THE Noble's Club Bullpen, MK II

Hmm. One way to interpret your comment is that "interesting" shouldn't mean "tricksy" but might mean "a fun surprise".

such as a hut that pops a great engineer? :lol:
 
Game spam :lol:.

But the question seems to be...why do some people get stuck?

My closest guess is that they actually see the level as their limit! There's no reason for that ---> many players have managed to win on deity. The important thing is to analyze in each game what is causing you to struggle.

Most players who do poorly on noble are terrible with some basics: tech choice, building (against unit) choice, which tiles to improve first, and improving tiles rapidly enough. Anybody who gets those things down won't be stuck at noble for long. Why then, so many failures?

A lot of players don't make a concerted effort to improve or change on a game to game basis. One of my favorite examples is when I was tutoring not one but SEVERAL players who made and to my knowledge still often make the same mistake: delaying the granary in new cities they intend to grow!

It's amazing. I must have told these players several times, and had other even better players vouch for my advice: for cities that are going to grow even somewhat, the granary is the #1 economic building in the game (only a border pop takes precedence, if you need one). 3 games later, these players are still building the likes of a library or courthouse ahead of the granary in green riverside cities. Or maybe they'll not build a monument even though the best tiles need a pop...etc. Whatever, the granary example is glaring enough.

I suspect that players who fail noble more than a few times are failing for just the reason the "delay granary against all advice" players fail at their respective levels. They're not able (or more likely simply not willing) to adapt to advice that is merited by proven results and coming from players at a level they aspire to defeat. Instead, they repeat their same weak actions and replicate the results.

I can recognize some of the things you mention in me, we learned but not all stays in.
Some of the stuff is lack of basic maths understanding (there's sooo many people who don't understand percentage), some is sloppy playing (nod me) like keeping track of everything and their mother (bug mod helps a ton here) and a lot is probably "oh well this worked good enough last time".

My greatest challenge is probably turning off the notechbrokering, I suppose it'll be an entirely new game, but on the other hand it's probably a must if I'm to get anywhere from the prince/monarch area where I've been for ages.
 
Let me put it this way - WHen i was playing on noble - i tried a few NC games and gave up in frustratioon after that i really did not try any of the NC games until you posted one of JC ... How could i resist my favourite past time Preat rush ... :D, Even then i was half expecting there to be no iron ...

So yeah, maybe dont complicate things too much for the people actually trying to come to grips with Noble ...
 
Let me put it this way - WHen i was playing on noble - i tried a few NC games and gave up in frustratioon after that i really did not try any of the NC games until you posted one of JC ... How could i resist my favourite past time Preat rush ... :D, Even then i was half expecting there to be no iron ...

So yeah, maybe dont complicate things too much for the people actually trying to come to grips with Noble ...

Well, yes and no, while I had REAL trouble with some of the earlier (I especially recall the Kublai map) maps that felt pretty biased compared to a normal random map it also made me do things more efficient.
I'd say take one thing at a time, for example the JC map could have been no iron in BFC but sort of close. Even for example horses nearby and iron in nearest opponent BFC.
But not like the "no iron, no luxury, low food, AI's get it all, I play on IMM and consider Noble to easy maps".
 
Agree - as far as the JC game was concerned iron should not have been in the capital maybe for a 2nd city to grab i guess ....

But what i'm saying is maybe for a Nobles Club we should let the maps and the opponents be random and let people who are learning the game just play the map rather than cook up scenarios by selecting the opponents and then tweaking the maps as well ...

Just my opinion, i think it's a bit too much to do all that for NC game.

BTW - Dalamb did say that the JC game was meant to be fun and easy more than anything else so i guess the iron being there was ok, since everybody just got to have some good ol fashioned AI thumping fun :D
 
