[BTS] Help a noob out on noble

[Chase_2_Rabbits]

Maybe those cottages were put up prior to the above posts too, but in any case, you have put them in the wrong spots. First one to be cottaged should be the floodplain or one of the sugars, because it gets you extra food. With that very nice river, you shouldn't consider putting cottages on non-riverside tiles for a long time, particularly non-riverside plains. Early workerturns are very important, so you shouldn't waste them.

Do you have Bronze Working? (Probably not since you have AH) If so, it makes sense to chop down the riverside forests, for instance into settlers/workers, and cottage those. Cities overlapping with the capital can help grow cottages, like Fippy argued. This is something new players rarely do, and is a bit of an advanced play, but it's very strong. It's all about preparing for that luscious Buro capital that will power your empire for a long time. Once you get access to more happiness and can grow the capital faster, it can gradually take over already developed cottages instead of starting afresh.

The mine has also been put on the 'wrong' tile. If you want a mine this early, build it on the riverside tile, since this gets you an extra commerce. May not sound like much, but so early that one commerce is a fairly big deal. Way down the line (post Rep Parts really), you can start changing mines to windmills, in which case the riverside ones should be first. Being financial, that riverside windmill will give you 3

No idea why you went for AH here btw. The map doesn't show a single AH food resource. Would have made more sense to grab BW instead, to enable slavery and forest chopping, and then probably skipping AH on the way to Alpha (self-teched or through trade) and then backfill techs like AH.

I hope this doesn't sound too harsh. All about learning, and you have come to the right place

This is all important stuff, yodude4. Improving the right tiles and taking the best tech path in the early game are vital skills.

 

[Chase_2_Rabbits]

Thank you all so much for the comments! It's a lot to take in, but I think I'm starting to get it.

So about the second city; at about 3:00, before most of you posted, I settled my second city on the gold location (on the flat desert). I know, I really should have waited, but I'm kinda new to this forum thing. So that debate is kinda moot, but I'm open to considering location 1 marked on the map for my third city.

Anyway, I played to turn 55. Animal husbandry popped turn 48, and I got some nice horses right outside the range of my fat cross I cottaged the tile north of my capital and built a monument in Lakamha to get the corn out. Other than the second city snafu, does this give you any more information about where I should go?

I actually built the fish city (3E, 1S) second. It can work 3 riverside cottages for the capital, and my plan was to get a library in there ASAP to generate my first scientist for an Academy for the capital. With hindsight though, 3N, 2E is a better choice of 2nd city. It can do the same function, but more quickly (I had to wait for a monument and a work boat in the fish city). It also bridges the gap to the gold city to go there 3rd.

The next tech to choose after Writing is an important choice. Well, after BW assuming you've not got that yet. Once the worker techs and writing are in, the next choice can start to determine the course we're taking to win the game.

If I were you, I'd consider starting the map again having taken in the advice given so far. Be more selective with the tiles you improve, the techs you research (no need for AH on this map) and learn to embrace city overlap.

 

[pigswill]

No mention yet of AI. It looks like you're isolated with Hanibal, unlikely to get tech trades unless you get him up to Friendly. On the other hand fractal maps are unpredictable, there may be other AIs contactable by sea, this would require a coastal city and an exploring WB (or two)..

 

[Olafeson]

Holy Crap @Pedro78,

these Civ Illustrated guides are amazing. Especially the explanation of Leader characteristics. I mean i can tell that Willem is a techwhore while SB is a unitspammer and expander while you better build some tropps when the red fists shows up at turn 50 while Montezuma/shaka are your neighbours.

But this is some next level passion put into a game by the community again. Definetly gonna check that out, will help me a lot. Unfortunately the pictures got deleted.

 

[Olafeson]

Also it can get quite confusing with all those acronyms used like BW, AH,etc. so use this link. Maybe someone has a better one but i use this.

http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Acronyms_(Civ4)

 

[Olafeson]

I decided to play along and use the advices everyone gave you, and try to make it short and let the pictures speak. To make little notes on the map, use ALT + S. Maybe we can compare the results. at turn 50 and turn 100.

