Need some help with Noble

[rep1826]

So I've started playing Civ IV and tried a few games (I was an avid Civ 3 fan). I'm not doing very well despite reading a lot of the articles here. I have a lot of ideas for what is supposed to work based on the advice I see here and my understanding the game mechanics, but nothing that I do ever works out.

What usually happens

It seems like I go into every game with the same basic mindset/understanding, and the result is always pretty different. That's cool, it makes for a much deeper strategy game. However, the constant factor is that I end up in last place score-wise by the time it's about 1000 AD. Usually it's because my power is by far the lowest. So here's my thoughts on a large variety of topics. Please let me know where I'm going wrong! By the way, this is really long but I'd appreciate a response to any part of it (I talk about a lot of different things).

Game settings

I like "epic" stuff, so I've been playing on huge continent worlds at marathon speeds. My favorite are actually archipelago because I like being a big naval power but I feel like it's "cheating"; the AI leaves me alone when I'm at my weakest. I don't want to win just because it's easy! So to make it fair I play on continents instead. I typically play with 11 other AIs, with my own setting on Noble.

City selection

I'm very picky about where I place a city based on the tiles. Unfortunately, creating a city with good tiles ends up making it very far away, and I get hurt in the maintenance costs. The AI has terrible city placement (they even have overlapping work tiles, which drives me crazy). Their city placement is so bad that I'm often tempted to just raze their cities.

I try to plan what the city will do based on what tiles it has, but sometimes the cities seem too food-poor to do anything except production (or maybe nothing at all, really). What do you do when all of the land is like this? The AI often places cities on land so bad it seems like it'd just be a waste of time. But is it?

Maintenance and number of cities

Huge worlds with 12 players leave a lot of room to create a lot of cities. And despite the rule of "fewer cities, hyper-optimized", only I seem to abide by this. The AI spams cities like crazy, just like in Civ 3. Apparently on Noble, the AI is subject to the same maintenance costs that I am, but I find that very hard to believe. The problem may be that I am too poor gold-wise whereas the AI is not. This is related to what I said above about cities with terrible land not even being worth it. The AI always builds cities on tundra tiles. I usually don't even bother, figuring it'd be a waste of resources. Yet, they always beat me. Is it the case that Noble is perhaps "too easy" for the amount of land available? That is, are the maintenance costs too low for the AI given the size of the world and the number of players, making it too easy for them to put down about 10 (mostly bad) cities.

Cottage economy vs. specialist economy

I play as Gandhi usually, and I try to do the specialist economy. I always found Hinduism, but I can't seem to parlay that into making lots of money. The biggest problem is that I'm really poor gold-wise when I do SE, and I can't get the science specialists up to speed fast enough to not fall behind in tech. And that's even with the pyramids. I'm usually the most backward civ technology-wise. However, I rarely trade techs with the AI, and they're probably all trading with each other. I guess that's part of the problem?

I think another problem is that I'm not really using a great prophet city/gold city. I'm not sure I've understood the mechanics of how it's supposed to work. I tend to have a total aversion to cottages and not build any at all, preferring to maximize food so that I can create more specialists and get my gold that way. But that gold never seems to materialize in great enough quantities to support anything I need to do. One or two civs usually have airships when I have just got my first gunpowder unit.

City specialization & military weakness

I like to specialize my cities. But sometimes it doesn't seem to work out, i.e. the land is just bad for it. I usually have a highly specialized production city (with heroic epic) that just cranks out military units until the end of time. I can usually build any unit in the game in about 1 turn. However, the AI (with their huge number of cities) seems to build a military unit in just about every single city they have and over time produce an astonishing number of units. How on earth do they have the gold to support this and still research? Again, this gets back to my gold problems.

Diplomacy

I really don't use diplomacy or resource trading enough. That's usally because everyone is doing so much better than me and I have no tech to trade with them that they don't already have. Also I'm not sure I understand the benefits. If I receive the resource "fish" which has +1 to food, where does that +1 go? To every city? It couldn't figure out where it was going, and I looked everywhere.

Ruthless barbarians

Often times the barbarian's just seem absurd. A lot of times I can't possibly get to the copper/iron yet very early they somehow have lots of axemen. This is more a complaint about game design - why so aggresive on only the Noble setting? The only answer seems to bee-line to get archers as fast as possible and always make sure you fortify two of them in every city. This makes it hard to develop the economy early on, however. I could turn them off, but again I don't like to make things too easy.

