My Noble game... WHY AM I LOSING!?

[digitCruncher]

I have lost 4 noble games in a row. Two of them were bad luck, but the other two I got ripped to shreds, despite what I'd call near-ideal conditions. (Pardon my spelling of leader names, its a long post, and I cant be bothered googling ALL the leader names to find the proper spelling...

First game (Lost by bad luck)

Spoiler :

Playing as Julius Caeser (Romans). I start of with a friggin AWESOME spot: 2 fish, 2 clams, a corn, and some production resource (I think it was stone. However, I am on a arcipedilo map (that I suck at anyway), with no metals, and two really angry civs, with simaler awesome starting positions. Oh yes, and on that continent, there were 4 survivable (able to produce enough food for a size 8 city) city locations, and 2 of them were held by opponent capitals, and 1 was my capital. I decided against playing the game (although in hindsight, I probably should have kept it >.<

Second game (Lost by barbs, and bad luck)

Spoiler :

Playing as someone (I didn't bother to check, I died so quickly), I had two nice cities, inland. I had a warrior and an archer on my capital, and a warrior, on a hills, on my other city.

Then an archer came along (a barbarian archer). The archer attacked my other city, and this is what the strengths were:

Archer: 3 +1 FS
Warrior: 2 +25% City defence, +25% Hills defence, +25% Fortify, +10% vs. barbarians, +20% Cultural defence.

Thats 3 + 1FS, vs. 4.1. I thought that it would be enough, but nooooo, and I lost my warrior. After getting my other warrior (which was guarding some food resource... I had a hard time with barbs on that game), I realised that, as well as the normal bonuses my original warrior had, the barbarian now had +50% from its own unit abilities, as well as +50% base strength...

After losing my first city, and having to deal with a nearly invinsible barbarian city right next to my capital, I decided against playing that game, as there was no way I could win it...

3rd game: Lost from no metals:

Spoiler :

Now I was playing as the Holy Roman Empire... and started off with a roaring start. I quickly built 4 cities (while still keeping above 60% tax, and then some), got 2 extra health in all cities, after brutally testing a new medical drug on my populace, and then found 2 prime barbarian cities ready to take over.

Then everything went wrong. Firstly, Hayua Capac founded buddisim. Then he spread it to everyone else (except me, typical). I had some unhappiness issues in my first Roman game, so I had my own religion. Hayua Capac then declared war on me and stole one barbarian city. However, as soon as I moved towards it, he retreated his UU warrior, and I took the city, without a struggle (which was lucky, it was a archer on a hill, which was very hard to take before Hayua did the hard yards for me ). I then got another barb city, and sat at 20% tax for the next while.

I got copper working, and iron working, and then looked for metals. There were none. I went almost all the way through the classical age building catapults and elephants in order to take out Lincoln, however just before I was planning to go to war, 3 empires declared war on me. I thought about going to war, or not, and decided that if I didn't get the metal before the medieval age, I would only have longbowman, as the pikeman could SLAUGHTER my elephants and horse-archers.

I never got the iron, and with 4 waves of attacks coming at me at once, I managed to weasle my way out of all the wars (at a great cost to my economy) by using my standing as a buddist member of the AP (from the one city I took from lincoln, which was much harder than I thought), and with a bit of money I had left. However, when I realised that without the capability to get metal, and with 6 empires hating my guts, and only 2 really really weak friends, I couldn't possibly win, or even get above the 50% mark...

And now for the current game. I read some guides between the two games, and started with the confidence that I would SLAUGHTER the opposition. I decided: I will go for a domination victory, with maybe a diplomatic victory if my friends become strong. I started as my fav. empire (the dutch, due to thier levee UB, which reminds me of the offshore platform buildings in Cevo (a free, legal 'version' of civ II), which I loved.

I started off with tons of luxury resources, and not many food resources. However, after shooting straight for copper working, I adopted slavery. I then built some workers (remembering NOT to automate them), and planned my city building structure. I then grew really quickly, always keeping above 60% science (and 10% espionage too... you can never have too much espionage IMO). I then hit a wall. Normally, without a religion (which ironically, was founded somewhere else), I hit HUGE unhappyness problems. However, with all my luxury resources, I suddenly had a sickness problem. However, I fixed that by whipping my cities whenever they started becoming sick (as that is not particually productive if they are sick).

