The step up from Noble to Prince

So, I've been playing for a year and a half now, I feel that I'm, all in all, a moderately advanced player. The few online games I've done have gone from OK to very good, so I have confidence in my abilities, all in all.

With that said, I seriously need help. Playing on Noble, I usually wipe the floor with any and all resistance, whether I play war-minded or peacefully. The challenge left for me there is limited; as the renaissance rolls around, I'm well ahead of any opposition, and the later stages of the game tends to be "business as usual".

But holy crap, when I step up the plate on Prince, I'm getting beat. Hard. I can't seem to gain any headway in *any* area. The AIs are militarily stronger, devastate me in technology, and are able to spread out alot faster than my strained economy allows. Even the one score point I always squeeze in, circumnavigation, seems to be an impossibility, as the AIs beat me to Optics with a pretty huge margin of error.

My usual playing style involves beelining for a religion (without the happiness bonuses I'm sure to be crushed even faster), getting CoL and Currency pretty fast for getting my empire out rapidly, and - if the threat level in my area allows - ignore excess military to get cracking on city improvements and wonders like mad. I try to specialize my cities at the best of my ability, and cottage spam like hell to get my economy booming.

All to no avail. No matter how hard I struggle, I quickly end up with a score half or lower than any comparable AI, and it's a question of time until they're so far ahead that they can easily mop me up with superior unit types. The only area I seem to be able to get a head start in is culture; but I'm sure, with all the AIs reaching Liberalism way ahead of me, their Free Speech will massacre me in that respect as well.

So, can anyone give me any hints on what I'm doing wrong? I'm sure there's opportunity for improvement in all aspects of my playing style, but I really feel I'm doing a decent job, but it's getting me nowhere faster than a bat out of hell. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

I have no idea. I am beginning to do well on Noble, and would probably start this thread soon anyway. Help??

Stuck in Pi said:

I have no idea. I am beginning to do well on Noble, and would probably start this thread soon anyway. Help??

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Good to know I'm not alone. When I started out, working my way up to mastering Noble went pretty fast. But all my forages into the Prince+ difficulties has ended in tears.

Just read some articles in the War Academy / Strategy Articles Subforum. These help alot.

gopher666 said:

...ignore excess military to get cracking on city improvements and wonders like mad.

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A city has its basic improvement rapidly - a Monument if no religion present and a Granary. This is when specialization kicks in. A science city gets a Library next, a Production city a Forge/Barracks. There's no need for Barracks in a one-hammer/turn science city.
Chop forests, also outside your BFC.
Don't build that many wonders, only those you really want.
Post a save of a typical game of yours so other players can help you improve your game style and not only give general tips.

mystyfly said:

Just read some articles in the War Academy / Strategy Articles Subforum. These help alot.



A city has its basic improvement rapidly - a Monument if no religion present and a Granary. This is when specialization kicks in. A science city gets a Library next, a Production city a Forge/Barracks. There's no need for Barracks in a one-hammer/turn science city.
Chop forests, also outside your BFC.
Don't build that many wonders, only those you really want.
Post a save of a typical game of yours so other players can help you improve your game style and not only give general tips.

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Thanks. I've ignored monuments (having a religion), and granaries have of course been built. Forests are chopped, for the most part, and seeing as I have had more than enough time to expand cottages even to me production city, I've built a library there, as well.

Anyways, here's my latest save, showing a pretty dismal situation.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/112791/gopher666_BC-0570.CivBeyondSwordSave

this save is from 570 BC. Don't you have one from 1000 - 1500 AD? These say more about how you play.

About founding a religion: it is often advantageous to adopt a very strong / your closest neighbours religion. So you get diplo bonuses with your closest/biggest threats. And they flood your cities with missionaries so you won't have to do that, that leaves you to building stuff like units like a horde of axemen
The only drawback is that you don't control the shrine (yet). However you have eighter more land than your religionwhore neighbour or a bigger army than he has which leads to even more advantages (and possibly, the shrine)

mystyfly said:

this save is from 570 BC. Don't you have one from 1000 - 1500 AD? These say more about how you play.

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The save is from 1580 something; I just replace my save games cause I get tired of having 100 megs of saves.

mystyfly said:

About founding a religion: it is often advantageous to adopt a very strong / your closest neighbours religion. So you get diplo bonuses with your closest/biggest threats. And they flood your cities with missionaries so you won't have to do that, that leaves you to building stuff like units like a horde of axemen
The only drawback is that you don't control the shrine (yet). However you have eighter more land than your religionwhore neighbour or a bigger army than he has which leads to even more advantages (and possibly, the shrine)

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Well, in this particular case, I'm blessed with actually having no neighbours, being alone on a smallish continent. Copper/Iron's also far away, so I decided not to get a distanced city crippling my economy. For now, my only problem has been marginal barbarian trouble.