What I'm trying to accomplish

What I'd like to see/how I liked to play Civ3/what I think is cool is a scenario where I have weak military power in number of units but my technology is just so far ahead of everyone that it doesn't matter. I like the idea of a great military power vs. a great economic power. So I try to focus on the economy while providing defense only. Yet my strategies for doing this always fail. The "unit mongering" AI seems to have better tech than I do!

"Cheat codes"

I'd love it if there were a way I could enable the "investigate city" passive espionage option on every other civ from the very beginning of the game, and just watch what the AI does for one trial game. That way, I could at least learn why they're beating me or how they tend to play. I can't figure out how I'm getting absolutely stomped.

 

[Carbon12]

First off, Welcome to CFC!!

Well, I was going to post some help, but seeing as I'm only on chieftan/warlord, you seem to have about the same grasp of the game that I do. I read about games on here, and what I read makes sense, but then I have a hard time making the same connection to my game. I've come along on some stuff, but it's still slower going. I'll be reading this thread to see some of the answers you get and see if they help me in my game.

There are a couple groups around that sound like they might be a good fit for you. The Noble's Club runs a premade map and everyone does their own thing on it and then post how it worked out for them. That's a good group that I've found and been shadowing on here.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Welcome aboard.

So I've started playing Civ IV

You may want to clarify whether you have the expansion packs - it can make a dramatic difference in advice you (should) get.

It seems like I go into every game with the same basic mindset/understanding

You'll get past that eventually, not particularly critical given that you are playing a consistent map type and leader.

I like "epic" stuff, so I've been playing on huge continent worlds at marathon speeds.

OK - keep in mind that the balance on marathon speed is screwy. In particular, you should be more inclined towards war, because of the changes in production costs and the relative balance between movement rate and production rate.

I'm very picky about where I place a city based on the tiles

Might be a problem - land needs to be developed and worked, and that means placing cities close enough to work it, whether or not all of the locations are ideal.

Their city placement is so bad that I'm often tempted to just raze their cities.

This is definitely a problem - if the AI puts a city in the wrong place, then you raze it. Temptation ain't good enough. (Not an absolute rule - some compromise is allowed when the captured cities has goodies in it).

I try to plan what the city will do based on what tiles it has, but sometimes the cities seem too food-poor to do anything except production (or maybe nothing at all, really). What do you do when all of the land is like this?

Food is life - if there isn't enough food to make a city interesting, don't settle it.

Huge worlds with 12 players leave a lot of room to create a lot of cities. And despite the rule of "fewer cities, hyper-optimized", only I seem to abide by this.

Don't confuse "fewer cities" with "less land area".

I play as Gandhi usually, and I try to do the specialist economy.

Hmm - don't do that. You don't yet have enough laps under your belt to be so particular. Come back to it later if you like. For now, you are better off with a hybrid.

I always found Hinduism, but I can't seem to parlay that into making lots of money.

Don't do that either. Instead, dedicate yourself to improving your land first. Again, you can come back to the religious minigame later (although it's worth noting that religious openings are pretty scarce at the highest difficult levels).

I really don't use diplomacy or resource trading enough.

It's not critical yet. When you master the important things, Noble AIs won't be able to keep up with you anyway.

That's usally because everyone is doing so much better than me and I have no tech to trade with them that they don't already have. Also I'm not sure I understand the benefits. If I receive the resource "fish" which has +1 to food, where does that +1 go? To every city? It couldn't figure out where it was going, and I looked everywhere.

Fish has a +1 to , which only changes the yield of the tile with the fish.

Fish has a +1 to , which applies to every city which is "connected" to the fish. For resources you acquire in trade, that means the cities connected to your capital. The health benefit appears in the city management screen at the top (your total health cap), and on the right hand side (the listing of resources available - directly under the religion markers). If you have the building that multiplies the health bonus, that will be reflected in both places.

Often times the barbarian's just seem absurd. A lot of times I can't possibly get to the copper/iron yet very early they somehow have lots of axemen. This is more a complaint about game design - why so aggresive on only the Noble setting? The only answer seems to bee-line to get archers as fast as possible and always make sure you fortify two of them in every city.

With the exception of Barbarian Uprisings (which were very badly designed), they aren't that aggressive. The usual solution is to acquire the resources/technologies you need to train advanced units sooner. The more advanced approach is a technique called "fog busting".

If you have barbarians attacking you in your cities, something has gone Very Wrong[tm].

What I'd like to see/how I liked to play Civ3/what I think is cool is a scenario where I have weak military power in number of units but my technology is just so far ahead of everyone that it doesn't matter.

That still works, but you need to be able to generate beakers to do it.

