Hello all, I'm new here but I have a bit of a newbie question. I just moved up from noble to prince difficulty, and though I've been successful in defeating my neighbor in two wars now, the effort to do so has been extreme.

In my most recent game, I was the Ottoman empire vs the Koreans, the Vikings, the Carthaginians, and the Celts. The Koreans were my major rivals, and other empires shared this disdain. So I've gone to war with Koreans twice, both times sweeping them successfully, though with great effort both militarily and economically. However, despite my victories, throughout the game i have been hundreds, if not thousands, of points, behind the number one, two, and three players.

I'm new to the prince difficulty. I'll admit that I'm used to noble, and I'm used to dominating my first opponent or two. But it was too easy, so I moved up. But since then, I've struggled between weakest and second weakest. What is a good strategy to avoid being too technologically far behind (which is a huge problem) and to stay in the top numbers of a small sized game (5 players).

Any help is well appreciated, thanks!

Could be any number of things, a save file is usually a good way to get specific advice in what you're doing wrong.

First of all, points are mostly meaningless. They are more of total population markers and get wildly thrown off by vassals. More important is tech parity; I assume you aren't doing so hot, but how far behind in techs do you get?

How long does it take you to war? Do you capture enough land? Do the cities you capture become beneficial parts of your civilization or swamped by enemy culture? It's possible your wars are too drawn out due to poor tactics, choking your economy for far too long.

If you find yourself falling behind in tech (common on higher difficulties) a really good way to get yourself back to tech parity is to research/bulb a technology that no other civilization has, and trade it away to everyone for 4-5 extra techs or so. There are just some techs the AI doesn't usually prioritize. I've found Aesthetics, Code of Laws, Alphabet are pretty good for this early on. The entire liberalism path is great for trading once you get the reward. (Philosophy, Paper, Education, Liberalism)

sorry, im not sure how to add save game files. But I can give you some outlined occurrences. When I went to war with Korea, I used Janissaries and Grenadiers when they had cavalry and riflemen. By the time I won, I still didn't have riflemen, but my neighbors, the vikings, had machine gunners. My grens beat the riflemen ok, but I felt way behind the others in tech and size.

I feel like im centuries or decades behind the stronger rivals in terms of tech. I may have just started out too cocky because of my "noble" standards. War is profitable only in the sense that I always gain cities and never lose them, but it is costly in that most of my cities covert to unit producing cities for the prep and for the duration in order to support the war.

While I beat my neighbor, my much stronger neighbor joined in at the last minute and got the Koreans to capitulate to them, so now they essentially control them. I don't feel that I could ever beat them in a war, because they are decades ahead of be technologically. Id be using riflemen and theyd have infantry. What can I do to remedy this in the future?

To attach a savegame file here:

1. Save the game at some point (you decide) when playing.
2. Click "Go Advanced" when you reply.
3. Scroll down beyond the text box and smileys and go to the "Additional Options" tab
4. Click "Manage Attachments"
5. Find the file where your savegame is. Typically, this is "My Games > Beyond the Sword > Savegames > Single" or something like that.
6. Double click the correct savegame
7. Click "upload"
8. Post your message normally. You will see a savegame at the bottom of your post.


Benefits of a saved file here are huge. For instance:


While I beat my neighbor, my much stronger neighbor joined in at the last minute and got the Koreans to capitulate to them, so now they essentially control them. I don't feel that I could ever beat them in a war, because they are decades ahead of be technologically. Id be using riflemen and theyd have infantry. What can I do to remedy this in the future?

The underlined question is just too general for me and others to give you a sufficient answer.

And I agree with Joshua368. Points don't indicate who is winning. If Civ A has 1000 points and has 10 cities with high populations, lots of wonders and infrastructure, etc and Civ B has 700 points, most people would assume that Civ A is "winning." But if Civ B has 8 cities with low populations from whipping military, but has an ARMY of about 50 units (catapults/swords/war elephants/macemen) while Civ A only has an army of 10 archers (1 per city), who do you think will win a war if Civ B does the smart thing and declares on Civ A? And Civ A had 300 more points than Civ B!

Ross,
I recall when I moved from noble to prince that it was really hard. And it should be harder because at Prince the AI has a number of advantages over the human player that really add up over time.

