Help a lad find his way on Noble

[XRW175P6MQ4]

You pasted an initial save so I think I'll give this a go. Shame it's on noble. Oh well consider it a teaching/fun game for me.

When I was looking at your start I notice that you had a 5 hammer start. Settler on plains hill, forested plains hill in initial 8 tiles. So SIP. I saw Absolutezero do a pretty sick quecha rush on youtube this way. Well not exactly. He used quechas which we obviously do not have here.

Here I am at the start of turn 30.

Spoiler :

Mongolia is dead. One aggressive warmonger is down. The warriors transition well into a spawn busting operation.

Huts and events were a bit annoying but nothing bad so far.

Edit. Done. save attached. I can give some more screenies, if you want. I may upload some more eventually if I feel like it.

 

[Ronojoy1917]

Wow thirty turns KO. I don't know if I'll ever do that.

Turn 100 - Turn 200

Tech path:
Machinery--Masonry--Meditation--Priesthood--Monarchy--Currency--Mathematics--Calendar--Compass--Optics--CoL--CS--Poly--Mono--Aesth--Lit--Music--Paper--Education--

So with Machinery I started pumping out Cho Ko Nus, my aim being to have twelve when I went to war with Genghis. Meditation Gandhi still refused to give me, which was annoying so I had to go down that branch. After that I think it's pretty self explanatory. I'm hoping to get Astronomy of Lib. for an intercontinental invasion.

As soon as I got Machinery the war preparations began in earnest. My goal was to have 12 cho ko nu and 8 axemen. However, I saw an easy chance to to take out one of Mongolia's settlers so I declared earlier than planned, going with nine Cho Ko Nus instead. The war went pretty smoothly, wrapped up in 43 turns. How's that for an early medieval war? Kind of long?

It felt a little too long because I noticed that, as usual, I had gotten too caught up in the war and India was a few cities ahead of me. I reacted quickly trying to get as many settlers out there as I can. It seems to have worked, and although its kind of a weird shape, with a string of my cities on the east of India going down a line, I didn't allow myself to be cut off from the rest of the continent.

Other than that things have been going pretty smoothly. I finally managed to get Gandhi to Friendly, and he's a good neighbor to have.

Around this time I discovered the other continent, and it's an interesting situation. Augustus, Elizabeth, and Louis are Hindu, Bismark is Confucian. Augustus is the biggest out of them, with an empire as large as mine, and he is just gobbling up Germany, which bothers Louis, because he's buddies with Bismark. Elizabeth, although small, is the most advanced and only a few techs behind me. I obtained Feudalism and Construction from the English, Theology from the Romans.

I'm thinking now that with almost all of the good land on my continent settled, and with me not wanting to go to war with Gandhi, an invasion across the sea might be a good idea. Augustus seems like he might just run away with the game if no one stops him. While I don't want to go total warmonger, I think if I press my technology advantage, I can cripple and distract him with maces and cho ko nu, (he doesnt have machinery or civil service), while aiming for a space win.

Advice? If you look at the save, please tell me what you think of the city placements.

 

[Ghpstage]

Wow thirty turns KO. I don't know if I'll ever do that.

It was a Warrior rush. They are very effective below Monarch difficulty, perhaps even 'optimal' in most cases on those difficulties. It doesn't really help people learn though.

Looking forward to inspecting that save of yours, Ghpstage. How did you get so many techs so quickly? Some of them are cheap but some like Maths and Currency are kind of expensive.

Focusing on the economy rather than going off course for metal casting and machinery, both, as I mentioned of which I think of as rather pointless here, even for a war.
I Opened borders with Genghis early for trade rotues, and with Gandhi when I got Sailing from him, got cities working cottages quickly, ran scientists to stop my cottage cities growing into , though I have left them too long in one city. I also Oracled Monarchy to allow my cities to get growing, early Currency brought in even more and I specialised my cities.

