Barbarian activity increase by difficulty level?

[misterfilmgeek]

Does barb level increase at Emperor (or any level)? For reference, I never play Raging Barbs. Most games it's not too bad if I'm close to other civs, but in a few games (where there is alot of open territory in one direction), I've had to build nothing but military for 30-40 turns in multiple cities just to get control of the incoming tide, and thus fall too far behind the other civs to ever get even. This never happened on Monarch. At most I'd have to have 2-4 sentries until I could expand into the fog.

In searching for an answer to the above question, I saw some posts about whether barbs favor attacking the player over the AI, and I must say that this is true as low as Monarch. On multiple occasions I have seen barbs completely ignore advantageous match-ups (Axeman to Archer/Warrior) and march straight for my territory or unit, and I have never seen it pillage AI improvements. The AI tends to ignore barbs, even letting escorted Settlers march right past barbs as if it knows it won't be attacked. I was surprised to see that some people haven't witnessed this. I just assumed it was part of the programming. I was shocked to hear that barbs wipe out AIs - haven't seen that either.

I do play with the BUG mod, but from what I've read, this doesn't affect the strength of the barbs, so I'm not sure if that has an effect or not.

 

[Ataxerxes]

Does barb level increase at Emperor (or any level)? For reference, I never play Raging Barbs. Most games it's not too bad if I'm close to other civs, but in a few games (where there is alot of open territory in one direction), I've had to build nothing but military for 30-40 turns in multiple cities just to get control of the incoming tide, and thus fall too far behind the other civs to ever get even. This never happened on Monarch. At most I'd have to have 2-4 sentries until I could expand into the fog..

Yes, the barb level increases as the difficulty increases. They start appearing sooner and getting better units sooner on the higher difficulties as well.

[/QUOTE]I do play with the BUG mod, but from what I've read, this doesn't affect the strength of the barbs, so I'm not sure if that has an effect or not.[/QUOTE]

No, the bug mod has no effect on the barbs.

 

[kivanc]

the best way to deal with barbs is starting fogbusting ASAP possible. if u don't think to build the 2nd city very early, just start with building a worker and then some warriors. depending on the map, u build between 4-8 warriors and fortify them everywhere. (BTW you don't have to postpone building your settler until all warriors are build. u can build the 2nd city in between)

each warrior fogbusts 1tile around it, if on a hill 2tiles.
no barb will appear "inside the clear tiles". they will only come from "outside".

your cultural borders and 1/2 tile around it is always clear. So just palce warriors outside it.

i used to build the great wall once but later on high levels i found it a waste, but for most leaders not all. and also it creates a great spy pollution problem. u have less GS in your games if u build and early wonder.

 

[georgjorge]

Not only will they fogbust, they will also SPAWNBUST, which means that no barbarians will spawn in a 5x5 area around your units (the unit being right in the middle of the area), so the territory they cover is greater than the territory they can see. If your land isn't too big, you can prevent barbarians from turning up at all by positioning units in a systematic way. If the land is too big, just position them so that they don't appear close to your cities - they will have to pass your units to get to your cities, and usually attack them and hopefully lose if you put them in good defensive positions.

 

[skyclad]

spawnbusting is invaluable Ive found as Ive moved up from noble prince monarch and now getting comfortable on emperor. It just takes away to much to fight the barbs, outsmart them instead! Instead of fighting them with chariots and swords, instead of having axes in every city... Just put out those 15 hammer warriors where they need to stand and you dont have to waste any more hammers than necessary.

What to do with all those useless warriors later? Dont give them combat promos... except the first to open up medic... Make all of them medics, and one woodsman to make a super medic later. That way, you have a use for them thousands of years later, as medics and HR happiness.

Sometimes, I even avoid hooking up metals for a while, so I still have acess to cheap warriors. Or of course, neglecting hunting works just as well.

 

[kivanc]

yes. i already meant spawnbusting by mentioning fogbusting. i only forgot it was 5*5. i thought it was the same area with what they see (3*3). it is really very useful.

