How the heck do I beat Noble?

[YuriPup]

Been trying to beat noble for a while...

I rolled back to Warlord and stomped (at least I think I did, I only scored Warren Harding, IIRC).

Anyway I am just getting creamed on Noble.

Now I do seem to be weak at fighting wars (heck I still don't have warlord or domination victories) but I turtle up well enough--on Warlord at least that Space or Cultural victories aren't a real challenge.

 

[Tiepolo]

Could you post a save or perhaps some screen shots?

Check out the War Academy too, lots of helpful guides. http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/

 

[MosheLevi]

I am no expert myself but I noticed that in order to win wars you need to attack with very large stacks when you try to conquer cities.

First bombard the city with your siege units to decrease its defense bonus to zero.
The AI cannot retaliate yet and will not attack your stack if it is a large one.

Then attack with your siege units first.
Half of them should have city attack promotion and half should have collateral damage promotion.
You should attack first with the siege units that have collateral damage.
These are your suicide units and their main objective is to cause collateral damage and reduce the strength of as many enemy units as possible.

You then attack with the siege units that have city attack promotion.
These siege units should survive the attack.
However, you may want to attack with other strong units first.
So it is a good idea to cycle through your units and check the unit battle prediction via the ALT key.

You may lose more units than the AI but large stacks will insure victory.

It is also a good idea to use spies in enemy territory to detect weak spot for pillaging.
I always use a few cavalry units to pillage tiles behind enemy lines while my main army attacks one of the cities.

It will slow down the AI in the long run and give you an advantage.

 

[slobberinbear]

Yuri, I suggest you go over to the Strategy and Tips forum and look at some of the articles and sample games.

The first thing to understand is that Civ IV is an economic game at its heart. If you focus on making your cities better, you will be in a much better position to win the game. This means several things:

1. settling your cities in good locations. Try to position them to get food and other bonus resources, then learn the techs to harvest those resources.
2. this means building enough workers, preferably at least one per city.
3. build an army to prevent attack from the AI
4. learn military technologies and go to war when you have enough units. Good early military technologies are Bronze Working, Animal Husbandry, Iron Working, and Construction.
5. slow down your gameplay and take the time to look at your trade opportunities.
6. don't overdo the buildings in your cities. Just build the ones you need. When in doubt, make units.
7. don't build wonders at the expense of not building cities or an army. Wonders are a luxury and fun to get, but can distract you.

I hope this helps.

 

[YuriPup]

6. don't overdo the buildings in your cities. Just build the ones you need. When in doubt, make units.

I hope this helps.

That is probably the biggest one I have to keep in mind.

I regularly have 10s of gold coming in with 100% research--probably a trait I inherited from earlier Civ games.

I should running something like 70-80% research and 5g/turn, from what you are saying.

My armies are almost always smallest on the board.

Annoyingly enough, the last Noble game, I thought I had an ok sized army until Peter attacked with tanks and helicopters--it seemed like 30+ units in the end.

I was sad, and wiped out.

 

[Phorever Phalanx]

I actually think the biggest jump is between Warlord and Noble. On a random map type/civ I can win Warlord about 95% of the time, but less than 50% at Noble. Things like starting position, the nearby civs, and early random events can make a huge difference.

 

[Supr49er]

Welcome to the Forums MosheLevi.

 

[Smartbluma]

Several Tips:

1. Are you developing a good economy? Read up on the CE and the SE guides if you are puzzled.

2. When in peace, prepare for war. One of the mistakes of people is that they don't build an army early. The army should either take enemy cities for your own benefit or protect your own territory against a warmonger. After I build the initial settlers and workers I build Barracks and my army once I hook up iron. My army consists of:

2 spearmen (Anti-mounted, it may help if one of the spearmen has Combat 1 and Medic 1)
2 axemen (Countering enemy swords and other axemen)
8-12+ swordmen (Butcher up the archers and cavalry)
2 archers (To defend captured cities)
and 4 catapults (Lower defence in cities)

Or if you have the espionage points available, bring a spy along instead of siege. Why? Because if you bring the spy into a highly defended city, you can invoke a riot for one turn and the defense turns into 0%. I think it is sufficient enough as siege weapons but getting the espionage points without sacrificing research would be hard

EDIT: Try something new once in a while. Try a different strategy, like REXing. Get Catherine (Cre/Imp) and spam settlers to claim as much land as possible. Tweaking your plan slightly can surprise you.

