It's my second game of Civ4, and thus my second game of Civ since the old DOS version...

I decide to crank the pressure up from Noble to Prince, and also selected Raging Barbarians for the extra fun! I haven't noticed much of a problem so far in terms of the Difficulty level, but oh... my... god... the Barbarians...
They started in 2650 BC. It's now 1 AD and they are not slowing down. And this is MARATHON. More and more spawn, every turn. I've stacked my cities safely with archies, but woe be unto me if I try to improve even a single square. It gets pillaged instantly. Barbarians have been going quite out of their way to make sure even the deepest terrain improvements get pillaged. Most of them come out of the ice wastes to the south of my capital. But when I build terrain improvements around my other cities, additional barbs spawn and give line-of-sight to the southern barbs, who bypass the capital to help pillage. I cannot make anything. Conservatively, I estimate that I've killed 150 barbarians. It has been intense! The AI have not had any significant troubles. Someone's city got razed in 2500BC, but in my explorations I'm finding lots and lots of claimed resources and roads. I have NO resources and NO roads. On my Noble game (also a Marathon), I noted that the Barbarians came in waves. But this "wave" has lasted over two-and-a-half millenia.

Is this really how Raging mode is?!! Or maybe there's some kind of glitch at the fog on the edge of my territory...? The fact that the AI civs aren't suffering from attacks anymore is making me very suspicious.

While raging barbs will definitely be worse than normal barbs, you can still keep your improvements as long as you fog bust heavily. That is the key to dealing with barbs.

Send some archers away from your territory and plant them on forested hills if possible. Space them out so that the "fog" is busted around all of your territory. A lot of the times the barbs will attack your fortified fogbusters, though with Warlords expansion it seems their AI has been tweaked, and they often just walk right past the fogbusters and start pillaging. Anyway, like I said, you must fogbust to thrive on raging barbs. Also, you should build some chariots and keep them inside your borders (especially on Warlords). Their extra movement makes defending your improvements a lot easier, and in Warlords they get a big bonus against axemen.

So that's how it is eh...

I've just slingshotted samurai: 400AD now, and way behind schedule on this due to over-militarization and inability to improve land and resources. With the samurai I can afford to start taking the defense of open-land improvements seriously though. For the entire game I've just been relying on veteran archers in each city to take out the barbs. There are just so many, anyone defending or attacking beyond the gates was getting worn down in a couple of turns. I'll do as you say and fog-bust the region beyond my LOS.

"Prince" should turn out to be a cakewalk once I have this barb threat under control. Just thinking about the numbers and opportunity costs... it defintely seems worth it to over-militarize and fogbust under Raging Barbs, and I should have started working on that a couple thousand years earlier.

Thanks for your advice dalessi.

Just to note, with Warlords the barbs have got smarter - they seem less likely to suicide on a forest hill archer and more likely to just walk on past and pillage. They can still get caught in the open pretty easily, but in Warlords I think chariots might now be better barb killers, with the 100% axeman bonus and visibility promotion. Anyone else found this?

Something else is to start giving Drill promotions to your Archers if you are using them. Drill allows an Archer who survives a combat to do so with more health left over so it can do a better job surviving subsequent attacks. Archers with other promotions may have a higher chance of winning the first attack, but will have smaller odds of surviving the second.

Just to note, with Warlords the barbs have got smarter - they seem less likely to suicide on a forest hill archer and more likely to just walk on past and pillage. They can still get caught in the open pretty easily, but in Warlords I think chariots might now be better barb killers, with the 100% axeman bonus and visibility promotion. Anyone else found this?

I've found this to be true in vanilla cIV. It's very common to see an animal (especially Lions) refuse to attack a Warrior standing unfortified in flat woods. I've also had non animal units walk right past (remaining adjacent for 2-3 turns) the guys I had posted to attract them. I think some of it has to do with the line-of-sight of the Barbarian empire as a whole.

The level of barbarian activity is also tied to the amount of land covered by F.O.W. I played a game on a very large continent with only a few other civs, and the barbarian activity was comparable to what I have experienced on "raging". It may be that you suffered from a combination of different barbarian-promoting effects, but it may also be that you neglected your military. Don't do that.

One of your earliest priorities in the game is the locating and securing of metal resources (copper if you're lucky, else iron), and then building enough axemen to secure your territory (and possibly a neighbor's too!).

Fog-busting is good too. Since barbarians will on;y spawn where there is no line-of-sight (this includes foreign civs too), you can effectively eliminate the threat along entire frontiers (like an undeveloped second coast) with a few well-positioned (on a hill) units. Doing that reduces the number of barbarians you face as well as increasing the concentration (and therefore effectiveness) of your military. You can even do this along your primary front as "pro-active military deployment", which can keep the fighting outside of your own territory by preventing barbs from spawning nearby.

Thanks for the all the helpful advice guys, I thought i'd gratify you with some progress I've made.

http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/9013/civ4screenshot0002dg0.jpg

This is my map at 1302 AD. I have just made a beeline up to Rome and capped it this turn, securing the highest score. As soon as the points registered I made peace with Catherine, Caesar, and Bismark. I had made peace with Ghengis earlier after a nasty fight. He razed an tundra city in a surprise attack with a huge force of 14 Keshiks. I had to make all my cities whip a Samurai or Spearman and lucked out, because barbarians pillaged my iron mine a couple turns later. I routed his Keshiks when he split them up, and made peace.

I have really poor diplomatic footing. (With 4 wars at once, do I need to say that?) It was probably for religious reasons, as well as early problems with my score. All I did until 400 AD was hole up in 2 cities and beat the hell out of barbs. See the great ice region to the south of my empire? The whole place is barbarian Valhalla. But because of wars and development priorities, I can't keep it fully unfogged. I have 3 units in hill positions down there, but I fear they may as well go home for all the good they do in lowering the frequency of attacks.

http://img122.imageshack.us/img122/4926/civ4screenshot0001mq5.jpg

These are my current barbarian kill totals. Maybe 20 French in there too, but they weren't much of a threat to my slingshot Samurai and I exterminated them. Note the extremely low losses. I just sit axemen up on forested hills in the ice region and the barbs washed up against them like small waves.

In conclusion, I think I can pull this game off. I have about 700 turns left. Erradicate a couple more civs and remain friendly with the distant ones like Egypt and America. Domination victory.

I sometimes play raging barb games to make things interesting but after quite a few games it seems that unless you've got copper you're screwed. Knowing it's a raging barb game i go to archery, then BW. If you don't have copper the barbs will overrun every improvement you try to build and defend with archers. For a fully developed size 4-5 in the 'wilderness' you're talking a substantial military presence to defend everything. That would be fine but then you go into another civs territory that doesn't have any iron or copper units either and they're fully developed. So basically it seems that barbs are another ai civ. Also say you have an axeman and there's another ai civs warrior next to a barb, the barb attacks you(?), in warolrds now I've noticed that the barb will retreat and attack no one.