Barbarian Civ in Terra!

[The Navy Seal]

Because they made it so there isn't any body on the new world it makes the Barbs like a civ on the new world.

 

[Marcus_Aurelius]

Of course you can create a custom game and just turn off the barbarians. Some might feel that is cheating, but you can try it both ways for fun.

 

[weasel77066]

Of course you can create a custom game and just turn off the barbarians. Some might feel that is cheating, but you can try it both ways for fun.

Break into WB and stick ALL the iron and copper in the new world....
Or wait till later and still ALL the oil over there. That'll give ya something to fight about

 

[Antilogic]

You know, that's a good idea. No oil without New World colonies?

That's shear awesomeness right there. I'm going to try that.

 

[Tyrant Roger]

My GOTM is Monarch, Terra, Standard. I am surprised to find initially that I am on my own continent with no AI neighbors. Later I discover there are two nearby continents each with multiple AI civs. Even later I discover one more small continent with a single AI.

So where is the big continent with the barbs?

I finally find two small islands. One has a small barb civ and the other is empty. There is no more land; it is all water.

Is this a typical terra map? Or a wierd one?

 

[Antilogic]

That is weird. Was your sea level on high?

All the terra maps I played had two significant landmasses: the old world, and a new world about 60% of the size of the old world, maybe a little more or less.

 

[The Navy Seal]

Tyrant Roger That has to be either a small map or a high sea level.
Welcome Antilogic.

 

[Genghis Khan II]

That sounds interesting.

Maybe you just have an odd random seed.

It happens

I got almost a pangaea one time on cotenents, with a small island (10 squares or so) on a large map. That's about as odd as it gets.

 

[InFlux5]

I play Terra maps for the realism factor. Thus, while I could bee-line to Astronomy, I don't. The problem of the human "cheating" is thus easily solved.

It's not even that I consciously avoid Astronomy, I just don't bee-line to it. I pretend like I don't know that it's that important (unless and until my Caravels discover the new continent.) It's not unusual for the AI to begin settling the New World before I do, and I kind of like that.

Also, as others have pointed out, you can essentially play a Terra map as if it were a Pangaea map in the beginning. If you dominate the Old World before Astronomy, settling the New World becomes less important.

All in all I love Terra maps.

 

[The Navy Seal]

The only problem I have with terra maps is because the city limits are so low the new world won't get settled as fast.

 

[Pantastic]

It's not even that I consciously avoid Astronomy, I just don't bee-line to it. I pretend like I don't know that it's that important (unless and until my Caravels discover the new continent.) It's not unusual for the AI to begin settling the New World before I do, and I kind of like that.

I don't get this; I don't consider the new world a very high priority on Terra games. Normally I get a caravel out fairly early to try to get the circumnavigation bonus, and otherwise go through my usual tech path. Sometimes I'll snag Astronomy from Liberalism, but often I'll just grab Nationalism and not even research Astronomy until after Democracy. But when I do decide to start my big new world expansion, I'm dominant there by a huge degree, Typically I kill most of the barb cities and settle most of the area and the AIs have 1-2 city colonies that they didn't found until I killed most of the loose barbs.

I suspect the AI doesn't 'know' that it needs to fight off a ton of barbarians when it lands and so sends something like a settler and 2 garrison units to colonize, which will just get wiped out. Aside from the occasional exploring unit, I hit the new world with a full stack of units, around a dozen of whatever is technologically advanced, and I think that's the difference.

 

[InFlux5]

I don't get this; I don't consider the new world a very high priority on Terra games. Normally I get a caravel out fairly early to try to get the circumnavigation bonus, and otherwise go through my usual tech path. Sometimes I'll snag Astronomy from Liberalism, but often I'll just grab Nationalism and not even research Astronomy until after Democracy. But when I do decide to start my big new world expansion, I'm dominant there by a huge degree, Typically I kill most of the barb cities and settle most of the area and the AIs have 1-2 city colonies that they didn't found until I killed most of the loose barbs.

I suspect the AI doesn't 'know' that it needs to fight off a ton of barbarians when it lands and so sends something like a settler and 2 garrison units to colonize, which will just get wiped out. Aside from the occasional exploring unit, I hit the new world with a full stack of units, around a dozen of whatever is technologically advanced, and I think that's the difference.

So...what don't you get? The AI in my games usually doesn't have a problem establishing a foothold on the new continent.

 

[Pantastic]

So...what don't you get? The AI in my games usually doesn't have a problem establishing a foothold on the new continent.

I've never had the AIs start (or at least successfully start) colonizing the new world before I do unless I deliberately decide not to go over at all, yet in your games you routinely have the AI go over before you. And even when I wait for a while, the AI ends up with a couple of crappy cities on the edges of the continent while I have most of the land and pretty much all of the best land, while what you said implies that they have some significant presence.

 

[InFlux5]

I've never had the AIs start (or at least successfully start) colonizing the new world before I do unless I deliberately decide not to go over at all, yet in your games you routinely have the AI go over before you. And even when I wait for a while, the AI ends up with a couple of crappy cities on the edges of the continent while I have most of the land and pretty much all of the best land, while what you said implies that they have some significant presence.

Well, all I said was that they often begin settling the New World before I do. Is it just a couple of crappy cities on the edge of the continent? Yes. But I still find it more interesting to have a civ or two there in addition to the barbs when I show up. That way it's more of a race to settle the new land, as opposed to me leisurely gobbling it up since I'm the only one there.

