How many games before you starting winning on Noble?

[Jatta Pake]

Just for the record, I'm new to Civ4 with BTS. I jumped right in after this most recent patch and started founding civilizations.

Frankly, I'm overwhelmed with the level of detail, in the game and on these boards. I've been reading strategy guides for days now, and I can't quite grasp how to win. So many flavors.

Here's how my games have gone so far. Were you much different as a noobie?

Game 1: I played like it was Civ3. Founded 16 cities, no cottages, and my economy collapsed. Started a war with a small northern neighbor and watched him eat my military alive. Gave up.

Game 2: Started in the Arctic with six neighbors on each side. Lost my capital to Barbarians after founding my second city. Gave up.

Game 3: Lost to a Diplomatic Victory by the Incan who used Apostolic Palace. I had a peace filled game playing the Mali. I couldn't seem to ever acquire enough of an advantage tech-wise to do anything militarily. I just seemed to exist. Nothing major exciting happened between the other civs either.

Game 4: Decided to go war crazy and take out some civs with an early Rush. Founded three cities and let loose on Hannibal. He crushed my entire military and overwhelmed me. I gave up before losing the last city.

Game 5: Started at the tip of a five tile long penninsula blocked in by a peak. I couldn't explore so I gave up.

Game 6: Ahh, this was to be my game! I shared a continent with Cyrus but I had a lot of breathing room. I carefully nurtured "focused" cities which would handle the various components of my empire. Military city. Science city. Wonder city. Religion city. Built the Mausoleum! Finally, around 1400AD I ran out of room to grow. I turned on Cyrus like a rabid animal. I had an early victory taking his Ivory city. I now controlled all the world's known resources of Ivory.

But then we hit a stalemate. I couldn't push beyond the one city and he couldn't retake his lost city. We've had on again, off again wars now for three hundred years. I'd slaughter his stack and he'd slaughter my stack. I can't even see two-thirds of the planet, and a French caravel just came knocking.

I feel like if the game was only between me and Cyrus, I'd eventually beat him down in like 600 years. But I think my wars have left me drained of science oppurtunities.

Back to the drawing board...

 

[pholkhero]

play a succession game (or follow a couple) ~ guaranteed to improve your game !

 

[Jatta Pake]

I think anything will improve my game at this point!

Warfare is so strategic in Civ4. So much to consider with each move.

 

[Party]

What difficulty are you playing this on? I switch directly from years of civIII and didn't have nearly that much trouble!
*EDIT*
Okay, unnoobed myself, your playing on noble.
BTS is much more challenging then just civ4. Noble in BTW is roughly as hard as Monarch+ in civ4.
Just start easier and work your way up. I had to play many, many, many games on about warlord difficulty before I learned enough to move up.

 

[Psyringe]

Don't despair. You're in the middle of a migration process. Naturally, it will take some time before you un-learned old strategies which no longer work, and adapt to the new elements of gameplay.

The typical first Civ4 game for a player coming from Civ3 goes like this: You start building cities like mad, overexpand, can't pay the maintenance, your economy goes down the drain, and then either all your units go on strike and some AI picks off your cities, or you fall back in tech so far that the game is a lost case.

The second crucial lesson that players migrating from Civ3 have to learn is the importance of promotions and unit-specific bonuses. Having City raider promotions is a huge advantage when fighting against enemies fortified behind city walls. Don't attack with axemen when your neighbor has lots of chariots running around (because these have a 100% bonus when attacking axemen). And so on.

There are many more lessons to learn, like using specialists effectively, using religion, choosing civics, etc. But the first two are the real important ones. You can win without specialists, you can win without religion, but you can't win when you keep crashing your economy or building the wrong units for the situation at hand.

My guess is that you'll win either your current game (depending on whether the other, yet hidden civs in the game managed to advance peacefully and trade techs a lot), or one of your next two games, and then start to get the feeling that you're getting a grip on the game.

