Barbarians with double movement in rough terrain are broken

[azum4roll]

It's risk vs reward.

Should I send my pathfinder into this dense forest where there most likely are ruins but also barbarians lurking, or should I send him the other way towards the plains with no barbarians in sight, but he'll move slower?

Should I send my pathfinder across this narrow strip of land, knowing barbarians might surround him, but it's also the place the AIs are least likely to explore to?

 

[a3kov]

Should I send my pathfinder into this dense forest where there most likely are ruins but also barbarians lurking, or should I send him the other way towards the plains with no barbarians in sight, but he'll move slower?

Should you send your pathfinder to this forest or that forest ?

 

[CppMaster]

Should you send your pathfinder to this forest or that forest ?

What's the difference?

 

[a3kov]

What's the difference?

You have to explore first to know the difference

 

[ElliotS]

Barbarians can be anywhere. I don't understand the part of "weigh risks vs rewards". Both risks and rewards are unknown (if you are exploring the land you already know then you are cheating). If you are implying that I need to only use 1 move instead of 2 that also doesn't make sense.

The issue is only about initial exploration, not passing the area you already explored. At that time both your pathfinder(s) and warrior are not experienced enough, and loss of units hurts the most.

The problem is the risk and reward is completely random and often unknown. Again, it's not nessesarily a problem of it being too hard, in fact in certain situations it's easier as not all the promotions are balanced.

If you have a scout and take it one move at a time it's almost impossible to get rekt even in jungle. Taking paths that go onto hills and give you more vision is also good. If you've got a warrior the chance you're going to walk into such a bad position that he dies (instead of just needing to fortify and heal and be unkillable by barbarian brutes in jungle) is super low.

Sure there is the chance that you've got a flat featureless jungle with no clearings that makes exploring all risk, but I think 99% of the time there are choices you can make to drastically increase your unit's chances of surviving. I'm not so concerned about that 1% corner case that I want to throw away barbarian promotions which feel flavorful and I think add to the balance.