Monarch Raging Barbs

[VoiceOfUnreason]

OK, I've been getting my head handed to me fairly regularly of late, so maybe it's time to go to the well.

How does one successfully deal with Raging Barbs when dropped into the middle of a continent?

My habit of late is to quickstart into a new vanilla continents map, random leader, with raging barbs enabled. And all my games are beginning to look the same. Traits become completely irrelevent, terrain almost so - instead, each game is "if you can research a ancient war tech at once, try it. Otherwise, grab archery, and forget about building any workers for the next couple thousand years."

Worker techs? Are you kidding me?

The closest I've had to a successful open start included popping three scouts from huts, so I got a decent fog radius broken out. The horses were too far away, so I dropped a settler near by, and things started looking up... until I discovered that my capital had been razed (the archer wasn't quite as secure as I thought he was).

Big difference between archer on a hill, and archer not on a hill. Right - got to remember that.

Am I supposed to play this as an OCC until the barbarians settle down and raise families?

 

[AncientPlayer]

In a case like that there's only one priority: Get the Great Wall!

 

[Lucky Charms]

I like to tech immediately to Archery, make 5 or 6 archers to secure your lands, and then focus on advancing and expanding. As Ancient Player said, the Great Wall will be a massive aid to your needs.

 

[DevilJin]

You can't rely on the great wall all the time. If your leader isn't industrious and you don't have stone nearby, trying to build it will be a gamble, and a huge risk in monarch levels or above. So try to find horses and bronze as fast as you can .If you have nearby, so you can handle barbs very fine.If not, research Archery

 

[Meatbuster]

Depends. If I have Bronze, I would chop a second city to be able to build more axemen faster. I usually start building a settler (in Raging) after getting 2 axemen.

If not, I would tech to archery and build warriors nonstop in both cities until I get archers. Then make a third city and make sure each has 3 archers at least, while using the warriors as sacrificial fog-busters.

Sometimes it can't be helped if they get Axes before we get Chariots or our own Axes. I tend to restart a lot in Raging Barbs on Marathon speed anyway, at Prince or higher.