Still can't win on Noble

[joe6778]

I’m getting totally frustrated that despite spending hours playing Civ 4 Complete, including Warlords, BTS, and Colonization, I can’t win on Noble difficulty. I have played over ten games (BTS) and I won one game (space victory.)

First a little background: I’m 55, I’ve been playing strategy games all my life, and I loved Civ II and Alpha Centauri. I didn’t like Civ III with the frantic civ expanding, but I recently bought Civ IV, and I’m addicted. I have played for hours and I’ve visited the Civ Fanatics website for hours reading the forums and the strategy guides trying to better my game.

I was having trouble winning the Warlords scenarios, but thanks to this website I have been able to beat the Alexander the Great, Ghengis Khan, and Chinese Unification scenarios (but I find Omens and Barbarians impossible.)

I played one BTS game where I was on the verge of winning on points, diplomatic, domination, and even by culture when I saw that Sitting Bull was starting to build his spaceship. I was battling Hatty at the time, but I turned on the R & D full speed and was able to launch two turns before Sitting Bull. Unfortunately, I was one thruster short, and I lost by one turn!!

I almost always play as the Americans with most of the default options. I’m reluctant to fight wars, but the game I’m currently playing had me being squeezed culturally by Portugal to my north. I had good relations with everyone but Germany, and the Greeks were friendly to me. I couldn’t get iron and no one would trade, but I did have ivory and horses. When three other countries attacked Portugal (and their master, The Celtics) during the Medieval Age, I took the opportunity to expand my civ. I quickly took one city and was moving on their capitol. Longbowmen and crossbowmen were attacking (not just defending the city) and were able to take out a few of my units, but when I attacked them or their catapults, I was losing units! I finally surrounded the capitol and pillaged everything around it to weaken it. I had my units on hills and in the forests healing, but I was still losing units when they came out to attack me. And to top it off, the other three civs at war with Portugal made peace! So it was only me against the Celtics and the Portuguese.

After bombarding the capitol for a few turns and only bringing the culture of the city to about 80%, I made three suicide attacks with my trebuchets to weaken their garrison, but my attackers were taking heavy losses despite the collateral damage (since they still had strong walls, but I didn’t want to wait too long bombarding because I wanted to take it before the Celts came.) Then, after taking my lumps but weakening their garrison, I took another look and saw even more units defending in their capitol! WTH?

Anyway, I’m getting so frustrated because after all I’ve learned the battles are so hard for me. In this particular game, the Portuguese were the weakest civ!

I don’t have the patience to build tons of siege weapons and in this particular game my best producing city is five turns away from the battle. What I thought was going to be easy turned out to be so hard for me.

I don’t want to sound like a crybaby, but I’m really getting sick of not being able to win on Noble and I’m ready to quit. Can someone take a look at my saved game and tell me what I’m doing wrong?

 

[lymond]

I will take a look at the save. As a generally piece of advice - and it happens often so i'm not pointing you out or anything - late game saves are often not optimal for fixing your overall game. Often games can be lost in the first 50 to 100 turns and how you manage the early game is highly important.

America is a good civ in the game but may not be the best one for newer players. Civs with certain traits like FIN/Org or early UUs can be helpful.

Have patience and get some feedback from the forum and you will be beating Noble in no time. No real need to waste words on those little scenarios in your game as they are kind of in a "vacuum" and hard to make sense of without knowing a lot of other factors. Let the save and screenshots tell the story.

 

[Sidney Magal]

One

Spoiler :

Two

Spoiler :

Three

Spoiler :

Four

Spoiler :

Five: GO TIGER!

 

[lymond]

^^^^^ha...yep...siege your friend...even cats are quite nice ien masse.

On a more general note, after reviewing the save, I found quite a few things wrong. It does appear like you have a few basics down which is nice (like granaries in every city), but you are not pulling them together into a cohesive whole.

1) More workers. You are expansive. You should have about 4 or 5 more workers. There's a bit of work to do here to build windmills and chain irrigate food specials. Why are 4 workers building a workshop on a corn resource. Looks like automation. Don't automate workers!!! At least until late game for trade networks and until you have a better idea of how to manage the auto function.

