Struggling at Noble

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Hi,

I've been struggling with Civ 4 pretty much since I bought it. The level below Noble is far too easy for me but I can't get a handle at Noble level. Whatever I do as a starting tactic it just won't work, I can't expand quickly enough and the few times I do it's because I've neglected city defence, so the AI always starts an early war against me and I quickly crumble. But if I defend better I end with a tiny number of cities insufficient to build a decent sized army or get enough culture going. Anyone got any tips at this level?

Cheers!

 

[qwertz]

Can you beat warlord with random leader on random map with different game settings and with any victory condition?
Do you have your favotite leader/nation/strategy combo?
Have you read the articles in war academy?


Stay at warlord until you can answer all of those questions with "yes".
Chose your favorite leader and nation, chech any settings you think may help you.
Start the game on noble, regenerate the map until you get a nice starting position.
You should find the game not much harder than an averge warlord game.

 

[aronnax]

Let me bring you down to one thing. In this game the three most important things are money, workers and tech path.

For you to be able to have a large empire, you need money. For now cottage spam a city early in the game, it should provide you with what you need. Now think smart and choose where you settle carefully. You want a money or science city, plot your settler in that nice juicy floodplain or those Dye Resources. You want production find a spot with hills and grasslands. The best is to have about two or three nearby resouces per city. Thats where the workers come in. Cities are nothing without their improvements. So build improvements in order that will make you profit most. Dont mine a hill early game when your city needs to grow. Also remenber not to let your cities grow too fast or they will be revolting smelly masses. Switch where your citizen work to benefit each situation

Lastly, your tech path. In the begining of the game, look at your city and see what you really need. If you start off in a place with Sheep or pigs go for AH. If its Trees galore get BW quick or you will have nothing to do with that worker. Look up sailing if you have a coast then when you are landlocked. Grab a religion if you start with Mysticism. Also there is no need to research for all the techs. Just outtech the AI's with important techs than trade these away for smaller not important techs. Forget Meditation and Hunting, research writing and trade for both (only after you get Alphabeth)

 

[cthom]

and watch your wonder slots. eg, you want wall street in your financial city, if you've got 2 nat. wonders in that city already you can't build it there.

yes, it actually happened...

 

[MrG]

I had exactly teh same problem moving up to prince, (Blatant advertisement alert- you can see the result of this on "how to get battered on Prince, an idiot's guide" I think its on page two of the BTS forum at the mo.)

Anyway I can pretty much beat Noble, anyway I choose and what works for me is as follows.

1) I always research bronze working first
2) I generally grow my first city to size 3 before building workers then I chop like crazy to build a couple of workers (obviously not the first one) and a settler. Alternatively go for a worker first and chop asap for warriors more workers and then a settler.
3) Beeline for Alphabet and DO NOT trade it, everything else fine, but NOT alphabet
4) Try an early axe rush/horse archer rush if there's no copper about against your nearest rival
5) Aim for three cities initially i GP farm, one production city and a science city - preferably your capital which can at a pinch usually double as a production city
6) I don't build wonders -except oxford uni and wall street - if I'm ahead on tech, otherwise I don't bother. I build units instead.
7) Chose your friends carefully - try to destroy agressive civs earlydoors if you can.
8) Learn to leverage your traits, if you have financial leader, cottage spam, if you have an aggressive leader, build lots of units, in fact do this anyway. You don't "need" to do this to beat noble, but you will at later levels so its worth starting now.
9) Have a plan - from the start, usually based on your leader, then amended according to your start position then amended again according t your opponenets - then stick to it, with the proviso that if something really bad happens - change things round.
10) build hundreds of catapults, comnsider them expendable.

Also post a save if you can, and the real experts round here will tell you exactly where you are going wrong.

Hope that helps..
11) aim for a ratio of 2:1 for science/production cities.

 

[Rince]

I can't expand quickly enough and the few times I do it's because I've neglected city defence, so the AI always starts an early war against me and I quickly crumble.

Also, you need to remember that rapid expansion can kill your economy and make your empire difficult to defend. 4-5 core cities are enough to get you through the middle age.

Rince

 

[anduril171]

Also, you need to remember that rapid expansion can kill your economy and make your empire difficult to defend. 4-5 core cities are enough to get you through the middle age.

6 cities... you want 6 cities (on standard map size, anyways) so that you'll be able to build Oxford, Wall Street, etc.

Of course you don't have to build all 6 yourself; it's always nice to take a nice city right on your borders...

 

[JJ Boston]

I'm not sure what your preferred leaders are, but since you're having trouble militarily, try using a militant, aggressive leader or someone with a good early unique unit. I was struggling at Noble for a while and never was a very aggressive player before but just finished an extremely good game with Montezuma, winning by domination victory. The early advantage set the pace for me, which set the stage for everything else. Expansion wasn't a problem, I only captured 6 cities, but captured an empire, starting with the luck of having a few barbarian cities nearby.

