Trying complete jump to Noble

[ICNP]

Okay attached is a BTS save file of my current Noble game. This is my third Noble game, with my first game as Churchill going splendidly as I captured Paris with a XBow rush and then dominated the rest of the game. My Hanibal game fell through as Zara just ran away in size on the other side of a Ring map.

Now my Korea Game. Standard Size Tectonics map. I feel like I did a good job REXing as I have as many cities as Zara (once again on the other end of the continent ), but my economy is suffering for it. The map is very spaced out and besides a small area of beutiful grassland most of my area is Plains and mountains . My early exploration somehow allowed me to walk right between the nearer Chinese and Dutch and I started pillaging a little on Zara. He has yet to forgive me. I got the Tower Shields event and am trying to put together some city takers, but there are no cities worth taking in the vicinity. The Dutch are running away in tech with the main religious shrine of Hinduism, which I converted to in order to get the diplomacy bonus.

I would be very happy to get some advice/criticism on my current efforts. I want to be able to keep playing at Noble since its challenging, but I feel discouraged by how far behind I am.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

1) See "The Everyone's Guide....

OK, quick thoughts after examining the save.

2) Right now, you're at 6 cities, and 4 workers - that ratio is backwards. One of the consequences of this is that all of your cities are badly under developed.

3) you are investing hammers in buildings too soon. The granaries are OK, but the monasteries aren't doing very much for you right now, so those could have waited.

4) Your city placement is a little bit soft - pay more attention to food and green tiles.

5) Your prioritization is a little weak. The silver, rather than the iron, should have been your top priority in the north. Likewise there are many brown farms when instead there should be green cottages.

5b) Likewise, you should be pushing a lot harder than you are right now to get Monarchy and Hereditary rule. If you need to pass along Iron Working or Alphabet to get it, then so be it, even if it means giving away Writing too.


Nonetheless, the position you are in is a win. You need, in no particular order, more workers, more cities, more units, and a plan.

 

[vicawoo]

Lots of stuff going on in this game.

On the whole, I'd say micromanage your tiles more. Prioritize working (and improving) special tiles, then flood plains, then grassland cottage tiles. If you're working forests, try to whip workers or libraries, depending on what you need. Don't bother with plains tiles, plains farms aren't worth it, better off whipping or running a scientist. Roads are low priority, especially to coastal cities that are connected (check for the little trade triangle) by sea.

Get the ivory, you need the happiness.

You usually only need 1 garrison unit for cities not on the front line. Fogbust top left.

Individual advice

Spoiler :

Seoul: switch scientist to cottage. Worker is a good build when you're unhappy, while making a worker/settler unhappy citizens don't use up food, and specialists slow worker production.
Pyongyang: only tiles worth working are the cow and the wheat. Whip a worker when angry face reaches 16 turns if whipped.
Wonsan: good tiles worked. Doesn't need lighthouse since it has nice grassland tiles to cottage. Switch to a workboat for that city to the north, and when great scientist is near completion send a worker to cottage up the grasslands.
Pusan: this is a production city, so it's better off making workers, axes (which you're building but right now you need workers), and wonders. Don't run sea tiles at production cities unless you're broke. I would build the great lighthouse at this city instead of the other one. And the worker improving the grassland mine is good.
Stras-Hu. 3 flood plains and a wheat unimproved and a size 5 city. It desperately needs improvements. I'd send a worker or whip the library, but a 2 pop whip is preferable so put a turn into building a worker, whip, improve wheat then make 3 cottages on flood plains.
Nampo: Build great lighthouse at the other city. Lighthouses, by the way I tend to prioritize late, usually I'd rather have a library or barracks. Whip a monument here, and this is a production city, so granary barracks workers/units. And improve grassland mines before plains mines, two grassland mines use up two food and give 6 production whereas one plains mine uses up 2 food and gives 4 production, and food's usually your limiting factor.
Colju: forget building the road to the city, as it's already connected by sea. Have the worker improve the silver and road it for an empire wide +1. If you get the city to the south to build the workboat, you can build a granary and library right after the monument.

