Hi all,

thanks in advance for any help you can give, this site's been my favorite reading material now for a while!

So here's the deal, I try and follow advice and tactics on the site and set up production cities, great people farms, commerce cities etc, but the following things always seem to happen to me:

( I play on Noble )

1. By the time I build cities 5 and 6 it causes me to have to drop my research to like 40%. (Normally get here in the AD's) which I don't get back up until around 1200

2. I tend to found a religion, but most of my neighbours seem to as well which means I always have poor relations with everyone (as non-founders are a long way from me, thus harder to spread my religion to)

3. by 1200AD I'm third in the score and considering making war to take some opponent cities, although I think this is v bad war timing?

4. I always have a puny military, maybe 1 unit in each city, horribly old warriors or archers.

Here are the questions which are always going through my mind:

Should I have a city which JUST produces military units? What buildings should it have? Isn't that going to cost me a lot in maintenance for all those units?

When's a good period to start my first good war?

How many cities should I have up and by what time period? I tend to end up with about 6 / 7 by 800AD.

Thanks everyone, it frustrates me how much I seem to fall behind when I read Sulla's walkthrough where he breezes through Noble making it look easy!

I suggest reading all those cookbook threads. Even the emperor/immortal ones even if you arent playing on that difficulty yet! The discussion there contains a lot of information and gives some insight to why something was done.

As per your points:
1. The slider it self doesn't tell much. A huge empire with 40% research compared to a small one with 100% might still have more overall research power!

2. Dont find a religion. Let your neighbour spread one to you.

3. There is no 'bad' war timing. It all depends on the situation!

4. This one is easy to solve. Build more military.

A specialized military city can be very useful. You'll want buildings that give experience and buildings and that give more hammers.

Your first good war? It depends on the situation! It might be good to do before settling your second city, might be good with horse archers a bit laters, maybe with macemen.. You get the point.

Short answer: Land.

Long answer. 5 or 6 cities don't seem to be enough, at Nobel you should be getting more than that. Once you have built a city then in most of them you should spam cottages on all the flat land, once they have been worked your rate should go back up. Also you should build courthouses in your cities.

Waiting until 1200AD to go to war is possibly a bit late, if I can reach the AI I would have won a few wars by this time.

Don't worry about the research rate, if necessary go to 0% research. Once your land and cities have improved it will go back up. You should also take a look at some example games here. Download the provided saves and take a look. Also you could upload one of your saves (preferably from the BC years) and we can critique it for you.

Welcome. Attaching a save from a typical game is a great way to get detailed advice; a series from the same game is even better. To answer specific things:

Score is not always the best indicator of how well you're doing; falling behind in score does not mean the game is lost. Having no military is a clearer sign of trouble.

1. If you have BTS, you can see the actual science/turn output, which is the number that really counts. Don't worry as much about the slider.

2. For diplo reasons it often pays to not bother founding religions, or adapting other civ's state religions over your own. There are often better things to spend hammers on rather than flooding the AI's with missionaries.

3. 1200AD doesn't really tell if it's good or bad war timing. Generally good war timing is whenever you get a key military advantage, either through outteching or (more rarely) taking advantage of an AI without metal. Another good timing is if you can dogpile, watch AI's for "we have enough on your hands" and be ready to take advantage of their wars, or start one yourself though tech bribing. If you have an early strategic resource and a nearby neighbor, axe/sword/chariot rush may be good timing.

4. Usually a city that produces only military is a must, especially good if you get a unit eligible for the Heroic Epic early. The city should only have barracks, granary, monument if needed, HE, maybe a forge or stable. Generally look for an early-game production site, which means lots of hills (possbily augmented by strategic resources) plus some food boni + irrigable grassland to work them.

Aim for 6/7 cities closer to 1AD instead of 800AD.

Hi all,

thanks in advance for any help you can give, this site's been my favorite reading material now for a while!