Turn 1:

Spoiler :

Warrior 1 S to reveal possible seafood, SiP. 15 T Worker first.
Tech path : Agri -> BW -> Hunting* -> Wheel -> Pottery

* hunting : just to chop out one safety holkan, on noble you can defend with warriors, but with a holkan you are safe from barbs even in higher dif.

Turn 15:

Spoiler :

Worker out, starting Warrior, farming corn, scouted coast for seafood, leave warrior to fogbust with woodsman 1 promotion in these forests.

Avoided goody hut to not get any techs or gold, that would change my early game.

Turn 30:

Spoiler :

At turn 30 got another warrior and farmed the corn and placed a mine on river hill since it gives + 1 extra commerce. Chopped the forest 1N into a holkan

With 2 warriors and 1 Holkan you are safe even on deity difficulty for now.

Now we (note how i use the royal plural) will grow to size 4, adopt slavery turn 31, then 2 pop whip a settler into a worker, finish worker with chop.(extra hammers cuz expansive leader)

Red spot city 2 as Pedro78 suggested.

Turn 36:

Spoiler :

Notice how i chopped the forest into the settler, then waited until 60 hammers got put into the settler. If i whip now i get 30 overflow into a worker. (at least Bug/Bull tells me that). Worker stands on the forest marked with "chop3" and will chop it next turn into a worker.

Turn 37:

Spoiler :

So basically i managed to get a 1 turn worker after the settler.
With the Whip overflow of actually only 28 hammers (instead of 30 like Bug/Bull told me) and the "chop3" forest hammers, added to the bonus of pacal being expansive leader (+25% worker boost).

Turn 42:

Spoiler :

So at turn 42 we can 1 pop whip the granary in the capital which we will do, we got 2 cities 2 workers,
2 warriors and a holkan.

The Capital can now grow with a granary making whipping and regrow far more efficient, also by the time we whip the
granary we got 2 population to work the newly build "cottage1" and the corn in capital.

Second city builds granary with river mine. At size 2 this city can build a new worker working mine and improved corn. Capital may produce another settler at size 4 or 5 and 2 pop whip that also into a worker.

With this setup you can defend yourself even at immortal or deity difficulty vs the barbs. The approach is very similar to Pedros78 but his strategy is more economic. Which is totally feasible on prince difficulty.

 

[Anysense]

No mention yet of AI. It looks like you're isolated with Hanibal, unlikely to get tech trades unless you get him up to Friendly. On the other hand fractal maps are unpredictable, there may be other AIs contactable by sea, this would require a coastal city and an exploring WB (or two)..

Declare war, leave him with 1 city and take all his techs for peace. The only problem is that there won't be much to take, as noble AIs are very slow with research.

 

[Pedro78]

I played the first couple of turns (until Writing) to show you what a good opening would be, and share some basic knowledge about game mechanics.

Spoiler Tech path :

Agriculture - Wheel - Pottery - Bronze Working (BW) - Writing

I went Pottery before BW because of these awesome riverside sugar FIN cottages. This move is very situational : in many starts you will have too many forests and will need BW first, or might have a very high base production and might skip BW altogether until Alpha.

Writing seemed obvious after BW, as we don't have any Animal Husbandry (AH) resources out there, and in this case it wasn't worth it to tech AH for the sole purpose of revealing horses.

No need for an early religion, it usually does more harm than good. The main reason for that is that you're basically "taking a religion out of the game", which increases the risk of other AIs converting to the same religion and liking each other. Extensively spreading your own religion to other AIs tends to be counterproductive aswell.

Spoiler Worker turns / Build order :

Built a Worker first, which is the right move in most inland openings.

Worker went to improve the Corn (5T), then moved to the riverside grassland hill and mined it for 1T, waiting for Pottery. Then it built 2 cottages on the 2 riverside sugar tiles and eventually went back to finish the mine. No point in connecting the Corn this early. Then it built a cottage 2N1E of capital***, waiting for second city to come online. The worker started improving the 2nd city's corn as soon as it was founded.

