What's so raging about Raging Barbarians?

CaptainPatch · Nov 11, 2013

My last game was Huge Marathon Pangaea King, but w/o Raging Barbarians. This game it's Huge Marathon Pangaea Emperor, but with Raging Barbarians turned on. In both games, I had >95% of the map revealed by late Classical/early Renaissance. What puzzles me is that I don't see any significant differences in the rate at which barb encampments appear, nor how quickly barb units start coming out of those encampments.

It _might_ be that I'm playing Songhai w/Honor adopted (barb radar), and I've got roaming units that generally are able to pounce on encampments anywhere on the Pangaea continent within @10 turns. So, my guess is that the "raging" has to do with how fast an encampment spawns additional barbs rather than how fast the encampments appear. Am I right?

GoStu · Nov 11, 2013

CaptainPatch said:
My last game was Huge Marathon Pangaea King, but w/o Raging Barbarians. This game it's Huge Marathon Pangaea Emperor, but with Raging Barbarians turned on. In both games, I had >95% of the map revealed by late Classical/early Renaissance. What puzzles me is that I don't see any significant differences in the rate at which barb encampments appear, nor how quickly barb units start coming out of those encampments.

It _might_ be that I'm playing Songhai w/Honor adopted (barb radar), and I've got roaming units that generally are able to pounce on encampments anywhere on the Pangaea continent within @10 turns. So, my guess is that the "raging" has to do with how fast an encampment spawns additional barbs rather than how fast the encampments appear. Am I right?

I believe you're right in that it's frequency of spawning. Without them Raging I can generally send one unit in to clean house, where I find with Raging I need to send two or three more often than not.

Just finished a Songhai game with Honor on... Songhai is very underrated.

sendos · Nov 11, 2013

CaptainPatch said:
It _might_ be that I'm playing Songhai w/Honor adopted (barb radar), and I've got roaming units that generally are able to pounce on encampments anywhere on the Pangaea continent within @10 turns. So, my guess is that the "raging" has to do with how fast an encampment spawns additional barbs rather than how fast the encampments appear. Am I right?

Pretty much, yes, unless I missed out on other information about raging barbs. The barbs appear about once every 3-4 turns and I think they appear faster if they're attacked.

Infantry#14 · Nov 11, 2013

Raging barbs can be insane at times. Seriously, my last emperor game there are 3 barb camps spawn next to my capital and some city-states. Instead of going to the nearby city-state target, three barbs from 3 camps gang up on my 2 scouts. After a couple turns, they perish from the barb onslaught. I had to make a detour to honor and then they stop harassing my units. Those barbs really push me back for about 15-20 turns on epic.

The good thing about raging barb is that they sometimes steal city-state workers and rarely ai civ settlers and workers. Also, Aztec with Honor opening can farm barbs for culture. I would purposely surround a barb camp so that I can farm barbs until the renaissance/industrial.

CELTICEMPIRE · Nov 11, 2013

GoStu said:
I believe you're right in that it's frequency of spawning. Without them Raging I can generally send one unit in to clean house, where I find with Raging I need to send two or three more often than not.

I generally like to put Raging Barbarians on when I'm being an Imperialist and would like to give my soldiers more experience.

Just finished a Songhai game with Honor on... Songhai is very underrated.

True, especially in Vanilla where they are the only ones which can defend while embarked.

Walter R · Nov 11, 2013

CELTICEMPIRE said:
I generally like to put Raging Barbarians on when I'm being an Imperialist and would like to give my soldiers more experience.

They've been on raging by default for a lot of games now, for the reason above. Nuisance very early in the game but after that I've always got somewhere to XP my units. Very good for XP on new ships for instance, although if I didn't know better I'd swear the AI has cottoned on to my sp because an AI scout/unit always appears when I attack a barb camp, however remote - without fail! Hope it's true, a learning AI is just what we all want.

Barghaest · Nov 11, 2013

Barbarian spawn is also affected by Handicap and GameSpeed. I generally use Raging, but it isn't as noticeable unless there's less empires than default for the map size (which, in turn, has other effects on the game as well). My last Huge game with Honor (and 4 less Civs than default) I was constantly swatting camps. As soon as I'd clear one another would pop and my pairs of scouts had a time clearing a camp before another barb popped there (without raging they can easily dispatch a camp before reinforcements pop up) so it definitely affects spawn rate at camps... I'd always thought it increased appearance of camps as well but that could just be my adjustments to BarbPercent for GameSpeed doing that.

Pembroke · Nov 11, 2013

To spawn barbarians you need space that's outside the visibility range of all units and cities, yours and the AI like. After all the world is "developed" you generally have very few locations where a camp could spawn.

Some maps favor raging barbarians. Try a tilted-axis pangaea with raging on. The icy half of the world is usually left pretty much unsettled aside from the natural wonders so it provides a safe haven for the barbarians producing larger hordes for longer.

MKDELTA3 · Nov 11, 2013

Raging barbs most definitively affects spawning speed. Without raging barbs you can generaly speaking clear an encampent with a single archer, but with raging barbs the camp spawns replacements as soon as you've killed the fortified unit inside and sometimes even faster. This is why Honor is sort of viable with raging barbs on. You can farm them ad nauseam if you can keep AIs from clearing the camp.

Magma_Dragoon · Nov 11, 2013

Raging doubles the spawn rate of units from barb camps

What's so raging about Raging Barbarians?

CaptainPatch

Lifelong gamer

GoStu

King

sendos

Immortal

Infantry#14

Emperor

CELTICEMPIRE

Zulu Conqueror

Walter R

Great Engineer

Barghaest

King

Pembroke

Tribune

MKDELTA3

Warlord

Magma_Dragoon

Reploid

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