Growing with Barbarians

[Wlauzon]

Ok.. had this happen in a couple of recent games. (Noble level)

My strategy was basically found city, make worker, then make barracks, then one archer (usually) for defense, then make about 3 more cities, all with barracks. 1 or 2 archers is sufficient for defense, since all the barbs have is warriors for a while.

By then I have iron and the techs for a swordsman type unit. I start churning them out continuously - the only time I stop making military units is to make a library when available.

I stack them in groups of usually 5 to 10 and move them as a unit into the unoccupied lands. By then the barbs usually have several smaller cities.

And in the games I played like that I added anywhere from 4 to 10 NEW cities without ever making another settler, just from taking over barbarian cities (one was quite large - size 13).

In my best effort (lucked out on having lots of open land and no nearby civs) I ended up with 15 cities, of which I had only founded 5. On my worst I only got 4 barb cities, but still ended up ahead of the game in land area.

The major key to this of course is to have Iron available, but usually if there are some hills around you will have it, and copper and gold also.

 

[Gufnork]

That's a lot of barbarian cities. Were you alone on your island? Usually the AI expands fast enough to prevent barbarians from getting cities (and if they don't, I will).

Your start sounds really, really slow. Building barracks takes a lot of time in a newly founded city, especially if you're not aggressive. I suggest you skip barracks and expand a little faster instead. Atleast on higher difficulties you're not competing with barbarians for space, you're competing with another civ.

 

[Wlauzon]

That's a lot of barbarian cities. Were you alone on your island? Usually the AI expands fast enough to prevent barbarians from getting cities (and if they don't, I will).

Your start sounds really, really slow. Building barracks takes a lot of time in a newly founded city, especially if you're not aggressive. I suggest you skip barracks and expand a little faster instead. Atleast on higher difficulties you're not competing with barbarians for space, you're competing with another civ.

This only happens usually on Large or Huge maps with less than the max number of civs (I usually play vs 7 others). You don't see it much on the default game.

And barracks does NOT slow the game down. There are two reasons for making the barracks - one is to allow the city time to grow to size 3 or 4, and to allow the worker time to build some roads, get the techs for animal husbandry and bronze/iron. The 2nd is the promotions - which can make a big difference in some cases. While if you skip the barracks you might get more units faster, the quality of the units more than offsets not having a barracks.

And btw, at Noble, no barbs appear before turn 35.

On my last game last night I ended the game with 18 cities. The next largest civs had 13.

This strategy does NOT always work - it depends a lot on where you start and what resources you have.

 

[Gufnork]

Yeah, with that much open territory it changes things. You're much better off waiting for your city to become productive so your cities churn out settlers faster instead of getting one out right away. It's not like all the good spots will be taken. You might want to mention any abnormal settings in your posts if they depend on them.

 

[Wlauzon]

Yeah, with that much open territory it changes things. You're much better off waiting for your city to become productive so your cities churn out settlers faster instead of getting one out right away. It's not like all the good spots will be taken. You might want to mention any abnormal settings in your posts if they depend on them.

The only thing abnormal is that I always turn off the UN and Space Race.

This strategy is not one I start a game planning to use. It is one that I use if the starting map conditions are right. Also, it seems well suited for playing Inca, since they get civ specific upgrade pretty early.

And of course this can be combined with other strategies. The point is though, an early land grab seems to be essential to winning - this is just one of several ways to get an early start.