Civ4 - where the hell do all the barbarians come from
 

I was playing a Prince level mod called FEX Epic. And the Barbarians just kept coming eventually destroying the drive I had towards a good civ game. SO, I sent some units out to scout around to find where they were coming from, perhaps a city somewhere and I couldnt find them anywhere. SO I ask, do they just amterialize out of a square or do they have to come from a city or else they would be animals?

I think they come from Ohio. Just a guess.

Dola

"Ugmar Barbarian, THE Ohio State University."

Barbarians can come out of any fog of war tile. So send a scout to explore all the areas around you.

Goodie huts gone bad!

(don't know if Civ 4 even has goodie huts...)

Yeah, they hide out where you either haven't been, or where you've been but haven't explored recently. My experience is that they camp in any unoccupied area that they can, until their ability to set up a camp is "cultured" away. Once they are squeezed off the map, they're gone. Until then, they cause quite a problem. I've played 2 games on oceanless maps (highlands and lakes), and they were around forever.

Barbarians can set up cities now too, though, can't they?

Yup, and build workers to improve the land, as well. It was real weird the first time I saw a barbarian city with a worker in it.

Of course they can. Just because they're barbarians doesn't mean they aren't CIVILIZED.

.. and build wonders as well.

I'm begining to loath barbarians. Has anyone check the option to remove them? If so, do the goodie huts remain?

Yeah, barbarians will pop up in any dark "greyed" area. They are a huge pain until later in the game when they have pretty much been wiped out/the world fully explored.

I have found two ways to deal with them, depending on your terrian.

1) If you have a lot of plains/desert, I found the best way to keep barbarians at bay is to have "outriders," either chariots or mounted archers. Have them for a perimeter around your "civ." The trick is to avoid having the barbarians getting too close to your cities/improvements. You should be able to handle them relatively easily without fear of having them ruin your improvements/capture workers.

2) If you are in a forested/jungle region, I tend to use foot troops to form a perimeter around the civ. Placing them on hills expands their line of sight (making the grey areas further out) and also gives them a defensive bonus. Barbarians will typically (though not always) attack a unit that's nearby.

The problem with both of these tactics, however, is that your military is being used to fend off barbarians, instead of other civs, and it can drain your resources depending on how many fronts you have.

I usually play without barbarians... I have a hard enough time playing on Noble without having to fend off barbarians early.

And yes, you still get huts with barbarians off.

Hmm...I was hoping that would turn off the huts too. One thing I've noticed, is that luck seems to be too much of a factor with the huts. If you get a settler out of the huts, you are by far, way ahead of all the other civs. Anyone know if you can turn them off too? Sorry about the threadjack.

Ever since Civ1, the barbarians come from the black squares.

gaul

The more civs you play with the less barbarians you have to deal with. In the game I'm currently playing with 18 civs on a huge map I think I only ever saw two animals and one barbarian.

Yeah. Thos fuckers can get some mildly decent cities going to. But it's always fun to destroy them.

However, they can be an absolute terror early in the game. They singlehandedly ruined one of my campaigns as i was barely getting started.

And yeah, they can come out of anywhere that you haven't fully scouted. But I see that in general they seem to keep coming from the spots they've come from previously. So build up some warriors, etc and post them around those areas.

Definitely agreed with this. I had this one corner of a continent that I hadn't quite culturally expanded to yet, and it had three spaces with the fog of war covering them. Seemed like every other turn there was a friggin barbarian Axeman coming down to harrass my farm and iron ore mine up there. I finally just posted a scout up at the end of the continent to keep them from coming.

I didn't know that before I started playing. I also didn't know the Terra map always had an old and new world. The first time I played a game on Terra I was very peaceful and had a decent points lead by the time I discovered astronomy. I immediately loaded up a couple gallons with missionaries, a scout, and a settler to look for other civs. When I discovered the new world I thought I'd found a new civ without any religion, and unloaded everyone near one of their cities to make peace and try to spread my state religion. The barbarions pretty quickly slaughtered all my non-combatants... and I thought "Oh cool! A barbarian civilization!"

I pretty quickly took all their cities and dominated the new world. It was pretty fitting that I was randomly assigned the Spanish for that game and used Conquistadors to slaughter the new world natives. It kind of sucks now that I know what to expect... pretty much stopped playing terra after that.

GF (now F) sends them.

"Argh! We ruin the Civ4 game for Flasch!"

What I think would be cool would be if the barbarians could become actual civilizations during gameplay. For instance, if a barabaric nation had five cites, they could either be allowed as a civilization or maybe their acceptance could even be voted on by the existing civilizations.

Yes, but how is the AI? If the AI is bad, it can ruin a good game.

My biggest wish for a patch/expansion is the option to play on a random map from the continents/terra/islands/pangea group. One game everyone would be on the same pangea-like island. In another, there would be a vast barbarian-only continent to explore. In still another, you'd be alone on an island with one other civ, with several other islands out there--some empty, others inhabited by 1-3 civs.

In short, I'd like the experience of starting out in a world that I don't know much about until I explore it.

I'm in 100% agreement. It's fun having no idea what's out there before you discover it.

You stop getting settlers after the first couple of difficulty levels. What the huts give you is XML-moddable (and changes by level).

I haven't tried it, but... http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=143727

Time for me to learn XML programming. Thanks for the insight!