So here's my situation. I'm currently in a rut and want advice on how to get out of it.

I seem to only know how to win one way. I get a strong cottage economy, build a big tech lead, ample defenses and secure a space race win. This works extremely well up to Noble difficulty. I'm usually doubling up on my opponents scores by the end of the game.

However this isn't working nearly as well on Prince. I think I'm too passive and ultimately I wind up having my progress dragged down by the warmongers. It seems the maps are always less inviting and the other civs are invariably the most annoying ones in the worst places.

To combat this I've been practicing early rushes but this usually winds up in me ending up even more backwards and hopeless than when I simply build good defenses and respond when others attack.

I'm trying to be more aggressive and start wars on my terms but I have no feel for it. I've read pretty much all the war academy articles on aggression but cannot seem to figure out aggressive play. I watched Themeinteams walk through with his chariot rush which was a fun watch but I cannot seem to duplicate it’s success. Everything seems to either go too slow or it all falls apart some way or other.

Here are some examples…

A couple days ago I tried my first Prince difficulty rush. It was Gil and I alone on a continent right next to one another. It took me until almost 700AD to take him out despite throwing countless swordsmen at him. I was using 3 cities to crank them out but his Vultures seemed to spawn like rats in a sewer well! By the time I was done conquering him the game was over for me as I was so clearly light years behind the other civs in the game (I rated 6th in every category in demographics).

I assume my mistake here was actually attempting a quick rush of on Sumeria though given our proximity I'm fairly sure he woulda started it if I hadn't. Ugh.

Yesterday I played another Prince game where it was me and Ethiopia right next to each other and I was seriously boxed in. I had no horses and Zara was aggressively building towards me. Given our proximity and how limited my options for expansion were I figured I had to crush him and so I put together the best axe rush I could muster.

I knew I was too slow against Gil and I decided to go for speed. I used 2 cities to build axemen, and later when iron showed up, swordsman, and did what I thought was looking like a very very fast and effective rush. Zara only had archers and his cities were mine 300-500BC on normal speed. I kept 3 cities that were in primo spots and razed a 4th and wound up broke at 0% with only 5 cities and much to my chagrin Monty on my new northern border with double my points aggressively building towards me. The early rush retarded my economy so badly I was screwed. My workers were going on strike and I was sinking fast. I simply could not do anything tech wise and no matter how many cottages I built the turns kept ticking by and my deficit kept getting bigger and bigger until I stopped the game as hopeless.

Was my mistake going for ironworking so early and not going for alphabet before starting my rush? I honestly don’t think I could have taken him out faster than I did. I whipped the cities and had tons of forest to chop. He had great city locations and I spent so many resopurceso taking them it didn’t seem correct to raze them all. I guess I probably should have just kept the nearest one to me and razed the rest but I just have no idea what I’m doing in the moment and what to look for when making that decision in terms of it’s effect on my economy.

I'm currently playing an Epic game on Noble (I stepped back down to Noble to try my first epic game thinking the slower pace might teach me more and help me spot my mistakes a little earlier. I don’t know if it’s just me but epic seems easier than standard, like a lot easier)

The good news is in this current game I had Korea right next to me and he attacked me quite early when I had just planted my 4th city. I was doing a little REX to get the bronze, horses and iron as I knew he was so close I had to have good locations or else it would screw me. I was quite under prepared for his attack and was quite weak at the time. I was forced into building an army fast. I whipped the crap out of my cities to snap an army into place and thankfully I had chariots to deal with his axemen (he had no horses and I think he attacked me as he realized I had snapped up all the good spots with my first 3 cities.) I wound up rolling over him and my realm cut the continent in half at the middle, securing the top half for my own leisurely colonization and development in the process.

At the end of the battle my army was double the size of the next largest army and my tech was at 10%. It was tempting to keep rolling down the continent with this huge army but I was seriously concerned about my economy and felt I had to go into stabilization mode. In this game I was able to save my economy by building research then wealth as I thankfully was teched into alphabet. It worked out well but I kinda felt like I lucked into

Calling off the dogs in this game seems like it was a good call as I'm dominating now. I'm the #1 Civ in all key demographics and my score is 2x to 4x that of all the other Civs. My neighbor Justin asked me to Vassalize him and I’m friendly with Hammur, the last civ on my continent. He’s never going to attack and if he did it would be a joke. I’m building tanks and bombers and have a full fleet of destroyers and transports at the ready if anyone is stupid enough to attack from the other continent. The sad thing is I feel like quitting the game because the space race win is a sure thing but I have no clue how to go about using my leverage for any other kind of win. This would be a great game for me to go for another kind of win as I think I’m so far ahead I could chose my victory but I’m kinda at a loss for how to go about any of them.

So I know I just rambled on and on there but I’m hoping you vets will know well where I am development wise from those examples.

Any tips on increasing aggression without crashing the economy would be most helpful, especially the early rush and the “raze” or “keep the city” call.

Also when do you call off the dogs? I never seem to know when to stop a war. Most wars I get in are later stage wars and I often take a couple cities and sign a peace treaty as I'm worried I'm exposing myself to the other civs too much when I'm focusing all my resources in winning a war. When I let the wars drag on and on and I feel like I’m cutting off my nose to spite my face as my tech lead disappears and my economy goes down the crapper.

If you guys have any links you could offer up on how to win this game other than space race I'd love to see them. If you want me to post saves or whatever I’d be happy to do that too but I actually am new to this site and don’t really now how.

I think at this point in my development I should stay down at Noble but not go for space race wins and instead learn how to win all the other ways. I think my lack of experience in these other styles is hurting me big time in my jump from Noble to Prince.

Two questions to ask yourself:

1) What is my starting tech path?
2) What is my starting build order?

Try a new game with Mehmed II on Pangaea. Research mining, bronze working, animal husbandry, then pottery. Start by building two workers, then a settler, and then barracks. Settle your second city next to copper or horses, hook up the resources and then chop and whip axes/chariots. Once you have six, attack and build two more while your units are on the way. These will serve as reinforcements to take out your opponent's second city.

Fortunately, the random map will cause some deviation from any formula to make things interesting. I would not have attacking Gilgamesh in the swordsman era, for example, unless I had a lot of catapults to accompany the swords.

The economy crash after an early war was/is a huge problem for everyone once they reach a certain point.

Some tips:
If you know you can finish a Civ off, then only take the cities that are well-placed... the AI is often quite bad at placing cities, and taking a subpar city is usually not worth it.
Don't be afraid to build new cities even when your economy is on the verge of crashing. If there's a non-jungle/forest riverside grassland city, or floodplains city, or gold city it is worth building a city right away since it won't take more than 10 turns for its commerce to be greater than its maintenance.
Leader traits play a big role in determining how to resolve. If you're Organized, you can try chopping the Oracle while researching writing to get an early Code of Laws. This strategy is pretty good even if you're not Organized, actually.
Creative is a pretty big help since if there is a better tile on the outskirts of your BFC you can work it quickly instead of waiting around. It is really important to be able to work gold, gems, silver etc early on if it's at the edge of your BFC--so if you aren't creative/don't have stonehenge, make sure you use a worker to chop (or whip with slavery) a monument out right away.
If you're Financial... riverside grassland cottages work well. If your capital city is close to an ocean and you can trade for/research sailing, build a water city for all the 2F3C water tiles (after a lighthouse). Also, you can build a cottage on any tiles like Dye which add 1C to the tile to quickly get a 3C tile. Even if you're not Financial, cottage spam works pretty well. Just make sure you go into each city and check that they're actually working the cottages.

Try playing a game as Darius I. He's a bit overpowered imo, but his Immortals are great for an early rush and the Financial / Organized trait combo will save your economy after the rush. If you're playing with him, just use the immortal rush (chop them out with 2 workers) to capture a bunch of early land (don't get too greedy), repair your economy through what I said above and establish a strong tech lead. Once that's done, research a few military techs and win domination. Remember that some games you're bound to have bad luck... like in your game with Gilgamesh. I would still suggest trying to play through it anyways though, just so you can learn more.

As for other victories... well, you can try for a Cultural victory as someone like Hatsheput or Zara. It's easier than it seems. Just try to get as many religions as you can in your cities, choose three cottage cities to build Cathedrals in. From there, you can either stop and put your Culture slider at max, or you can continue on to Electricity/Radio/etc and try to get those wonders, then use your culture slider and build culture in teh cities. Make sure you have a Great Artist GP Farm for culture-bombing the cities, too. Just make a city and try to build a few wonders that produce GA points and put on Caste System to work Artist Specialists. Pacifism helps. The difficulty in winning culture is playing diplomacy... if you have only peaceful people surrounding you, it shouldn't be too difficult to win culture at your difficulty. Try to keep your neighbors in one religion, and try to make sure you get the Favorite Civic diplomacy bonus from the AI (their favorite civics are listed under Info when you hit F4, I think). The +4 trade relations have been fair and forthright helps also, and the +1/+2 from the years you have supplied us with resources.

Well, I've never actually won conquest/time/diplomacy so I can't help you there... but this should help you for domination/culture victories. Good luck.

Two questions to ask yourself:

1) What is my starting tech path?
2) What is my starting build order?

Try a new game with Mehmed II on Pangaea. Research mining, bronze working, animal husbandry, then pottery. Start by building two workers, then a settler, and then barracks. Settle your second city next to copper or horses, hook up the resources and then chop and whip axes/chariots. Once you have six, attack and build two more while your units are on the way. These will serve as reinforcements to take out your opponent's second city.

