[BTS] Noble Shadow game - Huyana Capac

[Shikhar Agrawal]

Hello guys
I am new to the game and looking to improve my gameplay and learn some terms like specialist and espionage system.
Lymond suggested my to start a new game and post here since beginning is very important.So lets go

Its pangea , no events/huts , with barbarians

 

[Zavior]

Looks like an extremely strong start. Would settle on the plains hill 1N

 

[Shikhar Agrawal]

Looks like an extremely strong start. Would settle on the plains hill 1N

Sorry but what is 1N

 

[Noble Zarkon]

1 square north of where your settler is standing, the plains hills means that your capital will start with 2 hammers a turn instead of 1 which is very powerful early on. It also preserves the floods plain tile you are standing on.

 

[Shikhar Agrawal]

1 square north of where your settler is standing, the plains hills means that your capital will start with 2 hammers a turn instead of 1 which is very powerful early on. It also preserves the floods plain tile you are standing on.

Thanks I settle my city and researching animal husbandry while producing worker

 

[coanda]

1 north. 1 tile north of your starting settler location.

Seeing as it's Noble, I'm going to give a bit of general-principle advice almost every newer player needs.

Think fast and short-term. If you can get a small bonus now, that's worth giving up a big bonus 50, 60, 100 turns down the line. If you can save a turn or two on something, it's huge. This means most buildings aren't worth it (granaries are a big exception, especially as Inca), most cities want to be placed where they don't need border pops, tile overlap between cities so they can share tiles and trade them back and forth is a good thing, and food resources to let you grow faster are by far the most important map tiles. Food is king. Much more important than hammers or commerce.

Okay, that general point out of the way I'll look at specifics I see on this start. The pigs tile will be 5 food and 1 hammer when improved, that's your "power tile" that's going to fuel early game expansion. You want to be working that as soon as possible. To get that pigs tile up and improved fast, you need a worker.

Worker is 60 hammers. If you settle in place you'll put 4 hammers towards that per turn, and finish it in 15 turns. If you move 1 north, or 1 east, your city tile will give you 2 hammers instead of 1. Which means you'll put 5 total hammers per turn towards the worker, and need only 12 turns. You lose 1 turn moving but gain 3 turns on increased production, to get the worker a total of 2 turns earlier; it's a good early decision. Settling 1 north keeps you on the river and will eventually mean a couple extra grass riverside tiles for cottages (not a big priority early); 1 east loses the river but catches that plains-cow, which is an above-average tile. Both are fine decisions, and both are better than settling in place. Normally you'd want to check around with your starting warrior/scout's first move before making a final decision, but in this case it can't really find anything relevant. Pick one of the two spots, move the settler, and make a city.

The two early research priorities for almost every start are (1): tech needed to improve your best food specials, and (2) bronze working, so you can chop forests and switch into slavery to very efficiently convert food surplus into hammers. Generally in that order. In this case, that means an Animal Husbandry -> Mining -> Bronze Working tech path is the right choice.

Early warrior scouting priority is to identify potential additional city locations near your capital where a second and third settler might make cities. So you typically want to move more or less clockwise or counter-clockwise spiraling out around your capital; pay particular attention to any area where you see a good food resource, like a corn, wheat, or pigs. Don't wander too far from the capital early on; exploring distant lands is not as important as figuring out where to put city 2 and 3.

You might hold up for a bit more feedback from other players, but I suspect with this start they're all gonna recommend either settle 1N or 1E, build worker, research Animal Husbandry -> Mining -> BW, Quechua scouts around the capital. If you're satisfied with your opening plan, you could play out until the point where the worker has improved the pigs then stop for more feedback and advice.

 

[Shikhar Agrawal]

Researched the animal husbandry and now going for mining while scouting met justian

 

[coanda]

You're going to want to slow this down dramatically to let people get some feedback. Feel free to play a separate private game for entertainment, but for learning from a forum shadow game you generally want to let at least a couple hours pass between turn sets so there's time for other people to weigh in with advice.

