Looking for advice - noble game recap

[jnebbe]

Asked for some help yesterday and they said to post a recap of my game so that's what I'll do.


I beat noble already once but it might have been a fluke
My strategy last game was to expand ridiculously fast and make a wall of cities to prevent ai from expanding too far and also always decline open border requests, and then fill in my cities later inside
I went on strike for a bit but got pretty lucky with luxuries. I teched up to alphabet and traded to get literally everything i could to get back in the game.


noble, Pangaea, huge, normal speed, random civ
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https://gyazo.com/64e95d2e29f8612456f874e4745cd722
playing japanese
settled on starting tile, building worker, researching agriculture


https://gyazo.com/48c4f6e038ec8a1459d9c2ac0a851bbf
took 2 villages which gave me a little gold and mysticism, finished agriculture and starting mining


https://gyazo.com/fb1ebc0be6d0b662cabbec6766aab106
worker finished, sending him to farm the corn. Going to make a few warriors to give time for kyoto to grow and to explore since im going for the above strategy again


https://gyazo.com/8950773e329059e7d40df8f6d70ddc75
starting warrior died from back to back barbarians. Worker is making another farm on grass, new warrior is getting vilage, started on bronze working


https://gyazo.com/dcd7b7c8de71318bb3cbd87aeb7403e9
made another farm and a bunch more warriors, i think im going to wait until next turn to get slavery+wait until kyoto grows to 4, then rush a settler


https://gyazo.com/031088f912d545d81554e6849293c800
I got slavery and rushed a settler so now kyoto is 2, sending settler to where the warrior is, and worker is making a road there. Got some gold and hunting from villages. met chinese and arab scouts


https://gyazo.com/a295eb393d3ced294b45060c64544135
met spanish from scout. Found chinese capital, might try to settle right above the scout to wall him off and for the silver. Its still very early so I could maybe win the culture battle here. kyoto is 4 again so it's going to start a settler and rush when it can


https://gyazo.com/d7559a2a8131dc55f9db6349fa69c5b9
jk going to settle closer to the fur, chinese is already in a corner so I dont need to wall him in yet. settler rushed in kyoto, now its 2 and working on another worker, will be done in 6 turns


https://gyazo.com/9a90aefc4bafcbb6df3444de0b72e7a4
declared war on chinese to steal a worker and rushed one in kyoto so now i have 3 workers. found spanish and arab capitals and finding exploring the map more


https://gyazo.com/c88e89647f0cfcebd09e4963a8149f22
https://gyazo.com/c6d40fe310f6280f0a874a67407e0b1e
https://gyazo.com/1a518d0cd69eb006be29f2702e5495f7
I built tokyo there because i thought i would be able to zone anything out of bejing since i had like 3 warriors coming over there, then literally the next turn the build shanghai. going to go to peace with mao since I don't really want to fight right now, and i can clean him up later
theres some interesting mountain ranges on either side of me which is going to make expanding safer but more restricting


https://gyazo.com/6c488b66d88005d3699cae8b3644c78c
made peace with chinese. made another worker and rushed a settler and am going to settle to the right of where the scout is
open borders with spanish to see whats north of the mountain range
also i got copper and iron working is about to finish


https://gyazo.com/7c9b40c2478e64586358386b72691865
edo founded. Iron working finished but i dont have any iron inside my borders yet. There's some iron just outside bejings borders and I dont think he has copper yet so im thinking about taking him out before he gets the iron. He has 5 beavers and 5 silver in his area so i'm really wanting to take all that for myself
researching mathematics for currency/calendar for my wine


https://gyazo.com/3c309f7320c9af854c6e6fa944896f6c
lost a worker to barbarians so im rushing one out. Building axemen from 2 cities for the chinese.
There's a lot of good resources north of spanish

 

