Orion's Home School 2: Nobles in Space

[EDaddy]

I would like to see a cultural win too. A diplo win would be intresting too!

 

[Grifftavian]

Thanks for both home schools! I'm usually about 50 - 50 on the Noble Level, but have learned a lot here. Maybe my Giant Leap to the Prince Level can turn into One Small Step

If you do a third home school (I hope you do) I'd vote for Diplomatic. It would be interesting to see how to keep enough Civs on your good side long enough to vote you the UN Leader.

One question: I noticed in most of your city screen shots that you are not using the city governor. I usually play with Citizen Automation turned on, with emphasis on Production. Is this a good idea, or is it better to manage each city yourself?

 

[Orion071]

Well, the votes have come in and a good number of you do want to see a Cultural and a Diplomatic win.

I ceratinly don't have any problems showing you a Cultural victory. Victory can be achieved by either going with a Specialist Economy and using lots of Artists to get the victory, or you can use cottages and the Cultural slider to get your 3 cities over the limit. As I've said before, I don't usually use an SE, so I would be using the Cottage method. They're both perfectly valid paths to victory.

I'm not so sure about being able to show you a Diplomatic victory. It's very hard to start a game and say "I'm going to win this one with diplomacy". a Diplomatic victory is one that develops throughout the game. If the opportunity is there, you can take it, but the opportunity isn't always there. I would love to start a Huge map with 18 civs and try to win a Diplomatic victory, but the chance of that happening would be fairly low. The easiest way is to dominate the voting through war and have nearly enough votes to elect yourself. But I don't think that kind of "backdoor domination" is what you want to see.

So I think I'll do 1 more game and try a Cultural victory. Who should I use? I was looking at Ramesses, but I'm open to other suggestions. Gandhi is another excellent leader for Cultural, but I used him in the first game.

 

[semirami]

City governor sucks! In my current game it puts the citizens to work at two corn farms, ignoring the gold mine. I am training guess what? Worker! I have 10 food per turn surplus(absolutely useless), but only 9 beakers. So if you want to win, no city governor, no automated workers.

 

[Orion071]

City governor sucks! In my current game it puts the citizens to work at two corn farms, ignoring the gold mine. I am training guess what? Worker! I have 10 food per turn surplus(absolutely useless), but only 9 beakers. So if you want to win, no city governor, no automated workers.

The food surplus is not useless. When building a Worker, any extra food is turned into production. So switching from the Corn to a Gold Mine will slow down the production of the Worker. Is it enough to offset the increased research from the Gold? Well, that's up to you to decide.

But yes, the City Governor sucks. I'm perfectly capable of handling the deployment of citizens myself. Also, don't automate Workers. They're even worse than the Governor.

 

[semirami]

Well, the votes have come in and a good number of you do want to see a Cultural and a Diplomatic win.

I ceratinly don't have any problems showing you a Cultural victory. Victory can be achieved by either going with a Specialist Economy and using lots of Artists to get the victory, or you can use cottages and the Cultural slider to get your 3 cities over the limit. As I've said before, I don't usually use an SE, so I would be using the Cottage method. They're both perfectly valid paths to victory.

I'm not so sure about being able to show you a Diplomatic victory. It's very hard to start a game and say "I'm going to win this one with diplomacy". a Diplomatic victory is one that develops throughout the game. If the opportunity is there, you can take it, but the opportunity isn't always there. I would love to start a Huge map with 18 civs and try to win a Diplomatic victory, but the chance of that happening would be fairly low. The easiest way is to dominate the voting through war and have nearly enough votes to elect yourself. But I don't think that kind of "backdoor domination" is what you want to see.

So I think I'll do 1 more game and try a Cultural victory. Who should I use? I was looking at Ramesses, but I'm open to other suggestions. Gandhi is another excellent leader for Cultural, but I used him in the first game.

Ramesses is a very good choice, but he has a defect. He does not start with Mysticism and you will need all religions, except one maybe, to build as many temples and cathedrals, as you can. I suggest Huayana Capac. He is industrious as Ramesses and financial, excellent for your CE. Well you will lose "spiritual", but I think you dont need many civics or religious changes.

The food surplus is not useless. When building a Worker, any extra food is turned into production. So switching from the Corn to a Gold Mine will slow down the production of the Worker. Is it enough to offset the increased research from the Gold? Well, that's up to you to decide.

Thats right, but the mine provides hammers as well and I'll still have a citizen working at the farm for +5 food surplus. Well using the governor, I will have 2 hammers more, but 8 beakers less at 3000BC, when the research is everything. Not very inteligent I think.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

The easiest way is to dominate the voting through war and have nearly enough votes to elect yourself.

Didn't that get disabled in the last patch?

 

[Orion071]

Didn't that get disabled in the last patch?

Yes. That's why I said nearly enough.

 

[Daedal]

Thanks for these tutorials Orion! I've won a few noble games on and off, but seeing you plow through the game in detail has helped me become a lot more consistent. I'm noticing a pattern with your wins (also with Sisiutil's in the ALC)...

1) REX
2) Take over a neighbor (military REX)
3) REX again until your economy is about to burst
4) Build infrastructure to support previous REX and military to defend it
5) Pick victory and use vastly superior & (due to REX) to get it.

Of course the devil's in the details... but that's the general idea right? It seems to be all about that first 100 turns and how much expansion you can get right there.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Of course the devil's in the details... but that's the general idea right? It seems to be all about that first 100 turns and how much expansion you can get right there.

Land is power. It's not the only approach to take, by any means, but it is a pretty simple one to engage in, and tends to well illustrate many aspects of the game. Certainly the first 100 turns are a lot more important than the rest

 

[DaSeigno]

Orion, first off, thanks for making these posts, they've both been pretty helpful.

