Civilization IV: Barbarian Onslaught
- Thread starter Tre976
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dh_epic
Cold War Veteran
ImmortalU said:
This doesn't happen every game. You need to adapt your playing style.
- You can't hold off on bronzeworking. You need it sooner rather than later.
- If your capital doesn't have copper, your second city MUST be founded near copper.
- In the rare instance copper isn't around, you need to look for iron, or take advantage of horses
- Barbarians don't bring out the axes until most AIs have bronzeworking. If you're the last one to get to bronzeworking, you'll pay the price, even on a continent all by your lonesome.
- The first barbarian cities are weak -- protected by a few archers, sometimes even a few warriors. Nip your problem in the bud.
- If you're really really really screwed -- and this should be extremely rare -- construction is the best technology for someone light on resources. Catapults can work wonders as defence, especially against stacks.
I've been in your boat. What you're dealing with is very preventable if you play the game like you're expecting barbarians. Barbarians seem to go in a few stages.
1) Animals come out
2) Warriors come out
3) Archers come out
4) Cities start to appear
Pay close attention to how sophisticated the barbarians get, or you're done for.
gunnergoz
Cat Herder
Mounted quick reaction forces help too...
mossmonster
Consider, if you will...
I spend far more time (and lost units) fighting the barbs then I have vs. the AI civs for the first half of the game. They just don't stop! I've tried having armed sweeps of the wilderness to control the infestation, which does seem to help, but I've come back and found size 5 cities with walls, mines, cottages and roads waiting for me. Most of my cities aren't size 5 yet! 
This is not a complaint, just an observation, but boy does it sure does change how you view your military as a priority. Unlike civ3, neglect your early-game defense at your own peril.
This is not a complaint, just an observation, but boy does it sure does change how you view your military as a priority. Unlike civ3, neglect your early-game defense at your own peril.
jdog5000
Revolutionary
I also like the way barbarians are implemented in this version. I played a Terra map, which puts all civs on one continent and leaves another empty. When my explorers and colonists arrived in the new world, it wasn't completely empty ... I had to deal with the natives! There were only about 6 barb cities on the continent, so there was still plenty of space, but they were no pushovers, especially when they upgraded to longbowmen just before some of my knights were going to run them over. Longbowmen behind walls on a hill ... and some on them had a couple upgrades too. Much more challenging and realsitic than being able to spam poorly defended colonists ...
Also, a note to those who don't like barbs by their borders early ... with a Terra map, all civs are so close together that I saw basically only animals in the old world, no barb cities or armies until I reached the new world. Might be worth a try instead of turning them off.
Also, a note to those who don't like barbs by their borders early ... with a Terra map, all civs are so close together that I saw basically only animals in the old world, no barb cities or armies until I reached the new world. Might be worth a try instead of turning them off.
My problem is that barbarians cheat. Barbarian cities produce units they shouldn't be able to produce. The aforementioned no-copper no-iron axemen, for example. I've been in situations where I had NO metals or horses within a good 50-60 tiles of my start before, yet barbarians continually (1 every 2-3 turns) attacked with axemen and swordsmen.
dh_epic
Cold War Veteran
Zurai said:
This has to be a bug. What map type are you playing? Metals/horses should never be this rare. You should be able to produce enough forces to take down the barbs.
Something to keep in mind, if you take your time expanding too much, barbarians will found multiple cities around you. Often, the best way to prevent barbarians from popping up is to maintain a presence on your continent, and fight the fog of war.
Also, the game starts to become a downhill battle if you get up against the ropes -- even by a barbarian. You're better off starting a new game, and trying to get off to a better start.
These barbarians are SOOO beatable.
Aussie_Lurker
Deity
What is good, though, is that one of the suggestions for the whole 'Big Vision' document was ideas which would halt the rampant expansion of the early game-and 'minor nations' was one suggestion put forward. Now, though they did not implement the idea exactly the way I wanted them to, I have to give these guys major KUDOS for at least meeting us halfway, and giving us barbarians who can actually pose a genuine threat to the existence of an early civ. Now, if only we could have very rudimentary diplomatic deals with these guys, and the ability for barbarians with sufficient cities to form a new nation, then we will have something even MORE awesome. Perhaps that will come in mods and XP packs. I, for one, have hope and-until then-will be more than happy to deal with these much more challenging adversaries.
Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
Got something interesting that wasn't posted here that I read....