When the worker was complete, Mutal grew while building a Warrior, working only tiles with the highest food possible. You usually want your second city up ASAP, so there are two "standard" moves available : build a Settler at size 3 (can be sped up with chops), or wait until size 4 and whip it (requires BW). Here I valued the 3F3C cottages more than an earlier settler, so I decided to grow on these, then whip a settler. Another reason for that is that the whip overflow allows you to convert food into hammers when building settlers. Pacal being expansive, this meant a 1T granary. Let me explain.

When you're in slavery and hover your mouse over the whip button, you see this :

Without any production modifiers, 1 population = 30 hammers when whipping. Therefore, the overflow from whipping is capped at 29 hammers. Here I decided not to whip the settler immediately, but to wait for more overflow so I can build the granary in 1 turn (thanks to the EXP trait), and grow back faster to whip something else (settler, worker, library...).

That's when I whipped :

See the turn after :

By the way, be careful about unit decay: when you leave a unit in the production bar for more than 10 turns, you will progressively loose all the hammers invested into it. The BUG mod tells you how many turns left you have / how many hammers you will waste :

Another trick (a little more "advanced" this time) is to keep your slider at either 100% or 0% whenever you can. Because the Civ4 engine "floors" things, if you're producing e.g. 11 base commerce, when running at 90% slider you will produce 9.9 bpt and 1.1 gpt, which will be rounded up to 9 bpt and 1 gpt, i.e. you're wasting 1 bpt. With other (more complicated) research modifiers that apply, you can loose even more bpt. The point is that if you want an optimal tech rate in the early game, you have to run "binary" research.


***the reason why I built a cottage rather than chopping is that I could finish off the granary with whip overflow, so I didn't need to chop. Without the EXP trait I would definitely have chopped instead, as the cottage won't be immediately useful.

Spoiler Second city :

It was settled 3N2E of the capital, for the reasons explained in previous posts.

It immediately started on a worker, working the riverside grassland mine, which is a pretty good tile especially considering that we're EXP. Thus, even when our worker finishes the Corn farm, this city will keep working the mine for the extra 1C, as the yields will be the same due to production modifiers.

The first thing to build in your second city is very situational. Sometimes you will want to grow and whip a worker/a granary, sometimes you will need to build an Archer / Axeman ASAP... Right now I just needed another worker, mostly to chop for another Settler and a Library in the Capital. Plus the EXP trait makes it very easy to get quick workers, that's another reason why settling on plains hills (PH) is so valuable. Especially considering that a PH is a crappy tile (0F), and grassland mines should be preferred to PH mines in 99% of cases.

Also, be careful about the automated citizen assignement by your cities. Even though what it does usually makes sense, it sometimes does stupid things so it's better to keep an eye on it, especially on higher difficulties.

Spoiler Random thoughts + dotmap :

Disclaimer: I'm not claiming that it's an optimal start, I'm sure many people will find improvements to this one, but I'm pretty sure it would be viable on just about any difficulty (barbs off ).

The turn where I got writing I immediately opened borders (OB) with Hannibal. I can't have traderoutes with him yet, but I'll have the +2 diplo bonus from OB sooner, which is important especially if we turn out to be semi-isolated with Carthage.

My dotmap (used some info from your spoilers to make it more relevant @yodude4 )

The fact that there is fish to the north kinda ruins the 1N3W city location, so I'd delay settling the wet rice for a little while. The white dots are cities that I want ASAP. The others are cities that will come eventually, but can wait until I get a solid base commerce. As there's horses 2S2E of your capital, a city should also come on the "Hmmm" mark, sharing the fish with the GP farm (can also share cottages with capital).

You'll notice how tightly packed I plan to settle those cities. This helps with both maintenance and growing cottages.

