Morocco's Kasbah

^^It's kinda hard to get by turn 80 when I'm spending 70 turns fighting off barbs.

Which makes me wonder--how come all these video makers here never have barbs attacking their cities? Or if they do--it may be one. I had a dozen off and on. And had to spend money and build a crapload of archers?
 
1-2 archers usually enough, and you use your starting warrior to protect your worker. City bombardment is enough to kill all barbs other than horseman. Your expos also reduces the number of barb camps that can spawn if you place them in good positions.
 
^^They are usually enough. But not dealing with a half-dozen at a time. And sure, my warrior can protect my worker, but not when two barbs are attacking him. I have to move my worker back into the city and move my warrior somewhere to heal up. And of course, the barb then pillages one of my tiles, and when I kill off the barb and have my worker fix the tile, the barb comes back and the process gets repeated.

I guess it's just a bad string of luck with my games lately. The barbs seem to waltz right by the AI cities and beeline right to mine. I must have been a barb in a previous life :)
 
@docbub, It sounds to me like your actual problem lack of scouting and barb camps in the fog.

I spent the first 70 turns fighting off barbs.

The Egypt DCL was pretty bad. My usual setting is raging barbs, and sometimes it gets out of control, but mostly it keep me in good practice.

Once you get control of your immediate area, just a couple units are needed. Camps only spawn in the fog, and they tend to respawn is the same place. So just keep those spots under surveillance!

I tried a game tonight as Morocco. I ended up rage quitting.

I don't think you can count on Petra or any of the early wonders. Losing your three best candidates for a pantheon is harsh though. I would have stuck it out until the last religion was gone, and then see how I felt about the game. There is no virtue in playing a game out if you won't enjoy it!

Which makes me wonder--how come all these video makers here never have barbs attacking their cities? Or if they do--it may be one.

Multiple barbs attacking your city all at once is kind of rare. If that happens to folks when they are recording, I would guess they are too embarrassed to share!

I had a dozen off and on. And had to spend money and build a crapload of archers?

You did not need a crapload. Two would have done it.

They are usually enough. But not dealing with a half-dozen at a time.

You won't fact that many at time unless you are leaving multiple nearby camps alone.

And sure, my warrior can protect my worker, but not when two barbs are attacking him.

Sure he can. He has two promotions at that point, so he just heals in place, even if one is a spearman. He is protecting your worker, so you are near you city. Use the city bombardment to kill the barbs.

I have to move my worker back into the city and move my warrior somewhere to heal up. And of course, the barb then pillages one of my tiles, and when I kill off the barb and have my worker fix the tile, the barb comes back and the process gets repeated.

The problem is that moved your warrior off station.

The barbs seem to waltz right by the AI cities and beeline right to mine.

Well, they do look for weaker targets. But if the barbs are travel by AI cities they will take damage and they will be coming at you one at a time. You should be able to manage that.
 
Thanks, beetle.

I think my scouting was going okay, though I did find four barb camps which were pretty close to my capital. And that's where I ran into trouble. Scout was immediately attacked by one of the camps so I had to scamper off with the barb in hot pursuit. Then another barb joined in the chase.

The other camp that was near my capital was in the jungle and that was a slogfest getting an archer there to take out the camp. Naturally another barb spawned near the camp and proceeded to attack my archer. So I had to retreat, only to discover another barb camp six tiles away from that camp.

And there was a barb camp about a dozen tiles away (near Persia's capital), and they were leaving that camp and coming to my land.

I started a new game, and like the last time I didn't get Petra. I did have barb problems, but not like the previous game. Have a ton of salt and some gold mines.

Only problem is that Alex is directly north of me and I'm going to have to take him out early.

And yeah--it's rare that a ton of barbs attack the city at once, but I had that rarity.

Thanks for your advice and input. I always appreciate your assistance.
 
