Raging Barbarians

[Thandor]

I love fighting barbarians so you can't feel safe in any place, but being attacked by 6-8 groups of barbarians every other turn is not what I was waiting for..

I'm 300 turns into my first game and I have already have 6 generals and I'm unable to move anywhere because I can't produce enough units to keep those barbarians away of my lands..

Is that intended , is there a way to mod the spawn rate to lower it a bit, so I don't need to be fighting them every turn?

 

[Michkov]

Base barbarian spawn rate is increased from the default in the mod. Raging ups that even more, so turning off raging should still give you more barbs than the vanilla game.

 

[Shuikkanen]

Having that crazy many barbs spawning all the time also depends on the amount of unsettled, unmonitored terrain around your borders. Sometimes you get annoying huge landmass of ice up north (or south) which they keep spawning from. Posting recon units or light cavalry on hills, preferably with a sight promotion, helps you dwindle that area and eventually control it completely, but you might need to protect your spotters at first or otherwise the barbs coming from just beyond their field of view will eat them alive and you're back to square one. Also, I think that barbs will not spawn on any tile that is within 2 tiles of your unit, even if your unit can't directly see the tile in question, which helps in forested, dense hill areas. (Although I'm only about 90% certain of this.)

 

[Thandor]

Having that crazy many barbs spawning all the time also depends on the amount of unsettled, unmonitored terrain around your borders. Sometimes you get annoying huge landmass of ice up north (or south) which they keep spawning from. Posting recon units or light cavalry on hills, preferably with a sight promotion, helps you dwindle that area and eventually control it completely, but you might need to protect your spotters at first or otherwise the barbs coming from just beyond their field of view will eat them alive and you're back to square one. Also, I think that barbs will not spawn on any tile that is within 2 tiles of your unit, even if your unit can't directly see the tile in question, which helps in forested, dense hill areas. (Although I'm only about 90% certain of this.)

As far as I know, scouting will only make barbs spawn a bit further from my cities which won`t solve the issue of having more generals than units and having to spend half my units to guard every single improvement I build.

And the AI is having the same problem.. because I keep seeing great generals spawning everywhere

 

[Shuikkanen]

Well, what I really meant by unsettled, unmonitored terrain is that in order to prevent the barbs from spawning, simply have none. Monitor everything. It takes a while to get there, since the newly-spawned barbs will go after your initial scouts, but once you have the terrain covered, that's it. Of course, if the map happens to have a completely uninhabitable tract of land twice the size of Siberia, it can be really frustrating. But otherwise it should be doable, and any inhabitable land will also eventually be claimed by the AI. This is a costly strategy but sometimes the map layout just leaves no choice.

How do you have 6 generals? Have you not spent them to build to traditions and/or doctrines? Also, if you have that many generals, make a barb busting unit. Spend the general on a unit (make sure the unit is alone in its tile so the XP gain isn't spread around) and grant it all the anti-barb promotions (terrain specific promotions, if you have a bunch of forest in hot spot, or something like anti-melee work fine too) plus morale (for quicker movement) and have it patrol your borders. Hell, make six if you can't spend them otherwise.

(I hope you didn't literally mean that you i) have 6 generals AND ii) that you have more generals than military units, meaning you have no more than 5 military units by turn 300. That's... doing it wrong.)

 

[Thandor]

Well, what I really meant by unsettled, unmonitored terrain is that in order to prevent the barbs from spawning, simply have none. Monitor everything. It takes a while to get there, since the newly-spawned barbs will go after your initial scouts, but once you have the terrain covered, that's it. Of course, if the map happens to have a completely uninhabitable tract of land twice the size of Siberia, it can be really frustrating. But otherwise it should be doable, and any inhabitable land will also eventually be claimed by the AI. This is a costly strategy but sometimes the map layout just leaves no choice.

How do you have 6 generals? Have you not spent them to build to traditions and/or doctrines? Also, if you have that many generals, make a barb busting unit. Spend the general on a unit (make sure the unit is alone in its tile so the XP gain isn't spread around) and grant it all the anti-barb promotions (terrain specific promotions, if you have a bunch of forest in hot spot, or something like anti-melee work fine too) plus morale (for quicker movement) and have it patrol your borders. Hell, make six if you can't spend them otherwise.

