Prince games for training

Naokaukodem · Sep 2, 2014

I'm actually not ridiculous in an immortal game (haven't really tried Deity yet), although I don't know how this could unfold on the long term.

This uncertainty made me to want to train, my main issues being as always global happiness. There is the same level of global happiness in Deity than in Prince, which I find very easy, so i'm going to play Prince games to try to get good habits happiness wise.

The problem is that in Prince I can't resist in building happiness wonders, which i don't seem to be able to get in Immortal. This makes the whole simulation false !

In Prince I usually conquer my neighbour ASAP, but then I feel lazy to go for the others if they are too far. The games are pretty ended then, especially if i have happiness issues by then. (waiting time, I hate waiting or press enter in rows)

I wish i can make ranged wars pretty quickly, and not being entraved by GH, that would make the games a way lot more smooth (and also quicker by a lot) and at least i may end them !

What do you suggest to this nonsense ?

tetley · Sep 2, 2014

I would at least go on King. That's already a non-game as it is. Then I would start working on improving build orders, military tactics so you go lossless, and trying to win on the earliest turn you can. That last one alone will de-motivate you from building silly wonders like Kremlin or Red Fort.

Uzael36 · Sep 2, 2014

I'm not sure how playing at Prince difficulty will give you any better habits than playing at Immortal. As you mentioned, you are now picking up other bad habits that don't apply to your Immortal game.

Naokaukodem · Sep 2, 2014

Uzael36 said:
I'm not sure how playing at Prince difficulty will give you any better habits than playing at Immortal. As you mentioned, you are now picking up other bad habits that don't apply to your Immortal game.

Good point hehe.

But my main -not to say my only- grief is happiness, not military tactics or anything else. That's why while i feel my Immortal games can be totally wasted due to hapiness, I want to specifically train myself on that without engaging myself to much on the other aspects, otherwise I would get frustrated.

beetle · Sep 2, 2014

I understand dropping down on difficulty while you tune aspect of the game. But if you are competitive at Immortal, why drop down to Prince and not Emperor or King? As with most aspects of the difficulty scales, happiness is incrementally tougher at each level. I really don't follow how you think Prince games sans Wonders will help you with your difficulties at Immortal.

Nick31 · Sep 2, 2014

My own advice would be to 'train' on Emperor. If the AI doesn't get some advantage, you can develop all kinds of opening game habits. I'd train by learning to dominate Emperor. Figuring out a core 4 strategy, a spread strategy, and maybe learning techniques like a good Oxford move, a good Exploration game (coastal city emphasis with Exploration policies), and other play types.

joncnunn · Sep 2, 2014

As others stated, Prince isn't that good for training as you can get away with a lot that you can't on higher levels. (In fact you can get away from anything that doesn't cause you to lose your original capital on Prince)

If the intent is to then play on Immortal, try Emperor where you have at least be somewhat selective about which wonders you go after.

kingfish101 · Sep 2, 2014

Nobody gets bonuses in Prince.

zagosya · Sep 2, 2014

According to my experience, the difference becomes clear after adopting ideologies. On immortal AI usually has much better tourism output by that time than on King difficulty, so you suffer A LOT in happiness if you don't adopt the most influent ideology. -30 happiness is not a piece of cake

Teproc · Sep 2, 2014

zagosya said:
According to my experience, the difference becomes clear after adopting ideologies. On immortal AI usually has much better tourism output by that time than on King difficulty, so you suffer A LOT in happiness if you don't adopt the most influent ideology. -30 happiness is not a piece of cake

Ideology pressure is indeed a pretty big problem on higher difficulties. My tip : do everything you can to win the World's Fair. Which includes bribing as many AIs to go to war each other exactly as the world's fair happen, teching up to Industralization to get factories up and running for the World's Fair (this is more Deity than Immortal but whatever), sending production trade routes, obviously assign you cities to max production, etc.

joncnunn · Sep 2, 2014

kingfish101 said:
Nobody gets bonuses in Prince.

Nope, the AI plays on "AI Default Handicap" level in BNW, and gets 90% of the unhappiness of a human on Prince + 75% of the normal costs for techs, plus a cultural policy aquistion bonus as well.

