Barbarians Kill an Army

timerover51

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Chicago area in Illinois
I was playing last night on one of my fairly heavily modified map files for Play the World. I was on there because I can see all of the improvements and overlays in the editor, whereas I am having problems with that in the Conquest Editor. I was also experimenting and having a little fun too.

The map is one of my big ones, 300 X 240, 70% Ocean, Archipelago, Normal Temperate Climate, 4 Billion Years, with Raging Barbarians. I have also boosted the Terrain yields and the bonuses of resources, along with adding a few of my own, resources that is. This makes for a fast moving game. The standard Barbarian units are the Gallic Swordsman, the Cossack with +2 hit points, and the Privateer with +2 hit points. As the standard Barbarian level is Conscript, I added a couple of additional hit points to make them harder to kill. As a side note, my combat experience ratings are Conscript 2HP, Regular 4HP, Veteran 6HP, and Elite 8HP. I also put a lot of Barbarian Camps on the map, in likely places near resources, and a fair number on the coast. As you should be able to figure out, I like lots of Barbarians on the map, causing everyone problems.

Ever hear the phrase, "hoist with one's own Petard"?

I am playing as the Americans, and with the size of the map, there are quite a few good size land masses to work with. I am on the largest land mass, which is really good size, and have the Aztecs, the Persians, and the Arabs each on their own land mass. (Still have not encountered any of them.) I have the Heroic Epic set to be built with the Literature Advance, and it does not require a victorious army. It is set to allow armies to be built without leaders. (I like to build Wonders, too.) I was busily advancing along, running into wandering Gallic Swordsman on a fairly regular basis, but not having that many problems killing them, although I did loose a couple of Warriors before I got the Swordsman with Iron. I reached the Middle Ages, got Chivalry, built an Army of three veteran knights, called the 1st Cavalry, to start eliminating bothersome Barbarian camps, and also meet the Victorious Army requirement for the Military Academy. Given what happened, I should have called it the 7th Cavalry.

I take out one Barbarian camp with it, and dispose of a couple of wandering Gallic Swordsman. Then my Military Advisor pops up and warns me of a massive Barbarian outbreak near Atlanta. I know that there is an un-eliminated Barbarian Camp near Atlanta on the coast, so I shoot a caravel over to investigate. After sinking a Privateer, and taking some damage, caravel reports that the camp now has 8 Cossacks and 2 Gallic Swordsman. I think to myself that is probably doable, and send the 1st Cavalry to the rescue. I get near the camp and send in my trusty caravel, the Mayflower (I like to name my ships), for another recon. No Privateer, but now 16! Cossacks in the camp. This does not look good. The Cossacks come boiling out of the camp like yellow jackets out of a poked at nest, and hit the Knight Army in steady waves. It had 3 Veteran Knights, 2 of which upgraded to Elite during the battle, and a total of 24 hit points to start (my armies get a 6 hit point boost). Did not matter, as it turned out there were TWO Barbarian camps in full outbreak, so the army was hit with between 24 and 32 thoroughly stirred up Barbarian Cossacks. The army takes out quite a few, but goes down to defeat. The Barbarians then go storming past Atlanta, clearly no Sherman is leading this bunch, and head for Chicago.

By now, I am building Musketman as fast as possible in Chicago, building Knights in near by Philadelphia to feed into Chicago as reinforcements, and Knights in New York to feed into Philadelphia. Then, to add to the fun, on a good size island, 3 Galleon moves away from my capitol of Washington, Seattle gets hit with its own Barbarian out break. I manage to hang on to both cities, getting quite a few Elite Musketman out of it, and after getting to Military Tradition in the middle of all of this, clean up all of the nearby Cossacks with a mixture of Musketmen, Knights, and Cavalry. I also cleaned up a bunch of Barbarians and one camp to the west of my settlement area, where I had already explored but had not gotten anything built in yet.

Did I tell you that I am on the largest Continent? Based on my circumnavigating ships, the entire Southeast section of the Continent is overrun by Barbarian Cossacks, and the Privateers have sunk one caravel and one galley. I have also lost one caravel to Privateers operating off of a different landmass, that also looks like it has Barbarian Cossacks running amok, along with Privateers that have badly shot up another of my caravels, which I am trying to get back home. Not sure yet if she will make it. I have an Ironclad and a Frigate heading to meet her as escort.

As of now, I have yet to encounter any of the other three civilizations on the map. I did make sure that they had a goodly complement of Barbarian camps on their continents, so I am not sure what I am going to find when I do meet them.