That way, I could at least learn why they're beating me or how they tend to play.

You could, but that won't tell you much about how you should play - the AI provides really lousy examples.

 

[Carbon12]

Yeah, one thing I did think of as I read VoU's response. It's almost always better to let the AI spend hammers on early wonders or tech, in this case religion, and then take it from them in a war. Yes, you could research Meditation or Poly early and get the early religion, OR, you could research mining and BW and then make a stack of axes and go take the holy city from them. Seems the overwhelming opinion on the boards is that the early religions are almost never worth taking.

 

[KaytieKat]

Hi welcome to the forums

So I've started playing Civ IV and tried a few games (I was an avid Civ 3 fan). I'm not doing very well despite reading a lot of the articles here. I have a lot of ideas for what is supposed to work based on the advice I see here and my understanding the game mechanics, but nothing that I do ever works out.

No worries when I first came to this forum I was pretty much stuck on chiefton and noble was VERY hard. But now I can usually win on nobe, even prince and have one a monarch game or two and Im not the world's greatest player. the REALLY good players have gone from like noble to immortal and even deity in just a few months.

What usually happens

It seems like I go into every game with the same basic mindset/understanding, and the result is always pretty different. That's cool, it makes for a much deeper strategy game. However, the constant factor is that I end up in last place score-wise by the time it's about 1000 AD. Usually it's because my power is by far the lowest. So here's my thoughts on a large variety of topics. Please let me know where I'm going wrong! By the way, this is really long but I'd appreciate a response to any part of it (I talk about a lot of different things).

First thing right there--your power has NOTHING to do with your score. I wont go into all the things that do go into it but having the biggest most powerful army in the world wont increase your score. It WILL however win you the game. In other words dont worry TOO much about score. It IS nice to be number one but if you read reports you can see lots of games of people who won all kinds of victories without ever leading in score.

Game settings

I like "epic" stuff, so I've been playing on huge continent worlds at marathon speeds. My favorite are actually archipelago because I like being a big naval power but I feel like it's "cheating"; the AI leaves me alone when I'm at my weakest. I don't want to win just because it's easy! So to make it fair I play on continents instead. I typically play with 11 other AIs, with my own setting on Noble.
.

That kind of ironic. SInce while there are a few reasons why heavy water maps puts ai at disadvantage the fact that you can start out isolated really is NOT one of em. In fact starting out like that is considered a handicap most times. But I like continents too. I also prefer marathon. Best thing to do about speed you play on is learn how some aspects of game scale and some dont from standard. And how that affects the play. Same with mapsize.

City selection

I'm very picky about where I place a city based on the tiles. Unfortunately, creating a city with good tiles ends up making it very far away, and I get hurt in the maintenance costs. The AI has terrible city placement (they even have overlapping work tiles, which drives me crazy). Their city placement is so bad that I'm often tempted to just raze their cities.

I try to plan what the city will do based on what tiles it has, but sometimes the cities seem too food-poor to do anything except production (or maybe nothing at all, really). What do you do when all of the land is like this? The AI often places cities on land so bad it seems like it'd just be a waste of time. But is it?
.

Noone like nice pretty cities in perfect locations more than me . That said you cant ALWAYS get that perfect site nor is it always practical. Like overlap annoys me too, BUT look at it this way--a city needs to be size 20 to work EVERY tile on its on. And it takes a LONG time for a city to get that big so in long run you can get more out of 2 size 12-15 cities sharing some tiles than two widely spaced cities trying to grow em to 20plus. ALso city size is a little diff than from civ3. I usually tell peple think of it as -5 diff. Like a size 15 city in civ 4 is like a size 20 city in civ3 and size 20 like 25 and so on (it not EXACTLY like that but I think it close enuff that you can get the idea)

I mean when I first started playing I used to raze almost EVERY enemy city I captured if I thought it was sucky location. But as I learned the necessity of comprimes on my city sites I noticed waaay too often I ended up building cities on the EXACT same spot of the city I just razed. SO know I only raze if 1)its a VERY early rush and I wouldnt be able to afford it anyways so then cities only get kept if they are shrined, have a wonder, or is the enemy's capitol. or 2) it is just SOOOO monumentally sucky I just cant live with it. and for me that USUALLY means one tile away from the coast or sometimes cuz its a border city that just gonna get swamped by the culture of another ai that I am not planning on attacking anytime soon. Other than that I just learn to live with it mostly cuz unless your a VERY quick to resttle in the more ideal spot another ai can beat you to it and also after mid late game a size 15 city that kept half its buildings after you capture it but in less than ideal spot will still probably in long run end up helping you more than trying to start a whole city from scratch.

