How am I doing (First prince game)

Well, I finally decided to go for it and play my first prince game. I'd been winning on noble pretty easily and regularly, so I figured it was time to up the difficulty.

So I'm now playing my first game on prince as Ragnar. I started in a floodplain rich area (there must be at least 10 in my FC), which will be awesome seeing in how Ragnar is financial! I'm on a rather tiny continent, but with three other civs! So I quickly ran out of room to expand after only building two cities myself. I have Mao to my east, Ramesses II to my north, and Washington to my south. In about 200AD I declared war on Ramesses. I was below him in power, but he only had archers because he had no copper (and his source of iron wasn't hooked up). Sweet. So it's currently 530 AD, I've taken two of his cities, and I have some axes fortified on his source of iron. I'm researching the alphabet (6 turns left), and when it finishes, I plan on sueing for peace. I want a tech.

Some other random info... Depite having for civs on my island, none of the religions were found on it, and the only one left to be founded is Islam. So somewhere in the great abyss is a continent with 3 civs and 5 religions. Wonderwise, I only managed to get Stonehenge. I also tried for the Great Wall and the Oracle, but missed both (by quite a bit so I didn't waste too much time). At least the gold I gained from the wonders has helped my finance my war. Durng my war, I took Memphis which had the pyramids, so now I'm running representation too. (Wow did I freak out when I saw that Ramesses adopted Representation after missing the message that he built the pyramids. "How the f*** does Ramesses already have Constitution?! They really tech quickly in prince!")

I'm not sure which victory I should go for. I wanted to grab a domination, but I'm on a really tiny island, and I'm guessing that even if I take the whole island, I'm only going to have 35-40% of the land. Perhaps a space race is in order. Or a diplomatic. Ideas?

So how am I doing in my first prince game?

Attaching a save would be helpful. Just rename your Warlords save to a .txt file or zip it up so you can upload it to the forum, as it still doesn't recognize Warlords saves as valid attachments.

You can capture the rest of the land where you are, hook up with the rest of the civilizations and check who is friendly with who. Become really good friends with one alliance and try a diplomatic victory (40% of the population will be helpful in votes), it might be harder on prince since everyone hates you more than usual (I always find diplomacy victory fun because I can get it only rarely ). Anyway, if that does not work, space race is the way to go, unless you have a massive army and not too technologically backward, then conquer the rest of the world.

When you're on tiny continents you always have to be careful not to wipe out your neighbors too fast. If you do it before you have contact with the rest of the world then you will always end up technologically backwards on higher difficulties.

Mango said:

When you're on tiny continents you always have to be careful not to wipe out your neighbors too fast. If you do it before you have contact with the rest of the world then you will always end up technologically backwards on higher difficulties.

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Yes, I agree; however on higher difficulties (especially above monarch), I usually find that even if your opponents on a small continent are not wiped out, you will usually still be technologically inferior to your opponents elsewhere in the world . Best way would be to get optics and seek out new friends (and foes) as quickly as possible and swap those technologies.

You are Vikings, so your sea units get Mobility promotion with a Trading Post: my advice is to conquer all but one other civ, while going for Optics, and when you can build caravels, go for the round-the-world trip to get the movement advantage - this gives you caravels with movement 7. When you have researched Astronomy, wipe out the rest of civilisation on your continent as you can substitute their trade routes with civs on other continents. should be straigtforward as you are Aggressive.

Sorry I meant movement 5!