As near as I can tell, all of the Barbarian camps on the entire map went into Outbreak overdrive at the same time. Has anyone else ever encountered this? I should also add that I am playing at the Chieftain level (given my slow style of play, that is challenging enough), with the bonus against Barbarians in combat set for 200, rather than 800, but I have built the Great Wall to give me better odds.

Another thing that I have modified is that I have the Army set with the "Finish Improvements" box checked. Based on what has gone on so far, I can rush Wonders, normal improvements, and surprisingly enough, units with it, along with building armies. I can only have one Army per three cities, so I need to get out there and build more cities. First, have to kill a lot of Barbarians. Definitely have too much of a BAD THING. :hammer2::hammer2:
 
As near as I can tell, all of the Barbarian camps on the entire map went into Outbreak overdrive at the same time. Has anyone else ever encountered this?

Yep. The first civ to reach the 2nd era triggers a large wave of outbreaks. Happens in all games with barbarians :)
 
Thanks Virote and Pounder. I have run into outbreaks before, but not to this extreme. That also means any new Barbarian camps that I run into with only Gallic Swordsman either have the Cossacks out wandering around, or just spawned on the map. If nothing else, I am going to have plenty of targets to shoot at.

Definitely a case of "hoist with one's own petard". What we need on the forum is a Smiley that is busy shooting itself in the foot.

Now I will really have to see what is happening with the AI civilizations.
 
Ever hear the phrase, "hoist with one's own Petard"?
It's Shakespeare!
There's letters seal'd: and my two schoolfellows,
Whom I will trust as I will adders fang'd,
They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way
And marshal me to knavery. Let it work;
For 'tis the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petar; and 't shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines
And blow them at the moon: O, 'tis most sweet,
When in one line two crafts directly meet.​
 
Virote, I figure that the Hammer to the Head is a reasonable substitute. Never have I seen so many Barbarians running around.

Takhisis, I had to ready Hamlet lo those many years ago in high school, and knew that it was from Shakespeare, although, given the era of French Petard Engineers, I suspect that it might have been a fairly common phrase back then. I find it amazing how many phrases and lines from Shakespeare have worked there way into common usage in the English language.

Side Note: The development and use of the earliest Petards is attributed to Henry of Navarre, who became Henry the Fourth of France, the immediate predecessor to Louis the XIII, and Louis the XIV of France.
 
It's connected to the Romance words for 'fart', incidentally. :D
 
A unit that can convert barbs into your own converting units may un-petard the your game, as say Partisan in CCM. Of course other civs might take better advantage of this to re-petard you.
 
As of now, I have yet to encounter any of the other three civilizations on the map. I did make sure that they had a goodly complement of Barbarian camps on their continents, so I am not sure what I am going to find when I do meet them.

I'm curious about what you found, if you continued the game and eventually did meet them. My experience is the AI beelines for any barbarian they see. But I've never tried giving barbarians superior units and wonder if the AI would suicide itself trying to knock out every barbarian unit it came across with the odds against them.
 
I'm curious about what you found, if you continued the game and eventually did meet them. My experience is the AI beelines for any barbarian they see. But I've never tried giving barbarians superior units and wonder if the AI would suicide itself trying to knock out every barbarian unit it came across with the odds against them.

I plan on going back and finishing the game when I have the time to do so. With respect to what I will find, it should be interesting. One problem the AI civilizations are going to have is that I failed to check the Civ-Specific units box, so they are not going to have any unique units. I did not realize this as, playing as the US, the US unique unit is the F-15, which I am a long way away from.

I have done this before with Conquests, and in the one case that I had contact with India, where they had several Barbarian camps with enhanced Barbarians near them, I was up to the Industrial Age, while India had a total of TWO cities. For the AI, with my slow style of play, that is incredibly poor. I suspect that the Barbarians were the cause, as I took out 4 camps near India with a combination of a Crusader Army, a stack of Knights, and a stack of Cavalry.

I am running another game with Civ-Specific units available, to see if that makes much of a difference.
 
That seems like a very low number of cities. Even AI's stuck in really poor areas in my games did better than that. Something must have definitely been knocking on their door a lot.

In my Earth map games, there is always a civ that never expands, almost always in the Middle East.
 
In my Earth map games, there is always a civ that never expands, almost always in the Middle East.

No, in this game, I am pretty sure it was the Barbarians, as the area was pretty good in terms of food and space. I had run one game earlier, with no Barbarians near India, and got what I would call normal expansion, given my mods to the game. After I added the additional Barbarian camp sort of near by, India had the major problems.

