My First Real Attmept at Noble

[LeHam]

Okay, I've been playing at Warlord for a while, and been able to beat it; however, every time I play Noble, something really bad happens and I quit because I'm going to lose. I plan to end this bad habit, though, by posting the game in this forum. Hopefully now I'll finally be able to complete one and win!

I'm looking also for some advice, too. I'll need some to be able to win. I'll make postings whenever I can. Thanks for your advice! I'm stopping this post just before finishing my first new Settler.

Gary Ham decides to start a new game with these settings:

MOD: RevolutionDCM (this mod is similar to the regular game, no big changes like units)
Leader: Pericles
Civ Name: Hamien Nation
10 other AI at Noble difficulty on a Huge Custom_Continents Map
Climate: temperate. Sea level: Medium. Speed: Epic. Resources: Balanced.
So we begin!



Gary Ham of Hamia, 4000 B.C.E. Gary starts out in a nice enough area, next to a tribal hut. There's some hills, a lake. Agriculture looks like a good bet to research--He has a lake nearby, so it should come in handy. At 3900 BCE, the villagers give give Gary 112 gold! Yay!

At turn 11, the map becomes a little more clear:



To the West, the landmass gives way to the ocean, and Gary's city, Hamien Capitol, rests on a bay. Is Gary alone on an island?

In 3650 BCE, Buddhism is founded! By 3475 BCE, Gary's Scout (Linux) has discovered a river with floodplains, and some Jungle! Obviously, Gary concludes, he is positioned near the Equator! He pats himself on the back for having such good reasoning skills. Gary is now researching Mining after finishing research on Archery.



In order to build an Archer, gary manages the City Screen so one of his citizens is working the plains forest.



Finally--in 3325 BCE, Gary meets his first other civilization: The Byzantine Tribe, led by Victoria! Gary doesn't have the resources to go to war now, so he waits...Gary must find out where her civ is, so he decides to do some more exploring.

Here it appears the continent splits off in two directions:



In order to explore it, he must build another Scout! Hinduism is founded next turn in a distant land...

It's 3125 BCE, and Gary has found Victoria's civ. He can't see far enough into her land to gain sight of the city, though.



It's 3000 BCE, and Gary has just finished Masonry. His research screen looks like this:



Gary chooses Bronze Working next, as it will let him chop down forests for hammers and enable Slavery.

Gary returns to his capitol, only to find that his Settler is taking 23 turns to produce! Grrr. He decides to switch to a Scout now.



Gary finishes his Scout in 2750 BCE and names it Debian. He sends it to explore the western part of his continent. He also decides to next build a Barracks.

In 2575 BCE, he finishes Bronze Working, and discovers a source of Copper near his city! Forget the Barracks, let's build a Worker! In order to shave off twelve turns of building time, Gary whips his slaves--er, "drafted volunteers"--in order to get Copper quicker. Here's the screenshot:



Gary accidentally presses the "Automatic Explore" button for his Scout, and before he can cancel it, his Scout has passed right across a Lion's path, thus ending the Scout's life. What an idiot. Gary's other Scout gets killed the same way.

Good news in 2100 BCE! Gary has completed the roads and Mine necessary to give his capitol access to Copper! Hooray!



Now, Gary seeks help. Where should he--I mean, I--settle my next city? Not sure where. Also, how am I doing so far? Did I do anything wrong? Comments?

EDIT: Also, how do I size down the pics a bit?

 

[jancarly]

I'd place my second city in the north. Between pigs and rice but near the ocean. So one tile above. This will make your city grow very fast.
I'd have started with building a worker. Don't swap constantly!

Next thing to do: build another worker to improve your tiles.

 

[LeHam]

Hooray! A comment! Thank you for your help!

 

[Bootsiuv]

I would pay more attention to the views then the posts.....assuming you've re-read your story a few times, 50+ people have likely read it.

Many people don't post very often, if at all. Your story is just fine. Keep it going.

 

[LeHam]

I just need to download OpenOffice for my PC so I can transfer the story file from my Mac...Hope the power doesn't go out, or the cable for that matter.

