Can exploring your land be bad? (Barbarian question)

[Bleys]

I hate these barbs. They seem to come from everywhere. I have had Barbs spawn on single-tile peninsulas with a fog-buster 3 tiles away. What is up with this crap?

Is it the fact that I explore my territory from edge to edge? Maybe I should be keeping some of it totally "dark", I dont know. I see these games others play, and Barbs rarely seem to be as big a problem, even on Emp-Immortal games (I play mostly Monarch).

Especially on Continents maps. I have game going now, strong start, want to try the Oracle-MC-pop a fast GE for Mids technique I saw in BurNs game, but I cannot stop the barbs. I restarted from turn 1, made 5 more units to fog-bust (in addition to the 5 I made first try) and its still not working. 3 tiles away from a fogbuster spawns em every time. I cannot POSSIBLY make enough units to "see" every single tile in my area, no way, there is no AI civ in the tundra area to the North of my position, that area alone would require 10 units to completely "light up" every tile.

So what am I doing wrong? Should I NOT bother exploring that area? I am not planning cities down there for a while, I have my first 3 sites pretty locked in, my starting spot, City 2 for Marble and two food sources, City 3 for Iron, 2 food, and gold. All are within 10 tiles of my start, so should I NOT un-dark the rest? Will just as many barbs spawn in "dark" areas that spawn in "non-lighted, but explored" ones? Its very very discouraging. Heck, my first city was in the direction of an opponent, and I didnt even know it. What the heck here. This is why I am really starting to dislike Continent maps. If you dont start in a small area with AIs close enough to keep the barbs off, you almost have to build up a HUGE fogbusting army before you can even build a settler.

It should be noted that I only have access to Vanilla for now, so "Build the Great Wall" isnt a viable option. Trust me, the instant I get Warlords, GW is my number 1 priority.

 

[Thyrwyn]

Barbarians can spawn anywhere that is not visible to any civ, whether you have explored it or not. Barabrians can spawn in a tile that was visible the turn before, but is 'grey' now. Are you playing with "Raging Barbarians"?

Fog-busters are key: plant them on hills so that they can see further. Build Chariots or Axes before you really start "building". Archers at the very least, if no copper or horses.

 

[Big J Money]

This is why I am really starting to dislike Continent maps. If you dont start in a small area with AIs close enough to keep the barbs off, you almost have to build up a HUGE fogbusting army before you can even build a settler.

Sorry I can't answer your question, but I found this comment interesting. It's ironic how your opponents can be used to help you survive in the early stages of the game. This dynamic complexity is one of the reasons I like Civ so much.

 

[futurehermit]

if you rex a bit (esp if creative) and use fogbusters you are usually ok. however, it is important to not delay getting copper/horses hooked up. in vanilla/warlords i would generally ensure i got one or the other with my first settler after capital or else the threat of getting overwhelmed by barbs is fairly great.

in some cases and on some higher difficulties getting archery may be necessary as you just can't wait or will get mauled

 

[Bleys]

I actually go for Archery fairly early, thanks to the many games of Mad Scientist (best military tip EVER, I never regret those 7 lousy turns).

I failed miserably at the MC slingshot too, Mids got built 2 turns after I completed the Oracle, LOL (mostly due to the fact that 2 of the 3 civs I met so far are Industrious). I didnt chop it at all, I only have 1 worker and 1 being built by my 2nd city. The ONLY things I have built are a worker, 4 Warriors, 5 Archers, and a Settler. Thats it. And still they are coming out of the woodwork. They spawn in between my city and my fogbusters. They spawn in the 1 froaking tile thats in "shadow" on a peninsula thats 3-tiles long.

I use hills. I send my Archers out immidiatly to stop this nonsense. But even on Monarch, feeling "forced" to make 10 or more units before I even build a granary or 2nd worker is ridiculous. And not warriors or archers, either, AXEMEN already.

