Too Many Barbs Too Soon (BtS)

[Neoclast]

I dont think its the settings as much as a failure to recognize that its going to happen. For instance on Epic setting I know I will start to see barbs around turn 70ish and then by 90ish they are moving into my lands. Also Barb galleys come around 110ish or so. Always protect you seafood with at least a pair of galleys and let them attack you first so you get the coastal defense. If the first loses you usually can kill the wounded galley then. Using pairs of units agains barbs usually is a good idea, one giving the other time to heal if needed.

 

[Zack]

I should probably mention I always play on marathon, so it's possible that the barbs are unbalanced at that speed.
I really wish someone would come up with a mod to balance Marathon, since Firaxis never bothered to patch it besides the espionage screw up.

I think the increased barb activity doesn't even come close to countering the advantages of Marathon.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I dont think its the settings as much as a failure to recognize that its going to happen. For instance on Epic setting I know I will start to see barbs around turn 70ish and then by 90ish they are moving into my lands. Also Barb galleys come around 110ish or so. Always protect you seafood with at least a pair of galleys and let them attack you first so you get the coastal defense. If the first loses you usually can kill the wounded galley then. Using pairs of units agains barbs usually is a good idea, one giving the other time to heal if needed.

I've lost a trio of fortified galleys on immortal/epic. That's when I got really mad.

Now, I tend to intentionally expand such that my cities bordering the fog don't have seafood, and any pillage-able seafood is 8 tiles in (or further). If you do this, barbs won't enter your territory even if you have 0 galleys. I watched a good 6 of the suckers hover around my NE border never entering until I picked them all off with a couple triremes 1000 + years later. Stupid cheating 4x spawn rate 3.17 garbage. Suck on that, broken mechanics! Haha!

 

[r_rolo1]

Now, I tend to intentionally expand such that my cities bordering the fog don't have seafood, and any pillage-able seafood is 8 tiles in (or further). If you do this, barbs won't enter your territory even if you have 0 galleys. I watched a good 6 of the suckers hover around my NE border never entering until I picked them all off with a couple triremes 1000 + years later. Stupid cheating 4x spawn rate 3.17 garbage. Suck on that, broken mechanics! Haha!

I still say that the fault is not of the rate of spawning. It is of the lack of naval units variety and specifically of a low strength early naval unit, in the line of Civ III curragh. Galleys are too strong to be the first combat naval units , especially of the barbs.

 

[Ghpstage]

I still say that the fault is not of the rate of spawning. It is of the lack of naval units variety and specifically of a low strength early naval unit, in the line of Civ III curragh. Galleys are too strong to be the first combat naval units , especially of the barbs.

Its a combination of a few things:
-An absurdly high spawn rate (it seems higher than land barbs, are they!?),
especially when you consider how expensive galleys are (almost the cost of 1.5 axemen)!

-Laughable tile defense bonuses, 10% wth?

-The speed of the barb galleys also causes a major problem.

-A lack of any cost effective counter until Metal Casting, a very expensive tech that comes at a time I would rather be improving my economy or REXing.

-Then to rub salt in the wound, if one does manage to get through to pillage, you need to build a new workboat because they get used up to build fishing boats....

The only way to avoid major problems with them is to know (and abuse) the mechanics that govern them,
as TMIT mentioned they have a limited range to attack the first improvement (What if an AI fishing boat drags it in though?)
and they cant pillage the fishing boats you build that aren't on coast tiles.

The only other things you can do is either build lots of expensive galleys, which will have a very low survival rate so will need to be replaced constantly.
Or tech MC early, which isn't the path many would want to take I bet, and even if you did this you would probably have had to build many galleys before you reach it!

The root cause however is that naval combat just seems to be an afterthought in Civ 4...

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Yeah that's true, it's the spawn rate plus the NO VIABLE COUNTER UNIT OR DEFENSIVE TERRAIN that really makes it obnoxious. Triremes come so late that barb galleys have done their damage already on any difficulty where one might care. An archer gets higher odds than galley-galley vs all other units it sees for most of the game merely by fortifying on a hill or forest tile, at a fraction of the hammer cost of spears or axes. An axe, if you get it, will handily smack down all barbs on defensive terrain. The programmers seem to think the existence of triremes balances that, completely disregarding how inefficient early metal casting tends to be with most starts.

