Barbarian Challenge #3

Gwaja

King
Joined
Feb 11, 2011
Messages
911
Location
Seattle, WA
Disclaimer:

Among some CivFanatic forum users, I am known notoriously as a map cooker/doctor. If you hate cooked/doctored maps of any kind, please stay away. This map is exactly just that.

Background:

You are Tokugawa of Mongolia. You are running away from barbarians who have managed to completely surround you on all sides.

You are leading a small contingent of settling and scouting party to start a new civilization under your banner. You were previously under care of Monty the Featherhead, who has fled from the continent in fear of the barbarians. Now you must take charge.

The barbarians are led by four of the most notorious figures from history: Aleric, Genseric, Attila, and Odoacer. You may or may not encounter them in your game, depending on how the game goes. Also, these barbarian leaders each have one lieutenants who have managed to scout out your settling party and are about to launch an attack almost immediately. These named lieutenants, whom I shall not call out their names, are closing in on you fast!

Fortunately, you have a friendly group of named mercenary heroes, willing to serve under you. They have bonuses, which may seem overpowering at first, but you will be glad you have them. Trust me. ^_^ However, they are far away from you, and it is unclear whether they can make it to you in time to help defend you from those lieutenants.

In order to not make this map completely unbeatable, you are given a generous starting bonus. You will notice that you have 2 scouts and 2 archers to protect your 2 workers and 2 settlers. You also start with 500 gold in your bank, which is what was left of Monty's treasury before he fled, as well as some basic starting worker techs. The reason for this is to help speed up the early game and better prepare for the imminent onslaught of nonstop barbarian incursions. These barbarians are souped-up version of the previous challenge. You have been warned!

As usual, the Great Wall cannot be built.

There are no other competing AI civilizations other than Monty. You may talk to him, but actual physical contact is not possible, so you don't have to worry about him.

The rest of the map details... I will let you find out for yourself.

The ULTIMATE goal of this map is to completely destroy and wipe out ALL barbarians off the continent.
Starting Position:


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Attachments

Spoiler :

After seeing where the initial super barbs were, on next playthrough I moved the central units all in the same direction (towards gold) and set out the scouts and archers as bait. I still lost one of the worker/settler pair, not sure if that was inevitable. Then used my super units to beat theirs with no loss (a bit lucky since some fights were 70% chance).

Didn't keep playing yet, but with the super units and more defenders I don't think defending against 4 streams of normal axes/spears will be that bad. For counteroffensive keshik (with flanking 2) seem an obvious choice, with axes as protection vs. spears.
 
@antimony

Spoiler :
The 4 initial super barbarian warriors were put there for shock value and some fun loud opening. Baiting with scouts is crucial, as there is no way 2 archers can beat them even if on a hilled city, being protective and all.

In my testing, by 2000 BC, barbarians will come swinging with Swordsmen, and by that time, I'd have already killed close to 150 barbarian units, if I recall correctly. I will have to look at it more carefully once I return from vacation, but I am pretty sure my recollection is correct. That is a LOT of barbarians, even for the 8 super hero units given.

Did you manage to keep "yourself" alive? :)


@Plains-Cow

Hmm not sure why that could be happening. I play with BUFFY, so I made two saves, one for BUFFY and one for vanilla BTS for those who don't run any mods. It could be that you have certain mods other than BUFFY start up automatically upon launching the game? I usually just start the game purely vanilla and then load BUFFY from the main menu, even though it is tedious, it seems to solve many issues. If not, I'd need assistance from more technically adept people.

I could provide a WB save, but it will play quite a bit differently from a normal save file, and tinkering with barbarian deity starting techs means opening up the world builder to fix them, which could sorta destroy the surprise I have built into the game. :) Nevertheless, let me know if all else fails and I will provide one.

@Fippy

I KNOW you have checked out the map already. Since I haven't challenged you with my maps for a very long time, I think this is the right time to do it. Make me and @lymond PROUD! Or... meet your doom from the barbarian onslaught! ^_^
 
@antimony

Spoiler :
The 4 initial super barbarian warriors were put there for shock value and some fun loud opening. Baiting with scouts is crucial, as there is no way 2 archers can beat them even if on a hilled city, being protective and all.

In my testing, by 2000 BC, barbarians will come swinging with Swordsmen, and by that time, I'd have already killed close to 150 barbarian units, if I recall correctly. I will have to look at it more carefully once I return from vacation, but I am pretty sure my recollection is correct. That is a LOT of barbarians, even for the 8 super hero units given.

Did you manage to keep "yourself" alive? :)


@Plains-Cow

Hmm not sure why that could be happening. I play with BUFFY, so I made two saves, one for BUFFY and one for vanilla BTS for those who don't run any mods. It could be that you have certain mods other than BUFFY start up automatically upon launching the game? I usually just start the game purely vanilla and then load BUFFY from the main menu, even though it is tedious, it seems to solve many issues. If not, I'd need assistance from more technically adept people.

I could provide a WB save, but it will play quite a bit differently from a normal save file, and tinkering with barbarian deity starting techs means opening up the world builder to fix them, which could sorta destroy the surprise I have built into the game. :) Nevertheless, let me know if all else fails and I will provide one.

@Fippy

I KNOW you have checked out the map already. Since I haven't challenged you with my maps for a very long time, I think this is the right time to do it. Make me and @lymond PROUD! Or... meet your doom from the barbarian onslaught! ^_^
I can load the games of others, but not with mods. It COULD be because I'm using Linux, but I've tried it with other saved games posted on the forum, and I'm able to cut-paste them into my saves and get them loaded just fine. I am running vanilla BTS without any mods. I did try the vanilla save file, but it just CTDs.
 
@Plains-Cow

I am on vacation right now, but I may have saved a WB save file on my OneDrive. If so, I can pull it out for you... if not, I will provide one once I return from vacation. ^_^
 
@Plains-Cow

I am on vacation right now, but I may have saved a WB save file on my OneDrive. If so, I can pull it out for you... if not, I will provide one once I return from vacation. ^_^
There's no rush at all. Besides, as a Linux user, I'm pretty used to most things needing a little (or a lot) of tweaking to get working, if possible at all.
 
This is too easy a map for @Fippy to show her true majesty :smug:
I, on the other hand, can't help but drool at the beautiful starting area :drool:
I want to play but I don't want to suffer! :o
 
640AD, I declare victory. Urgh, what a terrible grind.

Spoiler :
Contrary to wisdom above I put all my eggs to a single basket and moved all my starting troops to the forested hill North of wheat. Maybe I got lucky with RNG but I only lost a single archer and was able to take out both wounded lieutenants (one of them retreated when attacking me) next turn while the mercenary leaders hunted down the two others couple of turns later. Quickly scouted the locations of the barbarian cities and parked the mercenary captains two squares a way in the mountain passes.
As I already had all the worker tech I desired, I chose to pursuit middle branch to get a religion to help with culture. This also allowed me to pursuit oracle and I used it for feudalism 2040 BC, pretty good date. On hindsight I would have been much better served had I chosen construction and researched iron working much earlier. Extra experience on units was fun, but city rider swords and catapults was what won me the game some 2500 years later.
 
By the way I kept getting visual library c++ runtime errors. After third crash to desktop I started saving each turn. I could not discern any pattern to the error other than it usually occurred while pressing esc to cancel order or pressing enter to end turn. This was annoying, but not game breaking once I started saving regularly.
 
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