I find that the only way to enjoy Civilization VI is to turn barbarians off.

CivAddict2013

Warlord
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May 4, 2013
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I've been playing a lot of Civ VI lately and I just can't enjoy the game with barbarians on. I understand they're meant to add challenge; but it just seems unfair. You already have to deal with the AI beating you to religion, the AI teching super fast and the inevitable DoW from your aggressive neighbor. Barbarians just seem like a nuisance.

In the early game, you simply do not have the money to deal with the endlessly spawning barbarian units. Rather than cursing at my computer screen in frustration, I would rather just turn them off. Barbarians in this game just feel like the game is screwing you over before you can do anything about it. Maybe if you could just make an archer and a warrior and fight them off it would be cool.

But no; you have to build an entire army to fight off the barbarians. But when you build a big army early on; it kills your early gold. Meanwhile the AI is beating you in science, religion and cultural. It just doesn't seem worth it to play with barbarians on. A barbarian encampment can spawn an entire army before you can even get ancient walls.

I can deal with an early rush from the AI because I can usually build ancient walls in time. But barbarians? No, I just can't deal with them.

So from now I think I'll just play with barbarians off to save myself from frustration. Some people like when a game screws you over before you can do anything about it; but not me.
 
There have been lots of threads on this subject. Turning barbs off can make the game harder as the AI deal with barbs worse than you do.
As you said, you have played a lot so your decision means something to you. I personally no not care either way about barbs. Maybe 1 game in 20 they delay me
 
Being proactive is the best way to deal with barbs. You can't wait for walls as you mentioned. You really do have to hunt down those scouts and nearby camps. It's not impossible. But yes, it does require building an army as you say. But often 3 units is enough, 4 to be safe. The only time you will need more is if you have a horse camp nearby.

And I actually get further behind with barbs off. The AI will expand like crazy with barbs off. Otherwise they tend to get beat back by barbs and often have their settlers stolen (and the human can often snatch these settlers). I often marvel how the AI can build lots of military units AND districts, even on King and Prince. I usually can only do one or the other. Like if I'm going for religion by building holy site, I can't build a large army.

I play about 75% of my games with barbs off. If I'm playing at a higher level than usual, I actually like barbs on, it evens the odds a bit.
 
There are many ways for a start to suck and having a lot of barbarians nearby is just one of them. Having no city states nearby, starting too near the wrong AI or just generally lacking luxuries or early strategic resources can all throw you a loop. It's all part of the challenge.

Civ 6 does require you to build an army early, which requires a change of mindset from Civ 5 where you could often get by without. Often it's apparent within the first 10 turns that it's not worth pursuing a religion at all.

Though I do agree with preventing barb horsemen spawning in the first few turns of the game.
 
I find that either I'll get completely swamped with barbs in the opening 20 turns, after which point I'll often just abandon the game, or - much more often - they'll just be a minor nuisance throughout provided I keep on top of camps that spawn nearby. I only play on King, though, so YMMV.

Most of the time they end up paying for themselves in the form of the unaccompanied AI settlers they've kindly stolen for me to, ahem, recruit later...
 
There have been lots of threads on this subject. Turning barbs off can make the game harder as the AI deal with barbs worse than you do.
As you said, you have played a lot so your decision means something to you. I personally no not care either way about barbs. Maybe 1 game in 20 they delay me
Perhaps it does make the game harder. But personally, I find fighting off an AI Civ easier than fighting off barbarians. Perhaps if the barbs started getting aggressive after a
civilization discovers Masonry it would be better.

Being proactive is the best way to deal with barbs. You can't wait for walls as you mentioned. You really do have to hunt down those scouts and nearby camps. It's not impossible. But yes, it does require building an army as you say. But often 3 units is enough, 4 to be safe. The only time you will need more is if you have a horse camp nearby.

And I actually get further behind with barbs off. The AI will expand like crazy with barbs off. Otherwise they tend to get beat back by barbs and often have their settlers stolen (and the human can often snatch these settlers). I often marvel how the AI can build lots of military units AND districts, even on King and Prince. I usually can only do one or the other. Like if I'm going for religion by building holy site, I can't build a large army.