 

[MosheLevi]

Welcome to the Forums MosheLevi.

Thank you Supr49er, I am glad to be here.

I have been playing the Total War serious for years and I must say that CIV 4 is much more strategic on the campaign map.
I have read many CIV 4 strategy articles and it is just amazing how deep the strategy in CIV 4 is.

If I may add a few more tips:

It is always better to initiate wars yourself on your own terms instead of waiting to be surprised by the AI.
For that reason Diplomacy is very important.
It is very important to decide ahead of time who you want to have good relationship with and who to go to war against.

Go to war against one opponent at a time and make sure that you have technologic advantage against such opponent.
It is always a good idea to go to war once you mass powerful new units that your opponent has no access to.

 

[6K Man]

That is probably the biggest one I have to keep in mind.

I regularly have 10s of gold coming in with 100% research--probably a trait I inherited from earlier Civ games.

I should running something like 70-80% research and 5g/turn, from what you are saying.

My armies are almost always smallest on the board.

Annoyingly enough, the last Noble game, I thought I had an ok sized army until Peter attacked with tanks and helicopters--it seemed like 30+ units in the end.

I was sad, and wiped out.

A few points:

Generally - in the early game you should expand a lot more, until your research is running at 50% or even less. Your research rate isn't as important as your actual beaker output per turn, and even if you need to drop the research rate quite low, you can whip out libraries and run scientists to make up for the low rate. (and if you're coastal, getting the Great Lighthouse will help you expand MUCH further without going broke)

You need a lot more units. Try to have at least one city dedicated to building nothing but units, or related improvements (barracks, forge, drydock, etc). A stack of 30 units in the modern age isn't that substantial. If you see the AIs pulling away on the "Power" graph, then it's time to build more units or substantially upgrade the ones you have.

There is relatively little you can do with money, compared with previous Civ games. Upgrading units tends to be very expensive, and rushbuying with cash is only feasible in the late game under the Suffrage civic. If you are in BtS, you may want to keep some cash around for events, but normally, it's better to run as close to 0 cash on hand as you can.

 

[Abegweit]

If you are not beating Noble, then you are not developing your economy properly. It is as simple as that. So practice that part of the game. Listen to the words of our salivating Ursine friend. For the purposes of practice, let me add some more advice.

Forget wonders. They are a distraction to your practice.

Forget the religious line. Let the AI found the religions. Adopt whichever one your friends have, or stay out of the religious wars altogether.

Initial tech path should generally be whatever brings food to your neighbourhood, followed by bronze working and a beeline through math to CS. Depending on your situation, you will probably want to slip in one or two techs along the way. Sailing, IW, Calendar and Construction are some possibilities.

Start by training a worker about 90% of the time. The main exceptions is when he will have nothing to do because you don't have the techs yet or when you want a work boat instead. If you do start with a boat, move your citizen to the highest hammer tile you have in order to get it out ASAP.

A good rule of thumb is to let your capital grow to size three (train several warriors for exploration, MP duty and fogbusting) and then train another. Grow more (the exact amount depends on how much food you have) before your first settler.

As soon as you have writing, build (or preferably, chop) a library somewhere and hire two scientists. The GS you generate should usually be burned on an Academy in the capital.

Granaries! Everywhere.

Learn to use the whip. And always whip for at least two pop at a time.

Every city should have at least one food resource (Flood plains count) and try to place them so that they have other resources as well.

Keep working at it until you have at least eight cities at 1AD.

 

[oilnwater]

8 cities and 1AD sounds pretty tough to do, at least the way i play. how are you even supporting an 8 city economy at that stage, especially if you arent founding any religion or building any wonders, which rules out any possible holy church income? are you already capturing holy cities by 1AD? if so, you'd definitely romp me in multi.