Hi and welcome to civfanatics! :)

1. By the time I build cities 5 and 6 it causes me to have to drop my research to like 40%. (Normally get here in the AD's) which I don't get back up until around 1200

40% of what? 100% of 10 commerce turned into beakers is less than 40% of 100 commerce. The slider doesn't matter, your overall science output matters. In games in which you use mostly scientists for your research you might have a low slider (as the commerce is used to pay for maintenance/units) and still research at a good pace.

Anyway, it's normal to drop the slider a bit once you expand to 5-6 cities. Something has to pay for the maintenance, and before merchants commerce is all you have to do it. To expand more you need Currency (+1 trade route per city, opens markets) and Code of Laws (courthouses, Caste System for unlimited merchants). Don't forget to build enough workers to improve the tiles around your cities, as bigger cities working good tiles can help you expand further.


2. I tend to found a religion, but most of my neighbours seem to as well which means I always have poor relations with everyone (as non-founders are a long way from me, thus harder to spread my religion to).

A religion is not at all necessary. And founding a religion doesn't mean you should adopt it. Take into account the religious differences around you, and if necessary don't adopt any religion. Once you get to Liberalism just adopt Free Religion if the situation is too complicated to take sides. By the way, the modifiers for not accepting a religion when an AI asks you to adopt it are smaller than those for having a different religion, so you're better off turning down a conversion that you don't want, than converting and then pissing off the other AIs.


3. by 1200AD I'm third in the score and considering making war to take some opponent cities, although I think this is v bad war timing?

The year doesn't matter, the units you and the AIs have do. Axemen vs archers (with low cultural defenses), swords + catapults vs archers, macemen vs archers/longbows, etc. are good times to fight wars. Swordsmen vs longbows on the other hand is rarely a good idea. Once you're done with medieval wars try to beeline to one of the gunpowder-era units: Cuirassiers, Riflemen, Grenadiers, Cannons. If done well you'll have enough time to fight 2-3 wars with it before an AI gets a counter.


4. I always have a puny military, maybe 1 unit in each city, horribly old warriors or archers.

As long as they're for city garrison it shouldn't really matter. What is the composition of your attacking stack? Don't tell me you attack with warriors...


Should I have a city which JUST produces military units? What buildings should it have? Isn't that going to cost me a lot in maintenance for all those units?

Yes, you should have at least one city dedicated to building units. You'll need forge, granary (for whipping), barracks and Heroic Epic (once unlocked) in it. Apart from those you need something to pop the borders and happiness and health buildings to let it grow. No library/bank/monasteries etc. And once you get those units, use them.


When's a good period to start my first good war?


When you have a military advantage. See answer to 3.


How many cities should I have up and by what time period? I tend to end up with about 6 / 7 by 800AD.


It depends. :) Again, the year doesn't matter, what techs you have matter. Before Currency/Code of Laws 5-6 cities seems normal on Noble. You can add a few either through settling or war once you get those techs. Civil Service enables Bureaucracy, and if you have a heavily cottaged capital that will allow you to expand further.


Thanks everyone, it frustrates me how much I seem to fall behind when I read Sulla's walkthrough where he breezes through Noble making it look easy!

We've all been there at some point. :) Keep playing and you'll get better.

Hi all,

Thanks for the quick replies! I'll post a series of save-games in this thread tonight so you can see what I commonly do.

I actually seem to get a religion accidentally, when I build the oracle and get code-of-laws. If I do get a religion, is it good to spam missionaries regardless?

I feel like with the war I should be starting one when I get catapults and my opponent doesn't, does that make sense? I always seem to have just got musketmen and they're on longbowmen when I start wars.

Of course, on Noble you're very likely to found a few religions, and that, as I said, isn't bad. What's bad is adopting a religion when everyone else around you has other religions. The +1 :) from religion and the religious civic bonus are sometimes not worth it.

Spreading a religion should be done as carefully as you do anything else. What are it's main benefits?

- +1 culture if you adopt it, 0 culture if you're in another religion.
- religious civics, again, only if you're in that religion.
- +1 :) from temple, good in cities that you want to grow; look for buildings that give multiple happiness bonuses, like markets, or for tradable happiness resources. If your cities are 5-6 sizes beneath the happiness cap temples are pretty much useless unless you want to run priests for a Great Prophet.
- 10% research from monasteries: useless in production cities.

