Raging Barbarians

How is it cheating, it just make you prioritize making the great wall over something else. If you dont make it you can get screwed.

In MP (Multi-Player) it's not, because everyone is aware of the conditions.
In SP (Single Player) if the AI doesn't know, you get a huge advantage.

Welcome to the Forums Bonescorpion. :beer:
 
If you intentionally pick raging barbs and always build the great wall, you're stacking the game in your favor

Nonsense!

If you use the Worldbuilder to get the Great Wall for free, that is stacking the deck.

But making intelligent strategic decisions about what to build is merely playing the game. The AI is welcome to do the same, and race to the Great Wall. I am keeping nothing secret from the AI!

The phrase "stack the deck" implies cheating. This is more like memorizing the probability tables for poker... it gives a concrete advantage, but it is appropriately on the game board and your opponents should be neutralizing your advantage by doing likewise. You can't neutralize a stacked deck, right?

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Blame the devs for a weak AI, don't call me a cheater!
 
I have to admit I am a great wall fan, especially on raging barbs and having only recently moved to Monarch I can live with the guilt of building it!

It also has disadvantages in that you sacrafice lots of early military to build it and also those first 1-2 great spies are great but after that it gets dull, even with other wonders in the city I had 5 in one game and it probably was overall more of a disadvantage than advantage. I should have controlled my specialists better I know but sometimes you can't stop them. I think as I am guilty of relying on the great wall a bit, to steal techs at least as much as fight the barbs, I end up weak militarily early on and then get trounced as my power graph is not good, time to break the habbit I guess....
 
The AI is welcome to do the same, and race to the Great Wall.

unfortunately the AI doesn't recognize the added value of the GW with that option on and won't do anything more than it usually does to rush it. So it makes no sense to say the AI can do it, when you already know it won't.
 
The AI is welcome to do the same, and race to the Great Wall.

unfortunately the AI doesn't recognize the added value of the GW with that option on and won't do anything more than it usually does to rush it. So it makes no sense to say the AI can do it, when you already know it won't.

This is only partly true. While the AI does not recognize ADDED value, it certainly values GW high enough normally. If there are any civs on the map who like to build wonders, or at least are not adverse to it, you have a high chance of being beaten to. I've seen it numerous times built so early that the civ had to either beeline to masonry from the start (or popped it from a hut). Hammurabi in particular seems addicted to it, but he is certainly not the only one who goes after GW.

On the topic of raging barbarians, what exactly is the difference from normal ones. Do they just appear more often? I'm considering switching the option on because about a third of the games feel like raging barbs are on anyway.
 
Eh ... Am I missing something here? Some seems to make the Great Wall sound easy. In Beyond the Sword doesn't it require you to have 6 Walls before you can build the Great Wall? That means 6 cities and having that before the AI (Noble and up) is no small feat.

Honestly I gave up on that requirements since having 6 cities in a timely manner to get the Great Wall cost me more than the benefit it brings, 6 cities means my production and research can really take a hit due to maintenance cost, and I have to protect 6 cities before the GW up, and who know, if the AI (civilization) decides to attack me during this time, I'm pretty much death.


I always find having a group of mobile Axeman is a much more efficient way to deal with Babarian, unless someone can let me in to their secret of having 6 cities early. To those who can, I say good kudos to you guy, it's no cheating if you have that level of management skill.
 
Wherever did you get the idea that you need 6 walls? It reminds me of CIV2, though I'm no longer sure if the requirement was so high even than.
 
Eh ... Am I missing something here? Some seems to make the Great Wall sound easy. In Beyond the Sword doesn't it require you to have 6 Walls before you can build the Great Wall? ...

No city walls are required to build the Great Wall. Having quarried stone connected to a city does build it 50% faster.

Welcome to the Forums satthukaraoke. :beer:
 
Wherever did you get the idea that you need 6 walls? It reminds me of CIV2, though I'm no longer sure if the requirement was so high even than.


Eh ... because it says so? Could be a Next War thing though, I remember when I played the original Civ4 I always get the GW up, but ever since I got BtS I always play Next War as far as I remember, and for some reason I never got the option build the GW. I open the city window and I saw the icon there, grayed out, with a red line saying "requires 6 Wall". And I was just like "screw this".


Even then, like I said, I have always found having 2 or 3 mobile Axeman much more effective than the GW, back in the time I got those, it was not really to keep our Barb, I got it because ... well, you know, it looks cool. :lol:


Welcome to the Forums satthukaraoke. :beer:

Thanks, you just make me feel a little warm inside. :blush:

I have been playing the game for years and for some miracle hold myself on Noble. I recently discorver Civfanatic and spent the last few days reading the material and guide on here, good stuffs. :king:
 
Playing with raging barbarians and 18 civilizaitons, noble difficulty, on a 279 x 93 map, it seems that the raging barbarians generally tend to wipe out 3-5 players. It you're on a small or medium-sized continent with four-five other players, you can hardly feel the presence of the barbarians, while if you're isolated anyhow, it can be very expensive to counter.

