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A strategy guide to winning noble

I found this guide helpful in winning my first game at the Noble level, especially regarding the early game. His English is better than a lot of native speakers who post on gaming forums, so can the rhetoric!
 
I think it's a really good article and help win at the Noble level. One question I do have in the section concerning Horizontal expansion. It says that a good rule of thumb is to get as many cities as the happy cap. So if the happy cap is six, then get six cities.

I'm just wondering what the logic is for this or the mechanics behind it? So if the happy cap is 6, then I should have 6 cities. I get a new luxury resource and the happy cap is bump to 7, I should expand and settle a new city.

Why is this? I mean, if my happy cap is 5, why would that stop me from settling 8 cities?
 
I think it's because the more cities you have, the more they cost in upkeep and therefore they need to be big and well developed so that you can afford it... Or something...
 
I appreciated the article. I keep losing on Noble, so hopefully this will get me on a better footing. I think my main problem is getting sidetracked with my city specializing. Anyhow thanks for the help. :)
 
I haven't been able to win a game on Noble yet. Maybe it's because I read about the SE and wanted to give that a try, so I've been playing as Pericles, and I usually start out fairly well, but quickly fall behind.

My latest game was going pretty well. I did a Phalanx rush on Washington and took him out by turn 100 (on epic), then did an Oracle CoL slinghsot before most of the opposing leaders ahd religions yet, and thus was able to get three or four brothers in the faith, to include Genghis Khan, at least for a while before he converted to Judaism. but before that he asked me to help him out by going to war with Frederick, which I did, though I never even fought Frederick at all. Things were going pretty well and I was about ready for expansion because I built the Confusion shrine (the Diao Miao?) when suddenly Justinian plopped a city down in the exact spot I had wanted one of my future cities to be and right next to another potential future spot. Well, needless to say I went to war with him to take those spots back, and what I should have done was make peace after settling those spots, but I have a condition called Destroyitosis, which causes me to keep at war with someone until they are completely and utterly destroyed. Long stoyur short, the war went on far longer than it should have, Justinian called in four or five of his friends (including Montezuma), I called in Genghis Khan and Brennus, the war continued, everyone else made peace, but I couldn't, then Justinian started throwing war elephants at me, and that was pretty much it.

Aside from the copper in my capital's BFC as well as three crabs and a corn, the land around my starting area was pretty much void of useful resources and workable land.

I do like your guide though. It gives nice guidelines for the number of cities you should attempt to build right away and how to go about building said cities. One thing I would recommend including somewhere in the guide though would be something about the 60% rule, as that seems to be applicable to every difficulty level, unless I am mistaken.
 
Argh.

Well, I'm winning about 2/3rds of the games on Noble, but it's almost always due to starting placement. This guide helped, though!

I'm playing Augustus, and the problem is, I just can't get out of the gate early enough, that is, with my Praetorians. By the time I'm developed enough to start putting out units at a meaningful pace, everyone has longbows and vassalage.

Last game I drew Mehmed (AGAIN! four times in a row now) as a neighbor, and I was tempted to quit. I hate this guy. I said, what the hell, and played it, determined to take Mehmed quickly before he could start his usual wonder-and-GP/Golden Ages spamming.

I was almost (almost!) successful, or at least I gave him hell. I couldn't crack his cities, because by the time I get even a small army together (like 2 Praetorians, 2 axemen, and one archer), they were either walled or on hills. I did make his life miserable, as I raced around with horse archers, mongol-style, destroying everything in sight (even roads), burning and pillaging. I got two of his outlying cities that weren't so well protected. All he had was archers. Hell, I didn't even see one "fighter" . . . .I wonder if the computer cheats that, because I had eyes on his capital at the game start and he had an archer in it, not a fighter.

I lost mostly because of the inability to take other cities, and him convincing others to war on me. How he had all that gold with nothing but sea resources is a mystery. At the end, he vassalized himself to Stalin, I had three civs out to get me, and it was all over save for the shouting.

Oh, well. It was fun while it lasted, I had fun driving him, Stalin, and Napoleon crazy with my blitzkreig horse archers.

I need to find those threads on using the Praetorian rush . . . .

I know this post is a couple months old, but I feel no-one really helped you out much (save the guy who posted after you) so I thought I'd pitch in.

It's worth pointing out that two Praets, two axes and an archer will never conquer anything. If you really want to take cities, you want at least 5 or 6 city raiders (Praets, in your case) as the poster after you suggested. More is better. When I go for an early war, I usually build around 8 to 10 axes, and that's pushing it (meaning I should really build more, not less).

