How often do you tech Archery to deal with deity Barbs?

[drewisfat]

He's probably not going to post the map or even check the forums until he's done with that game.
NE area is very open, so I'm either using my initial unit or a later scout, as hunting is needed eventually for jumbos.
I run from fights all the time. Often running away from barbs is when I get my scouting in.

 

[Nick723]

He's probably not going to post the map or even check the forums until he's done with that game.
NE area is very open, so I'm either using my initial unit or a later scout, as hunting is needed eventually for jumbos.
I run from fights all the time. Often running away from barbs is when I get my scouting in.

This is already helpful!

So you dodge and maintain the fog bust, and then take the fight closer to your cities (or in your cities)?

I often feel the pressure to take ~50% fights which then sets off chain reaction of more spawns, etc.

 

[Fippy]

Deity barbs get a hidden 10% (?) bonus, i dodge most possible fights early cos they can never be trusted.
Unless the capital has really good early and can replace losses easily.

 

[Henrik75]

As requested, WBsave, and buffy save (so you dont need to add barb techs) added respectively.

Yes I have seen numerous people bloat out that archery is seemingly pointless and you can just build 2 warriors, but that's a gamble and an archer guarantees safety. 2 warriors in a forest have something like a 15-20% chance to both die; if the archer wins at 30-50%, it'll always promote, and if it heals to 2.5 or over it'll have half decent odds to win again. Hell, there was this one game I had 3 warriors in a forest all die to 1 single archer and it was game over because of that. Similarly 3 warriors in a forest hill died to a spear that spawned at 2320bc and it was game over because of that.
in this map there's tons of open land with flood plains and all, the archers start spawning and circling your border at turn 11, im not sure how you would do that with just warriors; rush out into flat land and hope for the best?
I was even forced to defend in the city several times against archers and even spears later on; that's such a gamble with warriors because again you only have 50-70% chance to win, and if you lose they promote and have a shot to win again.
If you're willing to reload/replay the map for optimization then of course warriors are better. If you are going in 100% blind and don't know what to expect and this is your only shot and want to avoid reloads/replays; then archery seems pretty logical to me if the land looks like it can spawn a lot of barbs and be difficult to defend from.

When I play aggressive OR creative civs I change it up a bit. Aggressive civs have super warriors by building a barracks for only 25 hammers and then promoting to cover; this will give you substantially better odds and turn 40 into 65% and 70 into 85%. Creative allows your borders to rapidly expand and cover many many many more tiles early on from fogbusting, and not only that but give you much more warning when barbs are approaching; allowing you to react accordingly, meaning its also easier to do it with only warriors.

And of course, examine the situation. If you're relatively cramped or have close neighbours, and see several friendly archers orbiting your border, you have a good chance of being safe. However as you saw in my video that doesn't always apply as hatshepsut's archer walked right past a barb archer that bee lined my 2nd city.

I think 10-50% is a pretty reasonable choice, I sit somewhere around 25-30 nowadays. Quite often I tech archery not because of barbs but because of scary neighbors on my border that can plot at pleased.

EDIT: another note i'd like to add in is teching hunting + archery sure is a pain in the butt, that's a lot of beakers wasted and you should be looking at every possible solution to avoid that; build more fogbusters early before the settler, settle early horses/copper even if its a sub optimal location?
But if you start with hunting or have a reason to go early hunting (ivory, fur, deer, animal husbandry), then teching archery is significantly cheaper and I hardly think it's a bad play at all, even if you don't end up needing it, its a cheap tech. Especially once you start getting into the barb spear period if you haven't fully fogbusted yet.

 

[Henrik75]

Lets Play Civ 4 Deity Livestream Charlemagne + Ragnar Part 1

Playing Civ 4 on Deity difficulty.Settings I play with:Deity difficultyNormal SpeedStandard sizeFractalNo hutsNo events

www.youtube.com

Another one id like to see done without archery, the second game in this stream of Lain's; Ragnar game starting around 2:00:00.
He gets pumped by tons of archers then the duo of spears, similar to my Justinian one.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

For the Ragnar game, starting with hunting, fishing, seafood start, makes archery easier to research. The debate is the percentage of games with similar conditions.

For the Byzantine game:

Spoiler :

I still didn't understand why you didn't go agriculture first. Those floodplains would need to be farmed for some time anyway. This ties to drewisfat's hypothesis. Better early gameplay obviates the need to go archery.

However, however, I support going archery anyway because ivory is nearby. So I would have went: agriculture, hunting, archery, wheel, pottery, mining, bronze working.

 

[Mr_Trotsky]

For the Ragnar game, starting with hunting, fishing, seafood start, makes archery easier to research. The debate is the percentage of games with similar conditions.

