I am freaking terrible at this game

[Silock]

For some reason, I just can't seem to get the hang of Noble. I generally have 7-8 cities, a good tech lead, one production city, a GP farm and a cottage economy, but I still can't win before the timer runs out. I dislike war, but is it just a necessary evil if you want to win with any kind of speed? I generally find that even though I have one city constantly pumping out units, if I attack someone, I'm too vulnerable at home. Do I need more than one city pumping units? Tech really isn't a problem, as I generally have enough money to leave the science slider at 100% and still make money.

What am I doing wrong? As soon as I build the UN, I don't get voted the diplomatic victory because my population isn't as high as the computer's is. Do I need even MORE cities?

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

Check my walkthrough.

 

[haphazard1]

Silock,

A lot depends on the settings for a game. When you say you usually have 7 or 8 cities, what is the map size? On a small map this is very good; on a huge map this is not nearly enough. Is there more land available for the taking, or has it all been claimed by other civs?

You sound like you have the basics down pretty well -- initial expansion, getting a tech lead, keeping your cash flow strong and your tech slider high, specializing your cities. So I am not sure just what is not working.

One possibility is that you should found (or capture) more cities -- my general rule is that if I am positive cash per turn with my tech slider at 70% or higher, I can afford more cities. Cities cost money, but they produce beakers and units and control territory and resources. More is usually better, as long as you can afford them. Since you say you are keeping your finances under control, this should be considered.

How strong are your cities? How large do you grow them, are they paying for themselves, do you have happiness or health issues with your citizens? What buildings do you build in them? Every city should be contributing something to your empire -- not right at first, perhaps, but certainly after it has had a few dozen turns to grow. You should know what it will contribute before you found it (or capture it).

On military, the AI is much stronger on defense than when Civ IV was first released -- many improvements have been made and conquest can be tough. If I am going to war, I usually have almost all my cities building military -- at least for a while, as I prepare my attack force. I will usually keep several cities turning out troops throughout any conflict -- your forces always gets drained, from losses in battle to garrisons for captured cities to units out for a while healing, etc. Units, units, and more units is the way to go -- military efforts are often about momentum, and having 50% more units can lead to much more than 50% faster conquest.

On diplomacy, there are a ton of factors which affect whether civs will vote for you. I find diplo victories rather frustrating, actually, as civs you have helped and gifted and worked with all game end up abstaining (or even voting against you) while other civs you never made a real effort with end up voting for you. But if you do not have enough pop...that generally means you need more cities, and bigger cities. Take them from your enemies if you have to.

Anyway, just some thoughts from an Emperor-level gamer who used to struggle on Noble. I've learned a huge amount from these forums, and from reading (and later participating in) the game of the month and succession game of the month threads.

If you can provide some more details, or specific examples of things that caused problems, that would allow for more specific advice.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Without knowing anything else, if you are managing to stay in positive cash flow at 100% science then you are not pushing your economy hard enough. Generally the solution to this is build more cities or more units.

Another very generic tip is to build more workers. Aim for at least 1.5 per city, especially in the early parts of the game like when you have at least 2 cities.

 

[Silock]

Check my walkthrough.

Will do, thanks.

Silock,

A lot depends on the settings for a game. When you say you usually have 7 or 8 cities, what is the map size? On a small map this is very good; on a huge map this is not nearly enough. Is there more land available for the taking, or has it all been claimed by other civs?

I play on the Standard map size. Usually by the time I get 6 cities or so, most of the spots have been claimed by other civs. Should I just go grab those cities?

How strong are your cities? How large do you grow them, are they paying for themselves, do you have happiness or health issues with your citizens? What buildings do you build in them?

My cities generally tend to be around 20 pop, and usually do have a few unhappy citizens that I'm just not sure how to get rid of. If I do more specialists, it starts starving. I have the standard happiness and health improvements.

If you can provide some more details, or specific examples of things that caused problems, that would allow for more specific advice.

I'll be able to sit down and play another game in the next couple of days and will post where I'm getting stuck. Thanks!

Another very generic tip is to build more workers. Aim for at least 1.5 per city, especially in the early parts of the game like when you have at least 2 cities.

Yeah, I always have plenty of workers, but they always end up piling up in my cities doing nothing. Should I delete them?

 

[PieceOfMind]

Yeah, I always have plenty of workers, but they always end up piling up in my cities doing nothing. Should I delete them?

That might have something to do with the fact you're not building enough cities. Those workers could be improving new new cities. Deleting workers shouldn't be necessary most of the time.

 

[Silock]

That might have something to do with the fact you're not building enough cities. Those workers could be improving new new cities. Deleting workers shouldn't be necessary most of the time.