Edit: Also, I know I said earlier not to go too far out from the capital, but when you see an area that looks to have good food surplus where you'll want a city eventually you want to check that region. That corn + floodplains to the east of the capital is gonna be a city site somewhere around there, so ideally your Quechua would have poked out a bit further around it to figure out if you wanted to settle on the river or what. No big deal, but next time you have a unit in that region take a look.

 

[Shikhar Agrawal]

sorry , i will be careful

 

[lymond]

General advice to advice givers: Explain the “why”. Saying “settle 1N” is not very helpful without context. OP is very new to this game and forum.

@Shikhar Agrawal please reread coanda’s first post again entirely. It’s important that you absorb good advice and not just gloss over it.

I’ll try to add some comments soon

 

[Shikhar Agrawal]

General advice to advice givers: Explain the “why”. Saying “settle 1N” is not very helpful without context. OP is very new to this game and forum.

@Shikhar Agrawal please reread coanda’s first post again entirely. It’s important that you absorb good advice and not just gloss over it.

I’ll try to add some comments soon

Yeah I've read it again , I didn't get what is meant by border pops

 

[crashmon]

Border Pops is when your culture in your city expands, so your cities borders covers more tiles, ideally you want your cities close enough so they can share resources as the resource is in the same cultural borders of those cities, as then you can switch which city uses the resouce as time demands.

I'm still only a monarch player, there is so much to learn in this game

 

[Shikhar Agrawal]

Border Pops is when your culture in your city expands, so your cities borders covers more tiles, ideally you want your cities close enough so they can share resources as the resource is in the same cultural borders of those cities, as then you can switch which city uses the resouce as time demands.

I'm still only a monarch player, there is so much to learn in this game

Oh , I use the totally opposite approach so that each city grows properly and don't compete for resources

 

[Nick723]

More on the ‘border pops’ piece. When you first built your capital, you may have noticed that your culture was a small square around the city. This is called the first ‘ring’.

On turn 5, the borders expanded, to cover the ‘Big Fat Cross’ (BFC) that you now see. The city can now work many more tiles. The borders will expand again on turn 50 (you can check this in the bottom left hand corner of the city screen). However additional (cultural) border ‘pops’ after the first don’t allow the capital to work more tiles: the maximum for any given city is its BFC. But they do mean that another city might be able to work those tiles.

Why did the capital’s borders expand? Well because the palace gives +2 culture per turn. However, you only get a palace in your capital, so when you build a new city, the borders won’t expand without you doing something!

In the early game, there are 2 main ways to expand culture: buildings and religion (other ways come along later). There are 2 early buildings that provide culture: the monument (a cheap building, but only 1 culture per turn and no other benefits) and the library (more expensive, but 2 culture per turn, plus some other benefits). Generally we’d like to avoid having to build these for the sole purpose of expanding borders, as that’s hammers that could be spent better doing other things. Generally also for high level play it’s not a good idea to found the early religions, so we normally have to live without the religion option for the early game. So we try and place our initial cities such that their key tiles are in the first ‘ring’, or they are using tiles that are already in our culture from the capital. Of course this is a general rule - in some cases it makes sense to build monuments!

2 special cases:
1. Creative leaders - they generate +2 culture per turn in all cities. This means that any new city will ‘pop’ it’s first borders after 5 turns. Problem solved!
2. The Inca. Their unique building (the Terrace) also provides +2 culture. As a granary is something that you normally want to build in most cities anyway, this gives the Inca more options for early city placement.

 

[lymond]

Ok.let me first start by pointing you to the BUG/BULL mod here:

BUG/BULL

It's highly recommended that you install these two mods, which work together as one overall mod. Install BUG into Custom Assets (CA) - Single Player install option. BULL zip has an instruction txt include, but you will simply copy the required files into CA as described, and then copy the DLL over to the regular Assets folder. However, note that you should not write over the vanilla DLL file. Instead rename the vanilla dll by adding an extension like ".original" (note the dot there) that essentially disables that file. It can be re-enable later if needed.