 

[Tristan_C]

Game speed does not affect barb spawn rates. Raging Barbs / Marathon / Monarch++ is whimsical.

If you want to see barbs defeat whole civs (including yourself), play on that setting. The best opportunity for barbs to conquer an AI is after they launch their first settler. Usually the settler carries with it a large chunk of their core garrison, particularly if they whipped it and now deem their low-pop capital not to need as much defense.

I think barbs really do spawn worse against the human player! I was defeated by barbs in my last game, so I went back and peaked at the worldbuilder. I counted ten AI civs, and a total of 9 barb units inside of BFCs. 6 of them were in my BFC.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Game speed does not affect barb spawn rates. Raging Barbs / Marathon / Monarch++ is whimsical.

If you want to see barbs defeat whole civs (including yourself), play on that setting. The best opportunity for barbs to conquer an AI is after they launch their first settler. Usually the settler carries with it a large chunk of their core garrison, particularly if they whipped it and now deem their low-pop capital not to need as much defense.

I think barbs really do spawn worse against the human player! I was defeated by barbs in my last game, so I went back and peaked at the worldbuilder. I counted ten AI civs, and a total of 9 barb units inside of BFCs. 6 of them were in my BFC.

Slowing the game speed drastically increases the value of barb pressure, so I'm not sure what you're talking about.

Units cost hammers. Barb units are generated out of thin air. Additionally, barb units effectively move "faster" on slower speeds just like other units, allowing them to move out of locations where they are essentially spawnbusting themselves (barbs can't spawn even within 2 tiles of another barb unit). The relative barb movement speed absolutely does increase their spawn rate against year on slower speeds, and it increases the amount of they put towards you as well. Gwall is much stronger on slower speeds (and of course larger maps) than faster speeds.

Barbs can be "pushed" into AI borders by placing spawnbusters such that barbs that do spawn are closer to the AI. Of course if your neighbor has great wall, you're going to have more heat.

 

[misterfilmgeek]

I know that units fog-bust, but the 5x5 "spawn" stat is very useful - thanks! I have been using too many units in some cases.

My problem is when I get an area that is too large to monitor with 3-4 units (as has happened multiple times recently). The barbs seem to come 2-3 per turn and as soon as I hook up a metal, spears and axes arrive, before I can even produce one on my own. I tend to lose a few units at first and slowly gain the upper hand, but this takes an enormous amount of hammers and I fall behind, especially with the AI city "stealing" good sites from me (I made a separate post about this).

I basically started playing on Prince and moved to Monarch fairly easily (with loads of help from this forum) and usually win games with double the score of my closest rival, but moving to Emperor has been ridiculously difficult. I haven't made it past 1000ish AD yet. Maybe I should just turn off barbs and lose valuable early XP, but that seems like a wimpy way out. I just don't know how you deal with them at these levels if they have enough room to spawn like crazy.

 

[Tristan_C]

@TMIT

We're both right; I think you misunderstood me because my wording was unintentionally tricky. Since game speed doesn't factor into barbs being placed, clearly, marathon is going to spawn three times as many barbs as Normal, and they will (as you say) close in three times as fast towards civilization.

Edit: I admit to not having all of my facts straight but I think the barb spawns run on some kind of quota for world size. And cities start appearing when there is an average of 2 cities per civ. Since this is updated turn by turn, Marathon is going to provide the barbs the best chance for these continual updates.

When both the speed of the spawn AND the speed of the units is considered, we're probably looking at least six times as much barb pressure on mara, not just 3.

 

[Willem]

Game speed does not affect barb spawn rates.

That's not true. Take a look at the CIV4GameSpeedInfo.xml file, there's a special line just for Barb production. At Marathon it's set at 400%, even though almost everything else is only 300%.

 

[kivanc]

i could try to build gwall in some of my games if it gave a +2GP birth rate of GE instead of Gspy. GSc would be the best but it would not be related.