Noble game; need help

[Orbit of Glass]

Yeah, so I'm having trouble beating noble difficulty. The odd thing is warlord is fine- the last game I played was 'casual', I did next to no micromanaging of cities and such and still ended up winning, with a tech lead of panzers versus musketmen. But I can't seem to beat noble. So, now I've got a bit of time, here is a noble game I've just started, and hope to get some advice from the forums here.

Noble, Fractal, Standard, Elizabeth, Normal speed. I choose Elizabeth because financial and philosophical are both nice and useful, and I get a lot of use out of redcoats, since I prefer to hold off waging wars until industrial times, although this seems like it's a bad strategy. My reasoning behind this is just because it's so much simpler. In renaissance or medieval warfare you have to manage and counter pikemen, maces, longbows, crossbows, trebs, cats, knights and musketmen. Industrial warfare all you have are rifles, cavalry, cannon and grenadiers, and also industrial units have comparatively a larger advantage over medieval units than medieval units have over axemen and the like, if you beat them to tech first.

So here is the starting position.

Spoiler :

Not bad, floodplains, corn, sugar. Warrior moves 1W revealing nothing. I settle in place. This reveals more hills, forests and floodplain southeast. Maybe I should have gone 1SW to get those floodplains, but now I have lots of forest to chop and hills. However, this may not be so useful for my playing style as I don't chop very much. This is bad, I know. I usually only chop for wonders or things that must absolutely be completed on time, but sometimes I forget. My reasoning is this; say a forest gives +1 production a turn, and +2 with lumbermill. Over 40 turns which isn't too much all the benefits for chopping will be negated, if that forest was worked. In the end game I find the forest tiles useful when lumbermilled. Also the health is nice since unhealthiness is much more annoying in BTS. But yeah, I should probably try and change this style, right?

London starts warrior construction. My first tech is agriculture for the corn. Warrior goes exploring.

Turn 5 this appears from a hut. Lots of jungle to the north by the way, only interesting things are three dye.

Spoiler :

Turn 8 agriculture is done. I start pottery.

Turn 10 Buddhism is founded in a distant land. More dye found northeast in yet more jungle.

Turn 14 London grows to size 3 and pottery finishes. I start bronze working.

Turn 15 warrior built in London and another forest grows nearby. Warrior fortifies and London starts worker.'

Turn 18 I get 78 gold from a hut, meh.

Turn 19 Hinduism FIDL. There are lots of floodplains southeast, but no resources and the land around them is desert, so not sure if I want to settle there.

Turn 24 Oops, exploring warrior pops hut and two barb warriors come out.

Turn 25 my exploring warrior is killed by barbs. Bah. Bronze working is finished and copper revealed north of capital, unfortunately outside fat cross. London builds worker and I start settler. Worker goes to farm corn.

Turn 33 AH finishes research and I start hunting so I can build a scout and resume my exploration. A warrior appears from northeast- hello Gilgamesh. I assume he was on other side of jungle belt. Horses appear northeast of capital.

Turn 37 hunting finishes and I start mysticism.

Turn 38 settler finishes in London and scout starts building. I decide to get around to switching to slavery.

Turn 42 mysticism finishes and I start writing.

Turn 45 scout finishes in London and I start stonehenge.

Turn 46 Pacal II's warrior appears from the west.

Turn 48 Gilgamesh offers open borders and I accept. Scouting west reveals ocean or inland sea, can't tell, as well as a hut and marble. Looks like a good city site on coast to get both marble and horses.

Turn 49 writing is finished and masonry begins.

Turn 50 scout is attacked by wolf but survives.

So here is the situation as of 2000 BC and 50 turns. I have an idle settler in capital.

Spoiler :

The world.

Spoiler :

I plan to settle either 2N 1W of the far corn or maybe 1NE of copper with the settler I have (probably both spots settled eventually though), then after stonehenge build another warrior and scout the south to see what's there, and then another settler to go 2E of marble. I'd also like to get a city at the westernmost group of dyes. Apart from that, I haven't thought too much about what to do. I put off techs enabling wonders till later which is unusual for me, so I may miss oracle. If I get that marble I'd like to go for great library though, and it may help with oracle anyway.

So, thoughts? What should I do now, and what should I have done differently?

Here are 4000BC save (sorry, already settled, forgot to save) and 2000BC save.

