Hi

(vanilla, Nobel level) I will always use raging barbarians in my games to ensure my empire grows up nice and strong! Anyhow i decided to try a huge inland sea map with only 6 AI players so there would be lots of space. Now since there are so many Barbarians attacking me, i have noticed a few things...
1) I would assume Barbarians do not attack the AI as much as the human player, but how big is the difference exactly?
2) I founded a city with no defensive unit because it was not near any shadow region. Then a 'mamba' dance line of Barbarians weaved its way past other cities heading directly towards the ungarrisoned city. Of course i had nearby units to kill them off but i'm like "you gotta be kidding me here surely?".
3) When a bonus tile is improved by a worker, (Or even a normal tile sometimes) immediately Barbarians will come running, they will do this for a while and then seemingly become less interested untill the next bonus tile is improved and then they go crazy for that one!
4) They appear to spawn near weak points, as if they know exactly where all of my stronger military units are. Now i am surrounded by shadows but they consistently fail to bother spawning near strong points - unless i redirect several units away, and then they will immediately start spawning there!
5) Do barbarians ever spawn units more advanced than swordsmen?
6) How much would you say raging barbarians will set back a players empire? I feel that they will slow my growth rate by at least 50% (less for smaller maps) but since i have aggressive AI setting and they havn't bothered declaring war yet... perhaps the overall damage is actually a bonus??

1) I think it is the same
2) Don't know why they did that. Sometimes they're just random like that.
3) I'm pretty sure they try to pillage all improvements. A lot.
4) Barbarians spawn in fog of war. Wherever your units are, there is less fog of war so the barbarians don't spawn there. When you move them, the fog of war comes back where they were and decreases where they are going. The only way to stop that is to have more units out fog-busting.
5) They do indeed. I remember in MadScientists annoying french RPC, the barbarians had riflemen and were only two techs away from infantry. (It was a terra map)
6) I wouldn't know. I would guess that 50% is around right.

5) Do barbarians ever spawn units more advanced than swordsmen?


Yes, the most advanced I have seen barbarians is riflemen.

4) Barbarians spawn in fog of war. Wherever your units are, there is less fog of war so the barbarians don't spawn there. When you move them, the fog of war comes back where they were and decreases where they are going. The only way to stop that is to have more units out fog-busting.

Thank you for the detailed reply, much appreciated.

With regard to your point 4, sorry i did not explain better, i do know about fog of war already. So this is all in reference to fog of war areas unchanged by unit line of sight..... What i was saying is that my entire empire is surrounded by fog of war, lots of it. You would expect Barbarians to spawn from every direction but this is not the case. They will not spawn in fog of war areas which are closer to areas where i have strong military units stationed. As soon as i move those units, that same fog of war area will suddenly start spawning barbarians.

To 2, 3, 4) The spawning is random. However once spawned, the 'Barb Military AI' has complete visibility on the map, so they know where the weak sports are, and might converge there. Sometimas this will cause a bit of odd behaviour.
Also its more probably to spawn in a huge fog-of-war Thundra in your backyard than in the 3 plots that seprate your "Strong spot" from the next AI (Which is probaly why that spot is that strong in the first place.)

To 1) They dont make difference between AI and human - i had games where they took out whole AI empires.

It's possible however, that because of 2,3,4) they choose to rather converge on your softer cities, than on the nearbye AI - since AI usually does protect most of its cities - even those in the Backyard wit 2 or more units.

Edit: And BTW, how do you know, they did not attacked the AI's as much as they did attack you ? Pretty hard to completely recon a Huge map with only 6 AI empires

And to 6) - i dont think it actually set you back. A strong army on the early stage of the game (and later - tho irrelevant for barbs) is mandatory anyway, to take the oportunity and advantage of a weaker AI nearbye or to prevent a stronger one from doing the same to you.

The map you discribed - land heavy but sparsely settled (6 AI on huge :crazyeye:) is kind of worst case Barb wise - lots of fog, few fogbusters. Should be a strong indication in favor of building the Great Wall.

Thanks Refar

Well there does not appear to be a 'Great wall' in the game (vanilla).

As for where Barbarians spawn - the mystery remains as to why they do not spawn in 'large' fog of war areas that are not near any juicy targets?