I usually just REX and avoid sailing deliberately at first to slow the barbs from getting it a bit.

 

[Ghpstage]

The only saving grace is that the AI hardly ever uses the blockade ability, this would make archipelago maps near impossible at emperor+ on epic and marathon...
Oh and it's much harder to fogbust all viable coast tiles on many maps.


The other problem I forgot to mention is that while barbs start with 0XP, your land units have the option of 3XP from a barracks.
Galleys don't, this is only made worse by the fact that XP earned in defensive battles is reduced.
This means you're galley must survive 2 battles with a maximum of 68% odds before it can even get it's first promotion, the oddds are not really in your favour.

This is also why on the rare occasion you get a naval war against someone that nobody is likely to get an experienced fleet at all,
The only way to get XP is to attack! You get more XP when attacking at 98% odds than defending at 68% and with no viable counter to galleys till MC decent odds for attacking don't really appear... I wish the defensive XP penalty could be removed for naval units, it has no place there.

This is also the reason that the Viking UB is so strong, the 5XP you need for nav 1 on a galley is very unlikely without it and why GG lead galleys for other Civ's is something that is actually worth considering .

 

[Molybdeus]

Naval warfare is just messed up for all eras. (Going strait from ironclads to destroyers and missing essentially a whole era of naval combat is a good example.) I think they would have to reduce the gold cost of upgrading naval units to fix it to allow people on quicker speeds to keep their navy up to date. That way they could add maybe three more ships. Canoes [Galleys would require Iron Working], a Galleas [requires Gunpowder but not Astronomy] and a Cruiser [requires Railroad and Military Tradition] would be my picks.

 

[Kaxen]

I noticed the barbs tend to rush towards you unless you have units to counter them easily, like axeman in all border cities or a galley/trireme stationed at both ends of your empires seas instead of in the cities, blocking passage to the sea food.

They will still attack rarely, but if you have some offensive defense going on instead of just some archers hiding behind the city walls you should be fine and get lots of promotions aswell.

 

[Yamps]

Regarding barb galleys and triremes, it's interesting that in Warlords expansion triremes are available much earlier, with Sailing and BW. Why did they change that? And increased spam rate in 3.17 as well? Is there a hidden message there, like: "detour from your optimal path or get pillaged, puny human?"

Good to know about the galley sight range, but 8 tiles seems a lot...

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Regarding barb galleys and triremes, it's interesting that in Warlords expansion triremes are available much earlier, with Sailing and BW. Why did they change that? And increased spam rate in 3.17 as well? Is there a hidden message there, like: "detour from your optimal path or get pillaged, puny human?"

Good to know about the galley sight range, but 8 tiles seems a lot...

It is but with a little planning/fogbust it's still applicable to most games.

I did an immortal/normal fractal last night (i'm working on being able to win space rather than domination w/ immortal difficulty, to make my game-ending abilities a little more dynamic than "oh crap, I fell behind so let's just pound everything into capitulation with infantry/arty real quick and win UN"), using washington. Great start in terms of resources, pretty average in terms of everything else. I had 1 neighbor - fred. He's not aggressive, which is good, but he also won't trade monopoly techs like that, which means I can't trade for anything but monarchy early on.

Now obviously this ~30 city sized island should have some barb troubles, right? Well...

1. I used warriors exclusively for fogbusting and city defense until after 1500 BC
2. Fred built the great wall, but I still didn't have trouble. I eventually got chariots around 1500 BC.
3. I had 3 coastal seafood tiles, but settled a city to the north that essentially "blocked" barb galleys from entering and fogbusted in between (it was a good city anyway)
4. I out-expanded fred, 14 cities to 9 (and I have room for more ). I'd have held him to 7 but he beat me to a barb city then settled one in between my cities before I could react. Annoyingly, I can't flip this city even with a close-as-possible city w/ 80% from culture and ANOTHER one @60%. Ridiculous.

So basically on a fairly large land mass on immortal/normal, barb galleys got completely locked out by culture/outsourcing killing a few to the computer. The spawn rate makes them very obnoxious, so I have no qualms about abusing the mechanics to allow me to ignore them.

On a side note, Fred is out-teching me and I'm probably going to have to kill him to win space . Nobody else seems to have enough land + current tech to keep up with me now that my cottages are matured however, so a quick infantry/arty foray using $$$ rush should get rid my only problem...not exactly a nail-biter but it should highlight the anti barbs/barb galleys quite well, although I doubt I could get away with warriors only barb d on deity unless I was inca.