I play about 75% of my games with barbs off. If I'm playing at a higher level than usual, I actually like barbs on, it evens the odds a bit.
I've tried rushing a few units to try and take out the barbarians early before. However, even when I tried to do that; I still had trouble finding the encampment.

The most annoying thing is the infinite horse units the barbarians seem to have. Perhaps if they spawned less often it would be less annoying.

Even if you do create a large army it's still difficult to fight off the barbarians.

There are things other than barbarians in the early game that are important; such as religion, settling and working tiles. When barbarians are on; I feel like the game is forcing me to solely concentrate on military.

Don't get me wrong I like a challenge; but the barbarians in Civ VI seem ridiculous. In Civ V, the barbarians were kind of annoying; but if you built a few units you could easily deal with them.
 
I suppose it depends on the difficulty you play at. I usually play at Prince or King and really like Barbarians. They give me easy unit experience for promotions. Gorgo gets bonus culture for every dead Barbarian. Clearing Barbarian camps gives me gold and various other bonuses depending on the Civ I’m playing. They kill lots of AI troops and pillage AI facilities. They slow down the AI significantly making the game easier for me. At the level I play at turning Barbarians off makes the early game boring and predictable.
 
The real issue with the Barbs is that the Horsemen spawn too early and too frequently. Regular camps are easy enough to deal with, but the Horses, the [bleep]ing horses, man. Talk about a game-ruining mechanic.

The Barbs ruined my enjoyment of the game way more in Civilization 4, where I lose about 60% of my games on Noble because they slow down my economy by pillaging/Forcing me to build units instead of buildings and settlers.
 
So from now I think I'll just play with barbarians off to save myself from frustration. Some people like when a game screws you over before you can do anything about it; but not me.

I wouldn't go so far, but I would argue that the "scouting" mechanic is a bit counter-intuitive, especially for new players. It seems a bit weird that you have to guard your cities from puny scouts & if you let them return to their camp they spawn a lot of units/a big threat. It would be much more "balanced" if camps would just spawn units over a longer time so that the threat would slowly become more & more dangerous & you have time to notice it & plan ahead. It would also be more intuitive if barbarians & camps could also spawn from "goody huts" so that this element would be a little bit more diverse than just giving advantages.
 
Interesting. I actually started playing with barbarians off recently to give myself more challenge, as I found it very much hampered the AI while, as player, I would never have trouble with them because I'd start with building a warrior while scouting in a ring around my city with my warrior and then immediately taking down any camp I would find.
 
Actually I like barbs , makes more diverse game , I like Beyond World xenos most tho , I wish they could expand on that , and if you dont clear camps for long , they become bigger and bigger and even turn into City state
 
Victoria
There have been lots of threads on this subject. Turning barbs off can make the game harder as the AI deal with barbs worse than you do.
As you said, you have played a lot so your decision means something to you. I personally no not care either way about barbs. Maybe 1 game in 20 they delay me

You bring up a good point, Victoria....

The AI has to deal with the barbs as well. I forgot about that. I'm playing my first game with barbs right now, and I have had to create a lot of slingers in order to deal with this threat.

However, I usually just turn them off like I have been doing since Civ II.

Yes, I am THAT old... :)
 
I suspect many here are. I remember my brother building his first game of Pong, we were all excited.
I loved the underwater cities.
Oh yeah, Victoria, I remember Pong. :):)

I also remember the Atari games that almost killed the music industry because we all started buying those cartridges instead of music.

But I don't want to get off topic, :nono::nono: :eek::eek:

So back to barbs...

I have found them to be a pleasant addition in my current game. I just have to devote a couple of cities (with mined hills) to the production of warriors and slingers so that the rest of my mighty empire (he said laughing like a megalomaniacal dictator) can go about business as usual.

Oh yeah... walls are now a MUCH higher priority.
 
