Prince VS Noble

[Florian]

OTAKU,

That makes all kinds of sense. Does that pattern continue?

 

[OTAKUjbski]

OTAKU,

That makes all kinds of sense. Does that pattern continue?

More or less. (The Civ4 BtS Reference Sheet outlines the differences for easy comparison.)

There's another disproportionate jump from Monarch -> Emperor then again from Immortal -> Deity.

I think the most important factor is the relationship between your increasing research costs, the AI's increasing growth & building rate and Barbarian frequency.

At lower levels, there's a considerable "window" of turns when you can ignore city defense and focus entirely on growth and expansion. That window all but disappears around Emperor. (In my experience, I can safely settle a 2nd city on Monarch without an escort -- allowing it to build its own defense, but at Emperor, it's a considerable gamble to attempt.)

 

[TriPp]

Differences in gameplay.

From Noble -> Prince, the and limits decrease by -1 from +3/+5 to +2/+4 while from Prince -> Monarch, they remain +2/+4. Similarly, from Noble -> Prince, the distance maintenance multiplier increases by +0.1 from 0.75 to 0.85, while from Prince -> Monarch, they only increase by +0.05 from 0.85 to 0.90.

This means early expansion strategies have to change considerably more making the jump from Noble -> Prince than from Prince -> Monarch.

In the unit/Military department: from Noble -> Prince, the AI only gets a free Scout while from Prince -> Monarch, the AI gets Archery and a free Worker & Defensive Unit (Archer).

This means early rushing strategies have to change considerably more making the jump from Prince -> Monarch than from Noble -> Prince.


-- my 2

Good points!

I also think part of the reason Prince was easier for me was the fact i stayed on Noble so long being intimidated by Prince thinkin it would be too much(i now know,far from true)for me to handle. So every game i played on Noble id get better at expanding etc..

I didnt finnally try prince till it got to the point that everytime i went to start a new game i was allready fully convinced i would win(and then some,and then some more). Ofcourse very boring when its that easy. lol

I Definatly overprepared myself for that little jump. Maybe im doing it agian...I feel the need to try out monarch now.

 

[vicawoo]

I overprepared for a jump from monarch to immortal. But it was a pretty big jump.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

I beat noble pretty easily, then it took me 6 or so games to win at prince level. Then I moved straight on to Monarch, mainly due to HOF gauntlets. It took me a while again to learn how to win (more than 6 games this time), but now I'm pretty comfortable on Monarch. The jump to emperor is hard though, behind in tech most of the way. You really have to beeline specific techs and use trading well. Just lost my last emperor game when I was 6 turns away from building the internet when I got invaded by the world superpower (who was friendly) and his 2 vassals. Tanks vs gunships, oh dear.

I'd recommend trying the HOF and some gauntlets, you get a lot of good advice there.

EDIT: I can normally win monarch if I do an early rush and get a lot of land. That doesn't seem as much of an advantage at emperor, the peaceful AIs race ahead in tech. You allso need to know when to end a war because war weariness forces you to use the culture slider which badly affects research.

EDIT2: My best tip would be that once you have enough forces to kill all defenders in a city you want to take, build nothing but seige weapons from then on (apart from replacing losses).

Other tips: Try getting education early so you can build Oxford ASAP. If you are ahead in the tech race you can put off building the Great Library (a must have wonder for me, probably my only one) until after education.

On noble I used to build the Pyramids all the time, I stopped on prince in favour of early rushes and the Oracle but went back to it on monarch, skipping the Oracle.

 

[TwoShedsJackson]

I'm finding the move from Noble to Prince reasonably tough but would hope another few games should sort it.

I found that playing the game less on 'autopilot' helped i.e. I was building all buildings everywhere, wasn't specialising my cities properly etc. and that meant I wasn't outpacing the AI anywhere in order to be able to get one of the victories when the time came to decide which one to go for.

Also I realised that taking a sensible diplomacy approach is helpful, I used to just accept trade offers and the like without thinking about what it would do to relations with other leaders, now having read articles here each game I pick two civs and use triangle diplomacy with them and don't accept trade offers from other civs which would piss off my trade partners.

Made the game easier and more realistic for me.