It could have gone better, i got an unwanted Great Prophet for my first GP, I wanted a GScientist for an Academy, I have at least one worker goofing off, I left one cottage city stagnant by running scientists after I got Monarchy and I settled my military city 1 tile off where I thought he was (rushing is bad ).


Now onto your game,
If anyones running away with this game its you. Augustus is miles behind in tech and the only way he will be able to catch up is if you fail to develop your economy.

I don't really like the idea of rushing to war with Rome.
How much experience do you have with intercontinental invasions? They take large numbers of units, take a long time to build up troops and transports and get them there, and if you take more than a couple of cities then the maintenance is going to be crazy.
Right now the only things we know about Augustus' military are that its bigger than yours, its kicking Freddy's teeth in and that it has Elephants, which is worse for your invasion plans than Maces.
If your really serious about attacking then the first thing you should do is buy his map (should be doine regardless of war), and your going to need a lot of Catapults and Spears to stand a chance of getting anywhere. If you are intent on war, you'd be better off waiting till you have Renaissance units.

You could do with trying to specialise your cities too. Lets use the city of Kaifeng as an example.

Spoiler :

This city has very little commerce, and no food to spare for specialists. As such markets and libraries are not needed yet, and likely never will be.
What it does have is , those mines should be worked rather than the uniproved grass forest and plains farm and a Forge should have been a prioirity here, and a Barracks for building military would have been nice.
Similarly theres no need to build structures in cities which already have plenty of !


From here,

• Open Borders with all AIs that are willing so you get the overseas routes when you Lib Astro.
• Buy maps from Rome and India
• Get more Workers, you have heaps of tiles in need of improvement.
• Wake that sleeping settler in Xian and settle him somewhere, the sheep+wheat site southeast of Beijing perhaps, Xian has Cho-Ku-Nu to spare as garrisons.
• See if you can specialise your cities a bit
• Pick a Great Person farm, a city that can run many specialists (Mongols capital for example) and farm it, run specialists there and build the National Epic. This should be done early for best effect.
• Get Universities built to allow you to build Oxford in your best city. This should be done as early as possible, and building Universities in cities just to open it at this point is more than acceptable, its advised! As is whipping them.
• Whip off some less useful pop to get workers and infrastructure. Less useful pop are those working unimproved tiles, plains farms or are specilaists that won't lead to a great person.
• Build more workers and improve tiles! Its so important i'm saying it twice

 

[Ghpstage]

To 1AD
9 cities, a settler is on his way to make a 10th and I have Axes approaching a barb city. Finished CoL, researched Civil Service, Calender, Metal Casting and traded for IW and Archery.
Still need more workers, you can never have enough workers!
Tech rate could be quite a bit higher, but i've just settled a city, captured one and have swapped to building infrastructure.

Spoiler :

Accidentally agreed to a trade embargo against Genghis and hes gone into military build up mode, not that I care when I have 1.4 times his power, my cottage city's culture pressure is really starting to cut into his empire and has 60% defense and he doesn't even have Catapults

Probably not the best example as I adopted a religion that wasn't diplo friendly purely to put culture pressure on Genghis

 

[XRW175P6MQ4]

Granted warrior rush isn't really a great habit. Still nasty if it works. The specific configuration of tiles at your start is the best possible start for a warrior rush though. Your settler even spawned on top of the plains hill.

So here is the delicious meaty center of my playthrough.

Spoiler :

Turn 60. During rush I got pretty much any worker techs I could possibly want. Ag, AH, BW, wheel. I have 6 workers some roading to sites some chopping and some building the important improvements on the special resources.

The excercise is the basic rex. The main difference is we are now rexing from 2 positions although at the cost of a few turns relative to ghandi.

Note that capitols are USUALLY better city sites than average. Karakorum has 3 clams, 1 rice, 3 flooplains. Can someone say national epic?



Turn 91. I'm building axes for self defense. Barbs are going to be a big problem if this land doesn't get filled in quickly. Warrior spawn busts work fine for the most part. If a barb sneaks in we got axes.