So your best bet is to spread the religions in your GP farm (increased happiness from temples) and your commerce cities (for monasteries). Later on you'll want to spread it to all your cities for Free Religion bonus, but there's time enough for it.

As for wars, musketmen are pretty useless. They don't get City Raider promotions, don't counter anything specifically. Fighting a war with Macemen/Trebuchets/Pikes/Crossbows is just as good as fighting one with Macemen/Trebuchets/Musketmen. In the second case you're just replacing specialized defensive units (pikes and crossbows) with one type of defensive unit (muskets), so you gain no real advantage.

Specialists!!



Actually one word answers are probably too simplistic to take seriously.

Land is power.

Also, more military and more cottages. <--something newer players usually struggle with

By the way, if you want to post games it would be better to add some images from those games: a few shots inside your main cities, an overview of the land, the tech trading situation, the demographics and maybe your statistics (sorted by number of current units). That way even people who won't have the time to download your saves and look into them can participate to the discussion. Group one save plus its images per post, in order to make them easy to follow.

For uploading images I recommend photobucket, it's free and easy to use.

Bring on the save.

For me an ideal start is teching for bronze working. 2 workers off the starting block and a settler. Forest and chopping does marvels at the start. Others will argue one land tech first if you have a food resource nearby.

For decent science. Lots of cottages. If you assign one city to have a library and 2 scientist specialists really early on you will pop a great scientist early. Hopefully 1200bc or before.

Add in an academy/ to your science city and soon the city will have 20-40 science beakers a turn. Add in Great library for 2 free scientists. Keep adding the great scientists to this city and you will tech way ahead of the AI on noble. The city popping the great scientist neednt be your science city. A city with grassland and rivers normally is a good starter.

If you build the pyramids and switch to representation your specialists will give you +6 science beakers a turn before multipliers kick in. On my last game i built the pyramids by 1900bc on epic speed. Hooked up stone and chopped forest.

As for military. You should always have 1-2 cities pumping out military. A unit a city isnt great in terms of defence. Even with 5-6 cities you should be doing this. You will need axemen or archers to hold off AI barbs.

Load a save and someone will probably advice you better.

Welcome to the Forums rathboma. :beer:

I'm currently playing on noble and here's my advice:

Settle, Cottages, Conquer, rinse and repeat



Really the only problem I see is MILITARY, with all your neighbors different religions your going to need a nice army to protect yourself. And as for the economy, my solution is COTTAGES! Lots o' cottages can do wonders by 1200 A.D. And anyways, if you found a religion, try to spread it to others as fast as you can, if your religion is big enough, create the shrine and your economy is set for pretty much up until the Renaissance or Industrial Eras.

Hi guys,

ok, so here are a set of games which represent how things tend to go in my games (rathboma saves)

I started a new game last night (which I think I'm doing much better on!) so I'm uploading that too (lizzieR saves). I've abandoned the rathboma saves, I think I screwed it up, or at least it wasn't fun any more.

In both I'm playing as Elizabeth : England

Let me know what you think, and thanks for all the replies already!!

first i do not see why score should worry you.

second. Going worker first is rather good. Growing to size three before that is not that hot.

looked at 50Ad save. That barb city is quite distant even for me:lol: and i rarely raze anything.

You know cats and HA are not that hot against longbows but this could have be done half millenia before.

In general: make workers earlier, focus research (why you need Alpha? ), kill someone before 1000AD. And stop worrying about score. Score won't help AI then they have dead cold hands.

Attack early, raze cities, build Markets, settle near gold. Sell techs, pillage improvements, build Harbors, steal gold with spies.
Cottages should be built by automated workers - leave the laborious, unsophisticated, cottage sniveling micromanagement behind to focus on other things, in this case Luxery resources and War, as the superior.

rathboma: Most importantly, don't pay attention to trolls like troytheface.

................