2) Research is pretty abysmal. Not getting a tech advantage on the AI on Noble level is not good. There are many reasons for this. In part, you don't appear to be specializing your cities appropriately. Your cap is a production city and it may be a good idea to move the cap. You should shoot for Lib by at most 1100AD

3) No Education > No Oxford ...should have this much sooner. Unsure of your overall tech pattern but this needs work.

4) Great people. I expect you popped at most 2 or 3 Great people so far. Nice to see and academy and settle scientist in cap, but was your cap the best place for it. You do need to set up a GP farm - a city with highest food potential to run specialists, build NE and get out great people for various purposes (like bulbing Edu a LOOONG time ago)

5) Besides the cap, I don't really see any other very strong production sites. Your cities have a hodge-podge of improvements in them. Likely do to automation (bad bad) . Re-read articles on city specialization. You do have locations here that could have better hammer output if improved differently. Conversely, you have cities with lots of cottages but they are not working them. Cities with cottages should always work them. Not all cities need cottages.

6) You are in a religion - looks like you aligned yourself with a "bloc" of other civs. Not sure if it was the right bloc, but the idea is good. Milk it. However, you are running no Religion civics at all - this is bad. Right now, theo would do you good. Organized Religion is great in a large portion of the early game to get key buildings in. Bureau would be better than Vass if you are in Theo for the boost to Washington. You are in HR, get more units in cities with happiness problems or whip that happiness away. Don't want unhappy citizens for long - you pay for them.

7) Not a major thing, but I think a city on the stone is worth it just to get the resource. Not a great city, but it does get the fish. Stone would help with some wonders, including some NW like Moai that you apparently built much slower in Wash. Why build Heroic Epic/Moai in a city that you appear to have set up for Oxford - although it may not be the best site for Oxford.


Anyway, in short, and I recommend this to all newer players. Run a shadow game from the start. Post the start save, screenshot and leader. Wait for some advice. Post report and save at 20 turn intervals - get advice - rinse repeat. It is the ultimate way to learn. Be patient too - save this game solely for this purpose and play it slowly. You can always run other game for your fix. Some folks may play along to show you have they do things. Do this and you will be playing Monarch in not time.

edit: Oh and get the BUG mode if you don't already use it.

 

[dr_s]

I looked at the save, some comments on the current situation.

You have many unhappy citizens weighing you down. But you can currently trade for two happy resources from Fred and Alex. Do it! Whip away the rest of the unhappy citizens or use the culture slider to raise your happy cap.

You don't have a good production city. Look at Seattle; you can't work many of the hills because of lack of food, but you are working two grassland cottages there. Similar comment for Philly. Convert those cottages to farms and you can work more hills for more production. More generally, think about focusing each of your cities one one thing, e.g. hammers or commerce, and make sure you have some cities producing lots of each.

You have lots of unirrigated corn and wheat; that's just wasting food.

As noted above, bribing Alex to war would be very helpful, and you need way more siege if you're going to fight in this era. Also building horse archers and chariots is useless if your opponent has pikes.

Good luck and have fun!

 

[joe6778]

^^^^^ha...yep...siege your friend...even cats are quite nice ien masse.

On a more general note, after reviewing the save, I found quite a few things wrong. It does appear like you have a few basics down which is nice (like granaries in every city), but you are not pulling them together into a cohesive whole.

1) More workers. You are expansive. You should have about 4 or 5 more workers. There's a bit of work to do here to build windmills and chain irrigate food specials. Why are 4 workers building a workshop on a corn resource. Looks like automation. Don't automate workers!!! At least until late game for trade networks and until you have a better idea of how to manage the auto function.

2) Research is pretty abysmal. Not getting a tech advantage on the AI on Noble level is not good. There are many reasons for this. In part, you don't appear to be specializing your cities appropriately. Your cap is a production city and it may be a good idea to move the cap. You should shoot for Lib by at most 1100AD

3) No Education > No Oxford ...should have this much sooner. Unsure of your overall tech pattern but this needs work.

4) Great people. I expect you popped at most 2 or 3 Great people so far. Nice to see and academy and settle scientist in cap, but was your cap the best place for it. You do need to set up a GP farm - a city with highest food potential to run specialists, build NE and get out great people for various purposes (like bulbing Edu a LOOONG time ago)

5) Besides the cap, I don't really see any other very strong production sites. Your cities have a hodge-podge of improvements in them. Likely do to automation (bad bad) . Re-read articles on city specialization. You do have locations here that could have better hammer output if improved differently. Conversely, you have cities with lots of cottages but they are not working them. Cities with cottages should always work them. Not all cities need cottages.