You seem to assume two things. One is that it's easy to quickly take over the entire New World. But those far-away colonies are expensive, and this usually prevents me from founding a bunch right away. The second is that you assume I can quickly and easily stamp out another civ's presence on the new continent. While this may be true, I then have their armies in the Old World to worry about. I can probably win the war, but it will be tedious and costly. Long, involved conflicts are my least favorite part of the game.

I don't know you and I don't mean to disrespect you, but speaking generally it seems many people on these boards are playing at a difficulty below their skill level. Frequently people will make claims like "Doing so-and-so is easy for me" or "I can always do so-and-so" when, in my opinion, it shouldn't be that easy. I play at Monarch and it's a challenge for me. If I stepped back down to Prince I'm sure I could gobble up the New World before the AI ever had a chance; but that wouldn't be any fun. What difficulty do you play at?

 

[cabert]

I'm playing at monarch too, it's usually not much of a challenge but i have real life things happening now and then like a child crying that make me rather unwilling to move up.
I didn't try terra yet, since i have the feeling it's a typical conquest map = don't even bother with the new world, just kill all your neighbours in the old world. I don't play much pangea, for the same reason.

This being said, I have the feeling you just need to send a bigger force there, to conquer city after city.
The cost? Either research communism and switch to state property or sent a GE to rush versailles or forbidden palace there.
I'm sure the map is more about managing the conquest/developpement of the new world but I just can't see a real difficulty there!
If your neighbours send huge amount of troops there to get a good foothold, there will be very few units at home = backstab.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

I LOVE building cities on the "Carribean" Islands in the new world and "Australia". These islands are rarely if ever settled. Terra is an awesome role playing map. Everybody is so close and the Barbs are a late game treat.

 

[Winston Hughes]

I'm playing a terra map on monarch at the moment (my first time on either setting). I've found that my initial expansion into the new world (after shooting for astronomy asap) has weakened my smallish home empire so much (it can be expensive at first, all those distance costs and having troops so far from home) that my powerful neighbour Tokugawa is looking mighty frightening right now. I've got a small tech lead on him, but his military is huge, and he can churn out units far quicker than me.

Now I'm caught between (i) trying to reinforce my new colonies against the relentless barbarian attacks (and making them profitable with workers and growth), or (ii) abandoning the whole enterprise to focus on the threat at home.

It's probably extremely unwise, but I'm tempted to risk defeat at home in pursuit of a new empire across the sea, far from my land-locked enemies. Quite how I can pull a victory out of this situation I don't know...

 

[Pantastic]

You seem to assume two things. One is that it's easy to quickly take over the entire New World. But those far-away colonies are expensive, and this usually prevents me from founding a bunch right away.

The fact that you list this as the primary issue with taking over the new world really says it all. The only real brake on new world colonization is how many colonies you can afford, not the AI players. There is no race; I land with a bunch of units, fight off barbs for a while, then start taking barb cities and settling land as fast as I'm willing to afford - since I normally have US/FS/EM/FM/* by this point, even colonizing the whole thing won't crash my economy.

The second is that you assume I can quickly and easily stamp out another civ's presence on the new continent. While this may be true, I then have their armies in the Old World to worry about

How difficult civs are to stamp out of the new world isn't really relevant here, why do you think whether or not I assume that has some bearing? I've never even used a war as part of colonizing the new world when I've played Terra maps, the AIs don't colonize aggressively enough to warrant it. Plus you seem to be admitting that the AI won't put up any kind of effective fight in the new world, since your only worry in conquering their new world colonies is that they might fight you in the old world.

What difficulty do you play at?

I normally play at a custom difficulty level where my empire gets the handicap of monarch and the AI gets the bonuses of emperor. But I've seen the same thing back when I had trouble beating monarch, when I played emperor and lost at it, then did pretty well at it for a while (I like to play less optimally than that takes). At whatever difficulty level, the AIs might or might not cause me problems in the Old World, but not the new. If I crank up difficulty or have a bad start I might have trouble dealing with the AIs in the old world, but not the new.

 

[Pantastic]

Now I'm caught between (i) trying to reinforce my new colonies against the relentless barbarian attacks

The best technique is not to have colonies at that stage. Find a good spot (a hill is ideal), then drop off a settler, a worker (if there's a back area), and good-sized army with a bunch of city garrison longbows (or whatever defense unit is current) and a bunch of combat units (ones with combat and +25% vs X promotions, not city raiders). Then just sit back in your single city and fight off waves of barb attacks; your city will pretty much suck in all of the barbs that aren't defending cities. While you wait for the attacks to die down, run your galleons back home and so they can bring over your city-taking troops and the batches of settlers and workers you need to expand. If you have an engineer, it's definately worthwhile to bring him over so you can get Versailles or forbidden palace build quickly.

If you do this, once the waves of barb attacks finsih you'll just need to worry about the occasional raider barb, which you can guard against with scattered 'border patrol' units, you won't be trying to defend several cities against a dozen barbs suddenly marching up. Since you won't be taking barb cities or settling more cities until the waves are done, you can cut down on transport needs by just bringing fighting units in the first wave.

 

[The Navy Seal]

I normally stay at pease until modern times because you can go 0% science, somtimes I end up with 46% of the world.