This is going to be a bit of a story, because basically everything went wrong. I started playing Civ4 again after a long break from the game. I decided to go to custom map and do ALL random -- random civ, random map size, random climate, random start age, etc. I also checked the unlimited leader and raging barbarians. It was prince difficulty, because I hate it when the AI cheats too much.
On the second game with these settings (my first game went fine), I started in the classical age (monarchy was available to research turn 1) on an archipelago map. I had a financial leader, which I thought was OP on archipelago. My capital was on an isthmus with access to two crabs, some silk, corn, and wine. Those were a lot of food tiles, so I thought I'd grab monarchy so that I make a giant capital city quickly. I thought if I can do it without neglecting my military and settlement, I'll get the great lighthouse too, and get a permanent tech lead for the whole game.
I was on a relatively small island with a Persian neighbor. The Persians get the Immortal UU which does bonus to archers. I thought, "If he has horses, and he chooses to attack me, I can't defend myself." I scouted his base and found horses just outside his cultural borders. I thought to myself, "I need to find copper or iron ASAP". But even after researching iron working, I saw no copper or iron on our start island. I thought to myself, "It is impossible for me to defend myself, because I can only spam archers, which he does bonus damage against. I have to just pray that he doesn't attack before I advance through the tech tree a bit." So, I decided to go the full-eco route, because the military route was so hopeless.
While I was building the great lighthouse, silver was found in my only mine. Normally, I'd consider this to be a good thing, but it meant that my total hammers dropped from 8 to 6. (10 to 8 after I work every single forest in reach).
Now, I knew that raging barbarians was checked, but in my previous game, I never saw a barbarian on my main island before I got it all settled. So, I thought maybe barbarians are broken on random start ages. I scouted the whole island, built 5 tile improvements, and nearly got the great lighthouse finished before the barbarians appeared. My scout got killed by a barbarian inside the Persian's cultural borders (we had open borders), a galley destroyed my fishing ships, and ~7 land units (including a swordsman and 2 axemen) attacked on land. I went from not even seeing a barbarian the whole game yet to ALL of my tile improvements being destroyed in about a dozen turns.
What was even more puzzling about this barbarian invasion than its suddenness, was that it seemed to be directed ONLY at me. Barbarians were pouring in from every direction, even walking away from the enemy base to attack me. I also checked the stats before quitting the game, and it didn't seem that the AIs were hurt by the barbarians at all. But I saw immediately before my scout was killed that the AI had only 1 archer in one of his cities that the barbarians were walking away from in order to attack me. I think if several axemen and a swordsman had ganged up on that one archer like they had on my capital, the AI would have lost a city. But it didn't happen.
After I whipped a galley, and after my winery and silver mine were destroyed, my population was very unhappy. I thought this was unacceptable; I have to defend my tile improvements. I whipped several archers to guard the entrance to my isthmus, as well as a granary to rebuild quickly. I was down to 1 population again, but I wasn't terribly concerned, because I had rebuilt my tile improvements with a granary and had an army to defend myself this time around. IMMEDIATELY after my granary was completed, it was destroyed by the hurricane random event. And to add yet more insult to injury, the moment I posted my archers on defense, the barbarians quit coming. I do not understand this, because ~50% of the island was still unsettled and unscouted.
I checked the stats, and before the barbarians attacked, I was leading in every metric: GDP, manufacturing, and food production. After the barbarian attack, I was solidly in last place. I checked the map and saw that I was down to my capital with only 1 population, whereas the Persian player seemed to be completely unharmed with 3 cities. I saved the game and quit. I don't think I'll come back unless I'm in a masochistic mood. At the rate it's going, he'll probably settle the whole island before I get back to where I was before. And there is still the issue of having no counter to his immortals.
On the second game with these settings (my first game went fine), I started in the classical age (monarchy was available to research turn 1) on an archipelago map. I had a financial leader, which I thought was OP on archipelago. My capital was on an isthmus with access to two crabs, some silk, corn, and wine. Those were a lot of food tiles, so I thought I'd grab monarchy so that I make a giant capital city quickly. I thought if I can do it without neglecting my military and settlement, I'll get the great lighthouse too, and get a permanent tech lead for the whole game.
I was on a relatively small island with a Persian neighbor. The Persians get the Immortal UU which does bonus to archers. I thought, "If he has horses, and he chooses to attack me, I can't defend myself." I scouted his base and found horses just outside his cultural borders. I thought to myself, "I need to find copper or iron ASAP". But even after researching iron working, I saw no copper or iron on our start island. I thought to myself, "It is impossible for me to defend myself, because I can only spam archers, which he does bonus damage against. I have to just pray that he doesn't attack before I advance through the tech tree a bit." So, I decided to go the full-eco route, because the military route was so hopeless.
While I was building the great lighthouse, silver was found in my only mine. Normally, I'd consider this to be a good thing, but it meant that my total hammers dropped from 8 to 6. (10 to 8 after I work every single forest in reach).
Now, I knew that raging barbarians was checked, but in my previous game, I never saw a barbarian on my main island before I got it all settled. So, I thought maybe barbarians are broken on random start ages. I scouted the whole island, built 5 tile improvements, and nearly got the great lighthouse finished before the barbarians appeared. My scout got killed by a barbarian inside the Persian's cultural borders (we had open borders), a galley destroyed my fishing ships, and ~7 land units (including a swordsman and 2 axemen) attacked on land. I went from not even seeing a barbarian the whole game yet to ALL of my tile improvements being destroyed in about a dozen turns.
What was even more puzzling about this barbarian invasion than its suddenness, was that it seemed to be directed ONLY at me. Barbarians were pouring in from every direction, even walking away from the enemy base to attack me. I also checked the stats before quitting the game, and it didn't seem that the AIs were hurt by the barbarians at all. But I saw immediately before my scout was killed that the AI had only 1 archer in one of his cities that the barbarians were walking away from in order to attack me. I think if several axemen and a swordsman had ganged up on that one archer like they had on my capital, the AI would have lost a city. But it didn't happen.
After I whipped a galley, and after my winery and silver mine were destroyed, my population was very unhappy. I thought this was unacceptable; I have to defend my tile improvements. I whipped several archers to guard the entrance to my isthmus, as well as a granary to rebuild quickly. I was down to 1 population again, but I wasn't terribly concerned, because I had rebuilt my tile improvements with a granary and had an army to defend myself this time around. IMMEDIATELY after my granary was completed, it was destroyed by the hurricane random event. And to add yet more insult to injury, the moment I posted my archers on defense, the barbarians quit coming. I do not understand this, because ~50% of the island was still unsettled and unscouted.
I checked the stats, and before the barbarians attacked, I was leading in every metric: GDP, manufacturing, and food production. After the barbarian attack, I was solidly in last place. I checked the map and saw that I was down to my capital with only 1 population, whereas the Persian player seemed to be completely unharmed with 3 cities. I saved the game and quit. I don't think I'll come back unless I'm in a masochistic mood. At the rate it's going, he'll probably settle the whole island before I get back to where I was before. And there is still the issue of having no counter to his immortals.
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