I'm not very good at this.

[WalterRaleigh]

I got this game off Amazon last summer as part of a combo pack that also included CivIII and Colonization. I've played quite a bit, but still haven't quite gotten the hang of it yet. In fact, I've yet to beat the game on Noble (although I usually quit before the game actually ends). So I thought I'd start a new game and post it on here, and maybe get some feedback from you guys on how I can improve myself.

I used the settings that seem the most "realistic" to me:
Noble, RandomScriptMap, Huge, Marathon, 18 civs (all random, including myself), Ancient, Random Climate and Sea Level, City Flipping after Conquest, Require Complete Kills.

Here is my start. I am Suryavarman II of the Khmer Empire.



(not sure why the image appears as a thumbnail and not full size, but you can click on it to see the full image)

Spoiler :

I moved my Scout over to the hut to see if there was anything useful in that direction (there wasn't), and decided to settle on the Corn tile where my Scout just came from. I don't like to spend time looking for a place to settle unless I have a very good reason to do so. Since my new city has Corn and Stone, I first research Agriculture, The Wheel, and Masonry (I started with Mining and Hunting). I also manage to get Mysticism from a tribal village.

Before long, I realize that I'm on a Pangaea map. I manage to explore a pretty good radius from my capital before my scout gets killed. My two nearest neighbors (as far as I can tell) are Louis XIV and Montezuma, but no one is really close by.

With my Stone resource, I built Stonehenge, The Great Wall, and The Pyramids. After that, I focused on producing Settlers to build new cities. Meanwhile, I researched Animal Husbandry, Bronze Working, and Iron Working. I was lucky enough to get a Horse and an Iron within the cultural borders of my capital.

I built my second city to the east of my capital, and used it to get Gold, Pig, Rice, and Silk. (I built it on the Gold tile, which may not have been the best choice). My third city, to the west of my capital, has Copper, Gold, and 2 Spices. My fourth city (and last so far), to the northwest of my capital, has a Cow and several Ivories. The next city I build will be on the coast southwest of my capital, between the Crab and the Sheep. The most likely candidates for future city locations are the Barbarian settlement to my west, and between the Gem and the Sugar to my north, but if someone else gets those locations first, it won't really bother me, because I'm already spread pretty thin.

My next tech priority will be Calendar, so I can get more use out of my resources. After that I'm not sure. I probably won't do much expanding beyond what I mentioned above, and instead focus on improving my existing cities. I'm going to avoid war for as long as I possibly can.

Overall, I think I've done pretty well so far. I will post an update when I reach the Medieval era. I appreciate any tips you may have for me, and maybe at some point in the future, I'll be able to help other new players.

(in case it's not clear, the attachment labelled "Ancient" is the start, and the one labelled "Classical" is where I am now)

 

[ThatOne]

Honestly I would have highly recommended settle on the stone to start. Helps your early production so much, and if you do decide on henge then you can get it done really fast. Unless it is tropical I wouldn't settle on food, because that is 9/10 what is limiting you from fitting more cities in. Especially since that corn is 6 food when worked on water. Can put the food in a 2nd city if you do determine it is too much.

 

[Zholef]

What ThatOne said. Also, you don't usually want to settle on gold tiles; they're so powerful when mined. More importantly, you need more workers. Not only are you working unimproved tiles, your cities aren't even connected to your capital, which means you're missing out on trade route money.

 

[Learner]

I feel that Stonehenge is kind of wasted on creative leaders. I don't think that you really needed it.

The first thing i noted is that Monty has Jaguars while you have only warriors and chariots. Connect either metal ASAP and star building Axes for city defense. If your opponents have horses you should also build few spearmen.

You should research pottery before writing. Teching pottery first will give you a slight discount on writing, since it is a tech that leads to Writing. And the sooner you get Cottages up the better. Priesthood is also a tech that leads to Writing and gives you an access to Oracle, on of the most powerful wonders in the game, so I would now tech pottery > Priesthood > Writing. If you tech writing before you complete oracle, you can choose Code of Laws as a free tech. Oracle and Stonehenge both generate Great Prophet points, so you should get a Shrine for Confucianism in time. You can also choose Metal Casting as your free tech, but I would probably go for religion.

Other important technologies are Mathematics, Alphabets, Currency, Construction and Feudalism.

Math gives you stronger chops and therefore more production. It also allows you to build Barays, your unique buildings.