(I hope you didn't literally mean that you i) have 6 generals AND ii) that you have more generals than military units, meaning you have no more than 5 military units by turn 300. That's... doing it wrong.)

I already have 9 military units and 3 unused generals, 1 attached to an unit and 2 spent to get doctrines, that makes 9 units vs 6 generals, I could train more units, but that will hurt my economy because I won't be able to get new buildings or wonders.. I tried to asemble a group to settle my third city, but they couldn't go too far because they were attacked every other turn giving no time to recover or advance.. So my strategy is fortify and watch my units hold against the horde.. I can't fight them because they come from nowehere.., at least if they were coming from a city I could try to find it and fight them there.., but this is not the case..

I'm playing with moded epic speed to make the game slower, so 300 turns is not that much in terms of production.. I could have produced about 15 military units, but I lost a few with the first barbarian wave..

I have changed min spawn distance to 3 and it seems their numbers have been reduced..

 

[Shuikkanen]

Might really be it's the epic speed that's the real problem here -- what I've understood is that this mod is really balanced to only work in normal speed. I don't even know if the barbarian spawn rate is slowed down for different speeds, and even if it is, the rate might not be comparable to how much the production is slowed down. (Any formula might come from vanilla bts, and unit costs don't scale as you build more in vanilla, so...)

I can't really offer much advice that will help you to move on from this situation. I'm sure it's not impossible to stabilize, but can't tell from just that screenshot. When I play with raging barbs on, I try to make sure that whenever I expand I cut down on the directions barbs can attack me from, and I try not to settle too far. Your 2nd city is poorly positioned. For example, settling it 3 east and 2 south would've left you an easily defendable western front (city square + 1 hilly square) and no fog of war in between your cities. Also, from the information visible, you have maybe too many units in and around the 2nd city, which doesn't seem to be in critical danger as there's not much lost in not improving any of its squares at this point. If all your units there were in the city you could try and pick off any that foolishly end their turn on the plains to the south. Maybe have a couple defend the hill to the east rather than the one south of your borders. But again, I don't know what happened in the previous turns so...

 

[Thandor]

Well I have been able to hold barbarians an earn toons of exp and a few more generals, but the AI doesn't handle them too good.., I have seen some civilizations being destroyed by barbs.. and without barbarian cities becoming new civilizations it hurts the challenge of the game..

I will try to make some tweaks here and there to see if I manage to keep raging barbs on without breaking the game..

 

[Thandor]

Hello again,

I have been tweaking barbarian spawn rate and now they doesn't swarm you every turn, but I still see too many AI factions loose cities and even being destroyed..

Have anyone else noticed this issue?

I think the AI has like 70% vs barbarians and I think that should be enough to hold them for a while..

 

[plasmacannon]

I have had a few games where the Barbarians took out a Civ or two. I usually still continue the game unless the foes adjacent to me were the ones taken out or 3 or more Civs were conquered by Barbarians.
So long as your first few cities are 3-5 tiles from your Capitol and if possible expand towards an ocean, you should be able to start to create an area where Barb's won't appear and it's easy to have land for you to develop and maintain.
I think the AI's promotions are random, or we would see more City3/Hills2 Archers defending Hilled Cities.

 

[2popbulb]

Problem with raging barbs is when they kill some Civs survivors have too much land for settling so they become monsters with 30+ cities. Sometimes they have entire huge continent for themselves and they are in no danger until Navigation is discovered. This is why I no longer play with "Raging barbarians" option enabled.

 

[plasmacannon]

Problem with raging barbs is ... they have entire huge continent for themselves and they are in no danger until Navigation is discovered. This is why I no longer play with "Raging barbarians" option enabled.

I usually use map settings where separate continents don't form, such as Commanding Heights, Pangea or occasionally Donut.
Some maps I do, such as 3 continents with 2-4 AIs on each one. If the Barbarians do manage to wipe out an AI, they usually are not strong enough to wipe them all out. If that were to happen, I might restart. It would be too easy of a win, because I could simply just avoid that barb filled continent all together.

 

[2popbulb]

I like Custom Continents map because there are at least 2 and often more continents with 2 or more AIs on each continent. Late contact,exploration of big map,complicated diplomacy and overseas trade routes,those are things why I like this map. But,if barbs manage to wipe out most of Civs it is not so fun anymore.