6) You are in a religion - looks like you aligned yourself with a "bloc" of other civs. Not sure if it was the right bloc, but the idea is good. Milk it. However, you are running no Religion civics at all - this is bad. Right now, theo would do you good. Organized Religion is great in a large portion of the early game to get key buildings in. Bureau would be better than Vass if you are in Theo for the boost to Washington. You are in HR, get more units in cities with happiness problems or whip that happiness away. Don't want unhappy citizens for long - you pay for them.

7) Not a major thing, but I think a city on the stone is worth it just to get the resource. Not a great city, but it does get the fish. Stone would help with some wonders, including some NW like Moai that you apparently built much slower in Wash. Why build Heroic Epic/Moai in a city that you appear to have set up for Oxford - although it may not be the best site for Oxford.


Anyway, in short, and I recommend this to all newer players. Run a shadow game from the start. Post the start save, screenshot and leader. Wait for some advice. Post report and save at 20 turn intervals - get advice - rinse repeat. It is the ultimate way to learn. Be patient too - save this game solely for this purpose and play it slowly. You can always run other game for your fix. Some folks may play along to show you have they do things. Do this and you will be playing Monarch in not time.

edit: Oh and get the BUG mode if you don't already use it.

I didn't have much choice with the improvements because I couldn't get production from the grasslands and plains until later. I also wanted to get more food and I couldn't build a lot of farms until Civil Service.

I'm usually very advanced in research, but I didn't have production or research since the beginning.

I thought I had more than enough workers with not enough to do, so I automated some.

I tried to build specialized cities from the start, but I failed- (not enough resources/improvements?) I wanted as much food/commerce as possible so my cities would grow. I'm not sure I'm getting this part of it.

I have been whipping and I cut off research temporarily to build up funds while I was at war to upgrade my units.

BTW- I'm using the BUG mode.

 

[TheDanish]

Just to throw in another bit of advice:

You can war during the Medieval era, but it's hard. Medieval is probably the worst time to war - this is when Castles come into play and make city cracking a real pain.

 

[mintegar]

When three other countries attacked Portugal (and their master, The Celtics) during the Medieval Age, I took the opportunity to expand my civ. (...) And to top it off, the other three civs at war with Portugal made peace!

The AI suddenly signing peace treaty between each other once you join a war happens a lot, that's just the way the AI-Diplo stuff was programmed.
That's why when you declare war you should have the means available to fight your way to victory reasonably quickly.

Always consider the way War-Weariness works: The civ which declared the war is hit way more by , while the other civ is normally relatively unaffected. That's why it can be often better to just wait till you are attacked. In such a war, you are not in that much time pressure to end it. Time can be working in your favor in that case, as the civ which declared against you will be crippled by WW-induced unhappiness.

After bombarding the capitol for a few turns and only bringing the culture of the city to about 80%, I made three suicide attacks with my trebuchets to weaken their garrison,

Normally it's better to bombard all (or most) of the culture % away before attacking.

There can be exceptions, like when you are 2 whole eras ahead in tech, or when there is some really good reason to take that city down as soon as possible. But then you should be pretty sure you can live with the lower combat-odds. I hope you are looking at the odds calculator before attacking?

Then, after taking my lumps but weakening their garrison, I took another look and saw even more units defending in their capitol! WTH?

Reinforcements, the AI can use whip too to put up new units quickly..

 

[blue_7]

basically everything important as already been said. city specialization, more workers, and NEVER automate workers unless you know what there doing(i normally build a single road to all my cities resources and luxuries and than just improve all my tiles once thats done i set all my workers to create trade networks so they finish my road system).

a few notes about warring. TMIT once said you never want to fight a midieval war its to hard to do with longbow defense, unless you have a military advantage or absolutely need to. if i was playing that games i would have allied with brenus or boudica(didnt check who was the leader) and knocked out sury a long long time ago. he has nice land for . you went into the war with not enough trebs or all around units for that matter. in this era of fighting i like to have at least 2/3 of my army siege and than a whole lot of knights with a few pikes and longbows for defense. my army would have consisted of at least 20 units. although it was a good idea to pillage when realizing you couldn't take there city

i used to be horrible at war until i watched some of TMIT vids. you can learn alot from him try watching him some time.