It's probably not a great idea from an efficiency standpoint to put a barracks in a non hammers city with no war expected soon. Karakorum is probably working on a barracks because I didn't have something more important. The hills do give it decent hammers though. Believe it or not but guangzhou will eventually be a production beast.



Turn 121. Chengdu is the least jungled of the jungle sites. I like clearing jungle but it's been put off as late as possible. I don't want ghandi getting any of this land. Generally speaking jungle is good land once you get it cleared but you need twice as many workers as you think you do. Late game chengdu is better than the capitol in hammers. Reason = Levy. Beijing isn't riverside so it has a lot of potential hammers lost by not being able to build a levy.



Turn 153. Macau is badass. Double gems and rice. Once you get the jungle cleared. In turns of hammers late game its alright but this is obviously a hammer city.

Shandong grabs rice and copper, and completes the blocking action. Ghandi shall not pass. Don't worry though. Ghandi could hurt a kitten with an automatic kitten hurting machine.



Turn 180. Just an overview of my tech situation in general. I went paper, edu, lib. I chose nationalism because it's the most expensive, and I just always pick nationalism. Drafting rifles is considered reasonably strong. Protip: get nationalism, run nationalism civic, build globe theater in high food city and draft every turn with no consequences. Please draft responsibly. The reasoning behind rifles is they have a longer window of usefulness than muskets and are strongest unit that can be drafted for 1 pop.

I'm going democracy because it gives a couple of the best civics for cottage spamming. FYI i cottage spammed, mined all the hills and made enough farms to work all the tiles. Karakorum recieved farms only to max out specialists.

Printing press gives a static buff to towns iirc.



Turn180. Well I got rifles. I generally give high priority to having the strongest units available possible. Currently I'm picking up military tradition to build cavalry. iirc rifling is required for cavalry otherwise you can build cuirassiers with mil trad. I decided to go for communism. After democracy I spent a GP o a golden age and flipped into. Universal suffrage, emancipation, free speech, and free religion.



Turn 180. Built the kremlin. Kremlin gives a huge bonus to rush buying. Rush buy is enabled by uni. suffrage.



This is a little bit of a demonstration. Turn 242 FYI



Turn 243. Rush buy is has a penalty if you don't have at least 1 hammer invested in a build. Additionally rush buy is cheaper the more hammers already invested. Therefore the most efficient way is to build at least one turn then rush buy. So turn one queue cavalry in every city. Slider is lowered to generate massive amounts of gold. Remember cottage spam is usually low on hammers high on commerce. Press end turn. Now we have a lot of cities with greater than 1 hammer invested. Rush buy. Units finish next turn.



Turn 255. India dead. I may have overbuilt. I had 78 cavalry left over.



Turn 310. I found sushi in Delhi. The reason is, ghandi founded and shrined to religions there. So it already gets a lot of gold. Gold works slightly differently. Gold isn't commerce so it isn't converted to beakers when the slider is on. So even at 100% research the shrine gold and corp are added to your treasury each turn. Modifiers such as wall street are counted. So 2 shrines and a corp headquarters make perfect site for wallstreet.



This is the victory. Actually I had to reload a and mash end turn to get the screen again. Sid sushi gives a crapton of food to each city it's spread to. More food is more pop. More pop is more vote in a diplo victory. You can see I had most of the votes. Elizabeth voted for me because she was friendly with me. Defensive pact, and I was in her favorite civic.

Just some after thoughts.

Spoiler :

I was never in a state religion.
I had more GP than I could shake a stick at much less use effectively.
I was first to most techs so wonder spammed heavily late game. Three gorges, hollywood, eiffel tower, broadway. three gorge damn gives power to every city on a continent with no unhealth. Decent idea since I had the whole continent to myself. The others helped. I was having happiness problems.
That garbage city in the south gets 18 hammers per turn.
Elizabeth will declare on Augustus for 3805 gold.
End save I have 2 great merchants, 1 great artist and 1 great scientist.

