Raging Barbarians option

[AeonOfTime]

Has anyone else tried the raging barbarians option? I used to play all my Civ3 games with that setting, but in Civ4 it really changes the whole game, imho. It changes a lot because you can't concentrate on your empire's growth with them buggers attacking from all sides in a steady flow that even adapts to your technology: they start off with warriors and archers, then start coming at you with swordsmen/axemen and horse archers when you can build them. Now that's what I call ragin'

All in all, I must say it makes for a very interesting game as it forces you into a defensive position nearly right from the start. Last night I started an epic game, and lost my second city as well as all tile improvements around my capitol as I could not build units fast enough to counter their attacks. Fortunately, the other civs did not fare that well either, which was highly satisfactory

But now to the main question: any tips on how to handle them and still have your empire grow? As they come from all sides, you need a lot of units to protect your tile improvements / city connections while at the same time founding new cities...

[Blake]

It depends a lot on the map.

Maps/starts with a lot of land and few players results in many more barbs.

It's possible to never see a barb with raging barbs, especially on island maps. It's possible to be pillaged clean with raging barbs off, if you have fog on all sides and no AI's to clear it.

I quite enjoy "Double raging barbs", land maps like Oasis/Highlands/Great Plains plus raging barbs, and Epic speed. Now THAT's fun.

Some notes:
The AI does indeed get set back as much as the player or even moreso. So even if it seems hopeless, it probably isn't. (the AI can protect their cities, but they get pillaged clean)
Cities are best founded on hills, your capital will probably be okay with the culture bonus though. Founding on rivers is good too for trade routes. Plains hill on a river is ideal, for the best tiles sans-improvements.
Creative and Agressive are very strong anti-barb traits, especially Creative, you can actually afford to rely on border expansion and the +20% defense is nice.
A beeline to bronze working is highly reccomended. It's best to found a city on the copper, if this is fairly undesirable it's important to found next to the copper and fortify an axeman on the copper.
You pretty much need 2 Axemen per city, and a dedicated defender, either warrior, archer or a 3rd axeman. Chop axemen if you're relying purely on them (no archers).

In some cases, so many barbs come in you just have to hole up in your cities, fortify what improvements you can, and wait for the storm to pass.

During a "barb storm" growth is usually impossible other than a little back-filling, make sure to get a 2nd city fast then just weather the storm, take comfort in the knowledge that the AI are getting reamed too.

Once the storm passes your axemen army make good scouts, barb-city killers and city garrisons.

Fighting barbs without axemen/horses SUCKS. You must found your cities on hills, garrison them with 3+ archers and garrison forests with more archers (camps in forest are a good improvement to protect). It's nearly impossible to keep any improvement alive other than those on forest and MAYBE hills (make sure to defend with 2+ archers). Instead focus on founding new cities, send out a couple of Guerilla archers ahead to the next city-hill and have them pre-fortify, then send out the settler. Focus on building wonders too, you can actually chop quite safely, barbs deliberately hunt improvements, they don't hunt workers. The AI will be more set back on wonder building since their workers just hole up in the cities rather than chopping.


One multiplayer game I lost my capital twice to barbs. First a barb axeman snuck in and took Rome, teleporting my capital. Then another barb haxman snuck in and RAZED the new capital. Later in the game an AI snuck a knight in and took my Capital yet again. I won that game .

[AeonOfTime]

Thanks for all the notes, especially the part about the barbarians not heeding workers is worth gold. I'll try a new game tonight (also with Creative and Agressive traits) and see how that works out

I was also quite surprised lately in a Terra map game that the "Americas" when I discovered it actually had 6 barbarian cities on it of which one was size 12... now that was a continent ripe for joyful picking

[favedave]

I LOVE raging barbarians.

I play with it all the time now. It slows the game down, but not as much as slowing the speed.

I disagree with the building advice. You don't have to build cities on hills. And you do NOT have to build your cities directly on copper - in fact doing so makes you lose some of the production since you can't build a mine anymore.

Remember - barbs only come out of the black areas that you have never explored or areas you currently cannot see.

So put some units outside your visible area so you can see more - this pushes back the areas where they spawn.

And then send military units out with your settlers. And build cities where you normally would. Just more slowly and carefully. If you build only for combat and not for longterm planning, you'll fall behind later.

The barbs don't spawn for a while, so you can get up to 2 or 3 cities before they start coming. But get copper/iron so you can get axemen ASAP.

I do agree that you need mining/copper/iron right away. No time to mess around with getting religion or anything till you got those. (Only go for iron if you can't find copper).

And since you'll have a larger-than-otherwise army, you have to pay more attention to your finances. You need units guarding your resources, and they cost money.

Aggressive trait is very useful, but so is Financial. Those extra gold pay for the extra units you need to keep nasty barbs smacked down real good. And Financial means you can get more money from less squares, which is important since your cities grow so slowly.

After beating off the first few waves, I then send units out all around me to keep the Fog Of War away so that no barbs spawn close to me. They'll still spawn, but farther away.

Raging barbs is a great option to choose if you want a harder game, but don't want to crank the difficulty level way up.

BTW, I only build axemen and horse archers for a loooooong time. Swordsmen are fairly useless and a waste of production with barbs to fight.

