Need help: Noble game, 660 AD, Malinese

[Convex]

I'm starting to play Noble games and need some help. I've attached a game.

In this game I chopped and axeman rushed the Chinese on a peninsula of a large single continent map and wiped them out. I started attacking the Mongols. But I'm lowest in the power graph and am not sure what I should be doing at this point. I usually win on lower levels by domination but I failed at this in a previous Noble game.

I started trading techs with the English and am hoping to have them join me in wiping out the mongols. But my culture and tech is slow. Should I be warring?

Any advice from the experts? Where can I take this game in order to win? What should I focus on?

 

[Jet]

It looks like you have a good army, I don't think you'll be last for long.

I would actually build more buildings. Keep one or two cities building units at any given time, but -
1. definitely a granary everywhere
2. forges
3. lighthouses esp. b/c with financial you get 3 commerce
4. courthouses
Whip them! As soon as it says +1 unhappy for __10__ turns (or 15 on epic etc) whip. Preferably whip something for 2 population, that is generally the most efficient choice.

One city is building a catapult w/o barracks - I hate that except in emergency - build a barracks first.

You should get great people generation going. Have one city run a scientist for eventually an academy in your capital and have one city build a temple and run a priest for eventually the Confucian shrine. Remember that in terms of happiness temples are free to whip because you get +1 happy from the building.

Some of the cities aren't very well placed. Beijing - ugh (one tile off the coast). Shanghai - ugh (one resource, non food). Kumbi Saleh - ugh (no resources). As you attack more cities you might want to raze some of them.

You might want to try building the Colossus after a forge. That will make your 3 commerce water tiles even better. The Colossus should go pretty fast after you get the forge, because you have copper.

 

[Cam_H]

Convex,

Welcome to CivFanatics!

I've got to admit that I'm surprised that you've established so few city buildings - usually breaking builder habits is one of the challenges as you progress in levels - but that's not the problem here!

I'm more optimistic than Jet is about how you will go ... that stack of doom you have should be sufficient to wipe out the Mongols I would think.

Your cities are however stagnating in size and you've developed no city infrastructure to support your science push in that there's no buildings to multiply your commerce intake. You've done quite well with your Cottages and special resources.

I appreciate that the poorly placed cities are those taken from the A.I.. You possibly could have razed and resettled some in a slightly better spot, but I'm not 'that' concerned about it.

I'd say press on with your war effort, but you'll have to start taking care of the business and growth side of your empire.

 

[pigswill]

First post, welcome to CFC convex.

Now comes the criticism. You should have wiped the chinese cities you captured ; city location generally is not optimal; but its too late to change that. You could also benefit from locating your own cities a bit better. Don't know if you've practiced dot mapping but if you can't do it in your head practice drawing on a saved map.

You're generating no great people at all. You could build a library in timbuctu, you've easily got enough food to then run two scientists which will add to research and generate a great scientist. Use a great scientist to establish an academy in your best commerce city.

You've discovered confucianism and done nothing with it. Build a monastery and get the missionaries out to spread it to your own cities at least. Build a temple and run a priest specialist who'll eventually give you a Great Prophet so you can found confucian shrine and start earning money.

You've got a decent size army so yes war against GK, make sure you only keep the cities that are worth keeping (good resources or holy city or world wonder), don't be afraid to raze naff cities, you've got enough of them already. Once you've beaten up GK a bit see if you can extort a tech in exchange for a peace treaty.

Overall it seems a bit of a mess at the moment but its all fixable.

Its worth remembering that we all play some not good moves at times, with practice you won't make so many but I'm confident that no-one on the forum has played perfectly every game regardless of their current level.

 

[Shillen]

You need fishing boats out of timbuktu. You're even working the clams but neither of them have boats.

What's with the city ruins between the bananas and rice? That's actually a perfect spot for a city.

Why are you Confucian? It's gaining you nothing right now. Switch to no religion so all your cities with other religions in them can get cultural expansions.

Guangzhou's elephants are still in the jungle. Chop the jungle down for +1 food on that tile.

I'm surprised to say it but I think you're actually over-using catapults. Build more war elephants, less catapults. And you're giving them all bombard bonuses which is not what you want at this stage of the game. Bombard is good if you're suiciding the catapult. But since it's so early in the game you should probably give them city raider promotions because they'll have a pretty good chance of winning in non-hilled cities that have been bombarded down to 0%.

As the guy above me said, don't build units in cities without barracks (except really early in the game to garrison/explore or in a state of emergency).

Definitely need more buildings. Building units in size 2-3 cities is kind of not worth it. You're much better off building a granary or a lighthouse or something to help it become a useful city. Timbuktu at the least should get a library.

Oh and some of your units should get medic promotions. You should have 1 unit in every stack with a medic promotion. A medic promotion in enemy territory triples the healing rate of all units in that tile. You also took a lot of combat promotions with your units. I see a combat 2 axeman and a couple combat 1, city raider 1 axemen. That's kind of a waste. Axemen should either be all city raider or combat 1, medic 1, then cover or shock. War elephants can take combat promotions since they can't take city raider, though.

 

[Convex]

Thanks for the help. My first post and I've got some new things to learn/try.

I'm reluctant to raze cities, that's why the Chinese ones are where they are... the AI put them there. What is dot mapping? Is it placing cities so they don't overlap?

I get it that I need to build infrastructure. I'll do that.

The city ruins between bananas and rice was a level 1 Chinese city.

I've been lazy with the details of religion, promotions and great people. I see I need to put more attention in these areas.

Thanks again!!

 

[weimingshi]

in civ4, expansion is limited by your economy. Never played noble difficulty before. So I am not really sure how many city you can build/conquer before you reach currency/corporation that won't stifle your research. If you find you are technologically backward from other civs, chances are you got too many cities.

 

[Wlauzon]

You CAN expand almost endlessly with the right leaders, the right wonders, and the right techs. And a lot of relgions.

In one huge 4 continent map with time limit turned off, I had over 3.5 continents covered, and somewhere around 100 to 120 cities. And I was makng about 200 gold per turn with research and culture at 50/50 (at Future Tech 17 or so), Asoka.

However that was pretty unusual to get so many tech for improvements and wonders early enough so that at around 1700 I could keep my research up at 100% and expand at 1-2 settlers per turn on my original continent. Good goody hut finds (I got 5 or 6 techs from huts), good trades, and huge research bonuses for my main city (making over 500 beakers per turn at around 1800) I had managed to get all the good research wonders, 5 religions, and had generated about 6 Great Science guys to add to city.

Adding to that, I was able to keep bribing other civs to go to war on each other by trading techs, which pretty much kept them off me and slowed them down a lot.

I think that was just about my last Noble game, after that I moved up to Prince and became yet again a doormat for Alexander and his friends

 

[Cam_H]

What is dot mapping? Is it placing cities so they don't overlap?

It's simply planning where your cities are to go. This is an example done by Robo Kai in the RK-01 First Strike First succession game: