Restless Barbarians Becomes an Advantage?

[80k]

Do you feel that setting Barbarian Activity to Restless gives you a huge advantage over the AI? Usually on Regent level, i find it to be a challenge to keep up with the AI in terms of expansion. Scientifically, I generally stay head to head with them.

However with Restless barbarians in my last couple of games, the AI seems to have a hard time with them. As a human, i've learned to go after them, and steal their gold, and protect my settlers and workers more heavily. With the extra gold, i am able to keep science up, as well as keep my military a bit higher to counter the barbarian activity. The AI doesn't seem to do much in terms of dealing with the heightened barb activity.

is my reasoning correct or did i just play a few lucky games?

 

[Aramazd]

On regent and below barbs can help you, but on Monarch and up the AI gets bonuses against barbs.

 

[80k]

ah ok... hehe i guess i need to try a monarch game. thanks for the info!

 

[CIVPhilzilla]

Yeah try having high barb activity on higher levels, there a pain in the *** to deal with.

 

[davidcrazy]

restless barb is really bad for me because usually i don't have enough units at the beginning and a lot of times my settler will be alone on his way to the destination... i very very seldom see an AI send out a lonely settler. and this means restless bard work to my disadvantage.

 

[Jawz II]

i always get the super funky barbarian biker rally style riots with the few gajilion mounted barbs show up and tie down at least half of my army for 3 or 4 turns on emperor

that is a pain in the ass

 

[Frostyboy]

How is it on Deity?

Does the AI get lots of bonuses against barbs then?

 

[Frostyboy]

Sorry por double posting but I just thought about 1 more thing.
When playing a civ with enslavement capacity - like the Mayans jav.thrower, you can use the barbs as a worker reservoir, by capturing them

 

[AdHHH]

I always used raging on chieftain/warlord because u got more barb camps and more promotions, especially if you were a militaristic civ. The money also comes in handy, but at one point the barbs were in 2 stacks of 25 each! It prevented my expansion, and since I was fighting I had no other units to spare. Only just moved up to Regent so I daren't have raging barbs yet, but Im working on it

 

[blackhalo15]

I don't use barbarians no matter what level. I think they are frikin annoying.

 

[Pook]

I always use raging hordes of barbarians at Emperor level. I don't know that it gives an advantage to me or the AI. In several previous posts I've covered that in Civ 4 I want:
1) Barbarians to be be able to capture cities like they did in Civ 2.
2) Barbarians that actually attack. Playing C3C 1.15, the 24 horsemen stack will sometimes do nothing. The intent of the patch was that barbarians would be more selective about what they attacked- the problem is that now they often stay put or go in an endless loop between two mountain ranges.

To answer the earlier question, yes the Mayans can enslave barbarians- that's a fairly easy way to pick up workers.

 

[Frostyboy]

In the Sengoku conquest, the barbs can be apain in the ass when they upgrade to Ronins far too early - thats 4/3 against 2/1 (stone x-bows)

 

[Jawz II]

i always put barbsa setting on hardest,is it raging?

i hate barbs,wonder why i do that?

hmm....