Need advice on my first Noble game.

[Ai Shizuka]

Hi, as said here, I moved to Noble level.

The first game was quite bad. I picked Kubilai Khan on a huge Great Plains map, to try a warmongering approach. Rushed Charlemagne and Ragnar with Keshiks. Then barbarians started to be a huge annoyance: with no chokepoints to defend (great plains), they forced me to guard pretty much every city at 360°.
So I decided to go for Bismark and his Great Wall. But his empire was in the north-western corner of the map, a horrible wasteland of hills and mountains, and every single one of his cities was on hills.
Result: a painfully slow war, wich dragged until '700.
At that point, Pacal and Willem had a huge tech advantage on me. Both of them was friendly or pleased. Not that I had any real chance to attack them with decent results anyway. The only possible target was a backward Tokugawa, but he was completely boxed in a corner by Darius, wich refused to talk for the last thousand years. War on Darius was not an option.

So, it was just a matter of time for Pacal or Willem to launch their spaceships. No chance for diplo or cultural victories. So I retired and got my first Dan Quayle. Oh well.

First lesson learned: screw Great Plains. Don't know if it's always like that, but it was horribly imbalanced. The eastern empires was on nice lands full of grasslands, forests and a nice amount of hills.
I was in the middle barrens: 90% of my land was plains with hordes of cows and not much more (some 15 cows connected BC). No forests to chop, no hills, nothing.
And the poor western empires (Toku and Bismark) was nested into the mountains.

Second lesson: move to smaller map formats. I think huge is a bit unfriendly to any noobish warmongering approach.


Now, on what I consider my first real Noble game.
Mansa Musa, Pangaea, large map, epic speed, temperate, medium sea level.
Axe rushed Ramesses and got a nice double holy city with Stonehenge.
Then moved on Suryavarman with axes and swords and got 3 new cities (including Confu holy city).

Recovered a bit and moved on Justinian with maces and cata/trebs. Easy but quite long war. When I came to Sitting Bull's land it was my rifles (upgraded to infantry during the war) and cavalry vs. longbows. Easy war with 1 lone cavalry dead on my side.

My neighbor is Hannibal, wich has been very friendly from the beginning. My empire is divided in two parts by a couple of his cities. His empire is quite big and he's right behind me in pretty much every category.

Diplo situation: Stalin and Charlemagne are very close friends and have a defensive pact. They both hate me with a passion but never declared war. Toku is my very friendly vassal. He's last in score, but was second in the recent "most advanced" hit parade, has a nice empire and I think it can hold his own in a possible war vs Stalin+Charles.

Now it's 1911 (and the attached save is at this year) and I'm not sure on what to do. I have a strong lead in score and tech, so space victory is an easy option.
Charles has the AP, but he has the votes of Stalin only, while Toku and Hannibal always abstain. I have the UN, and I think I can control it.
Score victory is 100% sure, but I don't want it.
Cultural is out of reach for everyone.

I would really like to keep waring, but I'm not sure. And here I'd appreciate any tips/advice from the experts.
Hannibal is not going to get involved in the war.
Both Stalin and Charles have rifles and cannons. I think I can wipe Charles pretty quickly: I have a nice amount of infantry with CR bonus in my stack ready on his border and can produced more units quickly.
But I'm not really sure about Toku. He would be on his own vs Stalin until I'm done with Charles.

So what do you think I should do?
Declare on Charles+Stalin.
Turtle and go for space.
Declare on Hannibal?

 

[Stewie0416]

My experience with Hannibal is well...

Take out Hannibal, his financial trait will really be a pain in the @$$ later on. But you may want to watch Stalin, he is aggresive so you may want to watch out. Can you post a screeny, i wanna see were Toku is. Is he a buffer between u and S&C?

 

[Ai Shizuka]

Hannibal has a very big empire, and the front would be huge. And Stalin+Charles could declare while I'm fighting Hannibal.

Toku makes a nice buffer between me and Stalin. That war would be two separate wars, I think. Myself vs Charles and Toku vs Stalin. And we would crush Stalin together when I'm done with Charles.

 

[dankok8]

I don't think Charlie or Stalin are threats; they are kind of small and probably backwards too + Toku can help you handle either one if they attack. I say go for an all out war on Hannibal because if you fight others, he might end up with a huge military tech advantage (i.e. get Mech Infantry or something) and then you're screwed. Conquering Hannibal will also get you closest to Domination.

 

[Stewie0416]

Wow, toku is bigger than i thought. Well, Hannibal actually seems like a good target. You should be able to hold out from a Charlie assault. It seems you can easily hit Carthage and Hippo, the AI seems to LOVE Calvary, so watch out. Take out Carthage's core and he should be crippled. Toku should be able to guard against Stalin. Take Hippo, Carthage, then swing your army north.

 

[UWHabs]

If you have infantry, and they only have rifles, fire on someone. If you have a tech lead, you'll be attacking with infantry and tanks while they only have rifles and machine guns, you'll win with hardly any losses (unless if you just rush through it). If Hannibal's close in tech, I'd say you recoup, get healthy, get your first tank, and switch all-out war (Police state, theocracy, every city gets in on the action). Build up tanks, and just run him over. Ideally before he gets infantry, where it will be a cake walk, but if not, tanks are still beasts. Toku gives you enough buffer space against Stalin even if you have to fight off the world, and Hannibal is the main threat holding you back at this point, I'd say.