Basically, you'll want to tighten up your game more and really work on focusing. Key things to consider:
city specialization - try and use your cities to not only pump out units, but to pump out more :commerce: and :science: and to do it all more efficiently - less waste
leverage your strengths - spend more time thinking about your leaders traits, starting techs and how that relates to the map you've been given - develop a plan - stick to your plan
avoid long wars - have a plan - stick to your objectives - you'll want to go back to focusing on your economy ASAP

I used Janissaries and Grenadiers when they had cavalry and riflemen

That's a big problem, actually. You're attacking with inadequate troops, so the war will either be long because you can't kill units efficiently, or short because you lose. Try to get a military advantage and then use it. If you can't get one pre-gunpowder try to use Liberalism to get a tech that gives you a dominant unit: Cuirassiers, Cannons or Grenadiers are probably easiest to get. Rifles are a bit harder as they take longer, and they can be somewhat countered by Grenadiers. If you have Cavalry it means that at some point you had Cuirassiers; you could have used them then if no one had a good counter. Also, getting to Rifles first plus mass drafting can usually provide an advantage through sheer numbers, even if the AIs have Grenadiers/Rifles. Just bring some siege along to take down the defenses first and weaken the bigger stacks.

There are several advantages with using better troops: you don't need as many to perform a successful attack; your attacks take less time, letting you rebuild your economy and head for the next military-superiority unit; less time for your targets to either vassalize to someone else or bribe someone to enter the war on their side. The question is, how to get to those troops in the first place? Well, for that we have to see some saves/images to find out what's keeping you back.

A few general questions:
- are you automating anything? (workers, city tile assignments, city builds, etc)
- are you specializing your cities?
- how many wonders do you build? none, a few, a lot?
- when there's no more (or little) land to expand how big are you compared to the AIs? Smaller, comparable, bigger?

sorry, im not sure how to add save game files. But I can give you some outlined occurrences. When I went to war with Korea, I used Janissaries and Grenadiers when they had cavalry and riflemen. By the time I won, I still didn't have riflemen, but my neighbors, the vikings, had machine gunners. My grens beat the riflemen ok, but I felt way behind the others in tech and size.

I feel like im centuries or decades behind the stronger rivals in terms of tech. I may have just started out too cocky because of my "noble" standards. War is profitable only in the sense that I always gain cities and never lose them, but it is costly in that most of my cities covert to unit producing cities for the prep and for the duration in order to support the war.

While I beat my neighbor, my much stronger neighbor joined in at the last minute and got the Koreans to capitulate to them, so now they essentially control them. I don't feel that I could ever beat them in a war, because they are decades ahead of be technologically. Id be using riflemen and theyd have infantry. What can I do to remedy this in the future?


It is my guess, based strictly on what I found to be the big difference between the two levels, that you are not acting efficiently enough with your first 100-150 turns. At Prince, you have less wiggle-room to be working unimproved tiles around your early cities, and your early tech path needs to have a semi-coherent plan.

My first bit of advice woud be to play your next game with a goal of having 6-10 workers on the ground and improving tiles when you've got your first 4-5 cities settled. You will probably find that this simple bit of advice has a unexpectedly large impact on your ability to advance your technolog.

Second bit of advice is to see what the land offers you, evaluate your leader's and civ's special traits and unique units/buildings, and set an appropriate research order. For example, if you are Hannibal, it would be a good idea to research animal husbandry at some point rather early, even if you don't have any cows/pigs/sheep for your workers to hook up. You'll want to see where the horses are for your UU.

Third, it sounds like you spend a lot of time thinking about war and production in your cities. If this is true, then make sure to read up on the city specialization information that Divaythsarmour posted. You need to focus some of your cities on commerce generation, or you'll never be the one attacking longbows with infantry.

Oh, yes, the worker plague. I'm guilty of it even at Emperor/Immortal, building too few workers and then wondering why my cities are working crappy tiles or have low population. :)

I generally play prince level for my own games now, so this was the most recent jump I made. Things I've found that are key to playing a better game:

Focus - There always has to be a plan. If you're not working towards a plan, STOP and make one. Obviously you can have plans at different levels, but on a game-wide macro level, what are you trying to accomplish?

- Pick a victory you want to achieve early on, and focus on that.
- City specialization is important! Trying to build every building in every city is a waste of time, and more importantly of hammers! That said, not every city has to be a 'pure' commerce or 'pure' production city, but in genera
- Pick and choose wonders you want based on your overall plan. Trying to build them all will only result in frustration.
- Research techs with a specific goal in mind. Skip techs that aren't important - you can trade for them or research them in a handful of turns later on.
- Diplomacy is important! You can't be friends with everyone, pick one (or a few) AI's to be friends with, and screw the rest. Be aware of what the AI's think of each other before you trade with them. Don't try to be friends with two AI's who hate each other. Learning diplomacy and how to manipulate it can make a huge difference in your game.
- Choose civics to assist your goals. Running Vassalism and Theocracy for a short stint while you're building a bunch of troops and then switching back out will give you a nice army of more-highly promoted units.
- Learn about how the economy works. Commerce is important in ALL games, regardless of the victory you're pursuing.


