Standard Difficulty - Dealing with Barbarians in the Early Game

[Soulzityr]

Holy crap. There are like 3-4 spawns of barbarian camps surrounding me every game. How am I supposed to deal with them? I start with a warrior, build a slinger early on, should I be focusing a LOT more on military? What is a recommended army composition to deal with them? It's crazy. And some barbarian camps have horse archers and stuff. They are destroying me early game.

 

[Vargas1]

The two biggest tricks I've learned are (i) keeping your early troops together and (ii) rushing towards archery. At least for me, I always want to send my warrior out as a de facto scout to try to find early city-states, tribal villages, etc. But a warrior alone can get in trouble if he gets caught by multiple barb troops. So you're better off keeping your warrior in a small loop until you have a slinger, then keeping those two together - if you use terrain well and don't overextend, a warrior/slinger combo should be able to kill the units coming out of the camp, if not clear the actual camp (and will get you a eureka for archery in the process). Then upgrade to an archer as soon as possible - once you have an archer, clearing camps should be easy, at least until you start seeing barb swordsmen.

 

[Leucarum]

Before getting archers you can also try and stop your city from being spotted.

Putting your city on a hill will make it easier for barbarian scouts to get line of sight on your city, so you might want to avoid that if you are expecting barbarians.

If you don't send your warrior out too far away you can use it to body-block/discourage scouts from getting to a spot where they can see your city. if the barbarians spot someone else first, it's their problem and you can deal with it at your leisure.

I also like to open with a scout, it lets you keep your first warrior very close to home, knowing where the barbarians are coming from can really help you, and with practice a scout can be pretty good at baiting barbarians away from your city. Not to mention that a scout on a defensible tile, can slow down barbarian warriors which may have spotted you very nicely.

Since the latest patch you also want to be a little more careful settling new cities on the shore. Sea barbarians are a lot more capable of taking your cities now, you need to make sure you are able to defend yourself from sea.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

The barbs weren't too bad in this recent game I started but I was getting ready to chop and on the turn that I was going to one turn a few chariots a fire broke out and killed my builder... lol... game trolling me for sure!

 

[Minou]

Try Barbarian Clans mode. They seem to be much less aggressive, and ironically you can often buy a unit from a clan to clear it (it's cheaper than the unit would otherwise cost, e.g. Warriors are 95g purchased from a clan versus 140 or 160 I think to buy normally).

 

[Buktu]

Try Barbarian Clans mode. They seem to be much less aggressive, and ironically you can often buy a unit from a clan to clear it (it's cheaper than the unit would otherwise cost, e.g. Warriors are 95g purchased from a clan versus 140 or 160 I think to buy normally).

You can also be lucky to get early UUs like Eagles or War Carts. And more CS help with Barbs in the long run as well.

 

[pkaem]

This seems discussed a lot. Do not send away your early units. If a scout finds your city, trap it between your city and the unit. Stay away like three tiles with your warrior, if the scout gets in, cut his way, if He comes out attack him and Stay at your hex. Heal one turn, he runs back twoards your city and back, kill it. The hint with not setting hills for this purpose is valuable. If you get the hang of this, rushing archery is not all over important. If you want to go peaceful, horses can even mess up your district planning. If you get to kill the scout, you have time to search and Deal with the camp. For exploration send out a scout or two.

 

[Sherlock]

Find a mod to limit barbs. It amazes me they never figured out how much this sucks.

 

[MartinMcMartin]

this: This seems discussed a lot. Do not send away your early units. If a scout finds your city, trap it between your city and the unit. Stay away like three tiles with your warrior, if the scout gets in, cut his way, if He comes out attack him and Stay at your hex. Heal one turn, he runs back twoards your city and back, kill it.

very good tactics, always works. just kill the messenger before he runs the marathon back home..

what i just do is spam 4 slingers and a warrior. if you dont want them to come back (i.e. new camp), make sure you see all the tiles round your lands. most of times it is however very useful to constantly have a barb camp somewhere. advances, money etc.

i never defend capital (i play deity, 20 civs, marathon, max CS, max volcanos, fractal). just try to get as far as i can for huts and CS's. it doesnt matter, if an AI wants you and is close it will kill you anyway. even with your first warrior its not enough, so i dont bother anymore. as soon as i have 2 slingers and 1 warrior i know i will survive... so scout like hell with warrior and spam slingers,...

 

[Sykes179]

The thing is, having no barbarians is almost as bad as having too many. There are 3 really important boosts available in the early game from killing barbarians and it can be a big disadvantage if you don't get those.

But number 1 tip is chase down the scout before it gets back to camp.

 

[Bibor]

Since we need 8 military units and a barb camp clear for inspirations, as well as a slinger kill, 3 archers & 2 crossbows owned for eurekas, I usually build my early army up to 8:
1-3 scouts
1-3 warriors
2-6 slingers to archers

This works well against both AI and barbarians at least up to and including Emperor difficulty.

 

[Alashiya]

I find archers are worth their weight in gold when dealing with Barbs esp 2 archers and a warrior or swordsman

 

[Bostock]

I find (on Immortal) that I can usually get away with being a little less cautious than most of the advice here (and a lot less cautious than some of the more extreme ones), as long as I open with two units (typically slinger -> warrior but sometimes the more adventurous scout -> slinger), I take scout-killing (and camp-killing) seriously, and my initial exploration is in a spiral around the capital rather than a straight line outward. This also has the benefits of uncovering territory that is statistically a little more likely to have been seen by me first, and uncovering the territory that's most relevant to my city planning first.

Sometimes I do get my butt handed to me though!