Settling cities waaaay far off ESPECIALLY like for the first settler you build is only good IF you have a very SPECIFIC reason to do so. Such as it is the only I mean ONLY way to get a crucial startegic resource like copper or horses or iron, or if you are doing it to block a choke point and back fill later, or it part of plan to agressively settle close to an ai you planning on killing very soon. Other than things like that it usually probably better to not settle off too far away.

Maintenance and number of cities

Huge worlds with 12 players leave a lot of room to create a lot of cities. And despite the rule of "fewer cities, hyper-optimized", only I seem to abide by this. The AI spams cities like crazy, just like in Civ 3. Apparently on Noble, the AI is subject to the same maintenance costs that I am, but I find that very hard to believe. The problem may be that I am too poor gold-wise whereas the AI is not. This is related to what I said above about cities with terrible land not even being worth it. The AI always builds cities on tundra tiles. I usually don't even bother, figuring it'd be a waste of resources. Yet, they always beat me. Is it the case that Noble is perhaps "too easy" for the amount of land available? That is, are the maintenance costs too low for the AI given the size of the world and the number of players, making it too easy for them to put down about 10 (mostly bad) cities.
.

10 cities really isnt all THAT huge. A lot of players mention how they do their best to get 12 cities by 1ad. Dont ask me how the BEST I ever done by that ppoint is 11 hehe. But getting 7 or 8 by then note TOO bad. A lot of people will say thats even ALL you need (one of my VERY first noble games I ever played--the first game in the nobles club series I won a domination win and I only made TWO cities my capitol --and then a second city to hook up copper for axes. by end of game I had like over 40 cities the rest of the ai was kind enuff to build for me hehe. Just be aware that depending on map size some national wonders require a certain number of buildings types like so many couthouses b4 you can build forbidden palace, so many banks b4 wall street etc. So make sure you have enuff cities to get those national wonders if they in your plan.

Cottage economy vs. specialist economy

I play as Gandhi usually, and I try to do the specialist economy. I always found Hinduism, but I can't seem to parlay that into making lots of money. The biggest problem is that I'm really poor gold-wise when I do SE, and I can't get the science specialists up to speed fast enough to not fall behind in tech. And that's even with the pyramids. I'm usually the most backward civ technology-wise. However, I rarely trade techs with the AI, and they're probably all trading with each other. I guess that's part of the problem?

I think another problem is that I'm not really using a great prophet city/gold city. I'm not sure I've understood the mechanics of how it's supposed to work. I tend to have a total aversion to cottages and not build any at all, preferring to maximize food so that I can create more specialists and get my gold that way. But that gold never seems to materialize in great enough quantities to support anything I need to do. One or two civs usually have airships when I have just got my first gunpowder unit.
.

Oh boy WHOLE threads been done on SE vs CE. My answer to it when I want to be smart alecky is to say (and truthfully) I have won games where I have NEVER built a SINGLE cottage but I havent even PLAYED a game where I didnt end up building farms and mines. That said early on just focus on like hybrids. Like say if its a hill mine it, if its a resources build the proper improvement for it. If its flat and resourceless and you have enough food to work the mines and other improved tiles and still grow, then cottage it, if not farm it. Just keep to that plan if your not sure and you can do ok and as you play more you will learn when to make expections for things like watermills, lumbermills, when to go for more cottages or none in a given city etc.

City specialization & military weakness

I like to specialize my cities. But sometimes it doesn't seem to work out, i.e. the land is just bad for it. I usually have a highly specialized production city (with heroic epic) that just cranks out military units until the end of time. I can usually build any unit in the game in about 1 turn. However, the AI (with their huge number of cities) seems to build a military unit in just about every single city they have and over time produce an astonishing number of units. How on earth do they have the gold to support this and still research? Again, this gets back to my gold problems.
.

Well yeah your military pump is and should be pumpinmg units ALL the time and the rest of your cities should be pumping units at least SOME of the time. As for affording them. Again whole threads can be devoted to that. Just know there are TONS of ways. --maximize your trade routes, use certain civics, build the approiate building, work cottages, run merhants if your focus on beakers to get xtra gold or if your focusing on gold at expense of beakers then run scientists. Build wealth or Reasearch too. Techs like Code of Laws, Currency, writing, alphabet, and pottery ALL have different ways of boosting your economy once you start expanding and costs start rising and pretty much every player will tell you you want at LEAST ONE of those techs BEFORE costs start getting out of hand so learn to plan for it. Beelinging str8 to bronzeworking and then rushing your three closest neighbors might sound fun but once your slider is down to zero and units going on strike youre gonna wish you had at least pottery before that point.