I find the only situation that barbarian ss difficult to deal with is that the camp is born just behind your city. That means no city state or AI help you to fight them off. So you should destroy them with your army asap. Sometimes I just use my scout to prevent barbarian scout returning to their camp. And if your cities are not located it seems that the unit spawn is slow. Normally 1~2Archer+1~2Warrior is enough without horse nearby. And if they are born near the AI or City State, sometimes they are got destroyed so fast and I mss the gold/eureka.
 
I like the barbies, and I've only ever seen hunting them as a benefit over the AI. I hate when the city states get to the camps before me. They help me purchase workers or granaries or other things I want but don't have the turns to spare. At the same time, in some upper-level difficulties the early barbarians are the only real challenge a player will have the entire game.

Unless there's a swarm, I don't need walls or an army. I procrastinate with armies in general, especially since the current build still heavily favors domination victory if the player wishes to pursue it. In the majority of games I've handled them easily with like 3 units.

Besides, the AI declaring war on you early is a gift to the player. Seems like their armies have become more effective as of last update, but still relatively easy to swat aside, and if you wish, advance and take all their cities. Just protect your early districts from getting raided. Either way you benefit (unless you somehow severely botch the defense or counterattack), either by getting a bunch of land early or getting their nice surrender package of gold.

I wouldn't go so far, but I would argue that the "scouting" mechanic is a bit counter-intuitive, especially for new players. It seems a bit weird that you have to guard your cities from puny scouts & if you let them return to their camp they spawn a lot of units/a big threat. It would be much more "balanced" if camps would just spawn units over a longer time so that the threat would slowly become more & more dangerous & you have time to notice it & plan ahead. It would also be more intuitive if barbarians & camps could also spawn from "goody huts" so that this element would be a little bit more diverse than just giving advantages.
I've never realized that's how it works. I find that pretty cool, actually. In that case, it seems like the difficulty could be adjusted just by increasing the number of turns before the barbarian scouts can spawn with the field in the advanced start menu. That way the player has plenty of time to build up an army.

The return-to-base mechanic does seem a little flawed for learning players, as it's tough to catch those buggers without archers or horses. They could find the resulting horde difficult for sure.
 
Civ 6 does require you to build an army early, which requires a change of mindset from Civ 5 where you could often get by without. Often it's apparent within the first 10 turns that it's not worth pursuing a religion at all.

I have the feeling that many players who struggle with barbs in Civ 6 try to play Civ 6 in the same way they played Civ 5, that is, they focus on infrastructure and settling new cities instead of building military.

Civ 6 is very different game from Civ 5, in many aspects. One of them is that in the early game barbarians are one of, if not the most, important things to consider. Like considering the best locations to settle to, if you ignore the barbarian situation in your early game, you WILL lose.
 
Also keep in mind you miss out on a couple eurekas (of course the AI does as well so it's a wash). Bronze working is the only eureka I really care about, but military training you don't want to put off too long either.

As for previous Civ games, I normally kept the barbarians at the default level. I don't think I have ever played a single game with raging barbarians. The only game that had barbarians as annoying as a horse camp in this game is Alpha Centauri. It's annoying when you got several adjacent squares of xenofungus and they can easily outmaneuver you and move like 3 tiles. And really annoying when I'd have a technologically advanced unit destroyed by a primitive mind worm since they use psionic powers. :) I have turned barbs off in SMAC before, but you get a score penalty for doing so.
 
They at least force me to build an army. If not for barbs, I'd be eaten alive by my neighbors later in the game :D
 
I have the feeling that many players who struggle with barbs in Civ 6 try to play Civ 6 in the same way they played Civ 5, that is, they focus on infrastructure and settling new cities instead of building military.

Civ 6 is very different game from Civ 5, in many aspects. One of them is that in the early game barbarians are one of, if not the most, important things to consider. Like considering the best locations to settle to, if you ignore the barbarian situation in your early game, you WILL lose.

It's not a question of "either, or." It is a question of creating a military WHILE you build your infrastructure.

Kinda like chewing gum and performing brain surgery at the same time. You HAVE to multi-task in the early game and do both. This is much easier for me (and my playing style) in Civ VI than in the previous versions of the game.
 
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