@Anysense Your GP farm spot will be stronger on the long run, but it requires settling city #4 really far away which I don't like. Also I really wouldn't build the Great Lighthouse on this map : not many coastal cities + building GLH in a secondary city is such an iffy move as soon as you move up in difficulty (except in very rare cases), that I would really advise against it. Overbuilding wonders is a bad habit that often prevents people from moving up in difficulty.

Another random thing. Turning off research after writing is often recommended until you get a Library in your capital, for the research boost. Of course this is not always true : sometimes you need another tech than Writing (masonry, fishing) really early. You don't have to build up too much cash either, that's why you usually want the Library up ASAP (needed to generate your first Great Scientist (GS) as well). Of course this varies, it's all about finding the right balance

Attached the 2280BC save if you want to take a look at it.

Spoiler Edit :

To the people who advise an early war against Hannibal :
For sure that's an option on Noble, we could even have warrior-rushed Hannibal and he would be dead already, but that wouldn't help @yodude4 a lot about learning game mechanics. I firmly believe than playing "lib games" is the best way to learn how to manage your economy.

@Olafeson You don't need barb defense on Noble for a really long time. All you need is a Warrior to escort your Settler. Barbs won't enter borders until at least T90. Getting a Granary would have been more useful than a Holkan here.

 

[yodude4]

Thanks again to everyone who responded! I am amazed at how many responses this got so quickly, and with all the advice I've gotten since this thread blew up, I'm going to restart the game. I'll play up until writing with your advice taken into consideration and post a screenshot. Sadly, I can't turn huts off after making the file, but I'll avoid them after the first to get the authentic forum game experience.

I settled in place again on turn 1, researched agriculture. My tech path was agri -> wheel -> pottery -> BW -> Writing. My worker hooked up the corn, the riverside mine (I finished the mine through pottery though) and the two sugar cottages. My capital built a warrior after the worker, and when it finished, I was at size 4 and built a settler. My worker chopped a forest and got my settler to 61/100 production, at which point I 2 pop whipped him out and settled Lakamha. I decided to build a granary in Lakamha, as there was some overflow on my whip in the capital and I used it to build a worker there to get it out more quickly than I would in my second city. At this point, I figured my first worker wouldn't need to build more than 4 improvements in the capital for a while since I'll be whipping, so I sent him to hook up the corn in Lakamha. When the capital finished my second worker, I built a warrior to start growing to pop 4 in the capital. Lakamha was working the northernmost sugar cottage in my capital, and I figured it would work the riverside mine once it grew to size 2, so my second worker went to one of the non-riverside hills and started a mine so that my capital would have a production tile. Screenshot below.

 

[lymond]

youdude - a request: please put your pics in spoiler tags like the others. It helps with page loading

excellent write-up, pedro. I do like the placement of Lakahma ...good habit for yodude to practice.

 

[Fippy]

Your worker building the mine should probably have helped the other one with corn
Or i just saw you also have an uncottaged floodplains for your Cap, that as well.

Several mines are bad improvements in this stage.
An important tip for everybody learning: think much more about food & slavery for your hammers.
Also especially with being FIN, but also without, river cottages are much better.

 

[Olafeson]

@yodude4

So final update from me for this map. Really great improvement already with the retry on the map. Looks pretty solid.

Turn 54:

Spoiler :

Open borders with hannibal for relations ofc, i got 3 cottages to share between Tikal and Lakhamba (1NE, 2N and 2NE).
2 nice plain river hills with mines for some hammers if needed , 2 workers one will finish next turn in Lakhamba, one settler will be 2 pop whipped into
a library this turn in capital. So next turn you have 3 workes and another settler and a lot of options now. I marked 3 spots that would come to mind for me:

Red (land secure):

Just make sure hannibal does not settle the wet corn, it is a good spot and will block hannibal from the rest of your land, allowing you to grab easily
6-7 cities on your small peninsula. 2 workers will build a road there and then farm the corn and chop a granary for this spot.

