Those barbarians are a nuisance. They don't scale up quite as fast as most civ's though, and on my archipello game they weren't actually trying to attack my HMS Kickass ships though (although they might as well have. Ranged attacks don't cause retaliation so it won't kill them untill it's my turn, and even if they'd been smart enough to just sail the other way, I played as english, had the Great Lighthouse, and the Naval tradition social policy. My destroyers could move about 4 times as far as those guys). They're still annoying though, since they cut you of from trade routes and sea resources untill you pulverise them.
About the terrorists-comparison though: Yes, those have machine guns like the barbarians but Shamus remarks how that makes sorta sense. But terrorists don't have a fully functional state of the art navy. Actually, I think the Somalian pirates have on occasion tried to attack warships (probably by mistake). That went... pretty much like Shamus shows here.
And yeah, the fact that Bismark and Washington wear suits in 2000 BC, and the Aztec still wears a tribal suit at the end of the game is kinda silly.
I was actually hoping Shamus would do a short Shamus-plays with this game. Sure, he normally does MMO's but you could tell the story of your leader through the ages. But I guess he did something like it now, which is nice, and he probably won't do a whole new story on it, which is a shame. I wonder what (if?) we'll get another series. I already read all the Champion online stuff. He seemed pretty entausiastic about Guild Wars 2, but that won't be out for some time.... We'll see.
