I finally won on noble!!!!

[tony777]

Ya I'm a noob. I'm obsessed with Civ 4 and have been struggling to win on noble for a long time. I came within 17 points of winning once in 2050 and was banging the table and yelling alot. Every game I would be ahead and then an aggressive Civ (usually Rome) came with about 20 galleons and suddenly declared war (I was playing continents standard size). As my units died, other civs would gang up on me. Finally if I managed to make peace I was behind enough that a win was hopeless (I did not even know about milking). So I finally sought professional help (not a shrink) in these forums. There were ideas here that blew me away!

The biggest help was the very simple idea that wars should be waged early! Duh!!! Build some axemen right away, select a weak target and destroy! This allowed me to take my island from 2 other civs and build up enough tech and military that the opposite continent civ never attacked and lost in a space race. Taking the initiative is always a good idea. Also the cottage spamming and also the specialist economy (oracle, forge, pyramids gambit with the germans in particular) worked wonders. I also like the CS rush which has worked 100% of the time for me on noble. I have tried all these strategies and they work way better than my old ways. I really like the cottage spamming and have finally realized the value of specializing cities! Now I have a commerce city, science city, GP farm and a few military cities every game without thinking about it too much.

I have been thus far unable to win on noble by peacemongering, but the tips I have found here have brought me close. I like particularily the idea of not wasting fractions. Science is either 0% or 100% (3 turns 0% then 7 turns 100%). I have become a big micromanger of tiles and workers. Now I understand why people control workers-workers are dumb! Never builds enough cottages, or harnesses resources when/where you need them. I also like the dot mapping stategy and I even found a formula to tell me how much a city will cost when founded! The 60% rule of thumb was also helpful as a guide to getting started.

My latest win on noble got me 12000 some points. It was a tiny pangea and ended 2000 BC. I used the quecha rush. My favorite win on noble was space race (standard continents) and ended 2049. Only egypt was left on the other continent. But this only netted me 6000 some points.

The city cost formula is : d(.1667)+(2(n)+1)(.21)
d= distance from capital (number of tiles) n= number of citys

example city 8 tiles from capital that is your 5th city = 3.64 gold. Try it!

 

[mice]

Congrats I remember that feeling.

I'd forget about points if I were you. Go for victories that you plan on at an early stage.

When you accomplish the victory that you worked towards, it's rewarding.

Next, get off the tiny maps. This means you'll need to learn diplomacy.That's a big topic.

 

[tony777]

One final thing. Everyone who is interested in Civ 4 should look at sisiutil's strategy guide in the war room on this site.

Yes, diplomacy is a big thing I need to learn.

 

[mice]

In you're next game, make a plan to get an ally to attack your enemy for you. Then 5-6 turns later attack too. You get positive diplo modifiers for sharing the war, and the foe has already burned up his/her big stack.

 

[troyDoogle7]

I hate to micromanage which is probably why I don't win on Noble too often.... Micromanagement is too boring for me...

Perhaps someone can create a mod to allow workers to spam cottages... and then that could be automated too!

 

[Ozbenno]

I couldn't win on Noble before I found CivFanatics as well. I've now won on Deity. There certainly is some gold here if you look hard enough.

The only other thing I'd add is that you've got to find a path that is comfortable for you. Its possible to win up to Emporer (maybe Immortal) without ever going to war, so if you're a peacemonger at heart, play that way. If you're a warmonger, go hard and go early.

 

[Warpoo]

The easiest way to learn how to manage this game is to play as rome on monarchy difficulty and marathon speed (once you go marathon you never go back). I wont go into the build order but go straight to iron and mass praetorians. Chop/whip settlers and workers. Chop everything!

Conquer all cities and keep them all. Than try to manager your economy. Once you can do that move up a difficulty level. My point here isn't that rome owns the iron age or conquering all its to manage your economy.

ill pimp my own game here, its the only real good example i can show you.

First i don't play with barbs on. As you can see i started with a gold and than founded my second city next to another gold mine. I was able to conquer all the civs and keep my economy going. Theres three saves there to see how i managed during the start of my attack to the middle of it.