Green (Commerce Research) :

Grab the gold and the coast, and grab the corn from Lakhamba for the gold city. An early gold mine with +7 commerce gives a huge boost in tech rate. I only have 21 commerce put into research at the moment. gold alone will make that 28 commerce. Now it gets interesting, settling on PH 1W of my spot will give you a 2 hammers city, allowing you to build for examples more workers and make the plain hill actually a very good tile, you grab more land, which later in the game can be improved (irrigated farms+windmills). But then the city will grow slow and will lack food, making it a 2-3 size worker/settler only production spot. Good shortterm usage.

On the other hand, the fact that pacal has the financial leader trait, will make working the coast quite good (not amazing but good). Lighthouse and the sea tiles give 2food/3commerce. Also lets you grow and whip the population. If you get the Great Lighthouse + colossus, settling the coast will be even better.

Pink (GLH):

If you want to get the GLH you probably need to settle ASAP on the pink spot, and put some mines on the hillchain there.
Long term investment (needs monument, boat , lighthouse and only then can start the GLH). On higher difficulty an A.I. would surely get it before you can secure it. But on prince, you should be able to secure it. Later can also share the FP 2 SE of capital and some cottages. Making it a good production spot for naval units to reach maybe small islands to settle or produce triremes to defend your seafood vs barb galleys.

So that was more than enough Bullcrap from such an inexpierenced player like me. Would be nice if you could keep this updated until you maybe finish off hannibal if you decide to go to war. I am already forum addicted so i gonna follow your game.

 

[yodude4]

Sorry for the updating delay - here's up until the end of Alphabet.

My capital finished the warrior and grew to size 4, and I started on a settler. Worker 1, after finishing the mine, chopped a forest to hurry him up, and I finished the job with a 2 pop whip. My capital transitioned into building its library to start growing a bit, and worker 1 moved up to the wet corn, which was where I decided to settle my third city so that I could cut Hannibal off from my land. I settled it and started on a Monument (it has very few good tiles in its initial radius and a border pop gives it 2 hills, which are the only production at that location). As for Lakamha, I whipped out the granary just as it grew to size 3, and it started on a worker. My second worker, after finishing the Lakamha corn, hooked up the third and final river cottage in the radius of both cities, and then moved down to hook up the flood plains cottage. Screenshot below.

Spoiler :

My question is, Hannibal has fishing and animal husbandry, and lacks wheel and writing. I could trade both of my techs for both of his (which is about 40 beakers in his advantage) or, since I don't need AH that much, I could only trade for fishing and keep him further behind. I would usually trade aggressively here, but since I'm on an island alone with him I don't want him to get too ahead in tech. Should I trade for both techs or only one?

 

[Pedro78]

You're playing way too fast. Third city should have been the gold city, and you settled Chichen Itza in the wrong place : you wasted a coastal fish.

There is no point in building a monument in your third city right now. It has everything it needs in the first ring (for now). It could build something more useful like a granary or a worker.

You are building cottages around your capital, but you keep it at a low size so it can't work these nice tiles. With a granary and this much food, it's easy to repeatedly grow capital to size 6 then 3 pop whip a library or a settler, this would me a much more efficient use of your workable tiles.

You will be fine trading away Wheel + Writing to Hannibal, he'll get these techs pretty soon anyways. Keeping up in tech with the Noble AI won't be a problem.

This might look like a bit of a harsh commentary, but you're playing ahead not waiting for advice, which makes it harder for us all to point you in the right direction. Updating delay is not a problem, it's better that you play slower and wait for advice, it's the best way to learn the game, really.

 

[Anysense]

My question is, Hannibal has fishing and animal husbandry, and lacks wheel and writing. I could trade both of my techs for both of his (which is about 40 beakers in his advantage) or, since I don't need AH that much, I could only trade for fishing and keep him further behind. I would usually trade aggressively here, but since I'm on an island alone with him I don't want him to get too ahead in tech. Should I trade for both techs or only one?

