Some thoughts about the barbarian setting

[BasketCase]

Having to escort settlers has never had much impact on my economy. When I perform the initial land-grab, I aim to make full use of the land available to me, so I always end up with a pattern of cities whose cultural borders prevent new barbarians from popping up (except for those barbarian uprising things, of course). This means I only need escorts in the unsettled borderlands. Those escorts invariably end up also protecting my border cities, not only from barbarians, but from other civs.

 

[McManus]

One thing I, personally, hate about barbarians is the unfairness compared to AI players... And no, I don't mean the RNG bonus, they can keep that, but mostly I hate how the barbs never really attack the AI.... I've seen raging hordes all fortified for over a 100 years because the closest city (and only one which they could have really attacked) was an AI city, but I've had barbs chase one unit of mine through huge amounts of essentially undefended AI territory. Never happens to me otherwise, I get an uprising; they all focus on me at 150%. Just pisses me off So usually I just play sedenteary barbs to keep the expansionist civs alive...

McM

 

[jimmygrace]

McM,

I don't think that the barbs favor the AI. I've been playing the conquests, and I notice some strange things. If a stack of barbs comes near me, they may just freeze where they are, as long as I don't move my unit. If I do move it onto another location adjacent to the barbs, they all attack it until it is destroyed. Similarly, if the game announces a massive barb uprising, and you place a unit right next to the hut right away, the barbs won't attack, and you can just pick them off at your leisure with 1 unit, even taking turns to heal, just as long as you don't move from your location. You can right-click on the hut to determine how many are left. This happened in the Sengoku scenario, but also in others. Does anyone have an explanation for this strange behaviour?

 

[TimBentley]

This thread can explain in more detail, but basically, in Conquests (actually, the bug was introduced in Play The World, but it took another change in Conquests to really break the barbarians), barbs will only move to attack defenseless units they can reach in one turn, or towards a unit to the northwest or southeast. This can be somewhat fixed by adding NoAIPatrol=0, since they will then move around randomly when no appropriate targets are present.

 

[Tearor]

the easiest way to deal with them is to make sure you have defence in every city ASAP when its built.

 

[klopolov]

the easiest way to deal with them is to have a mobile army (as in a group of units, not the one the leader makes) to defend from them and to destroy their little caves. Also a good way to get rid of them is to cover as much territory as you can as they do not appear inside of your borders.