Hi everyone

I'm about to win my second ever game on Noble thanks to the fantastic advice on this forum :D But there's still one major stumbling block I need to overcome and I'd really appreciate your thoughts on it!

Basically, if I don't get a decent start position on a map I find it really hard! I'm fine if there's lots of grasslands etc. but if there aren't any hills, how do I go about making a production type city? I know I have to explore, but in my last game I explored for ages and still couldn't find any decent hilly areas for production and I was really stuck! I actually quit because of it because I'm no good at military strategy (yet!) and need to be able to overwhelm my opponents still!

Any tips would be great! :)

Get to metal castings and build workshops? They arent that effective when you first get them but after you get the techs that increase the production to 4+ they start rocking.Or build a forge and hire an engy specialist

Get to metal castings and build workshops? They arent that effective when you first get them but after you get the techs that increase the production to 4+ they start rocking.Or build a forge and hire an engy specialist

I wasn't sure if that was the best idea, as it can take so long to get there, but I can't think of any other way around it, so that's probably what I'll need to do! Use my commerce rich cities to get my science up and then research it.

Hyper farm and whip until you research Metal Casting, CoL and Guilds. Once you have these three techs, and switch into caste system, every flat grassland tile can become a grassland hill mine (without the chance to spawn a resource obviously). Once you reach chemistry you can drop caste system without losing any hammer benefit or keep it and have the highest hammer tile improvement in the game. Add State Property to get your food back as well.

The forge is a possible addition, and it will multiply the hammers gotten from slaving, but it is A LOT of hammers to spend when you are hammer light and the happy benefit will probably be largely ignored due to the whipping. However, silver is unlikely that early, gold is hit-or-miss and gems often require that you at least get iron working which can be ignored for quite a while if desired. However, if you do have gold AND gems the extra commerce will help in the beeline since this particular path is quite expensive. You just need to balance out the opportunity costs of building the forge to the benefits you will receive.

Hyper farm and whip until you research Metal Casting, CoL and Guilds. Once you have these three techs, and switch into caste system, every flat grassland tile can become a grassland hill mine (without the chance to spawn a resource obviously). Once you reach chemistry you can drop caste system without losing any hammer benefit or keep it and have the highest hammer tile improvement in the game. Add State Property to get your food back as well.


Thanks mate! Can I ask - do you mean put loads of farms down so that the city grows fast, and whip libraries and any scientific buildings etc?

Workshops+Caste system(in BtS)+Guilds+Chemistry+State Property+Leevee=2F5H1C per grassland river tile. That's pretty impressive for production city, isn't it? And you don't need any hills.

Yep, farm + whip in those situations until you get to guilds, usually by trade, and then you can lay down some powerful workshops that only get more powerful with state property and chemistry.

Workshops+Caste system(in BtS)+Guilds+Chemistry+State Property+Leevee=2F5H1C per grassland river tile. That's pretty impressive for production city, isn't it? And you don't need any hills.

Agreed :D

But I'm just worried about being left behind at the start :(

Also, if you have lots of rivers available you could focus on getting to civil service and build watermills. You will have to get to guilds eventually to really get production on par with the AI but civil service can open up a few more options (move, via chain irrigation, some farms and open up those riverside tiles for watermills, which are food neutral improvements that add hammers and later generate quite a bit of commerce.

Once you get a few cities going with these basic improvements and decent number of commerce tiles (maybe stop slaving for a while, let the unhappy go away, and max populations), you could even try an early golden age to double those 1+ hammer improvement tiles and all those commerce tiles, thus getting you to guilds much more quickly.

Agreed :D

But I'm just worried about being left behind at the start :(

Well, usually your capital is in a strong location for early game production, since the map generator always tries to add at least 3 hills. And as stated already, in early game other cities just need to have high food surplus and you can crack the whip every 10 turns. Then you can of course beeline Metal Casting, Code of Laws and Guilds. That's already 1F3H for every grassland tile, same as mined grassland hill.

Thanks mate! Can I ask - do you mean put loads of farms down so that the city grows fast, and whip libraries and any scientific buildings etc?

Yes, pretty much farm where you can (you will still need to commerce for research). This is a tricky balancing act since the techs are expensive but you need hammers immediately. City specialization is crucial here, since production cities will whip while commerce cities won't. Also, during the down period after whipping you will probably want to work cottage tiles until the unhappy goes away, grow the city back to the happy cap, then whip again. You will want more production cities than commerce cities for this reason, and try and stagger so you only whip 1 city per turn(s).