The Inca got one horrible starting position on two tiles of grassland in the middle of the mountains, and could not expand at all without help. To slow down the AI, I have settlers set to cost 4 population, so they had no chance at all. For them to compete, I changed twp mountain tiles to grassland and one to forest, and added a river for irrigation. I put one of my boosted Wheat (+6 food) on one grassland tile, and put a Spice in the forest. This both boosted food (+2 food), and gave them a Luxury to keep their population happy. Their expansion after that was not great, given the mountains, but they did expand fairly well.
 
That seems like a very low number of cities. Even AI's stuck in really poor areas in my games did better than that. Something must have definitely been knocking on their door a lot.

In my Earth map games, there is always a civ that never expands, almost always in the Middle East.

Yep Ive seen single and double city civs before, usually those that are stuck in the tundra, I dont think ive seen one wiped out by barbarians as yet.
 
I'd be interested in hearing how the other civs fare as well. It's strange to think of barbarians destroying an army, but with that situation... I can see why they decided maybe they could win after all.
 
I'd be interested in hearing how the other civs fare as well. It's strange to think of barbarians destroying an army, but with that situation... I can see why they decided maybe they could win after all.

I will get back to that and see what has happened to the other civilizations. I have discovered another thing regarding PTW verses Conquests. The PTW Barbarians are far more active than the Barbarians in Conquests when it comes to moving about. I tried to run the scenario on Debug mode to see what was happening with the other civilizations, and my older laptop was not happy. Moved the file to Conquests and converted to a .biq file, and could run Debug mode with no problems. Barbarians, even when set to raging on Conquests were not moving around that much until something came close. In PTW, they were running all over the place.
 
While I have not gotten back to the game which triggered this thread, I have been working on some other ideas which resulted in one of the wildest games, if not the wildest game, that I have ever had. Again, this was in Play the World, using the Test of Time units on a custom 160 X 160 Archipelago Map, which did give me several good sized continents, as well as some smaller land masses and some one and two tile islands. Lots to work with.

I have the Vikings on the largest land mass, and missed the fact that the Incas were also on the same continent (the color of their starting position blended very well into the Plain terrain that it was on). When I started expanding, I promptly encountered Atawalpa (sic) and for a while I sort of stepped gingerly around him, as I was not really ready to start a war. Eventually, that clearly was not working out, so I "bit the bullet" and went after him. What I did not realize was about the same time I went after him, there occurred two or three massive Barbarian outbreaks in the same area, along with some preplaced Parthian Mounted Warriors joining the party. Barbarian Cossacks were all over the place, along with the Parthians gleefully joining in.

The Incas were hitting me from one direction, the Barbarians were hitting me and the Incas from every direction, with the Incan Jaguar Warriors getting hit by me and the Cossacks. For several turns, it was absolute chaos. As I had some Dino Barbs preplaced near the battle zone, all I could think of is what happens if a few of my boosted T-Rex join the party. In the middle of this Free-For-All, the Inca tried to send out a couple of settler units with a Jaguar Warrior as an escort. The Barbarian Cossacks went after those like starving flies after honey. The Incans never had a chance. The nice thing for me, is while the Cossacks clobbered the Incas, I clobbered the Cossacks from behind. It was wild while it lasted.

Finally, the Cossacks were wiped out, mainly because both the AI and me started putting most of our troops in the mountain terrain, and got a bit of an edge on them. By then, a fair number of the Jaguar Warriors had been taken down as well, along with some of my Knights and Berserkers. I did end up with the edge on the Incas, and I am in the process of wiping them out. That madhouse with the Cossacks definitely speeded up the process. As for my preplaced Dino Barbs, I know that my T-Rex pack took one city, and I think that they had a settler and a Jaguar Warrior for a snack as well. At least, that is what it looked like from watching the T-Rex.

Based on this, I would say that my boosted Barbarians pose a big problem for the AI civilizations when they start expanding. I know that they give me fits. On the same map as the Big Brawl Battle, there are at least two good-size islands with nice resources overrun with Barbarians. Putting in a settlement on them is going to be interesting, to say the least. I do need to figure out a way to see what the Dino Barbs are doing. First, I have to remember where I put them.

PIRATE CIVILIZATION

Again, on this same map, I am also testing out converting one of the player civilizations into a Pirate state, with no settlers or workers, and cities preplaced on one tile islands to make it a bit rough to eliminate them easily. I did forget that in the scenario, you start with TWO settler units, which means that the AI Pirate civ got to one of my really nice starting positions with the extra settler. It looks like they may also have picked up as least one settlement from a Goody Hut. I also forgot that in the scenario, you have two types of workers, so I shut one off, and missed the other one. Result is the Pirate AI has workers. This is not good. You have one guess who is presently ahead in Victory Points.

Anyone have the phone number of Victor Frankenstein?
 
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