Why Civ 4 is not fun.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Adagio
Then you should try Marathon, barbarian attacks are 3x more difficult to handle, compared to Epic...

Don't seem like it, when you look at the various coefficients.

[Jaybe]

I've been playing marathon with greater-than standard number of civs. I'm going to have to lower that number so I can encounter more barbs.

[bahoo]

My main problem with barbarians is not their existance, but the arbitrary method in which they appear.

It seems to me it was a poorly thought out mechanic on behalf of the designers. When I switched from Noble to Monarch (which seems to me to be an overly large jump in difficulty) I began having severe problems with barbarians. They always seemed to me more technologicaly advanced than me as well as much more efficent at building units. I ended up not really focusing on fighting but making little scouts and putting them on strategic hilltops to make them miraculously stop appearing. I much preferred Civ3 barbarians, where you could send a bunch of troops to their encampment and smash it in to the ground and they were taken care of for awhile, at least you had a target for you anger. Maybe it's just me, but smashing barbarian camps seems like a much more historically accurate method of dealing with them, rather than having a bunch of scouts keeping a close eye on all the woods. Barbarians should have to come from somewhere, not just leap out of holes in the ground!

[Thedrin]

When I switched from Noble to Monarch (which seems to me to be an overly large jump in difficulty)

Maybe you should have tried Prince level in between.

[MasterDave]

Incas rule at controlling barbarians early

Each difficulty level in Civ 4 represents a fairly large change in gameplay. I won my first couple of games on Noble fairly easily using my Civ3 tactics. After that it took me a fair number of games to master Prince, then master Monarch, and I am still getting my ass wiped out most of the time in Emperor.

I find that my new favorite race for dealing with Barbarians in the early game without building up military techs or expensive units is the Inca. I am a major religion whore and starting with Mysticism is a great path to either buddhism or hinduism, and a prereq for the CS slingshot. The Incan trait of Financial is also very useful for learning the techs leading up to Code of Laws quickly enough to pull off the Slingshot. Also the Combat I Quechas make excellent and cheap anti-barb units early on when the barbs are mostly warriors and archers (I usually give them Cover once they get 2 xps). They are also good for taking over barb towns and even AI cities on the cheap as long as they are defended by nothing better than archers. Even a single Quecha can really mess up an AI civ when they are still in their first city by stealing their worker and then pillaging all of their improvements. The AI will often be afraid to counterattack the Quecha with his archers because it is at a base disadvantage (3 vs. 4).

Once the barbs and AI's start getting axemen, the quechas will need to be upgraded to survive, but usually I have completed my CS slingshot or the Pyramids by then and I am ready to learn better military techs.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by bahoo
My main problem with barbarians is not their existance, but the arbitrary method in which they appear.

My main problem with barbarians is not their randomly appearing in the FoW, but that they cheat. For example, they could have Axeman units with no access to copper or iron. That sort of thing.

[Nugog]

My main problem with barbarians is that my units can't go past 10 XP when killing them