Which makes me wonder--how come all these video makers here never have barbs attacking their cities? Or if they do--it may be one. I had a dozen off and on. And had to spend money and build a crapload of archers?
Two comments:

1.) Regarding Morocco, the desert, and religion: Morocco's bonuses are extra commerce/culture from external trade routes (a mixed blessing), a cavalry UU (sub-par), and a situational UI (another mixed blessing as we're discussing). They don't have any bonuses specific to faith generation to grab the pantheon. Granted, a desert start bias implies the ability to generate tons of faith, but without something like the Ethiopia/Celt/Maya bonus to grab the pantheon, it's more of a bonus if you're lucky enough to get it rather than an advantage specific to the civ. Further, the start bias is also not a guarantee; I've had 3 deity Morocco games and two didn't have the starting location near desert, which only nullified the UI (conversely, 2 out of 2 Russia games were on FP-rich desert, so go figure.) This is especially the case on deity (side note: I'm guessing from your posts that you're playing on emperor or immortal - not that there's any deficiency in your play, rather the turn-times on those wonders implies at least emperor but you'll find that on deity the AI have so many units saturating the map early, meaning barbs have too many diversions to focus on you like that, unless you had an isolated start.) And take note for the future because while this is a bit of an annoyance for Morocco, it can be considerably more frustrating for Arabia since they have a religious bonus built into their advantages without any bonuses to getting it - puts them into a category similar to Byzantine, except that Arabia's other benefits are much, much stronger than hers.

2.)Regarding LPers and their experiences: I think you're half correct. The LPers know that 1.)people will learn more and 2.) they'll generate a larger audience from their videos if they demonstrate success rather than failure. So it is more advantageous for them to post the videos where they win, or at least overcome obstacles and maybe accidentally overlook posting the videos where they derp a bit. (However, Marbozir did post a valuable lesson where he Petra-failed as England and consequently got ROFL-stomped by France.) I feel your pain regarding the LPers and the fact that I have significantly different results myself, particularly regarding diplomacy - they seem to always have the option of having multiple AI's willing to declare war on your target, which both distracts the target and reduces the warmonger penalty. I've seen vids where the guy has conquered three AI capitals and is still getting full-value resource trades and research agreements whereas I seem to always be the pariah after declaring my first war...

HOWEVER

...there may also be something to learn from their results, in your case regarding why they don't have as much of a barb problem as you do. I found that this is an area where you have to watch what they do rather than listen to what they're saying; they move at such a quick pace to ensure that there aren't 150 segments, 20 minutes each per game. As such, they don't explain everything that they're doing, and strategic positioning and movement of scouting units is something that they do but rarely discuss. Observe how they have them end turns on hills for an extra ring of sight, which could cover an extra 7 or 8 tiles preventing an encampment spawn. Usually they just examine all the tiles that are internal to their civilization (i.e. between cities but still in the fog because the borders haven't expanded yet) and cover the blind spots. Sometimes this is a 12 or 16 tile area, but by jumping back and forth from hill to hill you can often cover large areas with one unit. When they do have barbs approach, they have the warrior or even the scout move adjacent but not attack to activate ZoC while the archer fires. Then when the barb attacks the warrior damaging both parties, the warrior skips turn, both healing a bit and increasing fortification bonus while the archer fires again. Also consider the position of your capital - having an inland start or one at least three tiles away from a coast ensures 36 useable tiles, and having them on flatter terrain ensures easier growth, but it also means an immense area needs to be covered to prevent barb spawns. Having a coastal start means there will be significantly fewer useable tiles but far fewer directions that barbs can spawn from. Similarly, having an extensive mountain range to one side of you may reduce the number of useable tiles, but also reduces the number of directions that barbs (or AI) can approach you from.

Only they know whether or not they cherry-pick which games they post. One thing that is certain, though, is that there is a MASSIVE amount of consideration going on behind the scenes. This is blatantly obvious when you observe how each video starts. Almost all the LPers always end one part of the video saying, "this is what I'm doing and this is the plan for the next few videos," and start the subsequent video by stating, "well, I looked at a few things between the two videos and changed a few build ques and found that this civ is now willing to declare war on this civ, and this civ will give me enough gold to buy this unit here..." and so on.
 
Very good post—and thank you. And I know what you mean about Arabia. I play them a lot :) And yes—I’m playing on Emperor level.