I love CRE for just the reasons you mentioned herm. seriously. I must just be doing something SLIGHTLY wrong. I am playing Vicky this game, though. As for copper, there was none, and no Iron in reach of my home either. I do have a HUGE area to REX at some point in the game, except for the fact that I am playing Vanilla and even if I keep my borders closed (my 2nd city will effectively close off my entire area, with just 2 border pops) they will sail in and drop settlers behind me very soon.

Big J, this is the primary reason for my last thread, "Difficulty level + map = TRUE difficulty". If this was Pangaea, I guarentee I would have 3 cities and be spawning a GE any turn now (around 1000 BC), instead, I havent even build a Granary at my home base yet, and I am EXP.

I am mostly just venting. I am not worried about "winning" this game, its a nobrainer, honestly, it was won the minute I saw the start (4 floodplains, with gold on a river, stone, and plains cows). I usually wont even play such lopsided starts, not as much fun winning on Turn 2, but SHEESH, I really really wanted to do the Pyramids thing, heh.

 

[Julian Delphiki]

It should be noted that I only have access to Vanilla for now, so "Build the Great Wall" isnt a viable option. Trust me, the instant I get Warlords, GW is my number 1 priority.

Go straight for BtS, it's better .

 

[Bleys]

Barbarians can spawn anywhere that is not visible to any civ, whether you have explored it or not. Barabrians can spawn in a tile that was visible the turn before, but is 'grey' now. Are you playing with "Raging Barbarians"?

Fog-busters are key: plant them on hills so that they can see further. Build Chariots or Axes before you really start "building". Archers at the very least, if no copper or horses.

No horses or copper, but I have Iron in my 2nd cities BFC, just need a border-pop. I can probably rush Napolean and take the Mids myself, if I wanted too, but I purposely DIDNT play Pangaea because I get sick of winning every game because I can make more Axemen than my neighbor can stop.

But my question about spawning is deeper than your reply. Lets say I DIDNT explore all the way to the tundra to the north, and put my "fogbusters" in a tighter circle in that direction. Currently, I have 5 up there, with no overlap of LOS (line of sight), but there is still a few shadow-tiles all around, including ones between them and my city. Will the fact that I have 200 tiles explored, but only 100 fogbusted cause more barbs to spawn in the un-busted spots than if I didnt expose them at all? Does that make sense? In order to unshadow every tile to the north, I would need to make 10 more Archers, minimum. And there is another area to the southwest that I have 2 archers on hills covering, but still has shadows. If I didnt explore ANY of it, and JUST opened up the tiles I want for my first couple cities, would LESS barbs pop?

 

[madscientist]

Bleys, get BTS. It has all the additions of Warlords except for the scenarios. In fact you haven'e even experienced the game until you've had a massive war against Shaka, trust me on this.

In Vanilla the barbs are the toughest IMHO. My suggestion is to get enough fog busters out there.

In warlords the best thing is to get the great wall or fog bust at strategic locations.

BTS is a little different. The barbs seam to establish their cities alot earlier, and thus there is less problems with rampaging barbs unless you capture their city (They seam to want their own digs!).

 

[Jtownsend]

I had an utterly apalling game with barbs on noble last week. I honestly wondered if I'd somehow put rampaging barbs on, it was so irritating. I'd rexed to a total of 6 quite quickly and I don't know if I screwed with their settling routine or what, but it was relentless.

 

[Bleys]

I know BTS is the pot-o-gold MS, I plan to get it ASAP. There is a thread in General that goes into detail about my situation, but in a nutshell, I dont own the Vanilla game, I play through GameTap, therefor, in order for me to get BTS, I would need to spend 50 bucks on the core game (or 60 for Gold, which I am leaning toward), and another 30 for BTS. I know Complete is out, and there are some places to buy on eBay and such, but I live in the US, and I am against even this sort of software piracy. If Amazon.UK would ship it to me, I would buy it in a heartbeat, but they wont, so my only avenue is a less-than-legal method and having it shipped to me in the states, which is totally illegal, I think. Hate doing that.