With no sickness, unhappiness, and HUGE cities, I declared war on Frederick. The war was a partial success, as I weakened him SO much, as well as taking a good city. However, his capital was too strong for me to capture, so I pillaged everything, and left him to rebuild until I take his capital, and make it MY science city.

With almost no barbs, a successful war under my belt, and ranked first out of the 3 civs I knew, I thought that I was definitly in the top 50%, which was my goal. Then came the message I dreaded:

"Leaders of the Buddist faith have united under one banner under the apostolic palace"

"Taoism has been founded in a far away city"

Now I knew how advanced at least one civ was, I retired, just to see what ranking I was...

My ranking? 8th, out of 11 (even before I retired). I was shocked. That game was the PERFECT game, and I followed everything in the guide to the letter. I used crazy micro-management in order to squeeze everything out of my cities, as well as owning a large chunk of a continent, the largest I have ever had on a noble game. I had ALL the resources (ivory, horses, copper and iron), and almost all of the luxury resources too!! I can't understand WTF has gone wrong...

Here is the save-game, so you guys can look at my empire. From what it looks like, I seem to have a large production problem, which is fixed, in part, by my slavery civic. Beurocracy is helping making my empire happy without a religion, and the stone helped me get the pyramids (just ), and I am never sick, as slavery, and my beelining to healing buildings is helping quite a bit (as well as a large chuck of forests)

Obviously, after retiring, I could never become first (Isabella is just too huge and powerful), however coming in the top 50% would help...

Also, I just realised something. Can you build a dike while not beside a river? If thats the case, then I am so screwed, as there aren't many rivers on my continent...

IMO, The jump from Warlord to Noble is quite large... with a 10% increase in barbarian strength, a drop in happiness, AND a drop in healthiness, and much smarter AI... I just hope each increase of difficulty level isn't as hard as this... Not complaining... but still, dang

[Edit] And before you ask, even though the first three games were quite bad, I have had simaler Warlord difficulty games, in which I came third before... I think that if I can survive till Communism, then I will be sweet. But to perma alliance with the strongest player, I need to be at least in the top 50%... and if Im below the 50% mark, then I don't think cultural, or domination victories are even remotely possible...[/Edit]

 

[autopsy-turvey]

why would you spoiler those

 

[digitCruncher]

I thought that, as they were far too long (and my post was getting longer and longer and longer as I remembered more and more important things), that I needed to make the post shorter... the spoilers aren't really neccessery to read, but give a little bit of background about my rotten luck...

If I didn't spoiler them, then the post would be HUGE (or so I thought... I actually think I can remove them... I thought that the text inside the spoilers would be as long as the text that is outside the spoilers, and if that was the case, then the spoiler thing would be helpful...)

Other than my ineptitude about using forums ... what else am I doing wrong?

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Dikes (the dutch UB) can be built on the coast

One thing to remember, wars (and the getting of new cities) hurts your tech short run but helps it long run

They key is making that hurt v. help balance out well

 

[autopsy-turvey]

more concretely i'd recommend you read up on the oracle->alphabet strategy and make that the focus of your early single player games, tech trading will keep you from falling so far behind. maybe play less island maps so you're in early contact with more civs and any religions you found will spread to your neighbors or you can convert to whatever everyone else near you is. religion is usually the only difference between worst enemies and best friends early early game and low difficulty

 

[autopsy-turvey]

I thought that, as they were far too long (and my post was getting longer and longer and longer as I remembered more and more important things), that I needed to make the post shorter... the spoilers aren't really neccessery to read, but give a little bit of background about my rotten luck...

If I didn't spoiler them, then the post would be HUGE (or so I thought... I actually think I can remove them... I thought that the text inside the spoilers would be as long as the text that is outside the spoilers, and if that was the case, then the spoiler thing would be helpful...)

Other than my ineptitude about using forums ... what else am I doing wrong?

no one cares how long your posts are and nothing that happened to you had anything to do with bad luck

you always end up dealing with barbarians and neighboring civs. assuming you dont ignore unit production barbarians should never be a real problem, and having more neighbors is pretty much always better than having fewer or no neighbors

what techs do you research and in what order, maybe people can give you pointers on your opening strategy

 

[digitCruncher]

Ummm, I think it went something like this:

Mining -> Copper Working (Yay for slavery)
Pottery, Sailing, Hunting (I needed the ivory), Agriculture.
If I forgot any improvement techs that I would need, add them here. The tech for the pyrimids was somewhere in that line, but I cant remember exactly where...)
Archery (Im not losing to one barb archer again )
Iron working
I then went straight to calender, to pick up all those plantations I needed...
Construction (I needed catapults and elephants)
Currency (Construction and Currency COULD have been the other way around, but I think it was this way around)
I then went to the tech that gives crossbowmen and windmills, as I needed the windmills. I forgot they can only be built on hills >.< As a result, a whole lot of my hungry cities that existed only to get resources, had a sudden realisation of hungryness...
I am currently (or possibly finished) shooting for Optics, so I can talk to other people, and after that, guilds, so that I can take out all those longbowmen on the hill, held by the Germans...

