Sorry for outdated questions, but I must be doing something wrong, and it likely applies across expansions.

In an Immortal game today, with MM for the first time ever (vanilla, SPI/FIN) and planned a hybrid cottage-SE system with both a huge GP farm and a big cottaged capitol. I got a great map, so I thought, a hut that gave me Hunting when I settled in place, a few grass hills, cows and ivory in my start, a few floodplains on a corner coast with fish and rice for my GP-farm not far off, and a killer gauntlet to cut off my continents' only other inhabitant, netting me 80% of the land vs 20% for her (Victoria). Note, the main chunk is rectangular 15 x 30 or so, tundra north, jungle south, my triangle of cities in the middle, one on each coast and the center, nicely spaced, unusable desert tiles in the dead center, etc etc.

I figured piece of cake, workers for chopping (plenty of wood in the my areas), chop out some troops and a wonder or two, get ready to Skirm rush Vicky, and BLAM, the AI is popping Barb Axemen all over the place, from 3 directions!! I was still a good 10 turns from being able to hook up any copper (wasnt in my first 3 cities BFCs), but luckily I had gotten Horse Riding on a hut, and had horses in a BFC, so I managed to get a bunch of HAs out to shut down the barbs, but the whip has its own costs, and they kept coming and coming, axes and archers and warriors, must have been 30, not kidding. It was all I could manage to get a couple skirms in each city for defense, give up the camp I built on Ivory early, and kind of turtle up. Vicky has shot past me, I missed Stonehenge, Pyramids, and Lighthouse, getting only the Oracle, which I used on CoL (I missed the early religions as well, since MM doesnt start with Mysticism, I was 2 turns late on Poly, then went AH-BW-Math). I took 2 barb cities that were in primo spots, giving me 5 awesome cities so far, so I am going to be able to equalize the game, and pull away soon. Still, it cost me my early Skirm rush on Vick, at the very least.

So where did I go wrong? I see such smooth runs on these "play along" games. Should I keep more scouts out on the perimeters to prevent barbs from spawning? This was a pretty large area, I had a couple, and making enough more scouts/warriors to do that would have taken a ton of time (pay me now or pay my later time, I guess). The couple spots I had a scout and a warrior (hut pops) werent quite at the edge, so they just popped a bit farther out. Kinda harsh. Vicky had a small peninsula, so after her 2nd city I bet she didnt even see a barb. She has already managed to galley a city on the opposite side on the continent closest to my OTHER flank, but thats just fodder for later anyway. I surely dont like the idea of "no barbs", maybe I just didnt have good fog-busting placement. I dont know how some of you guys manage to get so much done on these upper levels, LOL. Do you just keep patrolling in circles with a couple units in undeveloped areas? I am starting to wonder if smaller landmass maps are easier, since you "expose" them faster and with less scouts.

Once again, I apologize for the lack of pics, what is the screenshot KB-shortcut and where do I upload my screenies once I take em?

Sorry for outdated questions, but I must be doing something wrong, and it likely applies across expansions.

In an Immortal game today, with MM for the first time ever (vanilla, SPI/FIN) and planned a hybrid cottage-SE system with both a huge GP farm and a big cottaged capitol. I got a great map, so I thought, a hut that gave me Hunting when I settled in place, a few grass hills, cows and ivory in my start, a few floodplains on a corner coast with fish and rice for my GP-farm not far off, and a killer gauntlet to cut off my continents' only other inhabitant, netting me 80% of the land vs 20% for her (Victoria). Note, the main chunk is rectangular 15 x 30 or so, tundra north, jungle south, my triangle of cities in the middle, one on each coast and the center, nicely spaced, unusable desert tiles in the dead center, etc etc.

I figured piece of cake, workers for chopping (plenty of wood in the my areas), chop out some troops and a wonder or two, get ready to Skirm rush Vicky, and BLAM, the AI is popping Barb Axemen all over the place, from 3 directions!! I was still a good 10 turns from being able to hook up any copper (wasnt in my first 3 cities BFCs), but luckily I had gotten Horse Riding on a hut, and had horses in a BFC, so I managed to get a bunch of HAs out to shut down the barbs, but the whip has its own costs, and they kept coming and coming, axes and archers and warriors, must have been 30, not kidding. It was all I could manage to get a couple skirms in each city for defense, give up the camp I built on Ivory early, and kind of turtle up. Vicky has shot past me, I missed Stonehenge, Pyramids, and Lighthouse, getting only the Oracle, which I used on CoL (I missed the early religions as well, since MM doesnt start with Mysticism, I was 2 turns late on Poly, then went AH-BW-Math). I took 2 barb cities that were in primo spots, giving me 5 awesome cities so far, so I am going to be able to equalize the game, and pull away soon. Still, it cost me my early Skirm rush on Vick, at the very least.