 

[madscientist]

I know BTS is the pot-o-gold MS, I plan to get it ASAP. There is a thread in General that goes into detail about my situation, but in a nutshell, I dont own the Vanilla game, I play through GameTap, therefor, in order for me to get BTS, I would need to spend 50 bucks on the core game (or 60 for Gold, which I am leaning toward), and another 30 for BTS. I know Complete is out, and there are some places to buy on eBay and such, but I live in the US, and I am against even this sort of software piracy. If Amazon.UK would ship it to me, I would buy it in a heartbeat, but they wont, so my only avenue is a less-than-legal method and having it shipped to me in the states, which is totally illegal, I think. Hate doing that.

Wow! That's more info than I would have ever thought possible. Well I feel out of the loop. What is GameTap? I don't care for myself, I'm 45 and just go and buy the game, but I have teenage daughters and generally look into these type of things I have not heard of before.

 

[BurN]

Hm I usually don't research archery. Chariots are awesome if you have the luck of having early horses. But in most of my games I end up with just warriors for a pretty long time.
If you see you start inland, with AI's far away .. it just says "barb attack" all over it and archery might be good in that case. I think in general if you got a map with a lot of barbs, good expansion > fast expansion. If you predict a lot of barbs spam warriors till you feel you got enough to protect your capital+your second city.

Don't fogbust too far out of your cultural borders. Fogbusting is helpful but overdoing it is counterproductive. You are actually going to attract more barbs. Because you just have a higher chance that a barb that would've just passed by, will see your warrior and attack it. So the key is to have as few warriors as possible, at the best places possible just outside your border. (+future 2nd city site)

As a side note .. In my game, I didn't have heavy barbs because:
- I have an AI closing in on the SW.
- I have a coastal start, no barbs from N-W-E.
- Only one way they can come is SE, so it's a no brainer to have a few warriors there.

So I have a total of 5 (!) warriors only.

 

[Gooblah]

Screw Archery. Its a crappy dead-end tech, unless you play as China, Mali, Babylon, or any other Civ with an Archery UU.

Instead, opt for Animal Husbandry and Chariots; Build Worker-Warrior-Settler-Warrior. To tech, do something like this
1) Agriculture OR Hunting OR Animal Husbandry OR Improvement Tech
-If you have Agriculture or Hunting as a free tech, and a Camp/Farm resource available, go for AH. If a Farm or Camp resource isn't near, grab Agriculture/Hunting, then an improvement tech, then AH.
2) Animal Husbandry (if you chose another option above) OR The Wheel
3) Whichever tech you didn't choose in the line above.

The Wheel is necessary for Chariots (duh). Time the Wheel to finish by the time you have founded your 2nd city near Horses (which is why I usually choose AH as Tech 1 or 2). Have a Worker there hook up the Pasture, and link it to the capital. Spam Chariots to nearby city positions. Send Settlers there (with or without an escort.

 

[semirami]

They are not that bad. I have many games, where my early rush succeeds, only because I have 2-3 CR2 Axemen. Of course you can start custom game and check "no barbarians", if they destroy your game.

 

[Gliese 581]

Sorry for giving a sligthly brief reply here but I noticed you said barbarians spawn between your cities and yet you've found no copper or iron. I suggest you try to place your cities closer, 4 tiles apart at the most, UNLESS you've found copper but it's farther away or you're trying to block of an opponent.
The tighter your city placement the easier it is to protect. If I'm not creative I'll usually try to place my first expansion 3 tiles away from the capital unless one of the above-mentioned conditions apply.

 

[Bleys]

Well I feel out of the loop. What is GameTap? I don't care for myself, I'm 45 and just go and buy the game.

I am 45 also, but on a fairly fixed, limited income, so buying a $50 game is a big deal, especially right after Christmas.