I was wondering about your comment about nerfing Diplo victories.

OK, Ms. Smartypants, that's true. But with the last nerf to Diplo victories (you can't call the vote if you have enough to elect yourself) it does make it a little bit harder for the AI to win a cheesy victory like that.

I played a game just this weekend where there were only 2 civilizations left and the computer won an AP diplo victory over me. And no, I didn't vote for him, he won by himself. I'm pretty sure I have the latest version (BtS 3.13, right?). Any ideas how this could happen if it really is nerfed?

 

[Orion071]

Orion, first off, thanks for making these posts, they've both been pretty helpful.

I was wondering about your comment about nerfing Diplo victories.



I played a game just this weekend where there were only 2 civilizations left and the computer won an AP diplo victory over me. And no, I didn't vote for him, he won by himself. I'm pretty sure I have the latest version (BtS 3.13, right?). Any ideas how this could happen if it really is nerfed?

Was it really just the 2 of you, or did he have vassals? Vassals will still vote for the master and they don't count as a "team" towards invalidating the victory vote.

Maybe if there's only 2 civs left, then you can win a diplo vote. I don't know.

 

[Kesshi]

So I think I'll do 1 more game and try a Cultural victory. Who should I use? I was looking at Ramesses, but I'm open to other suggestions. Gandhi is another excellent leader for Cultural, but I used him in the first game.

Orion,

Montezuma can be a decent cultural winner, but the computer never plays him that way. He is spiritual, so you'll have an easy time getting an early religion or two, and converting (when necessary) is never a problem. And while slavery destroys a specialist economy, it is fun with a cottage economy.

Another fun leader for culture can be either Chinese leader just for the unique building. You're going to build a Theatre anyways, so you might as well benefit from the +25% culture bonus. Though early religions are tough to acquire, but this shouldn't be too much of a problem on a large land mass continent. When I'm going for a cultural win, I'll build what I call religion fishing cities. These are cities I place near my enemy's boarders, in hope that I can snag a religion from them. Slavery + Organized religion can pump out missionaries at a decent rate from these cities after they've acquired the desired religion. When I'm done with the city, if I don't want it anymore, I can just gift it to the neighbouring civ. Though sometimes a city that close will ask to join the other empire. Regardless, I can usually get a +1 or more relations with the neighbour.

Orion, I'll be looking forward to the next game.

 

[Grifftavian]

So I think I'll do 1 more game and try a Cultural victory. Who should I use? I was looking at Ramesses, but I'm open to other suggestions. Gandhi is another excellent leader for Cultural, but I used him in the first game.

I haven't tried all the new Leaders from BtS yet, but it looks like Pericles of the Greeks would be a good leader to play for a cultural victory. He's Philosophical and Creative. +100% GP Birth Rate, +2 Culture/City, and double production speed of University, Library, Theater, and the Greek Odeon (a culture producing Colosseum).

 

[IDave]

Thanks for the first 2 guides Orion, i have enjoyed them very much and learned a lot. I enjoy reading ALC but it is a higher level than i play so your guides seemed more useful to me. When you wrote the first one i was a noble player, and now i would class myself as a strong prince player. I can win prince most of the time now, and think i'm ready to step up to monarch, something which i never thot i would be able to do.

I would also like to see a cultural victory (i'd also love to see a diplomatic, a victory condition i rarely achieve, but i totally understand your point about it being the sort of thing that is situational)

If you are going for cultural, down the cottage route, then Phi and Cre are not going to be particulary helpful in my opinion, i'd say you probably want Fin and something else good like Exp, Ind, or Org, so i'd say the natural choice should be Pacal, HC, or Darius.

I'd be tempted to lean towards HC for Ind so you can spam a lot of wonders for all the extra culture and hopefully grab all the religions from Judaism onwards.

edit: LOL, having just refreshed the forum page i see you have already posted the start, and went for HC, good choice! I look forward to following your progress.

 

[BrantleyL1]

Thanks for an interesting thread. I'm going to have to go back and really study it, 'cause at this point, I'm not so sure I know how to do it...

Several thoughts:

(1) I'm still using vanilla, so a couple of the techniques here wil not work.
(2) there is a lot of detail here - what I'm looking for is an outline.
(3) I've had a lot of poor luck on starting placement lately. For example, you started on a continent with only two opponents. I usually get stuck on the continent with 4 or 5 opponents. Hard to expand - especially when you are resource poor. (Bronze not nearby, e.g.) This really slows down the ability to take out nearby opponents early.

 

[Daedal]

Brantley, check the latest Home School thread. Orion's started this one on a pangea map so everyone should end up nice and cuddly. Civ is one of those games where there's no outline you can follow every time. The strategies used in this walkthrough and others are all situational and the key is matching up the strategy to the situation.

 

[mabellino]

I'm coming late to this but I'd just like to add my thanks and adulation to Orion for bothering to do this for the Noobs out there. I picked up BtS about 3 weeks ago and had to drop down to Warlord level to have any fun playing Your tips and hints have given me the tools to push on to Noble and beyond

I was never a high level Civ3 player but could hold my own at Regent or the one above, Civ4 is so much of a deeper game that I'm floundering a bit.

I'm just too scared of war and try to turtle my way to a space victory I've never even attempted, let alone won a conquest/domination on any type of Civ

So thanks again for showing HOW to win, not just spouting tried and tested tactics.

 

[Tony.Uk]

I know there is a reason but why is it so important to create a worker at exactly the same time as AH, or for that matter any other resource. Does this apply in other situations too and what is the benefit. I never used this technique before and could be missing something here.