Playing a multiplayer game, just 2 civ's against each other, Game was fine from the begining, but once I hit gunpowder the barbarians started building thier cities, rather anoying as they were producing 2-3 units from the city PER TURN, got in cleaned them out and withen a turn new cities were built, this went on and one repeating itself keeping me from attacking the other human player then something interesting happened, the barbarians went from archers guarding thier city to rifleman, the other player is still rather new to the game and not to good with CIV in general so I was taking it easy on him, but the barbarians actually got AHEAD of him in technology and started sacking him, using infiltry and artilery (and later fighters) took out the citys and again they came up withen a turn or two, cleared the entire contenent so they are just appearing out of nowhere producing size 6-8 cities from the get go, each defended with 4 riflemen (And later grenadiers) what's next? barbarians in tanks?
Personally I always liked barbarians in CIV, but this is overkill, to stop them you have to have every single area in your borders, and with the new city maintaince policy that's very inefficient, But what really gets to me is thier insane... nay impossable production rate, one city I was attacking had the usual 4 defenders, I can manage to take out 3 in a turn, and the very next turn it's back up to 3 or 4 defenders, I would hate to see what It's like on rampage, they are already a horde.
Never before in ANY (I started on the old DOS version) Civ game have I had barbarians that: (A) Got ahead of human players in tech (B) Re-Spawned so quickly (C) Produced so quickly (On Noble level) (D) Produced ELITE (Level 3) units
In closing as I said I rather like barbarians but not in thier current level of overkill, when they can produce multiple units a turn (though thankfully not each turn (yet)), without fighters it's rather difficualt to unseat barbarian riflemen with over +150% to bonuses....Every barbarian city is built on a hill it seems, every unit they use to defend thier city seems to have lvl 2 or lvl 3 in city defence (seen several with 70% from unit ability) (and they are BUILT with that bonus (newly created) and fortification bonuses on top of that....
Only real defence is to cover every single piece of land in a border, which really affects playing style in 1v1 games, expectially on pangea maps.
Corellon
P.S - In a interesting twist of Irony.... I was playing China, the other human was german, and the barbarians..... AMERICAN!!
Playing a multiplayer game, just 2 civ's against each other, Game was fine from the begining, but once I hit gunpowder the barbarians started building thier cities, rather anoying as they were producing 2-3 units from the city PER TURN, got in cleaned them out and withen a turn new cities were built, this went on and one repeating itself keeping me from attacking the other human player then something interesting happened, the barbarians went from archers guarding thier city to rifleman, the other player is still rather new to the game and not to good with CIV in general so I was taking it easy on him, but the barbarians actually got AHEAD of him in technology and started sacking him, using infiltry and artilery (and later fighters) took out the citys and again they came up withen a turn or two, cleared the entire contenent so they are just appearing out of nowhere producing size 6-8 cities from the get go, each defended with 4 riflemen (And later grenadiers) what's next? barbarians in tanks?
Personally I always liked barbarians in CIV, but this is overkill, to stop them you have to have every single area in your borders, and with the new city maintaince policy that's very inefficient, But what really gets to me is thier insane... nay impossable production rate, one city I was attacking had the usual 4 defenders, I can manage to take out 3 in a turn, and the very next turn it's back up to 3 or 4 defenders, I would hate to see what It's like on rampage, they are already a horde.
Never before in ANY (I started on the old DOS version) Civ game have I had barbarians that: (A) Got ahead of human players in tech (B) Re-Spawned so quickly (C) Produced so quickly (On Noble level) (D) Produced ELITE (Level 3) units
In closing as I said I rather like barbarians but not in thier current level of overkill, when they can produce multiple units a turn (though thankfully not each turn (yet)), without fighters it's rather difficualt to unseat barbarian riflemen with over +150% to bonuses....Every barbarian city is built on a hill it seems, every unit they use to defend thier city seems to have lvl 2 or lvl 3 in city defence (seen several with 70% from unit ability) (and they are BUILT with that bonus (newly created) and fortification bonuses on top of that....
Only real defence is to cover every single piece of land in a border, which really affects playing style in 1v1 games, expectially on pangea maps.
Corellon
P.S - In a interesting twist of Irony.... I was playing China, the other human was german, and the barbarians..... AMERICAN!!
dh_epic
Cold War Veteran
How did you know the Barbarians were American? Were they barbarians at all, or were they an AI civ of some kind?
