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[Gumbolt]

Alphabet does help with research. So it always has a use once you run out of useful builds. Maths would of provided some very nice chops here.
I think if you chop more it speeds up your start greatly. Plenty of cities where 1 chop helps to complete a work.

Kyoto is clearly a very strong city and it freed up the islands to be settled.

Eventually the AI will trade iron working too

 

[Knightfall]

Okay, need to make this clear for you. Accelerating scouting does not mean building scouts. That is a waste of hammers. You had a few units already that you could send out ..couple of axes and that warrior in Utica as I instructed.
Do not disband your warriors. You already built them and they serve as MP for your cities that you never think about again. Silly to delete. I could see if for some reason you had built a huge amount of warriors for a rush or something, but otherwise do not delete those warriors...they were.

Think of this another way. You invested hammers into those warriors early..mainly for initial scouting and spawnbusting (please let me know if you do not grasp this concept). Now you just deleted all those hammers as you now have to rebuild MP for cities that need it or use your existing advanced units for that purpose when they could do better things.



Again your warriors MP your cities. The existing Axes you had were fine for busting barbs and scouting a bit to the areas N/NW/NE as I mentioned. Yes, keep things small but your army was already small last time I checked and I saw no need for more units unless you planned to go to war. Chariots for rapid response does not register with me.



Masonry and Alpha was good. But do not trade for ARchery. That tech is unnecessary. I need to mention something here that will impact you more as you move up levels. AIs have trade caps which vary among leader...except only Mansa who has no cap. They more you trade for dinky unnecessary techs the more you move toward the cap limit. This will prevent you from actually trading for important stuff later. Not much of an issue on Noble granted, but it is a concept you need to learn.

I don't see a need for Iron Working at present. That is something you can trade for later. It's an expensive tech that Alpha will buy for you easily. I would focus on maths and Currency. In most games you are not going to tech Iron Working yourself.


No. Only build walls in an emergency..easy whip. there is usually always something important to build but if you have nothing pressing to build then build Research, or later Wealth after Currency. Walls are a waste of hammers

I'm not looking at the game at present as I'm just popping in before hitting the sack. It may be worth it if you build the Great Lighthouse (GLH) and if they have food. Not sure at the moment

A library in your cap is very much an early priority, and once you should run 2 scientists there asap. The first GS is usually used for an Academy in your cap which is usually cottaged for Bureaucracy. This will signficantly increase your research rate. Other good food cities should get libraries as well when they can and run scientists as well. Later you will use more GSs for bulb strategies, but we will go over that later.

Whipping is generally used for getting out settlers and workers, a fast army, or a key building like a library. Usually you are going to whip at least 2 to 3 citizens so...yeah..you gain 1 unhappy from the whip but lose multiple citizens in the process. But yeah there are times when you may lay of the whip for a while like after you pressed the whip a bit to get out that army. Oherwise, you certainly don't need to just whip cities constantly.

Whipping is done with purpose with full understanding of the mechanic behind it and the consequences. There are still many things you need to learn about it and you will.

Why disband warriors to build scouts??? You do realize that you can scout with warriors, right? And also any leftover units can be kept as future garrisons for cities. Unit upkeep shouldn't be an issue at all on noble.

Walls are useless. If you have nothing, build wealth or research. If you don't have alpha or currency, build monuments for the char happiness and barracks for whipping from those cities again (after, of course, the granaries and lighthouses and libraries).

Definitely settle those islands. Intercontinental trade routes for all your cities will boost your economy significantly.

Yes, stop whipping things and just focus on build wealth/research after getting all the necessary buildings up.

Specialists are good but make sure to run them in food-rich cities to avoid stunting growth...Kyoto is a very nice place to do so for the moment.

Wow you deleted the warriors? Were they actually costing you anything?
Unit supply 0. Unit cost 0.

As above walls useless. Chariot/axes/scouts? Why?

Your 2 new cities are terrible. I would not of settled either.
How important was that horse resource? Not really in my view. Absolutely no food resources near it. That granary will take forever to build.
Stone city - Your not even building mids. Could of been settled much later. In mean time you have built a lot of roads that added no value here. Your also building a farm to help a stone city that has no food resource.
You wanted a helper city 1N above the sheep to help run cottages and share the capital's food. It could then use 1-2 food resources while your capital works cottages and grows to happiness cap.
Maybe also one 3W of hippo. That is where it probably should of been settled. Hippo 1N could of grabbed Clams but needed border pop.

I would be growing your capital. Size 3 at 875bc seems very low. You should of been chopping the worker not slow building oir whipping it. I would be using scientists in Kyoto and growing your capital. Size 3 capital running scientist is bad play.

You have built 5 cottages. Your currently running none! They won't grow if you don't use them.
Those 3 flood plains should of been a priority for cottages. Your currently running a farm over a 3f1c flood plain. Micro is important.
Your capital has 3 forest covering green grassland river tiles. Which I new city could be working as cottages.

If you want foreign trade routes you need sailing. IW is a complete waste. Probably should of gone sailing before Alphabet.
Just by settling an island your cities would have a 2c trade route. With Currency this add 2c more for the extra trade route.

You really need to scout out the other islands here. These tend to be great for new cities.

So 5 new cities needed.
2 cities to help with cottages.
2 island cities. One you have not yet explored.
Plus corn city.

Agree with most of this. Fin riverside cottages are basically loads of free, low-effort commerce especially on the lower difficulties. Not working them basically defeats the point of building them.

I recommended stone city to chop out mids somewhere. But the important part is actually chopping out the mids somewhere once you have the stone! Otherwise that city's just deadweight - with mids, on the other hand, rep pays back for itself very quickly.

Two points for me, first is that stone city is marginal and you need to build pyramids at least to make it worthwhile, second is that you're worrying too much about military and defence (e.g. walls, replacing warriors with axes/chariots)..

I disagree with lymond about alphabet on noble. Once you're playing monarch/emperor then alphabet is a good tech to beeline because you can trade for stuff like sailing, pottery, IW etc. On noble alphabet is a bad tech to beeline because its not that helpful in itself during the expansion stage and there's very little to trade for.

Alphabet does help with research. So it always has a use once you run out of useful builds. Maths would of provided some very nice chops here.
I think if you chop more it speeds up your start greatly. Plenty of cities where 1 chop helps to complete a work.

Kyoto is clearly a very strong city and it freed up the islands to be settled.

Eventually the AI will trade iron working too

Thanks for all of the advice. Unfortunately, i think I'm going to have to abandon this game, at least for now. I've got some IRL stuff that's going to be eating up a lot of my time for the foreseeable future, and I didn't want to just disappear and leave you guys hanging. That said, I'm really grateful that all of you took time to help me get better at this game, even when I was stubborn or made dumb mistakes. I may not have finished the game, and I still have a lot to learn, but at least now I think I have a good grasp of how to get an early empire started, and how to not end up bankrupt and completely surrounded by the AI by the time I hit turn 100. I know in some gaming communities people who ask for help just get yelled at or made fun of, so I'm glad that you guys are different. I guess that's one of the things that makes CIV CIV.