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Barnacle Bill
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Somewhere on the wine dark sea
Oct 2001 time: 00:16
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Historically, Barbarians were a significant threat to civilizations until gunpowder. A civilization is highly specialized - only a minority of the population is actually armed and trained. Even in ancient civilizations where citizenship was closely linked military participation (classical Greek city-states, pre-Marius Roman Republic, etc...), the majority of the population were disarmed persons of less-than-citizen status. A barbarian society has little or no specialization, and if its culture is warlike than almost all adult males are trained and armed. Thus, a barbarian society produces many more troops per capita than a civilization, and it is this that made them a huge threat.
After the technological developments which made gunpowder weapons dominant, barbarians were only a local threat in frontier areas. Gunpowder and the weapons to use it, even a relatively primative level, requires a fairly specialized infrastucture to produce in quantity and a barbarian society just can't - they have to get arms & ammo from civilized folks and usually have a shortage of both as compared to regular troops of a civilization. In frontier areas where civilized folk (and the military specialists among them) were thin on the ground, though, barbarians could generate local advantages in numbers to somewhat offset this disadvantage. However, industrialization, railroads and other technologies steadily increased the disparity.
It looks to me like Civ3 has it right.
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Moraelin
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Barbarians also depend on the difficulty you play on, but only on Deity they actually have any real punch. (And even then, it's... what? Warriors and Horsemen?) On Chieftain you actually have a +800% bonus against barbarians (i.e., hit and defend 9 times as hard against barbarians), which means one Warrior of yours has no problem taking on a whole horde of their horsemen. On Regent, you still have a pretty massive bonus against them.
Basically what I'm getting at is: if those ransacked your cities, then your cities probably weren't properly defended to start with. The AI civilizations can hit a LOT harder than any barbarian uprising, so it's a good idea to up your defenses ASAP.
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