Barbarian strategies......

[Dale]

Just to start off some strategy talking.......

How do you like barbarians, and how do you deal with barbarians?

I think the concept of barbarians is excellent. But I do believe if we mod the barbs, we need to be careful we don't make them more powerful than an AI civ in the start-game. If the barbs get stuck into AI civs and the player, it makes for a weak AI civ later in modern times.

I like dealing with barbs by using a few mobile stacks of 3-4 fast moving units like horsemen. I'll use 3 or 4 stacks of these mobile units to patrol the borders searching for barbs. If I check a ruin and get a barb raid, I'll try to avoid the barbs while moving two mobile stacks up to eliminate them. However, if the barbs are too far away, I'll take the loss of the unit who triggered them on the shoulder (usually I'm only exploring with el-cheapo units and one's I found in ruins anyways), and have a pleasant surprise if he lives.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Dale
Just to start off some strategy talking.......

That's the spirit

I like the way Cradle handles Barbarians: there are lots of them, they're very agressive, yet they rarely take cities or hold them for long periods of time. In Cradle, it's quite possible to encounter Barb stacks of size 6 or higher so it's almost a necessity to have one or two size 8 or higher stack dedicated to defending the homeland. Since it takes ages to repair damaged soldiers in Cradle, I always try to attack Barbs with the biggest armies possible to ensure I take as little damage as possible. If I get barbs from ruins, I just run and hope for the best (if I'm near my homeland I'll flee home if possible), I too only use el cheapo units and units from ruins for recon.

In Cradle for some reason I almost never resort to slavery but in the older days when I still played a lot of MedMod, Barbs were a great source for 'free' (i.e. no diplomatic cost) slaves.

[Eagle]

I prefer that barbs at a low setting. Just a little bit of trouble. Don't want them to be too much.

I remember one of my first SP games. Started out with two settlers, builded two cities and started working on a granary in both of them (I am a city builder, not a military guy). Was before I installed the medmod, so my cities were empty. What happens next ? Two barb parties are coming in, take my two cities --> game over in second turn.
Well, learned to start building a unit before building my granary that way.

For recon, I am using old units as well, and anything I pick up in ruins. Most of the time it will be a stack of max 2 to 3 units. So, I end up loosing them quite a lot.

I never used slavery. Don't like it. Not in the game, just principle in general. Maybe they are good in the game, dunno, just never tried it out.

[Pedrunn]

More barbs babe. Come hot that i am in flames.
In my own modifications i set barbs to have high priority to pillage and to pirate. And not as much to attack. That way we have to go after them. And thats is cool.
And gave me some fun situations.
Once i checked the trade manager and i saw that barbs were pirating me so i sent a stack of 3 units. There was a stack of 9 units in forests (0.25 bonus defense) sucking up my resources.
I thought well and i said to my self. I dont think it is a good idea to attack them. I would need too much units. And to cancel the route would mean a attack in my so unprotected cities (3-4 units). Or destroy my tile imps. So we lived peacefully ( ). They could get my route as far as they did not moved out of that point (of course i let a vision 2 unit to watch them). An unformal agreement (after all barbs cant read )

[hexagonian]

I'm finding that the barb setup in Cradle is a real challenge, because they are a constant threat in the early game. I've had to carefully consider tile improvement placement, because the barbs will more readily pillage them. And they willl stack up quickly, so military production from a purely defensive standpoint is a necessity. A player is faced with the decision to either expend a lot of energy to eliminate the Barb threat (and also face a lot of unit losses in the process) or sit tight and build up defensively. As of late, I have been using more of the latter strategy - and am still taking the occasional city loss though. But by the time I have a good military to deal with the barbarians, then the game transitions into multiple civs marching stacks around in my homeland.

One of the things that I am most happy with Cradle is the difficulty in enslaving barbarians in the early going - though it is possible. The last revision in Cradle (boosting the cost of Slavemasters) is one that I am very pleased with.

