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Conscript
 
Last Seen:
5/7/2008 1:56 AM
Posts: 47
Visits: 101
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I'm chalking one up with the "love the barbarians" crowd. They were a serious, real component of the history of every early civilization. An additional AI civilization, as was mentioned earlier, would not be an effective replacement. Barbarians came from every nook and cranny of the remote areas of the world, suddenly appear at the edge of the countryside, run in and raze and pillage, and disappear just as quickly... that is, unless the state's army was sufficient/ready...
Placing defensive units at the edge of your territory, on well-defensible tiles (forest, hills, hills/forest) and taking advantage of the defense promotions specific to that tile (guerilla, woodsman) is an excellent strategy. Barbarians make fairly predictable decisions, based on what they can see... I believe they attack, in this order:
1. Undefended city in adjacent tile
2. Undefended worker/settler in adjacent tile
3. Pillage improvement on current tile
4. Either...
- move to adjacent improved tile
- attack adjacent unit
(I haven't noticed a direct priority here)
5. Move towards something to kill/destroy
So if you place units next to a barbarian unit *before* it gets to your improved tiles, you can save your stuff. They attack suicidally, in general. Given the choice, though, I believe they gauge combat odds, and will choose a battle with greater success odds.
Also... regardless where you start, it is possible to get archery and masonry before anything tougher than archers start showing up on your borders. Archers + walls is a good bet, even in cities without any cultural defense 3*(+50% city + 50% from walls) = 6... your archers can go toe-to-toe with axemen, and hopefully you can have some city garrison promotions on some of your archers before the swordsmen come. Yeah they'll pillage your improvements... on border tiles, cottages are a liability.
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You are frozen by the floating eye's gaze.
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