I have just recently gone up to Noble difficulty (Warlord was FARRRRRR too easy, constantly coming first, or sometimes coming second if my position was terrible), however I currently have a couple of major problems.

The main one is that almost everyone hates my guts. I was stuck in one location, trapped by my friends, and had to declare war on one of my few friends to gain iron, my closest source of metal.

Now I have only 2 friends out of 6 civs, however I think that I can JUST pull through if I volunteer to become Churchills vassal (who, aside from Hasceput, is the only person who has a positive attitude towards me, and she is just plain weak).

But the problem is... there is no agreement on MY side of the diplomatic agreements to become a vassal. I can ask Churchill to become MY vassal (yeah right :P), but I can't offer to become someone elses vassal. I have seen the computer do it all the time, and I often get annoyed at it... however I can't seem to work out exactly HOW to do it... :(

I also personally don't want to quit this game, as it would be the third time in a row that I lost a noble game (the first was a icy tundra arcipedilo map with next to no production, the second was a game where I lost a warrior, on a hills, fully fortified and healed, on a 20% cultural defence city, to a barbarian archer, who promptly gained 2 city defence promotions, and ended up with nearly 10 strength...). I nearly lost this game too, as I started of with a killer tech deficit, and at one point ended up with 4 simultanious waves of armies, each larger than MY entire army... (With a gift of gold, and a AP vote, I survived :D)

Nuff said about the game. I want to become Churchills vassal NOOOOOWWWWWWWW!! (Screeny coming...)

I do have vassalage... just in case you were thinking it was a tech thing... and even though I don't think volunteery vassals need size and strength requirements to be met, I think I would JUST meet those (Churchill is HUGE but milaterily weak...)

You can't.

Really!? Thats sort of sad that the computer can do it, and I can't...

Oh well. Time to start anew... After looking more into my diplomatic situation, I realise that Hatshepsut has become a vassal of Tokogawa, and Churchill is almost as weak as me -.- The situation looks hopeless. Hopefully next time, I can get a source of METAL, so that Im not holding off huge armies with little archers...

(As an aside, Civ IV must be the only place where there is a significant difference between bowmen and archers)

A few alarm bells rang when i read your post.

First was come first in score. It's not really important to come anywherein score, but to get one of the victory conditions. space race or domination are the most common. Try to play for one of those victories right from yuor first turns.

Next is that you were boxed in. If this looks like happening, fight your way out. Settle cities aggressively towards your AI opponents, or build axes and attack if you have to. nothing worse than being limited to a couple of cities.

The AI will spam cites, so you need to too, as you can afford them with courthouses and currency, some cottages.

lastly build an army of 5-6 axes, some chariots, some spears. build some barracks (they all help to deter attacks) , then it doesnt matter if they hate you. you are in charge.

Hopefully this general advice is welcome. also check out Orion's home school for Noble (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=246889) and Orion's noble school, space (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=248945)in this forum

^^ What they said.

You can become another human player's vassal if you're playing a MP game. Otherwise, you can never become a computer player's vassal -- the game designers felt that this could be an exploit for humans.

And don't worry about losing a game, as long as you learn something from it and have fun in the process. Think about it -- if you were playing against six other players, all else being equal, you'd only have a 1:7 chance of winning anyway. So you've nothing to worry about until you've lost seven games in a row.... ;)

Really!? Thats sort of sad that the computer can do it, and I can't...



Becoming a vassal is an admission of defeat, since you can't make it without someone else's protection. So why would you even want to to do it in the first place?

Im not a total noob. (Wait... coming last in noble, only winning ever at Warlord difficulty... OMG I am!!)

But there were a couple of problems with that game. Its sort of hard to build axes without copper, or iron. I initially fought quite well by building some chariots and horse archers (and later elephants), however once they build pikemen, I was pretty much screwed (add on the fact that without metal, specifically iron, I can't build cataphracts, crossbowmen, or pikemen... massively weakening my attack force...). So yeah...

I wanted to continue the game, as I have the idea that if I come in the bottom two in the game, I go down a difficulty level, and if I come in the top two, I go up a level. Ive been bouncing up and down Warlord difficulty to Noble for a while, and only just started reading some of the tips and guides. Hopefully the next game, I will have a bit more luck... Thanks for the help!

how about overseas resources ? maybe you can hook up some metal at a remote island ?

elephants and cats are plenty to take down a civ in the classical era.

Yeah... but unfortunatly I never got the iron, and when I entered the medieval era, I got screwed. That, and Churchill had iron, but I had nothing he wanted...

I wanted to be his vassal for two reasons. #1: Its sort of like a perma alliance, right? My tactic at Warlord is get two good friends, and shoot as fast as possible for Communism, and then get a permanent alliance. By communism, I am normally about third strongest in the world, and with my permanent ally, we shoot up extremely quickly to become stronger than nearly every other two-man team, INDIVIDUALLY.
#2: Im not sure about this, but sometimes masters give other AI techs. I was wondering if Churchill would be nice enough to loan me his iron... at least until I could do something with it...

No overseas resources, because I didn't have caravels... which was sad...

Im gonna have to keep working on noble. I still have yet to get above the average score... and I have no idea why its so hard... I follow some guide I found, and still am falling slowly behind in everything... (But I am trying for a specific goal: domination, so yeah...)

Thanks for all the help!

You should stay at Noble. You'll learn more by losing at Noble than winning at Warlord. You've just learned you NEED to expand fast and grab some metal, right ? In the beginning Bronze Working is not an option, it's a must have to see where you gonna settle.

Diplomacy is good. Diplomacy with axes is better.

Shoot for bronze working and ice the nearest computer with a horde of axes. Or play as Cyrus and trample the three nearest saps. If you truly are both iron and copper and horse screwed its a lot harder. Its happened to me twice, but I worked around that problem with cats... Sadly thats no longer possible in BTS. Hmm I`m off topic here. Ah yes never rely on AI help they only care about themselves and theres a chance your master will declare war and drag you in and you can`t vassal to begin with.

I haven't seen the vassalage in action yet. It just hasn't been an option yet. Either it's to early or it's redded out.

I have just recently gone up to Noble difficulty (Warlord was FARRRRRR too easy, constantly coming first)

That's no good. Try thinking about your shopping list or baseball or something. I've heard pinching it...

Oh.

I recommend being aggressive from the start . Don't worry too much about getting religions or building wonders . Better to target a civ with one of the religious shrines already . Even better , target a civ that spread its religion quite a bit to other civs . If you capture the shrine and convert to that religion it really helps in diplomacy and in many ways its like going to war with out taking a diplo hit since religion compensates for it .

If you have a large army , the computer is less likely to ' pick on you' and give you some breathing space .

If your boxed in like that you have two options . Either start another game or play the hand your delt . If you see your boxed in from the very start because of AI city spamming , then focus all your production on military and ' break out .' Good news is , if the AI spams more cities , it will inevidably spread out its forces more and give you a better chance of taking at least a couple cities .

If you have no metal , it makes it harder , but if you don't even have horses , then you have to do it with archers . Granted its more difficult but its doable since its the only real option you have , its either that or remain boxed in until that civ has enough of your presence and decides to mop up your couple cities . The sooner the better before the AI has the opportunty to build up metal based units ( axemen , swordsmen) or even cats .

Being the Native Americans would be nice in this situation naturally . YOu can beef up some pretty good archer units and not worry so much about metal . Capac is nice for the Quenchas too .