Barbs can definitely change the game

[Dry]

Originally posted by Solomwi
It's a continents map, so probably just poor luck on my part.

Not sure.
What you describe happens to me 100% of the time. I play huge, continent, low sea level, epic, deault barb level.
I know at some point there WILL BE 2 barb cities around there.
I know the barbs WILL come in stream for my resources, pastures, ...
And you should be lucky to have only warriors and archers. I usually have archers and axemen. I even once saw a swordman coming.

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

At noble, I have the time to do the research before the barbs are coming.
I go first for hunting; then pottery, agriculture, animal husbandry; then archery.
At noble, I usually build only 1 warrior (+ scouts and worker of course). I get archery before city2 is build.
So city2 get the warrior as defender and start directly building an archer.
City3 and 4 will have an archer as defender and will start building a second one at foundation.
Barb streams come only after city4, 5 or even 6 are build.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Blake
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.

Cool. Nice trick.

[Aro]

Originally posted by Blake


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.

It seems an exploit to me.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Leifmk

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.

But all a Scout can do if a Barb comes around is run, and if it gets ambushed you have to build another Scout to replace him. An Archer will not only lead to the destruction of the barb, but once it's up in that Hill, you'll probably never have to worry about replacing him again. Hammer for hammer, Archers are still a better option.

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.

Another reason why you should be sticking Archers in the Hills around your empire instead of Scouts. It doesn't take too many Barb attacks before they've climbed up a couple of levels.

[Shaka II]

Double post (see below).

[Blake]

Originally posted by Aro


It seems an exploit to me.

*shrug*. Rushbuying from 0 hammers costs 50% more. Warriors are cheap enough that 50% more is still only 1 population. Then the game turns every population whipped into a set number of shields. It's a bit dodgy, but it's working consistently as per the rules.

[Solomwi]

Originally posted by Willem


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.

With hindsight, maybe, but it boils down to my unpreparedness for the increased barb activity on marathon (first marathon game). On epic, I've typically got plenty of time to keep the barbs at bay and get iron revealed so I can make sure I don't need to alter my expansion before snagging archery. Only the close proximity of another civ on epic has warranted switching those priorities for me. As I said before, I have plenty of lebensraum, os didn't see the need to hurry to archers. I'd probably still head for IW first in that situation, but have a few more warriors on hand to deal with the barb archers. With the right barracks promotions and the aggressive trait, they can handle archers in the field well enough. I was forced to keep them in or near the cities initially by my lack of numbers. A rotation of warriors on a well-placed forest tile can work until the barb axes and swords come along, too, especially if, as Blake mentioned, one's a medic. I just didn't have enough warriors to keep the rotation going at first.

Dry - I was among the tech leaders, if not the most advanced civ, and had prioritized archery very low and BW/IW fairly high, so I was confident I wouldn't be seeing axes and swords at that point. Had copper turned up in my borders, I'd have probably moved archery ahead of IW, but it didn't, so I forged ahead along the bottom branch. Another factor I was considering is that archers, while great at protecting cities, aren't as good at protecting improvements, but axes/swords are, since they let you intercept the barbs first. They're coming with swords now, but I've beefed my military up as a result of events in my first post to the point that they're easily dealt with. Of course, had iron not shown up, I'd have been in a world of hurt, but nothing ventured, nothing gained . For the record, when I fired the game back up, I noticed that at the time of my original post, I was a mere two turns from archery.

Shaka - You assume I want to reduce barb activity . No, my post was made more to give Firaxis an attaboy on their implementation of barbs, not to bemoan my situation. I played for a couple hours between classes today and have added four or five barb cities to the Japanese Empire, including on surrounded by two spice tiles, two ivories and one sheep and one with two furs and a deer. High barb activity presents a great opportunity if managed right, and the loss of Tokyo has been recouped several times over already. I'd actually go so far as to say this episode has put me in the driver's seat much earlier than I'm usually there. Plus, it was fun.

I think a better idea would be to take that woodsman axe and park it on a forest where it interdicts the barb stream, preferably fortified with a medic and just inside your borders. That way reinforcements are closeby if his strength drops too much and, as someone posted before, the barbs will pretty much exclusively attack him.

I wanted the religion so I could get started in earnest with my cultural borders. I loathe having to build obelisks for culture, particularly when it takes 30 culture to reach the first expansion, as on marathon. I'd rather build a missionary, if even that's needed, and let my religion do the culture work for me.

On poprushing from 0, I noticed the same thing with archers when I started whipping one in each newly conquered barb city that was large enough.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Solomwi

I think a better idea would be to take that woodsman axe and park it on a forest where it interdicts the barb stream, preferably fortified with a medic and just inside your borders. That way reinforcements are closeby if his strength drops too much and, as someone posted before, the barbs will pretty much exclusively attack him.

You're better off placing him a short way outside your border, where he will actually have an impact on the fog of war. That way he's serving two functions intstead of merely defending. Better yet, try to place him on a forested Hill just outside your border if there is one. If you're concerned about reinforcements, just build a road out to him.

[Solomwi]

In my situation, it was better to place him inside the borders for quicker healing. The little bit of fog of war that was going to be pushed back was insignificant to what remained, and I already was getting 3 or 4 turns notice of a new unit. I didn't need that second purpose, and gained much more by staying close to home while letting my workers focus on more important things than spending 14 turns building a road (including movement). To top it all off, I was able to shuffle units easily between the eastern and western fronts, and respond quickly to any other threats that might crop up. While I can allow for situations in which moving outside the border could help, no, I wasn't better off taking that approach, all things considered.

[TheArsenal]

Originally posted by Shaka II
You're lucky you're not playing huge highland on epic. Considerably more land area, but it seems more than that, sort of like they hide in the valleys. I suspect the mountain peaks shadow more of the land area, but I'm not sure.