 

[Ronojoy1917]

Turn 200 - Turn 250

Lib (took Astronomy) -- Engineering--PP--DR--Nationalism--Military Tradition--Gunpowder--Chemistry--Replacable Parts

Not much happend this round, I came to my senses and realized an intercontinental invasion is more trouble then it's worse. I don't know, it just feels like if I haven't had a war in a long period of time I'm doing something wrong.

In terms of tech, Elizabeth was being very uncooperative so I had to research Engineering myself. Then Divine Right because I wanted to build the Spiral Minaret, not only to get in the black, but also to fuel research, because more gold essentially means more beakers. Then followed some military techs because I thought money matters would be taken care of. My current tech priority is Steam Power, I want to build some levees, those things just seem to make any city on a river a super production hub.

I didn't do much expanding this round, almost none at all. I've just been focusing on improving tiles and the economy. One thing I feel like I must really have messed up on is making Karakorum a GP farm. How does that work, exactly? I can employ three great scientists, but no more than that unless I'm running Caste System. So is a GP farm only really viable with Caste System or am I missing something here?

I'm aiming for Space but am a little short on really good production cities, which is slightly worrying.

@ XRW, that looks like a lovely game, but why Diplomatic victory? After all that I would think you'd want something like domination or space. I find diplomacy to be the least satisfying. Is it because its only on Noble?

 

[XRW175P6MQ4]

Turn 200 - Turn 250

Not much happend this round, I came to my senses and realized an intercontinental invasion is more trouble then it's worse. I don't know, it just feels like if I haven't had a war in a long period of time I'm doing something wrong.

@ XRW, that looks like a lovely game, but why Diplomatic victory? After all that I would think you'd want something like domination or space. I find diplomacy to be the least satisfying. Is it because its only on Noble?

The short answer is because I'm lazy.

Long answer within.

Spoiler :

When I notice the AP built somewhere else that I've recently contacted, and been isolated from for a long time I get a bit nervous. Basically I don't have any ap religion and all it takes is for 1 religion spread and the AI calls a AP diplo vote and wins.

So the general idea is go generally toward mass media. Mass media obsoletes the AP (you actually have to gift it to the AI so it's maybe a dual edged sword). Oh wait now I can just built the UN. I have 51% or better of the world's pop. Elizabeth loves me too.

I teched to corps and theoretically could found any one I wanted. I popped merchants when I needed an engineer for Mining Inc (the best hammer return for a corp.). So I found Sid sushi (gives craptons of food to each city you spread it to. based on the number of fish resources you have). I usually just look at the corp advisor and pick Cereal mills or sid sushi. Usually sushi but I've had games where cereal mills gave more food.

As for the reason I didn't go space. Diplo is faster if you have the pop for it. Requires fewer techs. Besides I never did a diplo victory before. Around this time it's foregone conclusion that I win. I just want it over as quick as possible. My worst habit is starting a bunch of games and not finishing.

I actually played a little bit farther after winning. That's how I know Elizabeth will declare on Augustus. I used tanks. (as opposed to modern armor). It was a pain in the royal but. Frickin Loui pillaged my seafood. It was just load after load of tanks. I wasn't even rush buying.

One thing I feel like I must really have messed up on is making Karakorum a GP farm. How does that work, exactly? I can employ three great scientists, but no more than that unless I'm running Caste System. So is a GP farm only really viable with Caste System or am I missing something here?

You have not messed up. I ran engineers and merchants as well (end game 2 spys, 4 merchants, 5 engineers, 3 scientists, 1 priest) Engineers are useful. They can rush wonders and found mining inc. They have some bulbs. Obviously they are better on higher levels when you are in serious danger of actually losing a wonder to the AI. Merchants can found Sid sushi and cereal mills, they have some bulbs (not used often). Primarily they serve as golden age fodder. Lots of buildings give specialist slots. You should have plenty for most of the game in karakorum. Oxford gives 3 scientist slots, statue of liberty gives a free specialist of any kind to every city on a continent (owned by statues owner ofc), and the great library gives 2 free scientists.