Fortunately, the random map will cause some deviation from any formula to make things interesting. I would not have attacking Gilgamesh in the swordsman era, for example, unless I had a lot of catapults to accompany the swords.


I think I've gotten pretty decent at early techs and builds. I almost always play a civ that starts with mining and get bronze working first then and agriculture and animal husbandry so I know where to pop my 1st 2 expansions. My 1st 2 builds are almost always worker-worker, worker-warrior, or warrior worker depending on growth opportunities (I like getting the city to size 2 or 3 if possible before I make my settler). The third is almost always a settler.

I chop a lot of wood early as I think the gains are mathematically more significant the earlier you chop them. It seems like a granary and barracks are pretty important for an early rush.

If I'm not going for an insta-rush I usually get mysticism after Animal Husbandry and try to chop out stonehenge as I think doing that early saves a ton of axes.

Science suffers during early game wars, that's unavoidable. Hopefully, you're able to fund the deficits by the spoils of the war. If the situation is so bad that you're actually forced to disband units (or they go on strike), then you need to think about ways to improve your early game economic development.

I tend to try to capture an enemy capital early, and then I'll use one of my two capitals to produce units and the other to produce science. It should have a library and one or two science specialists. And probably one or two cottages too. All of this should be up and running while you are off fighting your wars.

You might benefit from reading about city specialization and how to make a units producing city. The idea is to have one or two cities that only produce units and are designed to make as many hammers per turn as possible, at the expense of commerce, in order to churn them out.

Then your other cities do the opposite and focus entirely on economic development. You find that by trying this, you end up with more units and more science than you had before.

This is why I use the Raze Economy.

If a neighbor is chocking you, first send a war stack at least trice the defenders to take the city blocking you, immediately found a new city to keep the corridor open, then rush in and pillage improvements, razing badly defended and badly placed cities, and chocking other cities. Dedicate only a few cities to the war: End it when his chock is done with and he is backwards.

I was Toku on a Peninsula and Mehmed built a city blocking off the only exit. Before he can set a multi-layer block I found Copper, razed that city, razed another city that can block my civ, settled my own city, and then pillaged him to the stone age!

Science suffers during early game wars, that's unavoidable. Hopefully, you're able to fund the deficits by the spoils of the war. If the situation is so bad that you're actually forced to disband units (or they go on strike), then you need to think about ways to improve your early game economic development.

I tend to try to capture an enemy capital early, and then I'll use one of my two capitals to produce units and the other to produce science. It should have a library and one or two science specialists. And probably one or two cottages too. All of this should be up and running while you are off fighting your wars.

You might benefit from reading about city specialization and how to make a units producing city. The idea is to have one or two cities that only produce units and are designed to make as many hammers per turn as possible, at the expense of commerce, in order to churn them out.

Then your other cities do the opposite and focus entirely on economic development. You find that by trying this, you end up with more units and more science than you had before.

I'm very bad at city specialization. I've read up on it quite a bit but cannot seem to get my head around it when the game is going. I think it takes a lot more planning than I've been willing to put into to it.

I seem to be a play-by-feel player and simply assign my workers one of either farm, mine or cottage depending on the terrain and whether the city is growing or not. I try to cram as many mones and cottages as possible usually. I estimate the number of farms a city will need to make max population but it always seems like my estimates are off and when cities overlap I never know why or where this is going to occur.

I almost always play financial leaders and I think I take the cottage spam too far most games. I wind up tearing down towns to make farms as my cities stagnate in the mid teens often.

I have no clue how to run specialists and have never made a successful GP farm. If I go for max food there never seems to be enough production or vice versa.

I've brought this up before but I never seem to make windmills, sawmills or waterwheels as I have no idea when it would be appropriate to use them over mines, cottages or farms. It seems like this might just be my biggest source of ignorance for game mechanics atm.

I think I've gotten pretty decent at early techs and builds. I almost always play a civ that starts with mining and get bronze working first then and agriculture and animal husbandry so I know where to pop my 1st 2 expansions. My 1st 2 builds are almost always worker-worker, worker-warrior, or warrior worker depending on growth opportunities (I like getting the city to size 2 or 3 if possible before I make my settler). The third is almost always a settler.

I'm not certain why you're having problems, then. Why did you use swords to rush Gilgamesh? Was there no copper or horse available?


I have no clue how to run specialists and have never made a successful GP farm. If I go for max food there never seems to be enough production or vice versa.

Slavery. A great person farm by definition can very quickly grow back population it has whipped. It sounds like slavery might be part of your problem. You should use both chopping and slavery to generate your units for your early rush.

I'm not certain why you're having problems, then. Why did you use swords to rush Gilgamesh? Was there no copper or horse available?


I had horses I just thought I'd need swordsmen to break through his Vultures since they were the strongest offensive unit I had. I'm still really uneducated on how to counter UU's obviously.

I think your slavery observation and suggestion for GP farm is a really good one. It hadn't occured to me to use whipping for this purpose.

I'm just beginning to see the value of slavery and each game I seem to use it more and more though I suspect I still have a lot to learn. I find it very usefull later on when population are in the teens and I have HR going and a nice big defense set up. However I have trouble with it in the early years as I never seem to be able to whip away my unhappiness early and intead wind up with a smaller population that is still unhappy. I get some good initial production for sure but I'm kind of ignorant as to how to maximize the whips usage and therefore i'm a little whip-shy.

Always whip more than one population, but whip less than 2 unhappy population: if you have 10 unhappy then feel free to whip 12 for the Great Wall!

Read the War Acadamy for more help there! You can read on economic tricsk for strong production: Slavery or Mine based, coming back from a war, and stack composition.

BTW best way to get rid of Vultures is Shock Elephants. They are swordsmen with +15 v.s. Melee so AVOID MELEE!

I had horses I just thought I'd need swordsmen to break through his Vultures since they were the strongest offensive unit I had.

Chariots get +100% attack vs axemen. Vultures count as axemen, since they are part of the axemen "class." So chariots are in fact the perfect unit to cream Gilgamesh with early on.

Rushing simply comes down to speed. Even protective AI's can't protect themselves from a properly executed early rush.

If you want to whip away unhappiness, you have to whip earlier in the production of something. DL Bug Mod (http://civ4bug.sourceforge.net/BUGMod.html). You can set it to tell you whenever a city can whip something and how much population it'll cost. If your city has exceeded its happiness cap, build something like a library/granary/barracks/courthouses later on that'll cost two+ population. Then, stop growth in your city once it hits its happiness cap, but before it exceeds it (you can build workers/settlers, work mines in your city, put up a specialist...). Once the slavery unhappiness is gone, focus growth again and find something else to whip. This is one way you could do it, anyways... Slavery is an extremely good civic, so learning how to use it well is often essential to moving up in difficulties. Sometimes it's better not to whip, though, like when you don't have much of a food surplus or when you already have good production.

I don't tech ironworking before a rush unless I either:

- have a unique unit that requires ironworking or

- have a great commerce start, no copper and an urgent need to kill someone.

In most circumstances teching ironworking slows you down so much that a
sword rush is harder to do than an axe- or chariot rush.

Even worse is teching ironworking when you are already axe rushing. It's really bad
for your economy, unless you have a bunch of jungle covered gems.

AGG city raider swords can hit ridiculously hard though, and if you give them shock they're not totally gimped vs axes (still better to put a few axes for stack D though).

Of course the prat is the most special case of all, thoroughly trouncing everything in the classical period and useful well beyond.

If you are a great space racer then I'm guessing you are always ahead in techs. Forget the early rush and get rifles or cannons or both if you can and you won't ever lose. A stack of 10 cannons and anything else will walk through several cites by themselves.

T

Try playing a game as Darius I. He's a bit overpowered imo, but his Immortals are great for an early rush and the Financial / Organized trait combo will save your economy after the rush. If you're playing with him, just use the immortal rush (chop them out with 2 workers) to capture a bunch of early land (don't get too greedy), repair your economy through what I said above and establish a strong tech lead. Once that's done, research a few military techs and win domination.

I did this last night and it worked extremely well! Charlam and I were on a peninsula and was seriously boxed in by my starting city. Conflict was inevitable so I planned the immortal rush from the get go. I had hardly any forest to chop and not as much food as i would have liked but made the best of it and was able to take him out completely by 1000BC. My economy was still at 80% and the spoils far outweighed the hit to my economy. Now I have the peninsula to myself and lots of time to develop it. Unless I screw up big time this might just turn out to be my first Prince win with no reloads.

BTW I read the whip article last night and I swear he's talking another language! I'm a relatively smart guy but 75% of what he's talking about flew way over my head. However I think I'm starting to understand a little but more and I'll keep trying to decipher it until I have it down. It seems like bronze working might just be the most overpowered tech there is between chopping and slavery whips.

One thing I've noticed about this game that is a little frustrating is that your score trajectory is very much defendant on early decisions and situations. You get in a hole and there is no catching up, at least for me with my skillset. I've noticed that if I have a period of poor production it lowers my trajectory for the rest of the game and there is no coming back from it. Usually the fault is mine and I totally get it but lot of times this happens due to piss poor map or warmongering neighbors which kinda gets annoying. I have had to scrap quite a few games due to that.

Space, for me, seems like the victory path I aim for when I am in a position where 1)Culture isn't going to happen due to lack of religions early on in my cities 2) Domination/Conquest aren't going to happen easy due to my tech/production lead happening really late 3)The diplo situation is to unreliable for a UN victory (this can happen quite a bit on marathon).