"don't pay attention"

As oppossed to contesting assertions, as oppossed to experimentation, as oppossed to intuition- you should instead follow orders from name callers. I suspect there are many that think they own the board or something- and that causal posters and readers are idiots.
I find it comforting that there are those who deem themselves keepers of good advice and catercall others with differing opinions. You don't have to think for yourself as long as the board has such pedestal defenders of...homogeneous opinion?

Troy,

1. How do I automate my workers to only build cottages?

2. I got a laugh :lol: from the "don't pay attention to trolls" comment and did not take it seriously.

"How do I automate my workers to only build cottages? "

If you have not researched Agriculture they will do it automatically and if you have researched Agriculture they will still do it.
I suggest even a micromanagement style will benefit from a few automated workers as they will at times counter what one thinks is favorable with a build that is more optimal. Automated workers have a built in vision of the future.

Currency and Code of Laws should counter the upkeep of having 6-8 cities. Build a market in your money cities and a courthouse everywhere and if needed run some merchants in market cities. Make sure you trade with other civs as foreign traderoutes give more $$.

That's the abridged version :p

@troytheface. You have a habit of posting (alliteratively) apparently absurd assertions. Until such time as you actually post a game implementing your (or Attacko's) insights a sceptical audience will assume that you're a troll rather than a visionary.

Manage your workers. Do NOT AUTOMATE them. Automating the guys who make or break your empire will leave you with very little actual power left in your hands. A stupid decision that would be.

I tend to go to war much later than most civ strategists advise, but it's an approach that works for me and I seldom see reason to change it.

Overall I divide it up into these phases:

1) Peaceful REX (Rapid Expansion). As some others above have said LAND IS POWER. And it's much easier to get land by building a settler than it is by building a gigantic stack full of axemen. Get those settlers built and have 1 to 2 chariots on escort duty as they head out to where they're going, first build out is a warrior so they can survive the barbs. When the slider hits 30% that's my warning to slow it down, because once defender units are built and the settled cities grow, the slider will go from 30% to 0% quickly. Soon as the slider bumps up to 30% again, if there's more land to settle, SETTLE it. If not, just go to the next phase:

2) Chew what you bit off. Workers to till the soil, dig mines, lay roads, work all the resources. ONE city is usually enough to dedicate to full-time miliary on Noble (more required at the higher levels), such that you can focus on buildings and wonders in the other cities. I disagree that adopting a state religion is a bad thing. It can had a diplomatic cost, or it can be a diplomatic bonus depending on whom you *do want* to make angry (as you should be ready for defensive warfare soon enough with a city making full-time units) or whose armies you want to keep away (aggro leaders like Monty). I don't mind founding a religion and converting to that and spreading it everywhere in my empire such that my cities get the 25% building bonus. Or if I don't found a religion, I might still adopt one and get the same Organized Religion bonus if it makes diplomatic sense to choose that religion. The bottom line is that this phase is for build-up. Forges in your production cities, libraries in your commerce cities, everything in your GP farm(s), and as soon as one city has all the buildings it needs, it takes over the duties of full-time-units, and the other one switches to building the buildings it needs.

3) When 2 or more cities have every building that could possibly benefit their specialization type (although I tend to want universities, forges, and banks everywhere so that it's never an issue to build national wonders that require 8+ of them before you can build), I start focusing on my pre-war preparations.

a. All border and coastal cities are well-defended.
b. The target of the war isn't a vassal or close ally of some monstrously powerful civ I can't tackle.
c. I have a good treasury built up (500+ gold).
d. My seafood is reasonably well-defended for the era I'm in.
e. My offensive stack is built up so that it has a reasonably good expectation of taking at least the first target city (more reinforcements can come for later conquests, but there's no reason to plant a siege army there waiting forever for it to be able to do its work--maintenance costs down the drain!) There's a gut instinct for knowing how many is enough, from experience, but you know it either is or isn't enough. It has to be enough.

If all conditions are met: WAR TIME. The offensive stack doesn't go into enemy territory right away though. First priority is to let the enemy invade with whatever spare units they've got hanging around (and they will if they have any), and kill them on YOUR land (no war weary hit that way). Once the AI isn't "bringing it" anymore, to any reasonable degree, then it's time to go on the offensive. Attack stack, forward MARCH.