New cities: 4 tiles below stras-su, gets flood plains clam and iron. To the right you can settle two north of the corn for the rest of the flood plains and ivory, and there's another city you can fit in to the north. Bottom left there's a fish cow, settle on the northern tile for slightly lower maintenance, but until you get great lighthouse it's going to cost more than its worth. You can fit a city or two in the top left.

Commerce: the wheat flood plain city should give you a fair number of coins, as well as the silver city. Once you hook up the ivory and silver, you can grow your commerce cities.

 

[NonPrayinMantis]

I took a look at your save and here is what I thought:

1) You need more workers! - You have a lot of unimproved tiles being used, and in some cities you have tiles that are improved, but are not being used. Plus, you have a happiness problem. You have unimproved silver that you could use right now and when the border of that city pops, you have fur as well. These sites should be your first priority as you need to grow your cities larger and get rid of some unhappy citizens.

The standard amount is 1.5 workers per city and you have 4 workers for 7 cities!

2) I understand that you can't get peace with Zara, but why are you fighting him? He has the same religion as everybody and he is nowhere near you. Fighting him is not worth the effort IMO. As soon as you have currency, I would pay for peace with him. Perhaps the Chinese or Dutch are better targets, but I would at least wait until you have construction and can use the dreaded Hwacha-phant (Hwachas plus Elephants - a nearly unstoppable combo in the classical period)!

3) Have you specialized your cities? Do you know what you want to put in them? When you settle a city you should already know what you want it for. IMO city specialization should go this way:
Seoul - Commerce and Hammers (a good bureaucracy capitol)
Wonsan, Stas Hu - Commerce
All the rest - Production

I would settle more commerce sites next.

Once you have your production cities basic buildings (granary, monument, barracks) in place and you have researched currency, try building either workers or wealth there. You really don't need to fight a war now so units are not exactly what you need. For now, once you finish those two axemen, build one worker there each, then switch to building research in your production cities.

NPM

 

[NonPrayinMantis]

4) Your city placement is a little bit soft - pay more attention to food and green tiles.

I agree. It looks like you might have a bit of city-overlap phobia. Overlap is not a bad thing when you are trying to use your resource tiles. For instance, I would have built a city 3E1S of Seoul that could have used the crabs, and then moved Wonsan further south. Yes, it would overlap, but using your good tiles is more important than having some overlap.

On another note, you might want to explore the peninsula east of Colju when you get a chance - you have a few warriors sitting there doing nothing.

NPM

 

[ICNP]

Thank you everyone for the response. Yeah I feel kinda dumb for not getting the Ivory/Silver worked sooner, instead I started building temples which wasn't exactly efficient. I don't quite understand the whole grassland obsession though, there isn't a whole lot of grassland to find in my area. I had originally planned on building Wonsan further North but I decided against it, It's just that darn number of cities penalty keeps egging me. I had captured Stras-Hu from barbarians so it had never occured to me to get a worker over there, I have one on the way though.

Will set Pyongyang onto worker production then. I haven't really bothered with monuments since I was hoping to use Buddhism, but the diplomacy situation bottled that one up.

 

[ICNP]

"Pusan: this is a production city, so it's better off making workers, axes (which you're building but right now you need workers), and wonders. Don't run sea tiles at production cities unless you're broke. I would build the great lighthouse at this city instead of the other one. And the worker improving the grassland mine is good."

As far as the GLH goes, I'm not totally expecting to get it. It would be nice to get it but the gold would be a welcome tech deficit. Considering that all but Pyongyang is coastal it would be a nice commerce boost.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I don't quite understand the whole grassland obsession though, there isn't a whole lot of grassland to find in my area.

Food is life; yes, there isn't a whole lot of grassland in your area, so you need to make sure that you take advantage of what grassland is available.

Somewhat related - green hills before brown hills.