Actually, I am playing on this exact map. The single advantage is once you have expanded enough, the sheer number of mountains narrows the avenues of Barb attack allowing you to defend through choke points. But even then I am being notified constantly that Barbs are taking foreign cities well into game. The AI is having a tough, tough go of it.

The map is square with borders edges that lead into blackness. I have a single well armed, large AI Civ (Napoleon) between me and the "edge of the earth" and have seen no Barbs move at me from this direction. Does anyone know if this "end of the earth" is treated as FOW and if Barbs can move onto the game board from those edges? I can get no Open Borders treaty with the disagreeable French to see for myself. If this is not the case, civs spawned on the map edges should have an extreme advantage as they don’t have to worry about defending the back end of their nation at all (from Barbs or invaders) and can station everything on the perimeter.

[Shaka II]

Originally posted by Solomwi
Shaka - You assume I want to reduce barb activity . No, my post was made more to give Firaxis an attaboy on their implementation of barbs, not to bemoan my situation. I played for a couple hours between classes today and have added four or five barb cities to the Japanese Empire, including on surrounded by two spice tiles, two ivories and one sheep and one with two furs and a deer. High barb activity presents a great opportunity if managed right, and the loss of Tokyo has been recouped several times over already. I'd actually go so far as to say this episode has put me in the driver's seat much earlier than I'm usually there. Plus, it was fun.

I see, you enjoy it. It is a fun contest, though I'm still learning how to cope with them while developing. I'll start another huge highlands map, probably with the default 11 civs, to try it out again, using some of my previous learning.

Originally posted by Solomwi
I think a better idea would be to take that woodsman axe and park it on a forest where it interdicts the barb stream, preferably fortified with a medic and just inside your borders. That way reinforcements are closeby if his strength drops too much and, as someone posted before, the barbs will pretty much exclusively attack him.

I agree, that's what I do pretty much. I put one or two strong defenders on the outskirts of each town on forested hills, with the ability to relieve those wounded defenders.

Originally posted by Solomwi
I wanted the religion so I could get started in earnest with my cultural borders. I loathe having to build obelisks for culture, particularly when it takes 30 culture to reach the first expansion, as on marathon. I'd rather build a missionary, if even that's needed, and let my religion do the culture work for me.

We all want religion (at least in Civ), but getting it on the harder levels, isn't so easy. Even having mysticism to start with is no guarantee, hence my point about not having it to help with happiness or border expansion. I chop in my libraries and beeline for monarchy after alphabet to keep my Civ from getting unhappy.

Originally posted by TheArsenal
Does anyone know if this "end of the earth" is treated as FOW and if Barbs can move onto the game board from those edges? I can get no Open Borders treaty with the disagreeable French to see for myself. If this is not the case, civs spawned on the map edges should have an extreme advantage as they don’t have to worry about defending the back end of their nation at all (from Barbs or invaders) and can station everything on the perimeter.

I doubt that beyond the map edge is FOW. Also, I'm not sure there is a great advantage, since you don't normally start right at the edge. If you grow toward the edge instead of to the center, then it limits your expansion and delays contact and trade with other Civs, spread of religion. I suppose it could help, but on a highlands map, the mountain ranges do a pretty good job of making natural barriers, if not semi-infinite, like the map edge. Similarly the water edge helps in a continent map. I've been in that situation frequently on pangea maps, where coastal cities are great for that reason..

[Scumbag]

I remove barbarians from every game I play. I'd keep them if they didn't spawn from nowhere, or if they had comparible strength to the average defender(s) I had, or they dissapeared upon a successful base attack.

[Solomwi]

We all want religion (at least in Civ), but getting it on the harder levels, isn't so easy. Even having mysticism to start with is no guarantee, hence my point about not having it to help with happiness or border expansion. I chop in my libraries and beeline for monarchy after alphabet to keep my Civ from getting unhappy.

No doubt, but I was playing on Noble . Having been able to keep tech parity from the outset, and having seen Genghis found Hinduism, I figured I had a decent chance at Judaism if I went for it ASAP. Of course, I also wound up founding Confucianism in a failed CS Slingshot attempt. With furs already connected and silver just one city site away (of course, happened to be right in the field the barbs were crossing later), I wasn't too worried about happiness. On the other hand, with obeslisks being my only available cultural buildings at that point, I needed something else, and decided I could have a more immediate horizontal effect by getting religion running first.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Scumbag
I remove barbarians from every game I play. I'd keep them if they didn't spawn from nowhere, or if they had comparible strength to the average defender(s) I had, or they dissapeared upon a successful base attack.

You're missing part of the fun. Yes they can be a pain in the butt sometimes, but they definitely add something to the early game. I think it would get boring if all I had to worry about was developing my empire so I could continue my expansion. The other civs generally don't wage war at the start of the game, so the barbs pick up the slack and let you hone your combat skills and get your units a few promotions. If you do it right, after awhile they're pretty easy to control, at least I find it so. My problem is just those initial first turns before I can get some Archers out in the field.

[popejubal]

Originally posted by Willem


You're missing part of the fun. Yes they can be a pain in the butt sometimes, but they definitely add something to the early game.

I agree. I used to hate Barbarians, but then I decided that I wanted to kick their fur-wearing, horn-hatted butts in one game just to get even and I found that in spite of the fact that I just wanted to kick some Barb-butt, I did quite a bit better in the game as well.

It turned out that I had been giving military units too low a priority in my games and I needed the Barbarians to teach me that since the AI was waiting patiently until I thought all was well and then hemming me in with their superior military. I had thought I was just not agressive enough with my settlers. Instead I found that I just didn't have enough muscle to back up my scientists and priests.

Give the Barbarians a chance. They'll make you a better player.