Spawnbusting Concerns

[OneThingIKnow]

I've been moving up in difficulty rather quickly, and right now I'm playing at Monarch. I've had reasonable success at this difficulty overall, but having trouble understanding the effectiveness of spawnbusting. I've always prioritized the early wonders, Great Wall included, so in most games I haven't needed to employ this strategy. I'm trying to learn new methods of play, so I decided for this game to forgo the Great Wall and go for a 1700-1600BC rush instead.

I'm playing as Hannibal with 11 AIs on a Terra map. I find myself towards the north of the landmass with a nice chunk of tundra and ice above me. I have Catherine to my west, and Boudica a little farther away to my east. There's a little space to my south before the landmass all moves west. I place one warrior to my east between Boudica and me, one to the south to cover what remains after settling in that direction for a copper site, but I need something like eight or nine more warriors to even have a hope of eliminating the barbs from my north.

My problem with this is maintenance. I have two cities, am looking to build an army to attack on of my close neighbors (each has a holy city), but I'm already out of money and down to 70% research funding.

When I do build an army of axes and chariots, it drops my funding to about 30% and the barbs start breaking through my spawnbust anyway, systematically killing my warriors. I attack Catherine and capture Moscow, only to have four or five barbs entering my lands at once.

Thoughts on spawnbusting and general strategy in this situation, anyone?

 

[UWHabs]

If you have 8 or 9 warriors and you still can't spawnbust, you're not spawnbusting correctly.

Remember - barbs can't spawn within 2 tiles of a unit (not just fog of war). So think of each warrior as a city, and you just need to dotmat the territory to cover it with cities. If you actually needed 8 warriors, that means you have space for 8+ cities up there. Properly spawnbusted, you shouldn't even see barbs.

Otherwise, if your land is that big, I'd forego the spawnbust and just keep units back. On Monarch barbs shouldn't be that bad, even from that expansive of a land. A couple axes and chariots should be enough to defend your lands from the barbs that come in.

 

[Deckhand]

UWHabs covered it pretty well.

But since you are Hannibal, Numidian Cavalry are excellent against barbarians (except the occasional spear). Vast tundra regions are often hard to spawnbust. Just bust near your cities and have some NC ready to destroy any barbarians that wander south.

 

[Tyrael]

Remember - barbs can't spawn within 2 tiles of a unit (not just fog of war). So think of each warrior as a city, and you just need to dotmat the territory to cover it with cities.

Just to verify, barbs can't spawn within 2 diagonal tiles either, so it's a city's BFC plus the four corners filled in.

Don't worry about going down to 30% or lower slider. You can run scientists to keep tech rate up while you conquer, then reap the benefits of those extra cities.

If you really need 8+ warriors to spawnbust your north, save on hammers and unit maintainance and just put 2-3 barb-killing units in each of your northern cities. It's also a good way to gain some XP for those units before a war.