Diplomacy

I really don't use diplomacy or resource trading enough. That's usally because everyone is doing so much better than me and I have no tech to trade with them that they don't already have. Also I'm not sure I understand the benefits. If I receive the resource "fish" which has +1 to food, where does that +1 go? To every city? It couldn't figure out where it was going, and I looked everywhere.
.

To get trading fodder, try and see what the other ai's are teching and then tech something else. Some basic trade fodder is something like alphabet--ai's tend to put that at low priority so by time you tech it you can trade it for stuff like ironworkingaand horseback riding. Different AI's prioritize diffrent things so once you get the feel for it you will get an idea of what techs you should focus on with idea toward backfill trades.
Ruthless barbarians

Often times the barbarian's just seem absurd. A lot of times I can't possibly get to the copper/iron yet very early they somehow have lots of axemen. This is more a complaint about game design - why so aggresive on only the Noble setting? The only answer seems to bee-line to get archers as fast as possible and always make sure you fortify two of them in every city. This makes it hard to develop the economy early on, however. I could turn them off, but again I don't like to make things too easy.
.

Short story is lear mechanics of fogbusting and spawnbusting and most games babries wont be a problem. And if worst comes to worst, Great wall can be VERY easy to get on noble but noble is a good time to start learning to live without it too.

What I'm trying to accomplish

What I'd like to see/how I liked to play Civ3/what I think is cool is a scenario where I have weak military power in number of units but my technology is just so far ahead of everyone that it doesn't matter. I like the idea of a great military power vs. a great economic power. So I try to focus on the economy while providing defense only. Yet my strategies for doing this always fail. The "unit mongering" AI seems to have better tech than I do!
.

"Cheat codes"

I'd love it if there were a way I could enable the "investigate city" passive espionage option on every other civ from the very beginning of the game, and just watch what the AI does for one trial game. That way, I could at least learn why they're beating me or how they tend to play. I can't figure out how I'm getting absolutely stomped.

First like already mentioned, dont worry bout what the ai does, read article sin war academy, or read /participate in sereis like nobles club, lonely hearts club or Monarch University or any individual thread where somebody is doing a walk through. Or watch TheMeinTeam's lets play civ videos on youtube.

As for your plan not always working. It hard give specific advice. SInce every game can be very different depending on all sorts of factors. But really I think you on right step though.

There is this thread in general discussion about "teach me and give me a gem" where people give the ONE gem of advice they think is most important. I have never said it there but if I HAD to boil it down to something like that it would be that. "Have a plan" doesnt matter WHAT the plan is. A bad plan by a human is 9 times out of 10 gonna beat whatever the ai can come up with. Thing is once you have your plan the follow it and have reason for EVERYTHING you do. You gonna put that city there? have that citizen work this tile as opposed to that. Have this worker improve here instead of theres build this unit go for that tech WHATEVER it is stop and ask how does that contribute to the plan and dont make a move until you at least have an idea on how it does (Hey its turn based strategy so you can take all time you need hehe )

As you play more and learn more your plans will get more refined, you will learn how different situations can affect your plan and how to adjust.

Sorry this advice is all sooo general but really. Just about every question you asked has been subject of not just eassys but entire threads and even multiple threads and even then it can all depend on the specific situation of a specific game. But dont get discouraged the mor eyou play and the more you rea don here and even give rpeorts, screenshots and saves of specific games the more you will learn and better you will get

Kaytie

 

[pi-r8]

I'll just nitpick one thing out of your post, which is that it drives you crazy to have cities with overlapping tiles. It's actually not bad at all to do that. A city can't even work all of it's tiles until it's at least size 20, which generally doesn't happen until quite late in the game. Having more cities that are smaller lets you grow them faster and work more total land tiles, which is really what matters.

 

[Sporknife]

You mention not building any cottages; that's the root of your gold problems.

 

[weekend_warrior]

I try to do the specialist economy. I always found Hinduism, but I can't seem to parlay that into making lots of money. The biggest problem is that I'm really poor gold-wise when I do SE

This is the root of your problems. You need to build cottages. A LOT of cottages. What exactly do you do with tiles that aren't river side? Leave them bare?

 

[L-Plate Ruler]

There are some great articles on these subjects...

Introduction to City Placement and Specialization: a Walk-Through

Speaking from my own experience, my game lifted dramatically when I started building actual commerce cities (and I think it'll jump again when I get more disciplined about only building what I need.)
Read this... Cottages!!