GameTap is a service that has over 1000 games that members can play. The games range from old-time arcade stuff (Space Invaders, Astroids, etc), old console games (Sonic, Echo the Dolphin, etc), and many many computer games. The computer games are widely varied, but there are dozens that are, by themselves, $50 games. RPG stuff like Baldurs Gate I and II, all the Icewinds, sim-city type games such as Caesar II and Pharoah, Action and FPS games like the Rainbow 6 series, Squad Combat like X-Com and Jagged Alliance, sports games, puzzle games, adventure games, like the Myst series, Mysterious Island, Alone in the Dark, etc, all the Hoyle card/table games, TONS of kids stuff, etc etc etc. Its really quite good. It costs 10 bucks a month, but its well worth the money. That amounts to about 2 "actual" games a year. Check the list on their site, its huge.

Screw Archery. Its a crappy dead-end tech, unless you play as China, Mali, Babylon, or any other Civ with an Archery UU.

You must not have played much Emperor or I doubt you would feel this way. No worries, I thought the same thing about Archery when I played Noble and below. Heck, even Prince is a breeze without early Archery, and so are smaller, tighter packed maps. But at higher levels on Continents, Archery is NEVER bad.

Sorry for giving a sligthly brief reply here but I noticed you said barbarians spawn between your cities and yet you've found no copper or iron. I suggest you try to place your cities closer, 4 tiles apart at the most, UNLESS you've found copper but it's farther away or you're trying to block of an opponent.
The tighter your city placement the easier it is to protect. If I'm not creative I'll usually try to place my first expansion 3 tiles away from the capital unless one of the above-mentioned conditions apply.

My 2nd city never saw a single barb, because it was on a narrow part of the land with my main city on one side and the AIs on the other. It was the chunk I bit off for my own future colonization that was the problem.

Let me lay it out clearer. I had a GREAT start. I built a worker, a couple warriors, and a settler, then a bunch of archers. I went BW, Wheel, Archery (after getting Hunting in a hut), Pottery, Masonry, Mystism, Meditation, Priesthood, IW or something like that, anyway, shooting for the Metal-Working Oracle Slingshot (I think I wasted a tech in there, thinking back, maybe Pottery, but I wanted to get cottages down on the floods ASAP, being FIN and all. Wasnt part of the slingshot though, so I should have skipped it for a bit, unless I need it for MC? Cant recall just now).

My 2nd city was 7 tiles from my first, toward another civ (unbeknownst to me). It had Marble, Rice, Bananas, and Gold in the BFC, and Iron popped on the 2-tile diagonal after IW. This was all fine, a very very solid start indeed, trust me. I could win this game with my eyes closed, it was such an awesome start. Even with the stupid barbs.

The problem was there was a TON of land to the north, and I mean a big chunk, and no civ there. I scouted it all out with my warriors, grabbing huts (no more techs, mostly cash, and a warrior and map or 2, IIRC, I do reload "hostile" hut pops, BTW, I think its lame and should be removed from the game). I tried to bust the fog in this area, but like I said, it would take over 15 units to "see" every tile, and thats not including the other chunk to the west, mostly jungle with Calander resources. Without exaggerating, it would have taken 30 units to fogbust the area.

BurN, thanks for your response, its the most helpful one (because I think you understood the question best, heh). I could tell why you didnt have any problems with Barbs in your game, ocean close on one side, and AIs on the other. This was a far different looking continent.

But I dont see how you can be so non-chalant about Archery. Especially at the levels you play. A fortified archer on a forested hill can stop an Axeman, and unless you have a bunch of 10xp Warriors running around, they arent going to do crap. Axe's appear well before 900 BC in my games. I dont mess around one bit.

My "chunk" of the continent was too big to effectively fogbust, period. Not only that, but I had no horses, no copper, and the the only Iron was WAY to the north by the Beavers. Spamming cities is NOT an answer to this, at least not above Noble, I would have needed at least 3 cities down there JUST to be able to use 7 fogbusters instead of 15. In retrospect (I started a new game, that one was going to be too easy), I should try to keep a tighter circle of fogbusters so I dont attract attention. Who cares if they are running around? As long as only a few find me, and those few run into my Hill Fortified Archers, I should be OK til I can go get their cities. This is closest to the answer I was looking for. They spawn . . . whether I pre-expose or not, but if I dont "lead" them to my city with a trail of units, maybe they wont stumble in.