[jnebbe]

part 2


https://gyazo.com/5e4f2a56597a0b06d1919a890c19986a
chinese made another city here, Im sending 4 axemen and a spear to take that over and hopefully not raze it so i can get the horses
there's no way i can capture bejing with no swordsman or catapults so im getting masonry->construction
also im dumb and realized you need monarchy for wines not calendar. I always confuse those 2
also met egyptians west of spanish


https://gyazo.com/e76b7433f2230b00a5eb6e14673fd16b
https://gyazo.com/8bcdd0de3583d83f68a08d34f2d4f0fc
captured ghaungzuo, sending 2 groups of 3 axemen+1 spear to try to capture bejing. I was researching construction but switched to alphabet. I think i can capture bejing with just numbers since he has just archers, and im probably behind techwise so ill use alphabet to get everything im missing.
I really need monarchy at some point, i have 6 wines waiting on it
also founded satsuma, will probably make another city by the marble
met indians, persians, french, and americans, now i know everyone


https://gyazo.com/61b7b933c8b7e2198537d48c55f0a85b
captured bejing, about to capture shanghai too. I usually dont care about completely destroying an civilization but I really need that silver and beavers


https://gyazo.com/5e1ae2cc294c58534fcfdbb465c5499a
https://gyazo.com/4c2f33c28b4141601f26f56b997b57c5
https://gyazo.com/5e1ae2cc294c58534fcfdbb465c5499a
chinese defeated, goal now is to improve all cities and also build a city north of spanish and start getting a pressence there
also founded kagoshima, funnily enough that iron was in black fog so i couldve had swordsmen for a while now and i had no idea
Maybe ill just capture that barbarian city instead of bringing a settler up there, or maybe both


https://gyazo.com/42b872b6fb8c9b81a32a7ff901f14a5a
on strike, none of the chinese cities were producing culture which i didn't notice for a while so I still dont have any of the silver or beavers
sending some axemen+archers and also a worker and settler up here, but another barbarian settled where I was going to


https://gyazo.com/db3c30181dbf47f037a51b1a1e1bd944
razed the barbarian city and founded nara, going to capture burgudian at some point too
slowly recovering economically, going to trade for anything i can once i get alphabet, hopefully calendar+monarchy


https://gyazo.com/2890d936ee51df95f1ca389e31ff5cb6
captured barbarian city of yayoi. I finished alphabet and traded that for a bunch of techs to asoka since she's the weakest, but then nobody else wanted to trade for currency or calendar so me and asoka are the only ones with alphabet


Stopped taking pictures here. From here on out I always had the score lead. I conquered spanish once she got in the way. Cyrus always had a pretty big tech lead and he eventually won space race, my score was 4000 and his was 3000 at the time. I wasted a lot of time completely capturing all of spanish cities and also spent a while taking 3 or 4 roman cities. I think it would've been better to focus on attacking cyrus since I could get tech from him wanting a cease fire. A lot of the cities I captured weren't very useful since their borders were swallowed up by romans and egyptians. Tried attacking cyrus when I had a lot of modern armors and he didn't have composites, but he had defensive pact with mansa musa and I was afraid of pushing in too deep.

 

[earthy]

it seems like your rapid expansion is really hurting you. slider at 20% teching alphabet in 560AD is really not ideal. It also looks like most of your cities are working unimproved tiles. There's a lot to talk about here(might be worth starting a shadow game with small turnsets), but in general some advice that I think would help:

build more workers - if you're going to settle another city, you should have a worker ready to improve tiles in that city. rapid expanding just to work unimproved tiles will crash your economy hard.
less greedy city placement - you had plenty of good land to naturally settle, slowly expanding a ring around your capital. those 3 cities near the chinese were unnecessary and probably hurt you more than they helped you.
better tech path - stuff like iron working can be easily traded for(with alphabet or similar).

Really just slow it down and focus on your economy. You should be able to out-tech your opponents and then wage war with a strong military advantage. axes won't be reliable as you move higher up in difficulty.

edit: and sign those open borders! trade routes are highly profitable, and you can gain +relations with AI from trade or sharing religion

 

[Major Tom]

As earthy said.
smaller turn sets if you want some meaningful input.

Settling on plains hill, starting worker, teching agri, mining and BW was top choice. Also worker stealing.

After that things came out of hand, it seems.

Start a new game with Japan and no huts. Let us see the start before committing settler and warrior.