Orion's Home School: Winning at Noble

[Orion071]

I think Nabe may have confused your woodsman 3 leadership warrior that you upgraded with a GG unit.

Good point. I forgot about him. Thanks for the reminder of his failure.

What I'm waiting for are continental battles.

In a recent game I played, it was a standard continent map. Using this thread tactics I took out all the civs on my continent.

Apparently on the other continent was Montezuma, Victoria, Mansa, and Khan (Mongolia).

Montezuma took out Vicky and Mansa, the same time I took out Peter and Julius. His land size was slightly less than mine, nevertheless he was still huge. Khan was still using axemen to Monty's macemen, had a different religion than Monty but they were still friends, go figure.

To get to the point, I tried to attack him when I had artillery and he had rifleman. I razed a few of his cities but he was always wiping out my Stacks of Doom. I had 24 mixed units of tanks, navy seals, artillery, and SAM infantry, but Monty still wiped them out in 3 turns with cannons, rifleman, and cavalry.

I ended up winning a time victory by 1000 points with both of us at equivalent technology.

My question is, how do you deal with a warlord, who mass produces troops and who owns 33k acres of land to your 40k on a different continent?

Well... the answer is... you don't. You out-tech him and launch your spaceship first.

But seriously, it's very hard. The big advantage that the defender has is mobility, especially with railroads. Once you take out a city, your enitre stack is vulnerable to a huge counter-attack. One way to stop this is to take out a city and then pillage the roads leading to that city. This will force Monty's counter-attack to stop short of the city and your army. When his force is outside the walls, YOU attack HIM with your Artillery instead of the other way around. Gunships are especially useful for pillaging roads due to their high movement rate. Force his army to move at the same rate as yours and always make sure that it's you attacking instead of you defending against his Cannons.

I won't be showing this in my game because I'm not planning on an intercontinental war. I think I saw enough war in this last game. The goal is to take over my continent and then launch, hopefully sometime in the 1700's. Maybe I'll send a few nukes over there for fun before I go.

 

[Roxlimn]

Defenses are too puny. If you're going to invade a monstrously large Civ, you need to have at least 27 infantry defenders (Marines or Infantry) all of which are multiply promoted with Drill to minimize siege losses. 4 Machine Guns in the stack will work wonders against Siege bombardment.

You take the city and prepare to reap the whirlwind. Then you blast his units away and proceed normally, preferably taking out his best production cities first. Make sure to Liberate as you go. It'll decrease maintenance and gives you 2 defensive units per city you capture.

 

[SilentAce]

Ok I am just playing the normal version so no bells and whistles although I have my eye on ebay for a all 3 box. Basically missed out on Civ III so been away from the game for a while so I started on the very bottom level and am currently at a pityful Warlord level. Your pointers where they apply to a non enhanced version have been very enlightening and I now remember why I used to always do my own workers rather than the lazy auto option plus other tips you have given.

I am probably setting myself up to make it more differcult for myself but I play huge continents on epic with random setting across the board bar ancient. While I can beat it on Warlord my score is always pathetic sitting basically in the bottom 3 of the HoF everytime. As i set myself A rule of not moving up a level till at least 3 top 5 Hof at current level I wondered what I should be doing to improve that score scenario.

One thing that would be really helpful would be a way to sum up a city and pigeon holing it based on some point system for each land type that falls in its fat cross. I always seem to be worrying that my citys wont get enough food....or dont have enough cottages......or as generally happens after the above to are catered for...dont produce enough.

Mike.

 

[marciv]

Turn 255: Japan's world map is enough for me to get the circumnavigation bonus! When I got Paper, I traded for other guys maps, but didn't give up my own. It isn't unusual for a Big and Small map to get this bonus before Optics.

Can someone explain the circumnavigation bonus to me. Do you simply have to acquire all the world maps to get this and if you do, what is the bonus? Fantastic thread by the way!!

 

[JujuLautre]

circumnavigation : when your are a first to get a sufficient knowledge of the world so that you know it from west to east (not always in a complete manner, the goal is to know at least a little bit of every column of the map), then you circumnavigate the globe. All your ships receive a bonus of +1 movement point from now on.

 

[18lama]

Great thread!

I was a warlord till now. After reading this thread I switched to Noble. I found it not to be difficult at all. I won a cultural victory in 1830 with Fredrick of Germany on huge/hemisphere/11 civs. Thanks for making me realize that Noble isn't as hard as people make it to be.

 

[marciv]

circumnavigation : when your are a first to get a sufficient knowledge of the world so that you know it from west to east (not always in a complete manner, the goal is to know at least a little bit of every column of the map), then you circumnavigate the globe. All your ships receive a bonus of +1 movement point from now on.

Thanks for that

 

[ParadigmShifter]

I heard they dumbed down the word "circumnavigation" in BtS to "X has proven that the world is round! OMG LOL NOOBZ WIV UR FLAT ERTH FEERY!!!" or something.

It would be much better if they said "Francis Drake has circumcised the globe in his enormous clipper" of course.

 

[Kesshi]

I heard they dumbed down the word "circumnavigation" in BtS to "X has proven that the world is round! OMG LOL NOOBZ WIV UR FLAT ERTH FEERY!!!" or something.

It would be much better if they said "Francis Drake has circumcised the globe in his enormous clipper" of course.

ParadigmShifter,

I agree with you. I like the circumnavigated text better. Personally I'd love for them to have dubbed it something like Magellan's Quest or Achievement, or something. It would be a quest that everybody has, but isn't ever randomly assigned to you. "An adventurous citizen of the Mongolian empire has successfully circumnavigated the globe, proving the world is round!" "You have completed Magellan's Quest, all naval units receive a +1 movement bonus."