One other thing that the Cradle barbarian setup has forced me to do is to always escort settlers with military. And I also make sure that the escort moves first acting as a scout before the settler, so that if the escort blunders into a Barb stack, the settler can move to avoid them. Imay lose the unit, but at least the settler is safe. I'm even using multiple units as escorts now - there were times I was losing a settler stack to Barbarian hordes.

(BTW, I'm finding that the most valuable early game unit is the Javelin Cavalry, just so I can see where everything is at.)

On the flipside, I've been able to lead barbarians into enemy stacks - and in a purely defensive mode have seen enemy army stacks in my homeland take out Barbarians lurking around my cities, thus saving me the effort of doing it myself.

[TheArsenal]

I enjoy the game most when I start fairly far behind and have to use all means available to catch up to other civs. So in this respect, I prefer an aggressive barbarian threat. Early game expansion and general exploration are slowed for me, as single units, particularly settlers as hexagonian noted, must have an escort. I also find myself considering military stack configurations and national defense more carefully than I generally do in the early game w/out barbarians. The result is I end up building a far more compact and well defended early empire. This allows me to turn my empire's efforts to other concerns, and feel fairly comfortable sticking with non-military aims, even when foreign nations walk stacks of two or three troops through my land and refuse to leave.

Secondly, I like to use my military. But since diplomatic/strength considerations don't always allow incursions against other countries, a stack (4 or 5) of Mounted Archers or later, Knights serve the dual purpose of mobile Barbarian control and expelling foreign civilians unit (slaver, settlers and the likes) before they wander too far onto my land and cause problems. This scratches my itch fight without going to war.

Question: IIRC, my settings are usually: ApolytonPack, Medium/Hard, U.G. Map, Marauding Barbarians, 8 Civs. Last night I used basically the same settings, but 11 civs, Very Hard, and didn't seem to see a choice for Barb difficulty settings. And during one portion of the game, the Barbs were identified as building a wonder and being lead by Mr. Genghis Khan, I think it was. So I ask, was the setting for Barb difficulty not there at this level/number of civs, or did I miss it because it was very late and I was tired?

[DeanToth]

1) In the very early game when I have my 1 or 2 warriors wandering around uncovering map tiles I have a strong negative emotional response to barbarians - since they tend to appear out of the fog-o-war and take over cities.... However, I like the IDEA of them and thus usually play with difficult barbarian settings

2) I like barbarians very much once I have a slaver going with a decent army stack. Nothing builds up cities like a good slave labor force with plenty of barbarians out in the wild to stock up on, just as in REAL LIFE historical settings - they are a good source of labor. (negative historical connotations to slavery notwithstanding).


I haven't played any mods yet, so I can't comment on those.

Take it easy.
(join the multiplayer registry)

[Maquiladora]

OK, i seem to be the only one who hates barbs, up to now
I just hate the way they ALWAYS pop out when your moving a settler to a nice green spot for a new city when, 'oh dear, look whats happened again, what an f'in surprise'. So i learnt to guard them pretty early on (civ2) but they just annoy me. I just wish it was more random, maybe it is, maybe im just unlucky.

Maybe its because i keep everything tied down in my empire, thats to say i like to have all units accounted for inside my cities, or at the very least in nice BIG useful stacks, rather than spreading my forces, all willy nilly. Which is why i have never used the sentinal command.

[Locutus]

Although Barbarians *are* as random as they can be, the fact is that if you play with Barbarians on the highest setting it's not very wise to have settlers walk long distances unguarded. There are a lot of Barbs out there and they're always walking around looking for juicy settlers So although it's random, it's not really a matter of just bad luck either. If you want them to bother you less, you should play with a lower level of Barbarian activity...

[DeanToth]

I always always stack an army unit or two either ON the settler or near it, as it treks across, what in game terms, are hundreds if not 1000's of kilometers of terrain.

And in these most ancient of times, i feel it is realistic to have barbies pop out like that.

Plus have you noticed barbies ONLY pop out of "unseen" tiles? That is, any black or dimmed tiles.

Any tile in direct "sight" of a city or unit NEVER spawns a barbie.... so you can keep nice buffer zone of units several squares to the side of settlers... especially warrior or scout units which have a larger viewing radius. And warriors are really cheap to make...