In all sincerity, this is WAY outside my experience with barbs in Civ 4. Although I have noticed harsher deals when you choose "Aggressive Barbarians" in the game settings. Also, the Terra Map has a lot more barbarians. Still, what you're experiencing sounds more like a badly designed map or a bug. I'd love to see a saved game.
In all sincerity, this is WAY outside my experience with barbs in Civ 4. Although I have noticed harsher deals when you choose "Aggressive Barbarians" in the game settings. Also, the Terra Map has a lot more barbarians. Still, what you're experiencing sounds more like a badly designed map or a bug. I'd love to see a saved game.
I'll try to up a save game, but not sure how it would load since it's multiplayer, might need 2 PC's to load, never experimented with that yet.
I'm calling them american because so far all the cities have been named after american ones, boston, chicago, illinois, New york, those are the ones I remember, the others I just invade and burn them to the ground. Maybe there were other names, or maybe it's just co-incidence just assumed all barbarians start off as a random civ, since when you load the game it shows a 'extra' civ on the load screen (When loading multi, it shows 2 human players and a unselectable 'random' civ)
It's fairly late in the game, as I said I was just biding my time waiting for the other person to catch up.
Edit: I've had some wierd resource spawns as well, have several horses and iron, and a TON of copper on the map, but only 2 uraniums and 1 aluminium on the entire continent (Pangea so it's only 1 big contenent with a smaller island off to the side), map size was large and I had the same issue with coal, the only coal source at the time (another spawned later either random or a mine I can't remember) was right between the borders of 2 of my cities, had to use a culture bomb to push it far enough.
I'm calling them american because so far all the cities have been named after american ones, boston, chicago, illinois, New york, those are the ones I remember, the others I just invade and burn them to the ground. Maybe there were other names, or maybe it's just co-incidence just assumed all barbarians start off as a random civ, since when you load the game it shows a 'extra' civ on the load screen (When loading multi, it shows 2 human players and a unselectable 'random' civ)
It's fairly late in the game, as I said I was just biding my time waiting for the other person to catch up.
Edit: I've had some wierd resource spawns as well, have several horses and iron, and a TON of copper on the map, but only 2 uraniums and 1 aluminium on the entire continent (Pangea so it's only 1 big contenent with a smaller island off to the side), map size was large and I had the same issue with coal, the only coal source at the time (another spawned later either random or a mine I can't remember) was right between the borders of 2 of my cities, had to use a culture bomb to push it far enough.
dh_epic
Cold War Veteran
My friend, you are definitely playing against a real civilization. In particular, barbarians have black borders and unique city names. The American civilization has blue borders, and the city names you would expect. Sounds like you were playing against the Americans -- and the AI is set to noble difficulty by default! It's no surprise he creamed you.
To turn off that third civilization, you need to choose a smaller map like duel. Or, I think you can turn off that third civilization by clicking on the slot and selecting "closed".
To turn off that third civilization, you need to choose a smaller map like duel. Or, I think you can turn off that third civilization by clicking on the slot and selecting "closed".
vbraun
Raytracing
I like the barbarins as is. 
Nooooo... and this (Admitidly) is the strangest part....
The cities are black, the units carry... Black flags.... but on the mini-map they show up as blue dots....
I know for a fact there were only 2 civs in the game, these wern't even around when the game started (I explored all that area, there were no cities there, on the score card there are 2 civs only.....
They arn't exactly creaming me, I'm still ahead in tech, but they are ahead of the other player, Hopefully I'll zip a copy of the save and send it over so you can see, the only thing I can think of is that something glitched somewhere.... There is no american civ (Or any other) listed ANYWHERE else, not the score, not the cities, not the civ rankings (Most cultured, Advanced, etc)
I've just taken a look at my save, there were a couple other city names chosen, one looks almost chinese the other I couldn't tell what it was from, but the majority were all american named. Wish I had a earlier save but the earliest auto-save i have is 2028 (Currently near end at 2047), hopefully it will still have some of the cities that originally were barbarian there, and they are barbarian as I said, even log calls them as such.
I'll PM you with the URL to find the save at, It's multi so you'll have to load it on 2 comps or play it "hotseat", but before you play hotseat, load it as a LAN game and you'll see the mystery 3rd civ listed as random with a closed slot, load it as hotseat and there are only 2 civ's in the game, a idea that just occured to me is that perhaps everytime the barbarians are completely eliminated they restart as a random civ, where if they already are inplace they are concidered a expansion and keep the same city names, it would be intersting to test, since I did notice the barbarian city/states all worked together in tactics similar to what a AI civ use
The cities are black, the units carry... Black flags.... but on the mini-map they show up as blue dots....
