more questions for the experts: barbarians

[chieflookout]

I'm playing on raging hordes (which I don't usually because they are annoying) and was wondering, will barbarians which are present when the game ends have any negative effect on score? Also, I had read that barbarians will not appear on any worked square, so I roaded every square on every continent, but those d--- barbarian partisans keep appearing anyway; do you have to have cities that use every square on a continent before they will stop coming? I'm not so much worried about them overwhelming a city as I am that they tear up roads as they move in, and its a pain to have to go back and rebuild them.

 

[Magic_gorter]

As far as I know any barbarian left will not have negative effect on you're score. You get a penalty or bonus at the start of the game (penalty when barbarian level is low and bonus when barbarian level is high).

In which situation the barbarians will not come I'm not sure. Maybe one of the more experienced players now this better. I think indeed that they will not come when all continent tiles are covered with citysquares. But if they come with a ship they still can come to you're continent.

 

[Peaster]

Magic G is right - no effect on the score.

There is a famous "barbarian paper" by Kull, I think, in the GL of Apolyton that might tell you about their appearances.

I don't recall them appearing on worked squares in my games. But sometimes it's hard to know exactly where they started. They can wander around for many turns before you see them on your map. So, maybe yours came from a boat, or even from an old hut?

 

[ElephantU]

Neither barb units nor cities detract from your ending score - only pollution squares do that. You can get a "bonus" from the Raging Hordes setting (and does that increase at Raging+1/2/3? I don't know).

Someone at Apolyton believed that the "spontaneous uprisings" could be eliminated for a continent by roading all land tiles, and the few times I've tried that it has seemed to work, at least the tiles I have explored. I also suspected uprisings only happened on "clear" tiles (Grass, Plains, Tundra, Desert) and not on "rough" tiles (Forest, Hills, Mtns, Jungle, Swamp, Glacier). I don't know anyone who has exhaustively checked that out - that's the kind of thing Samson used to get into, but he's not around any more. It would require setting up several "test" games with high Barb settings, revealing the map and analyzing exactly where they appeared versus terrain and improvements. A bit of that was done way back for the Barb Paper Peaster mentions (Keenan, not Kull), but not enough attention was paid to nailing down the uprisings issues. One thing we know is they do not begin appearing until the 8th turn after the game start (on a normal non-scenario game), and we also know the Barb Pirates disappear after MobWar is discovered by anyone. Keenan's paper details which tech discoveries trigger changes in what type of Barb appears, which is useful early on to let you know someone has discovered Iron or PolyTheism.

 

[chieflookout]

Thank you, elephant, for all your replies. Also, if anyone is interested, the game I've been playing is chieftain (trying some theories), large land mass, 7 civs, raging hordes, restart conquered enemies. Barbarian uprisings appeared where I had roads (I am absolutely sure that I had roaded every tile on an island, I began using the grids to check, and they still appeared), and usually, for me, they started to spread out from a single forest tile. Not always, mind you, but usually. Also, there are some places that are uninhabited and roaded that they avoid, and they like to reappear in the same place over and over, even after I have reroaded it, so I just quit, and fortified a line of tanks to block them off (the partisans won't attack my fortified units, they just try to go around). They also usually appear on the end part of an island, usually a peninsula I haven't reached with cities yet. If anyone cares about experimenting with barbarians, I hope this helps.

 

[ElephantU]

I had also noticed that uprisings tended to happen repeatedly on the same tile, and found that fortifying a unit on that tile will suppress it. Note that they cannot happen within a city radius so covering your island with overlapping cities will eliminate them, but a few of those cities may be on lousy terrain. Ah well, that's what Engineers are for...

 

[Terrapin]

While we are on the topic of barbarians, how do you get the leaders to separate from the combat units? I have only ever seen the leaders standing alone after their troops were killed attacking a city. Since I keep minimal or no troops in my cities, my defense is based on not letting the barbs get into my city radii. But Starlifter, in his power democracy thread, described sending horses out to 'collect' barbarian scalps for the gold. That hardly seems like a strategy worth emulating if the leaders only ever stand alone after attacking someone.

 

[Magic_gorter]

What might work is to have a defensive strong unit next to the stack with the barbarian leader. If the other unit attacks it will lose most of the time. Then you can kill the leader for the extra money.

 

[Ace]

That works, but at diety level, you need a vet phanlax fortified in your city to stop a barb archer. Than your offensive unit, a horse or chariot can go after the leader.

In my experience, the only way to get the leader alone, is to let the barbs attack you and lose, than the leader runs. I have pretty much given up on this because it is much more efficient to just kill the barbs before they can attack you, especially at the diety level, because of the combat multiplier the barbs get. At King and lower levels, letting the barbs attack works very well because of that same, reduced multiplier, that the barbs get.

 

[Peaster]

Yep, I use that trick sometimes, too, especially with RagingH. I try to fortify the phalanx on a mountain between the barbs and my city, so there's not much risk. I also try to get a horseman behind the stack ASAP, to catch the leader before it runs away. But this takes a lot of planning, and the AI is not 100% predictable, so sometimes I don't bother.

 

[simpeter]

Regarding "rough" vs. "clear" tiles: I've had Barbs spawn off a hill before. I remember it well as I was playing Barabarian Wrath level, so i got to watch 99 of them swarm out over multiple turns. I managed to survive it, losing only 3 cities or so, but I sure as hell got a unit on that hill as soon as i could.

 

[Bestbank Tiger]

Neither barb units nor cities detract from your ending score - only pollution squares do that. You can get a "bonus" from the Raging Hordes setting (and does that increase at Raging+1/2/3? I don't know).

Yep, I experimented once...you can add Barb Wrath and even higher levels and keep getting the higher bonus (even though Hordes+1 appears to be the largest uprising possible). Not sure what the limit is.