Barbarian Trouble

[DeletedSettler]

Total Civ chump here, Civ V being the first one and only ~60 hours into it. I'm working my way into playing on Prince. I've had mixed success so far, I won one as Polynesia in Archipelagos at least.

My biggest problem, hilariously, are barbarians. I'm trying to get my start rolling with more cities and a not-taking-forever national college and such, but I feel like I need 6+ units to handle the barbarian hordes. They take forever to kill fortified and ruin everything by Being Barbarians. My last game I ragequit on I had the Mongols as a neighbor gathering an army near my borders and about 3, 4 barbarian camps on the other end of it spawning spearmen, and I finally gave up because it was ridiculous.

So my big question is, how can I deal with barbarians in a way that won't painfully delay my empire's start? I've tried being proactive, even taking the Honor opener so I can rush out and stop them when they start up, but they just spawn so fast and far away I can't catch up.

 

[Chum]

Use Archers, not warriors. Archers and their upgrade line mop up barbarians fast.

After that, I tend to switch to the gifted mounted units. They'll clear camps pretty quick, and get there in a hurry too.

 

[docbud]

Barbs can definitely be a pain. And the longer you wait to take out a camp (or farm it), the worse it gets.

 

[Dedrytus]

One or two archers (with some luck one promoted from scout), starting warrior and one horseman usually is enough to handle barbs. When you play on prince, with this army you can declare war if you see that AI put city in nice spot. Declare war, kill some units if you want, steal worker or sth and wait until AI give you the city.

 

[Sherlock]

Game starts, as soon as I have 200 gold I buy an archer. Repeat every 200 gold. Kill the camps that are spawning the barbs early as you can, the bought archers help with that.

 

[Chum]

Game starts, as soon as I have 200 gold I buy an archer. Repeat every 200 gold. Kill the camps that are spawning the barbs early as you can, the bought archers help with that.

Too rigid. Sometimes gold needs to be spent on other things.

 

[Knowtalent]

I assume that it's early game that is the problem. I'm not big proponent of archers by themselves to clear a camp. All too often you clear what ever is in the camp and a new unit spawns before you can move into the camp. I generally clear with warriors in tandem with a scout. The extra for flanking is usually all a warrior or aSpearman needs to quickly clear a camp. Don't forget to withdraw to heal, the barbs don't heal so if you step away to heal that will help you deal with them if they have had time to spawn any significant numbers. I will usually only clear a camp near CS after they have asked for assistance. By the end of the ancient era camps are easy way to friend CS and give you an extra 25 gps


sent from my Note 3

 

[Sherlock]

Too rigid. Sometimes gold needs to be spent on other things.

I've never found a map that didn't have barbs. And gold = production, so it's pretty much all the same. But an archer is cheaper than a workboat and when you need one you need it quick.

 

[Ryika]

Well, Gold is universal production that is not tied to a city - a good use for "early" gold would be to buy a city state (faith/culture) or the library in the last city you just founded, so you can start the NC immediately. Buying too many archers can be a bad idea - but I agree that buying 1-3 is usually a good thing.

 

[Scotch0101]

If you turn on raging barbarians it doesn't help the least bit either.
Archers are good for early barb clearing......have one archer bombard the barb camp and a warrior or spearman/horseman to finish the job and move in to the camp.

 

[DeletedSettler]

Thanks everyone, for this current game (Montezuma) I went ahead and bought one archer and produced another quickly. Used one + scout to clear out future city sites and one with the jaguar on search and destroy. I only had one major barbarian-related disaster of a kidnapped worker. I was lucky enough to have lots of iron near me, so I now have a well-promoted team of crossbowmen and longswordsmen with the world ready for the taking.

 

[Chum]

I've never found a map that didn't have barbs. And gold = production, so it's pretty much all the same. But an archer is cheaper than a workboat and when you need one you need it quick.

That's all fine and dandy, but are you waiting 30 turns for that last library to finish so you can build a NC? Are you hard building settlers and not getting any growth? There's so many good reasons not to spend gold on military, especially when you ideally have several cities at different points in their production lifespan, and units can be produced in any of them at any time.

Gold is great for buying units, no doubt. But early game it has the possibility of coming very slowly if you don't have the right start, and it's useful for SO much more that blindly buying units is bad advice.

 

[tetley]

It's a bummer we can't have barb problems even after we pick the Honor finisher.

 

[Chabshaile]

Remember the biggest defense for barbs is chump units. Build anything at all that you can, just to go on alert outside of your territory. Barb camps only spawn in the fog. So the farther you push the fog back with units, the safer you are. After a few cities get going with a dew warriors/scouts/archers whatever you have you can push back the fog window and limit the barb camp spawn.

 

[docbud]

^^I'm confsued about this "fog thing." I thought that the "fog" was the clouded area that you have to clear. Is that correct?

If so, then barbs can also spawn outside of those fog areas. It can simply be an unlit part of the map (not within line of sight). I've had barbs spawn three tiles away from my city and there was definitely no fog anywhere. It just wasn't lit up (i.e., line of sight).

@Chum: So far as your comments on the gold. I agree. But there are times where one practically has no choice but to buy an archer or rush one to handle the barbs. If you have barbs invading your city, you can't use your worker, and thus no production, food, growth, or gold.

 

[Chabshaile]

Fog has 2 levels, cleared fog that you have units or a city to view or uncleared dense fog. Dense fog is where you have yet to view, thin fog is where you have looked but are not looking now. Either level of fog can spawn a barb camp.

 

[Chum]

@Chum: So far as your comments on the gold. I agree. But there are times where one practically has no choice but to buy an archer or rush one to handle the barbs. If you have barbs invading your city, you can't use your worker, and thus no production, food, growth, or gold.

Right, but then you and I are on the same page entirely, because that's a much different argument than the one presented, and the one I originally disagreed with, which was....

Game starts, as soon as I have 200 gold I buy an archer. Repeat every 200 gold. Kill the camps that are spawning the barbs early as you can, the bought archers help with that.

 

[tetley]

You can be proactive. If you gift a militaristic CS 250 gold early in the game, it will gift you units. Usually a better deal than gold purchasing, though it takes longer to get (20 turns, at least).

 

[Chum]

You can be proactive. If you gift a militaristic CS 250 gold early in the game, it will gift you units. Usually a better deal than gold purchasing, though it takes longer to get (20 turns, at least).

This is one of the reasons I rarely have to build units in my peaceful games. Although I never use early gold on a military CS, they'll usually end up becoming friends with me at some point and then they give me everything I need to clear camps and for homeland defense.

I had a game I won CV in 1866 and my most advanced unit was a composite bow.