Barbarian Quadriremes

[steveg700]

Well, I was having a promising game for a bit....sigh

Quadremes are too powerful to be something barbarians can mass spawn. Look at how feebly equipped an archer is to act as a counter, and that's with a +5 from Discipline. This city is doomed, as a galley will come along and finish it off in a few more turns. This will pretty much doom any attempt to settle on the coast for a long time--the only real counter will be my own quadremes or xbows. There will be no time to build walls.

Conversely, the quadreme will annihilate any ancient unit that it can catch on the coast, even with Discipline. Of course, this frequently means big trouble for the units trying to remove the offending camp.

The issue is compounded by two things. First, barbarism does not mean you don't have cutting-edge tech in Civ. As soon as anyone anywhere unlocks the quadreme, the camps can start spawning them. Second, barb camps spawn their units in a geyser, turn-after-turn, sometimes two in a single turn.

The obligatory response is to point out that quadremes are classical era, so they should be superior to ancient-era units. But archers and warriros can managed an underdog defense against horsemen and swords.

At the very least, I would say that barbs should get techs when half the civ's unlock them, not just leaping ahead with the tech leader.

 

[Aurelesk]

The Quadrireme is, like the Horseman, a Classical Era unit. However, the Barbarian have access to a weaker version of the Horseman, with a lower Combat Strength (20 instead of 36). Furthermore, the Ranged units were made less effective against Naval units (February 7, 2018 update). It could be fair that:

• A weaker Barbarian Quadrireme should be introduced until the game reaches the Classical Era. For example: they could be at 10 Melee Attack and 15 Ranged Attack instead of 20 MA / 25 RA.
  • Galley (30 CS) are not as weak as Scout (10 CS). They are way harder to deal with. Should they also be reduced in the Ancient Era too?
  • Catapult are unlocked at Engineering, a Classical Era Technologies. It means the players can only relies on Archer (25 CS) as land units to deal with Galley (30 CS). Due to the -17 CS penalty, this is a 8 CS versus 30 CS battle: it would take 8 to 9 hit from the Archer to beat a Barbarian Galley. Should the -17 CS penalty removed against Barbarian Naval Units? At least on the Ancient Era?

The fairly recent fix made the Sea Barbarians way tougher to deal with once they saw you.

 

[Pietato]

Sea barbs are nuts now, especially with clan mode on. They will have higher tech than every civ.

 

[Pfeffersack]

This city is doomed, as a galley will come along and finish it off in a few more turns..

Even if the barbs reduce your city to 0 health it will not be taken or destroyed. You only need to worry if another AI takes advantage of the situation.

 

[Dedrytus]

Even if the barbs reduce your city to 0 health it will not be taken or destroyed. You only need to worry if another AI takes advantage of the situation.

It is true only for capitals. Barbs raze cities like a... barbs ;-)

 

[Pfeffersack]

It is true only for capitals. Barbs raze cities like a... barbs ;-)

Ah ok...thanks for the clarification - I had my capital swarmed and assaulted by barbs at the beginning of my current game...and falsly concluded that each city survives.

 

[Buktu]

In the screen are just quads though and quads can't take cities since they are not melee. As long as no galley joins your city should be fine.
The best defense against quads are your own galleys imo. With the +100% policy card even small cities can build them relatively quickly.

 

[Archon_Wing]

The new galleys are worse as they can potentially destroy a city :O

I think they need the barb horse treatment where they are weaker until most civs research that tech.

As for now, my coastal build order is builder settler warrior galley lol (assumes you haven't been found by a early scout.)

 

[steveg700]

In the screen are just quads though and quads can't take cities since they are not melee. As long as no galley joins your city should be fine.
The best defense against quads are your own galleys imo. With the +100% policy card even small cities can build them relatively quickly.

As I mentioned in the OP, a galley came along in a few turns to raze the city.

A player galley can sit in the city and butt its head against barb quads, and do more damage than the archer. But it is damaging itself in the process. How many hits does it get in before it has to stop? Three? Seems like an iffy defense at best.

 

[Buktu]

As I mentioned in the OP, a galley came along in a few turns to raze the city.

I missed this, sry.

A player galley can sit in the city and butt its head against barb quads, and do more damage than the archer. But it is damaging itself in the process. How many hits does it get in before it has to stop? Three? Seems like an iffy defense at best.

If you consider that galleys have 30 cs while quads defend with 20 and you can use the +5 cs against barb units you should be able to two hit quads. Also you can pick +7 cs against naval units with the first promotion and you usually want 2 galleys for the eureka anyway.
Also you can savely heal one galley inside the city. And a galley raises the cities combat strenght.

 

[Archon_Wing]

I mean you can, but you usually have to deal with more threats from the land at the same time. It's just unnecessarily crippling and they can show up before you can build a single one. Then you might have to ask why even bother settling on the coast at all besides getting your garrison strength higher.