What you are thinking of is some people flip into caste system and pacifism and starve cities to generate several great scientists, or merchants quickly. BTW pacifism only works if you have a state religion. Scientists are usually considered more useful, but IMO each specialist has a use.

I'm aiming for Space but am a little short on really good production cities, which is slightly worrying.

Late game riverside cottage cities are good for production. Levy gives 1 hammer to each riverside square (given city is riverside). Towns get 1 hammer for Universal suffrage. Ghandi has a couple good spots. Remember that you can build the iron works in the city with the highest base hammer, not the heroic epic site. Reason is heroic epic city probably should spam units. Iron works city will want to build the important wonders and expensive space ship parts. In my game mining inc is worth 12 hammers. If I had it. So if you pop an engineer go for it. You need railroads and an engineer. The corp only has to be in the city that needs the hammers. You don't need to spam it to every city if you don't want to. (or need to in order to prepare an invasionary force.)

In my game bombay was worth 50 base hammers (end game). It had the iron works so +100%. Granted Iron works needs iron and coal to be any use. You have those trust me. 50% for forge and factory. Another 50% for a factory with power. Three gorge would finish in 3 turns. So 150 hammers to work on parts. More if you have aluminum. Laboratories give a bonus to parts production iirc. Space elevator isn't worth it. It gives 50%. The thing is you already have +200%. 50% only applies to the base so it doesn't help that much, and you have to use a high hammer city to build the darn thing. +12 base hammers for mining inc if you get it. 12x3 is 36. bombay would be worth 186 hammers.

In terms of tech, Elizabeth was being very uncooperative so I had to research Engineering myself. Then Divine Right because I wanted to build the Spiral Minaret, not only to get in the black, but also to fuel research, because more gold essentially means more beakers. Then followed some military techs because I thought money matters would be taken care of. My current tech priority is Steam Power, I want to build some levees, those things just seem to make any city on a river a super production hub.

Awww. Elizabeth was so nice to me though. She made defensive pact with me and voted for me in UN.

Levees are badass. Combo with cottage and universal suffrage. You suddenly have gobs of 2 hammer, 2 food, 8 commerce tiles. Grats you broke the game.

Generally one of the signs that building a wonder is not a great idea is if the AI is first to the tech. Unless of course you want the fail gold but that's an advanced lesson.

 

[Ghpstage]

Late game riverside cottage cities are good for production.

But only for units and production, they are awful for spaceship building as projects can't be rushbought.
A production city for spaceship building comes in 2 main flavours.

A Workshop spammed city in State Property and Caste, 2, 4 on non-river grassland is awesome production, and this type is really easy to set up. Just swap to SP, pick a couple of cities and workshop away.

The second is through corps, particularly Mining Inc. This gives potentially ridiculous to a city before you even consider its improvements, which will lean towards workshops and farm needed to feed them if you don't have Sushi. But it relies on you getting a Great Engineer, which isn't easy, and is generally more fiddly to get working well.

 

[XRW175P6MQ4]

But only for units and production, they are awful for spaceship building as projects can't be rushbought.

Forge, factory with power, aluminum and a few mines should be sufficient to crank out casings at least. Corp makes it much better. The iron works city can do the expensive parts. Anything in the 10 turn range is "fast enough" to build the casings.

 

[Ronojoy1917]

Turn 250 - Turn 310

Tech Path:

Steam--Constitution--Democracy--Scientific Method--Physics--Econ--Corps--Rifles--Steel--Artillery-Rocketry

The main thing with this round was dealing with the unhappies that came from switing from HR to US. I underestimated how bad it would be. Overall I think I'm doing okay, although losing land in the culture war with Gandhi. Diplo is going well, I even got Elizabeth to Friendly after DOWing on Louis who shes at war with. I've just researched Rocketry and next session I'll start on the Apollo Mission. Am I making decent progress towards space, at this point?

