Question about barbs and notification

[michmbk]

New to the forums, sorry if this has been asked before. Got the game three weeks ago (my first intro to the Civ series!). I play warlords, and am currently on prince. I hate reloading, because I feel like it's cheating, but last night had to do it. I had a border city with only one warrior protecting it, but with roads, could easily get others there if needed in 2 turns. My cultural protection was pretty good, so it would take a barb three turns from the border to get to the city. I was building a theatre (10 or so turns) and wasn't paying close attention to the city.

All of a sudden, I see a barb one tile away from that city - I can't get the warrior any help for 2 turns, and didn't have any ability to upgrade, so I ended up losing the city, which then got razed.

I'm used to always seeing the message in red on the event log about the enemy being spotted near the city, and I rely on those messages, because I don't want to have to constantly scroll through the entire area around my cities to see if a barb is getting close. I checked the event log, and sure enough - it was missing - there were no notifications.

I wondered if this has happened to anyone else - the event notifications seem to usually work ok, so maybe it was a glitch, but a frustrating one nonetheless, since it set me back quite a bit with respect to that city.

 

[Refar]

Happens to me simetimes. Tho i am pretty sure, it's just me missing out the message sometimes...

 

[URSExelcior]

The message is pretty subtle especially when several GP are born, wonders are completed, wars are declared. etc on the same turn. There's a way around it tho. Go to the in-game menu, Options, Game, and check "Show Enemy Moves". You screen will go to an enemy every time they enter your line of sight.

 

[Bleys]

What is the "sight radius" of your cultural borders? Is it consistent or terrain driven? Its possible a "shaded" tile spawned a barb, that barb was 1 tile from your "inner corner" thing thats just 1 tile from your city. The whole concept of barbs spawning is kind of FUBAR anyway, but since there arent many better ways to do it, I guess we live with it.

I do know I have had many a 1-tile "shadow" on peninsulas or between 2 cities spawn barbs.

 

[michmbk]

my borders extended three tiles from my city, so even if they spawned one tile outside the border, it took them 3 moves to get to one tile away - would have thought I'd get one notification of that though. Sounds like the options suggestion might be my answer.