Now the situation that puzzled me was this - i have an inland sea map and i started in the top left corner. Now, as it happens, my growth spread mostly north towards the map edge following the best terrain bonuses. I had 2 cities along the coast in the south and one not too far from my capital in the south. This last city had desert towards the south and had flood plains in the north, so there were no interesting tile improvements for Barbarians comming from the south to attack.

In the north there was a stretch of land probably about 5 tiles thick of fog of war left along the map edge and in the south there was about 30 or 40. All the Barbarians were spawning in the north and trying to attack the juicy terrain bonuses there, Meanwhile there was almost no Barbarians spawning in the south except for the occasional one attacking the sothern coastal cities.

After some time, i founded another city in the south and immediately Barbarians started vigirously spawning there!

lots of Barbarians were also spawning in the north west approach then due to mountains, i had the idea to blockade the western approach with some military units. As i was building the blockade, many Barbarians were charging around the military units and trying to attack the nearby city and its terrain improvements. The instant i completed the blockade, not one more barbarian bothered to approach from that direction!?!?

Also i did wonder how barbarians were doing around the rest of the world so i activated the world builder to have a look. I saw quite a number of large and terrain improved Barbarian cities inbetween all the majour races. I was dissapointed to see that there was only 1 Barbarian unit wandering on the entire map and it wasn't even near any majour race. Meanwhile about 5 barbarians were wandering towards my territory at that same time.

Dont get me wrong, i am not complaining or anything, i had a heap of fun with this map and all the Barbarians, these are just observations about Barbarians that i find 'curious'.

Oh one other thing has happened since then.... recently i had assembled an army of swordsmen and i rushed around and trashed all the Barbarian cities near my territory. I did the rounds a couple of times and then the barbarians just 'stopped'. They stopped and none have ever spawned against me since then?? There is still plenty of fog of war terrain, so why did they stop?

Now the situation that puzzled me was this - i have an inland sea map and i started in the top left corner. Now, as it happens, my growth spread mostly north towards the map edge following the best terrain bonuses. I had 2 cities along the coast in the south and one not too far from my capital in the south. This last city had desert towards the south and had flood plains in the north, so there were no interesting tile improvements for Barbarians comming from the south to attack.

In the north there was a stretch of land probably about 5 tiles thick of fog of war left along the map edge and in the south there was about 30 or 40. All the Barbarians were spawning in the north and trying to attack the juicy terrain bonuses there, Meanwhile there was almost no Barbarians spawning in the south except for the occasional one attacking the sothern coastal cities.

After some time, i founded another city in the south and immediately Barbarians started vigirously spawning there!

lots of Barbarians were also spawning in the north west approach then due to mountains, i had the idea to blockade the western approach with some military units. As i was building the blockade, many Barbarians were charging around the military units and trying to attack the nearby city and its terrain improvements. The instant i completed the blockade, not one more barbarian bothered to approach from that direction!?!?

Barbarians do spawn according to a mathematical formula, and over long period of time things will even out but there are temporary imbalances and freaks! ;)

In the south before you had a city there, they probably were spawning in that area anyway, but wandering back and forth or around in circles like they do when there's no target they like in range. When you put a city there, all of a sudden they had a target, and pow!

Barbarian units do not last forever. They "expire" after a while so if a barbarian spawns where you can't se it and goes away from you, you'll never know it was there. Barbs also DO spawn near AI empires!

I remember reading somewhere the exact parameters for barb activity at the various barb levels - it's somewhere in these forums but I can't remember where! At raging, the barbs will beeline for a juicy target from a lot further away than on the regular setting, so you'll have barbs coming out of the fog coming straight at your improvements on raging barbarians much more so than you will on the regular setting. Barbs spawning not far away from you on the regular setting may wander in circles and never bother you, but on raging barbs there's much less chance of it.

If you want to learn more about barb activity, I suggest you play a game and check the world builder for barb locations every turn and that way you'll see when and where they spawn and how fast and from how far away they beeline your improvements on that setting!

Thanks for that Mad Professor! Your reply does make perfect sense.

Anyhow, the AI races have taken out all but 1 of the barbarian cities now.

I noticed that the stupid AI races have taken barbarian cities far away from their own lands, near other races lands. They have mixed up cities all over now and it is going to cause allot of tension hehehehe