Raging barbarians always limit the AI players greatly, which makes for a slower game.

I have had hopeless situations where I quite simply didn't have access to any horse, copper or iron. That meant that I had to produce tons of archers to have any chance to protect my improvements, but the barbarians were too many for my archers that were often upgraded with city-defence. I spread myself too thin in a stubborn attempt to develop, and they ended up taking my capital one turn before I could reinforce it, taking just three turns to reach it with a stack of seven units.
 
So it makes no sense to say the AI can do it, when you already know it won't.

I find it makes at least enough sense to lead me to the concluding statement of the post to which you are replying.

I understand that the AI will fail to race me to the GW despite starting conditions which should suggest the GW had value. We agree on the empirics of the situation, but not where the blame lies.
 
I've seen it numerous times built so early that the civ had to either beeline to masonry from the start (or popped it from a hut). Hammurabi in particular seems addicted to it, but he is certainly not the only one who goes after GW.

Bismarck beat me to the GW recently when I was trying my darnedest for it. I think it was ridiculously early like turn 120 in a Marathon game. I agree, though, that it's very rare when the AI really gives you a real race to the GW. All the planets have to line up just right.
 
The AI is welcome to do the same, and race to the Great Wall.

unfortunately the AI doesn't recognize the added value of the GW with that option on and won't do anything more than it usually does to rush it. So it makes no sense to say the AI can do it, when you already know it won't.

The AI doesn't do a lot of things.

This is strategy, nothing more, nothing less.
 
In any game, information = advantage. Card players know this well. As such, the less random you make the game startup, the more advantage you have over the AI.

It is my opinion that a difficulty level is not truly 'mastered' unless the player can win almost all the time under completely random conditions:
Random world size
Random world type (shuffle map or a mod random map script)
Random leader
Random personalities
Random barbs
Random climate
Random shoreline

The more settings the player picks, the more he/she is stacking the game in his/her favor since that player enters the game knowing some of the parameters.

with Random Barbs, you might have raging, you might not, so you truly have to make a choice whether or not to prioritize the Great Wall. If you intentionally set Raging Barbs, you know the Great Wall has a high value and should be prioritized in most cases.

Everyone should play however he/she likes, and I have no problem with that. What annoys me is when people come on these forums and brag about how great they are at some high difficulty level but then you find out that person always customizes the game to his/her favorite settings, favorite leader, favorite traits, and regenerates the map until getting a favorable starting position. Yeah, I could win every hand of poker if I hand pick my opponents, the seating order, and reshuffle my hand until I have four aces.

As such, my opinion on regenerating the map: each regeneration is a game loss and should be counted as such if Civ4 tracked win/loss statistics.
 
Dagta, not sure if your comment about bragging is directed towards me. But I am just play raging barbarians for fun. I didn't build Great Wall and I played on Huge with 7 civs (or 6, don't remember). Barbarians were everywhere, lol. With such a small number of civs in so large a space, the barbarian waves were endless. I am only a prince level player so there is nothing that I can brag about anyways.
 
Dagta, not sure if your comment about bragging is directed towards me. But I am just play raging barbarians for fun. I didn't build Great Wall and I played on Huge with 7 civs (or 6, don't remember). Barbarians were everywhere, lol. With such a small number of civs in so large a space, the barbarian waves were endless. I am only a prince level player so there is nothing that I can brag about anyways.

No, my comment was not directed at you.

I'm not a frequent of these forums and when I am here, I don't usually look at usernames, so I honestly cannot name the people who have given me the bragging impression. I simply recall getting that impression from a few (not many) people on these forums over the years.

I'm not a great player. I very much dislike micromanagement, so I'm content to play on Noble. It's just an observation.

Reminded me a bit of the classic Sega Genesis days when some kids at school would brag about beating a game that had just been released... then I'd find out they used some cheat code to get 99 lives or unlimited ammo or something else. Is it really winning at that level if you set the game up in your favor? That's kindof my point.

Sorry if you thought I was picking on you or if I offended you. Tone of voice doesn't carry over into text. I'm amused by it, not trying to be angry or rude to anyone.
 
It is my opinion that a difficulty level is not truly 'mastered' unless the player can win almost all the time under completely random conditions:


Then i'd guess that 95% of all people who ever played Civ4 would be stuck on Noble, especially with latest patches. Sometimes you get a random start so bad that it's incredibly difficult to beat the AIs, even when they don't have enormous bonuses and cheats.
 
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