View attachment Nick BC-4000_Noble Demonstration.CivBeyondSwordSave

View attachment Nick BC-2000_Noble Demonstrator.CivBeyondSwordSave

 

[Divaythsarmour]

Nick,
I first tried your 2000BC game and ran for a couple of turns. The first thing I noticed was that you had lost Stonehenge. Then I loaded your 4000BC game and tried to play it more the way I would do it. I went for bronze working first. Although I'm loath to chop a healthy tree in real life, in this game, I love to chop. After the warrior was built, I started building a worker (to start chopping).
The first warrior discovered the marble to the west. I decided that I wanted that marble. So after building the worker, I started building a settler and used the worker (to chop and get the settler quicker). This is also a good technique when your concerned about the city not growing enough. Creating a worker and then a settler without chopping will stifle your city growth for an awful long time.
Then I sent the settler and the warrior to go settle next to the marble. I started Stonehenge (as you had). I like to build wonders, possibly too much. I might have gone for the Great Wall first. But anyway, I had the worker chop 2 more tiles to get Stonehenge. So at 2120, I have a second city near marble and Stonehenge.
You seem to already know that chopping is an issue. I understood your reasoning in that there are more hammers for worked forests. There have been situations where I've taken advantage of that myself, and left the forests alone. But usually not in the very beginning of a game when you really want to jump start things.
Having said all this - there are probably still better ways of starting this game. I just wanted to illustrate the power of early chopping.
Good Luck!

 

[Orbit of Glass]

Thanks for the help. I had second thoughts about stonehenge already on posting this thread, it being a bit late to start on the first wonder. Guess that was right. Is it recommended to chop first or ASAP with the first worker, or send it to do most the important improvements (ie. on resources) or is that situational?

 

[xanadux]

I think you can get off to a quicker start in your games. Build a worker first here. He will have plenty to do with agriculture. Riverside corn is a huge tile to have and your first priority is to get it worked. Having that tile improved, your city will be as productive at size one as it will be at size 4 working unimproved tiles. So growing isn't as powerful as getting a worker built as soon as possible (the first thing you should do) and getting that corn farmed.

Your teching is a bit off too. You researched pottery, and didn't even have a worker started yet. You have so much food, a granary isn't a priority for growth, and you can't build cottages without a worker. After agriculture, you should research BW. You want to chop a lot of forests ... all those hills have to be cleared for mines. Although cottages are fine, I would prioritize production early, getting mines built. A high production capital outperforms a high commerce capital early. I would suggest farms and mines, and probably no cottages because you need food to work the mines. You will have plenty of production here, and can use later cities for commerce. You have copper, so can defend yourself, and can catch up in tech later.

Why did you research hunting?

 

[Orbit of Glass]

Hmm, good point. Pottery was silly. I see what you mean, but is it really a good idea to designate a production city which has no production resources? Some metal or coal will probably be revealed on the hills later, but unless I'm lucky enough to get iron, probably not likely with copper and horses close by, that wouldn't be for a while.

I researched hunting because my warrior died to barbarians and I had no unit to explore with. I thought I may as well go for hunting so I could make my next unit a scout. Maybe I'll see if it's worth it once the scout gets this hut.

 

[xanadux]

The basic production resource is the hill in the early game. Having copper or iron does not make a city a production city. It's one very good tile. You have 7 plains hills in your capital, and if you farm the floodplain, along with the corn, you can work 5 of them at size 9 for 21 base production in your capital. You can work 4 at size 7 and 3 at size 5. Add in a forge and Bureaucracy, and you can easily build macemen in 2 turns. Building stonehenge is reasonable. It is cheap, you have production, and it allows your early cities to grow quicker. But you are building it without the production you could have. More production means more capacity to expand and defend yourself. There are plenty more floodplains to the SE for a 3rd and 4th city to work cottages. Let them build your commerce, and let your capital defend them.

 

[Divaythsarmour]

Is it recommended to chop first or ASAP with the first worker, or send it to do most the important improvements (ie. on resources) or is that situational?

I would say definitely situational. I see it as a question of whether or not your going to get an immediate benifit from your worker.

Your game is a good illustration. I believe your build order was warrior, worker and settler. The city was growing population while you were building the warrior, but not with the worker or the settler. So if you sent your worker to build a farm to get more advantage of the corn, you wouldn't get any benifit from that workers actions (i.e. higher population growth) until after your setter was finished. That could take a long time. In the meantime, the AI is pushing forward and seizing initiative.

In that case I would definitely chop the settler. Then if your next build was Stonehenge, send the worker to build the farm.

that's not to say that there's no way of getting immediate benifit from worker improvements, while you're building a settler. Let's say you have a hill nearby with a current 2 hammers. And all other things are pretty much equal. You could send your worker to build a mine on that hill (if it's not wooded). Then when the mine is complete, you could go into your city screen and have one of your population work that square giving you additional hammer/s toward your settler (if moving that population doesn't cause starvation). You would get an immediate benifit from the action of the worker even while you're building a settler and your population isn't inceasing.

You'll notice when your read (the threads with the "play by play" by the experts at the high difficulty levels) - they're always squeezing every little bit of efficiency out of each turn. They'll often time events, so that this particular thing will be finished by the time they research that particular tech or vise versa. And this appears to be second nature to them. Whereas, some of us really have to work to keep our focus.