A quick poll on which leader to pick next. I've been playing around with ideas for the following 4; please let me know which you prefer:
  • Ghengis Khan on some map with lots of opponents on his original continent (plus nearby horses, though perhaps a bit further away than JC's iron ;)). The point for us Nobles would be to try out TMIT's all-Keshiks conquest strategy (which I'd copy-and-paste into a strategy spoiler).
  • Gilgamesh with a decent techer like Mansa. The Vulture is a stronger axeman (6 base instead of 5 and vs melee both of them are 7.5), and early Ziggurat/Courthouses (available with Priesthood) helps recover the economy from REXing earlier that waiting for CoL. I've also seen suggestions that Giggles is a good leader for trying out an espionage economy, which is why I'd want a tech leader as an opponent. One EE alternative would be Isabella, with the +25%:espionage: from citadels.
  • Qin. Likely later rather than sooner; with a PRO/IND leader I personally wanted to hunker down and wonderspam, but in a more directed way than I used to at Warlord. I'm collecting advice on how to tailor choice of wonders based on what strategy one wants to follow.
  • Victoria on an archipelago map: a water map with a FIN leader, strongly suggesting a Trade Route Economy, with the possibility of Redcoats-based conquest later in the game. We've done Elizabeth twice, so the English/FIN combination might not be so attractive, but IMP for mid-game warfare might be fun.
Opinions? Other suggestions?
 
My vote is for Vicky.

Genghis would be fun but it's too soon, we just got done with the Preat rush :D.

BTW - I dont know if the whole espionage economy would really work on Noble / Prince cos the AI does not tech that fast, it's probably more Practical Emperor +
 
Genghis would be fun but it's too soon, we just got done with the Oreat rush :D.

Agreed, I think I've got my war fix for this month :)

Immortal University is currently playing Qin so maybe save him for a later game.

I quite fancy playing a mostly peaceful game next round so either Gilgamesh or Victoria swould suit, although I suck on watery maps, so...

My vote goes for Gilgamesh.
 
although I suck on watery maps, so...

I used to hate water based maps too, it all changed after i had a couple of games with Willem - he is just so powerful on water maps just unbelievable, now every now and then i dont mind playing a watery map.

However i must say - there should be at least decent amounts of land, probably long snaky continents would be ok, if not it's a bit of a put off for me ...
 
I vote for Gilgamesh. I've never played him before - although I've had the extreme pleasure getting completely crush by his Stack O Doom.
 
I used to hate water based maps too, it all changed after i had a couple of games with Willem - he is just so powerful on water maps just unbelievable, now every now and then i dont mind playing a watery map.

Perhaps it's time I got over my watery map phobia!

However i must say - there should be at least decent amounts of land, probably long snaky continents would be ok, if not it's a bit of a put off for me ...

If we do go for the Vic game I second this.
 
For the Victoria game, I took a look at the Map Creation guide and was thinking of "archipelago, snaky continents" and possibly "low sea level" so there'd be a reasonable amount of land, also. You won't be able to see the images in the guide until early next month; that account gets a lot of traffic so photobucket only delivers the real images for a couple of weeks before telling the owner to upgrade to Pro.

For Gilgamesh I haven't decided on a map type yet, but would pick a couple of the opponents. Are there other fast-techers besides Mansa?
 
NC 36: Gilgamesh is up. For my first time this has Monarch (adds Archery to all AIs) and Immortal (adds Archery and Hunting), both of which affect what kind of starting unit the AI gets. Anyone want Deity (adds the Wheel)? In any case let me know if there are problems with the saves; I checked starting units on an Immortal save, and there were both archers and scouts for the AIs, so I think I did it right.

Regarding editing maps (slight spoiler for NC 36):
Spoiler :
One of our opponents started with a really lousy position IMHO. In future, should I edit to improve such things? or just let the AI migrate out and hassle other civs sooner because of lack of his/her own land?
I'm finding mapmaking to be fun and frustrating both. None of the map scripts seem to do quite what I want; in particular, lately I've found that Custom Continents and Pangaea have lots of desert. Anybody know a good script that reduces desert? It's not that hard to turn desert into plains (although I do keep desert for flood plains and incense, both of which are supposed to be on desert tiles).
 
It has been a full week since the last post in the Gilgamesh game. Are people ready for the next leader, or should I wait a bit longer? Are people too busy with other games or RL at the moment, or are y'all starving for another "group" game?

In my case I'm struggling to find time to finish my essays in RL and the BOTM game that finishes in a few days, and after that kind of want to finish with Giggles, so could happily wait. OTOH it won't be hard to put the Victoria map together since I know what I want to do with it.
 
Ah, I'm a fan of low sea level too, but having gone no higher than Noble the negative side affects weren't known to me.

In regards to your questions:

1. Go for it, she's a long weekend here so I plan on doing lots of Civ'ing, need to get to Prince.
2. I've always been partial to snaky islands, is that one of the archipelago options?
 
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