Doing well above Noble?

[snipafist]

I just wanted some tips on how to pose a decent challenge on settings above Noble. I have played and won a couple Prince games, but I find them frustrating at times due to the AI having such a lead on me (I find it diminishes with time, as I'm better at managing in the long run than the AI), and it constantly beats me to techs and wonders and is much pushier.

This isn't to say I demand to build every wonder and be first to every tech, but I find it nigh-impossible to really stand up for myself until the late game, and it seems to be a small miracle to beat the AI to any wonders. Admitedly, I find it enjoyable to build the odd wonder and having this swiped out from under me constantly (not to mention having good settling areas swiped out from under me) grates on me. I'm aware of the basics, like not over-expanding, proper economic expansion, the value of early chopping, the importance of diplomatic relations, the proper amount of military defense, etc. I can beat games on Noble practically blindfolded by this point with a couple thousand point lead on rival civs, but Prince is proving to be a real stumbling block. Any pointers?

 

[jar2574]

I'm not an expert, and it sounds like you have the basics down, so I really only have one suggestion. I have found that the main difference any time I step up a level is that I have to be more selective in what I choose to research.

For example, I will not research archery in SP unless I am going for horseback riding. Instead I 'settle' for axemen to defend my cities.

I beeline to important techs, because I realize that I can't keep up with the AI in all of them at the same time.

Good luck. Welcome to the forums.

 

[hollebeek]

snipafist, you'll have to tell us what your typical early strategy is like, if you understand the basics but are having trouble on Prince.

My gut feeling is that you are not correctly managing either early production,
early religion, chop rushing, or your expansion rate, but it's hard to say
without knowing how YOU play the early game.

 

[snipafist]

It really depends on a lot of factors including start location, civ I'm playing as, proximity of other civs and their nature, and whether I'm capable of getting to a religion sooner or later.

Generally, I'll start off by producing a pair of warriors (one for defense, one to be a squatter for my second city), and 2 or so scouts. Early unit scouts about and hopefully I can pick up a couple goody huts (I'm usually pretty succesful at this and manage to pick up a couple free techs). Produce a worker once capital hits population 3 (otherwise it takes forever - I find that due to their method of production, Settlers and Workers are produced exponentially faster depending on a city's size) and starts improving things to pave the way for the settler after him.

After that, it gets a bit more fuzzy. I try to get about 6 cities out there and get them defended with archers. I'll chop to rush wonders, but don't much care for it for lesser tasks, preferring to save the trees for important wonder races and for generic production bonuses in the early game. From there on out, it really depends on the game. If I found a religion, I try to spread it to my neighbors to ensure good relations. If not, I'll adopt the dominant religion. If it's a hodge-podge and I'm right in the middle, I'll stay neutral until I can see whose friendship I need the most (or alternatively, who I can least afford to piss off). If I'm cramped, I'll go for some early warfare to get some breathing room. If I've got breathing room, I'll tend towards more peaceful techs to build infrastructure and then go for the war techs later when I'm getting closer to rival civs. I make sure early on to start developing my cities towards their specific tasks - cottages for the financial cities (or lots of food if I'm going for caste system scientists), mines and farms for the production centers, etc. I try not to waste production by building everything in every city. The research centers get libraries, the production centers do not unless they've got some good commerce improvements nearby or I feel I've got a shot at the Great Library.

And that's the early game in a nutshell. Past that I find the variables get too random to really predict what will happen. I've been a warmongering tyrant (Romans, woot) but I've also been a peaceful culture/tech civilization. It really depends on situation within the game. I find being too inflexible leads to failure when one can't apply the strict plan to the situation at hand.

 

[Napo981]

For myself I'm trying to improve my gameplay. I've just passed from prince to emperor, so I'm not a expert-deity player.

But from what I've read you look good.

However, it's very hard for a poster to actually suggest anything to improve without see you on the battlefield.

