Does anybody else think the barbarians are overpowered?

I played Egypt on emperor level, and was rushed by camel archers around turn 130. I had axemen and chariots. And spearmen, of course... I could defend my cities with spearmen, but it would take unsupportable numbers to prevent pillaging. I think they were much too strong, and too numerous. Ruins the game, really.

But then if you can stop the Barbs from pillaging, then they are simply inefective.
Civs are happy when they survive barb invasions.
I
am okay with getting the wind knocked out of me by Barbs once in a while and the player deals with them better than that AI.

the barbs are there to tear down civs, not just to be a nuisance. if the AI plays, they often fall due to the pressure, which is the point

Check out version 1.01. The barbs have been toned down a bit in it.

@Gunner: OMG! I was already playing 1.01 - hate to think how bad it was before :P

@jbfballrb: I was afraid of that. It seemed like the game was determined that the egyptian civilization should not survive into modern times as a significant power. One can argue for and against such a setup... but it's not one I will enjoy playing.

Anyway, I managed to survive the barbarian onslaught, losing only one city after a strategical retreat. However, as I suspected, the maintenance of the required garrisons made my research grind to a halt. By mid 1600, the european civs were fielding gunpowder units while I had just reached knights. I think they felt too sorry for me to attack... if one of them do decide to take me out, it will be easy. Not only are their units more advanced, they have massive amounts.

I will not continue the game, though. It's getting a little too much for my computer to handle. A pity, I think this was a really nice mod, even if the challenge on emperor is perhaps somewhat tougher than the vanilla game. Perhaps even unreasonable so :p

Yeah - perhaps if you are playing on Emperor, and the game is difficult, the problem isn't the game balance?

Does anybody else think the barbarians are overpowered?

I played Egypt on emperor level, and was rushed by camel archers around turn 130. I had axemen and chariots. And spearmen, of course... I could defend my cities with spearmen, but it would take unsupportable numbers to prevent pillaging. I think they were much too strong, and too numerous. Ruins the game, really.

there is a hill that you build a fort on and load some units there... barbs from the middle east cant get to egypt:)

or did you have them coming from africa?:confused:

Use Elephants - it works :)

I think the barbarians are a little overpowered. Whenever I play at the moment nearly every AI civ is destroyed and I get the same problems if I play as one of the early starting civs.

However I don't think that the barbs need to be toned down as such. I think that the problem is that the barbs form a sort of super civ. Every barb city belongs joins together to form what becomes a loose civ. I think the barbs need to be split up into separate tribes so that barbs from the Middle East, Europe, Africa and Asia aren't all joined. I don't have any historical sources but I'm sure that plenty of the barbs portrayed in RFC would have been at war with eachother as well as the empires. If the barbs which are in place of Carthage managed to destroy Egypt and Rome then they would be a force to be reckoned with but the barbs that spring up in Europe shouldn't just automatically be friendly.

I'm not sure how this could be achieved or whether it even can and I don't know whether this is the kind of thing Rhye had in mind for some of the minor civs.

I think that the minor civs would represent barbarians...