 

[joe6778]

• I was bombarding with three trebuchets, but was only causing minimal damage. I knew I had to get the war over with ASAP so that's why I was hasty. I thought the collateral damage would weaken them enough so that I could take it before they reinforced.
  
• I do watch the odds and mostly attack when they're in my favor.
  
• I figured their city was being whipped, but it didn't seem like the population was decreasing.

 

[Sian]

another suggestion is to throw misapplied nationlistic tendencies aside ... meaning that you're shouldn't play (not play) civilizations because of their place in the world ... it'll only bug you don't since its removes a lot of options from you (directly or indirectly), which can tweak the game in ways that can help you either win, or at least understand your problems on a more metagamic plane

Addentium

3 Trebs is nothing ... roughly half your army should be siege

 

[joe6778]

basically everything important as already been said. city specialization, more workers, and NEVER automate workers unless you know what there doing(i normally build a single road to all my cities resources and luxuries and than just improve all my tiles once thats done i set all my workers to create trade networks so they finish my road system).

a few notes about warring. TMIT once said you never want to fight a midieval war its to hard to do with longbow defense, unless you have a military advantage or absolutely need to. if i was playing that games i would have allied with brenus or boudica(didnt check who was the leader) and knocked out sury a long long time ago. he has nice land for . you went into the war with not enough trebs or all around units for that matter. in this era of fighting i like to have at least 2/3 of my army siege and than a whole lot of knights with a few pikes and longbows for defense. my army would have consisted of at least 20 units. although it was a good idea to pillage when realizing you couldn't take there city

i used to be horrible at war until i watched some of TMIT vids. you can learn alot from him try watching him some time.

Should I just start another game?

I couldn't get knights because I couldn't get iron.

What's TMIT?

 

[manu-fan]

Your description of the your battles is particularly telling.

Early wars should be Cats/swords
Later should be Trebs/Macemen
Later should be Cannons/Rifles

Now, you say you didn't have Iron, but Ivory instead, so we substitute War Elephants for Macemen.

When attacking a city, you should have enough siege to blow the culture to 0 in one turn, or two at the most. Over emphasize siege. I actually like to bring enough to get to 0 AND attack with some all on one turn.

In the open, if you didn't have Iron, you should have had some Crossbowmen in the stack also.

Anyway. It seems like your weakness is in War. On Noble, the idea is to go to war as early as possible and take opponents cities, getting gold and land and reducing their capabilities all at once. That's why I never pillage. Those improvements will soon be mine

Anyway. Good luck.

Cheers.

 

[lymond]

I'm going to repeat this from my earlier post for emphasis:

Anyway, in short, and I recommend this to all newer players. Run a shadow game from the start. Post the start save, screenshot and leader. Wait for some advice. Post report and save at 20 turn intervals - get advice - rinse repeat. It is the ultimate way to learn. Be patient too - save this game solely for this purpose and play it slowly. You can always run other game for your fix. Some folks may play along to show you have they do things. Do this and you will be playing Monarch in not time.


Yes, you should start another game and run it like I described above. I assure you with 100% certainty that this will improve your game dramatically if you are patient and stick with it. C'mon, you are 55, I know you've learned patience is a virtue...


Yes, as mentioned, you need to be prepared when going to war. Wars need to be quick and decisive. In order to do this you need to either a) have a military tech advantage b) have enough units and the right mix to be effective. Seige is highly important in battle to take cities (it's also nice in defense too). Bring at least 50% or more siege in your large stack of doom. Mix in a good number of a single type of attacking unit like mace or phants and a few support units like LBs, pikes, shock mace to protect your stack.

Noble - well anything below Prince - generally offers a great opportunity to early rush a neighbor to take them out entirely or at least grab some good cities like their cap. You can even warrior rush or archer rush - though I generally don't like archery as a tech at higher levels. If you get copper or horse in your cap's BFC or close by second city early and have a rival close by - they should be gone. I'm not sure if this was the case in your particular game, but it is something to note.

I look forward to following your next game. Don't play America

 

[michmbk]

Similar to what Lymond said, if you're not beating noble, you're not playing well in the first 100 turns. Once you've started to improve those first 100 turns, including getting enough workers and cities, with decent city specialization and tech path, you should be able to win consistently on noble.

