Man the Barbarian code is laaaammmeee...

[gettingfat]

I've never built more than 1 Scout, a half dozen Warriors, and a half dozen Axes, and I've dealt with the Barbs just fine.


I usually "skip over" favorite building locations, and built at the next good location. Later on, when my finances can handle it, I backfill and put a city at that good spot I skipped.

Wodan

When you can get 13 units built including half dozen axes and a scout, definitely you will be fine. It mean that you are connected to copper, have bronze work, hunting and wheels, and at least a couple of workers to build the road and mine the copper.

The problem is, in a panagea game at higher difficulty settings, unless you are lucky to start at the border and has a clear choke point. Building this type of military forces will slow your expansion, which mean you will see AI civs becoming your lovely close neighbours very soon. A lot of time it means your copper that is 12 tiles away from your start location will be taken. The unit maintainence will slow your research. So you will take forever to crawl to that iron working tech.

This is why some posters believe it limits the options for game starting. People claim the use of cottage spamming in emperor and I really want to see how it is done. The CS slingshot? Forget about it. And definitely you can forget about religion as well.

I like some barbarian activity. It keeps me play honest, but I feel the game designer has overdone it. But it's only my personal opionion.

 

[Willem]

Fortifying an archer on a plains bronze is suicide and fortifying an archer on an adjacent forested hill only causes the barb to bypass the defender to plunder the mine.

You need to be sending your Archers further out, beyond your borders. Yes, if they make it as far as city area, they quite often will make a beeline for your improvements. But if you have an Archer out in the wilds to intercept them before they reach your territory, they will invariably attack that unit. And if it is properly fortified, it will turn out to be a suicide mission an the Barbs will never reach your territory.

This is standard procedure in my games and it works well. In fact, once I find a city I'll place an Archer in the closest Hill I can find, forested or not, to try and intercept them as they're coming out. Even if that means placing them right beside the city. That's actually the best way of control them, until you can muster the forces to destroy the city.

 

[drjones]

I think there is a good deal of randomness involved in barb density. I have played tons of games through the ancient period and on the exact same settings I sometimes get a map that has 1-2 pop every turn and some where I only see 1 or 2.

I agree that barbs are a BONUS not a negative. Free cities? Free xp? Thanks! Not to mention the cities they found are just holding space for you from the AI while you build your infastructure up to be able to handle the expansion.

The only real negatives are trying to defend improvements that are on plains with no defence bonus where 2-3 units a turn attacking are hard to beat and the ease with which the AI civs defeat barbs due to their cheats.

I played with raging turned on for a while just for the extra xp however I found as I played at higher difficulty/map size it was just too crazy. Losing your capitol because 4 warriors closed in on turn 13 sucks a bit too much.

-drjones

 

[Wodan]

When you can get 13 units built including half dozen axes and a scout, definitely you will be fine. It mean that you are connected to copper, have bronze work, hunting and wheels, and at least a couple of workers to build the road and mine the copper.

The problem is, in a panagea game at higher difficulty settings, unless you are lucky to start at the border and has a clear choke point. Building this type of military forces will slow your expansion, which mean you will see AI civs becoming your lovely close neighbours very soon. A lot of time it means your copper that is 12 tiles away from your start location will be taken. The unit maintainence will slow your research. So you will take forever to crawl to that iron working tech.

You might look again at my list. Fully half of my "13 units" were Axes or Swords.

Personally I draw a line between Warriors/Archers and Axes/Swords. There's a distinct power jump there. Defensively, a warrior can take other warriors or archiers, with the right promotions and/or when fortified in the forest/hill. However, an Axe or Sword will hand him his lunch.

So, don't say that I suggested building 13 units right off the bat. A half dozen is what I suggested. Then, you're fine until you're ready for the 2nd level.

And at that point, it depends on whether you have ready cash, or not. If you're spamming, then you probably do, in which case you can upgrade some of those warriors to Axes or Swords, no problem. If you're not, then either keep the warriors (as inner-empire garrisons) or disband them, and build new Axes/Swords.

Either way, I guess I'm saying I simply don't see it as limiting one's strategic options. Yes, you have to build some military. Get over it.

