Archer Rush Part II - Revenge of AAHZ...

[ZEE]

.

[Lancer]

Sounds like you got a good thing going.

I'll never talk to you again btw.

[ZEE]

.

[Lancer]

You're off your nut my friend. It's because you are doing so well in this game that KISKS MY ASS every * * * * i n g t i m e!!!

[Lancer]

The poly house has to do with you and how you deal with yourself. You'll never see me raise that issue to you, ever. I ask for help for those people, you give it or you don't. It's that simple.

[ZEE]

.

[Lancer]

Well my invitation stands of course. Just let us know a bit in advance so we can get your room ready. Also I'd advise that you should let someone from the family meet you at the airport. Lastly you should definately visit within the time frame that we are here.

[ZEE]

.

[ZEE]

.

[Lancer]

Once more into the fray!

[UnOrthOdOx]

On dealing with raging barbs:


The best defense against barbs is fog removal.

Instead of camping those archers in your cities, get them out there on hills fog busting. Forces the barbs to spawn further away, they are likely to attack the archers, and even if they kill an archer, you have plenty of warning.

enemy capital = your second city, though. Spot on!

You need more workers, though, judging by the screens. (another worker prior to that third city)

[Yosho]

Originally posted by UnOrthOdOx
On dealing with raging barbs:


The best defense against barbs is fog removal.

Instead of camping those archers in your cities, get them out there on hills fog busting. Forces the barbs to spawn further away, they are likely to attack the archers, and even if they kill an archer, you have plenty of warning.

Some games, though, fog busting is just not a practical solution. Depends how many units you have and how much uninhabited area there is around you. It can help to have some guys out there eliminating some of the fog, but don't expect that to take care of the barb problem by itself; some barbs WILL sneak past.

[jbp26]

Originally posted by AAHZ
I played Civ 4 like it was Civ 2, and got burned. Overexpansion, whipped too much, too big a military, constant barbs everywhere = collapsed economy. Then an event destroyed my gold mine. I lost fights at 90% victory margin. Those barbs were NASTY, jeepers! Every turn literally 5-6 barbs on my borders. Raging barbs is a true test for real. Everything went downhill since literally the last screenshot. i built another 4th city and went whip/unit crazy. Size 3 cities with unhappy people for like 40 turns. The AI was not a factor, it was my stupidity that did me this time.

the part were you have to stop conquering and fix your economy is definitely one of the hardest. however 3 cities is not the time to stop expanding. judging by that last screenshot, i see two big problems- your land is undeveloped, and your cities are very far apart, which makes a cohesive defense from barbarians very difficult. start throwing down some cottages ASAP, and forget about barracks and totem poles. you need workers, settlers, and soldiers. more cities also means less fog and less barbarians. once you have them under control to just a few spawn points, theyre great for leveling up your units.

[wodan11]

Here's the way I look at it. The number of defense units each city will need increases, then decreases back to 0 once all fog is gone from that city's borders.

So, each city starts at 0. Animals don't enter your borders. Once warrior barbs show up, each of your cities needs at least 1 defensive unit (depending on what you're using to defend). If you're defening with warriors, then you probably should have 2 in each city, in case they get lucky. If youi're defending with archers, then just 1 in each city will deal with warrior barbs.

Look at it this way: you're risking the loss of that city plus the barracks, library or whatever it's made, plus some pop and whatever it's working on now. What if that city is making a wonder? You'll lose ALL those hammers it's accumulated. So, you need to make sure you don't lose a city to a lucky barb die roll.

Same as above: Once barb archers show up you need better defenders (axes or something) or more qty.

Now, a different way to approach this is to take the multiple defenders you would have had to have anyway, and position them to fogbust. Depending on terrain, you might need more or less total # of units this way. If you're extending in a linear way (like AAHZ did here) instead of expanding spherically, then you'll probably need more.

But, we also need to consider that at some point, barbs become so strong that fogbusting can actually prevent more barbs than it cost you in # of units. Since on some maps there can be so many barbs they can overrun you, this makes fogbusting a good option no matter how many units it takes.

Wodan

[Yosho]

Originally posted by wodan11
But, we also need to consider that at some point, barbs become so strong that fogbusting can actually prevent more barbs than it cost you in # of units. Since on some maps the barbs there can be so many barbs they can overrun you, this makes fogbusting a good option no matter how many units it takes.

Wodan

Well, I wouldn't say "no matter how many units it takes". Especally if you take out one of your neighbors in an early rush like this, and then end up with a very spread out empire, it sometimes would take a lot more units then you could have to get rid of ALL the fog. Not only that, units that wander too far out when attempting to fogbust often get isolated, and if they get attacked by one barb and wounded, they can't heal or get back before another barb finishes them off.

Don't get me wrong, getting rid of some fog is always worthwhile, it's often worth it to have sentaries posted right around your empire in defensive places like hill forests. But if you can't get rid of all the fog, some barbs will always spawn, and there's no easy answer to them.

You always want to have some units defending your cities, and perhaps key resouces like a hill copper mine. If you have extra units, you might want to use some of them to fog-bust, and you probably are also still exploring at the same time. Sometimes you need to basically go on a war footing in order to attack and take barbarian cities; and of course that can be really tricky if you've already rushed and overexpanded a bit.

Basically, some games, all you can do is hang on by whatever means necessary until you can eliminate the fog by mostly just building more cities.