Stuck In A Rut, Can't Beat Prince!

Hullo, this is my first proper post here, although I have lurked for about a year...see my sig link for a bit more info on my good(ish) self.

First off, is this the right place to post if I want to run through a game bit by bit, asking for advice along the way? If not, shoot me down.

I'm a competant Noble player but try as I might, I can't beat Prince. I like to think my strategy is reasonable, but it never seems quite good enough. Thus, I want to run through a game (Warlords), bit by bit and glean amazing insights from some players here. Pholkhero and Munterpipe are people I've specifically read, and like their style of play...this is the kind of advice I'm after.

I usually play Shuffle maps and a random leader so I don't have a game plan before I even see the map, so that's what I'll be doing here.

Hopefully you'll find problems with my planning, teching path, build orders, military strategy and can confirm my belief that there's no hope for me. Then I'll be free to go a cry in a corner.

Athangyoo.

Oh, start a bit later, I'm obviously busy at work at the moment.

The key is war. The AI has research bonuses, production bonuses and a load of other bonuses. They also like tech trading.

To have a good chance of winning, you need to have the the most land area, since the AI can squeeze more out of less land.


While the AI will produce huge numbers of units, it is not very good at using them. Even if you are fighting a war in which you are outnumbered two to one, you should still win (If you don't, you need some practice at fighting wars).


Also, don't bother founding religions. Let the AI do that for you, then capture the shrines they build.

First off, don't play so random. Pick a leader and a map that you like and stick with them for a few games so you have the common factors there to build your strategy off of.

That'll let you get used to the new level with with some similarities in the game in order to allow you to focus on the new difficulties.

Strat and Tips if you are looking for feedback and advice, Stories and Tales if you are trying to entertain. Succession games if you intend to share the play with others.

I think you'll find that you'll get a lot of advice and audience for "beat Prince" level games.

My suggestions

• If Sisiutil's presentation advice conflicts with mine, choose his
  
• Having a table of contents - a post at the beginning which gives readers a way to jump into the posts describing the middle of the game, is a big win.
  
• Turn on the grid lines
  
• Turn on resource bubbles.
  
• Post a screenshot of the opening position, and attach initial autosave
  
• Change your save interval to 1, so that you have saves available for every turn
  
• A steady pace is important - ideally you want one report a day; think of it as a blog.
  
• Attach a save to each report - let your audience review the position, so that they can raise issues that you didn't report on.
  
• If a picture isnt' worth a 1000 words, leave it out. Sisiutil disagrees here, but lets face it - we've all seen the Oracle movie and Cathy's horse#### pickup lines.
  
• Always include your own analysis of the situation, and your thinking about what to do going forward. After all, the goal is to raise your game to a point where you can beat prince on your own, which means learning to recognize what choices are called for. So show your work!
  
• You don't need fixed milestones, though I would normally aim for something at roughly the pace of a succession game.
  
• Listen - the easiest way to lose the interest of your audience is to appear to ignore their contribution
  

Thanks everyone for the advice so far. Specifically at VoiceOfUnreason, thanks for the guidelines for the posting of my upcoming game. I was planning on doing it much like that anyway (almost as an SG posting). Remember that although this is only my third post, I have been thoroughly reading much of this forum for a year...nearly everyday I'm reading something new here, so I know the form and layout, and what's expected of a good game post...

...I hope I don't disappoint, and thanks for the reiteration.

I'll post a start screen and save tonight (note that I will be upgrading to 2.08 Warlords first). I'll start a new thread for it now that I know I'm in the right place, so I can have posts 1 & 2 showing contents and game setup info respectively.

I'll link to the new thread in this post when I've done it.

OK, I've started the game thread here.

Sorry I won't be able to help (as a strictly Vanilla player), but I empathize with you. In the past year I've clawed my way up from Cheiftan to always winning on Noble. In just the past couple months I've been working on my Prince game. I've been able to take it twice ... out of about three dozen tries.

• Early war is more important now than before. Try taking out one or two neighbors before moving into the Medieval Age. If you've kept their best cities, you'll have a huge advantage over the AI.

• Bust fog to reduce barb pressure. I don't know how many games I thought were going really, really well, only to be brought down by barb axemen. Sure, I've got four cities of 6-8 size producing decent science and production, but when the axes come down and cut off all my resources before taking the cities ... man. Put archers or even warriors at points where they'll be able to break fog for long distance (wooded hills?).

• Avoid overbuilding of wonders and founding of religion. In noble its easy enough to found the three early religions and build pyramids, stonehenge, oracle and parthenon (heck, I build all four of those and founded three religions before founding a second city once!), but on prince, it's disasterous. That production put into one of those wonders can give you 10 axes, and the science you'd give to religions can give you iron working.

• Trade techs. I used to hate tech trading, because I felt that trading took away my lead. But if you trade those techs that you don't need to hang on to (e.g., I don't trade things like Military Tradition until I've done a war with Calvary), you can jump forward and still pick up those earlier techs that you skipped. As has been pointed out, the AI LOVES to trade amongst themselves.

• Make friends. Unless you plan on a conquest win, having a partner of equal power is nice insurance.

Your input would still be valuable...to be honest, I've found my tactics haven't changed much from Vanilla to Warlords...or from patch to patch come to think of it.

I've recently upped my game from Prince to Monarch and have started beating the AI or at least coming second.

I was following the guides I'd read on having production and gold/research cities but wasn't doing too well. I have found that not building and working cottages until slightly later in the game, and instead working mines/farms/food resources and building a military helps. As WTBC says an early war is good, and then building up the captured cities, resting and then maybe having another war just to trim down the neighbours.

I only start on serious cottaging in the mid game. Also starting with a worker seems to help.

Jonny, have a look at post six...the discussion carries on in a new thread.

Thanks for the input.

The single biggest factor to my first success with Prince was due in large part to this guide by Sisiutil (which is linked to from the War Academy):

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=165632

I must provide a disclaimer here. I was well on my way to my first victory on Prince using those tips, but I did not actually complete the game. I got Warlords while I was in the middle of the game, and that has been my new distraction; I'm playing my first game on Chieftain, since I have not usually been the Warmonger but want to get used to that, plus the new features.

Sam