...and when you're feeling cocky... The Early Rush.

 

[L-Plate Ruler]

Ah wait, there's more!

A Comprehensive Guide to Terrain, Improvements, Resources, and City Placement.

A Guide to City Specialization and the Land Improvements that surround them. (ver 1.6)

 

[/solar/]

So I've started playing Civ IV and tried a few games (I was an avid Civ 3 fan). I'm not doing very well despite reading a lot of the articles here. I have a lot of ideas for what is supposed to work based on the advice I see here and my understanding the game mechanics, but nothing that I do ever works out.


City selection

Don't be so picky! Overlapping tiles are not a big issue. It will be a very long time before cities are able to work all their tiles anyway. Sometimes it is right to build cities far away from your capital, but usually this is down to those cites blocking off large areas from the AI, so that you can settle more cities. when founding a city, look for 5-10 tiles that it will be working in the short term, to fill its goal, and worry less about how awesome the city will look at 2049AD when it is finally working all its tiles.

The AI does have some city placement problems, and puts down some pretty stupid cities occasionally. Its not to bad for the most part though.

Maintenance and number of cities

10 cities is a pretty good goal for the early expansion phase (filling up all the available land). Often to achieve this you need to attack a neighbour early to take some of his land. Yes your science rate may drop, but remember, 10 cities with 50% science can often produce more beakers than 5 cities with 70% science.

Cottage economy vs. specialist economy

I'm of the group that thinks those two terms are pretty meaningless. Build you cities using the best tiles they have access to. Some cities lend themselves to building lots of cottages. Some have enough left over food to run some specialists. Some have both. Learn to just engineer each city individually to get the best out of it rather than saying "I'm running a specialist economy so I have to irrigate all this grassland to run scientists".

City specialization & military weakness

One thing the AI does, especially if you declare war on them, is whip military units. So when you first invade it does seem like their cities all produce units every turn, because often they do. Part of city specialisation is limiting the building of infrastructure. Only build libraries in those cities producing lots of commerce etc.

Diplomacy

The fish resource for example, provides that tile with +1 food. When a workboat works the tile it produces 2 more. By having that resource connected (or traded for) your entire empire gets +1 health. Tech trading is a big part of keeping up, especially in higher levels. Look at the tech trading screen to see what the AI's don't have and research those techs, rather than just researching what you need.

Ruthless barbarians

Barbs aren't that hard on noble. A chariot or two and roads between cities is usually plenty.

What I'm trying to accomplish

What you are trying to accomplish is possible on the lower levels, but not any higher.



Post some saves on here, for people to look at. It sounds like you're making some big mistakes very early on if you can't keep pace with the noble AI.

 

[vicawoo]

Building more specialists doesn't give you a lot of gold, it gives you a lot of great people. You can't be a great economic power without cottages. The closest you can come is to get philosophy (pacifism) and code of laws (caste system) and run obscene amounts of specialists early.

 

[rep1826]

Thanks for the in-depth responses everybody.

The big thing I'm taking away from this advice is "build more cities". A lot more cities. I've seen recommendations of 10 to 12 cities which is more than twice what I was usually building. I used to build 12-18 _really good_ cities in Civ 3...so when I heard "build fewer", well, I did.

I'll show you the first real game I played, which is before I read anything on this board and tried to do the right things on a "continents" map. It's an archipelago map, and it's the reason I'm really confused by why people don't like isolated starts.

Notice how poorly I was doing in 1476. In that year, I still had swordsmen (as defenders?!) in London. I had 6 cities, really spread out. I was building Grocers in cities that didn't make a lot of money. I was doing everything wrong by every metric imaginable.

To be fair, I did reload once to move some units around once when someone barely took London around 1500. But look how well I ended up doing by 2021. Being brand new to Civ IV, I was impressed with myself.

However, this isolated start, which everyone perceives as worse but I think is so easy as to be unfair in my favor, is the best I've done in the game so far. The 3 or 4 games I've played since learning much more about the game, I've actually done far worse and have been completely eliminated before the industrial era.

I think the reason is that as you can see, I have very nice land on an island and it's big. When I play on continents, I can only build about 3-4 cities before I absolutely must start war mongering if I want more cities than that. As in Civ 3, I'm not good at rushing and I like to develop the economy as quietly as is possible. I know when most people say rush they mean in the first few 100 turns...with warriors. I tend mean...anything before 1000 AD

By the way, I'm not a peaceful player; the only victory option I ever enable on any game is conquest. Yet, something seems "cooler" to me about killing everyone with your economic power as opposed to being a big dumb guy with a hammer and you beat them with it in the year 3000 BC. I like the whole "punching above you weight" idea. Maybe it was only possible in Civ 3 because the AI was so much worse. It's not counter-intuitive, by the way. The real life England took over most of the world despite being half of an island; they were farther along in the tech tree than anyone else Today, the largest militaries by the numbers are weaker than the smaller, technologically sophisticated ones.