Alphabets allows you to trade technologies. Very important. Spies are a nice plus, if you happen to get a great spy from the great wall.

Currency gives you money and allows you to build money. Also very important.

Construction gives you catapults. With those and elephants you can easily conquer your neighbors.

After these technologies you can tech either Civil service or go Aesthetics line. Civil service is good tech, but Aesthetics > Litrature > Music gives you strong wonders and great artist, who you can use for a free golden age.

Feudalism should be taken later, but it is very important, since it gives you Longbows. Those are the ultimate city defenders, and with Monty as a neighbor, you are going to need them (unless you manage to kill Monty with Elepult (Elephants + Catapults) combo).

Calendar is nice tech on some maps, but I don't think that it should take priority over the ones i have already mentioned. With Pyramids and hereditary rule civic you can convert warriors into happiness if you place them in your cities. The health bonus isn't needed, because you are expansive leader and with Math you can build Barays.

I think you are doing fine. Just watch your city placement and city defense. Don't play too long sessions at once and remember to give us reports so that we can help you even more .

 

[elitetroops]

I'm gonna give you a few basic rules. When you move up you will realize that there are situations when these rules must be broken, but for now I would suggest keeping them as absolute rules. Follow them and you can't lose on noble.

General settling rules

• Food is king! Always make sure that every city has a food resource available.
• If not a creative leader, then food should always be in first ring. With creative leader you should still prefer to settle with food in first ring, but can get away with food in second ring if you have a very good reason for that.
• Try to grab strategic resources (horse, copper, ivory, iron) quite early. At least before your neighbors leave you without them.
• Don't settle cities too far apart, overlap between big fat crosses is a good thing.
• 2nd city should be settled quite early. Usually start settler as soon as capital has grown to size 3 or 4.

Resources

• Strong early food tiles are the best (corn, pigs, cow, sheep). You want these worked and should avoid settling on top of them.
• Strong early commerce resources (gold and gems) are also very strong tiles to work, don't settle on top of them.
• Strong early hammer tiles (copper, iron) are also good to work, prefer not to settle on top of them.
• Calendar resources with 3 food (sugar, banana) are good tiles to settle on. A small boost from +1 early is better than a larger boost later.
• Marble and stone on hills are also good for settling for the extra hammers. Beware that they often lack fresh water, so make sure there is enough food around if you do so.
• Hunting resources are kind of meh to work. It's fine to settle on top of them if that allows a better city. Same goes for the calendar commerce resources.

Workers

• When you start a game, building worker first is the correct choice almost every single time. It takes a lot of experience to recognize the few situations where there would be a better option, so for now always go worker first.
• Have enough of them to make sure your cities are always working improved tiles. If you have cities working unimproved tiles in 1000BC, you have too few workers.
• Improve food first.
• Improve other high yield tiles next (cows, copper)
• Commerce tiles (gold/silver) should be improved in time for when you have grown big enough to work it.
• Roads are needed to hook up resources, to connect cities to trade network and for troop movement. Early in the game health resources are usually not that urgent and troops are not running around, so connecting cities comes first, then hook up happiness resources.
• Most tiles without resources don't need a road ever.
• Build cottages early, especially around your capital if there are many green river tiles. Floodplains are very good tiles to cottage.
• Build farms on resources and possibly on flood plains and grassland if needed. Farms on plains tiles are useless, except for spreading irrigation after you get Civil Service.

Scouting

• Use your starting warrior/scout to scout your immediate surroundings first. You need to know where to settle your next city, so scout in a circle with 6-8 tile radius from your capital asap. What lies somewhere far away in the fog is of no relevance to you early on.
• Once you've found the best spot for next city, leave your scout there to fogbust and make sure there are no barbs interfering with your settler when that time comes.
• I'd actually recommend to play without goody huts on, to make it easier to resist the temptation of having scout running of in search of huts.