That Montezuma game was a very good learning experience. I really had to push myself to change my typical building style, but still had a good mix of building and war.

 

[Nay]

If you win 1/X games when playing with X civs, its exactly your dificulty.
If you win more, you should go up.


I cant remember the time i was playing on noble, but i dont think i fared better than you at first. Im fairly sure i lost a few Settler games, and theres no shame in that. But i kept learning from my mistakes, and how to avoid them.
Today i am working on getting my win-rate on large 8-civ immortal maps from 40 to 70% (not playing Capac for a principle).

That said, to get a grip on the new level aim for these points:


Leader Choice

.) Creative Leader - Not having to care for stonehenge/monument/religion for culture expand is the bomb. Cheaper buildings also rock.
.) Financial Leader - Best trait hands down. Most boring too, but effective.
.) Aggressive Leader - NOT having to take combat 1 to unlock anti-X promotions is a huuuge bonus.

Stay away from:

.) Protective Leader - Good if played right, might be something for later
.) Philosophical Leader - Same
.) Industrious Leaders - You run in danger of going Wonderwhoring(tm) to the point that you defend the pyramid/stonehenge/oracle city with only a warrior.
.) French Leaders - Nobody likes them french

Civilization Choice

.) Unique Buildings make a difference; most of them anyways. Aim for early UBs, possibly those that dont get obsolete.
.) Unique Buildings that you would have built anyway are good.

Stay away from

.) Civs with really really awesome Unique Units. They can make a difference at Epic and higher, below that they are outdated too quickly.
Never rely on a single concept to win the game, it wont work.


City placement:

Aim for

.) Coastal Cities - More trade routes, more cash, more everything.
.) Flood plains - 3 1 is THE place to settle cottages. Make money AND food, what more can you ask for?
.) Rivers - rivers act like roads in terms of ressource availability within your realm. Saves lots of time NOT having to connect every ressource and city with roads to have access to them.

Stay away from

.) Super production cities with no food. What good are 8 mines if you can only work 1 of them because your city has just tiles? 3 Hills make a nice Production site, 12 Hills will leave the city starving.
.) Super Gold cities - see above.
.) Avoiding overlapping - Yes, stay away from avoiding it. Overlapping is your friend. Overlapping non-ressource tiles becomes interesting when one of the cities grows to size 20. A city the size of 12 is good enough to seriously fulfill its role, be it income or production. Most of my cities top at 15-18, and then its time for the whip.
Having 2 cities at 10 is generally better than 1 at 15 (which is about the equivalent, growth-wise)

ok, that was long enough.
If you bothered to read through this, i hope you can take some of the advice and become a stronger player, and enjoy the challenge of taking on higher levels.

 

[Kanorin]

As you go up in difficulty, you will find that there is less and less margin for error. An error can even be a small thing like building a warrior when you should have built a worker. The beginning of the game is very important and having a strong start will help you gain a foothold for the rest of the game. Here are some general tips that may help you out.

In my starting city I always build a worker first (unless I have fishing and there are clams/fish/crabs in my radius). With the worker, I improve the tiles that will be most useful for 1) city growth (resources like corn), 2) production (mines), 3) commerce (cottages). After that first worker pops out, I build some defensive units and a scout if I didn't start with one. Let your starting city grow to max population (where # of happy citizens = # of unhappy) as you build some units.

Once your city has reached max (or at the least 1 less than max), it now becomes a settler/worker producing machine. You can vary the order a little, but you want about 2 workers per city in the expansion phase of the game. For example, your build order might look something like this after the city has grown to max: settler, worker, worker, archer/warrior, settler, worker, worker.

When you found a new city, bring 2 workers over to it to start improving its tiles so that it grows fast. Do not build any workers/settlers in your new city until it has hit max population. I find it best to build 1-2 more units in this new city, hopefully you have archery by now. When the new city hits its population max, you can choose to switch your settler/worker machine to this new city if you want to build some improvements in your capital.

You have to play it by ear, but usually you can build 2-3 additional cities (for a total of 3-4 cities) in the first wave of expansion. I usually stop expanding when I have to bring my science slider down to 60-70% to maintain budget.

As far as starting techs, get the techs which allow you to improve terrain first. There is no use building a worker if it will just sit there. I usually go for agriculture first if I don't have it and for bronze working pretty early (so I can put my 2nd or 3rd city near bronze if I don't have it in my capital). I also try and get archery pretty early on...otherwise barbarians will give you a tough time.

Keep in mind that these are guidelines and that certain situations will require different actions. Hope it helps!

 

[JujuLautre]

- 11 tips -

I would add to this list:

12 - understand the reason of these tips, and why they work well in some situations and work less in others; this way, next time, you'll be able to say if you should follow them or not

 

[BoydofZINJ]

Here are some general tips I have found working lately.