At first, expect the game dynamic to change as you go up levels. AI starts with more bonuses. Don't expect to out-scoring him in the early era as you did at the chieftain level. However, you can decently catch up in the later ages. In my last games in prince, I totally outtech and outscore the AI in the modern era, but the race in the early era was a closecall one.

A thing that wasn't discussed yet was the city production, which I find is a critical part of one's gameplay. Be sure you get the max pop in a city and the max production with the pop you have. There's a lot of good strat articles here I suggest you to read if you find there is something you could improve.

Good luck!

 

[Tauro]

A tip to jump to prince maybe could be learn the workers micromanagements. Automation is enough till prince, on the upper levels you have to follow your strategies starting from workers.
I mean that if you go with financial traits and keep research up you have to specialize your cities starting from the land improuvements.
There are many theories about it and you will discover the best suitable to you.
So you have to test...test...and test again
If you like war you can learn war strategies starting from quechua or praetorian rushes, they are easy and funny, and the work don on prince and monarch will be useful for upper levels.

GL, we are all in the same boat despite of the level we're playing at

 

[cleverhandle]

Post a save game if you want good advice.

 

[hollebeek]

snipafist, you're expanding too slow for Noble+. By the time you have your
warriors or scouts done, the AI has three cities.

chop-rush settlers to reduce the amount of time your cities aren't growing.
This does mean you have to carefully manage when it is appropriate to build
the first worker (do you want to found a religion before Bronze Working? etc).
But you really want to just suck up the downsides of building a worker
early, instead of waiting until it is "easy" (and too late). Building a worker
right of the bat is even the right move in some situations, when your
starting techs are appropriate (say you start next to corn, with aggriculture,
or gold, with mines).

Try a game with a civ that starts with mining, beeline to Bronze Working,
build a worker first and then chop rush a settler, to see what I mean.
It isn't always the right strategy, but until you understand how it works,
you won't be able to play Noble+.

 

[madmaven]

chop-rush settlers to reduce the amount of time your cities aren't growing.

I've recently gone from Noble to Prince as well, and I think this is the best strategy. Chop rushing is huge. Chop rush any settlers, and wonders, or any other essential improvement (courthouses).

Be selective about the techs you research. I haven't really gotten this down as well as I should, but you wont be able to get everything. Currently I'm trying to decide where to focus on. One game I went more for science and got canned by Alexander. The next game I went for military techs and fell behind. It's a challenge.

Plan war carefully. I had Russia in a box last game but wasted way too much time trying to take his last city. My units outside my borders were costing me a ton of money and my research ground to a halt. Go in quickly, take the city(s) and end it.

 

[Nestorius]

I'm only at Prince, too, but these are things I have found different and necessary to do at Prince that you don't have to do at Noble:

1. Chop rushing settlers and early wonders like the Oracle.
2. Living with only one or two holy cities
3. Having a specialized Great Person city and several Commerce cities covered with cottages
4. Being aware of what cities are making a profit, and which aren't and addressing the matter with appropriate improvements
5. Constantly checking for techs to trade in Diplomacy screen
6. Staying hyper-aware of the happiness and health of every city
7. Knowing in advance your tech path to liberalism by the time you get crossbows or longbowmen, and knowing your space race strategy by the time you get infantry
8. Upgrading only the units you need and keeping some cash in reserve for a quick upgrade during an ambush.

Basically after getting beat down on Prince, I started trying the OCC to learn the rules. Only that doesn't teach you city specialization. Now I tend to play out the games where I get a continent to myself, and I'm starting to be able to stay ahead in tech.

I'm still learning how to use the military though. I can usually defend myself fine versus attack, but I have trouble keeping the war going long enough while keeping up in tech, and being able to capture a city or two.

 

[madmaven]

Something else I failed to address in my last post...

A human player knows how to wage war much better than the AI. Use this. Catapults are such a nice thing. A stack of them can lower city defenses to zero, then suicide and whittle away the defenders with collateral damage. This paves the way for a smooth assault. I've never seen the AI do this to me.

A human can prioritize and specialize better than the AI. (ie: chop rush, certain wonders, city placement, cottages v farms, etc).

