Raging barbs

[traius]

Started my 5th game of prince today, and I got screwed in the resource department, just like last game (see Ridiculous food). No horse, no iron, no copper anywhere nearby. Nearby asoka (I actually blocked him off with my 2nd and 3rd city this game) has iron and horse... yay.
I tried to execute the only plan I thought I could, seeing as I had cornered asoka and he had two strategic resources and I none. I mass archered. It was way too late to call it a rush though.
But then 2200 hit, and barbs started crawling out of the wood work, and my army became a fogbusting/mobile defense. Normally I play huge 18 civs, but I forgot to add extra ai's this time. So there are only 12 civs, and a lot of fog.
Anyway, I saw on turn 1710 BC that Survaryman lost his cap to barbs, and I realized a civ was gone (it was actually the Romans though). It's cheap, but I decided to world-builder it to see how the world was doing. Out of the 12 civs, 3 are dead. 3 are down to crappy 1 pop cities with few/crappy defenders. One of those two will fall on the next turn without a miracle RNG or barbs wandering away for no reason, and another has a snake chain of barbs 13 units long. The barbs are far and away the largest civ, with more than 2x my cities, and I'm the non-barb leader in that department (with 4... they have 9, and in all likelihood 10 next turn!):S.
Has anyone else ever had a game that completely played itself like this?

[GA econ FTW]

My experiences on Ice Age Earth Map on diety with raging barbs....if you decide to start in the new world or in an area where you can't fog bust fast....Yeah, it's almost like a 'zombie armaggeddon'

...maybe that's why I like raging barbarians, I've been a fan of zombie-hordes-ending-civilization-movies.

I'm not good at digging through the archives and finding a thread, but it was in the civ IV strategy forums where a guy made a scenario: Deity, raging barbs, 2 civs, average map, 2 islands. the AI civ was placed in a mountain island so it couldn't expand, and the player (Churchill (protective), England) was placed on the north tip of an island where if the player could expand to culture the entire island, they'd have the 50% territory domination required (only domination win enabled). If I remember, not even some of the more skilled people who tried a hand at it won.

[Rusty Edge]

Zombie Armaggeddon. I love it!

I played some similar Diety games, an outgrowth of a discussion here about most difficult settings, and whether raging barbs with lots of space weren't a greater threat than an AI civ.
I think it went Raging/Huge/Marathon/ 3 or 4 civs/ Pangea style maps, ( I think I played some airid, some plains, and one hilly map. )/and the rules were I had to play as Brennus, because he was considerd one of the weakest. AI pool included Ghengis, Mao, Alex, Shaka, and Monty. You won by becoming the sole survivor. Sometimes I actually won. The logs would show hundreds each of barb warriors, archers, axes, and (horse archers? ) slain.

My advice- settle on horses or metal.

[plasmacannon]

Oh Yes!
That's why we put Raging Barbs in.
Here is a screenshot of 8 Barbs headed to a new city of mine named Washington.
Stalin of America decided to build Stonehenge. I decided to build 7 Chariots. He's no longer in the game anymore.

http://imgur.com/a/QOsDE/embed

The 2nd image is of my totals a little further in the game.
I killed the 2 Archers America had and 119 Barbs!
Now that's what I call a challanging game.

The 1st Image shows the Clams near Washington developed. The 2nd image shows them gone. The Barb Galleys pillaged them. I rarely got use of them.
I lost my horse resourse once. Luckily, I already had enough Chariots and archers to hold back the Barbs and repasture it.

Khmer to the left, built the Great Wall, so the Barbs near him funneled their way towards me and Stalin's old city.
I was kept busy for awhile. It was exciting!

[bitplayer]

Raging barbs can be fun at times I agree.

[midget_roxx]

Originally Posted by bitplayer

Raging barbs can be fun at times I agree.

And infuriating at others

[happyturtle]

There ought to be an option to disable the GW from the game, if you're playing with raging barbs. It gives far too much of an advantage to the civ that has it.

[traius]

Originally Posted by happyturtle

There ought to be an option to disable the GW from the game, if you're playing with raging barbs. It gives far too much of an advantage to the civ that has it.

Second this. I got it in the game I was talking about. That being said, the game didn't play out like I thought. The barbs didn't even crush the other civ on my continent in the end, even after my GW, and on the other 2 continents, charlemagne and gilgamesh have taken most of the barb cities over and are as large as I am (each of us has essentially a large continent to ourselves, with a few extra very uinimportant civs).. But they still killed 5/11 ai's, so not bad. The game will take a long time to play out, but it is pretty clear I will win because even though I only have 2% more land than gilgamesh, I have 5 times his pop and an era on him in tech. Soon to pumping out destroyers and cavalry, gilgamesh wants feudalism from me, lol. I think I might playon monarch next game, though this clearly wasn't a good test, and I'm otherwise only running 50/50 on prince.

[plasmacannon]

Originally Posted by happyturtle

There ought to be an option to disable the GW from the game, if you're playing with raging barbs. It gives far too much of an advantage to the civ that has it.

Or at least the part that blocks the Barbs. Just keeping the +100% GG emergence.

Of course, as the OP mentioned raging barbs will kill off some AIs in some games.
Knowing that one random empire survived, because it had the GW, means you know you'll have one tougher opponent to battle with.
For me, on Monarch, it was fine.
If it is too difficult on Deity, well, then step down a notch.

Maybe, what is needed is that the human players can't build the GW.
In multiplayer games, if one player did and the other didn't, it becomes quite a challange for the one that didn't.

In the end, Just keeping the +100% GG emergence, would probably be the best option.

[King Pluto]

If you guys haven't seen it before, you should try Kossin's Barbarian Challenge. You have enough land for domination, but you have no neighbors, Raging Barbs is ON, and the GW has been pre-built somewhere else.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=363758

[GA econ FTW]

Originally Posted by King Pluto

If you guys haven't seen it before, you should try Kossin's Barbarian Challenge. You have enough land for domination, but you have no neighbors, Raging Barbs is ON, and the GW has been pre-built somewhere else.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=363758

Thanks King Pluto. This is the challenge to which I was referring.

it would be cool if possible to tech to Marines just to see the desperate huddled masses of humanity in their few redoubts firing their submachineguns wildly at the huge throng of raging zombies...er....barbs rushing at them

but something tells me that if you got to that tech, the barbs would stop auto-spawning and would just have their 15 population cities on the other side of the island....

[happyturtle]

Oh man... I'm going to have to try that. I'll have to make a WB save and edit it down to Monarch or Emperor level. No way am I ready for Deity raging barbs!

[Colonel Mustard]

Originally Posted by happyturtle

There ought to be an option to disable the GW from the game, if you're playing with raging barbs. It gives far too much of an advantage to the civ that has it.

Navigate to - C:\Program Files (x86)\2K Games\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4 Complete\Beyond the Sword\Assets\XML\Buildings

Copy - CIV4BuildingInfos.xml

Paste it into - C:\Users\[your name]\Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword\CustomAssets\xml\Buildings

Open it up and find <Type>BUILDING_GREAT_WALL</Type>

scroll down to <iCost>150</iCost>

change 150 to -1

It can no longer be built.

[King Pluto]

To be fair, it's nowhere near as fun/difficult if you change the level. That's the fun of it; dealing with the hordes of barbs that swamp you without having to worry about teching or AIs. If you level it down and have more time to deal with less-advanced barbs, it's much easier.