Barbarians

[morganja]

Is there any way to tone down the barbarians? I'm getting 5 a turn on Prince level and it is extremely, extremely boring to have to constantly kill them over and over and over and over. It's a micro-management nightmare. I enjoy having the randomness of barbarians, but I still want to be able to enjoy the game. Right now it is so annoying to be close to a game-breaker for me. Does anyone enjoy moving chariots and horsemen around to kill Barbarians several thousand times? It's like a pop-a-mole game and not nearly as fun.

[Urban Ranger]

You can choose "no barbarians" in the custom game, I think.

OTOH I always have "raging barbarians" on

There more more ways to keep barbarians away than killing them off.

[proviisori]

You should place some units on hills outside your borders. Barbarians can only spawn in the fog. so by doing this you push the fog away and have more time to react against incoming barbs.

[JimG]

Swatting barbs is a good way to get your units experianced.

[Loader2k]

Oh i know what you mean...

However Flamer is right - reducing the fog of war is the way
to go. You could also fortify units into forests on the
barbarians path hoping that they suicide without bothering
you. You have to be careful about upkeep though - having
too many units outside your borders costs.

[johnmcd]

I find that not having units outside your borders decreases levels of barb spawn, if you have a landmass of your own you will have almost no barbarian incidence if you keep to your own lands and keep out of 'theirs'. They do still spawn but they will rarely attack your settlements. The AI always goes tramping round the fog though which seems to stir them up in my experience.

Dunno if it's real or imagined though.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by johnmcd
I find that not having units outside your borders decreases levels of barb spawn, if you have a landmass of your own you will have almost no barbarian incidence if you keep to your own lands and keep out of 'theirs'. They do still spawn but they will rarely attack your settlements. The AI always goes tramping round the fog though which seems to stir them up in my experience.

Dunno if it's real or imagined though.

Imagined!!

In fact, I once imagined a game in which I left the barbs alone and they didn’t bother me at all.

In some rare case, I might not see a barbarian attack for around 90 turns on Epic speed. In other cases, they would, at this stage, have stopped pouring in archers or warriors, and started to send those city-busting axemen.

Certainly the positioning of troops to uncover the fog will suppress them and would make sense if you can relatively cheaply ensure that one or two units will completely neutralise any barbarian spawning ground from one direction. But where your defensive position against attack is weak, posting units too far away could leave your empire exposed. Until I get axemen, I will rarely place units very far from my cities after the initial exploratory phase is over.

[Shaka II]

Originally posted by johnmcd
I find that not having units outside your borders decreases levels of barb spawn, if you have a landmass of your own you will have almost no barbarian incidence if you keep to your own lands and keep out of 'theirs'. They do still spawn but they will rarely attack your settlements. The AI always goes tramping round the fog though which seems to stir them up in my experience.

Dunno if it's real or imagined though.

It's hard to tell what goes on inside their minds, but it does seem that often they just want to be left alone. I usually post some sentry warriors and later archers on wooded hills to push back the fog of war. Well promoted archers can defend against axemen pretty well, if they have a good terrain bonus, such as forested hills with guerilla promotion. It depends on the map though, the density of civs. if it's a long time before your neignboring civs cultural borders touch, expect to see a healthy amount of barbs until then, and probably some barb cities, which are usually choice spots to capture.

[tetley]

Capture? Is it possible to capture a barb city? Every time I move in I get city ruins and maybe 30 plunder.

[JackRudd]

I've captured barb cities many times. They have to be size 2 or larger when you do so.