Advice needed - save attached.

[Mozzington]

Hi Everybody,

Long time casual player here. I've had advice from the forums in the past which has helped tremendously.

Please find attached save of my current NOBLE game.

I probably win half my noble games and lose the others. I am wanting some advice to try and make the step up. If somebody could please take a comprehensive look and give me some advice on where I am going wrong, improvements, cirz specilization etc.

In this particular game it's me and the colonel alone on an island. I think it took my way too long to vassalise him but I just could pump the units out quick enough. 3 turns from my main production cities?

Now I have his vassalised I have a potential problem with Stalin which if I was carrying on I would like to try and ignore and go after one of the number one world powers...but how do I do that?

It would take me forever to build enough ships and troops the game would be over?

See attached save and advise.

Thank you!

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I probably win half my noble games and lose the others. I am wanting some advice to try and make the step up. If somebody could please take a comprehensive look and give me some advice on where I am going wrong, improvements, cirz specilization etc.

Evaluation of city locations.

The clearest example is Akkad, which is currently stagnant at size 5 because it's relying on pre-Biology farms for food surplus. Meanwhile, the third ring has a grassland sheep tile that isn't in range of any city

Looking at the map now, I have absolutely no clue why you thought Akkad was important enough to settle first.

Why did you think Akkad was the right place to put the Great Library?

Why are there so many buildings in the city that hosts the Heroic Epic?

Why isn't Oxford in the capital?

Not sure how to classify those last three - at an advanced level, they look like a city specialization problem; but they could easily be a "not thinking about the effect of the wonders" problem. They look, I'm sad to say, like recommendations made to you by the AI.

Your position now is primarily a consequence of how slowly you have been going, and that in turn is a consequence of poor development during the BC era.

IE: fix your early game.

 

[OneLeggedRhino]

They look, I'm sad to say, like recommendations made to you by the AI.

Realize that the AI plays at a level that won't consistently win on noble. If you do what the AI recommends, you'll be roughly even with the AI on noble, meaning you have a 1/7 chance to win (assuming 7 civilizations).

Whenever I've planned a city, then see the AI recommends a city there, it always makes me nervous. Like that idiot friend who wants you to quit your job and sell moonshine, I just assume I should take whatever he says and do the opposite.

 

[Mozzington]

Wow, I didn't realise I was quite so bad lol. Thanks for the bluntness.

I realised that Akkad wasn't optimal for GL but I didn't want to make my science city Babylon as I'd already made this my financial city?

I have always tried to finger out my GL city by city number three. At the start of the game I though this was the better city as it had a couple of 4 food tiles to work to support the specialists. I have obviously got it massively wrong?

I thought you would put Oxford with GL???

Babylon seemed to pump out units fast enough so I decided to try and give it a boost with HE? Was I wrong? And what do you mean about so many buildings?

Thanks.

 

[mintegar]

Well, you ended up in a semi-isolation game, not the easiest thing because many AI don't trade techs in that situation, and compared to the "lonely hearts" games you have to share the space on the landmass with someone.

So i'd say in this situation Aim to get ahead of your rival in tech, and attack with overhelming odds sooner than you did. Your war started in 1580 which is quite late, and and lasted till 1796 which is too long i think.

Its hard to tell from the late savegame you posted what exactly went wrong here. Just keep in mind for future wars, you have to build quite a lot of units _before_ declaring, so that you have enough power to end the war quickly. Scout out the AI beforehand, usually in mid/lategame it builds up a "stack" of units which it keeps somewhere. Make sure this stack can't hurt your attack force, best by being far enough ahead in tech. It can be good to wait for the AI to move it's stack into your territory, where you can kill it easily by using lots of Siege or mounted units.

You took Charly as a vassal. Maybe in this game it would have been better to just kill him. You would have more cities, and no "want to join motherland" unhappiness.

Accepting capitulation of AI is good when you can move your Army immidiatley to attack another AI, but i think this was not the case in this game because you didn't have enough galeons to do that quickly. Another benefit of taking AI as vassal is that you don't have to pay the city maintainance cost for it's remaining cities. But in this case your continent was not _that_ big, and with good placement of Forbidden palace city maintainence should be no problem.

One huge problem which stands out from the log is that you got your first GP in 805AD. That is way too late! Try to get a first scientist out in the BC. Yes that means you have to sacrifice some production early on in your capital to run that 2 scientists even in you capital if you have no other suitable city... But Academy is so powerful that this pays of.

You got Economics in 1810, yet are still in Decentralication many years later. Why? Once you get access to free market, you should either adopt that, or Mercantilism depending on the situation. Look in you F4 advisor screen, there is a tab which lists the value of your foreign trade routes. If you have Foreign trade generating lots of Commerce, Free market is good. If you have no or little foreign trade routes, mercantilism can often be better.

Aachen has a Shrine, with generates lots of direct gold income. In this religios "Gold" cities, it should be your priority to get the Gold multiplier buildings Bank, Market, Grocer up ASAP.

Vienna there is lots of unhappines. You should build Market (is good in this situation because you have access to the right resources) and Theatre.

In Sippar you are building a Market. Bank would prob. be better, as it multiplies Gold by twice as much and happiness is not an issue in that city.


Didn't think too much how you can still win this map.. A good player can probably do it militarily because it's only Noble, but some AI are already really big.. Seems a bit like a slugfest.

