Barbarians

[Cornhog]

Either I expand too quickly or I just don't defend as well as I should, but early barbarians are the biggest factor in determing whether I win or not. I can handle the civilized armies, but for some reason barbarians kick my ass.

If I get lucky and my neighbors and I clear out most of the fog fairly quickly, I can thrive. But when the barbarians start bringing out 3 axeman at a time or archers, I'm in trouble. Hell, they usually start one or two cities before I can start uncovering the fog. At that point its not easy taking down a city defended by three free archers.

So basically I'm wondering, how do you guys combat the barbarians in the early game? Obviously, I need more defenders but I'm not sure if I can spare the resources and time for them.

If I ignore defenses and just focus on growth, I still have trouble keeping up with the AI in research. On the other hand, if I put an emphasis on defense, then I don't have nearly enough well developed cities. Is it just a sacrifice I've gotta make? One I can hopefully compensate for later?

I've never had problems with barbarians in previous games but they can really kick the crap out of me in CivIV. Oh, by the way, I'm playing on Monarch.

(Obviously I could turn the barbarians off, but I don't wanna play with training wheels)

[Hauptman]

well, my most recent way of dealing with barbarians is....


custom games 15+ civs...

Prior to that i would simply fortify an archer on a wooded hill in the barbar path and that settled that problem as the silly barbar AI just constantly attacked the first unit it saw.

[VetLegion]

I'm playing Monarch too. Barbarians are not a big deal. You have a free period of first 20 or so turns where there are none. After that, they seem to come as Archers and Warriors, and are easily countered by archers of my own as they do attack units on forests instead of going for the cities. Having a couple of archers can defend the realm at that point. The next point, when you see their cities founded, they becoma a magnet for AI. I try to take a barbarian city if it is well positioned but otherwise leave it for AI to loose time over.

[Dis]

I feel like they come a little too early. I start seeing archers when I still have warriors. Part of that is my fault.

One thing I do like barbarians for is it forced me to build an army. Sometimes I forget to do that until I'm attacked by the AI. And by then it's too late. . Barbarians keep you on your toes.

My last game was kind of interesting. I had the most space to expand. But that also meant I had the biggest barbarian problem. I was trying to finish up my worker technologies (agriculture, fishing, pottery etc) before doing the tech that gives you copper (I'm blanking on the name for some reason). It almost proved fatal. Luckily I was able to get my copper up and running. In the meantime my skirmishers could hold the fort (but weren't enough to take barbarian cities).

I only built 8 axeman. But that's enough to take care of the barbarian problem (standard map) and enough army to keep the AI off my back. Though it helped they shared my religion. The japanese attacked me later on, but I had a huge tech lead by then.

I'm still not sure what the best order to research those early tech are. I need to be more careful in the future when those axeman start appearing.

[The keeper]

I usually try to have a force dedicated to barb guard.


Bronze working is crucial. It reveals copper AND gives you slavery. If you have slavery, you can whip out an extra defender so at least the city will not imediately fall.


In my present game (marathon, continents, huge) I got bronze working, but had no copper or horses. My choice was to tech in the direction of alphabet instead of iron working. So I built a city where I could get some horses, and had lots of warrior guards. Once I got the horse city founded, the axemen were beginning to come.

I already had a barracks in my capital, and I began to make chariots with flanking 1 promotion. The chariots gave more mobility than an axeman, and retreated about 20% of the time.

I would make sure to engage the barbs on my time. Waited until they were in the open field, and then attacked with my chariot. The chariot would occasionally win, but not usually. If it retreated, all the better. I had another chariot right behind it to mop up the mess.


I generally like barbs. Barbs = free promotions.

[gdgrimm]

General guidelines that I'm following....

Bronze Working is always fairly early in my tech tree. It allows me to secure Copper, and if that isn't going to happen, I quickly research to Iron Working, to secure Iron. Getting them in the network is necessary to handle the Axemen. BTW, this also dictates (usually) whether I exit the Ancient Era via Alphabet or Iron Working.

If I have Copper, I'll often just skip the Archery tech, and build Axemen/Spearmen for Barb eradication. If I'm going to have to wait for Iron, I consider that too big of a risk, and push for Archery. My archers will be in place to handle Barb archers that way, and I'll have Iron before Axemen show up.

Early on, I do NOT garrison cities. Scatter some units (Scouts or obsolete warriors work well) to maximize the visualize range (usually on forested hills) and get advanced notice of where the Barbs are coming from. That's far more valuable, and a better use of resources than trying to keep units in every city.

Also, the very first building I ever build is usually a barracks. If for some reason, barbs look especially nasty, I'll pop rush some defense. That's kind of a last resort kind of thing, but dropping a pop or two (even in your capital) to pump out 3 or so units to prevent the loss of one or more cities is sometimes acceptable.