 

[ironic_lettuce]

Thank you so much for this guide!! I am one of the players you've aimed this at - I can beat Warlord pretty comfortably, but Noble was always just out of my reach, because of my poor empire management. But I just started a game and it's going much better for me now! I think the biggest mistake I was making in previous games was not using cottages enough, and I understand the whole commerce thing much better.

I'm still having some problems with:
- Choosing my techs
- Choosing my build order
- Making sure I have enough units to prevent getting attacked by other nations

But I'm definitely making lots of progress!! So thanks again! If you could give me any tips for the things I'm still struggling with, I'd be extremely grateful!

 

[gunsnroses]

Okay, I learned a lot from this thread but the thing I really wanted to know did not come up. This was because you had a huge tech lead over your rivals and in my games I mostly have a minor one (on noble too).

My recurring problems in the game is not building up my civ. That works fine (although I know got a few tips from your game to speed this up). The greatest problem is when I finally go to war, I got a reasonably stack and most of my units are somewhat more advantaged then my enemies are. In my last game I had a huge stack of macemen and a few trebuchets. But the city of my enemy was defended by three or four longbowmen and the odds of winning were so low!! Like... 4.5% to at it's highest 20 %. How can this be? How do you win a siege with a opponent with similar units as you have??!

 

[Sam_Yeager]

The greatest problem is when I finally go to war, I got a reasonably stack and most of my units are somewhat more advantaged then my enemies are. In my last game I had a huge stack of macemen and a few trebuchets. But the city of my enemy was defended by three or four longbowmen and the odds of winning were so low!! Like... 4.5% to at it's highest 20 %. How can this be? How do you win a siege with a opponent with similar units as you have??!

Understand the importance of cats & trebs and have a better balance between them and maces. Once you've lowered the cultural defence of the city to zero you suicide a few cats/trebs against the LBs to lower the defence's strength. Then you attack with your maces.

 

[Geoffroy]

@gunsnroses:

- do you bombard the cities before attacking?
- Once that is done, attack with siege weapons first, they will probably die but you make collateral damage and weaken the other units in the city. Attacking with trebs especially if you promote them with city raider promotions is great! So bring A LOT of siege weapons! After that you should be able to attack with your maces at > 80% odds
- Do you promote your units?

 

[gunsnroses]

@gunsnroses:

- do you bombard the cities before attacking?
- Once that is done, attack with siege weapons first, they will probably die but you make collateral damage and weaken the other units in the city. Attacking with trebs especially if you promote them with city raider promotions is great! So bring A LOT of siege weapons! After that you should be able to attack with your maces at > 80% odds
- Do you promote your units?

Thanks to the game of Orion I discovered that my empire development strategies are good for Civ 4 but I still played my military like I was playing Civ III. So I've started a game know and chose some civics so that I get extra experience for my units and know I have a war that's going much better. I also have much more siege weapons. These were all things I never thought of but I was just attacking with units like in Civ III.

So now I do all these things that you've said, so FINALLY it's working. (BTW, in this game I'm playing I even got a tech lead thanks to Orions tips )

 

[shmoolie]

OK, let's look at the continent again:


Here is a close-up of Delhi:



As you can see, I'm at both the health and happiness cap. I have +1 from a previous whip that will go away in 7 turns. My goal for this city is to finish the current Worker, then whip a Settler for Yellow dot. I'll regrow while building a Forge. Then I'll need Settlers for each of the other 3 city sites.

Where do you see that you have a +1 ?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You mouse over the whip icon and see how long the whip anger will last. You can figure it out pretty easily from there.

And man, this thread pre-dates me...so much time I missed before I got civ IV for xmas .

 

[KaytieKat]

You mouse over the whip icon and see how long the whip anger will last. You can figure it out pretty easily from there.

And man, this thread pre-dates me...so much time I missed before I got civ IV for xmas .

Hi

But I have been here TWICE as long and you have 2000 more posts than me and you probably played TONS more games since they take you like what 5 or 10 min to get a 1400 AD diplo win? hehe

Kaytie

 

[Amao]

Where do you see that you have a +1 ?

Another way to tell is the pop is 7 and the is 8.

 

[shmoolie]

Another way to tell is the pop is 7 and the is 8.

OK. Where do I see how many more turns it will last - after coming back to the city view one or more turns after I whipped?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Hi

But I have been here TWICE as long and you have 2000 more posts than me and you probably played TONS more games since they take you like what 5 or 10 min to get a 1400 AD diplo win? hehe

Kaytie

What are you trying to say ?

Cmon, even for me the AP takes like 1 hr 30 minutes if I'm racing for it and only it as a victory condition on epic. My normal games take about 4 hours on standard/epic!

The posts are the result of being a grad student with a student worker job 20 hrs a week. Sometimes, they keep me pretty busy. Sometimes...I post on the civ forum .

Grad school/studying/working out/etc get in the way of my civ IV time, but I'm pretty fast at that stuff, too .

I feel like I missed out a bit though honestly as I barely touched civ 3 even then got civ IV very late - my presence here is barely older than the noble's club (I was pushing up difficulty levels but very much a rookie and didn't know how to post forum pictures when it started - NC I is the only one I've not participated in! NC II was a very shaky game for me and reading my summary there now makes me laugh a bit! Why did I tech HBR and then make war chariots?! Why did that work?! Backdoored a win-what an ugly game ).

That reminds me though, APG III is running and I should get to playing/posting it in the next day or two!