Another thing, is that you said that you like to hold off on waging wars until the industrial era. That's like tying one arm behind your back. The same principles apply in warfare, no matter what the era. In the medieval era, think of the catapults as artillery, longbowmen as riflemen, knights at tanks etc.

Maybe just as an acedemic exercize you might want to force yourself into an earlier war. Don't even wait for the medieval era. Try creating a stack of six axmen (as soon as you have bronze) and take your nearest neighbor's capitol.

A succesful early war can pay off very handsomely. In the case of the neighbor's capitol, you gain prime land at the same time that your hurting him very badly (if not actually destroying him).

 

[xanadux]

Actually you get a huge benefit out of the corn when it is improved. At size one, instead of having 4 units of production towards the settler, you have 7!

When you have riverside corn, anything other than worker first is really a mistake. Getting that corn improved almost doubles the production of the capital, and makes the size 1 capital equivalent in production to a size 4 capital with no improvements. Worker first, research agriculture, improve the corn. There is just no quicker way to develop your capital and get the most production out of it. Before you even finish your first settler, worker first will put you way ahead of any other action here.

 

[Divaythsarmour]

Nick,
There's no doubt about it. Xanadu's advise is better than mine every way. I decided to replay your 4000BC game, changing the first build of a warrior to a worker (i.e. doing it his way). Then I built the farm where the corn was, doubling it's production of food. The population growth after that was phenomenal. It opened up many more opportunities. It's definitely a more elegant approach. I decided to stick to your plan of creating Stonehenge. Oddly enough, it was completed at 2000BC, exactly the same as when I played it the other way. But I didn't have to chop as much forest to do it. Once again I'm humbled as a result of a lack of restraint on the keyboard. But that's OK, I learned something too.

 

[Orbit of Glass]

Well, first round of exams is over so I can get back to CIV for a bit. I've already played through this game, though. I restarted from scratch, and farmed the corn straight away. I got Stonehenge, great. I decide to start a war. Target Gilgamesh, as I didn't know much about Pacal's land and Gilgamesh had a city encroaching on my cultural borders. Attack! My stack of axes marches over the border and captures said city. Hooray. I burn it. This turns out later to be a mistake. I continue advancing-wait what? Gilgamesh has vultures, I thought he didn't have any copper. Oh dear. I run around pillaging his resources a bit and then decide to sign for peace. The end result is that Gilgamesh has had a city burned and lands pillaged, but I've lost a few axemen and gained pretty much nothing. Which is why I think I should have kept that city. I continue on, and then everything goes into a downhill slide. As it does in pretty much every Noble game I try to play. I begin losing wonders, someone grabs Pyramids off me, and religions and GPs are FIDL/BIDL like mad. Pacal is becoming the tech leader now. Everyone is Confucian, which I got with the Oracle, but Pacal has AP and is resident. I don't know what to do so I start another war. Invasion of Gilgamesh with maces. However the AP vote forces me to stop, but not after capturing a city. Which was worthless, four desert tiles in cross or something like that, so I burned it. I declare another war later after the AP vote time wears off, and try to attack. I have about five catapults but they're taking 10% off of an 80% city every turn. Eventually AP vote comes in and peace reigns once more. My economy is shot, and Pacal gets Liberalism when I'm still trying to research guilds.

At this point I decide to call it a night.

I also tried to practice my rush tactics. One started off well, on Warlord though, would you believe. De Gaulle, I rushed Hatty with axes. This was probably not a good idea in hindsight, but no war chariots ever appeared. I managed to burn Egypt and capture many good cities. Unfortunately they were all commerce cities with no production. This was unfortunate because on Egypt's other border was Spain. Lots of spanish chariots appeared about five turns after the fall of Egypt. I lost about half of my conquest. Later, I also get a rude shock when I realise I'm right in the middle of the continent, but said continent is much bigger than I thought. Thus everyone around me has a huge empire whilst I'm tiny, although the conquest of egypt brought me to highest land all those turns back.

So I can't seem to execute a successful rush even on Warlord. How very embarassing. In games I've read about on higher levels, people tend to build their SoD and, with that one stack, go across conquering an entire empire in a few turns. How does that work? Whenever I go conquering, I lose plenty of catapults on the first city, so I have to build more, about four siege weapons die per city. Every city needs two garrison troops, I think, to hold it. Let's say I lose two regular units per city. So I find I'm needing to rebuild about eight units for every city I hold and six for each one I raze, which with war weariness makes me incapable of conducting a proper war. Maybe I should take a whack at running SE, because my CE always has my cities are stuck at 12 pop in the industrial age. I think I'll start another game now and see what happens.

 

[xanadux]

If you are trying to beat noble, don't worry about the rush unless it is absolutely necessary. Just develop and expand normally. You can worry about the rushing once you get to monarch level. For an example, look at my Mansa CivIV101 thread ... I didn't go to war til I had a well developed economy and macemen.