Well, that's what I was wondering, but I'm usually out of space on a standard map. Do I need to expand earlier? Do I just need to go to war and take some cities?

 

[PieceOfMind]

Well, that's what I was wondering, but I'm usually out of space on a standard map. Do I need to expand earlier? Do I just need to go to war and take some cities?

Honestly, it's hard to say much (at least anything that will be useful ) without seeing an actual save or at the very least a screenshot of your gameplay. It might be that you have enough cities - I just don't know.

 

[haphazard1]

I agree with PieceOfMind -- it is hard to say more without having more information.

But it sounds like you should be more aggressive expanding, grabbing more land during the unclaimed territory phase of the game. If your cash flow is very strong and your tech slider is high, then you can afford more cities. Most people expand too fast and crash their economy, but that does not appear to be your problem.

And yes, building up your military and taking some more cities is often the way to go. You do not have to be a warmonger, but it often speeds up the game even if you do not go for a military victory (conquest or domination). More land means more pop (diplo victories), and more resources (useful for pretty much any victory type), and if well managed a larger empire means more total beakers per turn.

On workers, there is often a phase late in the game (after railroads) when your territory is pretty much fully improved: railroads on every tile, improvements (whichever ones you have chosen) on all usable tiles, etc. Then having a bunch of workers sitting around with nothing to do is common. But if this is happening earlier in the game, something is not right. You might actually have too many workers, which would mean more resources could go into other things (buildings, military, tech or culture). PieceOfMind's rule is about right (1.5 per city), although type of map and terrain can change this. Tropical map, lots of jungle -- more workers, up to 2.5 per city. Lots of plains and grassland, maybe a bit fewer are needed.

Size 20 cities are quite large. If you are having several unhappy citizens which stay unhappy (not just short term, until a building is finished or whatever), you can try several things. Slavery can be used to whip away the unhappy pop, although this causes short-term unhappiness and needs to be done carefully. You can also use Nationhood and draft those unhappy citizens -- again, this causes short term unhappiness so plan carefully.

Usually it is better to avoid growing into unhappiness, unless you already have plans in motion to boost your happy caps (more luxury resources, new buildings, religion spread, civics changes). Shift your worked tiles to produce less food to stop growth (usually boosting hammers or commerce instead), or use the avoid growth setting of the city governor. Or assign some population as specialists. Unhappy citizens do not produce anything, but still cost maintenance due to larger city size. So it is better not to have them, even if you have food to support them.

 

[Willem]

On a small map this is very good; on a huge map this is not nearly enough.

Even on a small map 6 cities is not enough. You need at least 8 in order to build the Forbidden Palace.

 

[Silu]

Even on a small map 6 cities is not enough. You need at least 8 in order to build the Forbidden Palace.

On Standard maps those certain national wonders, including the Forbidden Palace, require exactly 6 cities On bigger maps the thresholds increase. I usually keep the nat wonder threshold a minimum number of cities on the early expansion. Less can delay Oxford and that's bad.

 

[VirginiaRounder]

A diplomatic victory is darn near impossible to achieve late in the game with such a small nation. If you don't like war/expansion, you might want to think about going for a different type of victory, like cultural or space.

 

[Willem]

On Standard maps those certain national wonders, including the Forbidden Palace, require exactly 6 cities On bigger maps the thresholds increase. I usually keep the nat wonder threshold a minimum number of cities on the early expansion. Less can delay Oxford and that's bad.

You're mistaken. The Forbidden Palace always requires at least 8 cities, it's the number of Courthouses that fluctuates. From the XML file:

<iCitiesPrereq>8</iCitiesPrereq>

 

[Powerslave]

Yeah, it sounds like you don't have enough cities. That's not a game-stopper, but you need to know how to plan around this. In one really tense pangaea game, I managed to only settle one city, in addition to my capital. Later in that game, I was able to culturally flip several surrounding cities. Just before the AI blasted off, I was able to get a cultural victory, even though I had only two cities total for most of the game. I'm not sure, but I think that was a Tiny Pangaea... possibly Small.

In other games, I've been able to sneak in a diplomatic, cultural, or spaceship victory with half the cities of most of my opponents, either because I got shafted on my starting location and/or because I wanted to play a totally pacifist game. It's not easy, but it's definitely possible. For these types of challenging scenarios, I'd suggest that you micromanage each city to the best of your ability, because that's the one real advantage you have against the AI. Whereas the AI is randomly making farms, cottages, and workshops on its land, you need to plan ahead and make sure that you're doing the correct improvement. Your cities may need to take on several functions, so specializing too highly can be detrimental. Your commerce cities may be called upon to draft some units, for example. In that case, you're going to want a barracks in that commerce city, which is something that you might not usually do.