I see your point about the LPers and their videos. I’ll have to look for Marbozir’s game where he got ROFL stomped by France. Sounds like it would be fun to watch!

I do try to keep my scouts positioned well enough to cover as much area as possible. In the game, I do have three sides available from which the barbs can come from. Several of the jungles were in jungles

Thanks for your post. It was very informative.
 
Filthy Robot had a pretty good video explaining how to deal with barbs. He had a coastal capital with a river so that was a pretty good advantage as it enabled using a combination of ZoC and leaving barbs on the other side of the river to severely handicap the barb movement. Also a barb will rarely attack a full health fortified warrior/spearman so that can be a pretty decent blocker unit for a long time. You do have some trouble when you get attacked by multiple barbs at the same time but in general you can sacrifice a tile improvement to trap the barbs into city range, so it really is a small delay (1-2 turns a barb occupies the tile so no yields, and 3 turns to repair the improvement so one less yield).
 
I think my scouting was going okay, though I did find four barb camps which were pretty close to my capital. And that's where I ran into trouble.

Four camps is a lot to manage. As you point out though, that many is kind of unusual. Thanks for being so gracious!
 
^^You're welcome. I always enjoy your posts and like your insights.
 
ShakaKhan said:
If a city is using 2 tile allocations for 1.) a farmed flood plain and 2.) a desert hill mine, than the two tiles would yield 4 food (from the farm after CS) and 4 hammers (from the mine after chemistry). TOTAL = 4F, 4P
If the same two tiles both had Kasbahs, the FP would produce 3F/1H/1C and the hill would produce 1F/3H/1C. TOTAL - 4F/4P/2C.
The food and hammer output is identical but you're also making 2C/turn, or 4C/turn during a golden age.
This was my thinking also. If you are going to be using four farms and four mines, just make them all Kasbahs and get the extra 8 or 16 gold for free.

But the defensive situation for Morocco I found to be excellent with this setup. The berber dudes get +125% combat bonus for free just for sitting on a Kasbah. That's pretty extreme. In my second game with Morocco I rather invited an attack from Attila by cutting my military spending a good bit. With my territory peppered with Kasbahs, the berber cavalry were holding off great war bombers by just sitting and healing. I was pretty far behind Attila in tech at that point and he could not overrun me.

The one problem, as someone mentioned, is that you can't throw it all into food or production for emergencies.
 
Filthy Robot had a pretty good video explaining how to deal with barbs. He had a coastal capital with a river so that was a pretty good advantage as it enabled using a combination of ZoC and leaving barbs on the other side of the river to severely handicap the barb movement. Also a barb will rarely attack a full health fortified warrior/spearman so that can be a pretty decent blocker unit for a long time. You do have some trouble when you get attacked by multiple barbs at the same time but in general you can sacrifice a tile improvement to trap the barbs into city range, so it really is a small delay (1-2 turns a barb occupies the tile so no yields, and 3 turns to repair the improvement so one less yield).
he plays exclusively MP, but it sounds like this video applies to SP as well. Link?
 
I'll try your strategy of zero wonders, ShakaKhan, but it's gonna be hard.

But not until my next game.
 
I tried a game tonight as Morocco. I ended up rage quitting.

I spent the first 70 turns fighting off barbs.

Out of curiosity, what map were you using? I tried playing a desert biased civ on the Middle East or Mesopotamian map (I forget the actual name and I'm at work right now so I can't check), and I found I was being overrun with barbs. I think it was because the map had very little water and a ton of land (more so than a Pangaea map), so there was more room for barb camps to pop up.
 
^^I was playing on regular Pengaea.

Last year or so I played a game as Arabia on the Middle East map and, like you, was completely overrun with barbs. I couldn't get anything done there were so many barbs. I think I started a thread on it and shared the game file.

The general consensus was that I was so isolated and so much land (dessert) that I was the only target the barbs had. There was no one else around except me.
 
Making cities on unknown lands could prevent barbarian encampments. Placing units and land vision also preventsnew encampments from forming.
 
A great thing about the Berber Cavalry is when you upgrade it to a tank it keeps it's bonuses. makes for some of the strongest tank units, better than Panzers for sure.
 
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