Quelling the Raging Hordes?

[SomeGuyNamedRob]

I don't get it.

I seem to be getting this problem once I pass the 500 AD mark...

I've searched every square of the map, taken care of every hut to be found, so where are these raging hordes of barbarians/guerillas still coming from? Is there any way to completely wipe them out that I haven't thought of? Can one succssfully destroy the barbarians when set to "Raging Hordes?"

 

[starlifter]

Hey Rob,

In a word..... nope. Seaborne barbs won't go away until after Mobile Warfare, and land barbs will always be possible as long as there areas of land that are "unsettled". So near the end of teh game, you can prevent any barbs by settling all land. And they you won't need defenders, assuming you hac the AI contained.

PS, Barbs do not need to pop out of huts.... they appear at random, on land and at sea. But not in "civilized" land aras, though.

 

[SomeGuyNamedRob]

Originally posted by starlifter
Hey Rob,

In a word..... nope. Seaborne barbs won't go away until after Mobile Warfare, and land barbs will always be possible as long as there areas of land that are "unsettled". So near the end of teh game, you can prevent any barbs by settling all land. And they you won't need defenders, assuming you hac the AI contained.

PS, Barbs do not need to pop out of huts.... they appear at random, on land and at sea. But not in "civilized" land aras, though.

So a single city on each land mass is all that's needed to quell the raging hordes?

 

[.:KNAS:.]

hmm... depends on the size of the island, but the more cities the less chance of them apearing, the barbs aint just gonna show up next to ur cities, theyll start a few squares out, maybe 5 at the least. And theyll only appear on island where they are either ur cities or AI cities on

 

[Sodak]

Originally posted by SomeGuyNamedRob
So a single city on each land mass is all that's needed to quell the raging hordes?

No, he means ALL land - as in there are no tiles outside of city radii. Not likely to happen, in other words.

 

[duke o' york]

Basically, on levels higher than "villages only", barbarians will appear in any unsettled or unimproved land. Settled land is that land within your city radius - you will never, ever get barbs appearing in one of your city's squares, nor will they come out of a hut in a city radius. Improved land simply means that you have put a road or irrigation, etc on it. The way I avoid barbs in my territory in the later game when I no longer need 150g bonuses is to road it all with my army of engineers. This allows me a minimal standing army, with all colonies and other cities protected normally. Unfortunately, I have had a couple of occasions when my engineers were building roads in the last few squares of the continent and the AI chose to have an uprising then. In the late game, uprisings can be up to 50 or so troops on raging hordes and my poor engineers were massacred by tonnes of fanatics and artillery. Well, not massacred, but I lost far too many and the temptation to nuke the next bunch that came along when I had the tech was very strong. The road net is very useful, especially if you take the wrong direction on your rails and send a unit onto a forest. This could lose you a wonder if the unit was a freight, but with a road on all squares then you can direct it back to the rails and continue to the city.

 

[Old n Slow]

A couple of other observations --

Empty islands/continents don’t seem so attractive to barbs; yet build one city on the rock & soon they’ll show up ready to visit.

At the poles, those that show from a hut seem to vanish right away.

But I do feel sympathies with the barb haters -- in the current GOTM, I had a trireme with a dip on board (purpose was to troll for barbs!) and sure enough just after I clicked the end of my move along comes a caravel & sinks my laden boat.


Maybe these guys are smarter than we think they are.

 

[Marlos]

Originally posted by Sodak
No, he means ALL land - as in there are no tiles outside of city radii. Not likely to happen, in other words.

If you play the way I do, the expand-at-all-costs-all-of-the-time-until-there-is-no-land-left-to-settle method, the barbarians only bother your neighbors.

 

[ArmOrAttAk]

Expanding onto mountains, or jungle terrain is more trouble than it's worth. I only go there when my engineers are finished with the rest, maybe you play all grassland maps <shrug>

 

[Marlos]

Originally posted by ArmOrAttAk
Expanding onto mountains, or jungle terrain is more trouble than it's worth. I only go there when my engineers are finished with the rest, maybe you play all grassland maps <shrug>

No sir, I play random maps 99% of the time. Remember, with engineers, anything can be made into grassland! You can get some incredibly productive cities out of the most uninhabitable land in the world!

 

[starlifter]

Expanding onto mountains, or jungle terrain is more trouble than it's worth.

Mountains are not too bad, esp. after RR. The only real difference in a developed mountain and a developed forest, is that the forest produces one more food than a mountain. If you put an airfield on a mountain, then there is zero net difference in a mountain and a forest (assuming both are defeloped).

Jungles and swamps are nice terrain in a democracy. They don't even slow down city growth when you build on them in mad to late game democracies... pump them up to size 3 on the foinding day, and let them grow by Rep/Dem celebration.
It only takes 8 days for an engineer to irrigate jungles and swamps .

Transforming mountains, however, is a long-term pain. 30 days just to get them to a hill, then 20 more days to kill the hill. But in a Democracy, you can have hoards of engineers for almost no net expense if you are careful, and have the time.

But in a fast game, I do avoid large sections of Mountains and difficult terrain, like the Himalayas for example.