[couerdelion]

I find the new barbarians are a lot more interesting and can really divert you from your early stage objectives. I’ve had much more significant problems with them in this game and learnt that it is wise to not disregard completely, the necessary defensive tech levels to give you

1. archers
2. bronze
3. iron

The other alternative is to have access to horses and chariots are usually good for early game patrols if you are luck enough to get this resource.

In the more normal scenario, as long as I can keep sufficient spare units then I can usually defend not just my cities, but also improvements. Barbarians then can be turned into a source of promotion for units by using the techniques explained to get them to attack you.

In fact, if you get bronze early enough, axemen can attack barbarian archers to get quite easy promotion if you can force them onto the plains. One of these promotions is the 25% against archers so with the +10% standard promotion the axemen has over 70% win chance against archers on plains - I still would avoid taking on the archers on a hill unless they were about to destroy an improvement.

However, defending is one thing and attacking their cities is another. For this you need the stronger attack units like axemen (or even swordsmen) and with the city attack promotion they will have good odds against defending archers. Captured cities can have very good locations and save the effort of building settlers.

[Yosh]

The best way to counter barbarians is to fortify units around your empire on forest hills as "fog-busters". These units clear the fog of war around your cities, and also act as a magnet for barbs that do appear.

Beelining for military techs often isn't a bad strategy, but sometimes it is enough to fortify a few warriors on strategic hillsides; usually by the time barb archers appear, your warriors have some promotions under their belt (cover and shock are nice ones for barb-busting warriors), and are fully fortified. Combine all these bonuses together - the forest, hill, promos, and fortify - and your warrior can almost always take care of barb warriors and archers. In addition, the additional sight-range that being on a hilltop gives you expands the ground your unit reveals, giving plenty of warning AND reducing the liklihood of barb appearance.

As someone mentioned earlier, it's not as important to have your units actually garrisoned in your cities as it is for them to be fog-busting; just make sure though that you have units that can get back to the city if needed!

Even on Monarch, you will usually have enough time to get some decent infrastructure and research done before barb axemen appear; as a rule, I ensure that my second settler has at least one warrior that can garrison, and 1-2 more that can fog-bust around the prospective city site. Achieving these military numbers is done easily, by simply slipping in a warrior after your initial builds -- by that time, they only take about 3 turns or so.

[Cornhog]

Thanks guys. I feel dumb asking about barbarians especially since I am a longtime Civ vet. Played Civ I, II, III, and Alpha Centauri and beat them all on the hardest levels (Well, not Civ III, but that's mainly cause it wasn't as fun as the other games.)

Anyway, it seems that fog busters seem to be the most important thing. I usually just kept my units in my cities, but I guess I should have them surrounding the empire. That might at least help the barbarians be consistent. It seems like there are either none or assloads. It makes it harder to prepare.

I think my main problem is that Civ IV doesn't seem to respond well to my patented super, rapid, barebones early expansion. It worked so well in the other games

[Yosh]

=)

That's ok Cornhog - CIV is a big shock for people who were expecting the same game elements as the previous ones - I know I got surprised by it too!

Hope this helped, and good luck - don't be afraid to post if you need advice -- can't gurantee I'll give you the best advice, but I'll certainly try!

[Willem]

Originally posted by Hauptman

Prior to that i would simply fortify an archer on a wooded hill in the barbar path and that settled that problem as the silly barbar AI just constantly attacked the first unit it saw.

I agree, that's the best way to control them until you get enough troops to take out their cities as they pop up. Until the barbs start spawning Swordsman, those Archers are pretty much unbeatable against the barbs, especially after they gain a couple of ranks in Hill defence. Once I get a few Archers out there, my empire is pretty much left in peace.

[Blake]

The only thing of note is that on some maps it's simply impossible to "control" babarians. Play highlands with the standard number of civs and marathon speed. Raging barbs if you want too. I promise you wont be able to push back the fog with warriors or even archers. On such settings, the ONLY thing that can push back the fog is cities built on hills garrisoned with 3+ archers or 2+ Axemen, anything else gets either steamrolled by the raging hordes, or simply ignored until everything is pillaged.

Pushing back the fog works best on watery maps, and/or with extra civs and/or faster game speeds. It's certainly not pratical for all settings.

[Dis]

only masochists play raging hordes.

[Blake]

And those who are sadistic, since the AI's actually get abused more . It amuses me to be #1 (by far) on Monarch without fighting another civ, just because all the AI's get ground into the dirt by the barbs.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Dis
only masochists play raging hordes.

I used to like playing with Raging Barbarians on in Civ 3, but I won't even contemplate it in 4. The standard is raging enough for me. It's rather sweet though when they build a city exactly where I was planning to. Sometimes they're even nice enough to develop some of the land for me.