Another idea I infer from your wording is the concept that you have to be "putting out units at a meaningful pace". The whole point of a "rush" is to get the particular unit out in force unreasonably early. In other words, the point is not to get massive infrastructure up and running so that you can produce the unit "properly", because while you're doing that, your opponents are building longbows. Instead, you want to "cheat" - you want to use every dirty trick you can to accelerate your acquisition of an attack force. This means using slavery, chopping down forests, beelining the required techs, neglecting all aspects of your civilization that do not directly and immediately lead to unit production, and so forth. The fact that you say your foes have longbows by the time you have any number of Praets is telling - it tells us that you are taking maybe three times as long as you really should to acquire your fighting force.

To put it differently again: a rush is a kind of extreme beeline. We define a beeline as "neglecting what is not immediately relevant". When you beeline Iron Working, you don't waste time teching Masonry or Writing. In order to beeline successfully, you must neglect things that would otherwise be important. You must focus absolutely on the object of your beeline. You want to field Praets, yes? Then why are you teching Archery and Horseback Riding? Putting the requisite techs and infrastructure in place for horse archers means you are denying yourself three, four, maybe five Praets.
 
Argh.

Well, I'm winning about 2/3rds of the games on Noble, but it's almost always due to starting placement. This guide helped, though!

I'm playing Augustus, and the problem is, I just can't get out of the gate early enough, that is, with my Praetorians. By the time I'm developed enough to start putting out units at a meaningful pace, everyone has longbows and vassalage.

Last game I drew Mehmed (AGAIN! four times in a row now) as a neighbor, and I was tempted to quit. I hate this guy. I said, what the hell, and played it, determined to take Mehmed quickly before he could start his usual wonder-and-GP/Golden Ages spamming.

I was almost (almost!) successful, or at least I gave him hell. I couldn't crack his cities, because by the time I get even a small army together (like 2 Praetorians, 2 axemen, and one archer), they were either walled or on hills. I did make his life miserable, as I raced around with horse archers, mongol-style, destroying everything in sight (even roads), burning and pillaging. I got two of his outlying cities that weren't so well protected. All he had was archers. Hell, I didn't even see one "fighter" . . . .I wonder if the computer cheats that, because I had eyes on his capital at the game start and he had an archer in it, not a fighter.

I lost mostly because of the inability to take other cities, and him convincing others to war on me. How he had all that gold with nothing but sea resources is a mystery. At the end, he vassalized himself to Stalin, I had three civs out to get me, and it was all over save for the shouting.

Oh, well. It was fun while it lasted, I had fun driving him, Stalin, and Napoleon crazy with my blitzkreig horse archers.

I need to find those threads on using the Praetorian rush . . . .

I know this post is a couple months old, but I feel no-one really helped you out much (save the guy who posted after you) so I thought I'd pitch in.

It's worth pointing out that two Praets, two axes and an archer will never conquer anything. If you really want to take cities, you want at least 5 or 6 city raiders (Praets, in your case) as the poster after you suggested. More is better. When I go for an early war, I usually build around 8 to 10 axes, and that's pushing it (meaning I should really build more, not less).

Another idea I infer from your wording is the concept that you have to be "putting out units at a meaningful pace". The whole point of a "rush" is to get the particular unit out in force unreasonably early. In other words, the point is not to get massive infrastructure up and running so that you can produce the unit "properly", because while you're doing that, your opponents are building longbows. Instead, you want to "cheat" - you want to use every dirty trick you can to accelerate your acquisition of an attack force. This means using slavery, chopping down forests, beelining the required techs, neglecting all aspects of your civilization that do not directly and immediately lead to unit production, and so forth. The fact that you say your foes have longbows by the time you have any number of Praets is telling - it tells us that you are taking maybe three times as long as you really should to acquire your fighting force.

To put it differently again: a rush is a kind of extreme beeline. We define a beeline as "neglecting what is not immediately relevant". When you beeline Iron Working, you don't waste time teching Masonry or Writing. In order to beeline successfully, you must neglect things that would otherwise be important. You must focus absolutely on the object of your beeline. You want to field Praets, yes? Then why are you teching Archery and Horseback Riding? Putting the requisite techs and infrastructure in place for horse archers means you are denying yourself three, four, maybe five Praets.
 
Thanks for the guide. This is really useful to have enough detail to implement a general strategy. I tend to find the more advanced and specialized guides hard to understand if I don't understand the "default".

one request- I may have missed this, but if this is most appropriate for a given map size or game speed, maybe mention that. I'm not suggesting that we need a listing of all the strategies from tiny/quick to huge/marathon, but if this is intended for moderate size/speed, state that outright.
 