Regarding your current game, it sounds as if you should have either built more units (if preparing for war, building soldiers in a science city is not a shame), or should have promoted them better. On Noble, it should be possible to win against a single AI on the same continent. You didn't get the most easy target for that approach though, Cyrus tends to build a rather large army.

 

[Merkinball]

Do you really think Noble on BtS is like Monarch on vanilla? Is that serious?

I'm winning earlier than ever with BtS thanks mainly to corporations (but city specialization has improved, and I'm dabbling in hybrid economies now.)

 

[MrTomothy]

I won my first Noble game. I wanted to do the Earth 18 civ scenario in vanilla, but didn't see the option to change difficulty, so I just went with it, and won with Elizabeth, my now favorite leader.

And I have been consistently winning since. ^___^


Prince, however, is a different story...

 

[Party]

I won my first Noble game. I wanted to do the Earth 18 civ scenario in vanilla, but didn't see the option to change difficulty, so I just went with it, and won with Elizabeth, my now favorite leader.

And I have been consistently winning since. ^___^


Prince, however, is a different story...

Yep, noble in vanilla isn't that hard. Noble in BTS is much, much more challenging.

Do you really think Noble on BtS is like Monarch on vanilla? Is that serious?

I'm winning earlier than ever with BtS thanks mainly to corporations (but city specialization has improved, and I'm dabbling in hybrid economies now.)

Yes, I really do. Corporations I love but have never had much luck with, every other civ chooses civic that block corporations and it's hard to get them to switch. Keep trying I guess, but for me it's easier to just send a nuke followed by a few tanks in to crash their economies.

 

[So-So Scientest]

What leader are you? Playing to the strengths has helped me a lot. That and learning how to really use religion have completely changed my success rate. I used to never spread or really use religion and just shoot quickly to free religion for its diplomatic value, now I avoid scientific method to fully exploit my religious benefits.

 

[Dida]

Playing my first BtS v3.13 game on monarch. Faced the "monstrous Qin" issue, but now after waging the 3000-year war I have conquered him and ruled the entire continent. Still a little bit behind in tech compared to 5 other civs on a larger continent,but I am well on the way to winning this game.

 

[Desert-Fox]

Start playing on lower levels if you can't, perhaps even on settler level, learn, how civ4 works and when you play well on settler, move up to chieftain... if you win on it move up to warlords... Civ4 is not Civ3, settler spamming is not a very good idea for example... also you have to know what to research because you do not need every tech in era to get into next as it was in civ3. If you have no horses then you may skip horseback riding for example. Also you can delay some unneeded tech or completely skip dead end ones when you do not need. I usually do not have divine right in 21th century... unless I got internet and learn this from it.

 

[Tusk]

I feel like if the game was only between me and Cyrus, I'd eventually beat him down in like 600 years. But I think my wars have left me drained of science oppurtunities.

Back to the drawing board...

One thing I've learned from 13 years of Civ playing, is that in each game - even the venerable Civ1 - getting caught up in a long, drawn-out war of attrition is sure to leave you half-dead for the other AI players to have their way with you. Pick your fights carefully - if you are not reasonably sure of a quick total victory, don't even bother.

And I agree with the posters above - pay special attention to unit promos and bonuses, they make a HUGE difference. When I switched from Civ 3 I kind of ignored this in my first few games and sent many, many units to needless deaths.

 

[classical_hero]

I won my first Noble game. I wanted to do the Earth 18 civ scenario in vanilla, but didn't see the option to change difficulty, so I just went with it, and won with Elizabeth, my now favorite leader.

And I have been consistently winning since. ^___^


Prince, however, is a different story...

I am in the same boat. I can win easily on Noble but going up to prince means that I still struggle against the Ai.

 

[ezwip]

You have to defend your cities too. If you leave them open the AI is sure to attack you. It is much improved even on noble.