Research

• Techs needed to improve early food resources comes first
• Techs to get your economy going comes next (mostly pottery for cottages or writing for libraries)
• (On higher levels you might need a tech for barb defense immediately after worker techs, but this is not needed on noble)
• Bronze working early for slavery is good in most cases.
• Currency for the extra trade route and ability to build wealth is very important once you have more cities.
• The religious techs you can usually trade for once you get alpha, no need to research those yourself.
• Other techs that the AI prioritizes highly and you can trade for instead of teching are Iron Working and Monarchy, not sure how much more you can trade for on noble as you will be running away in tech fast following these rules

City management

• Slavery is good. It is really good. Really! Early on your cities will quickly grow to happy cap if you follow rules above, then you can whip out 2 pop for 60 or 3 pop for 90 and quickly grow back. Much better than working some lousy mine a few turns extra!
• Granary is the most important building in the game. Build it first in new cities.
• Other than granary, barracks (in cities where you will build units), libraries in science cities and forge are the only essential buildings. Other buildings are highly situational.
• Most wonders are not worth the hammer cost.

Follow those basic rules early and you will completely crush noble. There is a lot more in there to learn about war and such, but with decent empire management you will be so far ahead of all AI that you can easily stomp any opponent.

Lol, that was a lot more rules than I had in mind... And this is really only the basics, but it should be enough to get you up to at least emperor.

 

[RedKi-rr]

2elitetroops, nice tips! At the higher levels they become even more useful.
By the way, what is your youtube channel? I tried to find it, but couldn't.

 

[Kallikrates]

Unless you only play maps with a lot of early food resources you will have to build grassland farms. If you have a 5-food tile and a 1-food 4-hammers-tile, you will work these, but when you grow beyond them you will want some farms for growth periods, although e.g. grass hill mines would be better yield.
But I agree that this is probably often not yet relevant while building the first 4-5 cities.

With calendar resources it is often useful to farm them in the many thousands of years before calendar, because the yield is still better (especially if one plays a FIN leader). Also, cottages on top of calendar resources can make sense.

Of course it depends on the plans one has, but I disagree on the importance of feudalism. I hardly ever research this myself.
Regardless of the neighbors, one cannot rely mainly on city defenders for deterrence. axes are useful counters for Monty's UU and he is a slow techer, so I will have maces or xbows probably before him. And machinery is not a dead-end like feudalism.

(And if one has no ivory, which seems to be the case in >70% of my games, so I am always a little puzzled that "elepults" is recommended as a standard strategy... and does not plan an early war, construction can also be postponed, but it is certainly far more important than feudalism)

 

[Learner]

I checked the map and this time we do have elephants and an elephant UU, so I thought that Elepult might be a good idea.

And while Feudalism isn't the most important tech, I find Longbows quite useful. And the ability to take Vassals is also nice if you just want to win domination victory quickly.

 

[Kallikrates]

Right, the ability to take vassals is far more important than longbows, I forgot about that...
And of course if you are sitting Bull and oracle feudalism or sth. like that, they can be very powerful. But to fight Monty one will need offensive units and for deterrence I think the numbers are more important than whether it is longbows, Horse archers or swordmen.

Nothing against elephants etc. I didn't check the map above. But depending on map scripts ivory is very rare compared to the other early strategic resources (that is my experience, I have often been on a continent without any, not to speak of having it close enough for waging war in the BCs), so other than pre-construction early rushes or renaissance era strategies with cuirassiers it can hardly be a "standard" strategy.

 

[Robert FIN]

I'm not skilled enough to help you in some specific game but if you wish to improve your playing skills, I recommend to play Nobles' Club games. You find the bullpen from here, S&T forums or just click the link on my signature script. Welcome to the forums!!

 

[Ghpstage]

As has been mentioned, settling on the corn was a massive mistake, a 3 food city tile is nowhere near as good as the 6 you could have got from it with a farm. On the stone or in place would have been much better. Similarly settlinng on the gold killed most of its value!
Also Stonehenge with trait Creative is a waste as you already have early border pop power (only the first border pop really matters 90% of the time), the Great Wall on the other hhand will be useful on Huge/Mara, but the Pyramids are nothing but a giant sink if you don't know how to use is it (Representation and Police State are the only reasons to build it!)

Wonders in general are a mixed bag, many are highly situational, and the chaotic building of them is a key mistake made by many lower level players.
You also need more workers, 4 cities with only 2 workers isn't going to cut it, for now try to stick to at least 3 workers for every 2 cities, at least until you learn how to manage them a lot better. This is anther, even more critical mistake made by lower level players as it leads to the working of unimproved tiles which leads to feeble economies.

 

[sinimusta]

I would probably use the scout to check what is to see from the stonehill. I'd most probably settle 1S to get more river tiles. 3hammer city center is strong yes, but looks to me the land is rather bad in that direction, to me the the tile 1E of the stonehill looks desert. 1S also leaves the stone tile to be settled later as with this much food I think some of it should be shared sooner or later.