All this said, I personally agree that the Barb-spawning algorithm is slightly wacked. Either it needs a governor (by that I mean a built-in feedback that cuts it back when there is a ton of empty space in the world) or some other change. For example, I wouldn't have a problem that, if a majority of the world is still unclaimed, Barbs establish their own little empires, in advance of where they might on other maps. This would be an entirely different thing from Barbs which keep spawning invaders (instead of starting Barb cities).

Wodan

 

[Wardog]

I liked to have barbarians in my games since Civ 2, but in Civ 4 I think they exaggerated. Sometimes there is an entire army of barbarians in the screen, and it gets boring when fighting barbarians becomes your main concern in the game. That's why I decided to turn them off.

 

[Milan's Warrior]

This is totally ****ing gay.

2 anti-gay slurs in 3 posts

 

[neriana]

I would like to be able to adjust barbarians like in Civ 2. I like having barbarians, but I usually feel like they're "raging" in Civ 4, especially after the latest patch. It is significantly worse on pangaea maps; I don't even want to play pangaea maps any more because of that. Yes, they train you and your units well, but I would rather play Civ, not Beat Back the Barbarian Hordes. My last game was so ridiculous I gave it up and rolled an island map. There were CONSTANT waves of them; if there was one square I couldn't see, out would pop barbarians. It just gets dull.

 

[Caprice]

I think it is funny.... with all the talk about putting out sentry units so the barbs will suicide into them... I haven't had much sucess with suicide sentrys as the barbs will pass them up to head toward my cities (even if they are as far as ten tiles away).

Definetly a challenege. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed, but I figure that is my fault more than the game, I mean, I can't blame the barbs for kicking my arse if I'm not doing well enough. LOL

 

[Willem]

I think it is funny.... with all the talk about putting out sentry units so the barbs will suicide into them... I haven't had much sucess with suicide sentrys as the barbs will pass them up to head toward my cities (even if they are as far as ten tiles away).

You have to place them in the path they're taking to your cities. If the sentries are a few squares away they'll probably be ignored, but if the Barbs come up adjacent to them, at least 90% of the time they'll attack the sentry. The key is in finding the right location to stick them. The best place is right inside their city boundaries, so as soon as the Barbs spawn they attack, and never even leave their city area. It works well for me at any rate, it at least buys me time until I can build the troops I'll need to destroy the city outright.

 

[aaronflavor]

I play on noble. The only time I have trouble with barbarians is when my cities become spread out, either due to trying to grab really great spots, or rushing another Civ's cities earily on. In these cases, things can really go downhill fast, as some cities may not have any culture or significant production--and are too far away for other cities to protect it. This problem is significantly aggrevated by not having access to copper.

It might be my imagination, but it seems as if more barbarians show up precisely when my cities are vulnerable.

I think slavery is the solution here. Even if you only have Archery, with slavery you should be able to hold your own against nearly any suprise barbarian attack. As slavery isn't really much good for anything else, and is only really used earily game, I suspect slavery was intended to be used for this purpose. Draft would be even better, but usually by the time you get Nationhood you don't have barbarian problems anymore.

A handful of games ago, when I was much more a beginner, I primarily had problems when I didn't build any significant military at all. You simply can't do this in Civ. Even if the barbarians don't get you, the other civilizations will. Apparently, they can see your "power," and if your power gets too low, they will invade, regardless of how friendly you or they are. It is absolutely essential to maintain a credible defensive force at all times, even if you're aiming for a cultural victory.

 

[neriana]

The problem for me is not that barbarians cause me many problems. I have a defensive force, I can go after them and kill them before they do too much damage. The problem is that on a large continent, especially on slower-speed games, ALL I feel like I'm doing for three millenia is fighting barbarians. It's completely boring.

Hopefully they'll add more barbarian settings in the next patch. Till then, it's islands or the no barbarian setting for me.

 

[shackleton]

Couple of things you can do for easier barbarians:

i) Turn pillaging off by editing the XML. This means you only have to defend your cities. Couple of archers in each city makes the city invulnerable to attack, because they build up promotions fast.
ii) Increase the XP limit you can get from barbarians. This makes them less of a pain because you're sort of getting something from them.
iii) Increase the time until barbarians begin to spawn, giving you time to rush a couple of techs other than military ones.
iv) Increase the time until barbarian cities begin to spawn. Barbarian cities are what produce the waves of units. Until they start building cities, they're pretty easy to handle.
v) Keep your score down. Believe that barbs tend to attack the player with the highest score, so if you're at the top expect barbarians to make a beeline for you.

