I just don't get it. Advice please?

[PadainFain]

As soon as I step up from Warlord to Noble difficulty I go from easily winning the game with most things set on automatic to being overwhelmed by barbarians.

I've tried 10 times tonight but every time I get over-run. How do you deal with this? This last time I kept making the best troops I could (Archers) but more and more just kept pooring in to ravage my land improvements and in the meantime my rating is dropping like a lead balloon compared to other civs in the world as I spend all my resource making troops to keep them at bay.

I don't pretend to be an expert as you can see but I could win Civ1-3 on the harder settings 9 times out of 10 and now I am completely at a loss.

Please help!

 

[jafink]

Sorry if this is off topic, but i noticed your name. I'm a big fan of the Wheel of Time. Nice to know that other civers also share my love for books.

 

[phybre]

You can disable barbarians. Either in an in-game menu or in the config file, I forget which. But barbarians focusing on sacking one civilization to the exclusion of the others is a documented "feature" in single player and multiplayer Civ4. Probably some sort of snafu regarding weighted randomness in their target picking, but that's a blind guess.

 

[gunnergoz]

Work hard to find copper and iron and make axemen and swordsmen ASAP; also longbowmen. You have a period in which there are lots of barbarians (I suspect spawned from previously loose animals) running around looking for you; unlike animals, they are attracted to cities. You have to prepare with the advanced units and if you are late doing it, expect to lose a lot of improvements to plundering, at the very least.
If you can't find iron or copper early in the game, you're kind of screwed...send out the scouts ealry to look for the resources and when you find them, build your next city next to one and make sure there is communications to your other towns.
It's a challenge built into the game and a very good improvement IMHO.

 

[dh_epic]

First off, if you're expecting the barbarians, you can produce the units to help thwart them. It sounds like you do an okay job initially, but they keep coming. You're halfway there.

The other half is not keeping your troops in your cities. Unlike Civ 3, I find there's a LOT more battles on the front lines, rather than constant city sieges.

Barbarians are very uncoordinated with their attacks. You would seldom have to deal with more than 2 or 3 units at once unless you let them build up a huge stack in a city somewhere.

My advice is learn the early counters to all the units:

Warriors --> Counter With Anything
Archers --> Counter with Axes, Chariots, Horses, or Swords
Swords --> Counter with Axes
Horses or Chariots --> Counter with Spears
Axes --> Counter with Upgraded Axes, Horses, or Catapults

Axes will be the hardest to deal with. The key is to intercept the barbarian by staying on a high hill, or fortifying. If you get the defensive advantage, you can take them out. I often send an axe towards an axe, but put it on a hill or a forest, and then watch as the other axe wastes itself against my axe.

Don't wait for them to come to you. If you see a barbarian coming, get a unit or two out there and take the fight to them.

Also, I would try to get ahead in military technology and take the fight to the barbarian city.

The best defence is a good offense.

 

[fightcancer]

Please don't post questions in the "Civ4 Single Player Articles" forum.

 

[Big J Money]

I was going to say the same thing. Is it a totally inappropriate place for such a question; it will bog down a good forum. This should have gone in the parent forum, instead. Hopefully the street-sweeper will be along his way, soon....

Also, Padain, you probably would get more responses in the other thread, it has more traffic.

=$= Big J Money =$=

 

[PadainFain]

Apologies for putting it in the wrong place. For some reason my browser either didn't display the posts in the parent forum or I was too drunk to notice them. Either way I was somewhat confused as to why I saw no one asking questions!

Thanks for the replies and hope the thread gets moved soon.