Whipping libraries will let you work 2 scientists during those down periods (instead of a cottage that will have to mature), which is good. The barracks is also a good whip building so when you whip units they will be level 2. Otherwise, you should probably whip units during most cycles since with low production you are going to drop behind quickly in power.

and of course read up on whipping.. it is a real art.. there are some nice articles in the War Academy on it. Also do not forget the granary when you plan to whip. It hurries the time back to the happy cap :)

Hi everyone

I'm about to win my second ever game on Noble thanks to the fantastic advice on this forum :D But there's still one major stumbling block I need to overcome and I'd really appreciate your thoughts on it!

Basically, if I don't get a decent start position on a map I find it really hard! I'm fine if there's lots of grasslands etc. but if there aren't any hills, how do I go about making a production type city? I know I have to explore, but in my last game I explored for ages and still couldn't find any decent hilly areas for production and I was really stuck! I actually quit because of it because I'm no good at military strategy (yet!) and need to be able to overwhelm my opponents still!

Any tips would be great! :)

Workshops, Watermills, Farms + an Engineer specialist (or priest if you have Angkor Wat). You might want to consider running State Property as well since it gives +1 food to Workshops/Watermills which makes them very very breastly. A grassland watermill with State Property + a Levee in the city makes 3f 3h 3c. A grassland workshop (on the riverside) with State Property + Caste System (+1 hammer from workshops) + a Levee is 2f 5h 1c.

There's a really good strategy article on these things:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=247353

EDIT: I totally meant BEASTLY lol.. it was kinda early when I posted =P

Workshops, Watermills, Farms + an Engineer specialist (or priest if you have Angkor Wat). You might want to consider running State Property as well since it gives +1 food to Workshops/Watermills which makes them very very breastly (sic). A grassland watermill with State Property + a Levee in the city makes 3f 3h 3c. A grassland workshop (on the riverside) with State Property + Caste System (+1 hammer from workshops) + a Levee is 2f 5h 1c.

Ignoring the GPP, farms+engineer == metal casting grassland workshop (ignoring representation, which is unlikely given lack of production in the first place). Additionally, only 1 engineer is possible for a long while and requires a forge which is not an optimal improvement for a slave-driven production city.

State Property, while good, comes late and late game production problems can be overcome without many problems. I think we are sticking to the early game (pre-liberalism) since that is when managing production without hills becomes challenging.

In the early game, forests (chopped forests) can provide a significant part of your production. A starting location with 17 forests has much more production than a few mines for the beginning.

Don't forget that you can also find horses, copper, and iron on flatland tiles. Cows provide good production too. And forests and plains provide modest contributions to production also. Worse comes to worse, you can also build workshops, although those come somewhat late and aren't useful unless you run Caste System or research Guilds. Just because there aren't a lot of hills doesn't mean there aren't necessarily any good sites for production cities.

Pretty much the ony problem that can't be overcome is a lack of food... if you have enough grassland or flood plains, you are fine. If your land is totally useless (tundra, desert etc) lack of production is the least of your worries.

Workshops take a while to be effective, but until then Slavery and judicious chopping can solve most production problems. You might have to adjust your strategy a little - e.g. many small cities optimised to getting the most out of the whip in place of normal production cities.

Aside from workshops and engineers and forests, whip catapults and 30+ hammer units for 2 pop.

whip; and build cities closer to each other then normal. Small cities, granary, barracks, courthouses when available(but built those from various overflows, as otherwise they require 4 pop for non organized leaders, so city size 8).

By building something from overflows I mean: whip an... whatever, archer for 1 pop, cata for 2 pop, whatever, put the courthouse next(the overflow hammers will go into it), grow back, get rid of unhappiness(while still building the courthouse, but probably at 1-3 hammers, since you're hammer poor), whip again another unit, back to the courthouse and so on. That basically is the trick for any costly building, but you should stay away from those in small whipping cities; beside courthouses that is. Basically - city should have granary, barracks, courthouse and nothing else. Whip units with those cities and workers/settlers/spies/missionaries. Workers/settlers are also a good buffer since the city stops growing when building those, so allows you to recover the unhappiness.

All that being said, yeah, production poor starts aren't the greatest thing.

p.s. - and prioritize drama more for culture slider in order to increase your happy cap. Since you'll be running a food rich/cottage poor strat., income won't be your strong point, so you'll need the cultural slider(the other way of increasing happy cap being military/hr, but you want your units mobile, not linked to the city and they cost maintenance - which with under 1c/citizen ain't too good)

With enough slaving going on, combined with the closeness of cities, happy and city maintenance probably won't be an issue. For those cities that need additional happy temples and HR. HR is a good choice since you'll want units for power but without a strong production base an offensive war is not a priority (unless you want to try and capture some production rich land).

I agree on the buildings but I would say you can choose between a library and a courthouse as the third required build depending on game circumstances. Granary and barracks are both pretty helpful since you'll be whipping quite a few units in these cities. It could be worth it to build both even, once you are OK on your military needs.