Dealing With Barbarians
keeping the hairy people from your door
keeping the hairy people from your door
Introduction
Whilst barbarians can present an annoying problem to a young empire, by using simple methods you can keep them under control with little trouble. In fact with a little planning you can turn the situation to your advantage.
If you want to know more then read on....
- Key concepts
- What are barbarians and what do they do?
- Controlling barbarians
- Using barbarians to your advantage
- Civilizations with barbarian specific unique traits
Key concepts
Fog of War -- also simply know as fog, this is the shaded out tiles that are not in the line of sight of any unit or city.
Barbarian Encampment -- a camp that acts as a base of operations for the barbarians and is the location where barbarians are spawned.
Spawning -- the act of creating a new unit or barbarian camp.
Farming -- not to be confused with irrigation, this is the act of gaining combat experience, gold, units and more from barbarians and encampments.
What are barbarians and what do they do?
Barbarians are a faction who are opposed to civilization and all of its trappings. In practise this means the spawning of camps and barbarian units that will try to disrupt civilizations and city states that they encounter.
Barbarian camps can appear in any part of the map as long as the tile in question is within the fog of war of all civilizations and city states. Barbarian camps can appear at any stage of the game as long as some fog still exists. These camps will spawn with a unit guarding them and will go on to spawn new units at regular intervals. These units can be as advanced as the most advanced player's most advanced units, however there are no barbarian units that use strategic resources (e.g. no barbarian Giant Death Robots).
The guard unit will stay on or near the camp (it will attack units within its movement range if the odds are favourable) whilst the newly spawned units will make their way towards nearby civilizations and city states. When they reach their destinations the barbarians will attempt to harass and hinder the development of the civilization in question.
They do this in a number of ways:
- Capture/kill civilians
Barbarians will attempt to capture settlers and workers, or outright kill great people. A barbarian that successfully captures a civilian will then attempt to escort it directly to the nearest encampment. - Pillage tile improvements
Barbarians will target your improved tiles for pillaging, preferring to pillage luxury and strategic resources. Any time they end their turn on an improvement they may pillage the tile the following turn. They won't pillage the tile if a higher priority target is available (such as moving from a regular improved tile to a luxury, or capturing a worker). - Attacking military units
Barbarians by their very nature are aggressive and will attack military units. They may do this even if the odds are not in their favour. - Citizen tile denial
As with any regular opposing combatants, the tile a barbarian occupies at the start of a turn cannot be worked by a citizen. Naval barbarian units perform similarly, preventing all sea tiles in a 2 tile radius from the unit being worked and potentially blocking trade routes. - City Pillaging
If a city ends up surrounded by barbarians, they may choose to attack it. If they successfully bring it below 1 hp, instead of capturing it they will steal a chunk of gold and potentially destroy buildings and kill citizens.
Controlling barbarians
There are a variety of methods you can employ to deal with barbarians and the problems they pose and they can be summarised thus:
General advice
Before delving into the methods of dealing with barbarians it's important to have an understanding of various technologies and the units and buildings they unlock, as well as social policies that can help you deal with barbarians.
There are some key early technologies that can really help with barbarians.
The next two technologies worth mentioning are Masonry and Bronze Working. Masonry as it allows you to build city walls that increase the base strength of your city, and Bronze Working as it unlocks spear units which have a higher base strength that warriors (7 v 6).
On the social policy front the most obvious choice to help with barbarians is the opening policy from the Honour tree. This gives your units a 25% increase in strength against barbarians, for example a warrior will go from 6 to 7.5 strength. In addition to this combat boost you will earn
per barbarian killed. This culture is based on the base combat strength of the barbarian, for example, a brute will yield 6 and a spearman will yield 7 . Honour will also show you the location of any encampments in territory you have already explored. This can be useful as it will let you know where barbarians will be likely to come from as well as letting you know where to go to destroy said camps. Discipline from the Honour tree, with its 10% combat strength bonus from having units in adjacent tiles, can also be useful but its probably not worth taking purely for use against barbarians.
From the Tradition tree the Oligarchy policy can be of some use. Garrisoned units cost no maintenance and cities with a garrison gain +100% ranged combat strength.
Passive
Passive barbarian control is achieved via the use of fog busting. Fog busting is the act of placing units so that they roll back the fog of war, removing an area from possible places that barbarians can spawn camps.
In the early game when you may not have the spare production to dedicate to building enough units to ring your entire territory, it is important to prioritise the areas that you are fog busting. One of the best use of your resources is to fog bust potential new city sites. This allows you to send in a settler with out worrying about it being picked off by a barbarian.