If you don't like to war, then focus on some of the culture techs (music, lib, drama) and wonders and cruise to a culture win.

A shadow game is definitely worthwhile, but absent that, make sure you've checked out sisiutil's strategy guide. If you follow that consistently, you will win on noble, guaranteed.

 

[blue_7]

this game is defiantly winnable. i would end the war with jao and the celts asap. if its not to late even switch over to the Celtic religion because you just painted yourself as a target for the strongest AI not to mention there your neighbors.

i suggest you start building some culture in those northern cities near jao. i didnt check the % but im sure your cities are losing culture with jao's borders being so close to your cities.

rebuilding your economy would be the most improtant thing right now. right now your running a mess of hammer specialist economy and cottage economy which is hurting more than helping(the AI really screwed up your land). i would specailizing about 3 production cities, make a gp farm, and cottage everything else. although the cottages wont be helpful until late late game.

i can see your going the lib race which isnt a bad idea. but right before you get lib switch over to musket->chemistry->steel path. to slingshot steel for cannons. and than tech military science for grenadiers. at this point the other civs would prob be teching nationalism banking and other none military techs(celts might go for military tech it really depends but sury wont. DONT TRADE ANY OF THE MILITARY TECHS YOU GET.

now comes war. build up a massive army of grenadiers and cannons and the best units the AI will have to counter will be knights and maybe muskets if there lucky. nothing would stand in your way. take out sury for the money and than move onto the celts. after that its up to you to choose your victory condition. i do the grenadier cannons combo all the time and it hasnt failed me yet.

TheMeinTeam posts civ4 games on youtube. he is very good.

http://www.youtube.com/user/TheMelnTeam#p/a

if you want to see how a medieval war should be fought i suggest watching his mao game.

 

[joe6778]

this game is defiantly winnable. i would end the war with jao and the celts asap. if its not to late even switch over to the Celtic religion because you just painted yourself as a target for the strongest AI not to mention there your neighbors.

i suggest you start building some culture in those northern cities near jao. i didnt check the % but im sure your cities are losing culture with jao's borders being so close to your cities.

rebuilding your economy would be the most improtant thing right now. right now your running a mess of hammer specialist economy and cottage economy which is hurting more than helping(the AI really screwed up your land). i would specailizing about 3 production cities, make a gp farm, and cottage everything else. although the cottages wont be helpful until late late game.

i can see your going the lib race which isnt a bad idea. but right before you get lib switch over to musket->chemistry->steel path. to slingshot steel for cannons. and than tech military science for grenadiers. at this point the other civs would prob be teching nationalism banking and other none military techs(celts might go for military tech it really depends but sury wont. DONT TRADE ANY OF THE MILITARY TECHS YOU GET.

now comes war. build up a massive army of grenadiers and cannons and the best units the AI will have to counter will be knights and maybe muskets if there lucky. nothing would stand in your way. take out sury for the money and than move onto the celts. after that its up to you to choose your victory condition. i do the grenadier cannons combo all the time and it hasnt failed me yet.

TheMeinTeam posts civ4 games on youtube. he is very good.

http://www.youtube.com/user/TheMelnTeam#p/a

if you want to see how a medieval war should be fought i suggest watching his mao game.

Thanks for the advice. I was going to quit this game but I'll give it a try.

I was building culture along Jao but my borders weren't increasing. I was also teching culture. I tried to get as much food going as possible, and then I was left with cottages until workshops were available.

How do I build a GP farm and which city should it be? I didn't have a lot of production at the start so I was trying to build a bunch of workshops to make up for it. Which should be my production cities? I have a hard time with these concepts.

 

[blue_7]

i looked at the save and you have two candidates for a gp farm. your capital and Atlanta if you can take back the clams from combira. unfortunately Boston has already built the NE so you wont get it in your gp farm unless you make Boston your gp farm which would be very difficult with all those plains tiles. id say Atlanta would be the best spot once it takes the clams, just irrigate all its tiles. the city tile wheat and 2 clams alone produce 17 food which translates into 7 extra citizens, plus it has a plain hill so you have some hammers in case you need to build something. make your capital a bureaucracy capital cottage everything and the money will just flood on.