Oh, another trick - if you have some extra workers - is to build some useless roads on your permitere. The barbs will tear those up first sometimes instead of heading for your lovely wheat farm.

[Blake]

If you really want to have some fun with the Barbs, play on a all-land map (Oasis and Great Plains are the ones I prefer), with only like half the reccomended number of AI's, or even fewer. It requires entirely different strategies, like the Barbarian city grab - grabbing the barb cities before the AI's pillage them clean. (it's annoying, the Barbs build up sweet cities, then some dumb AI like Isabella comes along with 50 zillion horses and pillages all the barb cities, revenge i guess. But if you're fast you can get the barb cities before they get pillaged).

[vmxa1]

I am not sure I would call it fun, but it was busy. If you do AW with raging barbs and do not have any civs on one side of you, it will be a challenge. At least until you can clear all the fog.

If they get axemen before you, you can expect to get some pillaged tiles.

Once the fog is pushed back, you will probably have a barb town or two to deal with, but at least they will be coming from the same direction all the time.

[Shaka II]

Like favedave says, I try to take the war to the outskirts of town, rather than letting them come to town and destroy all of my improvements, which they delight in doing. Since they emerge from the darkness, I find a hill or better yet a forested or jungled hill, which is a nice way to push back the fog of war, while providing a strong defensive position for your unit(s) at the same time. Usually they will attack even if the odds are low for them, so it can be a great way to promote your unit’s strength. Barbarian training. They are not as smart as AI in this way.

[Arrian]

Must be interesting on Terra maps. The Old World won't have much of a barb storm, I'd imagine, b/c it's crowded with civs. The New World, however, could be pretty crazy.

-Arrian

[Delta-V]

It *is* possible to survive without bronze...I was in that situation. Archers on forrested hills with Hills Defense I and II work quite well against axemen and even swordsmen. You need a stack of 2 or preferably 3 and just keep pushing them out farther and farther as you expand. It helps if you have a coast or map edge you can at least push back the FoW and keep attacks from coming in that direction. I got Iron before I ever got any bronze. By then, I'd expanded to fill all my little continent except for the one Barbarian city...which fell to my shiny new swordsmen! It got quite exciting there for a while...you pretty much have to found cities on hills, and the barbarians just keep coming, and coming, and coming...

[Xarathas]

I've played many, many games with raging barbarians (on large/huge maps, epic speed). It's not at all hard to survive without bronze. The first wave of barbarians will ALWAYS be archers and warriors.. and as long as you have like 2 archers when they come you're pretty much safe (well, the city is, your improvements might not be so lucky). By the time the Axemen show up, you should have city defender 2 if not city defender 3 archers sitting in your city. Usually I'd have 1 archer with Guerilla 1&2 upgrades also protecting vital mines or chokepoints (especially those forest/hill jungle/hill types). these are all pretty much impervious to axemen attacks. City defender 3 archers will also win just about every fight against swordsmen if you have full fortify bonus (with or without culture bonus/walls). Keeping improvements is a bit tougher without axemen of your own, but it's not impossible. You just need to know how to make the barbarians to attack you instead of the improvement.

Those that haven't played raging barbarians, should really give it a try. It's some good fun

[Mujadaddy]

Originally posted by Xarathas
Those that haven't played raging barbarians, should really give it a try. It's some good fun

Hmmm... I *might* try that... but in my last game I was *consistently* losing Warriors to Barbarian Warriors---even if I was defending a forest or hill --- bad luck, I suppose, but my growth was completely stunted on that map---I couldn't get an even break!

[Artuero]

Raging barbs on Terra maps are pretty entertaining. It also means that you conquer the new world rather than settle it, as they will have well developed cities and trade networks. You also have to go in force because they have a lot of units. The saving grace seems to be that they are aggressive enough to attack you rather than holing up in their cities, so you kill a lot of units on defense and get your units promoted.

[Diadem]

Scouts work very well against barbs I discovered. Build a few scouts early on to explore the map and get goodie huts. The goodie huts themselves might provide a few as well, if you're lucky.

Then, place them as sentries around your cities. If you place them strategicly around hills, you can often eliminate the FoW in most directions from your empire (meaning it's either coast or another civ in that direction).

Real military units work as well of course, but scouts a faster and cheaper, and have a use early on for exploration.

And stacks of promoted archers on forested hills hold back pretty much anything the barbs can throw against you early game. If you can get a river between your archer and the barb it's even better.

[Addled Platypus]

In one game they basta## barians built three cities and grew them pretty quick

I never realy see the barbarains harras the AI, like they harrass us humans

[Blake]

I find the "Barb doesn't harrass AI" comments so funny.

Try playing a map that favors barbs (say highlands). During/after a big wave swarm, activate worldbuilder and check out the AI's. Many of them will be pillaged clean.

Tge reason you don't see barbs harrass the AI is simply because you don't see barbs harrass the AI! You don't have their entire territory revealed, and where you're most likely to be scouting the AI, you're also most likely to be revealing the fog, preventing barbs spawning!

Also another thing to try is play with permament alliance(s) with AI and watch them get pillaged by Barbs .