Barbs and you on large and huge maps.

[Randall_Flagg]

Good day civers, i did not see a definitvie plan on dealing with barbs. if there is one please feel free to remove thread.


Please note this strat is mostly of use only on large maps where the land grab is alot slower than on standard and small. I have tested this in my last 4 games when i figured out i do not want to keep making units the barbs destory. This will also allow you to pretty much make roads and send settlers out with out an escort. (Note: this is not 100%)


Ok here is the best way i found to build a small empire without the pesky barbs.

1. Explore all around your city, *duh*. (note:Fog of war will always make more barbs. the less there is the slower they spwan) this is what i noticed. and i tested it on map with the south not explored. Not to say they cannot pop anywhere where los is not in your favor.


2. After exploring, you need to know which way you want to expand, you under no circumstance want to defend against barbs on both sides.

3. *the Key* you must build Warriors to send to the corners you want to expand to. you want los on as many squares as possible. my prefered metod is to build 4-5 warriors to send to spots where i intend to build cities.


What this does is make it so no barbs will spwan where you have sight. I find the earlier you expend the resources to do this the better of you are. you do not want barb cities sitting on a hill behind a river behind you.

The barbs will 99% of the time attack one of your warriors on the front. it will enable you to keep your copper mined and what not.


NOTE: Do not go over board on the military units, you can make yourself collapse under the might of the army. and your cities will go on strike. it is not possible to do this to large area, by large i mean a spot for 20 cities. i tried it hehe.

Good luck with the barbs, i hope this helps someone.


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Note: This was tested on Noble, i am sure it would work better on warlord and lower. not sure it would work at all on the higher levels.

 

[Tinamil]

Rather than going to all that effort to keep LOS on the map using warriors, why not just grab the archer tech early and put an archer in each city to defend it? Generally, a single archer in every city is enough to fight off any barbarian, since there is no axeman equivalent to counter archer units. You just have to be aware of your resources, and maybe put an archer out there to defend a critical one.

I have been playing on noble, and it's pretty easy to not have to bother putting warriors for defense in cities at all, you can have archers well before the barbarians will attack you. Might not be such a good idea in a multiplayer game though.

 

[Arkalius]

Once I've got some cities established and build up some infrastructure and defense, I usually create some horse archers and/or axemen that are on barbarian duty. If barbs approach my city, I go after them quick before they start killing my improvements.

Sometimes barbarians build cities in really nice spots and taking them over is a nice way to expand without having to spend time turning out a settler and moving him there.

 

[KAuss]

Barbs will spawn at the edge of your los, so it's pointless to even try to stop them...

Then from my tests in another post, the barbs that were spawned a few turns ahead of time will all collect up and aim for your city regardless around 400 BC on epic games... This means even barbs spawned near AI cities will stop what they're doing and this is why you get waves and waves of barbs...

The best way around this is to build next to the AI early... This was the only way to ensure peace for a while, but even still, during my tests, the barbs will ignore the AI if they can get to you first... At least 90% of the time...