1. Plan ahead. What are you trying to do? Early rushes? Middle rushes? late attacks? Tech to spaceship and win with a spaceship? Diplomatic victory? Culture victory?

2. Economy, regardless of which way you want to go... economy is important in ANY situation. If you are able to build troops and raze/capture cities and remain at 100 or 90% techning... you have a solid economy and will probably do well. If you are at 0% or 10% research rate and your troops are striking every other turn... you will probably lose soon.

3. Try not to overextend. Generally, most civilizations have trouble with a large number of cities without currency and a good economic structure. I tend to stay at 3 - 5 cities by the time I reach currency. Building a large number of cities may extend your influence - it will also slow the growth of your cities and reduce your income. Likewise, when capturing enemy cities that are far away... may cause an economic problem. Money is Power! If you can remain in the positive and tech - then you are doing good.

4. In a diplomatic victory... try to make friends with the person your going up against. Then make your "friend" declare war on specific people... which will give you votes you need. You have to becareful, normally the person that your running up against is very powerful and you may help him give you the edge for his victory or assist him too much and you guarentee his supremecy.

Sorry got to go... but you get the general idea.

 

[dragodon64]

Qwertz said everything you need to know. The rest is just trivial (and sometimes, wrong) details.

 

[VilleDick]

I will say on Vanilla Civ IV I could kill on noble every single time. BtS has humbled me quite a bit. Early wars are more difficult and expansion is brutally tough. I can usually only get to 4 cities, then end up in a stale mate war while everyone else is out taking over the world. Espionage tends to really screw me over because I ignore it. I need to find a better balance of spending between espionage and science. 10% spying just isn't gonna cut it.

 

[Quildavyr]

Try cultural victory.I had this problem on prince level,but solved.Ahm only cultural
You can defend your cities easily.And you have to defend only three

 

[Rub'Rum]

I'm currently trying to move up to Noble too, and it's starting to be tough for people who will allow inefficiency to happen (bad decisions that could have been overlooked in easier difficulties). I'm not sure I'll ever play at the level where not a single mistake is allowed. I've played this game for hours and hours, and I still can't remember exactly what tech is required for some other techs, and such things...

But I think one of my main mistakes is not building enough military units and becoming an easy pray for some civ who is going really high in the power graph. If you check your power graph and see some civ taking off, don't try to fool yourself: you have a lot of chances to be hit. Sometimes it's too late. I was just playing a game where I got attacked suddenly by a giant stack of doom of knights and trebuchets and macemen, they must have had like 30. I had 7-8 pikemen in the city, thankfully, I managed to kill a lot of knights but I had to give up two great cities. Good thing I had friends to call for help. You must get some people to be friendly with you... Not positive I'm going to win that one... On an unrelated note; I was about to recapture one of the great city I had lost, and a "friend" of mine called an palace resolution: "STOP THE WAR AGAINST SIMON(me)". I was ONE TILE away from the city I was about to take back, so I'm like.. "NO!!!" and of course they vote YES (I'm forced into peace, thanks guys) and my "friend" captures the city I was about to take back just after that.

Anyway, I don't know why I started talking about that event. I think my main mistake often is not taking the time to choose which buildings are required in specific cities. I mean, instead of thinking, I'll be lazy and build a lot of buildings instead of units. You assume an extra building with +whatever can't hurt right? Yeah, it can. Anyway, I THINK that's my mistake.

 

[Horace]

its always good to take out your neighbour early in the game, or at least spoil them by wandering around their land pillaging their resources and generally ruining them. they can then be picked off at your leisure. a second capital is very handy and provides lots of space and prime city spots. try going with an axe/sword/unique unit rush early.

 

[TyranusBonehead]

I played Vanilla and Warlords at Noble, but took a step down with BTS until I got used to the new game (currently play at Warlord). I'm looking forward to going back to Noble soon, but I'd advise mastering one level before trying the next one up.

 

[jeffreyac]

On the axe rush - I find that I generally get wiped out doing this, if I'm going for a complete kill... How many axes should I be taking? I generally have 4 to 6, but it just doesn't seem enough for a complete rush - maybe I'm waiting too long...

lol - though I think military conqust is my weakest aspect of the game (which is somewhat ironic, really....)

 

[VilleDick]

On the axe rush - I find that I generally get wiped out doing this, if I'm going for a complete kill... How many axes should I be taking? I generally have 4 to 6, but it just doesn't seem enough for a complete rush - maybe I'm waiting too long...

lol - though I think military conqust is my weakest aspect of the game (which is somewhat ironic, really....)

Agreed, I try an axe/sword rush and I never seem to have enough guys. I can maybe snag one city and I'm forced to stop because I'm depleted. Then it ends up in centuries of stalemates. Working on a better early military rush.