A benefit of late warfare is that you can flip to Police State and not have to worry so much about WW. That way you can stay at the campaign for as long as it takes to vassalize or destroy the enemy in question.

When a stack becomes large enough that by the time you take an enemy city, you still have 3 or more units that haven't seen any action, it's time to start building a second stack. Some like to have a city-raid stack and a pillage stack, but my preference is to go for multiple city-raid stacks. Take an enemy down quickly and intact, and then you won't need to burn as many worker-turns on making that conquered land work for you later on.

4) Wash-rinse-repeat for each rival on your continent. If you're on pangea that means you'll be going for domination or conquest victories, but on continents what it usually means for me is, I get to where I own my continent and then stop. Next phase is for non-pangea maps.

5) Switch to a defense-oriented army solidly defending your coastal cities, with two highly-skilled attack stacks at two centers of your land mass, ready to react and re-take any cities you might lose in a surprise attack from an overseas AI. High-production landlocked cities gear up to be ready to build space ships (space elevator, research lab, etc.), and coastal towns vary between wealth, research, or buildings. Military city keeps updating units with the newest edition of defenders, bombers, etc., for a strong defense.

Also defend against nukes or work to get a U.N. resolution signed that nukes can't be used.

Space ship. Victory. That's how I roll on Continents. :king:

Points? What points? You win or you don't, that's what matters, IMO.

Manage your workers. Do NOT AUTOMATE them. Automating the guys who make or break your empire will leave you with very little actual power left in your hands. A stupid decision that would be.

Agreed! Don't automate workers, the computer isn't as insightful or as great planning for the future as a human is. The only time I would automate workers is if you make it to late game, when you have so many and nothing to do with them.

The only time I automate workers is after railroads, when I assign about 5 workers to "build transportation network".

And if you do automate them earlier (don't.) make sure you click leave forests and old improvements in the options. Chopping is too valuable to waste on, say, an archer.

So I started playing that LizzieR save I posted a little more (upto 100bc). My start-of-game is a lot stronger going for worker-worker-settler first, I had no idea how much difference the chopping would make!

I have made my first mistake though, I've build loads of chariots to take out Isabella, but she has 4 archers defending the capital...they slaughter my chariots!

I've just got construction, and iron working (around 100bc, is this an ok point?) so I'm gonna take 1 city with my chariots, pillage their copper (no iron for them!) and wait for cats and swordsmen to get built and come forwards to take the other two cities. Does this sound like an ok plan? There's no way she's getting any better units in the 15 turns it will take me to bring up some cats to the front.

Catapults and swords will be more than enough to take her down, provided you take down her copper and she doesn't have horse archers/war elephants.

For future reference, chariot rushes are rarely worth it. Their strength is a bit too low and they don't get City Raider promotions. Chariot-based unique units like Immortals and War Chariots are pretty much the only cases in which it's worth going for a chariot rush. Otherwise any little detail can stop your rush: protective archers, cities on hills, too high cultural defenses, spearmen. But if you don't have copper and decide that you can't wait for Iron or Construction, at least build barracks, try to promote as many chariots through battles with the barbs, and use Flanking (II first if you have them, I next) chariots first, as some of them might do enough damage and survive. Once you get good enough odds you can start attacking with your Combat chariots.

She hasn't even got animal husbandary yet, so her horses resource is sitting unimproved. Just to be safe, I'll camp a couple of chariots on that and the coppor until my swords and catapults arrive to take her down. I can always ruin her production and income until they get there, plus all her workers are in that 1 city I can capture :-).

After I wipe her out I'll have 7 cities (if I keep all of hers), if I put a courthouse in every one of those how many cities would it be safe to expand to without killing my economy?
(I'll probably whip the courthouses).

Depends on map size. If you have the patience, pay attention to tradeoff numbers:
a courthouse will halve your maintenance. If the cities have a lot of cottages (say 4 developed ones), you may lower your economy by building the courthouse.

Prioritize courthouses in distant cities that are draining your economy.