Man the Barbarian code is laaaammmeee...

[DynamicSpirit]

Get your techs (Archery and Bronze).
Archery is only an option if you can get to Bronze quickly, and even then it's not advisable to neglect it (fortified Archer in a city WILL defeat an attacking barbarian Axeman).

I agree with most of what you say, but don't totally agree with that. At the moment I mostly play on monarch level, and I actually find that with a good military strategy, warriors can see off barb archers for quite a while - depending on my situation I often prefer to do it that way so I don't spend time researching hunting-archery too early when there are other techs I badly need to help my economy/worker actions/etc.

You normally encounter animals before barbs, and usually you can get a couple of promotions out of them [just remember, until you have those promotions, to run away from bears like the plague ]. I will then typically station the warriors on good defensive land outside my borders to reduce FOW. At the best example, a warrior with woodsman II sitting on hills/forest will almost invariably defeat an attacking archer. It always highly amuses me that the barbs are apparently so stupid that they almost *always* attack, even if the odds of them winning are negligible. If a barb archer is approaching, and there really isn't anything I can do to give me a good chance of defeating it, then I simply have my warrior run away.

If the worst happens and the archer enters your land then, well, a city with reasonable culture and two warriors sitting in it [the one that was stationed there anyway plus the one that's been running from the archer ] will easily see off a single archer. You'll have some improvements pillaged en route which is a pain, but you can easily rebuild those afterwards, and the turns the barbs are wasting pillaging your improvements are turns you can prepare to defend your city.

If you're on an island btw, barbs are exceptionally useful - they are the only way you can get an early 10XP unit, allowing you to build the heroic epic, which you might want before sailing off to attack other civs.

I think that this (expansion) phase is the FUNNEST part of the game, as it's like Always War (with barbs), filled with defensive strategy and interesting decisions as to tech advance/build orders. Want that wonder? Should you risk chopping border forest with un-protected worker?

I agree. The early part of the game is miles more exciting than the late part (one reason why my hard drive is full of half-played games that I simply got bored with after about 1000-1500AD).

 

[Artanis]

Y'know, I'm really kicking myself right now. Last night I finished a game and watched the replay, and during that replay I saw Thermopylae fall to Barbarians (I was Russia and Thermopylae, being Greek, was an AI city). I took a screenshot and everything, and even a couple to prove that it wasn't a trick...and then forgot to load it onto my thumb drive to bring to campus so I could post it (I don't have internet at home due to my former ISP gouging me )

Maybe tomorrow I'll remember it

 

[aaronflavor]

I'd have to disagree there. By far the best unit for controlling the barbs are Archers. Stick them on a Hill around your borders, especially forested ones, and almost nothing the Barb throws at you can dislodge it.

It's not that I think this is false, persay. Its more that this isn't always the way it works out. With many earily strategies, it is very easy to get spread very thin on military units.

(For example, I've recently been playing with Incan Quecha rushes. The result tends to be a few really nice cities spread so widely that they cannot reinforce each other. Often the cities take quite some time to get reasonable production or culture so that they can quickly produce military units of their own.)

I have had two separate games where suddenly a significant amount of barbarian units just sort of appear out of nowhere all at once. Most of the time, they're not coming from any particular source, such as a barbarian city. When this happens, unless you have a wasteful buildup of troops, or you are lucky to have a lot of troops there for some other reason, you probably won't have a military force strong enough that you can be sure you will be able to win. You may win, you may not.

In these cases, slavery is just awesome. Just pop out that extra archer or axeman, and you've gone from fairly dismal prospects to being fairly confident that you're OK. It gives you the freedom to not have to keep excessive troop buildup earily in the game when this may be difficult to acheive or wasteful.

 

[FatSean]

I have won the game on Noble no problem when the ******* barabarians don't swarm. There is no option to turn down the Barbarians at all.

