Noble's Club II - Ramses II

Hmm, I see you have a bit of a predicament, but in the end, I think you can easily take control of this game. The differences in our games are small, but there was one fairly early important one, Heliopolis and Elephantine. I put those cities farther apart, leaving big gaps, which Zara tried to get his settlers through. In your game, Zara must have decided it wasnt worth trying to get settlers around your lands, so he went for that island. I also settled the southeastern coast fairly early, despite the hits to my economy. I tried very hard to discourage any of the AIs to even consider settling my continent.

I think your plan is fairly simple though. Get Nationhood, build some Trebs, and draft/build an army. Drive those bums off your lands, and tech in peace to space. Chop that huge expanse of forests to build new cities as fast as you can. Keep your units up to date, especially in the coastal cities on all sides (Joao is likely to come from the west). Willem will never be a problem, hes a wimp. In fact, you can likely take your army (once you repel the invaders!) and Galley it over and take him out (thats what I am doing, heh, gotta love rifles, cavalry and cannons against LBs and Knights, LOL)

Hang in there mate. If there is ONE common "trait", if you will, I see among players who are convinced they arent good, or can only beat Noble, its that they dont seem to understand the concepts of "playing from behind" or "not being able to do EVERYTHING". I see it constantly in threads, even directly in these games. Heck, I am guilty of it myself, I can likely beat Emperor or even Immortal, but I dont like the grind I LIKE building lots of wonders and coming up with goofy plans that I can only pull off on lower levels. You are NOT losing this game, in fact, you are well ahead of your opponents, even if it "feels" like your losing. Look at the map. Consolidate your continent, turtle up a bit (drafting Muskets and then Rifles is a good place to start) and crank out the techs.

Here is a tip to abuse the SPI trait and get some VERY powerful units very quickly. Start your best unit in most of your cities. Adjust the production as best you can so you can time them all to finish within a turn of each other. Then, right before they are done, swap into Theocracy, Vassalage, and Slavery. Whip em out, even the 1-turn ones for overflow, and queue up more units. Then, in 5 turns, whip em out again, just before swapping back into Caste/Emancipation, FR, and Bureaucracy. That will give you 2 units in each of . . . say . . . 8-10 cities with something like 12 XP worth of promos, depending on settled GGs, stables, etc. SPI is the bomb like this. Even if you whip to unhappiness, bump the Culture slider up a bit, and gradually replace Cultrure with Science as the unhappiness wanes.

Your doing great bro. All of you are. I am impressed with this group of players as a whole. You ALL have a much more advanced understanding of this game than you think. Even if you lose, so what? ITS A GAME!!! I am being very sincere when I say I think you have learned all you can on Noble. Playing that level further is going to be more detrimental to your play than beneficial. Noble allows horrible habits to creep in, which is one of the biggest reasons your games seem to flounder in the middle. You are too used to running away with it and having your own way 100% of the time. I am the same way, EXACTLY the same, which is why I am able to recognize it in others, heh. Hang in there. It wont be long until you discover you are running away with Prince level games, wondering if its time to play Monarch. Its all about refining your techniques and making more streamlined, focused choices. I see you about to turn a big corner in this game, dont sell yourself (yourselves, actually) short.

Well I founded a few cities, met an AI and got embroiled in a small war.

First my tech: Finished paper> Phil> Monarchy> Education> Vass (trade)> Calender (trade)> HBR (trade)> Construction> Started Lib> Aesthetics (trade (!))

I can't belive I haven't even got lit yet so no NE or HE!!!

Off we go then

As I hinted in an earlyer post Willem coverts to Taoism


I find Willem


I wonder who will win?


A couple of trades




One of many unfortunate events to strike my Empire. So many...


My first barb city! And Willem gearing up for war. At last more blood!


Raze the city and put Giza down to be a GP farm - had been using my capital and Zaras old capital.


See I told you. More s#%t coming my way. This destroyed my libary and my market! My economy didn't like that. I lost 7GPT and 4 per turn.


I build a wonder I wanted


More...


Found a city to help block Willems immediate access to our continent


I bribe Willem to reconvert to Conf. No screen but it cost me 135 gold. So straight after...