The start calls for early BW as the most of the tiles are covered with forest. As a result production shoudln't be a problem.

 

[lymond]

why do newbsters always want to play huge/marathon

 

[Kallikrates]

I find this puzzling as well.
I am slow, I am used to turn-based games (I am actually too slow for the few real time strategy games I tried (older versions of warcraft and starcraft) and when I started CIV IV (after having played too long CIV II occasionally) I was at first slightly disappointed that the normal map wasn't all that big. But the game is so complex that the 8-12 cities one has to deal with for most of the game (more when going for big conquests, but by then micromanagement is not so important anymore) are enough for me.
I tried one game with a world map scenario on Epic speed and did not play very long, too slowly.
Although I may try some epic/large games for conquests with ancient/medieval units I am sure I would not want to play those huge maps most of the time.

But especially to get to know things, to learn about some mechanics and strategies and see results (or punishments) quickly, I also recommend starting with standard settings.

 

[lymond]

.

But especially to get to know things, to learn about some mechanics and strategies and see results (or punishments) quickly, I also recommend starting with standard settings.

Besides the other craziness of playing marahuge, this is one the key points about this newb mistake. Normal/Standard is still a very long and satisfying game experience, but still allows one more play/learning opportunities in shorter time frame.

Also, I think for some starting out with these grueling settings and struggling can be really off-putting and just lead many to quit the game before they even get started. I've seen that happen many times.

 

[vranasm]

ok first things first... dont play these horrible settings until you learn the game... you need quicker games to get hang of the game

so hold to normal speed and standard map size... in those 231 turns you played the save you would have either finished normal game or run 2 "up to 1AD" normal starts and would know more about the game then you know now

I settled in place... while I can see why someone would want to go for stone start, I held to the tripple corn start. settling on corn is bad

played to 300 BC so if you are in mood you can see how your save can look without building any wonders, casual gameplay (after first 8 cities i started to automate workers)

sitting on 17 cities, finished CS this turn... I think if one would really invest efforts maybe this game is winnable in BC's, since everyone is on the same land

 

[WalterRaleigh]

OK, I played this one some more. As some of you suggested, I researched Pottery first, then Writing and Mathematics. I also managed to trade for Fishing, Sailing, Polytheism, Monotheism, Archery, and Alphabet. After that, I decided to try for Theology so I could found Christianity. But unfortunately, my economy got really bogged down and someone else beat me to it. When that happened, I stopped the game. I think I could have done pretty well if I had continued the game, but as you guys said, Marathon games take a really long time. I've included the last autosave before stopping.

So, I'm going to start a new game. Based on your suggestions, this game will be on a Standard size map and Normal speed. I will also turn off barbarians and tribal villages, to make the game a little less complex. Hopefully this next one will turn out better.

Thanks for all of your help!

 

[WalterRaleigh]

Right, so here is the start of my new game. I'm Tokugawa of Japan. As I said in the above post, I am playing on a Standard size map and Normal speed. To make the game a little simpler, I have turned off tribal villages, barbarians, random events, and espionage.



It looks like the best thing to do is to just settle in place. I have Fishing and The Wheel, and based on what I see here, I should research Agriculture first, then Animal Husbandry (for the cow), then Mining, then Bronze Working.

I'll start playing later today or maybe tomorrow; I don't want to burn myself out.

 

[Longbowman]

There is probably another resource SEE of Settler. If you settle in place (which should be good) then you should think about your tech order once again, depending on what you see.

 

[elitetroops]

That's a tough start, but you should be able to handle it. The biggest problem here is lack of food. As mentioned, food is king. Every start should have 2 food resources and 2 other resources. That cow counts as a food resource, even if it is the weakest kind. If this isn't some wicked mapscript, then there should be another food resource 2E1S of settler and some strategic resource (horse/copper/iron) 1N of cow. Also possible there is seafood 2W1S of settler.

I'd move warrior 1NE to reveal as many unknown tiles as possible (you already see there's forest east from scout, moving next to that reveals no useful info. Unless there is something crazy good up north, settle in place is probably best option. At least there is a lot of forests to chop for hammers.

2elitetroops, nice tips! At the higher levels they become even more useful.
By the way, what is your youtube channel? I tried to find it, but couldn't.

??? I don't have a youtube channel...