If one of the other victory conditions seems like it would be easier then I persue them.

Dude, i don't know what to say except that I often feel that I have the exact same issue you described in detail (that was great!), and at the same difficulty settings as well. Your key questions are mine too.

I have no clue how to run specialists and have never made a successful GP farm. If I go for max food there never seems to be enough production or vice versa.

This

And even moreover, the power that would come with being able to specialize which GP they are churning would be amazing knowledge to have. I've read the strats but I guess I don't fully understand it. You need certain wonders that are generating "science" GP points to get great scientists for example? Requiring building a key wonder in a key city on harder difficulties seems impossible, especially if the city is weak on production. How can this even be done in any reliable way?

I think the GP farm is key to improving my game as well. Oh also, How do you decide which town of yours will be the GP farm city, and how long does it take to get it up and running effectively? Seems like it takes all game, how does it pay off in the early game?

One thing I've noticed about this game that is a little frustrating is that your score trajectory is very much defendant on early decisions and situations. You get in a hole and there is no catching up, at least for me with my skillset. I've noticed that if I have a period of poor production it lowers my trajectory for the rest of the game and there is no coming back from it.

I have this exact problem too. On Prince and higher the AI just takes off. Sometimes, they are isolated on their own island and just power up out of control if you slow down even for an instant. If they naturally get more land than you? Seems like GG, if you turtle you lose and if you get aggressive, even if you win against a neighboring civ, you still lose because you have revolts, high maint, army costs etc and you are just way too slowed down by all of it to catch the AI powerhouse.

!!!

I understand you can try and get war buddies to try and intervene and slow them down, but its hardly reliable and on Prince+ they often won't do it for random unexplainable reasons like "we're too busy right now" even though they are not in any wars! Diplo has potential for the AI powerhouse problem, but its nowhere even close to reliable. Isn't there anything else that can shorten your gap with the leader??

And even moreover, the power that would come with being able to specialize which GP they are churning would be amazing knowledge to have. I've read the strats but I guess I don't fully understand it. You need certain wonders that are generating "science" GP points to get great scientists for example? Requiring building a key wonder in a key city on harder difficulties seems impossible, especially if the city is weak on production. How can this even be done in any reliable way.

Something you can do is, once you're done researching worker techs and etc and are up to writing, go Aesthetics -> Literature. Your GP farm city can be founded as early as you can start running scientists in it (as soon as you get writing for libraries, basically). Ideally you want some surplus food in it through floodplains, food resources, farmed riverside grassland tiles or any combination of the above. You should have ~3 hills for production or maybe 1-2 hills and a lot of forest. Then, build the Great Library in that city... the AI don't often go for it and it produces a lot of Scientist GP points. Get the national epic also. From there you can hit your population cap and run scientist specialists. Before you get your first great scientist out, make sure you have Meditation, Drama and Alphabet (I think these are the prerequisites, maybe Mathematics is one too, I forget...) and use the great scientist to bulb philosophy. Philosophy has a high beaker value (so it's good for trading), you can found Taoism with it and it lets you run pacifism. You can use the scientists you get to build an academy in a bureaucracy capital, bulb more stuff (education, paper, printing press etc). This is just an example of how you can do it... but it's what I do pretty often in my games.

This

And even moreover, the power that would come with being able to specialize which GP they are churning would be amazing knowledge to have. I've read the strats but I guess I don't fully understand it. You need certain wonders that are generating "science" GP points to get great scientists for example? Requiring building a key wonder in a key city on harder difficulties seems impossible, especially if the city is weak on production. How can this even be done in any reliable way?

I think the GP farm is key to improving my game as well. Oh also, How do you decide which town of yours will be the GP farm city, and how long does it take to get it up and running effectively? Seems like it takes all game, how does it pay off in the early game?
It pays off as soon as you get your Library up in that city. (Scientists are by far the easiest to do, and they work very well.) You basically want to found a city that has access to surplus food - enough to run at least, say, 7 specialists. Sometimes, this can mean a massive 20-tile floodplain monster - but usually it doesn't. It is much smarter to pick a city site with one or two hills in it (to get the infrastructure and occasional Wonder up), and a small number of high-food tiles. If you can found a city that has three 5-food tiles and some riverside grassland or floodplains, a small number of citizens can provide enough food to support a large number of specialists.

Like others said, a GP Farm by definition has a fat amount of surplus food available, making Slavery very attractive. Whip a Granary, Library, and anything else you need.

If you are making a scientist farm, try to get the Great Library built in that city - an extra two scientists at that point in the game (plus extra GS points) is not to be sneezed at. Chop, whip, do whatever you need to. Revolt to US and rush buy the thing if it helps.

