Dominate @ Warlord level, get dominatED at Noble

[cakeman]

Hi all.. long time Civ player (I want a Colonization remake!) .. fairly experienced.. not into working my ass off to win @ higher levels just to prove I can.. just enjoy a good game..

For the longest time Ive been playing Warlord difficulty, typically with Persians on Archipelago, largest size world I can.. and I always end up dominating badly.. twice the score of the computer etc.. so, getting bored of that a bit, I figured Id just bump up the difficulty to Noble.. and Im getting my ass handed to me each time..

Im careful to plant cities in good spots, not to grow too quick so as to go broke or have to take my tech below 70%, I explore like crazy to hit as many goody huts as I can.. get at least one religion asap for the $ bonus.. yet I -can't- get a wonder built before the computer, Im 10's of turns behind them in research and they've twice the cities I do.. and, at best, Im mid-pack or lower.. (Im around 1660 AD at the moment, 5 cities.. )

Any suggestions or feedback?

Thanks,

cakes..

 

[Tekee]

More citites, I dunno I think going from Noble to Prince was alot tougher :/
Oh well sorry I can't help that much >_<

 

[Pinstar]

Getting up extra cities is all well and good, but they need to be improved! Make sure you have at least 1 worker per city. Don't rely on the auto-improver, direct them yourself.

If you want a BASIC rule of thumb, for a balanced city:
Plains tiles: Farm, if able, otherwise cottage
Grass and flood plains: Cottage
Hills: Mine unless food is scarce, then cottage
Special resources: build the appropriate improvement
Chop any forests next to rivers or on planes. You might want to keep forests on grasslands that aren't next to rivers.

Well improved cities are good cities. Lots of cottages will ensure you stay with the times, tech wise.

 

[civaddict098]

I usually play Noble but I switched up to Prince and it was much more difficult. maybe you could attach a saved game for us so we can see what your doing wrong. If you don't know how to upload a saved game just ask.

 

[Galileo44]

a save file or pictures are nice to let people know what you are doing

 

[JoeBlade]

.. yet I -can't- get a wonder built before the computer, Im 10's of turns behind them in research and they've twice the cities I do.. and, at best, Im mid-pack or lower.. (Im around 1660 AD at the moment, 5 cities.. )

I think this may point to a part of your problems: from what you write there I can only surmise you're persuing wonders aggressively. As you climb the difficulty ladder this becomes less and less of a viable strategy.
In essence, you should try to limit yourself to those wonders that:
1. Have more than just a marginal benefit. Example: a creative leader has very little use for Stonehenge; you'd be better off building another settler sooner or expanding your army.
AND
2. Can be built without crippling your empire in other ways. Typically this means you either play an industrious leader, possess the appropriate resource (stone, marble, copper) or have a high-production city with nothing better to build.

Look at it this way: the investement of a wonder is usually sufficient to build a sizeable army. That army can be used to take over a city, possibly even containing that very wonder! Unlike the wonder, the army can then proceed to take yet another city.
So in short: don't go wonder-crazy at higher difficulty levels or you'll suffer severely.

Two other minor points:
First, you say you (always?) try to found an early religion. Again, this may not always be the best idea depending on your civ's leader, your neighbours, lay of the land and available resources, etc. Sure, it may bring along extra happiness and research, and possibly even a shrine. But if your first few workers stand around doing nothing for several turns due to lack of proper worker techs the net defecit for your empire may actually be break-even or even a loss after a few centuries.
Second, you mention the 70% research rate. My advice: don't take this as a hard limit. It's relative to your total commerce output, and 70% of 200 commerce is still less than 50% of 400 commerce, for instance.

Anyway, I could go on for several pages but most of what I would mention has already been written down elsewhere.
Take a look in the Strategy Articles subsection of this very forum, there's a whole array of valuable information in there. There's Sisiutils Beginner's Strategy Guide (or whatever the name was) for instance, which is a good start. Not implying you're a beginner but you may yet learn a thing or two from that thread.
Succession games (see the subforum of Stories and Tales) and aelf's Emperor's Master Challenge threads as well as Sisiutil's All Leader Challenge threads in this very forum also contain interesting pointers, suggestions and strategy discussions; well worth the read.