 

[LeHam]

Section Two:

2025 BCE: Gary completes his Settler in Hamien Capitol, and sends it North, while his workers continue building improvements. During this time, he finishes research on Pottery, and begins research on Animal Husbandry. Gary reminds himself that he needs Alphabet in order to see how far he is in technology compared to Victoria.

Gary founds the city if Hamton near Pigs and Rice; then he saves; then he remembers that he just saved over another save file currently in the Modern Age. Darn it all.

1625 BCE--Gary has just finished Animal Husbandry, revealing Horse right on top of his city! He also starts researching Writing, improves the wheat near his city, and starts building a Worker! On top of this, his Warrior, which he received from a Tribal Village some time ago, arrives in Hamien Capitol, and Gary upgrades it to a Phalanx!

 

[LeHam]

Second post of Section Two:

After building his new Worker in 1400 BCE, Gary really wants to construct the Pyramids or The Great Wall. However, he needs Stone. He notices Stone to the left of his borders, and ponders whether he should build a city to take advantage of it.



News from Scouts! Victoria has founded Thessalonica! Gary needs to act soon, or he might have precious resources snatched from him. Next turn, 1275 BCE, Gary completes Writing. The Great Wall has now been built in a far-away land.

Upon checking in with Victoria, it appears that she has the same technologies as Gary Ham does! Gary decides to sign Open Borders; his Scout (Microsoft Sucks) must have safe passage through her territory.



Gary builds his second Settler in 1100 BCE, and thinks about where to send it. The Pyramids is probably too late to build, so he decides not to settle near the Stone, so he decides to send his Settler to an area to the southeast, near Cow and Rice, along with some Hills for Production. He also notices the first Barbarian Archers at his doorstep.

Gary names his new city Ionz, and orders it to build a Worker. He checks on Hamton, as well. Hamton has become unhappy in 875 BCE--Gary resolves to whip his citizens to finish the Library when he can. AND, his Farm near Hamien Capitol is destroyed by an event.



Gary meets Washington: Apparently he and Victoria aren't the only ones on this continent! If only they were...Then once Gary was finished with Victoria he could settle without fear, and--Holy crap! He has four cities!



Revolution is in the air! Hamton, with its angry citizens, is ready to rebel! Gary will have to keep a close eye on this.

Gary sees enemy Archers advancing towards his Mine: He engages it with his only available unit: A Chariot (Stephen Stewarts). Stephen Stewarts come in for the win!



This is where the game ends for now: Gary plans to attack Victoria in the near future...

BUT, is this a good idea? Is Gary ready? He has two experienced Chariots, and three Phalanxes ready for duty. He has heard tell from Civ veterans to strike when one has the advantage...but does he have enough of an advantage? Maybe he needs to gain more intelligence.





Note: Feel free to not only give advice but give (constructive) criticism on how the game has been going, how I have been handling it, or how good my playing style is.

 

[LeHam]

By the way, does anyone think the Greek's Unique Unit is a bit weak? I mean, the Phalanx is like an Axeman, but it doesn't really have any special bonuses that make it better. It does have +100% versus Chariot, but that's only on defense.

But then again, Chariots have +100% attack against regular Axeman, so I guess the point there is that the Phalanx isn't weak against Chariots like an Axeman is.

 

[Boom12389]

It looks like you spammed troops early. Typically one opens with a worker to quickly get good tiles up, while you took a very long time to improve your land. A good rule of thumb is to have 1.5 workers per city, so you might want to build another worker.

 

[LeHam]

It looks like you spammed troops early. Typically one opens with a worker to quickly get good tiles up, while you took a very long time to improve your land.

Oops. I thought it was a good idea to start training troops early. I've had some Noble games where my growth has been stagnated for thousands of years because of barbarians, usually because I neglected my military. Maybe I went too far in the other direction...

Tomorrow I might play some more and post.

 

[jancarly]

some other remarques, if I may give them to you:
you upgraded some of your units, that's something I allmost never do as long as I don't tend to go to war. It costs pretty much money. And in the early game every coin can be spend on research. So I wouldn't do.

going at war:
As far as I can see. I think that Izzy is to far away to attack. It will take several turns before you arrive with your troops only moving one square at the time. I'd wait and expand more mainwhile. Otherwise if you still want to attack, you have to get there with your chariots as soon as possible. Before you start war, try to steal a worker. That's one less you need to build.

research:
build cottages! boom12389 adviced you to have 1.5 worker/city. I mostly play with one worker/city and some extra. That makes 1.1 or 1.2 but they can improve your landtiles much faster.

oracle: why don't you try oracle at the beginning? This gives you a big advantage against the AI.