I usually get the Great Library, and it means I typically have a nice science city churning out GP before I even have CoL.

Don't be afraid to build the National Epic in that city... Sure, you'll get a little artist pollution, but the sheer numbers of scientists you'll be running should keep you from spawning more than maybe one Great Artist. (And heck, it's nice to bulb Drama.)

Sweet advice, ty.

Pretend I have a city as you described, say its got some serious food tiles and has 3 mined hills. Which settings would you set for the automator if you are not managing what tiles the citizens are working on?

You take some dudes off work, set them as science specialist...

and have the town running "emphasize growth/food", "emphasize science" and also "emphasize great person"? When and in what combination do you like to use these settings, if you use them at all (i imagine you must...)

You can always manually set the tile sto work. In a GP farm you will want GPP, so the maximum amounts of specialists possible. If you do not want to switch to Casts System and away from slavery you can always prevent growing above the happy cap by using the mined hills to reduce exess food that would grow you above the happy cap.

In early rushes, I think alphabet is a better choice that iron working as an early tech. Writing is also a must. A library or two, scientist specialists and maybe a cottage or two will help you recover your economy quite nicely. If you can get swords out before you declared war - keep in mind IW is an expensive tech early on - then you are probably not 'rushing' in the sense that you can go way faster than that. Ten axes is a formidable force so early in the game, do not crash your economy by building 25.

Sweet advice, ty.

Pretend I have a city as you described, say its got some serious food tiles and has 3 mined hills. Which settings would you set for the automator if you are not managing what tiles the citizens are working on?

You take some dudes off work, set them as science specialist...

and have the town running "emphasize growth/food", "emphasize science" and also "emphasize great person"? When and in what combination do you like to use these settings, if you use them at all (i imagine you must...)
I don't use the automator, but I imagine one would use all of the ones you mentioned. It's far more effective to do it yourself - even ignoring standard AI drawbacks, it has no way of knowing what you personally want in the short term.

Hmm, I did pretty good as a warmonger using Darius / Korea after reading some of the stuff here. I used my capital as a GP Farm for Scientists and made a few special science buildings around my small empire. Soon i was blowing people away in tech and invaded / eliminated Napoleon and Elizabeth with relative ease.

Then, Zara called up and just said hey, you win, Vassal. I even routed Washington in the 1900s off his own private island continent as he was the closest to catching me, but I was still miles ahead and would easily have taken space victory before he even got apollo. I launched spaceship just to see how I was doing and got over 10K normalized score which is not too bad. Could have easily taken either domination or cultural or conquest no problem.

In the game I learned a lot about GP cities, improved offensive game especially using strong air support and how to balance a budget pretty good during a war. woot!

Hey.

Just wanted to provide a little feedback for you guys for how this thread has helped me.

I now can confidently say I am able to beat Prince level!

The game I mentioned earlier in this thread ended in a 1940 space race win with a score of almost 30,000. Though I won space race I could have won militarily very easily as I had a huge military and tech lead at thend, it was just faster to build components than to actually go out and conquer everyone.

My early immortal rush of my 2 closest neighbors proved to be the key but I certainly learned a lot along the way to make the game a truly easy one.

Downloading the Bug mod really was a great suggestion. I cannot thank you guys enough for that tip. The scroll in between turns that tells when you can whip and trade kept me from ignoring those important aspects of the game for too long.

I realize one of the biggest issues I have as a player is that I end my turns too quickly. I often rush through games much faster than I should and it bites me in the butt. I forget to turn on growth after I've shut it down, or to whip or to move troops to where they are needed. I often allow barbs to pillage because I forgot they were in my territory. Little stuff like that really is a killer. By slowing down and checking in with my city screens more often I am getting to be more thorough and sure of myself when I end turns.

So basically the key steps I've taken in a nutshell are...

1. Abusing slavery. This is probably the biggest and best suggestion I got in this thread. I whip the crap out of my Civs now as much as possible. Population growth used to be somehting I dreaded and dealt with by making happiness buildings and health buildings. Now I actively try to use food to my benefit and as a result units and buildings appear earlier on my map and I devote less of my landmass to production.

2. Gunning for Bronze Working. I learned the value of having bronze working as early as possible. The combination of slavery and the chop speed up your early development more than any other tech. I can now put together an early rush that actually catches my neighbors off-guard and it sets me up for the next 100+ turns. I played a game the other day where my neighbor had 4 cities but the best unit he had was warriors! My axemen cut through them like butter. I cannot over-emphasize the benefits of the early rush. It really is a great trick and can catapult you to victory if you learn how to recover from it. If you are struggling with Prince work on your early rush technique until you have it down. It makes the rest of the game so much easier if you pull it off.