(Before BNW, it played on Chieftain and got those bonuses)

The AI also got bonuses in Civ IV, an "inflation bonus" which meant its city & civic maintenance costs increased much slower than the human and also a massive discount upgrading units.

joncnunn · Sep 2, 2014

zagosya said:
According to my experience, the difference becomes clear after adopting ideologies. On immortal AI usually has much better tourism output by that time than on King difficulty, so you suffer A LOT in happiness if you don't adopt the most influent ideology. -30 happiness is not a piece of cake

You can also avoid these penalties by simply building the darn guilds and running them even when NOT seeking a cultural victory. It only takes 10% to reach exotic, which is normally enough to avoid ideological problems. (Particularly since the works providing tourism bonuses also increase your own culture)

zagosya · Sep 2, 2014

I'm not a highly-experienced immortal player but usually I go SV so I either delay ideology and there's a big chance that the most influental ideology would not be autocracy (both Order and Freedom are equally good for SV) or I just go Freedom anyway and rely on Universal suffrage tenet

zagosya · Sep 2, 2014

I don't like guilds cause they hurt your growth so much (usually in your cap)

joncnunn · Sep 2, 2014

zagosya said:
I don't like guilds cause they hurt your growth so much (usually in your cap)

If your capital is coastal and you also have two more coastal cities, it will be more than paid for by 2 food cargo ship routes. Going tradition, 3 food cargo ship routes to the capital is normally better.

InspCallahan · Sep 2, 2014

It took me a long time to figure out how people manage to pump out four cities so quickly without happiness bombing and after an experiment, I have figured it out. There are two main points I've concluded:

- Getting an early worker is essential to improve your luxuries
- Producing your first settler when your population is low (3 or 4) stagnates your city, preventing it from growing and becoming more unhappy.

I think it works best to apply a top-down sort of management to cities. Get your cities up, then worry about growing them. Really if your intention is to learn how to manage happiness, just play the first 100 turns of a game over and over again until you understand your build order.

One other note: I like to steal workers from city states and they tend to build them much faster on Immortal than on Prince. This actually means my startup is easier on high difficulties, ironically enough.

Nick31 · Sep 2, 2014

zagosya said:
According to my experience, the difference becomes clear after adopting ideologies. On immortal AI usually has much better tourism output by that time than on King difficulty, so you suffer A LOT in happiness if you don't adopt the most influent ideology. -30 happiness is not a piece of cake

I wrote a recent post in the Strategy/Tips forum outlining the effectiveness of a strong Bulb/Oxford strategy. If you fly into Ideologies quickly enough, you can pass your chosen Ideology in the World Congress before all or nearly all of the other AIs have selected one. Saving two GS and an Oxford to fly into Radio 30+ turns before the AI is very possible on Immortal. Really helps avoid the unhappiness bump.

Rifraf · Sep 2, 2014

InspCallahan said:
It took me a long time to figure out how people manage to pump out four cities so quickly without happiness bombing and after an experiment, I have figured it out. There are two main points I've concluded:

- Getting an early worker is essential to improve your luxuries
- Producing your first settler when your population is low (3 or 4) stagnates your city, preventing it from growing and becoming more unhappy.

Forgive my ignorance, and I have seen this mentioned before without explanation, but I don't get the concept that building your first settler stagnates your growth? How? How does your city recover?

joncnunn · Sep 2, 2014

Rifraf said:
Forgive my ignorance, and I have seen this mentioned before without explanation, but I don't get the concept that building your first settler stagnates your growth? How? How does your city recover?

Every time you are building a settler, pop growth is indeed halted. It resumes growing again when it completes.
First you micro your work forces to speed up construction of the settler while its building.
Second you use your worker to continue improving the capital while it's improving and only send it to the new city after the settler is on route (and maybe later if the first tile you want to improve isn't in the first ring, founding directly luxury resource greatly delays when the new city needs a worker)

Tall tradition: In addition, this uses the food bonuses given by Tradition.

Wide Liberty: Instead, this uses the fact that settler production is sped up, and so not as many turns were spent stagnate. (50% faster production rate + a free settler)

Piety though has nothing which is part of the reason why it's not as good as the above.

beetle · Sep 3, 2014

I understood OP to be saying that his happiness difficulties are not with his initial cities, but later on. I still have money/happy problems mid game. I just keep working through it. This is why I don't think “Prince games for training” is a viable strategy.

Prince games for training

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Prince

Millenary King

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Prince

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Prince

Chieftain

King

Senior Java Wizard

Senior Java Wizard

Chieftain

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Chieftain

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