I am still far from an expert at this game. Anyone feel like looking at my save and giving comments? I'm doing okay now, but that's only because I expanded faster then everyone else. Once borders are solidified, they're going to surpass me in tech and production (this is how it happens in most of my games). What should I be doing better, or doing that I'm not doing right now?
:goodjob:

I looked at your game, and you don't have nearly enough cottages. Mainly make cottages, esp on floodplains. Farm a little bit for more citizens, but the game looks alright. I dunno what else, founding a religion might be helpful, or taking some holy cities. Just make sure you do the gold buildings (Grocer, bank,etc.) They're really helpful. Your game looks pretty good to me!

Btw, I'm in the same position as you. Noble player struggling with techs most of the time. I'm getting better about micromanagement, though.

City placement looks good. You need more workers though, some more cottages would help you also. Maybe one can argue about this but to leave all forests untouched by not chopping them looks suboptimal to me.

Thanks. Where do you see my next move? I'm reluctant to start a war, because I don't think my economy can take any captured cities.

First of all, you need a lot more workers. There are a lot of undeveloped tiles being worked at the moment. Second, you need to start building more cities. You've got plenty of room to expand and a lot of unclaimed resources (corn, copper, spices, wine and wheat).

The land you control already is very rich in resources, but a lot of them aren't hooked up. Happiness is severly limiting your growth (Munich grows next turn and it will have an unhappy citizen). The mistake you made was not going for calender. You have silk, banana, dye, gold, and sugar in your area, none of which are hooked up yet, and you are not even close to the required tech. Get the gold as soon as possible.

The biggest problem I have with your save is your undeveloped land, especially your lack of cottages. You've started to build them just now, but they're not even being worked! By this time you could have had two or three towns, but right now I can't even see a village. Go for pottery earlier next time, and you'll have a bigger tech lead and more money to support new cities. You're also going for Great People, which is ok, but you really should be focusing on other things.

Finally, Cologne is building a courthouse, which will only save you 1 gold/turn. Do something about that!

It will take some time for you to turn your this game around. But once you do, any victory condition will be possible. I'm sure your next noble game after this one will be a breeze.

OK, so in no particular orders, my biggest problems are:

- too much undeveloped land. Remedy: build more workers earlier, anticipate where I'll want my cities to grow into next, and stay ahead of their growth so that they always use developed land. Question: what do you recommend doing with grassland and plains that aren't irrigable? Cottage the non-irrigable, and irrigate where possible?

- too few cottages. Remedy: discussed above

I think the most enjoyable aspect of Civ is learning how to get better. I've given you mostly problems. For me to reveal all of the answers would ruin your fun. I'd make a suggestion as to what to do with flatlands, but circumstances differ from city to city, from game to game.

I'll just say this: a healthy economy starts from turn one. Your economy determines how fast you can expand and how large your tech lead is. The strength of your economy is determined by how you manage your workers. Keep trying new things, make mistakes, and fix them for next time. Makes for lots of fun.

Thanks for the help everyone. I'm now at 1200AD in a Prince game (small, lakes) and am 50% ahead of anyone else in score. The main difference in my play was that I micromanaged a lot more.

- I paid more attention to terrain improvements in general.
- I built more cottages, early (and also played Catherine, which helped...)
- I actually strategized around specialists (had two cities with what would be a combined 9 towns, so pumped out two scientists to build acadmies)

Things look well so far!!