Basically, I'd go read up in the War Academy, then go find Sisutil's beginner and intermediate guides, and probably review several of the ALC games he did at prince level.

Another thing that's improved my game a lot is playing Succession Games with a team of players - you can learn a LOT from your teammates, not to mention the benefit of having a very structured approach to the game (stopping every 10-20 turns to review things and get suggestions from the whole team is very productive).

Oh, and play the GOTM/BOTM competition games, even if they're WAY above Prince level. Keep track of what you do and post it in the spoiler threads, the other players there are awesome sources of advice for improvement (plus, reading their spoilers can be educational as well)

Welcome to the Forums Rossimus. :beer:

You are falling behind in tech i suggest because of your tech path. Experiment with
Oracle slingshots to something and beelining to Liberalism.

You are falling behind in tech i suggest because of your tech path. Experiment with
Oracle slingshots to something and beelining to Liberalism.
What is this? Could it be... usable advice?! :eek:

You are falling behind in tech i suggest because of your tech path. Experiment with
Oracle slingshots to something and beelining to Liberalism.

Who the hell are you and what did you do with the real troytheface?

Just to add to TtF's advice, beelining a tech that you know the AIs dont make a priority of is a good way to catch up in research.

Think of it this way, you tech Aesthetics, at 700 beakers. Then, you trade it to 4 other AIs for about 500 beakers worth of back-techs each. Kinda raises the "value" of that 700 you spent on Aesthetics, eh.

One big reason the Oracle and Liberalism are so valuable is the secondary purpose, a tech that can be traded around once you are ready to do so. With IND leaders, I often build the Oracle, slingshot Metal Casting, and build the Colossus, then trade MC around for every back tech I missed by wasting time with the religious techs on the Oracle path.

Thanks a ton for all the advice guys, I had no idea how little I knew about playing this game. I guess I've just been lucky winging it up through noble; I've never really had trouble at that level. Prince was a wake up call for sure.

I must admit, I committed just about every "don't do this" and neglected every "do this". I don't specialize, I certainly don't micro manage the citizens of cities, and I never have much of a long term plan for tech or for victory in general. Although, most of the time, I just work toward military conquest.

Where can I find those beginner/intermediate guides that were mentioned? Overall, I wouldn't say I'm bad at the game, I just didn't realize what potential it had as far as depth and complication. I just generally tried to make every city pretty good at everything :P

War, assuming I'm not out-teched, is by far my greatest strength. I wage wars on my terms as much as possible, and I try to out-tech and out number (preferably the former) utilizing sweet sweet siegery. I fight with broad strategic goals as to what I'm going for and how I plan to get it. But without specialization and efficient maximization of my cities, after my first two wars or so, the competition gets exponentially stronger until I'm fighting on even ground tipped in their favor.

In short, thanks for opening my eyes :)

Check the Civ4 War Academy. There's a link to it on the Civfanatics homepage. There's a pretty good guide Sisituil made called "Sisiutil's Strategy Guide to Beginners" or something like that (you can search it). I think it's good, as its been a while since I've checked it.

I find that on prince the AI isn't so powerful that a stack of axes in the BC's can't remove 2-4 neighbors if you're aggressive enough early. A few rival capitals is usually enough to tip the scales in your favor for the rest of the game. Remember your economy building/rebuilding techs: Writing for libraries and scientists, Code of Laws for courts and caste system, Currency for trade routes, gold trading/extortion, markets, merchants, and wealth building, Monarchy for unlimited happiness, and Alphabet for tech trading and research building. When your science slider is dipping any of the above can be enough to keep your head above water long enough to start plopping down riverside cottages. Which also reminds me: don't neglect your work force!

I've found a mistake that most early players make, and myself included when I moved up from Noble, was building unnecessary buildings. I used to try and build every single building I could. And then, somewhere along the way, I realized that my city with 6 surplus health could put off that aqueduct and instead produce something more of immediate value, such as military units. This goes hand-in-hand with city specialization and management, but it is a mistake a lot of early players make. There are very few buildings you need in all your cities (like granaries and forges).

Often, this simple correction can give a player more than three times the army size they are used to having, and often Warlord and Noble players who "couldn't keep up with the AI militarily" all of a sudden had a significant troop majority to fight with.

Of course, getting those advanced troops is part of the problem. An important component of diplomacy is being able to trade around for techs, because the AI does it any way and it's a bad idea to be left out of the loop. Often, in the middle of the game I will focus almost exclusively on getting military techs like Engineering and Guilds and backfill the rest through threats and warfare (especially stuff along the Aesthetics tree). My opponents might have 4 or 5 techs I don't have, but I will have one they want. Usually, it's a military advance, and that is all I need to forcibly obtain the rest.