BUG/BULL significantly improve the UI and provide so other nifty options for convenience. Also, note that the Blue Marble mod can be found there as well for some improved terrain/water graphics (simple non-invasive install). Blue Marble also allows one to change the UI color.

Note that the Custom Asset install means that you don't actually need to load a mod. It's just there. It will work for you current game as a result.

 

[Shikhar Agrawal]

More on the ‘border pops’ piece. When you first built your capital, you may have noticed that your culture was a small square around the city. This is called the first ‘ring’.

On turn 5, the borders expanded, to cover the ‘Big Fat Cross’ (BFC) that you now see. The city can now work many more tiles. The borders will expand again on turn 50 (you can check this in the bottom left hand corner of the city screen). However additional (cultural) border ‘pops’ after the first don’t allow the capital to work more tiles: the maximum for any given city is its BFC. But they do mean that another city might be able to work those tiles.

Why did the capital’s borders expand? Well because the palace gives +2 culture per turn. However, you only get a palace in your capital, so when you build a new city, the borders won’t expand without you doing something!

In the early game, there are 2 main ways to expand culture: buildings and religion (other ways come along later). There are 2 early buildings that provide culture: the monument (a cheap building, but only 1 culture per turn and no other benefits) and the library (more expensive, but 2 culture per turn, plus some other benefits). Generally we’d like to avoid having to build these for the sole purpose of expanding borders, as that’s hammers that could be spent better doing other things. Generally also for high level play it’s not a good idea to found the early religions, so we normally have to live without the religion option for the early game. So we try and place our initial cities such that their key tiles are in the first ‘ring’, or they are using tiles that are already in our culture from the capital. Of course this is a general rule - in some cases it makes sense to build monuments!

2 special cases:
1. Creative leaders - they generate +2 culture per turn in all cities. This means that any new city will ‘pop’ it’s first borders after 5 turns. Problem solved!
2. The Inca. Their unique building (the Terrace) also provides +2 culture. As a granary is something that you normally want to build in most cities anyway, this gives the Inca more options for early city placement.

Actually I never get any religion since my neighbours are always annoyed then. I usually just take my neighbours religion

 

[lymond]

Your start here is pretty decent. Some flood plains (FP) and river tiles, plus hill pigs for food.

The first thing at Turn 0 is analyzing your start and then making a decision on where to move the warrior or scout to help with the settling decision. Often settling in place (SIP) is more than fine, but often one can improve their situation a bit by moving the settler. But one moves the settler with the idea that some benefit will be gained by doing so, especially if that move is at the expense of a turn or two.

So let me state off the bat here that the first consideration for any settling decision is always food. This is an important concept in Civ IV. FOOD is KING. FOOD is Production. So when you view the information you have at turn 0 your focal point is always the best tile which is always the best food tile. In this case, that is the pigs. Everything centers on that pigs. So whether you SIP or move the settler, you will keep the pigs in your BFC.

The warrior or scout move serves mainly two purpose. A) revealing more tiles to see more possible resources hidden in fog B) reveal tiles one might lose with a settler move. So always move that guy first before making any decision on where to settle.

In this case, your warrior or Quecha really, is not in a great place for revealing information. I don't have much input there other than maybe moving 1NE to reveal more info in that direction. Or possibly move 1SW to reveal more tiles that way since the initial thought is to move 1N here.

The reason 1N is recommend is primarily because settling on a plains hill (PH) provides a bonus to the center tile. This will speed up building that first worker even though you lose a turn. That bonus will always be there and it is really helpful in speeding up the early game a bit. Also, that tile is on a river still so you keep the health bonus from that which is always nice.

Another option worth consider is settling 1E on that PH. This will bring the cows into play for more food and hammers - not great food mind you, but a strong tile for producing settlers and workers. You lose the health bonus, but not that big a deal. I'm almost inclined to recommend this move more, especially with that Gold tile as a bit more food will be helpful to work the Gold eventually. Gold provides a lot of early commerce which is pretty huge early on, but it is a food negative tile.