I guess I'm having trouble adapting to not being an island nation and to Civ 4 in general. To do well, I think that means one and usually two wars very soon.

The big question is now, how do pay for (shield-wise) all those settlers and build army up so quickly? I've recently found the threads where people post an opening, and others download the save and describe their progress/stuff that happens based on decisions they've made. It's already helped a lot. I'll keep reading.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

However, this isolated start, which everyone perceives as worse but I think is so easy as to be unfair in my favor, is the best I've done in the game so far. The 3 or 4 games I've played since learning much more about the game, I've actually done far worse and have been completely eliminated before the industrial era.

Well, maybe 5 games isn't enough to judge?

The usual problem with isolated starts is that the AI has an opportunity to cooperate, especially in research, and you get left out. It's not clear that this happened here, and of course you are playing archipelago, which is a map that the AI sucks at.


Your 1400 save is a mess; yes, the AI is bad enough to allow you to win from that position, but really you should be striving to avoid digging that deep a hole for yourself.

1) You are badly under sized. At this point in the game, you should control your island and both of the neighboring barb infestations. Minimum. According to the demographics screen, you are currently 4th in land area. You should be first... and it shouldn't be close.

2) You are badly underdeveloped. Invest fewer hammers in buildings, and more hammers in units. Workers are desperately under appreciated in your game.

3) Your city placement is very weak here. You've got 12 green tiles east of London that have no cities that can work them. Every one of those tiles is green (it can feed itself) and 4 of them have resources on them. Therefore (a) there ought to be a city in the middle of that or (b) you needed to better choose where you put your cities.

4) There are a number of answers to "where do the hammers come from", but chopping forests is part of the answer, especially in the BC era.

One last thought - CIV IV is a game where early advantages are turned into winning positions. If you want useful advice, your best bet is to post saves between 3000 BC and 1000 BC.

 

[CornPlanter]

1. Get rid of prejudices. Specialist Economy *can* be valid term and valid strategy given the right circumstances but more often than not it is not. Wars are fight in order to get economical/strategical advantage, not the other way round - both in real life and in Civ4. Isolated start is usually not good and getting as many contacts as possible asap is usually high priority. You can successfully play in all the crazy ways you like on Noble, no doubt, but first you want to learn effective ways

2. Advices in forums can help you only so much. Practice is everything. 5 games? Huh. Even your questions and your problems show how little you understand about the game (thats no offense, its perfectly normal for someone with 5 games experience). And yet you start with such a nice little goal "to get ahead in techs by several eras and crush hapless AI". Now thats doable, no doubt, but before you try to learn to own AIs in all the perverted ways, its probably a good idea to learn to win at all List your biggest problems.You probably dont even know where exactly your biggest problems lie, thats ok, VoiceOfUnreason and other people already pointed to many of them. Name the list "My goals". Here we are. First, you said barbarians are big problem. Second, you said you barely manage to settle 4 cities before land is all but taken. Improving these 2 could be your goals now Quantum mechanics and rocket science can wait.

 

[/solar/]

The big question is now, how do pay for (shield-wise) all those settlers and build army up so quickly?

The whip (Slavery)

 

[radmaster100]

Welcome to the Forum

I have been checking out this website for a couple of years now and there are some spectacular pros that have provided extensive tips that I have used to develop a hybrid of techniques that help me win most of the time on Noble (especially if I keep a game going until 1000AD). Again, I'm no pro but these tips are useful.

First read:
Optimum Early Growth Strategy by OhioAstronomy

The Liberalism Beeline by madscientist

Triangle Diplomacy by polypheus

Cultural Victory on the Higher Levels by jesusin

and, Winning Noble by JujuLautre

Basically what I do is based on what nations are the closest to my borders. If there are relatively peaceful nations near me, I will try to completely destroy at least two of them by 1000AD or go for a cultural or diplomatic victory. If there is a warlike nation nearby, I try to destroy it completely by 1000AD (this will probably be harder than wasting two peaceful nations and usually takes longer). If you go the warmonger route, you need iron so research your way to that right away and start cranking out swordmen, axemen, and spearmen. Don't stop until you can hear the lamentations of the last of their women. Then colonize this voided area with your own settlers or whatever you wanted to keep of their homeland. If you waste two civs it should give you enough time for your main cities to have enough culture to keep the other civs that will eventually border you at bay until the end of the game.