 

[JammerUno]

The shape of your lands is terribly awkward, going after Hannibal first would have given you a comprehensive front line and cut back 75% of the border you'd have to watch. I would attack Hannibal next, not just because he's the reason your empire is shaped funny, but he's the #2 as well. Going after the #2 is always a good idea. (unless you're not #1, in which case you should go after #1)

 

[JTMacc99]

Hey. Where are the tanks? Based on what I'm looking at from the two pictures, you're fighting a land war, you're researching satellites, and you've got a nice big stack of infantry, with artillery and calvalry. The opponents are with rifles and cannons.

So, you could pretty much completely clean out the Carthaginians in 15-20 turns if you had three stacks of 8 city raider tanks each, and three sets of 4-unit Bomber squadrons. (You'll need to bring a few stack defenders at the beginning, to protect your tanks from the counter attacks.) Bomb culture/move tanks next to city turn one, bomb defenders/attack city turn two. Move in CG infantry or marines into your new city, heal the tanks, and move on to the next city.

 

[Ai Shizuka]

Alright, war on Hannibal seems unanimous. And it was my least favorite choice. Looks like asking here was a good move.

So I'm gonna research tanks and bombers, make a couple of good stacks and declare on Hannibal.
Maybe giving some key techs to Toku, so he can defend better vs Stalin and Charlie, if they decide to declare.

Gonna try this war later, thanks for the tips so far.

 

[vicawoo]

Tokugawa's probably fine, with that large yet compact empire. Draft infantry like crazy and take out hannibal. If your cities end up half sized but you end up with his empire, you win.

 

[JTMacc99]

Alright, war on Hannibal seems unanimous. And it was my least favorite choice. Looks like asking here was a good move.

So I'm gonna research tanks and bombers, make a couple of good stacks and declare on Hannibal.
Maybe giving some key techs to Toku, so he can defend better vs Stalin and Charlie, if they decide to declare.

You should certainly give Toku the ability to defend himself. I'd probably set him up with rifles, military science, and maybe flight.

You already have the ability to build bombers. STOP building the Apollo program and start building bombers in that city. I think it will churn out one per turn. I'd probably set 4 or 5 of the best production cities on Tanks, two more on bombers, one on fighters, and the rest on paratroopers and marines.

Once you've finished Industrialialism, I think you'll want to go Computers, Robotics, Satellites, Composites, and then Lasers. If I've got that right, you'll then be able to make Tanks, then you'll be able to upgrade your infantry to Mech Infantry, then after that, Tanks become modern armor. At some point after that, you might still be working on this war and you can go ahead and pick up the laser and advanced flight. However, with what you're going to do to Hannibal with just tanks and bombers, I doubt he'll be able to field effective counter units (other than anti-tank units, which will be effectively dealt with by dropping some bombs on them before attacking) before you are done with him.

 

[Stewie0416]

Can you post the save? I want too see if i can play this myself.

 

[Ai Shizuka]

The saves is attached in the first post. Let me know if it doesn't work for some reason.

Anyway, I've declared on Hannibal and it's going surprisingly well. Looks like I was giving him a bit too much credit. I've built up my army a bit before DoW.

I already had flight for bombers, dropped the Apollo Program and satellites, researched tank and set up the best cities to pump out those. Thebes was going at 1 per turn, both tanks and bombers, and a couple more cities was producing 1 every 2 or 3 turns.

I've decided to go with my old stack (the one in the picture) to Hippo and then to Carthage. Those CR infantries are really rocking (I think some of them are 5,000 years old axemen from the battle of Thebes). Looks like the bulk of Hannibal's force was ready right there: a huge mix of everything, really, from longbows to cavalry, anti-tanks and some SAM.

And I went with my new stack of tanks to Oea and Tacape, to connect the two parts of my empire. Some of the other cities had very little defense, so I got Carmona and Malaca with 2 smaller squads of tanks.
That's 5 cities in 4 turns, I think.

Meanwhile I researched advanced flight and upgraded my old cavalry to gunships. And tanks are becoming modern armors in a few turns.

Stalin and Charlie are still doing the bestest buddies over there, not interfering at all. I've gifted Toku a couple of key techs, but he's not doing a lot so far. Probably he needs some more turns to move in a decent stack. At this moment he has some small cavalry squads roaming around.

Not sure if I'm going to destroy Hannibal or just make him capitulate.

But big lesson learned so far: score and empire size mean squat. I always used to go for the weakest targets in my old Civ 2 and 3 games. Looks like it's better to go for the stronger opponent, when possible.
Thanks again, I'm not gonna play the wimp role ever again

 

[Ai Shizuka]

Alright, did it.
The war was getting boring and really lopsided, so I made him capitulate. He was pleased after the capitulation :| . And he researched tanks during war-time, but was able to use only 3 or 4 of them.
Oh, and Toku conquered a couple cities with cavalry and cannons. I helped him with some bombing runs on his targets.

I'm quite happy right now, as this is my first Noble victory (on the second Noble game, but that bad Great Plains map was, well, bad), first Domination victory and first Augustus Caesar score. All at the same time.

Celebrating screens: