The barb issue on emperor and above

[spiceant]

how do i most efficiently keep the barbarians at bay while building up the foundation of my future empire? usually i get squished by either to rapidly expanding neighbours (relative to myself) or massive amounts of barbarians.

I do use the advantages of hills, but when theres loads of jungle that just doesnt work and the barbarians will crush me if i dont divert enough production to defense which leads to my neighbours leaving me no space to expand to.'

how do i most efficiently keep the barbarians away?

 

[Shillen]

Research bronze working early and plop your second city down by the copper. Then build a few axemen and set them up in the forests/jungles on your foggy borders. They'll take care of any barbs that come your way. If you have no copper nearby at all then you need to research archery and build a bunch of archers and do the same thing.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Can someone state a definite rule for how close the barbs have to be to my border units in order to (stupidly) attack my fortified units in the forest, instead of heading for my cities and improvements and making me attack them to stop them? I always worry, when implementing this strategy, that if they decide not to attack me, I could have big problems.

 

[Doppelgänger50]

I imagine your units would have to be in the barbarian units' line of sight. Though they'll still walk straight past if they think the odds of winning against your unit are too low.

 

[DaviddesJ]

I imagine your units would have to be in the barbarian units' line of sight. Though they'll still walk straight past if they think the odds of winning against your unit are too low.

This is my problem with this approach. If you put your best units out on the front lines, and the barbs decide to walk past them, aren't you sort of hosed? It seems like, unless you can predict what they will do, this is a big problem.

 

[shadow2k]

This is my problem with this approach. If you put your best units out on the front lines, and the barbs decide to walk past them, aren't you sort of hosed? It seems like, unless you can predict what they will do, this is a big problem.

I usually stick my units on the hills for the extra sight. If it's a forest hill, and I have an axe up there, they normally just walk past. If I move towards them into a forest, they'll attack. It's still fairly predictable.

I normally go for BW to see Copper, so I can skip Archery. I use Axemen to defend. I have Slavery at this point, so if a barb does happen to slip through, you can just whip one out if it's a desperate situation. But I've only had to do that once or twice.

 

[hollebeek]

I haven't heard others mention the "barbarian swarm" issue before.

Pay careful attention to how many neighbors you have, and where their
troops are. There is a specific date (I believe it is 1500 BC on emperor)
when barbarians start moving towards cities. If you are far from other
civs at that point, all the barbs discovered by scouts will swarm you.
If you're careful about defenses and keeping line of sight to the unclaimed
areas near you, it isn't much of a problem, but if not, you can have quite
the invasion at that point. Having your military at your borders, instead
of in your cities, can help quite a bit. Until there is a foreign threat, or
the city reaches size 4, there is no reason for a garrison.

 

[Charles 22]

This is my problem with this approach. If you put your best units out on the front lines, and the barbs decide to walk past them, aren't you sort of hosed? It seems like, unless you can predict what they will do, this is a big problem.

It rather complicates the scheme a bit, but if they're seemingly already bypassing, attack them! IOW, if they're that inferior to your guys, that probably means an attack coming from you will succeed. Only problem that this may involve having to build more units, or at least have backups (like within two hexes) of the positions so that if the attacker wins but gets hit hard, he can fall back, or stay put, and his backup will come to his spot to cover for him while he recovers.

I don't have very much experience attacking the regular barbs, but the animal barbs are often very easy to destroy. With the percentage of victory being shown now it's apparent that in some cases that attacking barbs generates a bonus. This isn't so far-fetched as it may seem, as indeed CIV3 was that way (bonus for attacking barbs, as opposed to defending against them).

 

[DaviddesJ]

Has anyone noticed that barbarians seem to be attracted to former barbarian cities? I have played games where there are a lot more barbarians showing up to attack their former city that I captured. It could just be a coincidence.

 

[sandman_civ]

Can someone state a definite rule for how close the barbs have to be to my border units in order to (stupidly) attack my fortified units in the forest, instead of heading for my cities and improvements and making me attack them to stop them? I always worry, when implementing this strategy, that if they decide not to attack me, I could have big problems.

Normally you'd find a warrior walking past an axeman, so you could always chase and attack it. You should have a good chance with a fortified axeman vs their axeman. Barbs are not an issue if you build one or 2 axemen in your cities and there's normally a gap in the early years when you can build a few; otherwise this means you are building other things and then you deserve trouble from barbs on higher levels

 

[Wodan]

Try researching Hunting first thing in your next game. Seriously.

Then, build 3-4 Scouts (depending on map, obviously you don't need them on archipelago or small continent maps, but on those maps the Barbs shouldn't be much of a problem, either). Use them to explore, and then fortify them on hillls in the areas around your empire. About 4 tiles from your culture border is best.

Net result: MUCH fewer Barbs. And, the ones that do come, you see coming from a long ways away, so you can use just a few good units to go kill them. (The Scouts themselves should be able to defend against Warrior Barbs and possibly even Archer Barbs if you give them the right skills.)