These two factors, used right, turn the tide in your favor big-time. I've noticed on price you really have to tighten up your play quite a bit.

 

[Bain]

I had the same problem going chieftain to warlord.

Civ difficulties are quite large increases.

 

[Smirk]

I've not played a single game where waiting to pop 3 is a good thing for the first worker. At most pop 2, but thats generally when I delay Bronze for some other reason, such as getting an early religion.

A good way to get a better feel for timing is to watch the AI, if the AI is growing faster than you early on in Prince then you need to speed it up a bit. Chopping for that first settler is something I always do if I have forests.

 

[kingdarius]

Up to Monarch it's fairly simple to implement a Persian Immortal rush or Roman War Machine strategy (search for those threads, they are already on this forum) either one of which achieves a fairly early domination victory. Above Monarch, I'm not so sure domination is consistantly viable. The other civ's just start too far ahead of you to successfully rush them. Most stratagies I read for Emperor and above accept lagging scientifically in order to achieve cultural victory just before the AI completes it's space program. This seems to be a "hole" in the AI in that that no AI player even attempts a cultural victory, but instead they all focus on Space Race victory. Anything above Emperor just seems to involve losing most of the time.

 

[EscapedGoat]

On the higher difficulties you need to play differently than the AI to win. The AI does the 'grow to size 3 then expand' thing. If the human does this, you will simply allways be behind the AI, because it has bonuses and you don't. You need a different strategy that can boost you past the AI's expansion rate relatively soon.

Enter Chop rush. Some possible opening moves. These are extreme cases, but it is illustrative of what is possible to achieve.

Settler first:
-Just a Settler in 25 turns.

Worker then chop settler:
-Worker AND Settler in 25 turns.

Worker, chop 2nd worker, then chop Settler:
-2xWorker and Settler in 27 turns.


What I do: I basically move a warrior+settler to a new spot, then move my 2-3 workers in after to chop rush a new settler in every new city I found. Think about it: would you rather have the +1 health from 3 forests or a new settler?(3x30 shields)? 1 health is one pop, one settler is potentially many pop. This way I can keep expanding very rapidly, get all the good city spots and waste minimal time actually building the settlers.

 

[sandman_civ]

Be selective about the techs you research. I haven't really gotten this down as well as I should, but you wont be able to get everything. Currently I'm trying to decide where to focus on. One game I went more for science and got canned by Alexander. The next game I went for military techs and fell behind. It's a challenge.

I'm grappling with emperor now and the things that keep me competitive on that level are:
- make sure you know what techs you want and go for them, I find if I concentrate on the science techs I can keep up, those that give you a free tech are huge, especially the oracle, and later on liberalism.
- balance is key, I also used to make the mistake like madmaven of concentrating too much on one or the other. You have to have a commerce/science city and this is usually your capital and one other with cottages, and make sure your number one production city has heroic epic wonder and it can churn out military units every 1 or 2 turns. Then SPREAD these units to your borders and don't neglect siege units they are very important!
- I find that having a religion works better than not, but make sure you can defend yourself. I find that waiting for neighbors religion to spread to you is better than discovering one yourself, as you can be chummy with them until you need to wipe them out
- build walls etc. in your border cities, and put plenty defence there, and spread the promotions to defend against archers and melee for example
- if you don't have creative, then get either stonehenge, the civic that gives you free artists, or the drama tech for theatre quickly, expanding cities are important

 

[petey]

Another good thing is to build more military units than you think you need. That way, when you do go to war, you're prepared if the dice go against you and when you see that there's a target that you want - holy city, etc - then you are ready to go and take it much quicker without having ot buld up the necessary force to do so. Also, if you have a stronger military, the AI is less likely to attack you, so you don't have to fend off invasions quite so often.

 

[jazwana]

Micro-managing happiness (and sometimes health) i've found to be important. I spend a lot of time switching around the city governor when on noble and below you can just ignore it the entire game. I usually don't found religions and instead go for vasslage, that's worked ok for me on prince so far but may not on higher levels.