Angkor Wat - might be a waist of hammers as I'm not running many priests (does make them a nice defalt specialist though)


Heres a lovely set of screens from consecutive turns




Hahahahaha!

Willem declares on me


I meet SB and make a nice war time trade! Jumbos and Longbows, plus a better happy cap? Yes please!


To be continued...

...to be continued

At the save

Thebes


Glance


Tech - pretty poor


Religion. As you can se the rest of the world prbably loves itself. I should probably spread Buddism and build the shrine


Power. Going up at last.


The demo screen


Victory screen. When I finally fill my conintent I hopt to be nearer dom


What Willem will give me for peace. I razed his city and fought off a small attack. Probably won't take it. I want techs!


My land. I can think of at least 10 more sites for cities! So much work and so little time.


Willems land


And a sneaky trade just I think I made just after the save for SBs map


So we have a Russian, SB, an Indian - from reading other peoples posts I know who but lets pretend I don't - and one for Rolo... João! Hi gang.

I'll report some thoughts in a bit.

Heh! Its funny, if I played my normal Noble game I would probably be in slightly better shape, I think just becuase its prince I panic, do feel I have to try harder and do things I wouldn't usually do. This leads to making some poor decisions and rushing into things I'm not use to! Your right about getting to used to having an unbeatable lead on Noble. Going for a spacerace on Noble, by that time in the game, there is little contest. This game on prince... well its certainly going to be a bit closer and at the end of the day, more fun.

Also this game in particular, I have found the starting map hard, all this land! I'm not use to it! In a typical game I genrally stop at around 8-10 cities, I have 18 this game!

Thanks for the pep talk,

My plan

1. Invade Willem via some galleys! I think its close enough for this to be ok. Also I can lay off Astro till I've settled more cities (more free UBs). Make him a Vassle or wipe him out?
2. Get a viable colony going on the nortern island. Should I keep them Egyptian and found a colony?
3. Tech to a specific millitary advantage and invade on of the other AIs. Need to meet them all properly first and see who will help and who will hinder. Which tech or group of techs is most important here? Combustion (transports, destroyers and access to oil), Industrialism (marines, tanks, battleships).
4. State property. I need to follow at least 3 tech paths! Any one suggest agood way to approch this?
5. Found 10 or more cities on my land. How can I do this at this late stage in the game? Should I be in slavery to whip buildings? I was getting lots of slave revolts before I switched out.

Waaahhh why I cant I make my cities all nice and spread out like that but still covering and working all the good spots?? . I was just going frantic trying to cover the eastern shores to block out jao that I left TONS of nice land unworked :/. When I can do BOTH is when I will probably be ready to move up a level hehe.

Yeah what Bleys said. Youre biggest kid on block so your only probelem at this point is leveraging your HUGE land advantage. Once all those cities get going you will be out hammering and out beakering everybody combined. And dont worry bout those lil cities on your contienent. Right now mostly like the WORST thing that they will be is annoying lil gnats that are gonne get swamped in your culture and maybe end up flipping to you. At best they will just be the cities you crush first when you decide to send your army out hehe

Hmm. Ok remember I am probably LAST person on these forums you should take advice from BUT I do have sugestion since you mentioned your economy having problems. and that is this --from your info screens you number 1 in land BUT number 5 in crop yield :/. To me that means you dont have NEAR enough workers. Lots of undeveloped land doesnt JUST mean lack of crops it means lack of mines and other hammer improvements which=lack of buildings that could be helping commerce and it means lack of commerce improvements which could also be helping your economy. Buliding settlers to expand is important but rem to make enough workers to develop all the cities you are making. Especially since on map like this you really not gonna be capturing many workers so you WILL need to build most of em yourself

Since all of you seem to be contemplaiting at leats taking out wilhelm and maybe even waring on other big continent remember this. One of the resons why I staye dput on my continent and didnt try to go all out war on even willy was there is darn few calender level resources on your continent. So happiness might be a lil lower than used to. So if you DO plan on lots of intercontiental wars be ready in case war weariness starts to be LOTS more painful than normal. Have theatres and collisuems up in the big cities so moving culture slider will help or switch to police state if you can and get rushmore built etc. And dont DoW on the civ thats trading you dyes and spices and furs etc and not be ready for the drop in happiness which is something I have done on MORE than one occasion hehe. ANother reason why its good I stay on noble hehe.