So where did I go wrong? I see such smooth runs on these "play along" games. Should I keep more scouts out on the perimeters to prevent barbs from spawning? This was a pretty large area, I had a couple, and making enough more scouts/warriors to do that would have taken a ton of time (pay me now or pay my later time, I guess). The couple spots I had a scout and a warrior (hut pops) werent quite at the edge, so they just popped a bit farther out. Kinda harsh. Vicky had a small peninsula, so after her 2nd city I bet she didnt even see a barb. She has already managed to galley a city on the opposite side on the continent closest to my OTHER flank, but thats just fodder for later anyway. I surely dont like the idea of "no barbs", maybe I just didnt have good fog-busting placement. I dont know how some of you guys manage to get so much done on these upper levels, LOL. Do you just keep patrolling in circles with a couple units in undeveloped areas? I am starting to wonder if smaller landmass maps are easier, since you "expose" them faster and with less scouts.
Large maps are always a big problem in terms of barbs, and in there you need to have some anti barb protections soon. And of course fogbusting is essential....

Unlike you suggested ,the barb behaviour is diferent in all of the expansions... in vanilla they tend to try to attack any unit in sight before trying to attack. That means that putting a archer or a axe in top of a hill is a good move: They fogbust and any barb will try to dislodge them agaisnt all odds ( warlords and BtS barbs normally do not aim to fortified units in hills ). Some players even use this to gather XP for their units before attacking a real opponent....

Back to your game, it seems that you passed too much time without a "real" unit to defend ( no cooper ( no axes ), no reference to chariots ( they're weak but they are very good fogbuters if you can get the + 1 visibility promo ) and no reference to archers ) and HA are not the best unit to tacke barbs ( ideally you'll want a cheap and eay acess unit... HA are neither ).
IMHO in the moment you noticed that you didn't had cooper nearby, you should had done some chariots and/or archers for fogbust.....

Once again, I apologize for the lack of pics, what is the screenshot KB-shortcut and where do I upload my screenies once I take em?
To take screens of the game just press the Print screen in the keyboard ( it saves the screens in My documents/My Games/(your version of CivIV)/Screenshots )
For uploading them you can use the Easy upload system of CFC ( the red button in the right top of the reply box ) or use a dedicated image server , like imageshack or photobucked ( among a lot of others ). any of those options will give you a internet adress that you should post between tags ( something like [IMG]www.somethingblahblah.bgty ) in the post

Thanks for the tips to post pics. I will get myself an account, pics are always best.
Back to your game, it seems that you passed too much time without a "real" unit to defend ( no cooper ( no axes ), no reference to chariots ( they're weak but they are very good fogbuters if you can get the + 1 visibility promo ) and no reference to archers ) and HA are not the best unit to tacke barbs ( ideally you'll want a cheap and eay acess unit... HA are neither ).
IMHO in the moment you noticed that you didn't had cooper nearby, you should had done some chariots and/or archers for fogbust.....
I was building Skirmishers like there was no tomorrow already, planning to rush Vicky with them. Saddly, I didnt send a few out into the woods to fortify a hill, although I am not sure just 1 would stop a barb axe without some upgrade, and I hadnt built a barracks yet (just doesnt seem to be time).

I actually had Horse Riding for a while, and had horses 1 border-pop out in my 3rd city, so I skipped making Chariots in favor of more Skirms, a few Chariots would have helped with faster fog patrolling as well, in hindsight.

Good tips, thanks.

Well, after much reloading, even re-starting from square one on the same map, I have come to a conclusion.

I am not ready for Immortal level, LOL. Sticking to Monarch and Emp for a bit longer, maybe until I actually get BTS. The barbs owned me every single game except one, where I had so many Skirms out as fogbusters that Catherine rolled up and landgrabbed a huge chunk of my best terrain (jungles with TONS of Calander-Happy resources)