Uncertainty on how to proceed

[Firewind]

Ok, it's my first game on Noble - I've decided to quit playing in the sandbox and start trying to beat the actual vaguely difficult levels. Doing pretty well, on an Islands map with five civs - the Greeks with Alexander, the English with Elizabeth, the Indians with Gandhi, the Germans with Bismarck, and me, the Aztecs with Montezuma.

I expanded relatively quickly to fill my island, getting some nice little city locations down, but found out that I didn't have any horses. No problem - I generally play diplomatic and peaceful anyway, and since it was a mostly seafaring map I didn't figure I'd need them. 'course, Alexander blew that out of the water by backstabbing me and declaring war early in.

I fended off a few galleys, sending out a handful of my own macemen to capture one of his border cities, right next to some horses, which I promptly began a culture race to try and grab. I managed to bribe Elizabeth and later Bismarck into the war, and refused to settle with Alexander for anything less than a city (which he wasn't too pleased about, and thus refused to give in to).

With my new horses, I began pumping out Knights, Grenadiers, Frigates, Galleons, and shipping them over. I got my ass kicked in one or two waves, but I did my fair share of damage along with it. My problem now, however? While I was occupied waging war, Gandhi's been quietly expanding to my west, and now holds the score lead, and we're coming up to the 1900s (so we're not too far away from the time end). Only by 100 points, but he has the lead. I'm allies with everybody but Alexander, so waging war doesn't seem like a very good solution, though if push comes to shove I might go for it.

Should I try to mop the floor with Alexander quickly? Should I go for peace? Should I start a second war with Gandhi? There's very little land worth inhabiting available, mostly one or two tile islands in the middle of nowhere, now...

Enclosed is a copy of my save with the current situation. Thanks in advance for any advice or tips. Also - yes, I know I suck if I'm having trouble on Noble. (Well, not so much having trouble as pondering which is the best strategy, but meh).

 

[Firewind]

So, any tips or advice? I'm posting this just before I decide to run with a smash-and-grab of Greece and try to push my tech and territory up high enough to topple Gandhi, but I'm retaining the original save if anyone has better tips for me to follow for a faster/easier victory..

 

[LlamaCat]

I can't look at the save right now, but here are some things to consider based on what you said:

-why do you care that Gandhi is in the score lead? The score is meaningless unless you are almost at the year 2050 and have time victory enabled. You're only beginning the 1900s you have lots of turns left... the 1900s go by very slowly and lots will happen.

- what kind of victory are you pursuing? this is probably your most important question right now and will determine everything else. No matter what your save looks like, you need to know the answer to this question for any advice to really stick. The key is not that Gandhi has the score lead, but whether he is a lot more advanced that you or about to launch his space ship or something.

- If you want to win peacefully, I might consider giving that captured Greek city to some other civ in exchange for whatever you can get. Give the maintenance costs to someone else to deal with and maybe create friction between them, and get out of the Greek war.

- If you want to win by domination of land, you probably need to press ahead on Alexander but try to calculate how much more land you need to capture. Look at the victory screen and see what percentage you are at now. It most certainly will take more than conquering just Alexander. But if so, just go all-out and devote yourself to war.

- Noble level you should be able to keep up with and pass Gandhi by now. Micromanage your cities better for peaceful victory.

 

[Firewind]

Well for the most part, a score lead means he has a lead in other things such as land, tech, etc, I thought. Plus, unless I really get power-crazy or tech-crazy in the next bundle of turns, it looks like this is going to drag to a score win. (either that or I'll have to try and zip for the UN, since everybody but Alexander loves me at the moment).

Mostly I'm out to see what victory seems most likely. Part of the problem with Gandhi managing to zip ahead was I only recently met him, so he's had a while to go unchecked in developing.

I decided to press the war with Alexander to see what would happen. After a few more turns of mostly stalemate he begged out of the war, even gave me Sparta. Bad move on his part - I staged some troops, including my newly-acquired Cavalry, and waited out the peace treaty before striking. At the moment he's valiantly defending Athens, but it's only a matter of time before his last city falls.

I managed to bribe Gandhi into the war, which slowed him down somewhat - I'm ahead of him now, albeit only by about 80 points. Alexander is absolutely hopeless, with about a 1700 point gap to catch up on just to catch up to his nearest rival in score, while Bismarck and Elizabeth are creeping up close to Gandhi, around 50-100 points behind him.

I managed to score 'Circumnavigated the Globe', so my ships move that little bit faster. I'm trying to press the Navigation promotion on them too, to speed them up that little bit more. I'm debating if I should consolidate my current gains or immediately turn my attention to another target (Possibly Elizabeth, she's barely three tiles away from my new island).

