Difficulty gradient too steep?

[Daedal]

Looks like I'm a day too late to be useful, but I entered noble a fairly short while ago so I remember the jump. The single most important bit of gameplay advice is to keep your military strength high and be at war as much as possible. Nowadays I try to take out my first neighbor the moment I have a catapult built and I don't stop until I take the entire continent, which depending on the size could be around the time gunpowder units arrive on the scene. If that means devoting every single city to wartime production, so be it. After that I invest heavily in navy units to rush my now-elite units to the next largest continent and soon thereafter achieve domination. Regarding warfare in any era, the goal is always to annihilate every living thing that doesn't run away fast enough. I used to like peaceful victories...I really did...

 

[jerVL/kg]

Actually I'm talking about Chieftan>Noble

Feel kind of lame now

Well, that's actually a step up of TWO levels -- no wonder you're having trouble!

Somebody mentioned slavery -- learning how to whip effectively was probably the most important thing that improved my own gameplay. You can manage w/o slavery on the lower levels, but on Prince and above, it's a must-have.

Cheers lads. Actually as it happens I'm running a noble level game as Bismarck now and its going OK. going to attack the Arabs tonight. Thanks this is all helpful.

Ahh...Bismarck. Now there's a leader with whom you can go Wonder-crazy. Qin, too (in vanilla, at least.) And it's a good sign that you're ready to attack another civ -- if you can crush at least one AI in the early game (the earlier, the better) it will vastly improve your chances of winning. Just be careful you don't over-expand!!

Anyways, good luck and be sure to share with us your future victories, plus any other questions you have -- I'm sure you've noticed that the people here will trample over each other to help out a newbie in need.

 

[Morgrad]

The thing I like best about a jump in difficulty level is just how painful it makes mistakes - and you often don't realize until the move up that things you were doing *are* mistakes.

I still have a ton of this game left to get good at, but anytime a game is going poorly I do two things: stop and really try to think about what I could have done differently, and make the AI pull a victory out of my cold, dead fingers.

Not quitting a game you think you're losing is often the best focus you can get. When you know your only shot at winning is by doing X, Y, and Z exactly perfectly, you teach yourself how to do those things.

That, of course, doesn't mean I keep my learned lesson intact for my next Civ IV excursion, though.

 

[d4m]

Just moved from Noble -> Prince myself.

Pay attention to the things you didn't before. Almost everygame I play now, I take FOREVER to make my initial 50-100 turns. Plan ahead and stick with the plan. Set mini goals for yourself to reach and reach them. A huge help that allowed me to catapult from noble to prince was better management of building queue and more focused city specialization.

Trade with AIs alot. Not just to trade, see how many cities they have, if they got 1 more than you, get another one. Check the power chart every 10-20 turns. If your not at the top 20%, get back there. Don't shun the idea of setting EVERY city to make military units at some time. WHen your low in power, whats perferred? You have to wait 20-40 turns to get back to the builder mode, or Monty takes 2 cities.

Plan wars around key techs and units. If I see I'm going to get artillery, or cannons, or what ever kick ass unit before someone else, when the tech is a few turns away, science slider goes low as hell for upgrade gold, get the tech, now 20 cats turn into 20 cannons and the war is on.

In Noble and under, bronze working & chopping if you have forest around you can give you one hell of a leg up at the start and give you 2 cities very quickly. With enough forests, you can have 3-4 cities when the AI has just their 2nd. Pre-chop forest till they are almost gone. Do a few like this when the worker has nother else better to do more important. If you don't need that cottage in the next 20 turns, pre chop. Now when you want your worker/settler, pick it, chop the pre-chops and now you have a worker/settler in about 10-20% of typical build time and your city was stagnate all that time.

LIttle things this like this make a HUGE difference. 1 extra commerce coin in a worked tile means your science budget could be almost double at the start. Ever wonder why some games, Bronze Working is like a 30 turn research and some others, its maybe 19. This is why, got some extra commerce your working early on. if you intend to chop a worker/settler, DON'T let the computer manage the tiles as it will focus on food & hammers. if ur chopping, focus on commerce during that time.

All little things like this add up. Mind you not an expert, no where near it, but I feel ya man. I had to work my way up through the difficulties as well.

 

[Shoot the Moon]

Am I the only one who finds Noble-Prince to be the easiest jump above Warlord? I don't know, might have changed with a patch sometime. (I made the Noble-Prince jump WAY back when)

 

[ParadigmShifter]

I've never played below Noble but I found going from Noble to Prince fairly difficult, Pyramids aren't a no-brainer anymore and land grab via axemen becomes more important I find. Also you get piled on when going for a space victory with low power (I'm looking at you, Washington - or Shaka with his 3 vassals).

 

[RedRalph]

You know what? You lot are very very good teachers. Won my first Noble victory last night, Large Map, Epic game, Space race, 1961. Thanks!!!

 

[RedRalph]

On Noble, on Warlord, I was palying risky game of having fairly weak defences in all but my border cities (especially the one with oil beside it) and even in the border cities the defences werent great til right up to the end cgame, but I thought I had this cancelled out by having two defensive pacts. Does the AI take into account your defensive pacts when deciding are you weak enough to attack?

 

[r_rolo1]

My personal believe is that they do ( it is rare to see a sole AI attack a DP duo except if one of the parters is exceptionaly weak), but I lack more solid info about it.

 

[Shoot the Moon]

I am almost positive that they do, although I am not know the exact mechanics.

 

[joza]

i will never go past monarch i'm just to freaking lazy to look after each and every military unit in every campaign

 

[KMadCandy]

i don't know for sure how they factor in DPs to your own power and their DoW equations.. i do know that you get diplomatic negatives for having more than one, i did some testing to see how those add up yesterday. if you're curious click here. i signed 7 and the last guy wasn't real happy about that *giggle*.

 

[jerVL/kg]

On Noble, on Warlord, I was palying risky game of having fairly weak defences in all but my border cities (especially the one with oil beside it) and even in the border cities the defences werent great til right up to the end cgame, but I thought I had this cancelled out by having two defensive pacts. Does the AI take into account your defensive pacts when deciding are you weak enough to attack?

Congrats on your win!!!

Regarding Defensive Pacts -- well, I just had a game where Hatshepsut (of all people) declared war on Genghis Khan when he had a DP w/Tokugawa. However, I believe her power score was more than both of them combined.

 

[cabert]

^^hatchepetsuh declared war .
She must have been really pissed!