Barbarians - Source of Experience

[AKMike]

I have had some good luck building my Spearmen into Elite as they continue to fight off a steady stream of barbarians.

Istead of going in and taking out the camp, I just let them respawn for a while, and they have boosted one of my spearmen up to elite.

Its a new game, so I haven't seen how much I can exploit this, but Ive' since sent an archer up there to be the bait for the barbarians so I can hopefully boost them up to elite.

Anybody else able to use this tactic effectively?

 

[Sman]

When u start a game just select the roaming option for the barbarans and then all of your warrior archers and spearman will became elite... in theory..LOL

 

[Suvorov]

Barbarians are great. I keep a coupla camps near my empire to toughen up my troops. Once they are elite, they get sent against other civilizations to get GLs for those lovely wonders. You don't seem to get GLs from fighting barbarians.

 

[Dragon2]

I don't know if this would work, but it would be fun to try on a large map where you controlled a continent far from your capital or forbidden palace.

Depopulate the center of the continent, while controlling the coast. Perhaps barbarian camps will start up there. If your culture zone still includes the entire continent, perhaps leaving one small gap on the coast will do the trick. If you can get barbarians, then mobilize during a war that is winding down. Draft conscript infantry and send them off to fight barbarians and become elite.

 

[Gray]

I had some luck with barbs in my current game. In the beginning there was a little peninsula outside of my cultural zone that had a barb village pop up. So, I built a road down to it and then built two fortresses isolating the village from the rest of the area. Then I would just send my reg and vet troops down there and fortify them in the fortress. Barb warriors and horsemen fell by the score. And I had lots of elite spear/pike/Immortals.

One thing though, I wish barbs got better as time progressed. I kind of get tired of my cavalry/tanks fighting wimpy little warriors….