Definitely both. If you mess up so badly that he gets ahead in tech then you should reload try again. Note that his lacking writing means that can't have alpha, that is you are ahead by a few hundred beakers, which is a good deal at 59 turn.
Chichen Itza is settled in the wrong place, you killed the fish. It was Main production in that city is wet corn, second - forests. And forget about those hills - you won't need them any time soon. It's already been mentioned several times that food is better for production than mines.
Read post #31, especially piece about production. Reread it. Reread it until it sinks in.

 

[Olafeson]

Nah no need to trade him wheel and writing yet, that will only boost him. Remember he has no other trading partners too and on noble he gets no Bonus on Tech rate and production rate.

No coastal city -> no need for fishing yet.
No AH resources visible -> no need to get AH (maaaaaaaaaaayyyyyybeeee gamble on horses to HA rush him), but then you do not have to, just grab more cities, grow smart build cottages and attack him later with superior tech.

I guess he teched a load of crap, like sailing and IW, maybe even hunting and archery. Totally useless techs, which set him far behind you. He basically now builds archers and galleys and maybe even swordsman. You on the other hand have a big economic lead.

No Wheel -> No pottery for good old Hannibal Barkas , also means no roads and no traderoutes for him.
No Writing -> No libraries for him, no Scientist specialists for him
No Alphabet -> no Research for Hammers for him

Now you can use all these 3 research boosts while he can not. Bascially i think you might be able to have double the amount of Research he has. You can much faster tech to smth like gunpowder and steel (Musketiers and canons), or MT (cuirassiers) and whoop his ass. He will run around with maybe Longbows at best.

And make sure to get Lib first. This should be a good practice game for that. It should be farely easy to grab Liberalism first. If you do not get it first, you made some big mistakes. But i am sure you can do it with ease.

 

[Olafeson]

Consider getting following techs from Hannibal:

Fishing : when you settled coastal city
IW: just to check if you have iron somewhere, this would allow you to go into medieval war with him (Swords/catas or Maces/Trebs)
Sailing: not really needed, could be useful to get a galley and look for some small islands to settle on and fight barb galleys.

(maybe monarchy): but i think it would be good if you just get CoL and found confucianism for the happy faces that allow city growth.

These will all be "backfilling tech trades" while you grab the good techs like CS / Philosophy / Education / Lib.

Let hannibal research all the useless stuff like compass, optics, calendar etc.

 

[Anysense]

Nah no need to trade him wheel and writing yet, that will only boost him.

Can't agree with that. By avoiding tech trading you will only hold yourself back. It may be worth not trading away techs like paper or education, that unlock important stuff, but writing and the wheel are not important, not at all.

 

[Olafeson]

Well, the immediately result of the tech trade will be following :

yodude4 will get AH but maybe one tile of horses pops, maybe none. that means he gets 2 hammer/1 comemrce on a tile that maybe not even in the cross of his cities.
he will get fishing, but he has no sea city yet, so why even bother to get a tech that has no value at this point.

Meanwhile Hannibal gets access to roads and libraries (commerce,GPP,cottages,etc. good stuff), probably Hannibal research smth like IW, compass, sailing then religious stuff. The religions already grabbed by another civ. So he basically techs crap, he will get no extra hammers/no extra commerce and no extra food (granaries), while yodude4 gets all of that.

If he really wants to get some techs out of hannibal, he attacks wipes him out till one city, grabs useless old tech like theology, compass, monarchy etc. .
DoW after 10 turns again and get rid of hannibal. Or just vassal him, then trade.

 

[Fippy]

Hanni only trades fishing & AH cos AIs always trade those (along with Monarchy, Mono and Printing Press i think). edit, Rep. Parts PP maybe not
He will not trade more in semi isolation.

Imo this depends on ambitions, experience and playing level..
there's some sense in newer players holding back those techs to slow Hanni down, but ofc most here would trade for them without thinking cos they know he's no real danger.

Mostly what i was thinking is, those are not important decisions for now.
Empire building & managing (City spots, workers, improvements, deciding what buildings) are important basics and should be focused more on, imo.