Barbs - Love them AND hate them - at the same time..??!!

[christian_a]

I remember one game I had. My scout got killed by a bear pretty early, and I kept forgetting to build a new one until about 1AD. When I did get round to exploring, I found a barbarian city just to the south of my empire, in a decent looking location, so I sent my army over there and took it with ease. It had a couple of improvements around it, but this didn't set my alram bells ringing, as barbs do build workers if left alone long enough. A couple of turns later, I glanced at my sliders, and suddenly realised I was running at +~20 GPT. I could've sworn I was only just breaking even. So I started looking around to see what was going on, and I finally took a closer look at the barbarian city I had just taken, and for the first time, I noticed what it was called: Madrid. And inside was a Christian Shrine (choose religions was on), with about 20 cities having the religion, plus Stonehenge, plus the Oracle. Yes, Izzy had got her religion as per usual, then wonderspammed, popped a prophet, then got wiped out by barbs about two turns later

Sweet!
I always play with (regular) barbs on. Also, I hate them! It sucks when I have to cramble with my meagre forces to keep them away from my workers and improvements. I tend to downprioritize the military. Although I try to rotate all my forces around to maximize tne exp they get from whupping barbs.

 

[PaulusIII]

I think they add a fun element to the game in that you're not able to get away without a military.

That being said, I despise them when they're ridiculously lucky. A fortified axe in a hill city should not lose out to two barbarian archers.

 

[christian_a]

I also feel, that playing No Barbs wound mean I would miss out on the dangers of the fog of war - unless I'm at war. Plus the fact that raiding or capturing barb cities is a favorite hobby of mine. With no barbs, you'd have to DOW an AI, and then suffer the entire war to an end. But with barbs you take what you want, and safeguard this new surrouding area against further wandering troops or nearby barb cities.
I especially like playing a map with a New World, so I'll start a combined conquest and colonization of the landmass. I'll even - in peacetime- go so far as to rotate all my low-exp troops to this new world for exp-munchkinism. And deliberately leave a few bard cities far from my own colonies and leave huge chunks of fog of war, just to have them keep spawning.

 

[astrodog]

I played raging barbs twice last night - first game I ended up completely pillaged turtled up in my capital waiting for reinforcements to be built, with about 5 barb archers surrounding it, the second game I lost my capital to them - was battling a barb north of it and didn't notice the three to the south until they were on top of me! Back to normal barbs for me.....

 

[bestbrian]

I remember one game I had. My scout got killed by a bear pretty early, and I kept forgetting to build a new one until about 1AD. When I did get round to exploring, I found a barbarian city just to the south of my empire, in a decent looking location, so I sent my army over there and took it with ease. It had a couple of improvements around it, but this didn't set my alram bells ringing, as barbs do build workers if left alone long enough. A couple of turns later, I glanced at my sliders, and suddenly realised I was running at +~20 GPT. I could've sworn I was only just breaking even. So I started looking around to see what was going on, and I finally took a closer look at the barbarian city I had just taken, and for the first time, I noticed what it was called: Madrid. And inside was a Christian Shrine (choose religions was on), with about 20 cities having the religion, plus Stonehenge, plus the Oracle. Yes, Izzy had got her religion as per usual, then wonderspammed, popped a prophet, then got wiped out by barbs about two turns later

I've commented on this before in other threads, but I perceive a higher level of Barb activity compared to Warlords. Barbs have become quite the Civ killers. Case in point: A few games ago I was playing on a Great Plains map (Huge/Marathon/18 Civs) with a normal level of Barb activity. I had Stone in the BFC and built the GW, and a good thing too. I think something like 6 Civs were killed off by Barbs. In the course of my normal expansion, I shortly thereafter captured from the Barbs the Hindu holy city that Brennus had been nice enough to build and shrine before he died.

In my current Great Plains game, betweem Barbs and Boudica, 10 of 18 Civs bit the dust by 1000 AD. And this phenomenon isn't restricted to Great Plains maps as I've noticed an extremely high level of Barb activity on all of my other BTS games (mostly played on Tectonics and Inland Sea). So, is it just me, or were Barbs cranked up from Warlords?

 

[elisk]

I like barbarians on terra maps, especially if I'm first to the new world. They have lots of easy to take cities, so I don't need to make as many settlers.