 

[Ghpstage]

Another thing of note is that you have far too few workers, just 5 for your 18 cities. You should have at least 20! If you did then more of your cottages would have been put down early enough to have grown to maturity and you wouldn't still be working unimproved tiles.

I realised that Akkad wasn't optimal for GL but I didn't want to make my science city Babylon as I'd already made this my financial city?

Its important to realise that commerce commerce which you get from tiles, especially cottages is not the same as gold gold. Commerce is converted into , , and depending on the slider position,. Even now your capital is puttting out significantly more science than it is gold, despite having higher gold multipliers!

I have always tried to finger out my GL city by city number three. At the start of the game I though this was the better city as it had a couple of 4 food tiles to work to support the specialists. I have obviously got it massively wrong?

Farmed floosdplains are only useful in a GP farm as an extra on top of food resources, with the 2 floodplains you have your only capable of feeding 2 specialists before Biology, which is the same as a single pig, wet corn or fish with lighthouse.....
Your capital (as an example, it isn't the best spot) could run 5 specialists from just its food resources once you got Civil Service and irrigated the corn (should have been done by now!)

I thought you would put Oxford with GL???

Not necessarily. The main contribution of the Great Library is in scientists GPP not science, as a result the GLib is better with the National Epic.
Oxford is best in your highest science city, which will very often be the capital.

Babylon seemed to pump out units fast enough so I decided to try and give it a boost with HE? Was I wrong? And what do you mean about so many buildings?

The capital isn't often a good choice for HE in my opinion, mostly because the capital makes such a strong candidate for a super science city due to Bureacracy that your likely to be building lots of infrastructure rather than units, and doing so wastes the HE bonus.

Too many buildings is partly due to wasting your HE bonus, and partly for building worthless buildings.
Using the capital as an example, a monument in the cap is a waste in just about every circumstance, a capital courthouse is useless unless you have big corporations, walls aren't going to be needed anywhere on noble, cap raisers (aqueducts, garden) are only worth building if you need the or here you have 6 excess, Statue of Zeus is a pretty junky wonder.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I realised that Akkad wasn't optimal for GL but I didn't want to make my science city Babylon as I'd already made this my financial city?

A problem with logic is that everything depends on your initial assumptions.

I have always tried to finger out my GL city by city number three. At the start of the game I though this was the better city as it had a couple of 4 food tiles to work to support the specialists. I have obviously got it massively wrong?

Yeah, you have.

Good places to run specialists tend to have spiky food tiles, and relatively uninteresting tiles around them. A good example on your map is Florence - cows, two fish, but lots of water tiles.

Babylon and Aachen have spiky food tiles, but the tiles around them are really good, so you would rather invest the food in copper mines/silver mines and so on. In other words, the cities are great for hiring specialists, but the opportunity cost is higher.

Feeding specialists from flood plains tends to have two problems. First, you using +1F farms to do it in the early game, and that improvement isn't particularly exciting. Second, floodplains carry around an extra health penalty that you have to compensate for.

Furthermore, you have to work more floodplains to get the equivalent food surplus (two corn farms vs four farmed flood plains), which means that you need to find two more happy and three more health (floodplain penalty), which usually means more hammers.

The same lack of spiky food is what makes Akkad slow in the first place: you don't have a good improved tile to work at size 1, so it takes longer for the city to get set up.

I thought you would put Oxford with GL???

No - you put Oxford with Science.

Some quick numbers taken from the save.

Commerce in Akkad: 35/turn
Commerce in Babylon: 65
Commerce in Babylon with better tile assignment: 74

Translated into raw beakers, you are getting 45 beakers from Babylon, vs 25 from Akkad. The Great Library, under Representation (which you may not always be running) only provides 18 additional beakers. And as you will have noticed, The Great Library becomes obsolete at Scientific Method.

More broadly, the main purpose of Oxford is to boost late game research, and by late game the Great Library is pretty irrelevant, so there's no advantage to pairing them together.


The rule of thumb, which I recommend until you are ready to start studying the exceptions, is to assume that your capital is going to be your late game research monster, and plan accordingly.

In this game, that would have stopped your entire cascade: once you decide that the capital is for research, you aren't tempted to look for a science city somewhere else, and you aren't tempted to build the heroic epic there, etc.

Babylon seemed to pump out units fast enough so I decided to try and give it a boost with HE? Was I wrong? And what do you mean about so many buildings?

"So many buildings": in your heroic epic city, every hammer invested in buildings is two hammers not invested in units. In other words, every turn you aren't training a unit is wasting the heroic epic.

So good HE cities tend to be small, with few buildings in them, because they are constantly pounding out units. Barracks for the XP, possibly a granary for growth. A Drydocks if also training ships. A forge because these cities tend to have high production yield each turn. But once you have enough citizens to work all the food specials and all of the mines, you don't really need to grow any more until late game - so happy and health buildings tend to get ignored (do I need a market or six catapults?)

In short, Heroic Epic doesn't go with most hammers per turn, but instead most hammers invested in military per turn. Therefore, it doesn't belong in a city that needs a lot of infrastructure (like the capital).

 

[Mylene]

Akkad must be one of the funniest cities ever built
Sorry but..just lol ~~
It lost your game on it's own, if you lose.