Okay, let's look at the problems one by one :
chaosklima said:
I am still having trouble winning, in any form, on Noble and above.
Noble is supposed to be the difficulty level where neither the AI or the players have an 'cheating' advantage. So you will have to manage more efficiently than the AI, or exploit some of the AI loopholes (for exemple, the incapability of the AI to build a consequent attack force once you decimated its first few stacks)
chaosklima said:
I almost always fall behind in score
As mentioned above, falling behind in score isn't always relevant to win. Cultural victories for exemple can be achieved with having really low population and limited techs (thus giving you a low game score).
War is the easiest way to maintain top game scores. You will cripple the AI by reducing their research capabilities and increase yours by annexing its cities.
chaosklima said:
my cities go red-faced (despite the temples and libraries)
Red faces are not as bad as they used to be in previous civ games. It used to be that a city with a low of unhappiness doesn't produce anything. Red faces in Civ4 'just' reduce the productivity. There's a lot of way to fight that. Civics have been mentioned, and chosing the right ones is an important part of the game.
The main source of happiness is resources, not building. Linking one new happiness resource to your network will give one more happiness to ALL your cities.
One easy and fast way is to trade with another civ for happiness ressources. When you go to the diplomatic screen, other civs will show ressources available for trading. Be carefull who you trade with however, you don't want to lower your hard built relations by trading with everyone's worst enemies.
You can also increase your culture rate, but in my experience it's a very high price to pay as it will lower your research.
Also, don't neglect market places, they will boost your income on top of giving you extra happiness for some of your resources.
chaosklima said:
I fail to develop a strong enough force to resist hostile takeover.
It's all about timing. You cannot afford to wait to be attacked to develop your military. Rotate building improvements and training military units in your cities, then send the units in the border cities. It's often easier to quickly build a few units in your core cities and transfer them to the less developped ones rather than wait 25 turns to build an archer in your newly conquered/built city.
Quickly identify which cities are likely to be attacked and maintain a defense force strong enough to at least absorb the first blow in case of an attack. The cities in the middle of your empire need just one units, while the cities on the coast and on the border are more likely to be attacked. If you have railroad technology already available, it makes it a lot easier to defend your territory, but that will come later in the game.
Keep a close eye on the power graph (not the game score). If you see you're dead last in term of power, you'll most likely get attacked sooner or later.
chaosklima said:
someone else beats me to the SS construction, even when I have the upperhand in tech.
There's only two ways to beat the AI in the space race at higher levels. Go to war, often, especially once you see 'so and so has built the appolo project'. Or beeline to Fiber Optics and build the internet as fast as possible.
Then it will just be a matter of correctly allocating the building of the different SS parts to different cities. The AI will only use a few of their cities, maybe 3 or 4 at most to build the SS. While if you have 10 cities, you can build 10 parts in the same time, once you have the required techs (hence internet). Start the easiest parts in your slowest building cities, and the biggest part in your top production cities, since you cannot build a space ship faster than you build the slowest part.
chaosklima said:
I've been paying extra attention to my terrain values and their usage, as well as unit development and city placement, and not to exceed the OCN by overexpanding.
Once you understand the power of cottages, there's no such thing as overexpanding. 10 cities at 50% research will most likely produce as many beakers as 5 cities at 100%.
A little tip I found usefull to know where to build cottages in the early game : If you want a young city to exploit a tile with a cottage, build it on tiles that provide at least two food. That will ensure that you can keep your city growing. If there's no such tile available, build a farm. Once your city hit the unhappiness cap, start improving the tiles with less than one food (mines on hills is usually the most productive). Avoid automating your workers in the early game. If you really can't help, ask them to 'build a trade network', rather than build an improvement.
chaosklima said:
I also play to my chosen leader's strengths, e.g. not trying to turn Asoka into a war mongerer or HC into a pacifist.
I always play with random leaders. I've had domination victories with Asoka and Diplomatic ones with Monty. The civs personnality is more a guideline when played by the AI than by a player. Overall, I don't find the leaders' habilities to be victory defining (at least not in monarch).
chaosklima said:
Is there something else I am missing, or maybe not taking into consideration? Should I pre-select the level of technology I want to achieve from the tech tree at the very outset? Maybe my GPs aren't being used to their best advantage? Any ideas/suggestions would be greatly appreciated. While I doubt there is a silver bullet cure for my low-talent leadership skills, I also don't want to be relegated to playing in the kiddie pools of Settler and Warlord forever.
I tend to pre-select the tech I want. It helps to stick to one technology path to get an advantage over the AI by getting some crucial techs while the other civs will rather try to get all the techs of a certain level before going to the more costly ones. You can then trade your advanced techs for several of the lower ones. When you get a new tech, try to trade it with all the friendly AIs in the same turn, giving you sometimes 3 or 4 different techs for the one you just discovered. If you don't, they'll most likely get it from the one you just trade it with.
Be careful who you trade with. Along with religion, trade relations are the biggest diplomatic factor. Sometimes it's better to refuse to trade a tech with a civ if it will lower your relationship with another one that's much more powerful than you. Power + bad diplomatic relations means war is coming your way.
Try to take the best advantages of your UU. Except if you're way behind in tech, your UU will give you a big edge in war. And war is still the surest way to win, as you will weaken your ennemies will reinforcing your own civ.
On higher levels, it's recommended to decide early what kind of victory you want to achieve, and then focus on it. This is the only way to achieve victory before an AI wins the SS.
If you're attacked. Focus on deflecting the first blow. Once the first big AI stack will suicide against your defences, the war is basically over. I have yet to see the AI lead coordinated attack past the first one, at any difficulty level.
Meanwhile, start pumping units and gather them all at the same place for a counter-attack. Split your troops to minimise collateral damages, but still send all your stacks on the same target. Don't try to capture a bunch of different cities in the same time, least you're leading by at least 10 to 1 in unit strengh/number.
When at war, focus all your cities on the war effort, and keep producing units till the war is over. Don't stop even if it looks like it's won. Only stop when you declared peace, or annihilated your ennemy.
Depending on the map, you might have to build a strong navy before your attack, not so much for attacking but to defend your own civ against a third party opportunist. A good navy should be at least a 7 unit stack on all probable invasion routes. Since the last patch, the AI usually invades with upward 4 transports + 3 escort ships. Hence if you want to totally destroy the stack before the units can reach land, you'll need up to 7 naval units.
Learn the strengh and the weakness of every units, then adapt your army to your enemy. Pikemen will counter enemy knights, riflemen will counter cavalries, Gunship will counter tanks and modern armor. Grenadier will counter rifleman, and so on...
Learn the resource requirement for military units. You can seriously cripple your opponent war effort by sending out pillage party to destroy the iron mines, or horse pastures for exemple.
And last, be flexible and don't give up. The best way to learn is to keep playing the game till the end, even if you lose. No early religion? Focus on cottages to keep the money rolling or capture someone else holy city. Somebody beat you to the pyramids? Send out scouts and plan for the capture of the city that built it.
