Noble help?

[yahn]

I don't know if I just really suck at this game or if this is normal, but I played a game on Warlord and beat it relatively easily. I then tried to playing Noble. I've been playing Noble for about 5-6 games now and every time I'm doing poorly.

I don't know where I'm going wrong. I get off to pretty good starts. I found a religion, spread it to some other civs, I almost always get Stonehenge and either the pyramids or the Parthenon depending on which resource I'm nearest. By about 500BC I have two decent cities already and I'm working on the settling a third, but somehow by about 500AD I'm already behind.

I play Arabia, so I go after polytheism first, then I go after whatever resources I have at my capital, then I go after bronze working so I can find out where bronze is. Somewhere in there I get Animal husbandry so I can also find out where horses are.

I feel I know how to start out pretty well, but if you see something I'm doing really wrong could you let me know? Can you tell me what I should be doing from about 500BC to 500AD?

Thank you for your time.

 

[Softnum]

It would be best if you posted a save around 500AD so people can see what specifically you might be having problems with.

 

[Winston Hughes]

By about 500BC I have two decent cities already and I'm working on the settling a third, but somehow by about 500AD I'm already behind.

I feel I know how to start out pretty well, but if you see something I'm doing really wrong could you let me know? Can you tell me what I should be doing from about 500BC to 500AD?

Firstly, don't worry about being behind (in score, tech, power etc. etc.) in the mid-game; as you go up through the levels you have to abandon your reliance on being ahead of the AI as you come into the late-game. At the higher levels, you'll always be well behind the AI in many areas until the game is almost won (and sometimes you'll win without ever being amongst the strongest or most advanced civs).

That said, it's perfectly possible to leave the AI for dead on noble. The chances are, if you're falling behind in the 500bc-500ad period, you're either:

a) expanding too quickly, and so suffering crippling maintenance costs

b) expanding too slowly, or picking the wrong sites for expansion

c) failing to develop your economy sufficiently

d) failing to utilise your buildings, religions, wonders and/or armies

e) failing to take proper advantage of diplomacy and tech-trading

f) taking an unhelpful tech-path

It sounds to me like you're expanding too slowly at the moment, with your third settler not yet built in 500bc. By that point, on noble, you should be looking to get 4-5 cities (either peacefully or by war). However, you may have other problems as well. I've left my third city a good deal later than that on a couple of occasions (for reasons I won't go into here) and still managed to get ahead of the AI by the mid-game.

Perhaps you could post a savegame or a couple of screenshots, to give us a better idea of where you're going wrong.

 

[yahn]

Well, I don't really have a good save game for an example. So, I'll play a quick game and put in the saves at 500BC and 500AD. Would that be good enough?

Thank you for offering to help so much. I figured if I posted a save game no one would be willing to load it up to help me out. So, once again, thank you.

 

[Greeneyedzombie]

and one save from 1AD

 

[Admiral Kutzov]

just a suggestion, but play a game without going for any wonders until you've got your own continent

as an alternative, forego the wonders until you've got 4 cities down, then build the GW...

 

[Harbourboy]

Another piece of advice based on my experiences would be to make sure you have a definite plan and stick to it. I often tried to do too many things at once (building 'some' armies and building 'some' science buildings and building 'some' culture and developing 'some' production - but not doing any of them really well).

Try focussing on doing one thing really well as a bit of a training exercise (e.g. try and be a complete warmonger, or try and build a megaculture). You'd be surprised how far you can get with such an extreme strategy and you will learn the lessons required to develop more optimal tactics in Noble level and above.

The 'build no wonders' strategy is an excellent example of an extremely good learning strategy because it forces you to focus on other aspects of your empire like armies and specialists.

 

[LucyDuke]

I'll echo the "avoid wonders" crowd. You sound like you're pretty wonder-happy (not excessively, but you mentioned them as though they're par). I'm recovering from a wonder addiction myself. Wonders consume a lot of time and hammers that could be spent on troops or infrastructure. And their benefits become handicaps that you come to rely on too much. It's just as easy if not easier to win without getting distracted by wonders. If you absolutely cannot give them up, pick one or two to allow yourself, and don't waste time or hammers for the rest.

Your strategery sounds good, in the sense that you adapt your path to what's on the map. I've learned a lot by following the various games in the Strategy & Tips forum. Check out some of the games there, and post some saves. I think it'll help out a lot.

 

[yahn]

Hmm, shows how much I know about civilization. I thought it was good to be wonder happy, that's probably why I'm doing so bad. The last game I played was probably my best start so far. However, I went incredibly wonder happy, since I had stone and marble near my starting location.

