barbarians nightmare: new patch problem or marathon problem?

[Jaybe]

For those not experiencing greater barb threats, it may be because of the geography or the map style you are playing.

Barbs may be hindering the player more than the AI because (at least PRE-1.52) the AI gets substantially greater combat handicaps vs. barbarians on anything above Settler difficulty. Their combat handicap is 40% on all difficulty levels, while player handicap declines by 5-10% above Settler.

I personally have little problems with the added difficulty post-patch: I just have to learn and adjust. OTOH, I am just on my 2nd 1.52 game and I play Noble.

 

[Zurai]

How many of you poo-poo'ing the barbs have even played a game on Marathon? First city growth on Marathon in a standard food environment takes thirty-three turns. A single warrior takes twenty turns to build at the start of the game. There are 60 or 80 turns in the game before barbarians first start appearing - and only another 20 to 30 turns after that before archers and axemen start showing.

 

[Danielos]

I also play on Marathon speed, Monarch difficulty on huge Pangea map with low sea level and only 5 AI civs, so you can just imagine the amount of barbarian activity in that one! The worst part in this game is that I´m surrounded with barbarian cities and no Copper/Iron is available. Barbarians attack with axemen when I´m stuck with archers as my best unit!

But I really like it the way it is now, you have to wisely trade-off between expansion and military, so it is very challenging and fun!

 

[Charles 22]

These are the keys that I've seen so far, that your two largest factors are your city placement and the amount of unsupervised land around it. Bearing that in mind you can see how having a number of coastal cities gives you a great benefit in this struggle. Not only are the barbs less because they have basically less land from which to spawn, but it cuts down on their angles of attack too, since perhaps half of your empire, with coastal cities primarily, is in not threat of attack. The angle is very important too, because it's not so much their numbers that is so bad, especially if you set a few units outside the city borders to draw attacks, but that they come from a lot more angles if your civ is entirely land-based.

Personally I like to station 2 units in every city that are under threat of attack. I also, fairly early on, will assemble a team of 4-5 swords with city promotioms for the purpose of attacking any of their cities I may run across. Over time, of course, the other civs will close in and remove their spawning grounds. You just have to build more military units than you're comfortable with in order to deal with them. Shoot for archery and bronze mining for the best combination to deal with them.If you get the archers to the 2nd city defense promotion, they're usually sufficient to hold off any barb axemen while in the cities. You use your axemen for occasional resource defense and for counterattack/policing.

 

[Xavier Von Erck]

I've been playing Marathon style speeds since before they released the patch with the Marathon speed itself. Check the mod forums, longer speeds WAY past epic are nothing new. I had an entire civilization of five cities overrun by the buggers on Noble since I didn't adapt my play-style. I have since.

Are the Barbarians tough? Yep.

And they should be. Makes for a better challenge at the beginning. I'm sure the Roman's said "Hey, these barbarians are freakin' tough man, let's hit the option to turn them off!"

 

[dabrovo_mlado]

i just tried marathon and had to restart a couple of times. they actually destroyed my capitol.

you need to adapt to the new conditions. defence is a priority. you have to get to archery fast or you won't make it. anything that needs a resource is not worth it because they start coming way to fast, and they'll pillage the resource connection if you don't protect it.

i played on a standard map, on noble, and build about 10 archers and a barracks before a settler to insure that both cities would survive. also, i didn't build any terrain improvements that i couldn't protect first. (i had a lucky start thou, a fish in a lake where no one could pillage the workboat)

for me the aggresive barbarians are great, i usually neglect my military and it ends up costing me later in the game when an AI attacks and i'm not ready. this way youre military is good from the start or you don't make it to your second city

 

[Cappella]

How are barbarians going to have more advanced units than you? That's not very realistic.

Not only that, but also the quantity of new barbarians spawning (I checked, there was no barbarian city in the are). In marathon mode, I have the time to build 1 archer, while barbarians get 5 to 6 new archers/axemen near the same city.

I also noticed barbarians popping from between 2 of my cities in an area I'm almost sure there was no fog of war! That never happened before. Now I get barbarians attack from all sides! At least, they don't spawn inside my borders... yet...

 

[Cappella]

I'm getting the same intense amount of barbarians now that I got before. I rather hope they don't give in to pressure and lessen the amount of barbarians, otherwise the game would be way too easy at the beginning.

If your are playing in difficulty easier than noble, then it's possible you don't have much problem with them, but trust me, I play on monarch all the time, and things got much much worst, and I can't say barbarians allowed me an easy start before the patch. Even if the 17 other civs on the map decided to team up from the game start and attack me non stop, It wouldn't be as hard as the way the barbarians attack me post patch 1.52.

I feel that now, I'm forced to have a heavy military strategy from the start, no more science/culture strategy

 

[Smidlee]

I got used to heavy barbs by playing America on aeric67's "180X87 Earth map" where he put barb cities all over the place in North America. (playing on prince)
Still I was able to get axeman and swordman before the barbs did. In fact I took one of their cities with 4 swordman before I saw a axeman. So I never seen axeman as fast as some here claimed unless this happens of higher difficulty or aggressive barbs. This is true with my marathon game as well.

 

[Wodan]

I'm playing on Monarch in Marathon mode right now. The barbs are there, but hardly a problem. I'm in about 1000AD right now, and in the process of catching up to the AIs on tech as well as score. (Techs I am actually researching ones they don't have and have been able to trade to backfill instead of paying cash for old/obsolete techs. For score, I was dead butt last most of the game but am now in the middle of the pack, and the leader is only 10% ahead of me.)

Anyway, the barbs simply haven't been an issue. Part of it is because most of my empire is coastal. Another part is because I have had 3 scouts all game and posted them on the edges of my empire.

In fact, there's a big barb city right on the edge of my north city, but I've left it there because Tokugawa is on the other side.

I don't think scouts are the cure-all or anything, but you guys nay-saying it should give it a shot before you poo-poo the idea.

Wodan

 

[tezster]

I kind of like the challenge barbarians pose... I'm playing a Marathon game on Prince, with raging barbarians (they're definitely not kidding when they called these marathon games!) - I like the dynamics of being a new civilization struggling to grow in a hostile world. It's undoubtedly changed my style of play. But the way I figure it, the AI civs are facing the same problems - I'm also playing 8 civs on a standard map, so maybe that cuts down on the problem somewhat

 

[oztricht]

Playing monarch-marathon and I also had to rethink my strategy. Now I'm garrisoning with 3 warriors in each city up until I get archery, and since the barbs get archers & axemen before I do I loose 1-2 warriors on each attack which have to be replaced. So as long as you are prepared for whats coming you can manage.

On marathon the long production makes preparation very important, since it takes 10-20 turns to get 1 unit out.

 

[MeteorPunch]

Definitely more barbs in the 2 games I played. Marathon was unplayable.

 

[carlosMM]

I noticed it in all modes, not just marathon. I initially associated it with marathon since thats the first thing I tried after the patch, but then after switching back to other speeds I still noticed it. In my epic game I had a new barb invading my borders every turn, at one point I had about 5 barbarians attack my holy city at once, from 4 different directions (one stack of 2), with 2 more attacking the city on the opposite side of my empire. These are mostly archers and axemen, since fog of war was lifted by the time higher tech was achieved. And this was normal, not raging mode, on Noble difficulty.

The barbarians also build a lot more cities post patch. Before I only rarely saw barbarian cities on my starting continent, they were mostly limited to unpopulated continents and undesireable tundra, but post patch, the unsettled areas all around my civilization quickly become infested with barbarian cities. Thats not such a terrible thing since if you build a small invasion force of swordsmen and axemen, it can save you from building a lot of settlers, and you'll still get more use out of the military in the long run and you will still grow while producing them.

The main gameplay difference for me has been that in the early game I need 2 or 3 defenders per city instead of just 1 (one spare while the other is healing, and one to prevent unhappiness from not being defended, since I have one or two outside the city responding to attackers as often as not), and this makes expansion much much slower since insufficiently defended cities will just be destroyed. It has less impact on the AIs performance since the AI likes to build multiple defenders anyway. The patch seems to have been aimed at slowing early expansion in a number of ways, and a slower start generally makes the game more difficult all around. Paradoxically, I find I need fewer defenders around the time that civs borders start clashing than I do before then, because the barbarians are so much more aggressive than the other civilizations.

I'm pretty sure the patch has increased the default barbarian difficult across the board, its just a coincidence that lots of people are also trying out marathon for their first game after the patch. I don't really mind, but it would be nice if barbarian difficulty was a seperate drop down configuration with shades of difficulty between none, default, and raging.

this is the perfect reply - why should I add anything?

 

[rabottens]

For me it has varied game to game. I don't notice much difference in difficulty levels as much as how many barbie cities I crush. To reduce them you must flatten those barbaric breeding pits. If you let them go unchecked they will do you like the Huns did the Romans. I keep a decent sized army searching for the vermin so they don't plunder my empire. If you aren't vigilant you will get overwhelmed irregardless of difficulty level you play.

 

[GROGERUS]

You can hardly focus on expanding your empire because most of the time you're busy building an army just to destroy those barbarians.

Welcome to the real world.

 

[Oggums]

I prefer warriors over scouts to station on hills outside your borders. The scouts always die.

As a side note, a civ that starts with a scout on Marathon can do a heck of a lot of early exploring, before barbarians are a problem. I did quit my first Marathon attempt due to the barbarians. I'm going try another Marathon game with Alexander this weekend (today's my last work day until after New Years)...start with Hunting and a Scout -> research Archery first.

 

[Ktulu]

I really like the "new" barbarians, although I think they advance to axemen a little too fast. Still, it's totally changed my early game. Before it was way too easy to leave your cities with one defender while you pumped out a worker or settler to help you expand. Now you actually have to worry about defending, not only your cities, but also your workers and improvements.

 

[BCLG100]

Compared to civ3; civ 4 has many more barbarian attacks. i have to garrison my cities with at least 2or 3 units very early on which i didnt have to do in the last game.

 

[Wodan]

If nothing else, you could always play archipelago on your marathon game.

Wodan