I lost both lib and circumnavigation due to expansion rate , but being #1 in pop on immortal w/o war is a plus.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Hey all:

The forum "CODE GOD" DanF just revealed that "fogbusting" isn't ACTUALLY fogbusting over in the S&T thread about this. Our units are much more effective than that.

The rule is actually that any unit in the game blocks the spawning of a barb with a TWO TILE RADIUS AROUND IT, regardless of fog! "fogbusting" is cheaper than I expected/knew.

 

[Ghpstage]

Hey all:

The forum "CODE GOD" DanF just revealed that "fogbusting" isn't ACTUALLY fogbusting over in the S&T thread about this. Our units are much more effective than that.

The rule is actually that any unit in the game blocks the spawning of a barb with a TWO TILE RADIUS AROUND IT, regardless of fog! "fogbusting" is cheaper than I expected/knew.

But they still can't spawn in areas that are explored too right?
i.e. if I had a sentry chariot on a hill it would block for 3 squares?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

But they still can't spawn in areas that are explored too right?
i.e. if I had a sentry chariot on a hill it would block for 3 squares?

Only where you can see, otherwise it's still 2 (like if you can't see through a forest).

 

[Ghpstage]

Only where you can see, otherwise it's still 2 (like if you can't see through a forest).

ok, but this revelation still reduces the apparent usefulness of the sentry promotion by quite a lot though
Does make heavily jungled starts look easier though!

 

[Tecibbar]

I don't remember the last time I see barb axeman. I remember they were common in warlord.

Barb archers doesn't give me much problem, maybe because I research archery before BW.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Anyone else notice that barbs are almost *more* of a problem on low difficulties? On immortal and above, they ai seems to have so many scouts and settlers the barbs never really have a chance to mature beyond archers. I played a monarch game and they came at me with multiple axemen !

Although barbs might be more common on lower difficulties for the reasons you allude to, they're also easier to kill due to inherent combat bonuses on lower difficulties. So you can farm more xp from them really. And at the low difficulties, you can even abuse the barb free win system to instantly get your 10XP warrior by attacking a barb axeman on a forest with roughly 99% odds or so.

I've lost a trio of fortified galleys on immortal/epic. That's when I got really mad.

Now, I tend to intentionally expand such that my cities bordering the fog don't have seafood, and any pillage-able seafood is 8 tiles in (or further). If you do this, barbs won't enter your territory even if you have 0 galleys. I watched a good 6 of the suckers hover around my NE border never entering until I picked them all off with a couple triremes 1000 + years later. Stupid cheating 4x spawn rate 3.17 garbage. Suck on that, broken mechanics! Haha!

Fortified galleys?

You meant the 10% coast defense right?

The 10% coast defense also works for units using the sea patrol mission on a coast tile defending a resource on sea tile.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Fortified galleys?

You meant the 10% coast defense right?

The 10% coast defense also works for units using the sea patrol mission on a coast tile defending a resource on sea tile.

Admittedly the wording was awkward, but basically it meant I wasn't attacking, and the barb galley pressure was great enough to break through 3 galleys (I think the barbs hit me with 5 in a short period of time, so not too unreasonable they'd win, but pretty unreasonable that I'm getting 5 barb galleys from one fogged area in the BCs)

 

[r_rolo1]

And just for the record: I would not touch the patrol function even with a 10 yard stick and a biohazard suit Patrol function is somewhat disconnected of the rest of the game ( just not to call it bugged ) and in some situations allows enemy units to attack more than once per turn , even if they don't have Blitz.

 

[PieceOfMind]

And just for the record: I would not touch the patrol function even with a 10 yard stick and a biohazard suit Patrol function is somewhat disconnected of the rest of the game ( just not to call it bugged ) and in some situations allows enemy units to attack more than once per turn , even if they don't have Blitz.

That's a whole nother debate! I use it frequently to defend tiles from barb galleys using the safety of coastal waters. If a barb galley is heading for your fish, you might as well sit beside the fish and sea patrol. IMO it's pretty simple and straight forward to not defend resources with galleys from marauding destroyers using sea patrol.

Anyway, better not get into that debate again...