Noble Level

[Dactyl]

I got the game this afternoon and I've played a half dozen games at the Noble level as the Indians, with Gandhi as my leader. I quit each game at about 400-500 AD, my intention being to get a feel for the early game. I'm an experienced Civ3 player and my observations are that at this level the game is easy. I got almost all of the wonders and in one of the games I founded Hinduism, Judaism and Christianity. I didn't go to war in any of the games either, and I was ahead in points on all of them. Interesting. To quote Emeril, I guess I'll have to kick it up a notch.

[alva]

If you were a decent Civ3 player, Noble is going to be too easy, if you don't play most productively, even with some mistakes you can still beat it.
Things do get a lot tougher a little higher up though.

[animaster]

Most civ players that have been played from civ1 got the tendency to start on one of the hardest divicultys and work their way down until they find their match not the other way

Offcourse you will get some quick lessons that way.

[balefire82]

Originally posted by animaster
Most civ players that have been played from civ1 got the tendency to start on one of the hardest divicultys and work their way down until they find their match not the other way

Offcourse you will get some quick lessons that way.

Huh ... I always would work my way up. Once one difficulty seemed to get easy, I'd try the next one up.

In any case, Dactyl, I'd say if Noble seems too easy for you, go ahead and try a harder difficulty.

[Snotty]

I thought noble level was the level where neither the player nor the AI had a production advantage.

I assume the AI is still going to try to play to the best of its ability at noble level?

[Robert]

Noble is too easy for me as well. (very experienced civ1, civ2 and civ3) though it's good for learning the game mechanics and concepts. Next game will be 2 or 3 levels higher. I hope it'll kick my @ss

[MeaCulpa]

I won my first 1 on 'noble' this morning. No big deal, I got most of the ww (I wasn't even indust.), founded 4 religions, conquered 2 mor HC later, launched the space ships with 50 turns left (epic game). I had the largest empire (15 cities) and enough votes to make sure I was the head of UN. Although Bismarck had only a fistfull of cities, he was the 2nd in the ranking; he had even built some parts of the space ship already.

Time to raise the bar.

[Jon Miller]

I lost my first at Noble...

of course.. there were issues with expansions.. and shiny new toy! in it

I am kicking ass in my current game

(in my first game I had almost all the wonders.. and was tech leader.. I just had few cities and little production, and few resources)

JM

[MasterDave]

I am also a civ3 vet, and was able to win fairly consistently on Emperor level. In Civ4 I won my first game ever on Noble level fairly handily.

I moved the difficulty up to Prince, and its a whole new ballgame! I have lost two complete games via space race, and have been wiped out early a couple times. It is very difficult to keep up with the technology on Prince level (I have tried several large continents an inland sea game so far). Also, even the civs with the lowest score seems to be very tough militarily, often outnumbering me in numbers of units two or three to one!

[DeepO]

Originally posted by MasterDave
I am also a civ3 vet, and was able to win fairly consistently on Emperor level. In Civ4 I won my first game ever on Noble level fairly handily.

I moved the difficulty up to Prince, and its a whole new ballgame! I have lost two complete games via space race, and have been wiped out early a couple times. It is very difficult to keep up with the technology on Prince level (I have tried several large continents an inland sea game so far). Also, even the civs with the lowest score seems to be very tough militarily, often outnumbering me in numbers of units two or three to one!

That's how it works, I'm afraid. The steps between levels can be quite intimidating at first. Never make any assumptions about AI behaviour on higher levels, if you only had experience with the lower ones

PS: I'm not sure where it currently is put, but Prince gives the AI a starting worker (could be Monarch too). That simple fact alone means the AI gets a decent advantage in the early ages. It's also one of the easiest situations to correct: Just find that AI worker before he finds you, and take it from him. Advantage reversed

DeepO

[ac_snowman]

I played a partial game on Warlord to get the feel of the game, then started a game on Noble. Chose random Civ and got English, only neighbor is Japan to my North.

So things are going well. I've got more cities, at the front of the tech race, well ahead in wonders, and way ahead in culture. I probably left my cities a little too lightly defended.

All of a sudden Tokugawa apparently got the itch and starts an invasion. Takes my first city, a small new city defended with an archer without getting a scratch. Okay I would have expected my boys to at least make a showing, but that's okay. I start defending up the next city in line with archers and axemen. He wipes them out, again, without receiving a scratch. That's when I started swearing.

Of course, then I noticed that he was using double upgraded swordsman (with cover) to hand my archers their butt. Of course I still expect my axemen to have put a better fight and my archers were upgraded to double sity defense, but still no so much as a scratch.

Moral of the story is: Don't neglect the defense of those border cities! Also, get those longbowmen as quick as possible.