Fog: I'd use your troops to spread out and remove the fog around your cities. If there's a unit stationed, the barb will attack the unit first (and probably lose). If the barb comes through, you still have time to react.

 

[LeHam]

Sorry, guys, I haven't been able to post. My keyboard stopped working, so I plugged in a Macintosh one into my PC, but I can't figure out to take a screenshot with it. If anybody knows how to or where the Prt Screen key is, let me know.

 

[Bootsiuv]

You could always download FRAPS....it's free screenshot software. I know PCGamer uses it for all of their screenshots.

I've used it several times in the past myself, and it does what it's supposed to with minimal effort.

Hope that helps.

 

[Jynx]

For the resizing, I'd advise you to resize them in something like paint. If you use photobucket, you can do this:





I've found that the 15" is best for appeasing audiences, as people's screen size varies, but 17" is better for good graphics, which doesn't matter as much as the picture actually fitting on the screen.

 

[Ronojoy1917]

I'm also a Warlord player and am considering starting on Noble in my next game. This should be very interesting and I might learn some things . I'm certainly no veteran, but it seems to me like if you could have gotten your cities out a little earlier you'd be in a better position.

 

[EwIck]

Since you're asking advice, I would have posted this in the strategy thread instead.
First off - and this is normal for players starting to want to improve their game - you seem to fail at prioritizing what to do. This of course depends on what the map has to provide on your spawn position. The first 100 turns of the game are probably the most important in order not to get overwhelmed by AI on the higher levels. The priorities are, expansion, production, and commerce.

Now, on your starting point, you had a wheat resource like right there in your city's BFC, no other food resource available. So this is a priority, because the more food you have, the quicker your city grows. And in order to work that wheat, you need a worker, so the worker should have been the first build - and that's the case for 96% of the games. It doesn't matter if your city doesn't grow immediately, it will grow more quickly eventually (in 12 (worker build) + 5 (farm build) turns in this particular map/city placement, 1 or 2 more turns if you had forests/hills to cross with the worker to get there)

Then, scouts/warriors are usually the next builds, as well as researching mining/BW to enable chopping and slavery (abuse those as much as possible! check out the many threads on that topic.)

Then it's straight to settlers. The more cities you have sooner, the more production/commerce. Don't be scared of having to drop the research slider to 50-60%, this can be taken care of later.

Just as you can see how big and advanced you can get in fewer than 100 turns, check the screenshot
This is a fractal map, standard size, noble
In this particular situation, I researched mining/BW immediately while building a worker (had agriculture already), then copper popped in my capital's BFC so I took down Alexander on turn 35 or so, the city north of the capital. At turn 72, I declared on the guy who had the two cities to the west and here we are, turn 76, two civs gone and I'm ahead - and about to be WAY ahead. I even had time to build the oracle and did so in only 4 turns due to proper use of the whip/chopping and of course, access to marble. Keep it mind though that this is one of my greatest starts. It's far from this easy on every map

in your case I would have scouted the map around your neighbour to find out if they have horses and decide if an axeman rush is feasible. If not, wait for swords, and if even that fails because they're too strong, wait for catapults

Check out the strategy forums, they're a good help

 

[EwIck]

[edit] I posted wrong information. disregard this reply.

 

[LeHam]

@EwIck: Thanks a lot for the sound advice. I know, I fail at prioritizing. Thanks for providing that clear guideline for how to start out. I always thought that building a Worker at the very start lead to decreased growth, but I guess in the long run it's better!

I'm certainly no veteran, but it seems to me like if you could have gotten your cities out a little earlier you'd be in a better position.

No ****, buddy.

EDIT: All right disregard the rest of the comment. I fixed the problem, the rest of the story is on the next page.

 

[Jynx]

Use Ifranview to convert stuff

 

[LeHam]

Use Ifranview to convert stuff

What is Ifranview?