[BTS] The Impossible Challenge 1: Advanced Barbarians

[CGQ]

Hey everyone! I've been wanting to do a series of evil cooked games after having some fun with World Builder to see how the experts here handle them!

Been winning immortal/deity games left and right? Do you want a game that's really going to challenge you and push you beyond your mental and physical limits?

This is the Impossible Challenge: 1!
Now let's take a look at this start:

Amazing start right? Lots of riverside food, gold, silver and gems, paired with a financial charismatic leader that starts with fishing! Even a grassland oasis!

Well don't let that beautiful start fool you...this will be the most rage-inducing, monitor-punching game of CIV IV you'll ever play in your entire life. If you thought AI had advantages in immortal, think again. Now that being said, there are optional instructions for this game I recommend you to follow:

Spoiler Instructions :

1. First, you may notice you have a couple more starting units than your typical game! To make things more fun, you start with writing (see #4) and you get three workboats for all your sea food, 4 warriors and even your very own personal pet lion!
2. You have two Buddhist missionaries. As soon as you settle your capital, use the first one to found Buddhism.
3. The 2nd one, send him out west and follow the river towards Mehmed (You will already know him from the start) I would suggest escorting him with your super powerful alpha-warrior. He will protect your missionary at all costs.
4. Open borders with Mehmed and spread Buddhism to him. From there, everything you do is up to you. Use any strategy you please, you can pretty much play it like any normal CIV IV game

Tips:
1. Send the convoy south of the 6-fish lake. You might face some more pushback from the barbs on the north side. Don't worry if you have to reload like 20+ times
2. Protect that alpha warrior at all costs! Since he's led by a warlord, he'll come in handy when he can be upgraded for free later on down the road!

Spoiler So what's the catch? :

Upon bravely sending out your alpha warrior and pet lion out into the world, you'll quickly find that the barbarians are a tad more...advanced than usual. 90% of all the problems you will face in this game are because of these barbs. To top it off, the further you get into this game, the more you'll find out just how unfair things are. There are more tweaks I made, but I won't spoil it further, since that is for you to find out. You do have lot of amazing land! Can you use that to your advantage and stop the barbarians before they take over the world?

Map Settings:
Fractal
Arid Climate
Low Sea Level
No Huts/Events
Raging barbs off

I challenge anyone here to win this game. I will also try to win it myself! Good luck!

 

[Qactus]

Oh nice! Don't know if/when I'll be able to play, but always appreciate such an effort in any case

The thread title "advanced barbarians" and the starting screenshot would probably lead me to race towards that stone next to that juicy oasis, settle on top and build TGW. That should keep out even Barbarian Mechanized Infantry... But it is probably a little more complicated than that...

 

[Izuul]

I assumed this would have raging barbs and we would have to find a hill to settle on somewhere to survive the onslaught.

I'm more curious now that I see its not raging barbs. Are there going to be barb maces running around on t40? Lol

 

[CGQ]

I assumed this would have raging barbs and we would have to find a hill to settle on somewhere to survive the onslaught.

I'm more curious now that I see its not raging barbs. Are there going to be barb maces running around on t40? Lol

Spoiler Even worse than that :

Barb riflemen and Grenadiers
I even threw in some barb redcoats muahahahaha

 

[Qactus]

Spoiler 1 AD :

Played to 1 AD. Followed through with the settle-on-stone plan, so expansion was obviously really slow, with the first settler only after TGW.
I have seven cities now (two of which are only for trade routes), making 227 bpt (Bureau, Rep, Slavery). Added the Great Lighthouse (which helps a lot) and the Pyramids (which was probably not necessary and didn't think they'd finish).
Have not declared any war yet, but been building Maces to take Mehmed's cities soon. With gold, silver and gems I whipped a couple of forges.
Julius Caesar is threatening to really run away with the game. Haven't seen his land yet, but it's probably at least as awesome as ours. The other AIs are progressing mostly like I would expect from Immortal
If I could change one thing, I'd have ignored the seafood completely. When the first frigate showed up, I was still relaxed with TGW in mind, but then the Privateer came by and it is still lingering. I'm in the process of assembling a stack of Triremes to hopefully sink it soon. But yeah, no fishing nets at 1AD

 

[CarpoolKaraoke]

Having a good time.