3. Recovering from and early rush. My only tool before was the cottage spam but this is not sufficient and takes too long to develop for me. I now realize the importance of getting the alphabet tech early on so you can build research when your economy crashes. It was a huge revelation for me. I also learned to micromanage tiles and squeeze every coin out of my terrain when my economy crashes instead of hitting the "best tiles" with the most food and hammers all the time. I've started to get a sense for how to conquer a neighbor then slow down a bit, recover, then go on the warpath again. It really is a fun way to play too. The only thing better than knocking out an early neighbor is knocking out 2 of them!

4. City specialization. This is by far and away to most difficult discipline for me atm. I am slowly getting my mind around it and the dividends are showing up in a big way. I used to rely on the cottage spam and a few heavy production cities and built every kind of building there was in every city I had. The GP farm is the hardest one to get going for me but I'm playing a game now where I seem to have a decent one brewing. Now I have more focus to my cities and it has lead to more efficiency and more balance in my building-military growth dilemna.

My game has changed so much from just a month ago. I used to hope for as much isolation as possible to I could REX, gun it for religions, get a huge tech and finance lead, develop culture buildings to expand my territories, cottage spam and hope to hold on for a space race win. There were more than a few games where I never went to war.

Now I am eagerly looking for nearby neighbors early in my exploration and am disappointed if they are too far away for a good early rush. I'm learning to use specialists and slavery to the fullest. I am trying to adapt my strats for my traits, my UU's and of course the map.

I still have lots to learn of cours. Trying out a SE is my next step in my learning. I've been so in love with the CE that I have yet to try out a SE but I am beginning to see that with my current playstyle that might make more sense.

TO WAR!!

Nice. I'm only about to beat Prince for the second time now. (With the same leader, coincidentally. :p)

As regards to the SE, I must admit that when I say I use an SE, I mean I use one Oxford/National Epic city that runs a ton of Scientists, and rely on cottage cities for my actual income. There is a good introductory guide to the specialist economy on this site somewhere, and when I first read it it helped me to get the super science city up and running. However, one thing I learned since then is this: yes, you could in theory find the BFC on the map that has the highest possible improved food yield, and then settle a city right in the middle of it. But the happiness and health cap will end up preventing you from working every single tile in that BFC. Rather, a much more effective solution is to find a spot with access to three or four high-food (5+) tiles, and maybe a river or a lake near grassland so you can build some farms if needed. A city like this can support 8+ specialists using only a handful of citizens to work the food resources. (In my current game, I have a coastal city with Fish, Clam, Pig (I think) and Rice (I think), plus two grassland farms. It takes me six citizens to work those tiles, and they yield enough food to run nine Scientists.)

It seems counterintuitive, but a small, highly efficient specialist city like that is generally speaking a better idea than a 20x-floodplains monster.

Success!

I finally took down a domination win on Prince!

I played Caesar and whoopped ass on my neighbors using the uber UU praetorians. I had the good fortune of playing a standard speed continental game with 6 of the civs on my continent and 3 of them very close to my starting point. I also had a source of iron near my capital so I started my rush buildup when I only had 2 cites. I wound up going on an uber BC offensive where I did nothing but war until I wiped out Darius, Catherine and Toku leaving me a huge realm and lots of time to recover. In fact I only built one settler in the BC era! Once I got my half of the continent settled and my finance and research stabalized I quickly re-armed and forced Sitting Bull then Elizabeth to capitulate in quick succession. Three turns later I was watching the Domination win video!

In this game I feel like I made huge leaps in a couple different avenues.

First of all I decided from the moment I started the game to win through domination. I usually don't do that instead simply try to get a nice sized domain and stay up in techs see where it leads me, which almost always winds up with a space race outcome. This time I was going to win domination or die trying. With a thirst for blood in mind I choose Caesar and knew if I was going to win the game it would be decided before the praetorians became obsolete.

I completely abandoned my bread and butter cottage economy and went with a specialist economy the entire way. I had never been successful with a SE until this game I think largely due to my lack of agression. The SE played into my strat of going for domination perfectly. Once I began my conquest in earnest the science slider was always 10%-30% tops and it didn't matter. By having tons of food and farms and specialists in quite a few cities my beaker output was competitive and my cities were cranking out the troops.

I built far fewer buildings than I usually do. This is one of the toughest habits for me to break. By the end of the game my military was so large that I just had most of my cities producing wealth as there was no reason to build anything else. I never really had a good GP farm (though I tried it was hard since I was focusing on my militray to much) but did have a number of good production cities which served my needs just fine.

I did not play the diplomacy game at all. I was militarily superior from the outset and did not care if my neighbors loved or hated me. I did not give in to any demands and never changed religious civics or even converted to any religion. Speaking of civics, I never left slavery or hereditary rule. I never bothered to switch economic civics and only switched legal civics from vassalage to nationhood. When the game ended oil had not been revealed and my strongest unit was the cavalry. I destroyed Sitting Bull with trebuches and knights and Elizabeth quickly folded her tent just as she was getting her redcoats up.