So 1N or 1E here with worker first and AH tech which is obvious. Always tech for food first if you don't already have the food tech.

A few key generally helpful tips to get you started:

1) FOOD is KING as mentioned
2) Generally always worker first..very rare exceptions to this guideline
3) Worker is the most important unit in the game. Do not undervalue them and do not undervalue worker turns. Good worker management is one of the key concepts to success in this game
4) Granary is the most important building in the game. Really the only one. Everything else is situational.

I saw a bit of discourse above on city overlap. City overlap is actually a good thing. I won't go into detail on this right now, but there is good reason for overlapping cities and tile sharing.

Actually I never get any religion since my neighbours are always annoyed then. I usually just take my neighbours religion

you are learning

 

[Shikhar Agrawal]

Your start here is pretty decent. Some flood plains (FP) and river tiles, plus hill pigs for food.

The first thing at Turn 0 is analyzing your start and then making a decision on where to move the warrior or scout to help with the settling decision. Often settling in place (SIP) is more than fine, but often one can improve their situation a bit by moving the settler. But one moves the settler with the idea that some benefit will be gained by doing so, especially if that move is at the expense of a turn or two.

So let me state off the bat here that the first consideration for any settling decision is always food. This is an important concept in Civ IV. FOOD is KING. FOOD is Production. So when you view the information you have at turn 0 your focal point is always the best tile which is always the best food tile. In this case, that is the pigs. Everything centers on that pigs. So whether you SIP or move the settler, you will keep the pigs in your BFC.

The warrior or scout move serves mainly two purpose. A) revealing more tiles to see more possible resources hidden in fog B) reveal tiles one might lose with a settler move. So always move that guy first before making any decision on where to settle.

In this case, your warrior or Quecha really, is not in a great place for revealing information. I don't have much input there other than maybe moving 1NE to reveal more info in that direction. Or possibly move 1SW to reveal more tiles that way since the initial thought is to move 1N here.

The reason 1N is recommend is primarily because settling on a plains hill (PH) provides a bonus to the center tile. This will speed up building that first worker even though you lose a turn. That bonus will always be there and it is really helpful in speeding up the early game a bit. Also, that tile is on a river still so you keep the health bonus from that which is always nice.

Another option worth consider is settling 1E on that PH. This will bring the cows into play for more food and hammers - not great food mind you, but a strong tile for producing settlers and workers. You lose the health bonus, but not that big a deal. I'm almost inclined to recommend this move more, especially with that Gold tile as a bit more food will be helpful to work the Gold eventually. Gold provides a lot of early commerce which is pretty huge early on, but it is a food negative tile.

So 1N or 1E here with worker first and AH tech which is obvious. Always tech for food first if you don't already have the food tech.

A few key generally helpful tips to get you started:

1) FOOD is KING as mentioned
2) Generally always worker first..very rare exceptions to this guideline
3) Worker is the most important unit in the game. Do not undervalue them and do not undervalue worker turns. Good worker management is one of the key concepts to success in this game
4) Granary is the most important building in the game. Really the only one. Everything else is situational.

I saw a bit of discourse above on city overlap. City overlap is actually a good thing. I won't go into detail on this right now, but there is good reason for overlapping cities and tile sharing.


you are learning

After improving tiles and connecting cities , I automate them. Should I not do that then

 

[lymond]

After improving tiles and connecting cities , I automate them. Should I not do that then

That is absolutely the worst thing you can do ..ha. We will go more into specifics as you progress, but do not automate workers. That is something one might do late game, but for a long time every worker turn matters.

Very common mistake that new players make

 

[Shikhar Agrawal]

That is absolutely the worst thing you can do ..ha. We will go more into specifics as you progress, but do not automate workers. That is something one might do late game, but for a long time every worker turn matters.

Very common mistake that new players make

Ok will keep that in mind though I overwrite and sometimes chop the forest too