALL their units were engaged in taking/retaking my city (possibly the barbarian AI is more inclined to retake a city than capture a new one and will ignore a new "threat" in lieu of a recapture),

b- The English city had been massively fortified and the skeleton garrison that remained was all that survived the barbarian attack, or

c- The barbarians just decided to come after me instead.

Or
d- the barbs knew about your city but hadn´t detected the english city yet

I agree btw.
the barbs are the thing I hate the most about Civ IV,
yet they´re at the same time one of the things I love about Civ IV
as now they represent a real challenge and not just a way to get some more XP for your warriors

[Artuero]

Real challenge is right. I found the new world first on a huge terra map (noble, raging barbs). The barbs have a ton of cities, some of them size 13 and 14. Initially they had crossbowmen and the like while I had, not sure, maybe musketmen or something. I conquered one of their cities and founded one of my own. But I had wars at home and couldn't ship my army over there to really take over.

Since then they have riflemen and I am just getting infantry, but still involved in wars back home so I haven't made it. In fact, none of the other civs have colonized at all and I need my units that are there to guard my cities. I am sure I will take over when I get a chance to send some troops, but it will take an effort. Looking forward to it.

[xxFlukexx]

I don't notice barbarian selective attacking, but I do notice what you said, that barbarians/animals go for your warrior rather than a scout first. It's weird maybe they have a preference for taking out military units first but it's bizarre when it happens. I believe the way the code works is that the barbarian city picks a city closest to it to attack and sends a trickle of units constantly.

The best thing about barb cities is that they usually are founded in a pretty good city spot and so that's a free city, pretty nice.

It's really annoying on land maps with tundra/ice because barbs pop up there too and I refuse to settle a city on all ice tiles just to stop barb invasions.

There's a small time window where the barbs will show up with an axeman pretty early and if you haven't secured copper/iron and don't have a good military producing city you are in for some hurt.

[remconius]

when you have spread your religion early you have LOS on enemy cities. You see Barbarians everywhere. I think human player can gain advantage from dealing with Barbarians better. Especially if AI moves worker inside every time.

[Derelict]

MidKnight: It's been my experience that barbarians prefer to prey on civ's with higher culture as opposed to those with lower ones.

It does make sense, however, considering that a high culture civ will tend to have more territory and, as a result, a greater number of resources (worked or unworked) to prey upon.

The barbarians also seem to have a preference for attacking units, pillaging worked tiles and, finally, attacking cities (in that order, based on proximity). For example, it's possible to plant an archer on a hill just beyond your developed tracts of land and watch the barbarians that enter the territory move toward that archer like a magnet.

It does seem like they may hold a preference for certain worked tiles to pillage as well. I have on rare occasions seen them sidestep a unit to move to a square they want to pillage, but more often than not they will focus on the unit first.

Of the "cultured" civilizations (by this I mean the "creative" trait civ's), Cyrus, Hatshepsut and Kublai Khan are most capable with prepartions for barbarian riaders (and taking their towns) due to their early UU's. Catherine, Louis and Frederick have to resort to more common (if not similar) means of dealing with them, though I've found all typically have more barbarian issues to deal with than other civ's frequently do. This can of course vary based on a lot of factors but that is my experience and impression so far.

[Blake]

I FINALLY saw one of those barb super-cities, it had the Hanging Gardens. I yoinked it with Riflemen .

[sabrewolf]

hanging gardens? ... so was it a conquered city? afaik they cannot build culture-generating improvements...

in my standard terra map i conquered a size 11 barbarian city but it never had anything but regular improvements inside and the cultural borders hadn't expanded.

i must say that i really love barbarians in this game. unlike animals, they'll come after your cities so you better have a warrior or two nearby. also, they tend to move intelligently by minimising the time "in the open". and their cities grow, they build stuff, etc. barbs are the ideal training ground for your units, and the source of "free" cities and bring another great twist to the game! imho they could be a little bit more powerful in the later game and something like civ3's barbarian era-change-spawning could make it even more challenging

[Jethro83]

Given the way barbarians had been in Civ III, I was definitely amazed by the barbarians this time around. They certainly made me think carefully about how many troops I should leave on a frontier that I don't need to worry about the AI filling up.

And to conquer the barbarian towns I actually had to bring my best swordsmen and a couple of catapults to get the job done.

I'm really loving this change of pace, even if the barbarians can at times become more than just a thorn in my side and actually constitute a genuine threat.

Although, there is one case in a game I played as Alexander when the barbarians of a town on my southern frontier sent an archer into my territory. Of course, I was cleverly manoevering my own archers to entrenched positions in hills, forests and forested hills in the hope that the enemy would smash themselves against them. Much to my dismay, this lone archer unit just kept moving through my territory with no discernable target. I keep manoevering my forces to protect vital infrastructure and they just kept heading north before attacking one of Mali's cities on my northern border.

[Targonis]

For those who havn't tried it yet, try a custom game, huge world, epic, with the barbarian hordes and you will be in for a fun time if you like a challenge. The rules also change as you go from Chieftain to Warlord difficulty when it comes to the barbarians as well.

In Chieftain, if you build walls and 3 archers in a city, that's normally enough to keep the SWARMS from hitting you. By swarms, I am talking about between one and four barbarian units suddenly appearing inside or near the borders of your cities with less protection.

In Warlord, I've had cities with 3 archers, and walls, and the swarms still come in. I need to make many sets of three archers to push them back so I can gather the resources inside my own borders. While this is going on, the AI civs can often continue on unhindered.

Note this is with the special option for barbarians.

On another note, I have discovered where some of the barbarian cities come from. I found a camp(the sort that provides technology, money, and so on) with a barbarian warrior standing fortified on top of it. It would NOT attack after 7 turns standing around it. This leads me to believe that if those camps arn't investigated early, they become barbarian towns, which in time grow to become huge cities. I've also seen AI civs in a small war against a barbarian city before, though not spending many resources on trying to capture it(which I did fairly quickly).

I hope this helps.

[Saurus]

There is an ongoing thread about A.I cheating. It appears the A.I get a 70% bonus VS animals and a 40% bonus VS barbarians regardless of difficulty level.
If the Barbarians are aware of theese special bonuses, then they in fact even should be more careful about attacking the A.I than the human player.

To me this even explains why the A.I civs so eagerly seems to attack Barbarian cities.