Raging Barbs in Fire

[Nimai_R]

You should always have a powerful caster with you when trying to conquer a raging barbarian continent. I prefer Spell Extension I and II Air III Archmages. Skeleton spams cannot survive Maelstroms from 4 tiles away. Of course, you are probably trying to take this territory before these are available.

Actually, I just did natures revolt with rangers//beastmasters and a few powerful vamps//the Baron fo ralive units. But cities are much easier to take when bears are guarding them. But I'll definately have to look into that for when actual barbs start spawning again. Sounds like a good strat to me

 

[vorshlumpf]

You should always have a powerful caster with you when trying to conquer a raging barbarian continent. I prefer Spell Extension I and II Air III Archmages. Skeleton spams cannot survive Maelstroms from 4 tiles away. Of course, you are probably trying to take this territory before these are available.

Yeah, the best I've got at the moment is my adventurer mage. Twin-casted fireballs at full empowerment aren't too shabby. I'm currently bee-lining for the tech that gives me archmages, then it'll just be unfair

- Niilo

 

[Sarisin]

-Kills-
Goblins: 267
Orc Spearman: 294
Lizardman: 145
Orc Axeman: 72

Love to see your totals Sarisin hehe

My last Light game (yes, I still play Light games ) the body count included more than 1,000 Orc Spearmen and Goblins. There were also 100s of Lizardmen, Orc Axemen, Worg Riders and Goblin Chariots.

I play Light with a Huge fantasy realm (almost all land) map, 10 AI civs (always seem to get at least one with the BAR trait), Emperor, Marathon, AggAI, and, of course, raging barbs.

The Fire games I play are much different. I cannot use the same settings as above in Fire games. Still, they are lots of fun, just different.

For example, in the raging barb Fire games, I find a much higher count of Lizardmen and those rascally Skeletons. It seems to me that more powerful barbs come earlier in Fire vs. Light.

I see large stacks in both versions of FFH.

 

[Sarisin]

Well, yes of course I do. But I don't pick up goody huts near the capital for the risk of hostiles. But those moderately away are ok. First I produce a scout who will take the nearby huts and then fight animals (and hopefully capture some). Then I make more warriors that will defend the capital.
In multiplayer you can't be so "daring" though

So, onedreamer, you are saying you send BOTH Warriors out exploring, but you don't pop any goodie huts with them close to your city? Then, you build a Scout and send him out for the goodie huts?

I don't suppose you are playing at Epic or Marathon speed, or it would be quite a few turns before you got that next Warrior as a defender of your city. I think that is a big risk with the roving Skeletons that are so plentiful these days.

I think this is the problem with the AI and why I often see an AI civ eliminated in the early going, especially in raging barb games. They send their Warriors/Scouts exploring and leave the city without a defender for awhile. A good strategy unless you happen to have the bad luck of a Barrow producing a Skeleton or, worse yet, having the Dirge unload a few Skeletons near your civ.

I don't know, I just seem to have very bad luck using Warriors as explorers, especially with goodie huts and Giant Spiders, so I keep them either in the city or very close by.

 

[cvlowe]

If I see an AI killed too early, I usually go back to the previous turn autosave and delete a skeleton or two from around their city. Gotta give the AI a helping hand sometimes... I usually stop those assists around turn 100 or when Orthus comes out to play.

 

[vorshlumpf]

I don't know, I just seem to have very bad luck using Warriors as explorers, especially with goodie huts and Giant Spiders, so I keep them either in the city or very close by.

I agree. When I play at levels that are challenging for me, sending out my warriors to explore is a recipe for a very short game. At most, I send them out to within a few tiles of my borders, typically targeting hills, so they 'explore' the immediate map area around me, but then they head straight back to prepare for the onslaught.

Mmm, onslaught.

- Niilo

 

[kenken244]

i think that the barb behavior needs to chanage so it attacks all civs equally instead of ganging up all on one person

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I would like it if there were a diplomatic stance between war and peace. Everyone would start with this towards everyone, including barbs. Civs in this state could attach each other's units but could not capture cities. Automated units would not attack the neutral units. Attacking would not start a war, but it would upset the units owner. He would declare war with you pretty quickly if you kept this up. You could not go back to the pre-war state once you have been at war with a civ, you would need a peace treaty. Declaring war after having a peace treaty would cause other civs to dislike you, but war without peace would only effect your relations to that one civ.

I would also like it if there was a state between open and closed borders. You could move in rival territory without having an open border agreement, but this could greatly anger the owning civ. They would have every right to kill the trespassers, and could unilaterally decide to close their borders to your units. Then, your would need to either get open borders or declare war.

I think that this system is more diplomatically realistic, but will probably never be adopted. In the unlikely circumstance that it is, then the barbarians could still attack everyone but could focus on those with whom they are at war. They would chose who declare war on based on more reasonable factors, like who would be easiest to defeat. Like everyone else, they would prefer one front wars, but would be unable to make peace treaties with other civs (except those with the barbarian trait)

 

[jan030]

Anybody tried to play Clan of Embers or the Doviello? They arent in war with the barbs. Huge advantage on your "enemies", they have to build an army, you dont...!!!!!