By the time the game was over it was early 1800's and my adjusted score was 102,000! This was triple the best score I had ever gotten before! I was in total control from the the moment my initial early rush began to the end. The only difficult thing for me was playing to the end as I began to lose interest when I got such a huge lead. It felt like I was playing Novice again for the vast majority of the game.

So once again thanks to all of you who straightened me out in this thread and to those of you who continue to struggle with Prince or even Noble keep at it! Once you get down the early rush and recovery Prince becomes every bit as easy as Noble or below. Do as much reading on early aggression as you can and master the early rush! I have now had great success with Persias Immortals and Romes Praetorians and I have to say Praetorians are so OP it's not even funny. You can be dominant with them for many more turns than seems reasonable if you can get your iron source pumping early. One of the best things about the ealry rush is that you don't have to build many settlers or workers. You just take the cities and workers from your neighbors and it slingshots you to the lead and you never look back.

Now on to Monarch..... wish me luck!

yeah, you might want to win a prince game without the romans before jumping up to monarch. mainly because rushes become quite a bit harder (as the AIs start with archers).

yeah, you might want to win a prince game without the romans before jumping up to monarch. mainly because rushes become quite a bit harder (as the AIs start with archers).


I've won a few times now with Persia and Elizabeth but they were space race based on early rush then CE. My big celebration was due to actually winning in a different manner. I may not be ready for Monarch yet but I'm ready to find out!

I was a bit like you, especially on lower levels you rely on out teching the opponents then you can win however you like (I tank spammed). When moving up levels i've found i've had to improve all areas of my game from city management and trading to picking time to go to war and how to attack.

Some general points (I think you've already found some of them already):
* I used the auto manager settings way to much (food/gold/hammers), its much more efficient to set them yourself. This way i've found my commerce cities develop much better, such as the AI not working resource squares or having mined hills so you can quickly complete wonders/buildings before whipping/switching back to commerce squares. Don't need to have all cottages/windmills/ect until your city is actually working all the tiles.

* Yup, whip away like Max Mosley on a weekend. Especially if your low on workers hence working none-improved tiles. Managing the cities as above really helps so you can get to whip point/regrow quickly.

* I value food mostly (especially due to whipping) hence getting them working is a priority, depending what is near the captial i'll have Ag/Animal before Mining+BW. If I don't have Bronze near then IW becomes a bigger priority. Clearly I still have to learn about the really early rushes, maybe i've just not played the leader/map that suits it.

* I used to hate trading techs, probably because the AI always seemed to get the better end of the deal in :science: count. Just have to remember they all trade amongst each other (unless enemies obviously) so you researching on your own will not out-tech nations who combine there research powers. Just pick the right time and techs to trade like once you've completed a wonder or are close to finishing so you've got what you want from it so can cash in for something else.

* Recon. Open Borders are great for planning wars, don't just charge in with a big stack that same as every game. Check the key resources for units (horse, bronze, iron), taking them out can make a war very easy. For example as Salidin I spotted Japan only had 1 source of Iron and it was right next to someone I had Open Borders with, so I sent a Pillage stack to capture the resource... on a hill, with a mix of units bonused to defend it = no more Samurai for Japan and easy XP as they try to re-capture it.

* Plan defense, don't just send everything attacking. Bloody annoying not having units to counter pillaging enemy units, or having garrison units ready to put into captured cities. I'm always itching to start a war and don't want to wait those extra turns but it does make things easier not having to worry about whats happening behind your attacking armies.

* Like yourself i've relied on CE and can't see myself ever using a full SE. I think in my current Salidin game i'm using a Hybrid making good use of both Cottages and Specialists, producing more specialists than I ever have.


I think you kind of hit the nail on the head about setting strategy for the map, its the map that sets the potential options, the leaders traits/uu/ub give you the options to forfill that potential.

Preston: try a game as Hatshepsut and go for a Chariot rush.

I had horses I just thought I'd need swordsmen to break through his Vultures since they were the strongest offensive unit I had. I'm still really uneducated on how to counter UU's obviously.

Well then it's not countering the UU but elementary number crunching you had troubles with.
You can always open the civilopedia to look up a UU.

Axeman is 5 strength, base; 7.5 vs melee.

Vulture is 6, base; 7.5 vs melee.

Swordsman is 6 base, 6.6 on city attack.

So if you sent axes like suggested, you'd be close to even money 7.5 vs 7.5. If you sent swords vs vulture, you just paid more hammers for a losing 6.6 vs 7.5. That's why he asked the question.

If you really wanted to counter the UU, sidestep his bonus to start with, which means using something like Longbows or Horse Archers.