With units in place at strategically important locations you are not only preventing barbarian camps from appearing but you have a military force ready to respond to barbarians moving into that area from out side the fog busted area.
Which leads nicely on to the next section......
Active
Actively dealing with barbarians is simply using military might to kill their units and destroy their encampments.
As with any military action it is best to have one if not both of the following on your side when dealing with barbarians. Quantity or quality. Quality can come from having a technologically superior units or from having experienced, promoted units. Luckily one of the best ways to gain promotions in the early game is from killing barbarians!
When dealing with barbarian encampments it is wise to remember two things. Firstly the unit guarding the camp will more than likely have a fortification bonus to their strength ( up to 50%) meaning they can be a tough nut to crack with a like for like unit. Secondly the camp may spawn another barbarian unit when your unit is in a vulnerable position. The best way to deal with this is to take at least two units to the fight. If you have an archer then this can be a good use for them, bombarding the fortified barbarian whilst a melee unit stands between the two.
Dealing with barbarian naval units can be more difficult than land units due to the likelihood of not having a large naval force available to you early on. Luckily in the early game the threat from naval units is minimal and can be countered with the cities ranged attack and archer units. However if you do have a lot of sea based resources or are playing a water heavy map type it is advisable to have naval units of your own to protect improvements and watch over civilian units you may be moving around on the high seas.
Game settings
You can influence your experiences with barbarians in the game before you even hit play by the choices you make during the set up process.
The two most obvious choices, found in the advanced set up screen, are Raging Barbarians and No Barbarians. Raging Barbarians increases the frequency with which barbarians are spawned, and No Barbarians does exactly what it says, it turns off barbarians.
The difficulty level you're playing on will also impact upon a number of different factors with regards to barbarians. For Prince and above, you'll receive 25
Gold for clearing an encampment, but this is higher on lower levels. Also for Prince and above, barbarians will be able to enter your territory immediately after they start spawning at the beginning of the game, whereas on lower difficulties this is not the case (and on Settler, barbarians will never enter your territory). On Settler you'll receive a 75% combat bonus against barbarians, but this will peter out with each difficulty increase, to the point where no bonus is given on Deity. The AI's bonus against barbarians works the opposite way, although it flattens out at 60% and stays constant after Prince. Barbarians only start spawning after 10 turns, but this is modified below Prince, ballooning out to 18 turns on Settler. The final effect of difficulty is seen in the range within which barbarians will identify a target. For all difficulties this is more for sea units than it is for land units, but it increases for each difficulty level, from a land range of 2 tiles on Settler to 8 tiles on Deity.This is the XML data summarising the effects of difficulty on barbarians:
Spoiler :
Map type, map size and civilization density can all play a role in how you experience barbarians in the course of a game. In general the higher the land to civilization ratio the more barbarians there will be as there will be more locations for camps to spawn.
A couple of map types deserve a special mention.
First of all archipelago type maps. On these maps you generally won't have to worry to much about land based barbarians to start with, as your starting location will tend to be small and quickly filled with cities or easily fog busted. However, due to the necessity of moving units around via embarkation, naval barbarians are much more of a threat than on say, a pangea type map. Also, due to the fragmented nature of the land masses, you will likely encounter barbarians later into the game than on other map types as there are lots of little areas that aren't being fog busted by you or the AIs.
The second map type is Terra style maps that have a large second continent that is liable to be left unsettled until the late renaissance era. This gives the barbarians time to spawn lots of units on the second continent, including naval units. So if you are heading out to pastures new remember to take the necessary military to deal with the threat and allow you to safely colonise the new world.
The final decision you can make whilst setting up your game that can massively affect your experience of barbarians is which civilization you choose to play as. Since barbarians are more of a threat in the early part of the game, using a civilization that has an early unique unit or a combat focused unique ability can be a major help in dealing with barbarians. For example, Greece and their Hoplites (a strength 9 rather than strength 7 spearman) or Japan and their unique ability which allows wounded units to fight as if they are at full strength will help in controlling barbarians by making your combat solutions more effective. An example of a civilization that is good to use to passively deal with barbarians is American, whose unique ability gives them +1 range for their line of sight.
Using barbarians to your advantage
Barbarians aren't all bad news. In fact they can prove to be a truly valuable resource that can provide a significant bonus, especially in the in the earlier stages of the game. The method by which these bonuses are gained is called farming.
