Honing my Noble game

[Saketh]

After reading the Immortal Incan Domination 2.08 thread, my gameplay drastically improved. I managed to with Domination with the Incans on Noble, Small map, mainly with an army of Axemen, Chariots (later Knights) and Catapults.

The people were me, Saladin, Isabella, Mansa Musa, and Kublai Khan.

Basically, I founded Hinduism, built Stonehenge and the Oracle (missed the Great Wall, though), and did the opening stuff before pumping out Axemen. Early in the game, I obliterated Kublai Khan with Axes and Chariots. Then I swept south towards Mansa Musa (the score leader at the time), and took out his cities one by one. Meanwhile, I had enough techs to make Knights, so my Chariots upgraded.

I took my catapults and Knights and began to attack Isabella. I destroyed her obsolete empire. I never had to touch Saladin (he had a tech lead , so a war with him would have been costly) -- I ended up winning Domination.

The thing is, I didn't feel fully efficient throughout the game. I need to improve a few things, and I need suggestions on how to do so.

• City specialization (this is a big problem for me)
• Opening strategies
• Wonders: What to build, when to build
• What to do with captured cities
• Maintaining a large empire efficiently
• Managing a cottage economy (I'm very bad at this)
• Balancing cottages with other improvements

I don't think I'm good enough to easily make the jump up to Prince yet. But I'm not that far from Prince either. I just need to improve these issues .

PS: How do you make replays out of Civ games? Or do I just post saved games?

Without further ado, here is my save game. Thanks for any and all help.

 

[Harbourboy]

My advice is to try one thing at a time. Maybe in your next game, make a point of razing every enemy city you capture, except Capitals and Holy Cities. This will show you the power of maintenance costs and foreign unhappiness.

In the game after that, build NO wonders. This will show you the power of spending your precious hammers wisely and just how many units you can build for the price of a Pyramid.

In another game, try building NO farms. Some of your cities will not get very big, but it will show you the power of commerce that comes in from cottages.

In another game, try to not found or adopt any religions. This will highlight the impact of religion on diplomacy.

In another game, try building NO marketplaces or banks. This will show you the value of not building everything in every city.

Granted, these sorts of things are silly and extreme tactics and may make it harder to win, but if you try them out, you will first hand the power that they can bring when you use them selectively in more balanced games. It's hard to see the impact of these things when you do them all at once.

 

[KMadCandy]

PS: How do you make replays out of Civ games? Or do I just post saved games?

/replays is a different folder than /saves. it's your scoreboard basically. i've never loaded one to see if it actually shows you the replay or just adds it as an entry on your scoreboard.

i've learned a lot from doing what harbourboy mentioned and playing games where i drastically change my style to learn about new strategies: what they're like, how i don't actually need some things as much as i thought i did, etc. it sounds counterintuitive, but for some of those games where i've gone completely counter to my nature, i've gone down a difficulty level the first time to be able to better focus on that aspect, since my goal is to learn about the impact on my empire and not about how to win wars.

one really fun, really weird game was Always Peace, Domination as the only victory type. i learned a ton about how to apply culture pressure in that game . i never flipped a city but i flipped enough tiles that i won handily. another time i went way down to chieftain i think, played izzy, and picked opponents that didn't know mysticism, so that i'd be sure to get all the religions. then i played "set up friend/enemy blocks, i'm the political master" and selectively spread religions to manipulate relationships and provoke AI wars without ever bribing anyone. was deliciously fun and evil to sit back and watch all of that (and to not have to face izzy's demands myself!), and i learned a lot watching how much religion can impact just about everything. yes i do play quite odd games sometimes.

so, grats on the noble win and on getting better, good luck on improving! you can often learn a lot by trying new things, even if you lose that particular game. you learn a lot from making mistakes. trust me, i know ... i used to be such a save and reload for better results type!!!

 

[Priah]

Id recommend moving up in difficulty as quickly as possible. I started civ4 on prince, and it took me a few games to get the hang of that pretty quickly, then moved on to monarch. However, id been stuck on monarch a good month and a half. Finally, with the new wotm I tried an Immortal game and I actually held my own pretty easily and got second in score rating by ad. You learn a lot by challenging yourself.

 

[TRJS]

Saketh,

Sounds like we are on a similar skill level. I have only just played my first Prince game. The GOTM which I managed to win.

I learnt a hell of a lot from reading the All Leader Challenge threads (ALC). They are like reading a book on each Civ played and provided me with great insights.

The other way I am learning is trying to win with new leaders so I can see how each trait strength and weakness might work.

Good Luck

 

[Ecofarm]

I am struggling with the same issues and I think the quest to balance these things is nearly universal. Harbourboy's suggestion sounds genius, and I will do that myself. For a look at these same issues, check out the thread "Builders plz help w/suggestions".

