What is the advantage, if any, of enabling barbs?

[planetfall]

A separate post had a comment that it is a mistake not to enable barbs. I've always turned them off as they seemed too aggressive.
The suggestion is the game can be easier if play with barbs. I'm trying to learn, but not catching the benefit of enabling barbs and handling barbs.
I've tried dropping down to emperor to learn how to deal with these units. First glances and first reads reveal many issues with barbs in civ6

1-- spawn rate is super aggressive, i.e, 3-6 units immediately
2-- once city discovered, steady city attack focus
3-- defenders start with spearmen
4-- if horses near camp, horse units are coming fast
5-- if kill barb, only get the first promotion, and barbs are not a promotion mill
6-- focus of early game must be military asap

So with all these issues, what are the benefits of turning on barbs?

There doesn't seem to be a middle ground with lower spawn and less barb advantages, like early civ versions. I don't see any mods, or notes, where someone has tweaked the gameplay.

 

[planetfall]

Forgot to ask, if enable barbs, do you also enable clans? Discuss why please.

 

[Monene]

Some civilizations and leaders need or benefit from barbarians, without them they lose some of their bonuses.

 

[Fat Bastard]

I play on emperor. Barbs for me are an easy way to increase era score. Yes if they have horses they're nearly impossible to beat, but they don't normally have horses. I usually have to restart the game if they get horses.

I don't enable clans.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Barbarians are no real threat if you play it correctly, but they are a threat to the AI (who doesnt play correctly).
Generally you want to avoid using your warrior as a long distance scout, and just scout out the immediate area around your capital in a "ring" (so that you know later on where barb camps spawn), and then use him to actively hunt barbarians.
If a camp spawns nearby, get a military unit between it and your capital to scare off the scout, and then clear out the camp.

Barbarians, like the AI, are absolute idiots when it comes to tactical warfare.
This means that they will initiate attacks where they lose the trade, and its easy to set up situations like that.
Most commonly you want to find a spot on rough terrain and fortify on that, only attacking when you know you can heal back up safely afterwards, or when you absolutely need to ensure a kill.

Worst case the barbarian scout spots your capital early (before you are in a position to scare off the scout, as your warrior is out of position), but since they cannot raze it anyway you can generally ignore that for the time being, and just have them kill themselves as they attack your capital.
If the barbarians scout you after this early time however (especially a settlement), you made a mistake and should keep better track of where camps are to try to actively deter them from scouting or in order to clear them out.

Its really not that hard when you approach it the right way, and once you do, they become an advantage for you since the AI can suffer massive losses from (incorrectly) fighting barbarians, whereas you are free to do whatever in the meantime to catch up.
Heck I often invade deity AIs that are visibly struggling with barbarians, just because of how utterly crippled the AI is when they have to deal with both a barbarian invasion and my own invading force.

 

[planetfall]

Thank you for the details. I'll give barbs another try.

 

[PeterMoss]

My friend introduced me to this game on Switch. We played hotseat advanced starts beginning with 5 cities. Barbarians kept killing my settlers. I was expecting to be notified about a nearby Barbarian unit which might cause my settler to stop moving and prompt me to react but the game did not seem to help me this way. I ended up just losing a lot of settler units.

Sometimes the settlers would not have an escort. Sometimes I would guard the target settling location and the settler would never make it there alive. Sometimes I would try to escort the settler but the settler did not always go the same way and would die.

Maybe it is a hotseat thing. Maybe it is because we didn't update the game. Maybe it is a setting to enable that we had off. I would like to ask if there is a way to be notified about a nearby Barbarian unit and have the settler safely stop in time?

The advantage to my friend was getting the Barbarians as an ally against an uninformed and inexperienced player.

 

[itix]

IIRC, when you are escorting a settler, you can attach it to a military unit so they are always moving in tandem.

However, I would just turn barbs off in MP games. Early on, they dont contribute to the gameplay. Later on, they are too easy to counter.

 

[Ordnael]

Enable barbarians: Always, it's not a civ game, for me, if there are no barbarians.
Enable barbarian clans: Did it a few times, slow turns become a slog with clans growing camps into CS...no thank you