I like the game, but this is making it very un-fun. My usual build queue is warrior warrior (maybe 3rd warrior) obelisk worker militaryunit militaryunit Settler

SO I'm not leaving my borders undefended. This time arround I'm on a huge island with 4 other civs. have exposed the ENTIRE ISLAND and still the Barbarians come. So don't give me any BS about the fog of war. A shell gives youe a few turns to prepare, but if you just don't have the units and a ****ing stack of 2 Axemen come at you...especially if you spread your units thin trying to do 'sentry' and they get picke doff one at a time by superior barbarian forces.

whatever. I should give this game to my buddy since I can't get my money back. He'll know what to do with it. heh heh heh

 

[FatSean]

Down to my last city. Two turns after the second-to-last city was taken by a single axeman with no other enemy closer than 4 squares, the city contained 4 barbarian axement and an archer. Impossible. the units come one or two at a time and an observing scout did not see anyone near enough to make it into the city in one turn.

Yeah I know the AI has to cheat to compete, but this is just weak. An archer and two warriors per city seems to be a responsible garrison to me...any more and you're playing some stupid war-game...and there are many other games that do combat much better.



I'm going back to civ2, bought that for $10. If CIV4 isn't on filesharing networks so people can try before they buy...it should be.

 

[neriana]

There is no option to turn down the Barbarians at all.

Actually, you can turn them off entirely.

 

[Artanis]

I have won the game on Noble no problem when the ******* barabarians don't swarm. There is no option to turn down the Barbarians at all.

I like the game, but this is making it very un-fun. My usual build queue is warrior warrior (maybe 3rd warrior) obelisk worker militaryunit militaryunit Settler

SO I'm not leaving my borders undefended. This time arround I'm on a huge island with 4 other civs. have exposed the ENTIRE ISLAND and still the Barbarians come. So don't give me any BS about the fog of war. A shell gives youe a few turns to prepare, but if you just don't have the units and a ****ing stack of 2 Axemen come at you...especially if you spread your units thin trying to do 'sentry' and they get picke doff one at a time by superior barbarian forces.

whatever. I should give this game to my buddy since I can't get my money back. He'll know what to do with it. heh heh heh

First: you don't need an Obelisk in your capital. Unless you're going for a Culture win, in which case it might help (I never go for Cultural, so I don't know one way or the other).

Second: It's not about "exposing" the entire map, it's about watching the entire map. If there's a spot that nobody is watching, Barbarians can come from it.

Third: Since they're getting picked off, I assume all your sentries are Warriors or Scouts. Try using Archers as sentries, since a hill-fortified Archer - especially a promoted one - will have a significant advantage over any Axemen trying to attack it.



Edit:

I'm going back to civ2, bought that for $10. If CIV4 isn't on filesharing networks so people can try before they buy...it should be.

There's a DEMO.

 

[Zurai]

Actually, you can turn them off entirely.

Which is something completely different.

 

[Willem]

So don't give me any BS about the fog of war.

There's no BS about it, Barbs only spawn where there's fog of war. Even having one square is enough.

...especially if you spread your units thin trying to do 'sentry' and they get picke doff one at a time by superior barbarian forces.

Well you're doing something wrong then. If I stick Archers on a wooded hill, almost nothing can stand against, not even Swordsman. Occasionally they get lucky, but not very often. My Archers barely even take any damage, especially when they've had a Guerilla promotion or two.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I have won the game on Noble no problem when the ******* barabarians don't swarm. There is no option to turn down the Barbarians at all.

I like the game, but this is making it very un-fun. My usual build queue is warrior warrior (maybe 3rd warrior) obelisk worker militaryunit militaryunit Settler

That's leaving it an awful long time before you build your first settler, which is probably weakening you quite a bit. As Artanis pointed out, the obelisk is basically a waste of time.

When I play, my first three units are almost invariably warrior, settler, worker, with the order being dependent on how I feel, what the initial map looks like, and what food/production is available to the capital. I may even build the settler first. Occasionally I'll part build a 2nd warrior just to give my capital time to reach size 2, then swap to settler/worker. You might find that approach gets you stronger more quickly so you can cope with the barbs better.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

First: you don't need an Obelisk in your capital. Unless you're going for a Culture win, in which case it might help (I never go for Cultural, so I don't know one way or the other).

