The only times I've had any success playing in Noble difficulty (I've won twice) is when I've used a financial leader. Anyone else and I have trouble keeping my science rate at 100%. To combat this, I resist early expansion, but then I find myself with far less land than my opponents. How does one make enough money to research (as fast as your opponents) in a non-financial civ?
Playing without financial
- Thread starter quazi
- Start date
Pfeffersack
Deity
How many cottages do you build? And when do you start to build them?
Well you can go the other route which is make scientists which dont use up money. Sometimes I get a decent research rate at 50% cause I have a lot of scientists. Yesterday in multi I was at 40-50% all the time while I was taking like 300 years to whipe someone off the map, since it was a pretty big map 
But I was able to have a good tech speed, i was able to keep my tech going. Only thing I really got outteched for was the cannon.
But I was able to have a good tech speed, i was able to keep my tech going. Only thing I really got outteched for was the cannon.
Corlindale
Emperor
I've actually had most succes on Noble NOT being financial.
I'm usually Philosophical, and I often build farms instead of cottages to support more specialists, and use Bureaucracy instead of Free Speech and Representation instead of Univ. Suffrage.
Yet I can usually keep my science rate at 90-100% through the entire game, thanks to religious shrines and plenty of trade routes. I usually don't have that many cities, though, so my maintenance costs are quite low.
I'm usually Philosophical, and I often build farms instead of cottages to support more specialists, and use Bureaucracy instead of Free Speech and Representation instead of Univ. Suffrage.
Yet I can usually keep my science rate at 90-100% through the entire game, thanks to religious shrines and plenty of trade routes. I usually don't have that many cities, though, so my maintenance costs are quite low.
seasmath said:
Stop playing on Settler then
On higher difficulties around Immortal and such you will be lucky if you nab up 2 relgions
But he does make a good point if your hurting for coin try to quickly snag the first 2-3 starting relgions and cottage the snot out of most of your cities. This generates massive income. Don't forget every relgion that you spread to one of your cities gives you +1 gold. 10 cities with 3 reglions is +30 gold a turn
Other then that learn to work your tiles well and put cottages wherever possible, i hardly ever use a farm acutally unless the city absolutly needs it to grow.
Gato Loco
Open to Interpretation
- Joined
- Dec 21, 2004
- Messages
- 347
Financial is probably the easiest trait for civ3 players to understand, since it's a lot like Republic in civ3. That and creative. I suspect we'll soon see lots of threads complaining about how the traits are unbalanced until people get good at maximizing the other traits.
Philosophical - It still makes me uneasy sacrificing growth by pulling people off the land to specialize. And getting wonders is very hard without prebuilds.
Industrious - Doesn't it hurt to have this trait and not have stone or marble? And actually aiming for an ancient age wonder goes against everything I learned in Civ3 about wonder addiction.
Aggressive - You'd think that this would be straightforward, but since it's harder to make an early rush, and less profitable to capture enemy territory, you have to adapt to new combat doctrines, such as pillaging and containment, which make warfare seem like a total waste before you have catapults and overwhelming numerical superiority.
Expansive - Thanks but no thanks, I have enough food resourcs as it is, and not enough luxuries. I suspect that the best use for this trait is that the extra health lets you trade away your food resources for luxuries. Maybe it's good for cultural victories where you want a few giant cities and the culture slider takes care of your happiness.
Spiritual - This will become useful as soon as we all get a feel for min/maxing civic settings turn by turn. For example, switching in and out of Organized religion depending on how many buildings are under construction vs. how much you're paying for civics, or going to Hereditary rule for a few turns in order to turn down culture and max out science to wn the race to a crucial tech.
Organized - This is worthless if you're running cheap civics. Depends greatly on your playing style, but certain combinations could be both useful nad expensive. Also it's the only way to cotrol costs with expensive civics.
Note that I'm not saying these traits aren't good, it's just that they're narrower and deeper than financial, and will probably take more praciitce before they're as useful.
Philosophical - It still makes me uneasy sacrificing growth by pulling people off the land to specialize. And getting wonders is very hard without prebuilds.
Industrious - Doesn't it hurt to have this trait and not have stone or marble? And actually aiming for an ancient age wonder goes against everything I learned in Civ3 about wonder addiction.
Aggressive - You'd think that this would be straightforward, but since it's harder to make an early rush, and less profitable to capture enemy territory, you have to adapt to new combat doctrines, such as pillaging and containment, which make warfare seem like a total waste before you have catapults and overwhelming numerical superiority.
Expansive - Thanks but no thanks, I have enough food resourcs as it is, and not enough luxuries. I suspect that the best use for this trait is that the extra health lets you trade away your food resources for luxuries. Maybe it's good for cultural victories where you want a few giant cities and the culture slider takes care of your happiness.
Spiritual - This will become useful as soon as we all get a feel for min/maxing civic settings turn by turn. For example, switching in and out of Organized religion depending on how many buildings are under construction vs. how much you're paying for civics, or going to Hereditary rule for a few turns in order to turn down culture and max out science to wn the race to a crucial tech.
Organized - This is worthless if you're running cheap civics. Depends greatly on your playing style, but certain combinations could be both useful nad expensive. Also it's the only way to cotrol costs with expensive civics.
Note that I'm not saying these traits aren't good, it's just that they're narrower and deeper than financial, and will probably take more praciitce before they're as useful.
Not building cities so that you can keep research at 100% is ridiculous. You'll get MORE research overall with more cities, even if you have to turn the slider down: eg 70% of 300 commerce is more than 100% of 200. The base amount of commerce you generate is far more important than the percentage you put into research.
cleverhandle
King
True, but I find the half-price Forges to be helpful as well. Getting that production boost early on in the game is nice. Not overpowering, but nice.Gato Loco said:
I think many people just can't get out of the simplistic Civ3 mindset yet. Aggressive is a great trait (for warmongers, obviouisly). Getting Combat I for free means that any Barracks-town can produce units with a specialization well before the militaristic civics are available. Try a few Axemen with Cover - you've got a 5 power unit with +60% vs. melee and +35% vs. archers, regardless of whether their attacking or defending, against cities or in the open. That's a heck of a unit. If you cover a few of them with one or two spears, you've got an army that's nearly as potent as Civ3's early sword rushes.
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