Newbie struggling on Noble level, need help

[Guardian]

Originally posted by NFIH

Hmm, I find I need every defensive advantage I can get and build walls at pretty much every city. The AI by no means only hits my outer cities. It quite often uses galleys to transport troops and hit me where ever it likes.

As Solver has already pointed out, this is part of your problem. In general, it's almost never a good idea to be building walls when you could have been building units. Units are far more flexible and therefore far more useful. Units can be moved around to wherever they're most needed at the time (as Solver says, you should always build roads to help this), while the walls will just sit there and be totally useless unless that particular city is attacked. -And even then, the walls are actually pretty useless unless you have a sufficient number of decent units stacked behind them.

Last, but not least, when assessing your military strength, the AI doesn't care how many walls you have. Hence, building units might actually reduce the chance of an attack ever happening.

[sparkyal]

As many have pointed out, keep up the military. It also seems to me that the AI counts the number of units, not necessarily the types, so if you have a large military early on, even if you have not promoted the units, the AI still seems to think you are strong.

Roads, lots of roads. Maybe this is a particular trait of mine but I'm a firm believer in roads. They increase your commerce and they let you move units around to bolster defense.

Plan your wars. IMO, you cannot win the game without fighting at least some wars. Be realistic, in the real world, people fight for resources, do likewise. build up before the war, then demand tribute. Once they fail to agree to give you stuff, attack. Take the cities closest to you.

I agree with the tech trading. In my current Noble game I traded Communism to 4 civs for 4 other techs I didn't have.

In the end, if you are not winning...nuke'm all!!!

[Solver]

Roads no longer increase commerce in Civ4 .

Winning without wars is easy on Noble. Maybe - just maybe - an early war for resources/living space. But you can comfortably win the game on Noble by building a mass of Cottages and just being an era ahead of everyone in tech.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Guardian
As Solver has already pointed out, this is part of your problem. In general, it's almost never a good idea to be building walls when you could have been building units.

Walls are cheap and requires no maintenance. Then eventually you get to build castles as well, which give you culture.

So I always build walls, though only at a low priority.

[NFIH]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Walls are cheap and requires no maintenance. Then eventually you get to build castles as well, which give you culture.

So I always build walls, though only at a low priority.

Yeah, I definitely find walls useful. An extra 25% can be the difference between life and death.

I like the idea of castles but I feel they come too late to be really useful. That is, gunpowder comes at almost the same time so castles don't make much sense unless you can build them extremely cheaply.

[DaShi]

I never build walls, usually because I'm on the offensice to begin with. I don't build bunkers or SDI either since my games never last long enough for an airforce or nukes to be a threat.

Switching to Free Religion is a good way to make other civs like you. In my last game, I pissed off nearly everyone with my early wars. Bloody English and Indians taking land that I was eyeing. Once I switched to free religion, I was on good terms with everyone (but the English and Indians since I razed most of their cities ). Even Isabella fell in love with me and together we wiped out the Mongols who were closely trailing me for first place. However, once we were the only ones left, she hated me again, but I finished the space race before she started making threats.

[Nugog]

Originally posted by DaShi

Switching to Free Religion is a good way to make other civs like you. In my last game, I pissed off nearly everyone with my early wars. Bloody English and Indians taking land that I was eyeing. Once I switched to free religion, I was on good terms with everyone (but the English and Indians since I razed most of their cities ). Even Isabella fell in love with me

Yeah - it seems to cover a multitude of early sins...........