If there are more barb trick I need them, On raging hordes why not use barbs to your advantage? There are plenty of them.

Of the subject... When I play ICS and discover gunpowder it get very slow, since building this musketiers takes 3 times longer then my pikmen. Am I missing somthing?

Here's a good barbarian trick:

You see them coming and don't want the city sacked by the crusaders or big horseys or the dragoons, so line the coast near the city with units...usually only takes two or three around the city. But the ship will sit off the coast for the entire game! Experiment a bit with it. Sometimes I'll do this trick and build up city walls and then let the barbarians beat their little heads on the new masonry. Other times I'll just build an iron clad and kick their butts.

I don't let the barbarians sack a city. As geofelt mentioned, they can be very destructive. But there are instances where it is better to let them do as you say, take the town and then bribe the whole lot. But when you have stock markets and universities and factories and a lot of money, that barbarian extortion is huge and maybe even worth it. Of course, by this time of the game, one should have a few garrisoned troops.

Another barbarian trick, find a remote barbarian city and drop a spy off and get an indefinate number of 63 gold piece 'none' musketeers. If you have Leo's, they'll upgrade to our favorite, rifleman. I love nones as I have a democracy usually.

In truth, I think raging barbarians are an asset. Of course, I have a diplomat or two within reach of every city.

quote:

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Originally posted by crowatbitemedotcom on 12-29-1999 11:58 AM
Are you sure about the barbs not taking your second city? I know that if you only have one city, you are safe as long you have a unit inside, but I thought that if you had more than one, you could lose.

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You're safe with the one city, but as soon as you have a second city you may lose. I've noticed that sometimes the capital may hold out against barbs with a warrior, but sometimes it doesn't. The 2nd city never gets a bonus. Either way you can't count on it once the 2nd city is there.

But if you make Writing a priority you won't have any problems with barbs. Just keep the diplomat(s) near the edge of your empire, and when the barbs show up, buy the military and kill the leader. This is where Raging Hordes becomes an asset: you get more money from leaders for higher barb levels (150 at raging). You can often get a new army and make a profit at the same time.

Another trick is to go trolling for barbs. Take one military unit and 2 dips exploring. Use the military unit to take any huts while keeping the dips adjacent to the hut; if barbs pop out the max will be six. Use the dips to buy barbs and use the new friendly barbs to attack any remaining former comrades. With Leo's you can round up a huge "non" army of cavalry later in the game.

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Theben
Co-Moderator of the Civ3 Forums

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Casualties are part of war.... It's ok to die by the humdreds if your foe will perish by the thousands

So, here come the barbs. I go out to meet them with a Settler, and build a city before he can be attacked. The barbs walk in, and if you have whatever technology that allows you to have partisans, VIOLA, you instantly get about 8-12 partisans. They are all "NONE" units, even if this new city you founded is close to other cities.

For you democratic players, you know how important "NONE" units are, and partisans are pretty decent units. They have a defense factor of four, move 3 squares regardless of terrain, and ignore enemy zones of control -- a bunch of free "NONE" partisans are great for setting up that blockade of ground units between your territory and the AI's.

Xin's idea is almost enough to make me build horseys and cats. I may try that in OCC.

Of course, finding a barb city from a fallen civ early in the game is priceless.

That's brilliant. I've deliberately built in the path of barbs before for various reasons, but never just to create NONE partisans.

Now I know what to do when I see one of those subcontinents smothered in barbarian cavalry and fanatics.

Keep sending engineers up there, keep building cities and keep generating NONE partisans. Since I play most of the game (and all of the modern era as a Democracy) these NONE troops will come in very handy during the end game.

I can't wait to try this out. It may be a dead end, but it will break the monotony of thumping on the AI.

Partisans appear if I capture an AI city after the civ has discovered COMMUNISM. You only need Guerrilla Warfare to actually build Partisans.

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Scouse Git (2)

I'm pretty sure you are right. I can remember taking over very large AI cities and having partisans covering every city square, and taking over small cities and have only 3-5 to deal with.

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SandMonkey

"Shut up brain or I'll stab you with a qtip"
-Homer Simpson

bird/sandmonkey:

I assure you that I had a size 2 city taken over by barbs, and I got 16 partisans out of it. Every square in the city radius had a new partisan on it, except for 3 squares that had barb units on it, and one square that had one of my tanks on it. Maybe it has to do with the total population of your civilization--i don't know, but i've also encountered what you mentioned--taking over an AI city and only seeing 3 or 4 enemy partisans popping up.

What's interesting is that I took the city back on the next turn with armor, moved all the partisans away and moved the armor away so the barbarians could take it again. When they took it, I got no partisans, no nothing.

I think you have a point about the number of partisans being linked to the overall civ population and not to the size of the city itself. This is only anecdotal evidence - but in a recent game I captured the Zulu capital (size 12) and suffered only one partisan. By this time they were reduced to only one other city.

Graag

Oh, does graag attribute quantum mech to being a bird or is it all their droppings?

All you do is land a (supported) settler/engineer near a foriegn civ, build a city, and then rush-buy the settler/engineer, thus disbanding the city and giving you a NON unit (since it is closer to the enemy civ). Basically you are changing a supported unit into a NON unit with a small amount of gold. This is how it works, right?

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SandMonkey

"Shut up brain or I'll stab you with a qtip"
-Homer Simpson

ok, this is not much of a trick (I tried it again deliberatly later but never got such a good result) but it is definitly fun!!!

question, what is the most modern unit the Barbs ever came up with ... I've never seen anything beyond destroyer, artillery, riflemen.
also, can you bribe a barb leader and use him for anything usefull?

Hopefully, somebody here is on their way to validating this, or running a test of their own. This is something I really took note of, because I didn't know about the partisan thing, and, like catullus said, it seemed like an awful lot of units. That's why I tried to do it again 2 turns later with the same city.

Paul--thanks for the info. Could I interpret that to mean that if I want to gain more free partisans in this manner, I would have to build another city?

I'm intrigued with the suggestion of letting Barbs take over one of my small cities, and use it as a subsequent source of NONE units.

The price is right -- Barb units are cheap to bribe. Or are they more expensive tp bribe if they're near their own city? Do Barb cities build settlers/engineers?