Why am I always the target of barbarian hordes?

[Name]

Seems as of lately, I have the luck of having 2-3 barbarian camps spawning near me that pump out crazy numbers of warriors and archers.. It really stagnates my progress from expanding my empires economy or science production. Alwhile the other team mates in safety and relaxation get to expand their empires rapidly. I've been told "oh just explore and take the camps out" yeah well I don't have time to take them out. I am beginning to wonder if there is some kind of hack out there to allow other players to place camps near your settlements?

[Danny]

Don't let barb scouts find your capital and report back to their camp.

[kyroshill]

Originally posted by Danny:

Don't let barb scouts find your capital and report back to their camp.

This.

Sometimes you have to prioritize either blocking the scout from getting view of your city or blocking their return to camp.

[Sarisin]

I agree this is the way to go, but it is often easier said than done especially if you play at Epic or Marathon speed. I will take you usually at least 10 turns to build your first Scout which can track down the barb Scout - the Warrior just cannot catch him. Then, you have to try and kill the barb Scout before it heads back to the barb camp.

The problem with this as it is in another game areas is the appearance of barb camps don't seem to depend on the game speed. IMO those camps should spawn a little later in the slower game speed. The OP is right though in that it is often just bad luck when a camp spawns near you and you have to devote many turns at slow speeds to try and kill that barb scout or you will have beaucoup barbs on your doorstep. Either way, you are set back in building improvements, districts, buildings, Wonders, etc. while the AI civs pull away from you.

The plus of all this is you can level up your troops to the max by killing the barbs. Sometimes I think there is some sort of factor against the human player vs the AI that drops things like this on you, but you have to learn how to react and move on...or just start a new game if you are falling too far behind.

Still, it would be great if the spawning of barb camps would come a few turns later in the slower speed games.

[Danny]

Your warrior can scare off the scout untill you can get more units.

[Sarisin]

The tradeoff in addition to falling behind in going for wonders, improvements, districts, etc when you have to build Warriors to counter the barbs is that you lose out on exploration and goody huts as well.

[TheOstwind]

My favorite strat is to spam slingers, 3, 4, maybe 5. Use them to explore. Nothing is more important than getting those envoys and huts early on, along with finding a natural wonder and another continent. After you've done some exploring, you've got a little army to help fend off the barbarians. Rush those envoys.

[kyroshill]

Originally posted by GrandmasHomeCookin:

My favorite strat is to spam slingers, 3, 4, maybe 5. Use them to explore. Nothing is more important than getting those envoys and huts early on, along with finding a natural wonder and another continent. After you've done some exploring, you've got a little army to help fend off the barbarians. Rush those envoys.

LOL..... seriously? I thought the game was "trash" and the devs had ripped us all off. Have a good holiday and quit trolling. You suck at it!

And watch out for Gandhi on your way out.

[Shahadem]

Originally posted by kyroshill:

Originally posted by Danny:

Don't let barb scouts find your capital and report back to their camp.

This.

Sometimes you have to prioritize either blocking the scout from getting view of your city or blocking their return to camp.

That's not really possible since barb scouts move at the speed of a scout.

And as stated above if you are playing at Marathon speed on a huge map it's not possible at all cause the amount of landmass is too big for your one starting barb. By the time your first scout is finished you already have a horde on your border.

It's just a really stupid game design choice that never should have been made. Plus I've never seen AIs get swarmed by barbs. Hell the barbs don't even target AI units.

[lost]

Originally posted by Shahadem:

It's just a really stupid game design choice that never should have been made. Plus I've never seen AIs get swarmed by barbs. Hell the barbs don't even target AI units.

I have seen AIs get swarmed by barbarians. I have also seen AI units targetted instead of mine. I even once saw barbarians take out a city state though that last was a few patches ago.

On higher difficulties, however, the AI is on a stronger footing vs barbarian units than the player is due to the bonuses the AIs get on those difficulty levels which the player doesn't get. Thus, they have a better shotnat combatting a swarm by having more fog busting units sooner.

That said, the barbarian scout turn really needs to be scaled properly with game speed. I've had my capital destroyed by multiple simultaneous barbarian raids on marathon at *prince* difficulty before it was even possible to finish building more than a single slinger. You can't defend against a half dozen barbarian horses with an unwalled city and at most a slinger and a warrior.

[kyroshill]

Originally posted by Shahadem:

Originally posted by kyroshill:

This.

Sometimes you have to prioritize either blocking the scout from getting view of your city or blocking their return to camp.