Wodan

 

[Qitai]

Try researching Hunting first thing in your next game. Seriously.

Then, build 3-4 Scouts (depending on map, obviously you don't need them on archipelago or small continent maps, but on those maps the Barbs shouldn't be much of a problem, either). Use them to explore, and then fortify them on hillls in the areas around your empire. About 4 tiles from your culture border is best.

Net result: MUCH fewer Barbs. And, the ones that do come, you see coming from a long ways away, so you can use just a few good units to go kill them. (The Scouts themselves should be able to defend against Warrior Barbs and possibly even Archer Barbs if you give them the right skills.)

Wodan

You will be much better off, just using warrior for the same purpose since these troops are suppose to be fortified rather than exploring. Also scouts do not get their bonus against barbarian and will likely be killed in emperor or higher. At the higher levels, you get only minimal or no bonus against barbarians.

In fact, at the higher level, one needs to learn to skip hunting if you do not need it for deer, ivory or fur.

 

[playshogi]

You could play as Inca on emperor. All you need is quechua and capture AI cities instead of building settlers and workers. You'll enjoy seeing barbs, especially archers, for the free promotion. 4-5 quechua captures any AI city defended by 2 archers (except on a hill). If they have more than 2 archers, wait for the extra ones to leave the city, or bring 2 more.

 

[IceLion]

Little tip I found out the hard way, put your outlying units on sentry, not fortify. Fortified units will not respond to oncoming enemies, but units that are sentried will awake and you will be promted to make them act.

I was playing the romans in the the Greek world mod and ended up with a horse archer SoD marching right past a stack of about 9 praetorians, the 'torians were fortified and I was too busy wiping the greeks out.... I lost to the barbs because they had cleaned out my two strongest cities before I could move the fortified troops to take care of them.

-IceLion

 

[spiceant]

i usually put my units on sentry again and again, i already dont build scouts and dont research hunting unless theres a resource that needs camps.
i refuse to change civs to use the quecha =l

the barbs just come to early for my scouts, even when fortified on a hill/forest with forestry II it still has a >25% chance to loose to an archer, which i find unacceptable, then i am forced to send it away and let the fog of war creep over the area.

 

[Wodan]

I just posted something over in the Discussions forum... I'll cut & paste (my response would be buried in a link).

ps I don't recommend using Scouts to solve the Barb problem. They're best used to explore and pop goodie huts. A secondary benefit is that they help push back the Fog. However, to actually FIGHT the Barbs, yes, Warriors are better.

Here's my post:

Basically, the whole Barb "problem" can be boiled down to two waves.

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One wave is at the start of the game, when there are Animals and Warriors wandering around.

To combat this wave, you don't need a Barracks. A Barracks is an un-needed expenditure and is in fact counter-productive. Any Barb will always fight your adjacent unit, even if it's also adjacent to a wide open (ungarrisoned) city of yours. Simply fortifying a few of your Warriors on forested hillls will get them to 10 XP, which is the max you can get from Barbs. If you skip the Barracks, you can build an extra 3-4 Warriors. If you build a couple of Warriors that you would have anyway, plus the 3-4 from skipping the Barracks, that will give you 7-8 total.

In fact, I would leave ALL of your cities ungarrisoned. Send your Warriors and Scouts out into the wilderness. 7-8 units is easily enough to put a shell surrounding your borders, which will prevent spawning in a HUGE area.

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The second wave of Barbs is when they get Archers, followed by Axes, then Swords.

To fight this wave, you DO need a Barracks. However, by this time, you have an early-warning system of 10 Warriors, which will tell you immediately as soon as the first Barb Archer shows up. Your Warriors will each have 10XP or close to it. A Warrior with those skills should be able to beat a Barb Archer, no problem. Just leave your Warrior fortified in the hills, which is where you have had him most of the game so far.

The key here, though, is that it's time for you to start building a few better units. Axes/Archers/Chariots... they each take different tactics. e.g., your Archers you have to leave in the forests and let the Barbs attack YOU (just like you've been doing with your Warriors). Axes and Chariots you can be more aggressive.

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I have been playing a Huge games on Monarch since 1.52 came out and have had absolutely NO problem with Barbs. It hasn't even inconvenienced me, even when doing a builder strategy.

Wodan

 

[DangerousMonkey]

The basic anti-barb strategy is...

1)Build a decent military
2)Station pickets in forests/forested hills 2-3 squares outside your boarder.
3)Create a small "fast reaction force" of mounted units in the center of your empire to respond quickly to threats.
4)Wait for the barbs to suicide themselves attacking your pickets, and if they don't just send in a few fast units to clean up.

The great thing about a solid anti-barb defence is that it's pretty good for defending against an attack from a rival civ too, so you may as well have one up all the time.