 

[[NWO]_Valis]

Have you read their trait description at all?
Look in the civilipedia about those civilisations:
http://civ4wiki.com/wiki/index.php/FfH_Clan_of_Embers_%28Civilization)

 

[Gutus]

I think the barbs are good the way they are. They are much less of a threat on archipelago, or continents maps. They seem to be vanishing quickly also on maps with a lot of AIs. Axctually i find them boosting my development. I always beeline for an early, good melee unit, like axemen, or such and go searching for those poor barb cities. This does not happen too often, as now I tend to play with 14+ civs on pangea, which means a quick death for the barbs, unless they can find a spot for a city, where the AI wont be attacking them and they can put Acheron inside.

As for the barb swarms attacking me, then yeah, this can be very, very annoying, but then I know, I have the weakest military and I need to produce more units, or "pact of nilhorn" if I can. Its all to have early barb slayers. In general barbs no longer exist in my games after 300-400 years. Starting from this point, only the Acheron is a threat.

 

[cvlowe]

Anybody tried to play Clan of Embers or the Doviello? They arent in war with the barbs. Huge advantage on your "enemies", they have to build an army, you dont...!!!!!

But on the other hand, you have no random units to level up your troops and build a core of "veterans"

 

[onedreamer]

So, onedreamer, you are saying you send BOTH Warriors out exploring, but you don't pop any goodie huts with them close to your city? Then, you build a Scout and send him out for the goodie huts?

I don't suppose you are playing at Epic or Marathon speed, or it would be quite a few turns before you got that next Warrior as a defender of your city. I think that is a big risk with the roving Skeletons that are so plentiful these days.

Yeah, I don't play Epic or even less Marathon. As I said many times, I think these 2 options are totally unbalanced, and the barbarian problem is one more proof to add to a very long list. I play on standard and I have never seen a civ eliminated in the early age by barbarians. The only mod I've ever played at epic was TAM.
Btw, I move as much as I can with my initial settler and try to spot all barrows around, and send my warrior and scout to destroy those I see (leaving them in the city is probably more risky than trying to destroy the barrow). If I don't arrive in time (with Emperor you often see skeletons spawned on the barrow at turn 5 -standard speed) then I might send back the warrior (the scout is worthless to defend the city) to the city if the barrow is near enough and the city is not producing the next warrior fast enough. I also noted that barrows spawn skeletons randomly. I initially thought they would spawn them every X turns, but I noticed this is not the case.

i think that the barb behavior needs to chanage so it attacks all civs equally instead of ganging up all on one person

Yeah, this is a HUGE problem. But I haven't found a pattern for it yet. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. I say it's a huge problem because the game becomes unplayable when it happens to you. Or at the very least, not funny anymore.

 

[Sarisin]

Yeah, I don't play Epic or even less Marathon. As I said many times, I think these 2 options are totally unbalanced, and the barbarian problem is one more proof to add to a very long list. I play on standard and I have never seen a civ eliminated in the early age by barbarians. The only mod I've ever played at epic was TAM.
Btw, I move as much as I can with my initial settler and try to spot all barrows around, and send my warrior and scout to destroy those I see (leaving them in the city is probably more risky than trying to destroy the barrow). If I don't arrive in time (with Emperor you often see skeletons spawned on the barrow at turn 5 -standard speed) then I might send back the warrior (the scout is worthless to defend the city) to the city if the barrow is near enough and the city is not producing the next warrior fast enough. I also noted that barrows spawn skeletons randomly. I initially thought they would spawn them every X turns, but I noticed this is not the case.

I agree that Fire is unplayable with raging barbs/aggAI, at Marathon on a huge map (land are the only one I play) with the default number of ai civs. If you add more civs, as one poster noted, it might work as it squeezes out the barbs.

However, I have found my comfort level in Fire using Epic speed with all the variables above. Yes, it can be very challenging and when you have the bad luck to be chosen to be a barb pounding board, you will fall far behind the ai civs. However, if you survive, you will have a very veteran army, especially if you have the Raider trait and you will be able to easily conquer other civs.

I found you comments on barrows interesting. I thought they spawned skeletons (same with ruins/lizardmen) on a fixed schedule - every so many turns. The earliest I saw a barrow spawn a skeleton was Turn 2 (Epic). I sent my scout to take it out and was shocked when he was killed by the skeleton that magically appeared!

Again, I think that just like there is an adjustment to when the barbs arrive on the scene based on game speed, there should also be an adjustment on when barrows/ruins spawn units and when animals appear on the map.

I also like the strategy of moving my settler at least once to get a better look at the surrounding area before settling my first city.