 

[Abegweit]

8 cities and 1AD sounds pretty tough to do, at least the way i play. how are you even supporting an 8 city economy at that stage, especially if you arent founding any religion or building any wonders, which rules out any possible holy church income? are you already capturing holy cities by 1AD? if so, you'd definitely romp me in multi.

I was going to say ten.

No wars. Wars don't teach you how to handle your economy. This is strictly about peaceful expansion.

As for preventing the crash, my preferred method is to build libraries in several cities and hire scientists.

 

[Evil Beejeebers]

I've recently moved up to noble too the best tip I think is the military city just building units non stop. and i sometimes when not having to go out of my way leave scouts in the psycho AIs(monty shaka such like) so i can try and keep up with them in numbers.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I was going to say ten.

No wars. Wars don't teach you how to handle your economy. This is strictly about peaceful expansion.

As for preventing the crash, my preferred method is to build libraries in several cities and hire scientists.

When I captured 14 cities before 100 AD on emperor I'd say it took knowing a thing or two about "economy".

Still, 8 is a reasonable goal by 1 AD, peacefully. The real answer is "as many as you can afford". That early in the game, you have few options other than commerce, which means cottages. What you really need in addition to that is enough to grow cities. Monarchy is a sound bet. On higher difficulties you can tech something else and trade for it...on noble you'll probably have to research it yourself...however cities are much cheaper to own on noble, so that shouldn't be too hard.

Libraries are good for temporary research and generating a perhaps much-needed great person, but libraries don't keep you out of strike. Merchants or cottages do that (shrines and such can help), and merchants aren't seen until currency or code of laws...cottages are usually the most efficient for that. Of course if you have enough commerce resources it's much easier...

Indeed, your best bet is looking at walkthroughs on strategy and tips. The game has a high learning curve and the best way to alleviate that issue is to see how games are played successfully.

 

[Abegweit]

When I captured 14 cities before 100 AD on emperor I'd say it took knowing a thing or two about "economy".

No question. It certainly does. However, my original point remains. If you can't beat Noble, that means you don't know how to manage your economy. Period. My posts have been about how to manage your economy. All the military prowess in the world won't help you if you can't manage your economy.

Still, 8 is a reasonable goal by 1 AD, peacefully.

Actually it's not. On another thread, Iranon said he wants to have 12 on Immortal - and I agree with him. However, my objective here was to show how to beat Noble (and to graduate to Emperor real quick). An obsession with military simply doesn't do that. You have to learn how to manage your economy.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

No question. It certainly does. However, my original point remains. If you can't beat Noble, that means you don't know how to manage your economy. Period. My posts have been about how to manage your economy. All the military prowess in the world won't help you if you can't manage your economy.

Actually it's not. On another thread, Iranon said he wants to have 12 on Immortal - and I agree with him. However, my objective here was to show how to beat Noble (and to graduate to Emperor real quick). An obsession with military simply doesn't do that. You have to learn how to manage your economy.

I said 8 keeping the difficulty in mind. Cities cost way less on noble, and the AI doesn't box you in at the same rate so your initial cities don't have to be settled to box them out, meaning they cost less still.

Iranon plays a very specific kind of game ----> he packs cities quite tightly and uses the whip and sharing tiles between cities to get the most out of the land he gets. That's certainly a viable approach at immortal but it isn't the only one that works! Same goes for noble...but as you've said noble players won't get anywhere without securing some basics first.

 

[zeolite]

4. learn military technologies and go to war when you have enough units. Good early military technologies are Bronze Working, Animal Husbandry, Iron Working, and Construction.

Why is AH classed as a military technology?

 

[fed1943]

Because it shows horses.

Best regards,

 

[Snorrius]

My armies are almost always smallest on the board.

Annoyingly enough, the last Noble game, I thought I had an ok sized army until Peter attacked with tanks and helicopters--it seemed like 30+ units in the end.

I was sad, and wiped out.

I also have similar problem. I have started to play BtS recently and there are a lot of to keep in mind! In my current game I share continent with Charlemagne and Hammurapi. Both made significant land grab and significant army. We share common religion but I do not believe them at all. And instead of building useful buildings I have to made new and new units just to keep parity (though if Charle will attack me, it may be the end I suppose).