 

[tinstaafl]

Some thoughts on unhappiness:
You are still in slavery, so: either whip away unhappy citizens to build happiness buildings fast, or alternatively switch to emancipation to help with culture war, and get rid of 2-3 unhappiness per city.

Connect your second coal, trade your friend ghandi coal for dyes and spices, and build pavillons for the cheap dye happiness, might also run culture slider at 10% for 2 more happiness in cities with a pavillon.

Just don't let mass unhappy citizens sit around for ages. The switch from hereditary rule to universal suffrage was in 1775 which i think is turn 280. thats 30 turns of massiv unhappiness, apparently 10 citizens IN A CITY and more. Really can't have that.

If you want, try it from the 250turn save just to see how much difference it makes.

The cottages in reach of your capital should all be assigned and worked by the capital because it has the strongest multipliers. 2 towns in reach of shanghai are assigned to
macau, ideally you would have the happiness to work as many cottages as possible in your bureaucracy capital.
(If you don't know, To reassign tiles to a different city, go into the ciy and click on the grayed out tiles that you want this city to use)

Overall, though there are a lot of holes, you are winning. Several victory conditions seem possible, choose one i guess.

 

[XRW175P6MQ4]

Turn 250 - Turn 310

Tech Path:

Steam--Constitution--Democracy--Scientific Method--Physics--Econ--Corps--Rifles--Steel--Artillery-Rocketry

The main thing with this round was dealing with the unhappies that came from switing from HR to US. I underestimated how bad it would be. Overall I think I'm doing okay, although losing land in the culture war with Gandhi. Diplo is going well, I even got Elizabeth to Friendly after DOWing on Louis who shes at war with. I've just researched Rocketry and next session I'll start on the Apollo Mission. Am I making decent progress towards space, at this point?

You are smoking everybody in tech. There is no way they can catch up unless you let your cat/dog/younger sibling play for the next 100 turns. You're OK for space. Space takes a little longer than UN. The main worry would be someone else getting the UN and winning. AI doesn't seem smart enough to win culture on lower levels (could be wrong but never seen a culture threat monarch and below). They shouldn't be able to win win space as that would involve out teching you.

Ghandi has dye. It doesn't look like you do. Pavilion is worth +1 happy with dye in addition to the +1 happy the dye gives in the first place. Also the wonders, hollywood, broadway, rock and roll. Give a resources that can be traded that is essentially +1 happy for every city in your trade network plus whoever you trade it to. If you don't build em trade for the happy resources.

You are building Iron works in a culturally threatened city that isn't even your best in production. Somehow shanghai is your best. 33 base hammers. Remember that multipliers apply to the base hammers.

You have artillery and cavalry plus a cache of slightly outdated units. Ghandi has longbows. At best he can build muskets.

You are building units when you aren't planning an invasion, and your neighbor is Ghandi. Either you use those units or you build wealth so you can crank the slider up to 100%. Focus on your victory condition in other words. Wipe ghandi => go space or just go space.

You are getting 2 unhappies because someone else is in emancipation and you aren't.

Free speech is better than bureacracy when your empire is large.

You are in Pacifism despite not being in caste system or running a particularly large number of specialists in any one city. The upkeep for military while in pacifism is horrendous. Free religion is better at this point. Free religion eliminates a -2 diplo penalty with rome.

You have access to free market which is superior to the default civic.

You have 2 great scientists and a great prophet. You have several civics you need to flip into. Solution pop a golden age and flip into the civics I mentioned. It will cost you 2 great people. You will have a great scientist left over. At this point there is nothing a great person could do aside from founding sushi or mining inc. that will beat the hammers and commerce during a golden age.

If I may ask what did you do in your first golden age? You had to have used one already. The first one costs 1 gp.