 

[onedreamer]

Well, with my PC, setting raging barbarians on a large or huge map is unplayable for me because of the load on the CPU, even on standard speeds. So I play standard maps, or no raging barbs. Sad state of affairs... but that's how it is.
On barrows, I initally started thinking the spawn rate was random because of events like the one you described (once you find skeletons very early, other times at turn 22 there is still an empty barrow, etc) . Then I placed a warrior on a forested hill accross a river next to a barrow, for defensive reasons (the barrow was near my capital and I wanted to know when a new skeleton would spawn and if lucky enough to kill him thanks to the defense boni). After a skeleton appeared, I reloaded for other reasons 2 turns back, and the 2 turns after that skeleton didn't appear again. And he didn't for a long time. So this seemingly confirmed my initial thought that skeletons don't appear at fixed intervals. I'd guess they have a % to spawn at the beginning of a turn ? Only Kael knows

 

[snarko]

The chance that barrows/ruins spawn units is defined in CvMap.cpp in the SDK and as far as I can see not in any way effected by game speed. How likely they are to spawn is only effected by difficulty level (iBarbarianCityCreationProb, the higher it is the more likely something is created). No barbarians spawn if there are 5 or more units on the plot.

 

[onedreamer]

Snarko, the fact that the spawn rate is not affected by game speed is exactly the problem that Sarisin was pointing at. This is just one more element of unbalance of slower/faster speed compared to a game that is clearly thought on the standard speed; the other speeds have been added to make some players happy but they've really been cheated since the work done to balance the game speed changes is really approximate (I'm talking of Civ4 in general).
In the case of barrows, the problem is that skeletons will spawn more or less at the same speed of a normal game, but in a marathon game the time it will take you to build your first warrior is a lot more than the standard one, so sending out your initial warrior is almost suicidal, as he was pointing out. At least I think this is what he meant, I don't play anything else than standard speed.

 

[Sarisin]

Snarko, the fact that the spawn rate is not affected by game speed is exactly the problem that Sarisin was pointing at. This is just one more element of unbalance of slower/faster speed compared to a game that is clearly thought on the standard speed; the other speeds have been added to make some players happy but they've really been cheated since the work done to balance the game speed changes is really approximate (I'm talking of Civ4 in general).
In the case of barrows, the problem is that skeletons will spawn more or less at the same speed of a normal game, but in a marathon game the time it will take you to build your first warrior is a lot more than the standard one, so sending out your initial warrior is almost suicidal, as he was pointing out. At least I think this is what he meant, I don't play anything else than standard speed.

Yes, you nailed my views precisely, onedreamer. Thanks.

I'm not a programmer, but it seems to me if you can adjust the appearance of barbs in the game, you could also adjust the appearance of other things like the Sailor's Dirge, skeletons/lizardmen spawning, etc.

I haven't played a Normal speed game, but I am guessing you can build your first Warrior fairly quickly.

In Epic it takes about 30 turns. In Marathon 50 turns. Yes, this can be reduced a bit as the city grows, but the point is that it takes a long time to build that Warrior, especially compared to a Normal speed game. Yet, you are faced with skeletons, lizardmen the same time as a Normal game. You must keep at least one Warrior at home to defend, and normally it will take only two skeletons to give your game a premature end.

To carry it further, in an Epic game the barbs usually appear around yr. 72. In Marathon games around yr. 114. If you can have this graduated introduction of bad guys like barbs, why not for the others?

 

[vorshlumpf]

In Epic it takes about 30 turns. In Marathon 50 turns.

I won't disagree that the appearance of skeletons and lizardmen should be throttled to the game speed (my last game had so many skeletons in the New World that very few barbarians appeared to harass me).
However, I just want to point out that these build times, if correct (I cannot recall but they seem high), are also likely for a city left to its own devices (i.e., balancing growth with production). When faced with a threat, emphasizing production will speed things up considerable (at the cost of growing, but that's part of the strategy).

- Niilo

 

[Sarisin]

My last two games both huge fantasy map, epic, Prince, raging barb/aggAI:

Game 1: Reinforces my earlier point on delaying the appearance of skeletons, etc. based on game speed. I kept my Warrior at home fortifying my capital and sent my Scout out to explore. Turn 22 a Skeleton attacked and damaged my Warrior defender. Turn 23 another Skeleton killed my Warrior. Game over. I still had 4 turns to go before my next defender was built.

Game 2: From the get-go I was swarmed by Skeletons and Lizardmen were buzzing around. I successfully defended against the Skeletons, but was unable to build improvements or think about settling a second city. In Epic the goblins and orc spearmen usually show up around turn 72. It went past yr 100, then yr. 125 and yr. 150. I still saw only Skeletons and Lizardmen. Curiosity got the best of me and I opened up the World Builder. NOT A SINGLE GOBLIN OR ORC SPEARMAN ON THE MAP!! No animals either. Only Skeletons, Lizardmen, Orthus, and the Dragon! I never saw a game like this before. Every ruin and barrow had a defender on it. Each remaining goodie hut had a Skeleton defender. Around turn 200 I started to see an occasional goblin or spearman, but still plenty of Skeletons and Lizardmen which were now more aggressive.

Naturally, 4 of the AI civs could not defend against this onslaught and were wiped out making it a big tougher with more open space and few civs left.

Although I had taken out several barrows, there were some left. Also, as I mentioned before it appears that the AI was spawning Skeletons and Lizardmen very early in the game instead of the usual goblins and orc spearmen. It created quite an early challenge.