You can farm barbarians for a variety of different things. These are:
Experience
Every time you engage a barbarian unit, either defensively or aggressively, you will earn experience points for the unit up to a maximum of 30. This equals two promotions. It is important to keep this cap in mind when dealing with barbarians because you could be wasting potential experience on units that can gain no more benefit at the expense of unprompted units.
Using barbarians in this way is a great way of improving your early units so that you have an advantage in early wars. This is especially true if you plan attacking a nearby enemy with swordsmen and plan to upgrade your warriors upon acquiring iron.
To get the most from this kind of farming it is a good idea to leave at least one barbarian camp intact so that it keeps spawning units.
Destroying a barbarian encampment results in 25
on standard speed and difficulty. This is modified by the standard 67%, 150% and 300% modifiers for quick, epic and marathon speeds, and increased to 50, 40 and 30 gold at Settler, Chieftain and Warlord difficulties. Destroying a camp is as simple as moving any unit on to the tile, which generally involves first killing the fortified barbarian within. Some civilizations receive different benefits from destroying an encampment, specified below. Additionally, if the entire honor branch is filled out the finisher which provides gold for each unit killed applies to barbarians as well.City state influence
You can gain city state influence in several ways.
City states can issue you missions that request your assistance in dealing with barbarians and their encampments. The rewards for these missions are influence points with the city state that has issued the mission.
If a city state tells you it is plagued by barbarians then it is your cue to send some units over to kill barbarian units. Killing those units will earn you 12 influence points per kill, as long as the kill takes place within or adjacent to the city states territory. Even if this mission is not active you can still earn the 12 influence points from killing the barbarians in or adjacent to a city states territory, in this respect you can treat this mission as a signpost to draw your attention to a chance to earn influence points.
The other city state mission that can earn you influence points is when they request your aid to deal with a specific barbarian encampment. The encampment will be highlighted by the city state mission notification. If you haven't discovered the encampment before the mission is offered then the mission will reveal the encampment for you. When you destroy the encampment you earn 30 influence points. It is always a good idea to leave encampments that are located near city states as it is quite likely they will eventually become targets for city state missions.
The final way to gain city state influence via barbarians is returning workers that have been stolen from city states. You recapture workers by walking a military unit onto the same hex as the worker. This will prompt a dialogue box that gives you the option of keeping the worker or returning it to the city state. Returning the worker will yield you 30 influence points. Stolen workers will make their way directly to the encampment that spawned the barbarian that stole the worker.
Units
You can get free workers from barbarians if they have captured city state or full civilization units and you recapture them. Note that if the unit was initially a settler, upon capture it is converted into a worker. You are given a choice of either returning them or keeping them for yourself. This can be a good source of free workers in the early part of the game without causing the diplomatic problems associated with worker stealing.
Culture
You can earn
Culture from barbarians by adopting the opening policy from the Honour policy tree. After adopting this policy killing a barbarian unit earns you Culture points equivalent to the base strength of the unit killed, e.g. if you kill a barbarian brute (base strength 6) you will receive 6. If you play as the Aztecs your unique ability -- Sacrificial Captives -- effectively doubles this bonus.Diplomatic improvements
If you recapture a civilian unit that belonged to a civilization but was stolen by a barbarian then you are given the choice of returning the unit to the parent civilization. If you chose to do so then you will have a positive diplomatic modifier with the parent civilization that will last for the rest of the game.
Civilizations with barbarian specific unique traits
- Germany
Furor Teutonicus: Upon defeating a Barbarian unit inside an encampment, there is a 50% chance you earn 25 Gold and they join your side. Pay 25% less for land unit maintenance.
Instead of capturing a camp and earning the appropriate amount of gold, 50% of the time you will gain a newly spawned unit of the same type that originally occupied the camp and a flat 25 gold (unaffected by speed/difficulty settings).
- Songhai
River Warlord: Receive triple Gold from Barbarian encampments and pillaging Cities. Embarked units can defend themselves.
This triple gold is affected by standard speed and difficulty settings, making it extremely profitable on marathon speed for 225 gold per camp at prince or higher difficulty, or up to 450 gold at settler difficulty.
- The Ottomans
Barbary Corsairs: 50% Chance of converting a Barbarian naval unit to your side and earning 25 Gold. Pay only one-third the usual cost for naval unit maintenance.
A barbarian naval unit is converted by moving a different naval unit into an adjacent tile. If successful, the barbarian ship in its current condition is automatically turned over to the control of the Ottomans and a flat 25 gold (unaffected by speed) is given to the Ottoman empire. If moving into an adjacent tile does not convert the unit, that barbarian can never be converted.
Patch version of this article: 1.0.1.383