 

[AmazonQueen]

I think one problem many people have when trying to move up is they dont "win" fast enough, or cant build whatever they want too whenever they wish.

I think that may be part of it. Also that early on you feel like you're getting thrashed when one of 2 things is happening:

1. You're getting thrashed
2. You're laying down the groundwork for eventual victory

It can be hard to tell which is happening though

Differences in gameplay.

From Noble -> Prince, the and limits decrease by -1 from +3/+5 to +2/+4 while from Prince -> Monarch, they remain +2/+4. Similarly, from Noble -> Prince, the distance maintenance multiplier increases by +0.1 from 0.75 to 0.85, while from Prince -> Monarch, they only increase by +0.05 from 0.85 to 0.90.

This means early expansion strategies have to change considerably more making the jump from Noble -> Prince than from Prince -> Monarch.

In the unit/Military department: from Noble -> Prince, the AI only gets a free Scout while from Prince -> Monarch, the AI gets Archery and a free Worker & Defensive Unit (Archer).

This means early rushing strategies have to change considerably more making the jump from Prince -> Monarch than from Noble -> Prince.

Useful to know, ta

 

[CivMcNut]

I was playing on Noble, winnning, but playing there every time when I first started reading this forum. Now I'm usually winning on Monarch and thinking about Emperor. I realized so many things I had been doing all along were not really mainstream and were hurting my game. There are articles all in this Strategy & Tips Forum in particular that will get you rethinking the way you play. Take a look at someone's savegame file they have posted. You can learn lots just by looking at how they improve their cities tiles, promote their troops, and researching paths.

A couple of things I gathered from the forums and applied to my game was adopt the bureuarcracy civic and run it, the boosts it give really give you a big push on tech.

Adopt the slavery civic and get good at using the whip right to where you don't have unhappiness and stuff is being made quickly. This becomes more challenging on prince as I think the happiness cap is lower.

Build a forge, granary, and courthouse in every city, and usually some sort of border popping building like a theater or monument.

 

[Catan_Settler]

For me the hardest part moving from Noble to Prince was in learning what you are safe to ignore and what not. You see, I used to build far too many buildings, and backfill missing technologies by researching myself... Because it seemed like 5 turns for Monotheism was worth doing since it was only 5 turns, whereas Metal casting was 25 (or whatever). Basically you have to streamline and optimize your game each time you move up a level, whereas with the easier settings the poor, stupid AI is so gimped you can just build everything everywhere, research every tech, etc, and still raise a massive army and crush them. You must trim all that unnecessary fat to beat an AI that suddenly has an edge in research and production.

 

[civkillla]

Domination is pretty much my only method of victory. I turn space race off and turn Agg AI(always) and Raging barbs(half of my games) on. It makes my style of play harder and more entertianing without needing the jump to monarch for an increase in difficulty.

Id never play a Huge map as my comp is too slow for it to be any fun and besides that the game becomes alot less of a interesting/fun game and alot more of a tedious/repititive chore(imho). Large though, yes.

I find the conquest, domination, and cultural victories to be the most challenging on noble and prince. The other victories just don't include the movement and interaction that I prefer. Raging barbs on huge maps becomes very tedious - I tend to just keep them at a normal level. Beating 6 to 8 opponents on a huge map, while on Prince difficulty, just escapes me. But I get a little closer with each attempt.

 

[DarkFyre99]

Does anyone else find that Prince is about a thousand times harder than Noble? The other jumps in difficulty were not nearly so drastic. Is the jump to Monarch that exponential?

I'm still struggling with Prince myself. I'm still trying to get it through my thick skull that:

a) I have to be more aggressive in pursuing tech trades
b) I have to be more willing to accept uneven tech trades

On Noble, the AIs are at parity with you, for both research and construction. On prince, you're at a disadvantage, and the AI's faster tech rate, combined with their tendancy to be tech whores, gives them an even greater advantage over you.

Another thing that makes a difference at higher levels, but not on Noble, is understanding the AIs' tech priorities.

Noble is still forgiving of sloppy tactics, mistakes, and ignoring certain aspects of the game. As you go up in level, you no longer have that luxury.