 

[troytheface]

There are many posts on here about how to improve gameplay. However, there are many that give themselves Rome, set the map style, ect.
In other words many that play on higher levels (speculation) give themselves
conditions which are favorable. (I never play rome or the Mongols-had really ez wins with them)

There is another group that know all the calculations- cottage specs v
Farm specs. ect. This coupled with tried military tactics propel them to higher levels- (think most play random civs- no need for stacking the deck for these fellows...)

Personally i try to make it harder for meself on Prince rather then level up.
But in so far as advice- try to build the Great Wall- good benefits with that and you should stay alive in the beginning at least.
Also i suggest that you keep losing for awhile- someone once wrote that a good chess player doesn't get anywhere til they've lost a thousand games.

Almost all the advice written share two things in comon- specialize your cities, give yourself a win goal (domination, diplomatic ect.)

But i'll suggest something else.....
Automate your workers (most will disagree on this - but my reasoning is that automation is better in 4- it frees you up to concentrate on other things- it lets you see what the ai prioritizes-
-it makes it harder ) build the great wall, skip religion founding and get catapults afor you attack a civ (or not- in this version you don't neccessarily have to attack your nieghbor - diplomacy is better and more fun in 4- while many argue that killing your neighbor is still the best way to victory i had a game where i didn't do that and ended up with an ally for the whole game.-

In short- experiment a bit and lose- much more fun anyway and you may find something you can tell others about.

 

[thelibra]

Howdy, and welcome. I made the same exact mistakes coming from Civ3 way back when, and while I'm still not an expert by any stretch, I can now regularly win on Prince, and while I can't regularly win Monarch yet, I am starting to be able to keep pace with the AIs.

Some advice I can give to the new Civ4 BTS player:

1.) Set your leader, landmass, everything, to random. Play the hand as it is dealt. This will force you to not only learn how to play each leader, and the most effective strategies for each, but it will also teach you how to deal with things like crappy starting positions, being surrounded by 4 warmongers (my most recent game I had, on each side of my landlocked capital, Shaka, Monty, Alexander, and Tokugowa. THAT Sucked, but I learned a LOT from trying to deal with the situation), starting with resources outside of your starting techs, lack of fresh water, etc...

2.) Regardless of placement, unless it's an impossible lay (like a 3-square tundra island with no connecting islands for galleys to travel), don't regenerate the map. Trust me. You'll eventually get to the point where you do nothing but spend 2 hours regenning, hoping for that perfect sweet spot. Remember you can always change your capital later.

3.) In warfare, and it took me till last night to well and truly realize this, raze your enemy's cities in a ring around the city you want to take BEFORE you take it. If your enemy has a city that borders your east, and you wants it, then you need to FIRST raze the city to the north, east and south of that city. This serves two purposes: it cuts off the cultural stranglehold that they would otherwise place on your newly capture city, and it prevents you from having to divide your stack between city defense of the new city, and warmongering. Once you've raised those 3 cities and taken the 4th, obtain a peace treaty as quickly as possible, and then fortify that city, replentish your stack, let the war weariness fade away, and 10 turns after the treaty, if you want some more to eat, declare war again. This will help you avoid those several-hundred years wars.

4.) Learn your civics intimately, which ones to shoot for (depending on your strategy for that game) and when to switch civics. Just because you unlocked a civic with a tech doesn't mean you need to switch. I almost never switch to slavery, for instance, unless I've got a Spiritual Leader. Also, never accept the "should we switch to blahblahblah?" civic question. Never. Always look at the big picture, because many civics work in synergy.

5.) War stacks (big ol' group o' units), unlike Civ3, shouldn't just consist of a lot of one unit. You need to diversify. In combat, stack against stack, it will always place the best defender against the person attacking. So, your stack of 5 swordsmen could also use a couple of archers, spearmen, and axemen tagging along. Not only will they help defend your stack against attack, they might just tip a battle in your favor if a city defense is only composed of something they have a bonus against.