I will read up on that strategy ... it seems to be quite popular...

Finally, does anyone have the probability that a warrior, fortified on a hills, on a 20% city, looses to a unpromoted archer? I think its something like 1%, or less. By that logic, the second game WAS lost by luck...

 

[nullspace]

Archipelago maps can be very hard or easy depending on how much land is around your starting position. In your save you were somewhat unlucky to start on a narrow strip very near the Germans. In the worldbuilder, I can see that some other AIs have much more land to work with.

If I can give you some advice, I'd say to GET MORE CITIES. I think you should have expanded faster to north to beat the Koreans to the good sites. Block the Germans with one city, then block the Koreans with one city, and after that you can fill in the remaining space as your budget allows. You'll end up with more settled cities that way.

The other option is war, which you did. But when you fight, you should really go for the kill. Once you've wiped out their mobile army, you've broken them and taking the cities should be easy. If there's a tough target like Berlin which is on a hill, don't make peace. That just lets them build more defenders, take other cities while you build the catapults you need to conquer the difficult city. (Ideally, you'd have enough units before the war started).

You should also try to specialize your cities more. One difficult on archipelago maps is getting enough production. So a city like the Hague that does have hills should specialize in production. Mine those hills early and build enough farms to work the mines. That would help you build more army.

A huge archipelago probably isn't and easy way to get your first win on a new difficulty level. Maybe you should try something like a small pangea to help you learn faster. And a bit more luck than you've had recently always helps, too.

 

[digitCruncher]

Yeah... I play everything on random... I really think I should start choosing a specific map, and trying to win on that one map type...

I started off by blocking Germany, as it was really really easy. However, I can't see how you can block off Korea, with even 2 cities...

And the Koreans actually blocked me off... I had some nice locations I wanted to settle on, however they moved too quickly to beat me. That, and I wasn't going to try and fight them for that land, as I thought that Germany was a much easier target (as they only ever had 3 cities )

I have found the problem with what I was doing wrong... I think I was building too many buildings, and not enough specilisation. However, specialisation is quite hard.

I also, almost ALWAYS have a huge food surplus, and a huge production deficit. I often slave away to stop that, however that rapidly increases unhappiness, and as its often a choice between "found your own religion, and then someone else next to you founds thier own religion (Like the third game)", and "Let someone else found thier religion... miles from your cities" (Like this game, and the first game), so I always either am fighting a losing religious war, or perpetually in unhappyness. That is why I was so happy having so many luxury resources...

I will stop making random maps, and see if that helps... Is the step from noble to Monarch so hard? By the looks of it, some people are terrible at Civ, and some are pros at it, so some people probably have never played a noble game in Civ IV, but if each difficulty level increases in difficulty by so much, then... I have no idea how ANYONE could beat deity *Looks and finds a walk-through for beating deity*

Finally, I can't find the oracle->alphabet strategy ... but am I right in assuming it means "Shoot for building the oracle, and then build the alphabet, and then trade all your techs to get a huge tech lead"?

 

[autopsy-turvey]

Finally, I can't find the oracle->alphabet strategy ... but am I right in assuming it means "Shoot for building the oracle, and then build the alphabet, and then trade all your techs to get a huge tech lead"?

yah, lay down 2 or 3 cities and go priesthood-writing-alphabet with the oracle taking it from writing to alphabet

don't research techs other than bronze and maybe archery before this is done, you can trade valuable techs like writing and alpha for all the random food techs you miss

then when you ahve currency sell techs and keep research at 100 all the time, research should pretty much always be at 100. before currency you can do this with shrine cities and loot from captured enemy cities, which is why its good to have neighbors.

from what you said about not building mines its possible that you're just not building and managing cities effectivly hopefully thats something you can pick up with practice