Get Out Of The Noble Rut

[Menes]

I'm kinda surprised that no-one mentined this before but looking at your starting screenshot Thebes should have gone 1 south to snag the gems (it also snags the bananas but you didn't know that at the time). You'd have had to wait 5 turns for the first border pop for corn and cows to be available but that's really trivial compared to long term city potential.

I also reckon you'd be ok going for clam/copper city next to make a start on axes while building stonehenge in the capital. Maybe think about early war to take out Ragnar. I'm not sure when he gets berserkers but take him out early enough and he won't be a major threat.

As the turnlog suggests, I found the Gems before settling and thought about moving the Settler for a while. My strategy involved working the Corn from the off, so I decided to settle in place, sacrificing the Gems for another city (see dotmap). I wouldn't have been able to work the Gems until IW anyway.

Also, as suggested, I'm going to leave it to the border pop to give me access to the Bronze and settle south towards Ragnar.

 

[Thomas G.]

Found 2 cities towards Ragnar. Gold and Gems, gold first. Hook up gold. About the time you are ready to build gem city you should have iron working so the gems can be worked off the bat. This commerce (and happiness) will help you good along the way.

Your builds: Capital builds stonehenge. After that it needs worker, then some axemen. Escort for new settler, heavy scouts, or even a beginning "kill-Ragnar-task force" . The border pop nets you bronze soon. Remember you need to hook up the bronze, if your worker is sitting idle you can build a road up there. Also another settler for gem city. After this you should re-evaluate.

Your goals:
* Scout out the world. Are you & ragnar alone on a continent?
* Destruction or subjugation of Ragnar. This is a big decision, and will be influenced by factros you do not yet know. His capital site would probably make a fine 4th city. But do you mabye want to keep him in the game so you can do a great tech trade at alphabeth first? Scouting will give you answers. Whipping will give you your army if need be.
* Oracle slingshot. If you decide against war mabye this could be something? Then you wouldn't be as pressured to build a great army, and could invest hammers in the oracle. Basically this is a hammer -> Tech converting wonder. And as an industrialist that conversion factor is better for you. You could grab metal casting with it (forges, gives you happiness because of gold/gems) or code of laws ("free" religion + courthouses + caste system). Or you could research these two techs yourself, and then attempt to grab machinery or civil service. A bit more risky, AIs are more likely to build oracle fast now that stonehenge is not available to them..

Oops, I'm rambling along a bit here. But just to show what phenora of possibilities you have. Scout a bit more then we can discuss what to do.

P.S. Ill bet Ragnar has horses....

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

In this case, there's a big old neon sign here that should have had you gazing into the crystal ball before you even selected your opening tech.

Could you elaborate on this? The plan was to get a Worker>Warrior>Settler out as soon as possible, and they came out pretty fast, despite not improving/working optimal tiles due to my own bad gaming habits.

Well, "the plan" should be a bit more ambitious. In general, I like to be looking as far ahead as possible, with the understanding that the plan is more subject to change the further you get from now. The goal here is to be aware of where you are going, so that as you are making short term decisions you can be shaping them towards the longer term plan.

What I see in the screen shot of settled Thebes is gold and gems, which will come under your control when your city pops out to the third ring. That's +2 happy as soon as you get them connected, and another +2 happy when you get a forge. That fits very well with our traits, since forges come at half price with Industrious. To install a forge, we need Metal Casting.

The quick way to the Metal Casting is to finish the Oracle, and the Industrious trait helps us there again. We should also be looking at the Colossus, since early Metal Casting plus industrious basically ensures that wonder for us. The juice of the Colossus kicks in for coastal cities, so as we are dot mapping we'll want to keep that in mind.

You can also start thinking about what to do with the Priest that is likely to wash up from the Oracle (although you'll have the option of diluting the prophet points by hiring an engineer).

There are other possibilities, of course. I'm only encouraging you to learn the exercise, not necessarily to accept its conclusions. If some other approach is going to be more fun, you should do that.

in my games, grassy hills usually get Windmills

You should consider cottages on grassy hills as well.

I thought about it and rejected it in favour of an early Stonehenge build

I'm not going to quibble with the choice, but this seems to be a good point to interject that somewhere along the line you have to let go of "Ooh, Shiny!" being the justification for your decisions. You aren't going to be able to collect all the shiny toys unless you so far out in front of the AI that the outcome is no longer in doubt.

 

[Menes]

I'm not going to quibble with the choice, but this seems to be a good point to interject that somewhere along the line you have to let go of "Ooh, Shiny!" being the justification for your decisions. You aren't going to be able to collect all the shiny toys unless you so far out in front of the AI that the outcome is no longer in doubt.

Just to be clear, I'm not building Stonehenge just because I can. I'm not aiming for a religion, and in my book, not going for a religion means building Stonehenge for border expansion, especially given the UB for Egypt.

As a rule, a rarely build Wonders I don't need...I'd rather use the hammers on military units or other buildings.

 

[patagonia]

One thing to remember regarding Stonehenge, which is largely map-dependent:

Here, you've got a lot of rich land to the south that's laden with calendar resources, making calendar as a tech reasonably attractive and profitable. Since calendar obsoletes stonehenge, you're going to find yourself torn between picking up the tech for the food, commerce and happy, and hanging on to your +1 culture per city to maintain border expansion. If you actually build the obelisks yourself, rather than relying on Stonehenge to provide them for "free" then they remain after calendar has been researched or traded for (but unfortunately no longer allow priest specialists) so you get to carry on generating culture.