Also be ready for the heavy maintainance costs that can kick in once you start controlling multiple cities on the same overseas landmass. Like go after willy first and make him capitulate and then give him back any clities you took that are on his island. It will save you maintainnce and help build up diplomacy back up with willy. BUT if willy is stubborn and you have to take SOOO much of his island before he capitualtes that giving it back would set his land "5 of orginal" to point that he could break away then maybe just wipe him out completely and then grant a brand new independent colony.

Having colonies would not only help maintanace but dont forget you slaso get xtra happy face for every vassal you own which can help balance out lack of happy resources. True you will also get diplo hit with other civs BUt if you are planning to attack them anyways it shouldnt matter much hehe

Things are starting to get intresting at the moment, I ended up with 3 vassels and stalin has two vassels... could end up with one huge world war!

With so much great land available I built Stonehenge/Oracle/Pyramids and settled my first 2 prophets for the cash to fund expansion, the 3rd went to a shrine as I used the oracle for CoL as nobody I had met had a religion, I think thats the first time ever I didn't take MC from it. Spread Confu to our 2 neighbors and aggressively settled towards the north and east.

I had about 85% of our starting continent when I was done blocking off and with more land then I needed and religion friends I just went into science mode and pulled way out in front of the rest of the world, I don't think I traded for a tech past Feudalism all game.

Only war I had was when Sitting Bull declared on me and launched 12 or so frigates that my destroyers quickly destroyed, I love being able to use lib for Steel! The destroyers then went over to his land and starved him for 1000 years or so, I bribed most of the world into war against him for the diplo benefits and they quickly destroyed him without me doing anything other then blockading all his coastal cities and sinking the boats he was spamming.

With my side of the world all confuscian with me and the other side at war beside me there was never any danger as everyone was pleased, I probably could have went for a diplo win at that point via my AP but rode out a quiet space race and won the game in 1860.

Wonder wise I built everything I wanted thanks to my crazy science with such great land but it would have been a different game for sure if my first 3 great people were engineers instead of priests who payed for a city or 2 each. I love early priests more then any other great person! Settled every GP I got except for 3 academies and 1 bulb for most of Education. Also got great use out of Sushi/Mining inc in this game.

The game feels very different at normal speed as it's been a long time since I played that way.

After my last checkpoint I did alot of tiding up with my economy, Building more cottages, wallstreet and going state property. With that in place my economy was booming and I started to out tech my rivals.

There was some more housekeeping to take care of with Asoka and sitting bulls annoying settlements on my lands. As I had rifles and cannons and they errr... didn't, that was to hard. Asoka actually capitualated to me? wimp!

A few more loose ends to sort, zara and willem. I decided I would either destroy or vassel them. As it turned out they both became my vassels. At this point I was coasting towards the space techs with only Asoka, my vassel, being the only other civ in with a chance.

On the other side of the world Stalin was busy collecting vassels of his own, sitting bull and joao.

After a millenia of hard work, my workers finally take five!



So this is how things were, I was busy teching/building my way to my first prince victory for space, had about 20 turns to go when all of a sudden the real fun begins.



A massive world war, between me and stalin and our vassels!

At this point I had modern armours and stalin was a bit backward so I wasn't too worried, but he did have an impressive power rating. This was his opening attack.



Geez 1962 and the guy still has galleons? I still have 18 turns left before the spaceship arrives so rather than just sue for peace and press end turn I decided to have some fun with my modern army and backward stalin.



Razed about six of his cities while waiting for victory, and here's an idea of how backwards some of his army was.



Victory was mine.







Final Powergraph



Towards the end I was really impressed my the figures my cities were pushing out. At its peak, with some cities building wealth, my empire was putting out +2500 beakers, a figure I've never achieved before.

Playing on prince was tough during the early/mid game but once I got over that hump (and with a bit of your help ofcourse) It was pretty plain sailing in the late game.

So thats it!

Bye!