I have a barbarian problem and the way this works makes me think this is a bug. And it ruins my gameplay to an extent I'm considering to give up. Here's how it works:

At some point very early in the game I probably get a barbarian state close to me that start spewing out troops and they all head for my cities. They come 3 and 3 each round and if I can repel the attacks this can go on for 50- 100 rounds, never tried for more anyway, just give up and start again.

The problem is that I can't even rush any tech to counter this. I can't push with my archers cause they will always loose to the enemy archers, no point mentioning the warriors. But the other civ's can defend a city only with scouts.

The game I just gave up now is a good example: I had horses and were 10 rounds from Horse Archers, this was a rush to try to counter what I know is coming. But the barbarian archers very fast razed my horse- build and everything else. They also razed a city I had build to get the horses, they can't be defended with warriors and I had not had possibility to even train archers before I was hit, even on first priority.

Strange thing is they were passing the boarders of my neighbor to get to me and off course this neighbor was ready with his Settler and plased a new city on my ruins only 2 turns after mine was razed. So now the barbarians are passing through his territory to get to me!

I'm playing Noble now, but I had the same problem with even Settler mode. I can only make a lasting game if I somehow avoid the barbarian rush, and that happens almost every time. And even at Noble mode it sets me back alot to handle this and if I can manage the other civ's have taken off in a way I just don't bother trying to catch up with.

Is it supposed to be like this?

Play a custom game with no barbarians.

Or learn to build settlers/workers/warriors/archers faster, you are being punished for starting so slowly.

Sounds suspicious to me. In my experience, barbarian cities usually just train three archers for self defense and then send random archers around the map. Having stacks of archers (or any other unit) regularly attacking your empire isn't something I've ever seen before.

There is a barbarian uprising random event in BTS, but that's just a one time deal, no waves to speak of. The barbarians that come from the barbarian uprising random event do exhibit the "walk past rivals to attack you" behavior. It can work the other way around too; they can walk through your territory and leave you alone to attack a rival. I think they're programmed to attack the person with the highest score or something like that.

It sounds odd but not undoable. There is a trick called spawn-busting. I'll let someone else go into detail, but it involves using warriors to cover your land so barbs can't spawn.

Do you have raging barbs on?

To counter just build either chariots or axes. Get archery fast instead of waiting for HBR, and position a few token units on your source of copper or horses.

And, though no one will say that is 'normal behavior' barbarians have very odd attack patterns. In a game I just played I had completely spawn-busted the northern part of my mini-empire with warriors and was waiting to find a good source of iron; and then, presumably from my northern CPU's border (which had GW of all things) an army of 4 spearmen came. I managed to throw together enough warriors to beat them. If I can beat spearmen with warriors you should be able beat archers with warriors, it just might take more than one warrior.

Hope some of that helped.

Cheers, Deux.

Oh, hey guys. Very good to get some replies at least. I guess I'll look up the button to turn of the barbarians, my option is to stop playing tbh.
I made anther attempt since I made the post: Went for Bronze working and metal working this time to get some stronger troops. Couldn't find any copper or iron close by so it didn't help me any. What it DID do was to enable barbarians to attack with Axemen, so my capitol was razed by a single unit of Axemen who plogued easily through my 2 Archer units even with 40% defence rating!

Welcome to the forums. :)

If you post one of your games up with several screenshots, then we'll be able to see if this is a bug or not. This is, in my opinion, the best way to get help.

Yeowch!

I strongly suggest not playing on gigantic maps with gigantic landmasses. If you're playing with a Pangaea map, try something with a little more water and islands. Then you might start on a half-decent island that you can cover with your units.

It's generally very helpful to get terrain under surveillance from your units. Sitting them on hills often extends their sighting range, so you won't need as many.

Consider trying to build the Great Wall so that the buggers can't enter your lands at all. You should preferably have Stone some place where you can get at it for a building bonus, and maybe try an Industrious leader who will get a bonus to build Wonders. (I think that's the right trait.) One other thing to try is a leader with the Protective trait, whose archers will have extra defensive abilities that might help you when they're in your cities or on hills.

Welcome to the forums ;)

Can we have a save please? :)