Karakorum could use a globe theater like nobodies business. Build that and all the unhappy goes poof. Zero unhappy in the city that builds it.

 

[Ronojoy1917]

Not an update just a quick question: I've just gotten a Great Engineer and want to make sure I use him in the way that I want. If he founds Mining, is that the corporation that gives extra hammers to city, or is that the other engineering corp?

 

[Ghpstage]

Both Engineer corps give , and Mining Inc gives far more in just about every case.

 

[Ronojoy1917]

Turn 323 - Turn 438 (Finish)

Well this round was quite straight forward, I just went about researching space ship part techs nad then building those parts. But first of course I had to complete the Appolo Program, and as I was building that in the capital, I decided not to do any civic changes until after it was done, since I was running Bureaucracy. AS soon as I launched a golden age and revolted, the change was amazing. I could jack the slider all the way up to 90%, shaving two turns off ASsembly Line, making it three turns not five. Also, the common sense move to build gold rather than units must have sped up the victory as well.

I guess the only real challenge this round was cultural. Two of my cities revolted to India, which didn;t matter <i>too</i> much, because they weren't very important, but it was still kind of scary at times, how strong that culture was. Next, one of Elizabeth's cities crosses 50,000 and the other two looked like they might follow. As a back up I started building ICBMs. Would those have worked, should the situation have called for it? If you nuke a city does it lose its culture? I've never used a nuke in my 15 or so games of Civ4 that I've played.

This has been my first real game on Noble, and although I won, I feel kind of weird about it. I mean, for most of the second half of the game Augustus was a good deal ahead of me in score, which I really wasn't used to. And then at the end of the game, even in Demograohics I was never number 1 in anything. Just second or third. I was left kind of wondering how I even won. The Leader thing at the end gavbe me Henry the VIII.

So to reflect on things I need to improve:

- workers, making more and making sure they are improving those tiles quickly

- put more thought into early tech path, not relying soo much on trades and going for what will be the most effective tech

- getting cities out faster after the first few have been layed out there

- playing to a victory condition (like not building so many units when going for space)

These are the main points I think I got from this whole exercise. Anything to add?

(The attached save is the last save before victory, not the last turn)

 

[GGracchus]

I don't think nukes stop culture, so you would have to send some marines or something to capture the city after nuking it to death, then raze it so she couldn't get it back.

You've covered all the basics a noble player needs, and if you nail those, you'll be at monarch in no time. Another couple things I would try is basic spawnbusting and warring. For production, you should use State Property. Workshops give you +4 hammers if you have your tech tree completeness(I think, maybe +3). Mining is giving you +6 hammers. 2 shops give you that, and SP makes shops food neutral. You could probably fit 5-odd shops for your main cities without sacking too much commerce. I also saw you didn't build airports or health buildings, which could let your cities grow a bit more.

EDIT: You should also check out BUG and BAT, they help make the game a bit easier without changing overall gameplay

 

[Ghpstage]

Next, one of Elizabeth's cities crosses 50,000 and the other two looked like they might follow. As a back up I started building ICBMs. Would those have worked, should the situation have called for it? If you nuke a city does it lose its culture? I've never used a nuke in my 15 or so games of Civ4 that I've played.

Nukes don't destroy culture, but they do delay culture wins by destroying many of the things that generate culture (pop, buildings, improvements but NOT wonders!). This means firing at cities that are getting close, but aren't there yet can be used to buy some time for you to win.
In my opinion crippling cities like this is the main role of ICBMs. For more typical war jobs, like city taking or stack demolishion, Tactical Nukes are almost universally better.

 

[Zechnophobe]

Not an update just a quick question: I've just gotten a Great Engineer and want to make sure I use him in the way that I want. If he founds Mining, is that the corporation that gives extra hammers to city, or is that the other engineering corp?

If you go to the Corporation screen, and click on/mouse over the various corporations, you can see the effect they would have on your cities if you got them. This can be a great way to plan out which corporations to run, should you go that route.