 

[KMadCandy]

grats! i'm glad you found us

i toss the score out the window, i rate by how much fun i have and if i pulled any firsts, or something i didn't think i could do, stuff like that. the scoring formula is weird in the first place and heavily tilted to early victories. those aren't always the hardest.

i've done a ton of peacemonger games lately, often keeping the peace between other guys so that no wars happen at all and i get no "worst enemy" penalties.

but my current game is completely bizarre and unnatural for me ... i have alex, huayna, tokugawa, bismarck and monty all fighting isabella with me. she picked a fight with me, and that same turn one turn the entire world was at war with her. i'm playing OCC and i look very very low on the power graph. but don't mess with me girl, i have political power that doesn't show up on your pretty power charts, and you're gonna learn the power of politics the hard way.

i learned about the "how to use an aggressive guy as your attack dog" here on CFC . i can't remember if it had even seriously crossed my mind except as a way to distract the other agressive guy. but i read great stuff, and put my own oddball twist on it by sending every hound on earth at her. she won't learn her lesson of course but i'm giggling my head off.

if you do want to see milking at its finest ... here's a thread started by a guy who got a score of 425,000. he shares how he did it, and i'm not interested in doing it myself at all but i sure liked reading about it. might give you a fun moment when you're bored.

 

[tony777]

You can all understand how crazy happy I was to finally win. Again today I won on noble, this time on a large continents map. It was only a points win though. My goal was domination from the outset so I bee lined for military tradition, getting it finally in 1700 something (it took awhile to repair my economy and science after conguering my continent). But it was not enough. I am not sure if I have a particularily nasty bug in my 1.61 Vanilla, but even with 95.5 % chance to win a battle I often loose! Is this normal? I imagine on levels higher than noble this happens alot and people tear out their eyeballs. I lost alot of Cav to longbowmen and musketmen, even after reducing def to 0% on a city located in plains and grassland, no river to cross. This is no doubt an example of the folly of late wars across oceans.

One thing I forgot to mention is my love of the whipping strategy, touched on in one of the posts above. I read in the forums somewhere of a guy who whips each city every 10 turns, keeping his population constantly unhappy but building quick. He comines this with the 25% production bonus of org religion, which ends up getting him roughly 54.5 hammers per pop sacrificed. He combines this with timing so that he whips exactly when he needs 55 hammers somehow. I have been unable to make this work thus far as I am always get carried away and whip the population to death. Although my opening move usually involves mystesicm, bronze, whip worker, chop stonehenge, meditation, chop oracle, whip oracle complete (not always necessary on noble). Then use great person who appears for theology. Also have combined this strategy to obtain CS then GP for monarchy, or the pyramids gambit.

Anyway, in my last game diplomacy worked well as I had Peter and Capac destroy mansa musa who was getting to strong. I grabbed a few cities, but then Peter got to strong so I had to get him before he out paced me. It was a space race in the end with not enough turns to complete the ship for anyone, as all players AI and me had used so many turns with war.

I have got some great feedback on this thread and will attempt monarch difficulty with Rome as recommended. I have finally realized also that in the game if you want to win you cannot be friends with everyone (I am quite possibly wrong as the post above says you can! Still more to lots to learn). Being friends with the last 2 civs in my previous game nearly ended in disaster as I was only marginally ahead of both. Make friends with the weaker of the two and use him to attack the 2nd place civ. This will weaken the 3rd place and the second place to the point where you can acheive victory. Anyway, I am sure there are many more diplo strategies to master.

Thanks for the feedback

 

[Grimus]

Congrats on your victory! You seem to know a lot, I wouldn't call yourself a "noob".

The early war helped me very much too... before I would be too peaceful and I would lag behind in power. When you pick a fight early and have 2 capital cities under your control (with all those plentiful resources) you become a force to be reckoned with.

I should try using that formula myself...

The micromanagement of research is something I choose not to do... too tedious and feels somewhat "cheesey", but that's certainly just my own, strange opinion!

Also, I think with the latest patch, they changed the way rounding off occurs with research/gold percentages. It goes to 2 decimal places now, so I think to micro it gives very little benefit now, but maybe I'm wrong because I'm a noob myself... can anybody verify this?

 

[KMadCandy]

they fixed the rounding in warlords only. vanilla hasn't been patched since months before warlords 2.08 patch, so it never caught up.