I agree that the above makes the opportunity cost of researching archery lower but I think what Drew is saying goes beyond that. He’s saying that archery actually puts you in a worse position - even ignoring beaker expenditure - because it slows fog busting and means you have to deal with more barbs who are closer to your cities. From what I can remember from CPK’s video, barbs that spawn beyond a certain distance from your cities won’t target your cities and just amble around aimlessly. This supports Drew’s assertion that pushing the barb spawns back a few turns earlier with warriors or scouts - because they can be built quicker and, for scouts, get into position faster too - actually puts you in a more secure position than sending an archer out later. I find this sufficiently convincing that I’ve made it my New Year’s resolution to stop going archery for barbs and it’s lasted longer than most of my resolutions! Albeit I’ve only started three games since this thread and archery was clearly unnecessary in two. I might give the Ragnar game a go to see how I get on if I get time, although I’m sure everyone would rather see an expert have a go

 

[Henrik75]

For the Ragnar game, starting with hunting, fishing, seafood start, makes archery easier to research. The debate is the percentage of games with similar conditions.

For the Byzantine game:

Spoiler :

I still didn't understand why you didn't go agriculture first. Those floodplains would need to be farmed for some time anyway. This ties to drewisfat's hypothesis. Better early gameplay obviates the need to go archery.

However, however, I support going archery anyway because ivory is nearby. So I would have went: agriculture, hunting, archery, wheel, pottery, mining, bronze working.

Spoiler :

I think I explained it pretty well in the video, the plains cow is a superior tile to the dry rice, and size 2 worker in (8+10) comes out faster than size 1 worker and grow in 7.

Those flood plains definitely don't need to be farmed, I kept them as cottages the whole game and irrigated through the grassland. Meanwhile the plains cow with imperialistic is like 8 hammers/turn, and allowed for delaying agriculture for a long time. Hunting unlocks the ivory on the way to animal husbandry so nothing was lost in the detour. Why would I want to work a dry rice instead of a plains cow especially with IMP multiplying the hammers? that's the real question here, if I have no problem growing to size 3-4 anyways; since the worker is produced at size 2 i'm already halfway there, and can grow on unimproved flood plains relatively quickly. Farming a flood plain is an awful 7 turn investment for a slight increase in food, I try and avoid it wherever possible. Only time I would farm it is if a city had only 1-2 flood plains and nothing else going for it.

 

[drewisfat]

I've never made a video before, so there are some issues with my audio cutting out. Feel free to fast forward - I'm not a fast player. First game went very well, had good barb luck. Second game I settled differently and went worker first and got much worse luck (TGW-fueled stream of barbs). I also made some mistakes that may have made the situation worse - you can tell I'm getting tired by the longer video length. Still I think that makes it a good demonstration since you're rarely going to be perfect and it shows that warrior spam is resilient under pressure.

That ragnar map is on a wonky script with over 1100 tiles. That's bigger than continents nonetheless fractal.

 

[CarpoolKaraoke]

Spoiler :

Uhhhhh there's horse on this map. It feels like this map falls under the "IF lots of open land, THEN resources available" category.

 

[sampsa]

Wonderful videos! I immediately view hunting a bit differently than before, both as a starting tech and teched early.

 

[Henrik75]

Very interesting videos. Never thought of putting so much thought into early fogbusting and setting goals on where to get your early units. Might explain why I struggle with it, maybe I play too quick. Thanks for playing the map and nice to have someone else to watch!

Part of my problems is often soon as I get my first worker out on t12-15 and start farming my corn there's already 2 barb archers circling my border like sharks in jaws, regardless where I put my starting unit. Also I should be more careful not to lose it to a lion at 20%
But I guess just take the chance and brute force the bastard with 2-3 warriors, and its quite possible with high hammer starts.

also @cpk

Spoiler :

maybe, but that's a garbo city on the edge of the map with no food, and only horses which aren't even reliable because they can die to archers still and are useless if spears come out; so I can't justify that over claiming rich flood plain land with archers for safety

But I will definitely try out this warrior/scout pump early on, I see you even swap off food tiles and work hammers to get them out faster which makes some sense.

 

[drewisfat]

Yeah I mean I'm always slow but excessively slow there due to nerves. Approach doesn't require as much thought as I gave it, but first time on video + expected barb apocalypse and im quadruple checking things that don't need to be.
Very important to minimize gambling with the starting unit as that can start a snowball working against you, whereas units at t50 are expendable.
Glad you're seeing the light on hunting sampsa. I like it as a starting tech unless aggressive, but ofc most agg leaders do start with hunting.
Fairly common move to switch to a hammer tile after worker for the first warrior if it's got a dangerous destination. Sure growth is super important, but the unit is less likely to run into a barb the earlier it moves out and your worker is presumably improving food. So it's not about hammers being better than food exactly, but that the opportunity cost of the hammers is changing quite dramatically in 5 turns.