 

[Gliese 581]

I see what you're saying. I play on emperor and sometimes I'll just get one of those starts where barbarians become a huge problem. There was for example one game where I played as the Incans and started in the middle of a large continent. I immediately rushed my closest neighbour but unfortunately missed out on building the great wall and the civ that ended up building it was farther away on the same continent as me. This left the barbs with me and one other civ to attack on a continent that was already huge for just four civs and I was taking the brunt of the attack as I was right in the middle and was being attacked from literally all sides.
The only way to deal with it is to view it as an all out war, but you're not going to come unscathed away. After the rushes finally ended I had fallen way behind and eventually I lost that game. I guess the only lesson for this kind of start is, always try to scout well early and get a quick grasp of the situation. If you determine that barbarians are going to be a huge problem, do everything in your power to get the great wall, and ignore everything else. Even if it's going to take a big sacrifice of early expansion it will be nothing compared to what you'll face without it.
I guess sometimes there's not that much you can do..

Edit: One more thing, the barbarians don't need to search for you, they have a built-in radar that tells them where they can attack. So if you build the great wall, not only does it prevent barbarians from entering your borders, it also actively works as a repellant and they will instead move towards civs that they can attack, making your expansion even easier.

Edit2: Heh I guess I should really read the OP better. So you can't build the GW.. well I'm sorry to say this but if you get the wrong start, you're screwed.

 

[Eldarion]

Bleys,

I completely empathize with your plight. Ever since patch 1.74 came out for Vanilla (didn't notice it nearly as much before), the barbs have been utterly ludicrous. Some incidents I've had with normal barb settings (no raging):

- Colonizing along the coast, my cultural borders covered all but a single square of fog, which directly bordered the ocean. A barb popped and immediately went after the closest city.

- Multiple archers stationed in a criss-cross on hills in northern tundra with no resources, where not even the AI would be dumb enough to settle. Barb axemen popped and started lunching.

Recently, I upgraded to BTS. Now, I haven't played extensively yet, but I have yet to even *see* a barb axeman, much less have one spawn on my face while I'm still trying to hook up copper. There's that one fatal event with the barb uprising (which I hear is bugged), but the barbs seem much more - well - civilized in BTS.

Personally? I just turn 'em off when I'm playing vanilla. Unquestionably the easy way out, but I find it much more enjoyable.

 

[Bleys]

I wondered about turning them off, but then I considered that I have seen AIs also have just as many problems as I have, and I didnt want to make it easier on them too, heh.

Glad to know its a minor AI thing with Vanilla though. I may (despite my aversion to such things) have a European friend pick it up and mail it to me. Seems easiest, and only slightly "immorally illegal" (note, some illegalities I dont follow so much, like the lame laws about certain substances I am not allowed to grow at my house, heh)

 

[BurN]

Well sometimes you can't do much about barbs. I've had a game as well where barbs where such a problem I ended up resigning. The only thing I could build was was warriors and archers because the barbs where just overwhelming, attack from all sides and my units kept on dieing. Though in 90% of my games barbs don't seem to form much of a problem. Do you play large/huge map or something?

As for me using warriors, till axeman say hi they perform well. They are cheap to build, perform pretty well in forests and you're likely to get some woodsman upgrades.

Disabling barbs is an option. The AI doesn't have that much problems with barbs. I'm not sure about monarch but on immortal they start of with 2 scouts, 3 archers and a worker. They prioritize building some extra archers as well. So early barbs is less of a problem for them. Also if I remember well, I read somewhere on this forum vanilla AI has quite a big bonus vs barb units. (Was it +40%? I'm not sure)