This game worked out a little differently, I didn't really start having trouble until around 750AD this time. I'm mostly having trouble because I knew Cath would declare war soon, but I was too busy going wonder happy to prepare for it.

Anyways, I'm getting a lot of good tips, so thank you all for that. Can anyone direct me to some of these threads that people have been talking about? I searched through the articles forum and everything in there seemed to be a little too advanced for me right now. I understand how to use the map correctly, but I'm still trying to master when I should build certain buildings and when to start preparing for war.

edit:
Thought I might ask, I get the +health from the granary, but what is the +50% after growth? When do I know when I should start building granaries?

 

[uncarved block]

Wow, where to start. For one thing, you don't have enough workers to develop the cities you have. Cottage early and often, at least in one or two cities! It's the only way to garner commerce for certain. If you play nice with your neighbors, build a Scout, get Open Borders, and check out what the AI is doing. They make a lot of mistakes, but I think the difference will be really eye-opening, at least if that 1100 AD save is normal.

Other, more general tips. Religions are nice, but you have to give up too much in order to go for the clean sweep; in fact, several of the AIs will attack you just to get a Holy City. I've played Saladin a fair amount (love those Madrassas!), but typically if I found four religions- and that's a lot- it will be the later three plus Hinduism/Buddhism. After a while, the returns diminish so much that it's not worth the investment, especially if you can't build all the Shrines.

Not every city has to be a supernova, either. I tend to build too far apart myself, but you could easily have gotten two, maybe three more cities in that same amount of territory. Go look at the ALC threads, especially the later saves, and see how tightly packed your empire can be. "Seeing" how to place cities is quite an art. I certainly could stand to get better at it.

The best way to deter an attack is to be planning one of your own. Your power rating will keep somewhat close to your neighbors. Indeed, a compulsion to hit F9 every couple turns would be a great nervous tic to develop.

Good luck. It took me months to get comfortable at Noble, and there are still leaders, like Stalin, that I can't seem to do anything with. It takes time, that's all there is to it.

 

[Shoot the Moon]

I looked at the 1100 AD save. Biggest issue: you need more workers. One worker for five cities doesn't work. A basic rule of thumb is a worker a city. By my quick count, there were 15-20 tiles that needed to be cottaged, a whole lot more that should have been chopped/mined, and a couple of resources that needed hooking up. Also a little more military wouldn't hurt either.

 

[Harald500]

I looked at the 1100 AD save. Biggest issue: you need more workers. One worker for five cities doesn't work. .

....Or he would rather work his butt of....

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Thought I might ask, I get the +health from the granary, but what is the +50% after growth? When do I know when I should start building granaries?

+50 growth means that on the turn after you grow, you'll find that the food bar for the city is half way full. woohoo, you grow twice as fast!

That's a very rough description; it completely ignores the implementation, so only tells you what to expect most of the time, but it is the basic idea.

When should you start building granaries? Learn about slavery and whipping. That will teach you most of what you need to know about when to build granaries.

 

[cabert]

+50 growth means that on the turn after you grow, you'll find that the food bar for the city is half way full. woohoo, you grow twice as fast!

That's a very rough description; it completely ignores the implementation, so only tells you what to expect most of the time, but it is the basic idea.

When should you start building granaries? Learn about slavery and whipping. That will teach you most of what you need to know about when to build granaries.

you're a bad guy, aren't you ?
granaries allow you to grow twice as fast, meaning that you want them asap to grow faster.
You can even invest your first pop growth in whipping a granary. You will get to size 4 faster than if you keep the pop and forgo the granary.

The link to slavery is very important, because growth is very slow at high populations without granaries, but very fast at low population with granaries.
So you can build your infrastructure (granary, courthouse, monument if needed, barracks if needed, library if needed,...) by regularly whipping 2 or more populations away.
If you focus on food, you can whip away 4 pops for a forge too and improve slavery further...
Sure, you'd like to have the forge AND the population. But it's a choice to make, depending on what you need in each city.

I found that in cities I don't plan to whip hard, I don't need a granary so soon.

 

[yahn]

hmm.. I thought I did a pretty good job with those cities. Should I have not put cities in the middle of so many resources like I did? Also, I know I always have too few workers. Thats something I need to work on.