 

[cakeman]

Thanks for the feedback all..

Pinstar - you've pretty much summed up what I do with land improvements.. though I have been farming Flood Plains instead of cottaging them.. I tend to have 3-4 cottages per city.. and I dont rely on auto-improver for anything till later in the game when I let it build my railroads..

civaddict and galileo - I'll do so next time Ive a question.. I think Ive already saved over many of the saves of that particular game.. thanks..

JoeBlade - I wouldnt say I chase them aggressively, I dont put a lot of stock in many of them.. I do try for Stonehenge off the start to get a start on GP creation, hoping for a Priest right away so I can create one or more of the Shrines.. I figure its pretty close to free money.. I also tend to try for The Oracle.. just for the tech boost.. otherwise I'll only attempt Pyramids and others if Ive a city thats just rockin along and has nothing else to build..

I guess my biggest problem with expansion is how do I not go broke? I tend to try and keep myself at at least 70&#37; dedicated to tech as otherwise I find myself falling behind the computer, but expanding at a fairly quick rate doesnt lend itself to keeping money, in my experience.. I try to avoid building improvements I dont need in cities to keep my maintenance down.. but noticed the other day that even with most buildings, my smaller cities were only costing 2 a turn to maintain..

thanks for the suggested reads, I'll have a go through them and see what I find..

Brett

 

[JoeBlade]

JoeBlade - I wouldnt say I chase them aggressively, I dont put a lot of stock in many of them.. I do try for Stonehenge off the start to get a start on GP creation, hoping for a Priest right away so I can create one or more of the Shrines.. I figure its pretty close to free money.. I also tend to try for The Oracle.. just for the tech boost.. otherwise I'll only attempt Pyramids and others if Ive a city thats just rockin along and has nothing else to build..

I guess my biggest problem with expansion is how do I not go broke? I tend to try and keep myself at at least 70% dedicated to tech as otherwise I find myself falling behind the computer, but expanding at a fairly quick rate doesnt lend itself to keeping money, in my experience.. I try to avoid building improvements I dont need in cities to keep my maintenance down.. but noticed the other day that even with most buildings, my smaller cities were only costing 2 a turn to maintain.

Well, if you're looking to generate Greate Person points, you could try simply allocating a priest specialist. When you indeed found an early religion for example, Stonehenge is again less useful: a single temple + priests specialist generates 3 GPP per turn vs. Stonehenge's 2 GPP (that's on Epic though, not sure whether it's the same on normal speed) At the same time your religion generates culture too, so the culture boost is not needed either.

The pyramids on the other hand are VERY expensive; I personally only persue them when I meet 2 of the 3 following conditions: 1) I'm playing an industrious leader 2) I have stone 3) one of my cities has massive production.
I'm not saying it's impossible to build them otherwise, far from it, but it requires a hefty investment which may, again, be better spent elsewhere.

As for the maintenance, a few things to look into:
- Do you build cottages early enough, and are you building enough of them?
- Have you signed open borders with your neighbours? Keep in mind that OB = more trade routes = more commerce. Sealing yourself off at the start of the game is not a good idea.
- Have you researched Sailing and Currency? These again add those direly needed trade routes.
- Have you researched Code of Laws and built courthouses? Once you've settled a sizeable empire these pretty much become a must. I think this is one of the most important early techs for non-financial/non-organised leaders, actually.
- Are your cities close enough to the capital? Larger distances = more maintenance. A single, remote city can in fact completely cripple your empire. Move your palace to another city if need be.

 

[Elrohir]

A couple things, some of which have been said before:

1. Expand faster. A general rule of thumb is that if you are making money at 60&#37; research, then you should be expanding to get more cities. (Be it peacefully or by the sword.) That's a general guideline, not a law that must be kept, but generally it's a good one. If you're making money at 70% research, it's definitely time to found a few more cities, or build up an army to pay a neighbor a visit. 5 cities at 1660? Assuming that's not on a duel map, that's too few for, well, pretty much anything, even cultural.

