Barbarians

[Crowqueen]

I'd rather that the game itself had fewer barbarians rather than me have to do some custom setting of no barbarians at all.

I'd rather it did have barbarians; it takes ages to build settlers so why bother when you can just take a swordsman and take over a barbarian city and absorb it into your empire?

And the best bit was when my rival's capital was taken over by the barbarians and I took it over myself. Gave me a bit of leverage with him when I was the one stopping him from moving from his island peninsula by closing my borders with him and thus dispatching him all too quickly at my own leisure.

Pretty useful, barbarians. Make sure you get the Great Wall though.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You don't need the great wall. You need archers (or even warriors at most levels) fortified outside your borders on hills, in forests, or on a ridiculously powerful hills/forest tile. Warriors like that still die once in a while but they have the odds advantage. Archers, fortified in this way, utterly pwn the !@#$ out of barbs. They used to give me trouble but with fogbusting they're pretty non-issue...unless you get the 2950 BC 4x archer barbarian uprising, which is really gay regardless.

 

[Bradlius]

True - but if you play as a protective leader, your archers start out with 2 promotions, so accumulating the maximum of 10 XPs from barbarian engagements will indeed get them up to level 5! Then they will be pretty unbeatable city defenders, even if you lack strategic resources; better still, you can later upgrade them to longbows, and ultimately to infantry...

Yeah, that's what I meant!
Actually, being a Vanilla player, I don't have access to Protective, so I was just over-stating the case.

 

[Ginger_Ale]

True - but if you play as a protective leader, your archers start out with 2 promotions, so accumulating the maximum of 10 XPs from barbarian engagements will indeed get them up to level 5! Then they will be pretty unbeatable city defenders, even if you lack strategic resources; better still, you can later upgrade them to longbows, and ultimately to infantry...

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think those free promotions (like Combat I for Aggressive civilizations) don't count for the level of the unit as displayed on the screen (for purposes like Heroic Epic and West Point). I could be wrong though.

 

[Jerrymander]

No, they don't count. But it's still the equivalent of a non-Pro/Agg level 5 unit.

 

[Pariah]

I'd rather it did have barbarians; it takes ages to build settlers so why bother when you can just take a swordsman and take over a barbarian city and absorb it into your empire?

I like that aspect too; only problem is, barbarian cities are not intelligently located. They tend to be built on non-defensive terrain (even on completely useless terrain), and have an annoying habit of being too far from the important resources...

 

[Crowqueen]

I like that aspect too; only problem is, barbarian cities are not intelligently located. They tend to be built on non-defensive terrain (even on completely useless terrain), and have an annoying habit of being too far from the important resources...

There are some placed strategically. I get the point about Phrygian being stuck off somewhere on an ice tile (the AI has a habit of doing that too) but in the main I've found the ones I go for are in my backyard, blocking my trade routes and on coastal edges ripe for exploiting with harbours, customs houses and so on. If the resources are an issue then the boundaries will normally open up after a while and absorb more.

Defensively some can be a PITA to capture, so they must be somewhat decent.

 

[Justy]

The Barbarians are actually good because they will tell you where your empires weak frontiers are. The Barbarians can be overcome but they are a more forgiving opponent than an aggressive AI. They will force you to create a strong army early. If you are weak and Monty or Capac comes' a knocking then you are in trouble. Just keep an eye on the clock they usually start up around 1000 BC.

 

[Pitman]

You don't need the great wall. You need archers (or even warriors at most levels) fortified outside your borders on hills, in forests, or on a ridiculously powerful hills/forest tile. Warriors like that still die once in a while but they have the odds advantage. Archers, fortified in this way, utterly pwn the !@#$ out of barbs. They used to give me trouble but with fogbusting they're pretty non-issue...unless you get the 2950 BC 4x archer barbarian uprising, which is really gay regardless.

I have played two games just in the past couple of weeks where I was hit by a massive barbarian outbreak that easily captured one of my initial two cities. Not only did I not have archers, I think I had only had time to produce about four units total when it happened.

 

[Pariah]

I have played two games just in the past couple of weeks where I was hit by a massive barbarian outbreak that easily captured one of my initial two cities. Not only did I not have archers, I think I had only had time to produce about four units total when it happened.

So did you persevere with these appallingly unlucky games, or start again (as I would)?

 

[MrBrown]

My preferred way to handle Barbarians is a good offensive defense (Axeman, Maceman, etc.) and a good road network. When a barbarian enters an important tile, I send an attacker from the city to kill it.

 

[Crowqueen]

I've got the hang of creating units like horse archers (because barbarians move too slowly) and using the Sentry order to police roads between territories to ensure I don't miss anything if I fortify instead. The barbarians have a habit of settling along my roads so therefore I make sure I capture those cities if I have, say, a cylindrical land map with the resultant empty space between places. I prefer to play aggressive games on land because it is much easier to get to your opponents without having to build ships and explore. Build a warrior or two and a scout and hey presto! they tend to get more warriors and scouts from goody huts without being restrained by oceans in between, thus multiplying themselves over the map and allowing me to concentrate on home - and war.