Small, cramped maps can be really fun, but they can also be frustrating, because you have to resort to warfare in order to have any breathing space at all. If you're not in the mood for the micromanagement and time investment of a major war, you can always try settings like "low water level" (most helpful on maps that aren't water-heavy, such as Archipelago), "massive continents" (in map scripts that support it, such as Hemispheres), or reducing the number of civilizations (but this is a rather drastic change and can cause unending hoards of barbarians to appear).

If the AI regularly has twice as many cities as you, then you need to work on your early game strategy. Pump out settlers, instead of offensive units, unless you're going to war. Aggressively seek out and attack any barb cities that you find. Pump out settlers from multiple cities, instead of just your capital. Make sure that you're working improved tiles, instead of forests. Settle everywhere that has more than two fresh, river tiles. Settle everywhere that gets a resource, as long as the city can grow to a half-decent size (say, a pop of 7 or 8, early on, and a pop of 13+ with Biology). Make sure that every single bonus resource in your land has a city working that tile, because most of those bonus resources give a lot of hammers and food! A horse on a plains tile, for example, will give you 1 food, 4 hammers, and 1 commerce (IIRC), which is a really, really nice tile for a production city. If the horse is on a fresh tile, and you're financial, then you get 1 food, 4 hammers, and 3 commerce! Not bad at all.

Try playing as an Imperialistic civ, like Catherine. You'll pump out settlers very quickly, while the Creative trait will help you to get work all your tiles quickly. Unfortunately, I think the Imperialistic trait was introduced in Warlords, but you really should buy BTS. It's a good expansion. Lots of added features.

One last tip: conquer your continent. Just kill everyone on it. They're trespassing on your ancestral lands. Then, cottage up, and tech to Astronomy. Once you meet the other continent(s), do some tech trades and coast to an easy victory. Your choice: spaceship (keep doing lots of tech trades), domination (invade the other continent with Marines and Tanks), diplomatic (adopt free religion and nuke everyone who dislikes you), or cultural (go 100% culture on your slider once you hit Rifling or Democracy). Once you own an entire continent, you can't lose. Guaranteed.

 

[Chas]

I'm not very good myself, I am now at the point where I win more than I lose on Prince, but I feel your pain.

I agree with all the comments about the number of cities. The 70% rule works for me - as soon as cottage growth etc. mean I am positive on 70%, I build another city. I often find that I have 3 settlers sleeping on target city squares, waiting until my income grows enough to found the city. On a normal size map, at normal speed, I think that if you control your continent, and you have 20 cities, then maybe you can relax and stop expanding. Bear in mind that the AI will never stop expanding - when the space runs out, the strongest AI will conquer the weak AI, right up to the end of the game. I'm not saying you can't win with less than this, but if you have 8, and the top AI has 25, it's a real struggle to keep up.

But I also think that one production city out of even 7-8 is not enough. If you make war, you will need to make at least 30 up-to-tech units, and be able to make good your losses. Losing 3 cats/cannons etc to take a city is nothing unusual, and you have to leave at least some garrison in each one you take. One city simply can't replace fast enough to keep the attack going. If you try to conduct the entire war on your starting forces, you need correspondingly more to start with. By the time one city has made all these, the early ones are out of date.

You can certainly avoid starting wars and win, but if you try to avoid war totally, you won't succeed - the AI will go to war with you however strong you are, and it will win unless you have similar numbers of units anyway. To 'win' it doesn't have to take permanent territory off you - it just has to disrupt your economic growth so that your tech slows and some other AI out-techs you.

I probably average 3, but at least 2, of the first 7 cities as producers, and towards the end I expect even more e.g. to win the space race I expect 5 good producer cities to build the casing etc. and still to have a couple more at least to keep churning out modern units.

In my recent Prince game I made war to take out the one AI on my continent, settled my continent and the very close large island, to give 23 cities. Of these 10 were producers, arguably 2 more than I needed in the end. Other than the war to take out my neighbour, I then tried to avoid war, but in fact at least one AI was at war with me from 1700 to the end in 1960, sometimes all of them. 4 of my producer cities were on the coast (2 on each side), to build the navy that is essential if you are just going to sit and defend.

 

[Silock]

Thanks for all the tips. I incorporated some of them into my first Noble victory. Played on standard size Pangaea. I got pinned in and only ended up with 7 cities. I had good relations with my neighbors and didn't want to go to war with them. Ended up with a space race victory without ever having to go to war, and had a 4th place score.

 

[SouljahAtWar]

Check my walkthrough.

Trust in the teacher... believe in the teacher... even if he is ignorant.