2.Control your workers yourself. I don't know if you do this, but by the time you get to Noble you should have a good idea of what needs to be done with them. Use them wisely.
-Build more cottages. Unless you're running a specialist economy, this is nearly always the answer. Build more cottages, so that you can keep up in tech, and defeat the AI militarily.

3.Try playing an easier leader until you get used to Noble. I like Mansa Musa, because both Spiritual and Financial rock. I don't know if you're playing Warlords or Vanilla Civ4, but in both there is a Civ with both Financial and Industrious traits - Qin in Civ4, I believe, and Huayna in Warlords. Don't get hooked on playing just one leader, but Financial can be great for figuring how to properly cottage spam.

4. Don't worry so much about getting a religion right away. It's certainly doable on Noble, heck, it's doable on Monarch if you start with a commerce tile and Izzy goes for the other one, but your whole game shouldn't focus on getting Hinduism or Buddhism. Try getting the worker techs and Bronze Working first, then rush to Code of Laws and try and found Confucianism instead. I'm not saying founding an early religion is a bad thing in and of itself, but it can be if your entire strategy is focused on it.

 

[uncarved block]

On top of all the other advice you've gotten here so far, I can strongly recommend playing a variety of different maps. Some of them require fairly specific strategies- Oasis, say, where all the resources are in the middle- while others favor general strategies with a tweak here and there: Lakes and Highlands, for instance, are good mixed terrain, land heavy maps, but with different amounts of Hammers available for each city. Flexibility in game play is a prime virtue in Civ4, even if the end results often look rather similar.

On the other side of the coin, playing a few games very rigidly can also teach you some tricks; the Challenges are a place to start, but more general approaches can also help. Try a game where the goal is early war, no matter what you have to sacrifice to get there. Try another where population is an emphasis, and see what that does for you Hammers and GP points. Play these games with no intention of winning, or even finishing-- the goal is to see how to get from point A to point B in one facet of the game, so that you have it in your bag of tricks later. You don't have to go overboard on this, just try it a few times and become more familiar with manipulating the game mechanics.

As far as expansion goes, the 'hidden' building in all the Civ games I've played is the Market. That extra +25&#37; doesn't seem like much, but they always seem to mark the point in Civ4 where my research (and empire) really seem to take off. YMMV.

 

[Uncle E]

I was having an issue about doing fine at warlord and being dismal at noble ... I read and read and found out that i was being way to conservative about expanding while trying to stay at 100&#37;-80% research. As soon as I started founding cities (in good locations) at a faster pace, things worked out.

I usually will build cottages quickly and in a good number around my capital as I play the incas alot (commerce bonus helps) while combining some religion and their shrines for some $$$ to offset maintenance costs. Courthouses help reduce your deficit and really only building wonders that matter (i used to try to build em all) have all helped out.

Maybe the map type is an issue? Archipelego sounds like it has its own unique challenges.

 

[OceansEleven]

Well I actually started playing off with Noble when I got the game. I started dominating/losing/tie. I started dominating mostly.

Anyways, this was when I automated my workers. Automated them. Do not automate workers. It is by far the stupidest thing you can do.

My suggestions...

Build atleast 4 cottages in every city.

Build atleast 4 farms in every city. You might need more.

Build atleast 4 workshops. Or if you have mines, that's good too.


It's really balancing everything out. You have to build cottages early. Expand early. It may be what you build. My build was - Worker > Something (Maybe a wonder) til I grow > Settler > Finish wonder > Warrior > Settler. The other cities would almost always be - Warrior/Archer > Worker > Whatever else?.

AI's don't normally attack in the way beginning. I think it's okay to build a warrior like that in the capital city. But that's with no barbarians. Usually my capital city is the wonder/settler builder. I pretty much go wonder > settler > wonder > settler. Then other stuff. But it's always nice to build a settler in another GROWN city when the capital is building a wonder. Be sure to build cottages very early on, and make sure you work them. I think that is the key to both Noble and Prince. Prince more importantly. Build cottages and work them early!!! I also love getting a religion. So my research almost ALWAYS stays at 90%, and even 100% most of the time. I usually always get Hinduism. Even when I have a leader that doesn't start with Mysticism. Got to get lucky.

 

[tycoonist]

try playing pangea, continents pr fractal as they are easier at the start