Played a game with raging barbarians last night and got the Great Wall because I am used to making sure it is one of the three early wonders I can produce quickly to demand (Stonehenge, GW, Oracle). I wiped all but two civs off the map (Fantasy Realm, was fun, tundra and desert and ice all in the middle regions of the map) and while in the process of destroying the penultimate one won a domination victory. The GW on a land map sends barbarians off in search of your opponents' cities, thus leaving you to build your armies and region in peace and send your own men out in search of barbarian-conquered other-civ territories from which to base your other campaigns off. Since you only get a maximum of 10 xp from barbarian encounters, you are much more able to get hold of opponent's territory by stealth but you will need the GW to make sure you can tech in peace while they are pillaged instead. Charlemagne I think I went to war with too early, because he stole Jute out from under my nose (right in the path of my German Empire's natural spread) but anyway the barsteward had German-named cities and of course I wanted them for my empire. That was a long campaign - mid 500s AD to about 1300-1400; I began with horse archers sieging Ulm and Jute (I was going for Knights before attacking anyone; Charlie didn't even get HBR until near the end and never got to use it because I'd taken all his horses and he only had Prague isolated with a GG-Swordsman inside which raised merry hell until I was able to attack it enough times per turn to erode its strength) and ended with grenadiers and in the process of building cannon - then I developed rifling before fellow Teuton Willem also got too uppity for Shaka and Ragnar and I sent in the boys when they both declared on him. Then Shaka had Dutch territory I wanted for myself and a lot of vulnerable workers on my border when I needed an oil-well built...and so on.

It's the only time I've built West Point and will be a benchmark setting for future aggressive games. It was the only time I've dared play with raging barbarians but I have got the opening game and getting the Great Wall down to a fine art and although I'm still on Chieftain I don't play aggressively enough at that level to try Warlord. So the GW doesn't slow you down in terms of XP, it speeds you up because the AI is trying to fend off too much to be able to live in peace for long enough to develop. I am ahead - barely - on the Warlord game I'm playing (a Pangaea variant - "Fractal" or "Balanced" tends to produce one single large continent with more regular coastline than Pangaea, but I wanted something simple to begin with) but not getting very far; I've managed SH and the GW and I've turned barbarians down, but not off, in order to give myself an easier ride, but I think I'm going to concentrate on raising my Chieftain game now I've dared to play wholly aggressively rather than go for the easy diplomatic victory. I got 43K points, so I was feeling quite happy.

 

[Pitman]

So did you persevere with these appallingly unlucky games, or start again (as I would)?

I had to start again. I only had one city left after they took the first one, with 1 population and 1 warrior, with 4 archers breathing down my neck.

 

[IronicBuddha]

More realistic, or just a pain in the arse you don't need?

I'm in two minds on that one, personally. It irritates the hell out of me to have to constantly rebuild all the farms and mines, and sometimes they'll come at me in groups just large enough to take my capital, as just happened now. So I sent an axeman down from my other city, he got creamed by the Barbs in my (MY!!) capital (BASTARDS!!) and that was it for my military.

On the other hand, I feel like such a wuss if I turn them off. It feels almost like cheating.

What say you good people?

Well you can turn them off yes, or you could just build fogbusters and make sure that there is little to no fog in the 2-3 tiles outside your culture, that will really help with any barbarian problems.

 

[kopfschuss]

One weird thing I've noticed concerning barbarians is that I can be expanding my empire in total peace for years, but as soon as I declare war on an enemy to get him away from my borders barbs start pouring in from everywhere on the map.

 

[azzaman333]

In BtS, the barbarians seem fewer due to the fact that they don't specifically target the human player.

 

[Lafer]

I am playing a game right now (my first on Warlord, things are looking good so far!) in which I decided to clear out my area of the continent, then put a city in a choke location so that no other cives could come into my area. I don't know if it was just me, but there seemed to be a lot more barbarian activity... I was gonna take out Monty first, but then Jao built the great wall, so I just HAD to take it!

I guess what I am trying to say is... You might want to wait until someone builds it, then take it from them... this way, you eliminate one AI and take a wonder while your at it...

 

[Navarre]

Any civ building the Great Wall near me is as good as dead. I consider it an act of war : throwing his barbarians on me. And I just love this wonder.

 

[Lafer]

Any civ building the Great Wall near me is as good as dead. I consider it an act of war : throwing his barbarians on me. And I just love this wonder.

Amen to that, man!

 

[TheMeInTeam]

GW solely for anti-barbs is a waste! If you're going to get something like that early, use it for the espionage points, or the great engineer pyramids rush or something in warlords/vanilla.

The only way you can get early great spies before running spies off the courthouse (much later than GW) is by building this wonder or capturing it lightning fast. Settle one, make scotland yard, and all of a sudden NOBODY can keep up in espionage. Very powerful wonder...but not for its barb defense ironically.