Barbs can definitely change the game

[Solomwi]

Playing as Japan, on a marathon huge world, Noble difficulty with the default barb setting (didn't pay it any attention in the setup). I had a nice little empire clipping along early, with recently founded Tokyo making three cities and putting me one border expansion from horses. I had also founded Judaism and had fur, wheat, deer, incense and cows within my empire, with marble and silver each just one settling away and iron showing up during the events to be described. Lots of rivers and forests, started one city layer from the coast, and had made contact with seven or so other civs. I had a settler a turn away from finishing and a handful of decently promoted warriors on the homefront. All in all, I was in pretty good shape, then it happened.

First Tokyo gets razed when I get a bad combat result (Combat I + Shock + 10% fortified warrior loses defending to barb unpromoted warrior). I started seeing a stream of barbs, alternating archer, warrior, archer, etc., each about two spaces behind the last, come at Kyoto from the west. No big deal, as one of my warriors is Woodsman II and there's a perfect intercept point that keeps them from being able to do any real damage. The only problem is they keep winning just enough fights, and I have to keep replacing warriors. Then a couple come from the east. I get a little help from a Roman warrior on that side, but now have another spot to protect. I'm furiously pumping out warriors in both cities and racing to IW, and finally the western stream trickles off and stops. I send a warrior out and find not one, but two barb cities right off my borders on that side. Assuming there's a third on my east, I managed to get squeezed between three barb cities simultaneously. Yippee.

Even though aside from my wheat farm being razed and some dead warriors, I haven't suffered any damage, it got to the point that I just had to put the game down and walk away for a break. Taking inventory, I realize that the worst damage is that this has completely immobilized me with respect to my competition for the last several turns. I do have iron, so if I can ever get enough breathing room to get it hooked up, I'll have a couple of well-promoted swords right off the bat, and properly played, this could be a really good situation once I'm out of it, at the very least a fun one in which to play catchup after some early setbacks, so I'm not packing that game in by any stretch. I just find it amazing that the barbs can affect a game so much. Never in a previous civ have they been implemented this well.

[Feyd]

Yeah... I've had that happen. They delay the barbarians for a reason in IV because you HAVE to get a defense set. You also HAVE to build up that military when you can. Nothing says "Ouch" like an Axeman appearing off of your borders when you have yet to build anything but a warrior.

This ain't your daddy's Civ.

[muflonex]

There are several ways to avoid this, eg. :

Terra maps tend to be more packed-up with civilizations, so there is less space for Barbarians. Also, smaller then Huge maps.

The best way is (as always) prevention. Barbarians are generated in fog-of-war areas, so to limit their "breeding" best way is to build some scouts and put them as your sentry on the hills. Scouts are best because they are cheap and more mobile than other early units. While placing them take into account visibility provided by your AND computer's cultural borders. Enjoy

[Blake]

I don't think you said the map type.

Anyway, on Marathon barbs spawn about twice as fast as epic, 3 times faster as on standard (this is, every one unit you can build, has to fight three times as many barbs units on Marathon).

If the map settings favor barbs (Any all land map) then the AI's will also be having huge barb problems and you don't have to worry about being set back, as long as you don't lose cities.

If you just got unlucky with a really foggy start compared with other civs, you might have more of a problem. But bear in mind at least one AI should be sharing borders with the foggy area and they will also get a good barb-reaming, so once you recover you'll still have room to expand into, and a weakened civ to conquer if you wish.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Blake
Anyway, on Marathon barbs spawn about twice as fast as epic, 3 times faster as on standard (this is, every one unit you can build, has to fight three times as many barbs units on Marathon).

I don't think they spawn twice as fast, it's just that it takes longer to build things.

[Urban Ranger]

You should be defending your cities with archers, not warriors.

[Blake]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


I don't think they spawn twice as fast, it's just that it takes longer to build things.

It's a petty distinction, each of your units has to fight twice as many barbs units, that's what's important. This makes having insanely good defensive odds essential. You can BET on warriors dying to barb archers.

Also something I forgot to mention - Medics! They rule against barbarians, barbs USUALLY tend to win by attrition - your units fight so often they get worn down and die, especially when outside of your cities, or worse, outside your borders where healing is only 10% a turn. Medic will allow a unit outside your borders to fight twice as often.

Ofcourse sometimes barbs will just win outright (i've seen upsets like warrior vs guerilla archer on hill, archer vs guerilla2 drill1 archer on forested hill), this MANDATES having atleast 3 defenders or 2 excellent defenders per city or chokepoint.

Defensive combos that tend to work:
2x archer, 1x medic warrior. (only on hill city)

1x Medic+Shock Axeman, 1x Cover Axeman.

For raging barbs and marathon, add an extra archers to stacks.

[Solomwi]

Originally posted by Blake
I don't think you said the map type.

Anyway, on Marathon barbs spawn about twice as fast as epic, 3 times faster as on standard (this is, every one unit you can build, has to fight three times as many barbs units on Marathon).