Boston if not fixed will revolt over to jao eventually. you need to really pump in some culture to save that city. i would get a great artist and culture bomb Boston. if that still doesn't fix it try using spies, pump culture into combria and Boston will be safe in no time. other than Boston the rest of your cities seem fine although i would keep an eye on Philadelphia.

you can sign a peace treaty with boudica right now. unfortunately you will be boudicas target because she hates you the most. so i suggest you switch to Buddhism this will make her like you more and hopefully turn her attention to the east. although by switching to her religion you would be pissing off all those Hindus, so as soon as you get lib go for free religion. the happiness from religion and the 10% should help out. not to mention you wont have to deal with "we are upset because you have fallen under the slay of a heathen religion" crap.

basically a gp farm is a city that can produce enough food that it can have the majority of its citizens work as specialist(works best under caste system) so you can manipulate what kind of great people you want to pop up. i will say getting a great artist to culture bomb Boston would be first. after that work scientist so you can get academy in your capital.

you were low on production because you didnt specialize cities and the ai was pretty much making all your cities hybrids. a production city is a city that works farms on grassland and using the extra food to work mines and workshops on plains and hills. later on you can mess with windmills and watermills but i dont even understand those improvements entirely, and there not fully effective until late game anyways.

 

[michmbk]

Thanks for the advice. I was going to quit this game but I'll give it a try.

I was building culture along Jao but my borders weren't increasing. I was also teching culture. I tried to get as much food going as possible, and then I was left with cottages until workshops were available.

How do I build a GP farm and which city should it be? I didn't have a lot of production at the start so I was trying to build a bunch of workshops to make up for it. Which should be my production cities? I have a hard time with these concepts.

You should definitely post an early save and ask for shadows or advice. You'll be able to quickly grasp some of these concepts. I'm terrible at remembering to get a good GP farm going - it's the worst part of my game, but I still do ok, so I wouldn't worry too much about having some areas of weakness.

The key to a GP farm is plenty of food. I often like a coastal city with 2-3 seafood sources to fit this bill.

Production - in the early game, you're looking for farms & mines - food resources plus a few hills will be fine. Later on, when you're running caste and getting to chemistry/communism, workshops become pretty strong, but farms & hills are good early production sites. Sites with a lot of trees help - can chop your production.

 

[joe6778]

i looked at the save and you have two candidates for a gp farm. your capital and Atlanta if you can take back the clams from combira. unfortunately Boston has already built the NE so you wont get it in your gp farm unless you make Boston your gp farm which would be very difficult with all those plains tiles. id say Atlanta would be the best spot once it takes the clams, just irrigate all its tiles. the city tile wheat and 2 clams alone produce 17 food which translates into 7 extra citizens, plus it has a plain hill so you have some hammers in case you need to build something. make your capital a bureaucracy capital cottage everything and the money will just flood on.

Boston if not fixed will revolt over to jao eventually. you need to really pump in some culture to save that city. i would get a great artist and culture bomb Boston. if that still doesn't fix it try using spies, pump culture into combria and Boston will be safe in no time. other than Boston the rest of your cities seem fine although i would keep an eye on Philadelphia.

you can sign a peace treaty with boudica right now. unfortunately you will be boudicas target because she hates you the most. so i suggest you switch to Buddhism this will make her like you more and hopefully turn her attention to the east. although by switching to her religion you would be pissing off all those Hindus, so as soon as you get lib go for free religion. the happiness from religion and the 10% should help out. not to mention you wont have to deal with "we are upset because you have fallen under the slay of a heathen religion" crap.

basically a gp farm is a city that can produce enough food that it can have the majority of its citizens work as specialist(works best under caste system) so you can manipulate what kind of great people you want to pop up. i will say getting a great artist to culture bomb Boston would be first. after that work scientist so you can get academy in your capital.

you were low on production because you didnt specialize cities and the ai was pretty much making all your cities hybrids. a production city is a city that works farms on grassland and using the extra food to work mines and workshops on plains and hills. later on you can mess with windmills and watermills but i dont even understand those improvements entirely, and there not fully effective until late game anyways.

This save is 20 turns later. How am I doing?

I'm ready to switch to caste system. I'm moving my prophet to settle in Boston. I'm trying to build culture there. I was the first to Liberalism and I took Astronomy (oops) and I'm working toward steel.