Spoiler Spoiler ~T48: :

T13: Discover the barbarian ships and Redcoats, after initially thinking it was just a large wave of animal units. (The Wheel, Masonry)
Growth to Size 3, Worker, Settler.

T32 Great Wall just as my boats get destroyed. (Bronze Working, Agriculture)

T48: Thinking about the Great Lighthouse since there's a pathway to a new continent even though there's a lot of room for expansion at the moment. Seems like we're semi-isolated.

I'm kind of surprised Mehmed hasn't died yet. I'm not really sure what the attack rules are for these artificially inserted barbarians but I'm really hoping he actually gets taken over.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

I once had barbarians on galleys take my coastal city. Can The Great Wall stop that?

Can barbarians naturally (not worldbuilder) get galleons?

 

[Izuul]

I played a little bit. A few noteworthy things happened:

Spoiler :

1) The Oracle went on T25! I don't think I've ever seen the Oracle go before T50 on Immortal, so there's definitely at least one super-AI out there. Must've started with Oracle techs already unlocked, and maybe Masonry tech + marble as well. This caused me to abandon my initial plan of building TGW. It ended up not being built early which was kind of surprising.

2) One barb rifle is just sitting in a forest not doing anything. I even moved a worker 1 tile away from it to improve corn and ivory and it didn't attack.

3) A barb frigate just showed up from the ocean to the NW and is now likely going to pillage all of my seafood. I have no idea how to stop it.I think a rifle or two can be killed by a handful of suicide cats and some elephants, but there's really no answer for a frigate until at least Astronomy, and possibly not until i get my own Frigates at Chemistry.

 

[CarpoolKaraoke]

I think the Great Wall ejects barbarian ships, but not privateers.

 

[Izuul]

TGW does not prevent boats from entering your territory - only land units, and only on the continent it was constructed.

 

[jorissimo]

I once had barbarians on galleys take my coastal city.

Seriously? That's awesome

 

[Izuul]

The start here is just so good.

Spoiler :

Even with all of my seafood pillaged I got 75BC Astro with no bulbs, very few trades, and diversions to CS and Engineering. I've finally managed to rid myself of the annoying Frigate that's been hanging around since T50 or 60, and all of my seafood will be back online in a few turns.

Also, that great general warrior we started with is super OP. He's basically wiping Mehmed out single-handedly. He can kill 2 units per turn and then full heal between turns.

For whatever reason, none of the barb land units seem to be targeting me. I've walked a missionary right up next to some rifles and redcoats, and they just completely ignore it. They did take Mehmed's capitol off him though which allowed me to snipe it off two injured rifles with my GG mace.

 

[Qgqqqqq]

Surprised TGW wasn't preplaced tbh

 

[Izuul]

Fun fact:

Spoiler :

I do not believe it's possible to ever get rid of the barb ships in the lake without nuking them. Cities on the lake can only build workboats - not ships. Fort chains needs to be adjacent to a body of water to allow ships to pass and there is no suitable terrain here to build a fort chain all the way to the lake. Airships, planes, and guided missiles can attack and damage the ships, but not actually kill them.

The only other solution I can even think of is to allow the barbs to capture a city on the lake, hope they move the boats into the city, and then recapture it. This likely isn't feasible for several reasons.

 

[tlhingan]

Is the general rule that with raging barbs off, the barbs won't invade until the average number of cities is 3?

Spoiler :

I did build the Great Wall, but I don't think I'm winning this one. Maybe second?

 

[Henrik75]

Great wall needs to be disabled on this map. put it in a barb city and raze it on t0.