The *political master* game sounds like great fun!

 

[cabert]

harbourboy's suggestion is good, although I would be a little less extreme.

About opening strategies, I'm still a bit weak myself. But the single best way to improve that is to give yourself a clear goal.
Something like "4 cities at 1 AD, 6 workers and Code of laws in".
Roll a map, play it once. Note how far you're from your goal (if you achieve your own goal, maybe you were not ambitious enough ).
Then try a different strat on the same map.
Again, and again.
Until you think you have it right. Note that the openings differ from one leader to another.

Among the opening strats here are a few radically different strats I use, for different kind of games:
- peaceful building, teching towards my immediate needs (I have corn, I research agri), minimal fogbusting
- teching to bronze or HA or both, building 1 worker and 1 second city, taking the rest from neighbours
- religiously cultural = don't bother with workers for a while. Units and settlers for the landgrab, teching to religions for a cultural rush.
- Oracling Code of laws.
- GW "first", then settlers without real protection
- moving the settler towards an AI, then rushing him
- worker stealing
...
Try out your own openings with one leader. This will show you how to focus on your traits/UU/UB or not.
For example, you can read futurehermit's opening with gandhi.
Or Sirian and sulla's classical "spain on a lake".

 

[Chemtech]

I'm having problems with the jump to prince - looking at the difficulty modifiers I'm not really sure why - with a decent start I would win most of my noble games - losses were usually a result of a single bad decision mid game usually in diplomacy. I did tend to win most of my games via space race with significant point advantages but usually only 10-15 turns ahead of the second civ into space.

My weak point seems to be the use of specialists and/or tech. I obsessively focus on getting a tech lead and yet 1/2 the time I find myself in near parity with some pissant little civ with 1/2 as many cities. I'm able to overcome this in Nobel but I am getting my ass handed to me on Prince.

I understand what type of terrain makes a decent SE city or a CE city - on Noble I would typically hit 400-500 GPT with the science slider at or above 80%.

I've tried about a dozen starts on Prince and I've even had some pretty good starts taking out a nearby civ - but I am frequently at a tech disadvantage by the time if I try military and if I try tech the computer seems to out-expand me by large margins. The worst part seems to be a remote start where I feel I'm doing just about everything right - expanding and teching efficiently and I proceed to get "discovered" by nearly every other civ in the game and 1/2 of them have a significant (30-50%) point lead on me.

Guess I need to read lots more...

 

[cabert]

I'm having problems with the jump to prince - looking at the difficulty modifiers I'm not really sure why - with a decent start I would win most of my noble games - losses were usually a result of a single bad decision mid game usually in diplomacy. I did tend to win most of my games via space race with significant point advantages but usually only 10-15 turns ahead of the second civ into space.

you should be able to win any noble game, even with a totally crappy start.
And you should be able to win by :
- culture
- military (conquest is easy but a bit tedious, domination is harder but more fun)
- diplomacy
- space

I don't say you need to do this before going to prince, but I say you cannot claim to be comfortable at a level if you don't manage one of those.
IMHO, it better to go for prince. It's the first "difficult" level, and what works at prince often works above, while what works at noble is very likely to be useless above.

My weak point seems to be the use of specialists and/or tech. I obsessively focus on getting a tech lead and yet 1/2 the time I find myself in near parity with some pissant little civ with 1/2 as many cities. I'm able to overcome this in Nobel but I am getting my ass handed to me on Prince.

Tech lead at prince is easy, provided :
- you focus a bit on your economy (= either SE, CE or anything in between, but don't expect the techs to flow in without any effort towards either commerce or beakers or GPs)
- you have a strong trade policy (=knowing what you're going to trade for what, what you're keeping for yourself, and what you're ready to miss for a while)

I understand what type of terrain makes a decent SE city or a CE city - on Noble I would typically hit 400-500 GPT with the science slider at or above 80%.

When?
In 1800 AD, you want 500 beakers/turn from your science city alone.
In 4000 BC, 10 beakers/turn is great.

I've tried about a dozen starts on Prince and I've even had some pretty good starts taking out a nearby civ - but I am frequently at a tech disadvantage by the time if I try military and if I try tech the computer seems to out-expand me by large margins. The worst part seems to be a remote start where I feel I'm doing just about everything right - expanding and teching efficiently and I proceed to get "discovered" by nearly every other civ in the game and 1/2 of them have a significant (30-50%) point lead on me.

the most common mistake, leading to what you describe, is lacking workers.
If you want to grow fast and good, you need loads of workers.
When in doubt, build a worker

Guess I need to read lots more...

reading is fine, if you select what you read :
- good SGs
- good GotMs spoilers
- the early ALCs are played at prince level