I know for a fact there were only 2 civs in the game, these wern't even around when the game started (I explored all that area, there were no cities there, on the score card there are 2 civs only.....
They arn't exactly creaming me, I'm still ahead in tech, but they are ahead of the other player, Hopefully I'll zip a copy of the save and send it over so you can see, the only thing I can think of is that something glitched somewhere.... There is no american civ (Or any other) listed ANYWHERE else, not the score, not the cities, not the civ rankings (Most cultured, Advanced, etc)
I've just taken a look at my save, there were a couple other city names chosen, one looks almost chinese the other I couldn't tell what it was from, but the majority were all american named. Wish I had a earlier save but the earliest auto-save i have is 2028 (Currently near end at 2047), hopefully it will still have some of the cities that originally were barbarian there, and they are barbarian as I said, even log calls them as such.
I'll PM you with the URL to find the save at, It's multi so you'll have to load it on 2 comps or play it "hotseat", but before you play hotseat, load it as a LAN game and you'll see the mystery 3rd civ listed as random with a closed slot, load it as hotseat and there are only 2 civ's in the game, a idea that just occured to me is that perhaps everytime the barbarians are completely eliminated they restart as a random civ, where if they already are inplace they are concidered a expansion and keep the same city names, it would be intersting to test, since I did notice the barbarian city/states all worked together in tactics similar to what a AI civ use
dh_epic
Cold War Veteran
That sounds really weird. It has to be a bug of some kind.
A screenshot might be more useful than a save game, actually.
A screenshot might be more useful than a save game, actually.
Olleus
Deity
Barbarians being so good might make some good senarios, like a rise of rome one. Just a few civs with a few cities but millions of barbarians.
jpinard
Martian
This is one of the fantastic things about Civ IV that people often overlook. The "option" for Barbarians gives you a wealth of new gameplay that people can interpret in lots of different ways. Sometimes I don't want to deal with Barbairans and want to focus "just" on competing civs. In this case I set Barbarians to low or off. Sometimes I want a widely unpredictable game - and then I play with Barbarians on normal. The idea of "unknown", "uncontrollable" factions in the game is just fantastic. So you thought you were just competing against the "gals of civ"? Isabella, Catherine, Victoria... and then "WHA?" Barbarians have created there own mini civ and don't like anyone! "Hey, you're not supposed to be here"! The element of the unknown can be so invigorating.
highstreet
hold it in
- Joined
- Jul 23, 2003
- Messages
- 142
narmox said:This reminds me of CtP, civ1 and civ2. I'm glad the barbs are back as a real threat, not just a minor nuisance.
Play with no barbs? Why not play with no enemy civ too, since these are much more a threat than barbs
Well said! It's part of the challenge to me.
And I love how they found cities. It sort of gives them a "minor civ" feel, which is cool.
dh_epic
Cold War Veteran
A good thing about barbarians is that it makes the expansion phase of the game longer -- which is really the best part.
Another good thing is that pursuing a military is always helpful if you know barbs are turned way up. Instead of building an army only to find you're far away from everyone else, you notice a barbarian city or two popping up around you.
And while some will say they're unpredictable, they really aren't. You see these barbarians develop quickly. You see their technology. You know they multiply. You have to always be one step ahead with your military. I haven't lost to a barbarian for a long time (except one time when an AI was on my west border, and a roving barbarian pillaged me from the east.)
Another good thing is that pursuing a military is always helpful if you know barbs are turned way up. Instead of building an army only to find you're far away from everyone else, you notice a barbarian city or two popping up around you.
And while some will say they're unpredictable, they really aren't. You see these barbarians develop quickly. You see their technology. You know they multiply. You have to always be one step ahead with your military. I haven't lost to a barbarian for a long time (except one time when an AI was on my west border, and a roving barbarian pillaged me from the east.)
CustodianV131
Prince
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2004
- Messages
- 353
Sounds like its just the way I like it!
Bring them on! After leading them in Total War, I'm ready to fight them again now. Need to keep the balance!
Bring them on! After leading them in Total War, I'm ready to fight them again now. Need to keep the balance!