 

[ICNP]

Okay so just finished playing this out and wow my situation is looking up. After some tech trades I went HR and am now at least 2 Happy faces in each city. I'm starting to get some commerce rolling in, and Seoul will have a market next turn. I just teched Construction and am planning on a Hwachaphant war. I captured the Barb city to the East cutting off the Netherlands, and will be building a city to cut off the Chinese, who will soon lose their precious Beijing under the feet of Phants (Although the cover event makes me think Axes/Swords may be more beneficial in taking the city). Pyongyang doesn't look like it will be able to do much outside of some production unless I farm most of the area to get some food.

Attached is a picture of my empire (with some random BUG dotmaps) and my newest save. Also I feel that Seoul is not the greatest place for a Capital and that when I get the chance I should probably move my Palace to Stras-Hu .

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

More notes:

Seoul is still a weak capital - too small, wrong improvements.

Workers - you still don't have nearly enough. Also, you'll want to be thinking more about how you distribute their labors (as a rule, improvements in your good cities are more important than improvement in your weaker ones.

You've got Wonsan building a lighthouse - that's premature (too many green tiles still unworked).

Pay more attention to the demographics screen - you are currently well behind the leader in land, well behind everybody in military. Pay more attention to whether or not your choices are delivering to you more 1s in the rank column.

 

[ICNP]

More notes:

Seoul is still a weak capital - too small, wrong improvements.

Pay more attention to whether or not your choices are delivering to you more 1s in the rank column.

Okay what improvements should be built/worked? The resources are a duh, but you want the rest to be Grassland/River Cottages (as available) right? Okay can do.

Which columns would you say are important? I'd suppose Score, Life Expectancy, and Approval rating are the least important, Soldiers being important for at least a parity, and Land being critical.

After my most recent play through, I finished the Great Lighthouse in Nampo, finished Maori Statues in Pusan, and have been cranking out Hwachas/Swordsmen in Pyongyang. I now have at least a worker in each city, except Rotsu, and typically more. I just grabbed Civil service, but Seoul is not the best production city. I probably will switch because with the market I can really crank some Gold out of it. Wonsan got a Great Sci and I settled him.

My problem is, which tech to pursue? Elephants require HBR while Maces need Metal Casting and Machinery. At least my economy is over 50% now that I have the GLH and some cottages are growing. Irrigation means I can spread farms out a little. I also have the issue of which guy to attack. I know that I have a lead on the Chinese, and they settled between 2 of my cities , but the world loves them. The dutch are now Christian and they hold the almighty Hindu shrine, but I don't have many Espionage points on them and they could have teched some good units on me.

 

[Gumbolt]

Just looked at your saves.

340ad and no city above size 4. *faints*

In terms of working tiles.

Grassland river = cottages. You should build cottages on grassland rivers first due to the extra commerce compared to normal grassland. Remember to make sure the city screen is working the tile.
Grassland = cottages.
Flood plains = Cottages due to commerce and extra food. You could irrigate for growth.

If a city has no food resources its often wise to irrigate 2-3 grassland to provide 3 food for city growth. A city with just cottaged grasslands will grow slowly.

A city with 2-3 food resources and 3-4 hills will often make a good production site.

Your capital should really by size 8-9+ by now.

I would restart the game. Plan your capital out from the start. First technology you research should normally fit a food resource in your capital BFC. Eg corn = agriculture.

My first build for this save would be a worker. When worker is complete I would then irrigate the corn and let the city grow more. You could then build workboats if you have fishing to work the crabs.

By this time you have 2 food resources and your capital will grow to size 4-5 early on. You can then think about mining a mountain and building a second worker.

I would then tech to bronze working and use the 2 workers to chop forest to speed up a settler production. You could even switch civics to slavery and part whip the settler if you reach the capital happiness cap.

Your new cities should focus on growth while the capital pumps out workers/settlers.

As and when you reach pottery you can think about granaries and cottages.

Overall when you pick a new city site make sure it has 1-2 food resources and a purpose. For Production? For commerce ? For specialist - great people farm.

Try the start again using all the above and notice the difference in the 2 saves!!!