Good guide for those looking to improve their chances on noble...
There is one thing that stood out to me though in the vertical expansion section

Unhealthiness is less important, since you still get your citizens, but need more food.

I feel that early unhealthiness can have a higher cost than sometimes indicated (probably because some people seem fixated on getting those cottages worked early) but it seems to me that early unhealthiness is a sunk cost in food, with no possible return on the lost food. However the food lost to angry faces can be recouped quickly with a conversion to hammers.
I used to think as the article does, but as my game play has improved I've begun to look at food, commerce, and hammers as three sides to one coin:D and a sunk cost to any of the above affects all of them.
Then again I could just be imagining things and my point is completely unfounded...

(I also usually prefer running an SE over a CE although I've succeeded with both)
 
Good guide for those looking to improve their chances on noble...
There is one thing that stood out to me though in the vertical expansion section



I feel that early unhealthiness can have a higher cost than sometimes indicated (probably because some people seem fixated on getting those cottages worked early) but it seems to me that early unhealthiness is a sunk cost in food, with no possible return on the lost food. However the food lost to angry faces can be recouped quickly with a conversion to hammers.
I used to think as the article does, but as my game play has improved I've begun to look at food, commerce, and hammers as three sides to one coin:D and a sunk cost to any of the above affects all of them.
Then again I could just be imagining things and my point is completely unfounded...

(I also usually prefer running an SE over a CE although I've succeeded with both)

unhealthiness can be a drag, but is rarely bad enough to kill your growth
+ you can overcome it quite easily by settling the high food spots which also give more health...
 
unhealthiness can be a drag, but is rarely bad enough to kill your growth
+ you can overcome it quite easily by settling the high food spots which also give more health...

More succinctly my point is that food, hammers, and commerce are all means to an end, whether that be military, technological, or cultural, they are all at their core members of an equivalence class(lets call it stuff;)). The focus changes throughout the game on which you will try to emphasize, but in the early game it is almost always food that is the focus. Still early cities have a fairly low maximum happy limit and even if you are looking to rush, food resources provide the quickest return on investment and are the easiest to improve early on. This leads me to think that an early economy should considerably focus on converting food into the desired output, usually quasi-hammers for settlers or actual hammers for units and buildings. As such angry faces can sometimes provide additional hammers for minimal food loss(if one whips for two or three pop as soon as one gets the sixth pop in a non CHA capital, or a CHA non capital) however a continual health drain is a waste of food and therefore stuff(which is by conjecture equivalent to hammers or commerce).
Admittedly in order to efficiently convert food to commerce early on (cottages and or specialists) the health drain is usually unavoidable as the requirement is a certain pop size which will eventually exceed the health limit.

Overall I guess my point was to not so easily dismiss health issues. They still result in a net loss in productivity that has no game mechanism to turn a benefit from.
 
Well, I won my first BtS noble game after reading the guide, so I guess that's an endorsement :goodjob:

I played a random map with random leader, and ended up with Germany. Win was diplo around 1960, and I was pretty close to launching the spaceship too. In hindsight I could have won a lot earlier.

1) I got kind of crappy starting position at the end of a peninsula, and no copper or horses, so I had to tech to IW before I could take out Babylon.

2) Next war was with Catherine. I made a couple of mistakes here. First off, I didn't move to pillage resources, which would have been smart. Also, it was my first time dealing with the Apostalic(sp?) palace, which I still don't really understand. I never was considered for leader-- not having enough of whichever religion it was, I guess. Also, two or three times votes came up to stop the war against Catherine. I voted "no" when I should have voted "never", and had stacks currently bombarding city defenses automatically recalled to my territory. I didn't realize you could say "never" without much in the way of consequences until a couple of resolutions came up to "give Catherine her city back", at which point I politely extended my middle finger at the screen.

3) mid to late game, probably should have dedicated more towards tech and money. I kept building tons of units, but also happy/health buildings and late wonders. When I had more or less decided not to go for domination, I should have pushed money and beakers more in my mediocre cities, since I was more limited by tech than production. I had overprepared for war with Catherine, and had lots of old units I could have upgraded.

4) didn't manage great people very well, and kept ending up with great spies.

5) If I 'd known I was in the running for a diplo win, I could have built the UN much earlier.

6) still not entirely sure I understand corporations.

7) probably could have done a better job matching workshops v towns to what the city was doing.
 
Well, I guess I should say this: if you don't understand how one wins the game, expect to lose a lot. :) I recommend you go read up on diplo victories.

Corporations aren't that complex either. Go read The Power Of Sushi.
 
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