Coordinated Barbarians?

[Drewbc]

Has anyone else noticed that the barbarians seem a little more "organized" as of BNW? I feel like all-in-all, they're smarter and coordinating their attacks against me and my trade routes. I've seen them send warriors and archer at me from one direction which I responded to by sending my troops to counter. Then they send a horseman straight for my trade route. A feint like this simple for a human, but it's certainly a leap forward for the AI.

And while we're talking about barbarian horsemen. Since when do barbarians have horsemen and horse archers??? (And I think they have a new unit.) I'm not complaining about any of this by the way, I think these new changes are awesome!

 

[SmithRobloxian]

Has anyone else noticed that the barbarians seem a little more "organized" as of BNW? I feel like all-in-all, they're smarter and coordinating their attacks against me and my trade routes. I've seen them send warriors and archer at me from one direction which I responded to by sending my troops to counter. Then they send a horseman straight for my trade route. A feint like this simple for a human, but it's certainly a leap forward for the AI.

And while we're talking about barbarian horsemen. Since when do barbarians have horsemen and horse archers??? (And I think they have a new unit.) I'm not complaining about any of this by the way, I think these new changes are awesome!

I yet to see such a difference in their behavour, but yes, they now have horsemen and horse archers, along with the new unit, the Hand-Axe... Wouldn't that mean that Germany got a new unique unit indirectly, then?

 

[MerchantCo]

But their new units provides a few extra strategies, such as "guerrilla warfare" [sending in a horseman to pillage a trade route, and then quickly retreating].

 

[Drewbc]

But their new units provides a few extra strategies, such as "guerrilla warfare" [sending in a horseman to pillage a trade route, and then quickly retreating].

Yh it could just be the new units giving them more options to play with. Well, another reason for the player to stay on his/her toes. For me, defending trade routes is quite tedious.

 

[darkskies]

I don't have BNW yet but with the update that just came out I notice my raging barbs were more raging and also they seemed to coordinate with each other more then usual. I haven't played enough games to make sure this was coincidence as they do vary from game to game but right now I'm inclined to think they are working with each other better.

 

[pintocat]

In all my BNW games so far, I have seen only one instance of a barbarian taking a civilian captive. Even if there are no military units around, they seem to just ignore them largely..

 

[JFM2796]

In all my BNW games so far, I have seen only one instance of a barbarian taking a civilian captive. Even if there are no military units around, they seem to just ignore them largely..

I think they're more interested in wreaking havoc on trade routes now. I recently played a game where an unescorted Indonesian settler wandered passed two barbarian archers and proceeded to drop a city right behind my capital. The barbs were more interested in shooting at my archer and didn't even take the settler when I ran away.

 

[Sabrina]

One thing I noticed: if you create a caravan and start a trade route that needs to cross ONE fog-of-war tile, a barbarian unit will spawn there immediately, with or without encampment (most of the times, without). So please, always protect your caravans by clearing the fog of war before traveling with them.

 

[bobbo008]

As said above, cargo ships going through FOW are as good as dead. Heck, I wish I had the option of being able to take manual control over them because barbarian ships make a bee line for them every time...

 

[ShadowSonic]

I haven't tried BNW yet, but the Barbarians actually being smarter sounds like a welcome change for someone wanting an early challenge.

 

[kingofsealand]

The new barbarians are actually pretty cool. They definitely do work together now and are far more opportunistic. For example it was rare for them before to try and attack cities, when the chinese had reduced one of my cities to almost no health, but had no land units to take it the barbarians began showing up in force to try and plunder it. Ive honestly had limited problems with trade route plundering, i try to keep the land caravans closer to home and generally by the time i get to sea-trade routes so many barbarians are dead that it doesnt matter, that being said i try to stick with the closer cities for sea trade as long as possible to negate the distance factor. Also i thought they removed rather than added the chariot archer for barbarians, replacing it with the axe thrower? (would make far more sense, how are barbarians going to manufacture a chariot with no woodshop?) Lastly, the fact that pillaging now heals your units means barbarians favorite activity is now run up on city > get shot by city but dont die > begin pillaging all tiles within sight to keep healing significantly prolonging its annoyingness.

 

[Drewbc]

Ok. I've comfirmed the barbarians are definitely more numerous and coordinated. As some have pointed out, they are definitely more prone to go straight for trade routes. And in my current game barbarian units were sieging on of Spain's cities. And they would've taken it if they weren't all ranged units. Yup I'm convinced and I welcome the challenge.

 

[Ryoga]

Well to be fair Barbarians have always been particularly eager to blockade your cities, now they have adapted with the new system.

One funny thing that I always experience in my games is that a barbarian will always invariably show up near my city just a few turns before my first worker is built.