If they brought the ships down to slinger strength instead of making slingers useless against them pre-shipbuilding this would be much easier to plan around. But instead you're faced with archer level threats.

 

[steveg700]

I mean you can, but you usually have to deal with more threats from the land at the same time. It's just unnecessarily crippling and they can show up before you can build a single one. Then you might have to ask why even bother settling on the coast at all besides getting your garrison strength higher.

In case anyone requires a visual aid...

 

[Buktu]

why even bother settling on the coast at all

Several Heurekas, Harbour adjacency and early naval expansion are reasons.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Several Heurekas, Harbour adjacency and early naval expansion are reasons.

None of which is really worth dealing with the photo @steveg700 posted though. You can get all of these later and by my estimate, there's at least 30 turns where any of it will they be able to reap any real benefits.

In case anyone requires a visual aid...

Post a t1 save.

 

[Pietato]

In case anyone requires a visual aid...

View attachment 597489

Now I want to play Maori or Portugal...

Is this with clan mode on?

 

[aieeegrunt]

Like everything else in this game, barbs are broken. It’s hilarious that barb camps have far more military potential than the AI civs.

Just turn them off, it gives the AI a chance to actually be competative.

 

[Buktu]

None of which is really worth dealing with the photo @steveg700 posted though. You can get all of these later and by my estimate, there's at least 30 turns where any of it will they be able to reap any real benefits.

Depends on the map I guess. With lots of coast to settle (which is the case in the screen for example if I look at the minimap) I want my harbours and some galleys early. On any Islands map as well where I might even need the water techs to embark settlers to get more than 2 cities.
Sure the situation is not nice by any means. But its not like you can't take care of this. There is a city in the north which is coastal and has some chops available. Chop 2 or 3 more galleys there and maybe also ancient walls in Sana'a and you should be fine.

In general you can look for city spots at the coast with just one water tile adjacent so early on just one barbarian ship can attack the city per turn. Otherwise you can try to block of 1 tile pathes with your own galleys for example.
I settle coastally alot early into the game and iirc I lost exactly one city to barbs in all my games.

 

[steveg700]

Catapult are unlocked at Engineering, a Classical Era Technologies. It means the players can only relies on Archer (25 CS) as land units to deal with Galley (30 CS). Due to the -17 CS penalty, this is a 8 CS versus 30 CS battle: it would take 8 to 9 hit from the Archer to beat a Barbarian Galley. Should the -17 CS penalty removed against Barbarian Naval Units? At least on the Ancient Era?

So this is also an issue worth highlighting. Since archers are 25 CS, that also means ancient walls will be CS 25, and unable to damage galleys in a significant way. The city is no longer likely to fall, but the sea resources are unusable. Part of the reason is appealing on this map is that

Yet another issue is that the camp doing the spawning could be off somewhere off where an ancient-era civ can't reach or even find.

Combat in Civ is not very tactical, naval combat in particular as it lacks terrain modifiers. It boils down to winning through quality or quantity. Since no civilization could ever hope to match the productivity of a barb camp, we're banking on a combination of Discipline and getting a promotion to overcome the numbers. Maybe take Oligarchy if you get that far.

So even after figuring out a path to survival, spending lots of gold and using up precious chops, a player finds themselves in one of those moments where they take a sigh of relief and feel a sense of accomplishment before realizing how much progress was stalled out during the siege.

 

[steveg700]

Now I want to play Maori or Portugal...

Is this with clan mode on?

Lessee...
Clan mode
Secret Societies
Tree Shuffle
Heroes & Legends
Monopolies

The two reasons the map was enticing was the three ley lines I got clustered together near the natural wonder (which is, unfortunately, not an actual mountain, so no aqueducts). Hope was to get a monopoly on incense. Tree Shuffle never seems to inhibit the AI, but it certainly has impacted some of the issues here (Sailing being three techs deep, and Foreign Trade being a leaf civic). But this is a plains start without a lot of ways to get more than two food per tile. Or water.

Of course, with clans mode there's the option to bribe, which I availed myself in a scum save, but I think there is another camp I haven't found deep down south. Maybe that's another issue with coastal barb camps that should be examined, because the barbarian ships aren't nearly as localized as their land units.

 

[Timewarp]

No way to know how much tech shuffle does or does not effect the AI, but it certainly has had it's effect for me. Mostly it causes problems when needed techs are expensive to get to. A Fast Iron Working in particular can be a problem that is solved by killing barbs fast, bee lining to Bronze Working, mining an Iron Mine, and then bee lining to Iron Working. That is still 2 vital extra steps to do, and sometimes Bronze Working and Iron Working are on different tech paths.

Having said that, I find this to be quite interesting and entertaining to deal with. The downside is that strategies that rely on getting an early tech or civic are sometimes quite effectively thwarted, or at least hugely mitigated.

For the record, I always play with tech shuffle on, and I really like this feature.