Here's an updated save of how I've gone so far with my warmonger strategy. I'll probably reload my old save and try for a peace tactic later, just to see how it'd go.

EDIT: I've wiped Alexander off the map, and it seems the land grabbing, as well as inter-alliance tech-trading, has boosted my score considerably. It's still a difficult decision whether or not to take down one of my allies next, though, but I'm not much of a backstabber in general so

 

[Meanness]

Haven't looked at the save, but I'll risk some general comments.

Your biggest problem is that you are in year 1900 and haven't figured out how you're going to win yet. By 1900 you should be going through the final motions of executing your plan.

Islands map usually means cultural, but then you should have been going full-bore cultural for the last 600 years. If you wanted to space race, then you should have warred earlier, wiped out Alexander long ago, and grabbed his island.

To improve your play, you'll need to choose the best victory condition for your position and commit to it much earlier.

 

[LlamaCat]

EDIT: I've wiped Alexander off the map, and it seems the land grabbing, as well as inter-alliance tech-trading, has boosted my score considerably.

This is a clue as to why the score does not really matter. It took me a while to understand this, but it's true if you start to conquer and grab more land, you will see a dramatic rise in your tech rate and commerce. It's hard to get sometimes, thinking: I am wasting all these turns building military and no infrastructure I will get behind! But rather, after you win the war or conquer enough land, you will be amazed how quickly you get back up to speed and then even pass everyone. You don't neccessarily need to be methodically building a library, courthouse, market, etc. etc. in every city.... if you are successfully beating down your opponents, it doesn't matter!

Also you are still focusing too much on the score... the conditions for what the game developers considered a good score are irrlevant to the other victory conditions. (If you want to win by score, that's fine .... but it's only one way to win and you need to "hang on" until 2050... kind of boring). Remember starting in 1950 every turn is only 1 year, so that's 100 more turns in the game, which on normal speed is only 400+ turns total. That's 1/4 of the entire game left if you go that long!

Think of that score like when you earn grades in school. For some people, an "A" or "B" is just standard and for others it's a good grade. For others a "C" is more than average, it might show an improvement and they are actually learning/improving. Think of your game that way: the most important thing is that you are improving your position.

Or if you are a jockey in a horse race, you often don't want to be in the lead... you want to position yourself a few places back so you can draft off the leader and then make your move later.

 

[Firewind]

Your biggest problem is that you are in year 1900 and haven't figured out how you're going to win yet. By 1900 you should be going through the final motions of executing your plan.

It's not that I haven't figured out how to win yet. I know full well how I can win. The problem is I haven't chosen which method to shoot for - Cultural could work, Conquest or Domination are both likely, but the most likely shot I'll take is UN diplomatic victory.

@Llamacat: Hmm... I'll have to bear that in mind, I always used the score as a judge for how advanced and powerful a civ was, along with my knowledge of leader traits.

An update: I'm currently still dithering between attacking England or India. Both are a short journey away, but India has twice the land England does. Both are Friendly to me, which might hurt my chances if I go for a diplomatic victory in the end.

On the other hand, Germany are just Pleased, and I'm fairly sure I could irritate them into war if I tried hard enough - however, they're also aggressive and militaristic, and while I have a tech lead, I'm not sure how well I'll be able to hold off a focused counterattack.

Of course, it -is- the AI - maybe I'm overestimating them a little.

 

[yavoon]

my advice is be a lot more aggressive in future games.

 

[Firewind]

Just an update - I just won the game.

Germany attempted to steal some of my land which my resisting cities had yet to take control of. To cut him off I blew his galleon out of the water, initiating an uneventful war - gunning for peace as soon as possible. The next bundle of turns were spent focusing on infrastructure and building up my military, with Transports and Destroyers heralding my invasion of German land.

Bismarck's SAM infantry and artillery gave me some trouble, forcing me on the defensive to hold Cologne, but a Permanent Alliance with Elizabeth coupled with some fast teching allowed me to retaliate with Tanks. It was a matter of twenty turns before I had all of Germany's island, and two of their three colonies. I would've taken the third colony, but the votes from the UN I had built came in and crowned me diplomatic victor (Elizabeth naturally voting for me and ensuring me the win, because a vote for me was a vote for her).

I've found that while the AI is very well equipped to handle sieges or slow wars, they struggle to keep up against Blitzkrieg tactics - four of the German cities fell within three turns of each other, to less than a dozen tanks between them.