On a bit of a sidenote.. I really don't like switching off pillaging because it's a nice aspect of warfare. However, I just cannot get the knack of defending my borders. I don't want to have to micromanage my defences. Although half the time the barbs will attack my unit on the border, the other half they'll walk right past it. Furthermore, often you have an awful lot of border to defend vs. a small number of cities. For example, early on (when barbs are appearing) say you have 2 cities... look at how much space you have to defend. You need a hell of a lot of units if you don't want to be micromanaging your defences.

I also tried just defending key improvements, such as bronze. Barbs tend to make a beeline for the bronze mine. But they still pillage everything else en route, so that doesn't work either.

So any tips for that would be great. Been thinking about fort mods, whether that would solve the problem, but afaik nobody figured out how to add a zone of control to forts yet?

 

[SUNREGENT]

I have had this problem, especially if my civilization is small and has a good number of rich resources, like gold or silk. Then it looks like the barb come out of everywhere. They do help get your units trained and thier city are almost always in great locations.

 

[al_thor]

Hooked-up resources (horse, iron, bronze) are DEFNITELY a magnet to the barbs. Even luxies are magnets. At times, it can be VERY tough to defend not only the resource itself, but the connecting roads as well. Still, an archer and a couple of axe can handle 'normal' (not raging) barbs, and the resource actually HELPS you because now you KNOW where they are going to attack.

If the resource is on a hill, give the archer Hills defense upgrade(s). If on flat ground, give him the Strength and Extra First Strike upgrades. Give your axe's the Cover upgrade, and/or the Melee upgade. Tell the barbs to "Bring it".

 

[aaronflavor]

At times, it can be VERY tough to defend not only the resource itself, but the connecting roads as well.

Have you ever had a barbarian pillage a road without first pillaging an improvement of some sort? I've never seen this. Generally they go straight for an improved resource, their favorite being copper or iron--or a weakly-defended city.

In a recent game, I had the interesting experience of barbarian axemen appearing from the polar region of my continent rather late in the earily game, after 1AD. But they wouldn't attack anything; They'd just wander around on the edge of the fog of war, and disappear after a while. I didn't have any significantly superior units, but I was in conquering mode, so I had a lot of them.

 

[shackleton]

"Have you ever had a barbarian pillage a road without first pillaging an improvement of some sort?"

Yes One of my early attempts at non-micromanaged barb defence was to have a unit on the resource itself, which in this case was bronze. City. 1 tile of road. Bronze mine. Usually the barbs would attack the city or the mine, but sometimes they would go for the bronze.

Right now I'm experimenting with pillaging off for all except for horse types (cavalry etc) because barbs tend to be axemen, archers, warriors and only very rarely horses. I think this also works with the AI cos the AI uses horsey types to pillage your lands.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Barbarians are ruining my games. I am currently playing on Warlord, after the Barbarians on Noble kept me on defense until the AI had squatted cities all around me.

I got a choice city on coast (in the corner of the map) on a Warlord Huge Continents Agg-AI non-Raging Marathon game. I have two cities, the AI each have 3-5 cities, there are no Barbarian cities on my continent. My cities even have a wall of mountains on the inland side... yet I am getting a steady stream of 2-3 barbarians/turn. It takes me an average of 4 turns to produce a new unit... the math is pretty easy from there.
So, I popped open WorldBuilder, and lo and behold, the Barbarians don't bother the AI... and this is on Warlord. There are NO barbarian cities and over 50% of the Barbarians on the map are headed for me... the others are just too far away, apparently busy not bothering the AI. Barbarians specifically targeting only the player just gives the AI time to squat the entire map.
The supposition that Noble is a level playing field must assume Barbarians are turned off. I would like an option for "Barbarian Animals Only" or give the Barbarians all "Barbarian Animal AI".

 

[Wodan]

It's possible the Barbs aren't bothering the AI because the AI have stronger military than you.

Wodan

 

[snepp]

Archery tech + a couple hills on your borders > Barbarians

 

[Willem]

It's possible the Barbs aren't bothering the AI because the AI have stronger military than you.

Wodan

No, he's probably just the nearest target. Barbs will go after whoever is closest. I certainly haven't seen any indication that they favour the human player. In fact in one game, I got a report that Thebes had fallen to the Barbarians.