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.