I often go for cultural, and I'd say, obelisks are still useless in your capital. I would guess a typical obelisk in its entire lifetime might give you 50 culture points before it goes obsolete. If you are going for a culture win, then your three chosen culture cities might easily be giving you 300-400 culture *per turn* towards the end of the game. The contribution from the obelisk is negligible next to that.

The only use I've ever found for obelisks are if you urgently need the 10 culture to expand a city's borders to size 2 as soon as possible (eg. to get some resource into your civ), and there's no other way to do it quickly enough [eg. library would take too long to build, and there's no chance of spreading a religion there]

 

[Willem]

When I play, my first three units are almost invariably warrior, settler, worker, with the order being dependent on how I feel, what the initial map looks like, and what food/production is available to the capital.

Mine are Warrior, Settler, Archer. Once that Archer is in place, I feel fairly certain that my city is secure for quite sometime, as not even a barb Axeman can dislodge him. Sometimes they do get lucky though so later on I might add another Archer just in case, if not then an Axeman. After awhile I place a few more Archers in the hills around my borders, then I don't have to much of a barbarian problem any more. Only the occasional one gets through, usually coming from a new direction that I don't have guarded yet.

 

[Willem]

The only use I've ever found for obelisks are if you urgently need the 10 culture to expand a city's borders to size 2 as soon as possible (eg. to get some resource into your civ), and there's no other way to do it quickly enough [eg. library would take too long to build, and there's no chance of spreading a religion there]

It's also useful if you're trying to secure your border or a chokepoint. That's usually what I use them for. I build my frontier cities first, leaving the inner city spots until later. So they come in handy in order to block the AI from advancing in behind them. Once the border is closed, all the land between my capital and frontier is secure and I can develop it whenever I want, or at least whenever I can afford to.

 

[Gaizokubanou]

Larger the map size, crazier the barbs get from the way I see it. Perhaps reducing the map size a little might help.

 

[GenocideBringer]

Some hints for dealing with barbarians:

1) Build troops here and there. Don't make the whole early game focus military, but just make sure that you always have a few troops standing by.

2) Try and station your troops outside your borders to reduce fog of war, with a couple inside maybe incase they get through somehow, and place them on defensive terrain (forested hill is ideal). If you wait for them to come to your city, they will pillage everything in their way first.

3) Get a worker pretty early. If you focus entirely on military, then you will be screwed later in the game, plus your city will not be as well prepared to build stuff against barbs since it's not improved.

 

[Krupo]

Question: do the Obelisks stop generating culture when they're obsolete?

Because Monasteries continue producing missionaries when they're obsolete, you just can't build more of them... [Krupo fires up Civ 4]

Ah... Obelisks don't appear in my 1900AD+ cities, but the monasteries are still producing culture. Interesting. I wonder if this has anything to do with my construction of Stonehenge, or if this "obselsence effect" applies to all obelisks?

Can someone check this please?

 

[aaronflavor]

Question: do the Obelisks stop generating culture when they're obsolete?

See http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=154361 for some discussion on this. Skip to the end for the conclusions.

 

[sydhe]

I had good luck with barbarians in my last game. I played the snaky continents option in the archipelago setting. It cut down on the number of directions the barbarians came from. It also helped that Louis XIV was on the other end of the continent with a one-square wide bridge joining us, so he got a lot of barbarians.

 

[Abdomination]

On a similar note, I've seen screenshots from people's games where they've been able to talk to barbarians the same way you would talk to any other leader. And their leader is none other than Sid Meier himself...

So how have they managed to do this then? Can you enter into negotations with barbarians?

Could you link these screenshots, because I am amazed by this

 

[Sahkuhnder]

Could you link these screenshots, because I am amazed by this

Here is the Sid picture.