Threat Down!

[Quillan]

To the best of my knowledge, animals and barbarians work a little differently. I think the animal spawn type is dependent only on terrain, not date. I've seen bears as the first animals to show up in the game. It doesn't seem to give you wolves and lions first, then bears and jaguars later. Some games I get few bears, and other games I seem to get nothing but. Most I get a nice mix.

[wodan11]

Originally posted by Quillan
To the best of my knowledge, animals and barbarians work a little differently. I think the animal spawn type is dependent only on terrain, not date. I've seen bears as the first animals to show up in the game. It doesn't seem to give you wolves and lions first, then bears and jaguars later. Some games I get few bears, and other games I seem to get nothing but. Most I get a nice mix.

Really. Do you venture out early on?

About 90% of the time, I not only send out my initial warrior or scout, I build another to allow my capitol to grow. So, I have at least 2 units out there scouting from the get go.

I guess if your habit is to fortify your initial guy, and to do settler first or something, then I could easily see how your experience would be otherwise.

So, my experience is different from yours. First, I see nothing. Then, wolves and lions. Later, jaguars and bears. Then, a magnitude of difference when you get warriors; different because they can invade your cultural borders. After this, archers. Then, axes. You're really sucking hind tit if you get swords and HAs, but it's possible.

It goes on from there but usually I only see barb longbows or heaven forbid grenadiers or something if I'm on a New World map or something.

Bottom line I REALLY see distinct escalations in barb units, whether animals or barbs.

Wodan

[Quillan]

I usually only fortify the third or the fourth warrior; the others are scouting. Normally I see wolves and lions first. But I have seen bears right off before. In fact, one game I got completely peeved because the first 5 animals I ran across were bears; they ate 3 warriors, 1 scout, and one settler.

[Theben]

Scouts, IMO, are just too fragile to use. If I get on from a hut, great, but I (almost) never build them.

Plus, warriors can 1) attack and 2) be upgraded later. Once had my initial warrior upgraded to axeman to maceman with WoodIII. He had him fortify in a jungle tile and he held off a 5 unit Russian stack by himself.

[Theben]

Originally posted by wodan11

Plus, without a doubt, a scout is easier to forest hop. So, while yes the warrior will get a slightly better benefit from the forest, the warrior is also much more likely to be stuck in between and thus not have the forest at all. So, it would be scout 2.5 vs warrior 2.0.

This works both ways. More often than not there will be a large swath of territory that's forest/jungle, and unless your unit is WoodII(I) it's going to move 1 tile/turn, scout or not.

[wodan11]

Originally posted by Theben


This works both ways. More often than not there will be a large swath of territory that's forest/jungle, and unless your unit is WoodII(I) it's going to move 1 tile/turn, scout or not.

The point wasn't that it moves 1 vs 2, the point was that it ends its turn in forest or jungle.

Wodan

[DaShi]

Originally posted by couerdelion
And watch for your scouts when they are healing. If a bear lumbers up then move away. If you meet another animal then that it just unlucky.

The difficult thing is to get to Forest II in the first place. Once you're there it's a lot easier to run away from animals.

A lot easier to run into them too. I'm much better at finding animals than huts.