With whatever strategy you want to follow what I call the "culture core" strategy. With your first city make a worker quickly (you can do this first or after your town has reached population of 2, but no later). Then chop a settler. Then make a warrior if you haven't already and escort the settler to a sweet townsite (good stuff is food resources, some hills, a river, and a metal if possible). With the second city you can choose to make a warrior or another worker based on if you are going the peaceful or warmonger route. At the home city, chop another settler when you reach a population of 3. Hopefully you will have another warrior made either from your first or second city to escort this settler to another sweet townsite (river, food, green meadow tiles, or special resources are nice, but this time you need to secure a metal if you already dont have one. Iron is crucial at this point in the game). With this start you are in position to win culturally, diplomatically, or through battle. These three cities are your "culture core." Develop at least 3 food tiles if you can, mine the hills, and cottage spam the hell out of these three. If you have commercially valuable resources in the fat cross of any of these cities you can make it a financial city (accent its money making abilities). Unless there is metal or tons of hills nearby, your capital is usually your Great Person farm (generates GPs quicker than the other three). Hills and metal make a military city more plausible. But if you are going the Martin Luther King route you just wanna make a ton of $ so you can increase your culture slider later in the game. Nevertheless, peace and war require $ which is why you cottage spam any tile you can (plus it gives your workers something to do once all the chopping and resource procurement is done).

Culture victories are harder than war+science ones. You have to be "nice" to some of the civs so they will trade with you and like you. First, make a culture core. Second, make some peripheral cities that will hopefully grow and make money or make soldiers. Third, establish good relations with some civs (preferably neighbors) by trading some of your techs. Fourth, build something like the apostolic palace or the UN if you want to win diplomatically. For a cultural win, do what jesusin says and optimize culture in your main three cities. I like cultural victories because it takes less time (most of the time about 2-3 hours) and you don't usually have to genocide anyone (except for the warlike nations).

Just playing is the best way to learn how to win. I've won a lot of games up to emperor but have never gotten the epic scores that a lot of people on this forum achieve. I just like the game and have learned a lot from this website.

Good Luck

 

[Shafi]

Ok, you really need to take a step back and simplify things here, you are trying to do too many complicated things before getting the basics right so for starters -

1) Out with the specialists and the SE nonsesnse and in with the Cottages! (Use financial leaders - you'll need the help)
2) Dont play archipalego or any isolated starts - continents / Fractal or even Panagea is good.
3) Dont build wonders. (for now - cause you do not yet have enough of a grasp of the game to judge which wonders are useful in a given game siutuation)

Now theres lots of information on just about everything on this forum and plenty of stratergy articles to boot, you should not try to absorb all of it, cos some of it is just plain irrelevant until you get your basics right, so i would suggest reading -

1) Sisutil's beginners guide for a general overview
2) There are a couple of specific articles on city placement and city specialisation in the war academy read all of them and practice and see if you can perfect what you learn, post screen shots here we will help with that.
3) Read Sisutil's guide on "Early Rushing" - and use this to your advantage, it made the biggest difference to my game.

Everything else can come later in my opinion.

Have fun!!!
Cheers - Shafi

 

[Fabio GP addict]

The big question is now, how do pay for (shield-wise) all those settlers and build army up so quickly?

Hello, I try to give you a little advice on this: think more straightforward ! Why should you build settlers AND army so quickly ??

I also had your problem of painly under-expansion, and the reason was always starting with religion and building the infrastructures (granary, lighthouse, library, barrack, ...), then realised I still have to build settlers and units !

The way I improved my game is rather easy: go straight to BW+Slavery, all at once you get copper (axes), hammers from chopping forests, hammers from pop sacrifice, hammers from copper itself (if you don't have copper nearby then try with IW --> iron) and you can go easily to find your neighbours and say HELLO

Do it soon and they will just have their capital (always a well-positioned city) and no more than 1-2 cities. Rush rush rush as in the beginning is the only way to get any good from your citizens due to the low happy cap and to the few land improvement (never work unimproved tiles).

At least you have a way to pay less for settlers ! Your axes (or chariots, archers, swords ... you can chose) will pay for them

 

[CornPlanter]

Guys but really, please... stop claiming that rush is the only way. CivilizationIV is much better game than that - all the way up to Deity. And rep1826 here is talking Noble difficulty for gods sake.