How early on should I start expanding? I usually build a warrior for my city while I'm researching polytheism then let the barracks build a couple of turns before my city hits 3 and switch to a worker and then to a settler after that. After I get polytheism, I try to research whatever I need for some early improvements and then I go for husbandry and bronze working so I can get the resources I need. Is that a bad tech strategy? I'm starting to see a lot of people say religions are not really worth it. I only founded so many religions because I started with a mine so I went for masonry after polytheism and figured why not grab monotheism to get Judaism as well. Then I got code of laws sling shot with the oracle because I went wonder happy and I wanted to get theology when Cathy declared war on me for the cheaper maintenance and +2 xp.

I learned that I should not have gone so wonder happy and should have built a couple more workers and maybe some more settlers early on. I also should have prepared better for war with Cathy, especially since I could see it coming as soon as she founded Buddhism. However, I'm wondering how my relations with Cathy went so sour so early. I thought I had pretty good relations with Biz, since we had the same religion and a while of open boarders, but Biz seemed to have better relations with Cathy than with me. Why is this? Why is it that the computer can seem to deal with having different religions, but I can't get open boarders if I have a different religion? I can't build on the relations without open boarders. What can I do about that?

Not every city has to be a supernova, either. I tend to build too far apart myself, but you could easily have gotten two, maybe three more cities in that same amount of territory. Go look at the ALC threads, especially the later saves, and see how tightly packed your empire can be. "Seeing" how to place cities is quite an art. I certainly could stand to get better at it.

^ What exactly is ALC?

Also I saw a lot of people mention that I had barely any cottages. I thought it was good to specialize cities, so I was only using a few tiles in each city and using the rest for specialists. What cities should I have built more cottages in? I thought I did a pretty good job with my capitol and my second and forth cities were for production. My third city was a commerce city, but I thought I could get enough money from the sea. Should I have built more cottages over there?

Did I really do anything right? I thought I did a good job with tech in the early on. Later in the game I got a little careless. I know that. Where did my city placement go wrong? I thought I did a good job with at least my first two cities. And I thought the second two cities were pretty good. I see that they could have been better, though. The city by the sea I basically took because it was also on the same river and I would not have to build a road to it early on. Is that really as big of an advantage as I thought? At first I thought it was, since it would be connected to all my resources without the road, but then I realized that it didn't really even need the resources until I would have had time to build a road there anyways. So, should a river not matter when considering where to place a city?

Lastly, I was trying to get a big edge on tech in this game, so I went for a lot of Madrassas. Then I realized that I was playing quick, so tech edge isn't really that big of a deal. I'm going to stop playing on quick because of that. But even if I was playing on epic or marathon, is that even a good strategy?

Thank you all for your time, once again.

 

[cabert]

specializing a city doesn't mean using loads of specialists.
It means focusing on :
- hammers
or
- commerce
or
- GP points

There are subdivisions in production specialized cities :
- military producers
- late game spaceship parts producers

and in commerce cities:
- science
- gold

...

 

[yahn]

Right, But I was using the priests to get loads of great prophets since I had Stonehenge, Oracle, Temple of Artemis... I'm just saying that I don't really see where I should have build cottages, but I know that the people saying I should have know a lot more than I do, so obviously I should have. But I don't see where.

 

[cabert]

Right, But I was using the priests to get loads of great prophets since I had Stonehenge, Oracle, Temple of Artemis... I'm just saying that I don't really see where I should have build cottages, but I know that the people saying I should have know a lot more than I do, so obviously I should have. But I don't see where.

In commerce cities .
I didn't open the saves sorry.
I play a hybrid economy mostly, but often i have a few cities with 1/2 farms (specials), and 17 cottages... You need cottageable land, and enough food (= either all grassland, or FP on one hand and plains on the other, ...)

 

[Greeneyedzombie]

500BC looks promising. you could definatly need more workers then. instead of building wonders in your capitol you should have build at least 2 extra workers, at least 1 for every city, and preferably 2 per city. so when you build a new city you have already a worker for it. your military looks rather weak. the librarys are good to have so soon.
500AD military and workers still the same problem. you have no markets, courthouses and granarys. while you can build them.
1000AD your cities look the same as 500 years ago. (no courthouses markets and granarys) as do the surrounding lands. you have 5 cities and only 1 worker? you should have at least 5 probably 8 workers at this time. and your military and defence is the bare minimum.

your city placemant is oke. with a bit better planning you could have 6/7 cities.
when you have different religions you can start improving relations by gifting a resource, and after a while you can open borders. then cancel your gift and trade it for resources or money

 

[Greeneyedzombie]

riviers are good early connectors, like the coast is too. but when possible you need roads though, for fast movement of troops.