Having Trouble with Everything

xeviat

Chieftain
Joined
Aug 29, 2007
Messages
4
I really like Civilizations, but it seems I'm destined to suck at it on Noble. I can beat the game with a number of different victories on Warlord, but Noble seems to ask for more than I can handle. I build few cities in the beginning, and generally focus on defense and religion expansion until I can research optics/astronomy to expand to the New World (I like to play on Terra maps). I like to play for diplomacy or cultural victories.

Just now I was wiped out by the Persians; I was playing the Holy Roman Empire, and all four of my cities were fortified with walls, 2 longbowmen, and 2 of the HRE's special pikeman unit. Somehow the Persians came at me with an unstoppable force of early units (nothing more advanced than catapults). There was nothing I could do to build up my defenses in time.

I've tried reading through the "newbie" guides on this forum, but they've never helped me. Is there any general and specific advice that may help me (not for a specific scenario, just in general).
 
You're at Feudalism and Engineering, but only have four cities? Why so small?

Terran Landmass ended up being small, and I was stuck on a narrow strip of land. Both the Native Americans (who were nominally my friends) and the Persians (who disliked me from the start due to religious differences) blocked my expansion. I didn't want to expand beyond my boarders for fear of destroying my commerce.
 
I play noble quite a bit. It's a significant step-up from the easier levels. Cultural victory is the easiest imho.

Pre-requisite: City management. You don't need to know a specific style, but you do need to know how to operate them efficiently. Food first, hammers second (quick early boost), quickly followed by nothing but commerce. No hills? Cottage like crazy.

Military and research will be the largest factors. You want plenty enough units to keep the AI from wiping you out. If they see you are weak, they will go after you and probably won't ever stop. So early on, forgo wasteful wonders that will become obsolete to focus on military tech and a military. You will need some wonders, so choose ones that help research. Culture will come later, so don't worry about it; however, it would be in your best interest to get at least 3 religions any way you can. Typically, after you get to a point where you've amassed a large military with Industrial age units (Infantry, Tanks), you can move away from research and pour on the culture. If you haven't had any real issues, your 3 major cultural cities should be getting around 400-ish or so culture per turn. Save your GA's for the 4K point bonus if a city is lagging behind a bit.

Essentially, you'll be playing defensively, but if you see an opportunity to beat up a poor civ in the beginning (since you will have gotten hold of copper and iron, hint hint), then take it, because their capital city is usually a good city to have. But don't waste turns fighting a losing battle 2-3 units at a time; bring the house! Why waste time building settlers when you can just take a city by force?
 
Spend less resources on religion. Also, if civs hate you because of religion, go no state religion.
 
You should try to get at least 6-8 cities in the expansion phase of the game, if you can't then try to take those cities from another civilization (preferably not Sitting Bull).
 
And chop, a lot. Mastering chopping is a fast-track to higher levels.
 
If you play defense, remember to build some units making collateral damage to weaken the attackers before they get to your city. Catapults are best unit for this in the early game, later cannons and artillery do the job.
 
You also have to consider the map when you pick playing styles. Peaceful expansion works OK when there's a lot of water between you and the AIs, but on concentrated maps like Terra and Pangaea you're just asking for trouble. If you play Terra with the overall plan of wiping out two civs before you discover the New World I think you'll find the game much, much easier in the second half. Remember, the AI doesn't know the other land mass is out there, and will make choices based on limited land . . and this almost always means war.

A bit of general advice, not so dependent on the map: you mention the city defenders, but no attack/counterattack force. Even when I want to play peacefully, I've found it a good idea to keep an attack "in planning"- building units, both melee and siege- against one of my neighbors. This keeps your power rating up (preventing war sometimes) and gives you options right away if an AI does sneak attack you. Having an army go from one end of your land to the other is usually a lot better than trying to whip and chop them once hostilities are underway.

Re: your second comment-- if you're worried about the economy tanking after four cities, then you've still got a lot to learn about the economic side of the game. Are you trying to keep the Science slider at 100% the whole game? That's a mistake I made for a long, long time. 200 beakers at 60% science is better than 100 beakers at 100%, because you'll have nowhere to go but up in the former case. Don't worry; it takes a while, but it will get a lot easier with enough practice.
 
I've always found Terra Maps to be more challenging than normal maps since you have all the Civs crammed into the one "Old World" continent. I think my next game might have to be on one of those maps.

One thing that has started helping me out is getting some early military techs and as soon as you can that reveal iron, copper, or horses mass up an early army of what you can from the resources and go conquer one foe while they still have only archers and before diplomacy starts becoming a complicated thing. Once Longbowmen start showing up, wars start getting a little more costly.

With more cities (especially another foe's capital) come extra science and/or gold that would give you that big leg up on the competition on trying to get to whatever victory condition once you have yours and an opponents cities under your belt.
 
It took me forever to conquer Noble, the Warlord-Noble jump is definitly bigger than Noble-Prince (which I play on now). The key to Noble, for me anyways, is to have a decent understanding of everything. You don't have to be an expert in GP farming, but knowing the concept is important, as is diplomacy, war, city placement, etc.

I know that isn't a ton of help, but if you keep playing at Noble you will get better and better and understand more and more and eventually be able to beat it with your eyes closed.

All in due time, grasshopper :)
 
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