 

[andersw]

I've done the jump myself and still feel noble is somewhat too easy while prince is too difficult from time to time.
My favourite tactic is to rush one (or more) of my neighbours, those starting positions are often soooo much better, not to mention the AI more often goes for an early religion.

The tactic is not as good when my neighbour is protective (oh I'm soo lousy dealing with bow/longbowmen), they also tend to put cities on hills
But on Prince difficulty it's actually better to deal with the protective even faster (they only get worse with time), just let that whip crack.

Also rushing can help you get a better capital as I from time to time get those one-food-resource-not-connected-to-water-and-no-floodplains starts....
If you can't rush your neighbour, try steal a worker, a short early war doesn't matter that much in the long term relationships.

However, I myself get into trouble when I try to play religious leaders (Saladins is one of my pet peeves).

Edit:
Also try to figure out good paths in teching, warmongering and building, I myself have trouble with tech paths in mid-game...

 

[ParadigmShifter]

I agree, take out protective civs early, before they get longbows. You can normally tell when someone gets feudalism becasue they usually change to vassalage and/or serfdom right away.

If a protective civ gets longbows expect heavy losses unless you have trebuchets or lots of catapults. Withdrawal jumbos are OK to soften up really tough defenders too.

If the protective civ has a city on a hill, consider leaving that city until you have some city raider 3 axes or swords, use other cities and/or barbs/barb cities for practice.

Protective civs like to turtle though so if you pillage their high productive tiles you can normally cripple them so you can go and get them later.

Make sure you have alphabet to extort tech for peace if you want to get a peace treaty. Use the time to build more axes/swords and then finish them off.

 

[Divaythsarmour]

That's one of the great things about Civ4. There are so many choices to make (in setting up a custom game) to keep it challenging. It all depends on what style of play you enjoy. Difficulty level is only one of the many variables.

I've only recently chosen to stay at the monarch level of difficulty (vs. going back and forth between prince and monarch). I've become bored with my style of play in prince. But obviously I could set up a prince game with a non-preferred leader, a larger than preferred map, and a quicker than preferred game speed and make it really challenging on myself.

I no longer consider playing at higher levels to be my ultimate goal with Civilization. My goal is to get really immersed in it. I mean the kind of game where you suddenly realize that it's 2:30 AM and you've been playing since 9:00 PM.

 

[civkillla]

I'm still struggling with Prince myself. I'm still trying to get it through my thick skull that:

a) I have to be more aggressive in pursuing tech trades
b) I have to be more willing to accept uneven tech trades

On Noble, the AIs are at parity with you, for both research and construction. On prince, you're at a disadvantage, and the AI's faster tech rate, combined with their tendancy to be tech whores, gives them an even greater advantage over you.

Another thing that makes a difference at higher levels, but not on Noble, is understanding the AIs' tech priorities.

Noble is still forgiving of sloppy tactics, mistakes, and ignoring certain aspects of the game. As you go up in level, you no longer have that luxury.

It seems Prince separates the men from the boys. If you don't have consistent and dominating victories in Noble - you're probably out of your league in Prince. The lower levels were "jumpable" when you weren't quite ready. And perhaps I've jumped too early now with Prince. I'm gonna keep trying anyway.

 

[r_rolo1]

As a personal experience, my Noble -> Prince transition was pretty slow ( took almost a year to get the guts to try it... ), but I found Prince not much more complicated than Noble and I jumped to monarch ASAP. Monarch clearly gave a run for my money... I won my first games but I felt the floor moving below my feet. I felt that I needed to refine my gameplay ( especially diplo and game opening... most of the problems with people getting up levels are because of this two areas... you need to get a much more exact game opening from level to level and as the level goes up you need to watch much more carefully the diplo ( because the AI have so much more stuff in everything, you need to work harder around the diplo... but it is pretty rewarding when a diplo plan goes right, believe me ) ) and involved more with the SGs and the online games in here to get practice. Not long ago I decided to try Emperor... I was afraid of it being much harder , but I'm holding.... of course that having barbs much earlier makes a lot of diference, but the tecniques I learned in Monarch are holding.

Hopefully will hit Immortal in some months...

 

[lovetramy]

prince was easy , monarch is clearly a huge jump