forum.freeciv.org

They are so freaking aggressive, I don't understand why. Before we even enter the common era they have muskateers and just own every other player before we can get footing. And I'm playing on novice!

I just love Pirates. They can teach a lot of lessons to novice players. When I play single player with Hard or higher settings, I love to have Raging Hordes of Barbarians. They keep me on my toes.

Essentially, you learn not to leave your cities empty. You learn about proper defense. You learn about keeping pace with other nations with scientific research. It's the closest simulation to playing online in a multiplayer environment, without actually being online

Yeah, barbarians mean that even on an Island game, I try to make sure my cities are well defended by turn 60 (or later: server setting) when the barbs appear. City wall and even one phalanx give a lot of defense, unless you've got hordes (which turns out to mean lots of barbarians in one place) coming. A couple of veteran phalanxes behind a wall can take a lot of punishment.

Build first city, grow and expand, build barracks in high production city, send phalanxes to all your other cities (remembering to Home them once there, so they don't cost the producing city for shield support), build/buy walls.

***

OTOH, as for keeping pace on research, I got soured when I learned that the AIs cheat with 100% science rates under despotism.

I, personally, don't like that barbarians start with legions, even when nobody knows iron working. There's no way to defend against legions until you can get phalanx and city walls built up. They should probably only start with Archers and Horsemen. Note that I like barbarians appearing on turn 1