Elizabeth/Noble Strategy

[Irrelevant77]

Can any help with some good ideas for the above combination. I am building lots of cottages and aim for currency and banking but get so far behind or attacked

 

[HectorSpector]

I don't even think you need a strategy on the lower levels.

You probably get attacked because you have no military. Make sure you have plenty of units in each city. If you're going to beeline for banking, trade off your new techs for the ones you aren't pursuing, to make sure you're keeping up in other areas.

 

[Duncan_Idaho]

Make sure you get an early worker (before your settler), get some cities, aim at growth at first (make sure you have enough workers), use the mines on hills and the resources, build military (even kill a neighbour if you will) or be nice to neighbours (adopting their religion or converting them to yours).

 

[Ozbenno]

Make use of both your traits as early as possible.

Financial - start cottages early
Philisophical - Research writing early, build a library, employ a scientist and pop a Great Scientist, build an academy. This coupled with the Great Library makes you unbeatable tech wise.

Try a research path of Bronze Working, Pottery, Animal Husbandry, Writing, Alphabet. Add in any worker techs you need before Alphabet. Once you get to Alphabet you should be able to trade pottery and writing to catch up on all techs you missed. You should now have a big tech lead.

Make sure you defend your cities, especially from known nutcases (Alexander, Khans, Tokogawa). You should have more advanced units than the AI does due to your tech lead. Don't be afraid of dropping research to 0 to upgrade your units, rather than build new ones all the time.

Don't worry about religions or wonders (unless you want to try a CS slingshot), they'll just slow you down. Once you have a big tech lead and you want a religion, go and take one!!!

 

[raymondieee]

These applies regardless of the leader you play.

Use the Demographics screen regularly. If you are low on military, build a lot more. I try to maintain in the top 50% (if 11 players, try to be 5th or better)of the pack, and even then, still get attacked sometimes.

If you are consistently falling behind in tech (not score) build fewer cities and spend more time developing them, i.e. build more workers and fewer settlers.

If I don't go for one of the first 4 religions, I at least try for Stonehenge. It allows for the border expansion I need and 2 Great Prophets will come rather quickly, save one for Theology and use the other for the shrine.

If you found or get a religion, make sure it spreads, to all your cities and you neighbors. And don't be afraid of Organized Religion for the high upkeep, you need those buildings building faster.

Where are you building your cottages? On your way to Currency, are you getting other valuable buildings built, e.g courthouses, libraries?

 

[lobster]

I have a question on playing as Elizabeth.

She is Philosophical and Financial. Aren't these two traits fighting against each other? For Philosophical I want more farms/food to feed my specialists to get more GPP, but for Financial I want more cottages to get more $$$.

So what should I do?

 

[Irrelevant77]

I am building my farms early on land you can only build farms on. I am ok until late mid game then it just goes mental I get slaughted I think it might be I'm not using my specialists properly but I don't know how.

 

[raymondieee]

Lobster - they are at odds if you are trying to have all you cities balanced - doing everything. Read the experts' articles around here about specializing a city for Great Person Production. Every other city should take advantage of Elizabeth's financial trait where applicable.

Irrelavant - anyone correct me if I am wrong please as I do not have the game in front of me, but anywhere you can build a farm, you can also build a cottage. Are you talking about before you get Pottery?

I try to hook up food resources and get adequate growth in a city before I build a cottage in it, but the cottages still need to be put up as early as possible on tiles where they will be worked. I see a lot about building them on river grasslands on these forums. And the experts here tend to be right while I am wrong, however, I have found that I get better results putting them equally on grasslands and plains, and farming grasslands and plains as necessary to keep growth up. To be more clear, if I have the food needed, I may have 4 grasslands cottaged, 4 plains cottaged, a couple grassland farms, and a couple plains farms, etc. assuming all the other tiles are special resources, hills, trees, coasts, or unworkable. Your mayors tend to like using the plains while building structures (if you have a food resource at 3+ food), and if they are on rivers with cottages, you pulling in 3+ commerce while working them to grow.

 

[HectorSpector]

If put your cottages solely on grassland, you don't have to worry about working extra squares to get the extra food required to keep growing.

Saying that, if you have a good food surplus you might want to put a cottage onto plains to take advantage of the hammer it gives.

With a financial leader, you'll definitely want to build cottages on a river rather than anywhere else (to start with at least), so that they start with 2CP and you can get that +1 bonus from financial right away.

 

[raymondieee]

Absolutely, a river is great to get to 3+ commerce immediately. My main point was, if you leave things up to your mayor (which I typically do) my plains near rivers that are cottaged are typically the ones that grow fastest, with some other source of food.

The English start with fishing and I typically have at least one seafood resouce and a work boat in about 15 turn from the start. (You may have to walk to the coast, 50/50 chance you went the right way )

(Actually it is more like 50/50/90; the game seems to give you a 50/50 chance you will get it wrong 90% of the time)