6.) Plan your wonders way way way ahead of time. Once you know what leader you are playing, and where your starting capital is, I recommend reading through all the wonders in the PDF file "PDF: Civ4 BtS reference sheet !!!" stickied near the top of this forum, and figure out which wonders will best suppliment your strategy. Going for being a tech God? Pyramids early on is almost a must-have, but Stonehenge isn't. Going for a warmongering strategy? Pentagon and Angkor Wat are critical. Looking to be a Great Person farm? Better build that Parthenon. However, remember that your civilization is not their collective wonders. I've played (and won) many a game without ever once building a wonder.

7.) It's -almost- always a good idea to keep your tech tree pointed at your unique unit (UU) and unique building (UB). These are not critical. Just like wonders, I've played and won many a game without using them, but a lot of them help a lot and nicely compliment your leader. Don't be fooled by some of these UU's or UB's that look useless. The Khmer's +1 food aquaduct may look like a ******** feature until you consider that effectively translates into an extra population hammer unit, cottage unit, or specialist per city, or faster growth.

8.) Don't get hemmed up on religions unless THAT is your primary strategy. Otherwise, they are a waste of valuable turns that could be better spent developing infrastructure or military technology for your city. If your long-term strategy though is to dominate the religious world, then you'd best devote yourself to this pursuit wholeheartedly, and try to get all the religions you can, as these will be your primary competition if someone else founds them first. The Meditation (Buddhism), Priesthood, Oracle Wonder slingshot to Code of Laws (Confucianism), is a nice early monopoly on all but Hinduism, and gives you a path to Taoism, but remember you need "Writing" for your religion to actually spread to other countries.

9.) If it's obvious you're going to lose, experiment a bit before giving up. Since the game is lost anyway, try something outrageous and do something you'd never otherwise have tried, just to see what happens. You probably won't turn the game around, but you might learn a new trick.

10.) Study the diplomacy between nations carefully before each turn, find out what everyone thinks of everyone else. Use a notepad if need be. Find two leaders who get along well with each other and that stay that way, and befriend them. Let these two be your core diplomatic relations, and refuse trade with their enemies. Ascede to their demands when reasonable, and try to cultivate as high a friendship as possible without giving them the game. It would also be a good idea not to share a border with either of them. When possible, I try to pick my allies from other islands/continents. That way their wars don't affect me, even when I wardec their enemies, and we never get the "Our Close Borders Spark Tensions" penalty to diplomacy.

I hope this helps in the transition. Other people have already mentioned some good advice, and you yourself have learned what having too many cities does. A good guideline is however many cities you can control while keeping a 70% research slider rate.

 

[troytheface]

another aspect of point 1 from Libra is by playing random you will learn about who you may face in the future. I think Atilla lived with the Romans -learning how to beat them in the process. (Hannible adopted Roman style army formations during the 2nd Punic War)
(Unless you prefer to forgo that notion and choose to stick with one civ and refine play with a specific set of traits-if that is the case then really try to refine it-)

Which leads to ... Spies....have some fun with spies and at least know your rival's strength and position.

And too- i realized no one really answered the title of the post - "how many games til you start winning on noble?" ....i say ....17. If your at #16 , play rome.

 

[SPQR300]

My first game ever was on Settler, but I won my second game on noble . It was not that hard at all in vanilla.

 

[Roxlimn]

Shrug. I had my first game on Warlords on Noble and aced it. I moved up to Prince in Warlords and started winning consistently after the third game. Went to BTS and still winning pretty consistently on Prince. I haven't lost yet, and I take whatever start I get. I guess it's because I never really bought into all the gamist silly strategies that worked on Civ3. Even in the previous incarnation, I diversified my stacks and didn't do ICS. Those things worked, but it just galled me to do it.


During my first few games in Civ4, I noticed the following changes. Adapting to these changes will improve your win chances immediately.


1. Cottages, not Roads, generate commerce. You need them. Unlike in Civ3 where roads generated commerce, in Civ4, Cottages generate commerce. That's the first change I noted and I took it to heart immediately. Spam your cottages like you did your roads and you'll do fine on Noble.