"I have finally realized also that in the game if you want to win you cannot be friends with everyone (I am quite possibly wrong as the post above says you can! Still more to lots to learn)."

keep in mind that i'm completely crazy, and play some weird games where i put odd rules on myself that nobody else would enjoy or even try. and i promise you i couldn't manage to get them all to like me, even if i handpicked every single one, back when i started. i'm still getting better at it. when i turn "worst enemies" into friends i get all happy, but it's a completely different style than "kill 'em and take their land" and some people are bored to tears by that stuff. my #1 rule is it's your game, play how you want, ignore everybody else's so-called rules about what's the "best" way to play and stuff like that.

"Make friends with the weaker of the two and use him to attack the 2nd place civ. This will weaken the 3rd place and the second place to the point where you can acheive victory. Anyway, I am sure there are many more diplo strategies to master."

i bet you'll be better at that strategy than i am really soon . the reason i mentioned how effective my relationships were at creating that world war was because it's such a very weird case for me. i almost never use them as attack dogs, and this is the first time getting everybody in on the act. so don't be surprised when i ask you for advice on that in a couple of months .

read my sig, it's the absolute truth *giggle*. it's not even the whole truth, maybe i should add a disclaimer about how i'm an oddball in addition to a permanoob.

 

[PimpyMicPimp]

I need to work on my aggression early on. I don't see to declare war soon enough, making my warmonger inside of me sad. I need to wipe out Civs earlier on before I can really start moving up the ranks.

 

[mice]

I need to work on my aggression early on. I don't see to declare war soon enough, making my warmonger inside of me sad. I need to wipe out Civs earlier on before I can really start moving up the ranks.

do you attack pre-catapults? That is the way to learn early war. Two axes/chariots for each archer defender.

 

[KMadCandy]

do you attack pre-catapults? That is the way to learn early war. Two axes/chariots for each archer defender.

if i do that, some of my army might die!!! are you out of your mind?

 

[PimpyMicPimp]

do you attack pre-catapults? That is the way to learn early war. Two axes/chariots for each archer defender.

No, I think I should change that. I've always waited until I have siege weapons, and then a lot of the time it's "until this tech is done" and then I end up waiting until I have a massive Calvery army, which works wonders, but takes too long.

 

[mice]

if i do that, some of my army might die!!! are you out of your mind?

Yes, but back on topic, I'm looking forward to the "KMadCandy guide to all manner of peaceful victories". Seriously. I want to learn more about them.

Back to Tony , you went from tiny maps to Large continents. Can I suggest Standard continents. Random leader. Try that for a few games. Then you can really say you can beat Noble.

 

[juggerxnaut]

i won on noble level in my second civ4game,
won on emperor in my third civ4game, 3 days after having civ4 installed.
i dont even know what cottage is then,just built some food resources and slave slave, finally i won...i can still remember the map is oasis.

 

[Rancid Sushi]

The sooner you attack, the better edge you'll have over your rivals for the whole game. I mostly like to play as Egypt or Persia for this reason because their unique units come very early, especially if you can get horses in your first or second city. Just whip about 6-7 War Chariots/Immortals and go kill the nearest noob who's strongest possible unit is axemen, which chariots rape (but only if the chariot is attacking). If they are smart enough to make spearmen, you'll need copper for axemen though. With that strategy it's fairly easy to wipe out a neighbor before 800 BC. By the time you get finished with your second rival, you should have iron and then Construction so you can finish off your continent with swordsmen, axemen, and catapults. Construction also allows for War Elephants which are awesome when paired with axes.

 

[tony777]

Mice, your advice above is noted. My space race win on noble was indeed tiny map with hand picked opponents (I thought it was standard but rechecked the HOF). The large continents was random opponents but a hard won and insignificant points victory, getting me only 4000 points in 2050 and I did not acheive domination. While I judge a game mostly on my enjoyment level, points is becoming increasingly important for me because it indicates-IMO- how well I know the game, i.e. how efficiently I can run the economy, use of land, military and diplomatic prowess.
Standard continents with random leader and opponents remains as my challenge. When I can pick a goal and see it through to it's intended conclusion on these settings I will try something harder.