That's not really possible since barb scouts move at the speed of a scout.

And as stated above if you are playing at Marathon speed on a huge map it's not possible at all cause the amount of landmass is too big for your one starting barb. By the time your first scout is finished you already have a horde on your border.

It's just a really stupid game design choice that never should have been made. Plus I've never seen AIs get swarmed by barbs. Hell the barbs don't even target AI units.

It's very possible. I do it all the time. You don't chase, you predict and delay.

And barbs target whatever is close. AI gets locked down by raging barbs too.

[Shahadem]

Originally posted by kyroshill:

Originally posted by Shahadem:

That's not really possible since barb scouts move at the speed of a scout.

And as stated above if you are playing at Marathon speed on a huge map it's not possible at all cause the amount of landmass is too big for your one starting barb. By the time your first scout is finished you already have a horde on your border.

It's just a really stupid game design choice that never should have been made. Plus I've never seen AIs get swarmed by barbs. Hell the barbs don't even target AI units.

It's very possible. I do it all the time. You don't chase, you predict and delay.

And barbs target whatever is close. AI gets locked down by raging barbs too.

Predict with what? Delay with what? I HAVE ONE WARRIOR! Either that barb is sent to explore or that barb sits on a tile and then isn't able to do anything because the barb scout is on the either side and gets to run all the way to the camp ahead of my one warrior.

And no, I watch the barbarians ignore the AI all the fing time.

[n-j-s]

Civ 6 is my first Civ game that I have played and I think the barbarian system is wonky. I am still learning the about the mechanics of the game and playing on prince difficulty. I think the way that firaxis implemented them is to slow you down to make up for the poor AI. Maybe its bias but when I have a scientific or religious lead, the barbs just show up and make a beeline for my city state, so I have to momentarily concentrate on them. The scouts show up at the worst tiles to chase. So far I have never been able to win a game, I always get second place behind the top AI but not by much, around a hundred points overall. Maybe their distraction in the early game was enough to do that. Hopefully, I will get better, still learning to do things efficiently.

[lauruswolfe]

Barbarians are out of control I could usually play decently on Emperor difficulty but since the latest update the Barbarians create so many units from a single camp it just wrecks my early game even more than it used to. I just tried playing suddenly I have 3 archers, 1 slinger, 4 warriors, 2 spearmen just sitting outside my capital I killed 2-3 units already but I can't even produce units fast enough to combat them so I'm just constantly eating turns trying to produce units. They're all from a single camp too.

[The Bored Chairman]

While it is possible for AIs to get invaded by barbarians, there DOES seem to be a coding oversight that causes Barbs to prioritise human players.

If a Scout that has already spotted an AI village spots yours as well, the raids will stop invading the AI and start heading towards the player. Another example of this can be seen when the "Recruit Partisans" mission is completed against a neighbouring AI. The Barbs that spawned from THEIR territory will attack YOU instead, DESPITE them being a targeted Covert Op against ANOTHER player.

There are several mechanics in this game that are still wonky, Barbs are supposed to spawn 2 Warriors and a Ranged unit (and only this) if their Scout reports back but it's not uncommon for them to spawn a unit EVERY turn the Scout remains alive. Additionally, there is supposed to be a small time frame before a Camp starts spawning random units that increases when a unit gets attacked, but again, this seems to straight up not be the case, Barb boats tend to be the worst offenders of this bug/oversight.

It's not just Barb spawns that are broken, Droughts are still bugged in that if a drought triggers, it has a HIGHER chance of triggering AGAIN each turn, rather than removing the trigger chance as it should. I don't play Apocalypse mode for this very reason, I once had a 30 turn Drought because another one would trigger every turn.

[Sarisin]

I don't want to crap on this thread of barbs (I already commented on them), but I agree with what you are saying about the disasters. I think like the barbs the disasters are dropped more on the human player rather than the AI one. I tracked this one game when I had a medium size civ of about 10 cities. My territory or very close to (the disasters often start in the AI territory and then move into yours) I had a disaster hit me 16 straight turns. Yes, I was playing in Apocalypse mode, but this seemed like a lot. One city got hit with a tornado, dust storm and then a flood in three straight turns. Usually, just tiles and improvements are damaged, but I had all my units in this area killed as well.

I like using the Apocalypse mode because as bad as they are at least you can somewhat prepare for most of them in terms of city placement (unless you capture AI cities) or building improvements like dams (guaranteed at least one flood while YOU ARE BUILDING THE DAM!) and flood barriers.