If the map settings favor barbs (Any all land map) then the AI's will also be having huge barb problems and you don't have to worry about being set back, as long as you don't lose cities.

If you just got unlucky with a really foggy start compared with other civs, you might have more of a problem. But bear in mind at least one AI should be sharing borders with the foggy area and they will also get a good barb-reaming, so once you recover you'll still have room to expand into, and a weakened civ to conquer if you wish.

It's a continents map, so probably just poor luck on my part. No AI civs are having trouble with these particular barbs, as they're all on the northern end of a fairly large continent, with me all alone in the south. That's one reason there's still a lot of upside to this particular game. Just as soon as I weather the storm and can get back to expanding, I should be in good shape. Once I get that iron hooked up, I'll be able to go on the offensive and clear up the problem. And Medics do, indeed, rule against barbs.

UR, tough to do before archery's been researched, but thanks for the, uh, insight.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Blake
It's a petty distinction, each of your units has to fight twice as many barbs units, that's what's important. This makes having insanely good defensive odds essential. You can BET on warriors dying to barb archers.

I surmise the healing rate for the units to be normal (i.e. not slowed down). If that is the case the distinction is important. Yeah, each unit faces twice or thrice the number of barbarians, they aren't worn down the same way barbarian "generation" rate is cranked up.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Solomwi
UR, tough to do before archery's been researched, but thanks for the, uh, insight.

You got 4 cities and haven't researched archery? Sounds like a personal problem to me

[Solomwi]

Nah, two and a third newly founded. Whole different ballgame.

[Willem]

Originally posted by muflonex
Scouts are best because they are cheap and more mobile than other early units.

No way. The best unit by far to counter the barbs is an Archer on a Hill. Barbs will almost always attack the first unit they see, and since Archers start with a 25% Hills bonus, then can pick up another 50% in promotions real quick, added to the 25% bonus from the Hill itself (75% if it's forested) and the 25% bonus for being fortified, they're pretty much indestructible. That gives them a full defense strength of almost 9 on a forested Hill. Even Axemen don't stand a chance. The only early barb unit I've seen take one down was a Swordsman, and that was only because the Archer was still green and not up to full fortification. And in addition to providing a formidable defence, being on that Hill breaks up the fog of war.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Solomwi


It's a continents map, so probably just poor luck on my part. No AI civs are having trouble with these particular barbs, as they're all on the northern end of a fairly large continent, with me all alone in the south. That's one reason there's still a lot of upside to this particular game. Just as soon as I weather the storm and can get back to expanding, I should be in good shape. Once I get that iron hooked up, I'll be able to go on the offensive and clear up the problem. And Medics do, indeed, rule against barbs.

UR, tough to do before archery's been researched, but thanks for the, uh, insight.

Big mistake going after Ironworking before Archery. Archers are the best early unit you can have for defence. With their bonuses and a few promotions, they're way better than the Swordsman at defending a city. And Archery is a much cheaper tech than Ironworking. You could have pumped out a number of them during the time you spent researching Ironworking, and the barbs would have been useless against them.

[Blake]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


I surmise the healing rate for the units to be normal (i.e. not slowed down). If that is the case the distinction is important. Yeah, each unit faces twice or thrice the number of barbarians, they aren't worn down the same way barbarian "generation" rate is cranked up.

Fair enough. I tend to use "percentage of era/game" as the unit of measurement, so I would say that barbarians spawn faster and units heal faster.

The "wearing down" bit is debatable. First there is always the chance of an upset loss, there is no substitute for defender quantity. It is much more challenging to get a satisfactory quantity & quality on Marathon because babarians show up in large numbers so much earlier.

On Marathon Raging Barbs Monarch level with a land map, the ONLY possible early strategy (if you disdain reloading) is to beeline archery and build 2 archers, delaying archery at all (unless starting with hunting) can result in being destroyed by the early wave of archers, after all the odds are on the archers side in an archer vs warrior fight - if you only have 3 warriors to fight off 4 archers, you're probably toast.

With slightly more forgiving settings you can beeline bronzeworking and rely on poprushing warriors to hold on should the barbs throw a suprise raiding party for you. Every poprush allows you to train 2 warriors. 4 warriors is usually enough to deal with an Axeman.
Note on poprushing warriors: Due to some quirk, there is no penalty for poprushing warriors from 0 hammers. It still costs only 1 pop, and you get the full amount of hammers - enough for 2 warriors built over 2 turns. So poprushing a warrior is pretty much THE thing to do when suprised by barbs.

[Leifmk]

Originally posted by Willem


No way. The best unit by far to counter the barbs is an Archer on a Hill.

But if you build enough units to keep the entire hinterland out of fog-of-war the barb plague stops altogether, and for this you want something cheap and mobile.

Of course, in most of my games I want a decent stream of barbs to come knocking for a while. A decently experienced archer/axeman army is a good thing to have.