Mid-term, you're going to want to settle south towards Ragnar to claim those rich jungle lands. That makes iron working a high priority, and you'll need a lot of workers too. Going back to what VoU said about the Oracle, metal casting and the Colossus, a second city picking up the gold 1S of where Cabert suggested fits, since it'll retain the plains hill that can be mined to help production. Since you're industrious and will imminently have access to copper, the Colossus is a cheap wonder with a good civ-wide effect that fits well with your traits provided you build a few coastal cities to leverage it.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Just to be clear, I'm not building Stonehenge just because I can. I'm not aiming for a religion, and in my book, not going for a religion means building Stonehenge for border expansion, especially given the UB for Egypt.

Just to be clear, one of the reasons you are stuck on Noble is that your book doesn't have enough pages.

The problem here isn't that Stonehenge is a bad play; the problem is that Stonehenge is only part of a good one.

I'm not aiming for a religion

Why not? You've got a unique building that encourages generating great prophets, you've got two traits that reward religious techs. What's not to love?

 

[petey]

Build two cities, then whip a bunch of Axemen to go after Ragnar. He's got a lot of jungle down there, so he's probably not expanding too fast and if you can take one or two of his cities, he's not a threat and you can finish him at your leisure. Don't destroy him off the bat, since that'll just add maintenance costs that you don't need. Cripple him and then let him build up a few city sites that you can grab later on when you can afford it.

Once the Axemen are made, build Oracle in your capital and use it for Metal Working. With that and Stonehenge, you should pop a Prophet in time to get Theology and found your religion. Settle the rest of the continent and then finish off Ragnar. If you can get the whole continent occupied before Astronomy, you'll be in a great position once the other AIs show up and can pick them off at your leisure.

 

[pigswill]

There's essentially two options for the early game: peaceful expansion or early war. You seem to be leaning towards early expansion, which is fair enough, you've got the space and some nice dotmaps. So carry on churning out settlers to grab your cities before they're taken by some-one else.

Points about SH are worth considering; its your game but its useful to remember that every decision has a cost as well as a benefit.

 

[namyzarc]

I just had my first Prince game & win yesterday. (Marathon, Huge, Fractal, 12 civs).
Here's what I changed from my Noble strategy:
1) Workers: On Noble, I'd automate most of my workers (leave old improvements option is turned on) except 1 or two of them which I used for more critical tasks. It had never really dawned on me how stupid these little guys were until this game were I really paid more attention to them.
2) Relations (& Religion): I managed to get Judaism & managed to spread it to everyone except Monty & Isabella. it only took 1 missionary to each leaders capital to make this work. The shrine & the AI did the rest. Result: better relations & fewer unplanned wars, thus allowing me to build & attacke when I wanted to.
3) Slavery! I always used this option, but in this game I made it a point to whip every unhappy person in the city. Result: I had built all the necessary buildings in all my cities, & could concentrate on troops to remove Isabella from my continent.
4) Bribery: Every now & again I would do this on Noble, but in this game it became an integral part of my strategy. Techs, money whatever it took. Result: Kublee ended up mopping the floor with Mony's beitifully decorated headgear. No more monty problems for me!
5) Tech trades: I was not THE tech leader, but 2nd or 3rd thoughout most of the game. This was ok with me because after Isabella was gone, Mansa (#1 in tech) was wiped out next putting me at #1.

Obviously every game is different but, in general, paying more attention to detail in ALL areas is ALWAYS beneficial.

 

[mrlaze]

Great info here. It will help me master Noble and move up. Thanks to all of you.

 

[Rathelm]

I see what you're saying, but I wanted to make sure I could build Stonehenge as soon as possible...as it is, Stonehenge will be finished not long after my second city is founded, so in that respect, the plan worked reasonably well.

I've been playing Monarch recently and one of my favorite early moves before on easier difficulties was trying to pull a CS sling with Oracle. However as I moved up I found that going for early wonders seems to hinder you more than it helps. The 10 to 20 turns spent on building the wonder is almost always better spent on building up army. Taking over early cities gives you a long term advantage over an early wonder that has little long term advantage (stonehenge loses it's effectiveness at calendar which is arguably an early tech). Not to mention that the barbs show up considerably earlier and in greater frequency on harder difficulties. That army goes a longer way. Now not to say that I would never build it, but I find that the times I find it worth building becomes fewer and fewer.

 

[Rathelm]

Just to be clear, one of the reasons you are stuck on Noble is that your book doesn't have enough pages.

The problem here isn't that Stonehenge is a bad play; the problem is that Stonehenge is only part of a good one.

Well said...

 

[drkodos]

I've been playing Monarch recently and one of my favorite early moves before on easier difficulties was trying to pull a CS sling with Oracle. However as I moved up I found that going for early wonders seems to hinder you more than it helps. The 10 to 20 turns spent on building the wonder is almost always better spent on building up army. Taking over early cities gives you a long term advantage over an early wonder that has little long term advantage (stonehenge loses it's effectiveness at calendar which is arguably an early tech). Not to mention that the barbs show up considerably earlier and in greater frequency on harder difficulties. That army goes a longer way. Now not to say that I would never build it, but I find that the times I find it worth building becomes fewer and fewer.

I concur. The one wonder that I think gives the longest advantage is Pyramids. I have found on higher difficulty levels it is beneficial, especially for cultural wins. Not so much for the abilty to run HR or Rep early (which is nice), but to be able to switch as early as possible into Civic that allows cash rushing so I can buy lots temples and get those Cathedrals going as soon as they can be built.