2. Civics change game premises. You know how governments used to be in Civ3? Nix everything you know. They won't help you here. Civics in Civ4 is more like government in Alpha Centauri. To give you an idea of how incredible Civics improve your position, here are a few samples:

+3 happy faces in your 5 biggest cities
+1 happy for every military unit in a city. You read that right: no limit.
+2 Commerce for every mature Cottage (Towns - Civ4's mature roads). That's like a double strength Civ3 Colossus in every city.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. You need to familiarize yourself with the Civics. Take Spiritual Civs for your first 10 games. The lack of anarchy will allow you to experiment with Civics more freely.


3. You need Siege Units to take cities. These units are not optional. If you don't take Siege units, your stack will die. City Defense is that percentage you read under each city name on the big screen. Part of it is Cultural, part of it is Walls and Castles. That's how much of a defense bonus each unit in that city receives. Attacking +60% defense head on is basically suicide. It doesn't matter how many units you have. You'll lose 8 for each defender you take down.


4. Promotions matter. Promotions are like special abilities each unit can receive. It's like each unit you have is a potential "UU." The most important promotions you need to know about are these:

City Raider: improves the strength of units that are attacking cities. You will need City Raider specialists to minimize casualties on the attack. Yes, this assumes that you've already used Siege Units. City Raider won't help much in cracking a city with full defenses.

Medic: Units heal insanely fast in friendly territory. Units in enemy territory don't heal for most practical purposes. Medic units give your stack healing capacity to help even the odds. Each stack needs to have a unit with the Medic I or II promotion, if available.

Anti-X: Promotions that basically say "melee-killer" or "archer-killer," or whatever-killer. Pay attention to this. Almost all units in the game have some native ability that specializes them for defeating certain units whether on the attack or on defense. A Spearman will have advantages against Mounted Units, regardless of whether it's attacking or defending. Promotions of this nature improve these specializations or diversify specialized units.

Highly promoted units are bad-ass. Seriously so. Acquire them yourself, avoid them in battle, or take them down with great prejudice.


5. Almost all units have a counter-unit. Units in Civ4 are not categorized by Offense/Defense. Instead, they only have one number and their special qualities determines which units they're good against. Whether on offense or defense doesn't matter, unless the unit's special abilities themselves say so (such as +100% on defense, or something). Read the Civilopedia about all units you see on the field.


6. You can predict the odds that your attacking unit will win a battle. Simply press the "go-to" button on the interface and mouse over the defending unit. Alternatively, you can press the "alt" button and mouse over the defending unit. A pop-up window will show you your odds of winning.


7. You can tweak the interface to always show tile production. Until you win consistently on Noble, you should probably always have this feature on. It will help to show you which tiles are producing what and in what quantity. You will not know this from your experience in Civ3. You need to refamiliarize yourself. No tile improvement is available for free. Each is tied to a tech you need to have. Moreover, techs and Civics down the tech-tree modify how improvements perform. This means that you will occasionally have good reason to rework a tile that's already improved so that it will have a different (presumably better) improvement.


8. Big cities are the ticket to winning. They've killed ICS definitively. In Civ4, buildings do not have maintenance costs. Yup, you read that right. No building in Civ4 costs you money to maintain. Cities have maintenance costs, and this cost is tied to your current Civic, the overall size of your empire, and the distance it is from the Capital. This means that maintaining new cities and particularly new faraway cities costs you money. This means that in many situations, you will have an optimum Civ size and each city beyond that simply drains your strength without really any benefits. Remember this when you go to war. If the city doesn't seem worth the additional maintenance costs, raze it.



Those are the basics. Don't confuse yourself with complicated strategems and techniques at Noble. You still need to nail the basics down pat. Once you're familiar with the game, you can get fancy.

 

[Horace]

^ seems like sense to me.
I would just add DONT automate your workers. Its crucial in the early game to have control over what they are doing. You want a nice juicy food tile up early (you usually have a cow or something around your city) and you want to be using slavery and chopping to boost your early production.

I also favour taking out a nearby civ relatively early to give you another capital and to free up some land to expand into