The best tip I can give you is to play the same game several times from several points and see how different strategies have different outcomes. This was useful to me, especially in the early game.

Some things you mentioned in your post:

Early happiness.

Hereditary rule and archers are excellent for early happniess. I ran a testgame where I got Carthage up to size 17 fully cottaged by 1 AD. The city wasn't healthy but I teched fast

Try Charismatic also, it's very helpful in the early game, both for rushing and for the growing cities.

Early religion.

I (almost) never go for Hinduism/Buddhism, intead I prefer to go for worker techs early on. If I get a religion it's be Conf. That is good for two reasons.

1. You know what the religous map looks like.

2. You get a missionary. Send him to the nearest pagan and make him your ally.

Race for liberalism.

Set up a GP-farm as early as you can. Run caste system after code of laws comes in and bulb philosophy for pacifism. Get 2-3 scientists more and you are set to build an academy in you best science city and bulb education (and paper if you like, but that's a pretty cheap tech anyway).

Diplomacy.

You really need to chose sides as early as possible. Getting a warmonger pleased or friendly can do wonders for your game. It's much harder for Mansa, Gandhi and the other members of the tech club to race down the tech tree when Nappy is pillaging all their towns and villages

Gone Dark said:

*snip*

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Alot of useful and interesting advice here (most of which go very much against my usual playing style; I rely on Pyramids/Representation alot, and almost always rush for Budd/Hindu if I can). I don't think I'm good enough to specialize my cities, too. I usually cottage what passes for my GP farm, and alot of my cities end up as a mix of production/commerce.

I wouldn't go for Buddh/Hindu/Jew. You lose too much (worker techs come later, you run your scientists later, etc). Taoism usually is my friend.

mystyfly said:

I wouldn't go for Buddh/Hindu/Jew. You lose too much (worker techs come later, you run your scientists later, etc). Taoism usually is my friend.

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You know, that makes sense. You really don't need the happiness bonuses until later. I've always beelined for Budd/Hindu if I start out with Mysticism, if not, beelined for Jew. That's one aspect of my playing that can use some changes. Thank you guys very much.

When you move up a level, the first thing you have to be prepared to sacrifice in the pursuit of the ultimate goal, victory, are many of the smaller, "lesser" goals and victories you're used to achieving along the way. It sounds like you focus a lot on these smaller victories like wonders, races (circumnavigation, founding religions, free GPs, Liberalism), and so on.

My advice is to give up on a lot, even all, of those goals and focus on building a quality civilization instead. You can expect the AI to be ahead of you in score and almost every other method of comparison for most of the game. But if you play things carefully, you can find yourself in a position to pull ahead in the late stages of the game.

The higher I go in Civ's levels, the more I find myself relying on military action as the great leveler. It sounds like you're more of a builder. As one of my friends on this board once put it, I war so I can build. A big empire is usually only possible to achieve through military conquest. As a result, you will have more cities in better locations, allowing you to better specialize each of them. You will also own more resources, enabling those cities to grow larger and more productive, as well as requiring you to trade less for the resources you lack while ensuring you have the surplus/monopolies you need to get them. You don't have to war throughout the game; you can focus your conquests in the early and mid-game, when they're easier, then settle back and indulge your passion for building from a position of unassailable strength.

Religion, by the way, is a huge distraction on a new, higher level. It requires you to pursue techs that do you little immediate good; you're better off pursuing worker/military techs. Founding and following your own religion also runs the risk of becoming the diplomatic equivalent of a big, stinking, rotting albatross hung around your sorry (soon to be wrung/sliced through) neck. The only way to keep that from happening is to build and send out missionaries like crazy. Instead, let someone else found the religions, adopt the most diplomatically convenient one when it spreads to you, and build military units rather than missionaries. If you have happiness problems while you wait for other religions to spread to you, well, there's a simple and extremely beneficial solution:

As you keep playing on your new level, you'll eventually find that you can, once again, achieve many of the "small victories" that you were used to winning on the previous level. Eventually, though, once you become dominant in each game, it means it's time to move up a level again, when the whole cycle starts anew.

gopher666 said:

Alot of useful and interesting advice here (most of which go very much against my usual playing style; I rely on Pyramids/Representation alot, and almost always rush for Budd/Hindu if I can). I don't think I'm good enough to specialize my cities, too. I usually cottage what passes for my GP farm, and alot of my cities end up as a mix of production/commerce.

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About Representation and Pyramids. The Pyramids are addictive, that's for sure, and you can almost always get them on noble. But if I'm financial I prefer hereditary rule, since I won't run enough specialists anyway to make up for paying 500 hammers.

So the Pyramids are a bit more situational on Prince, and you really want to run lots of specialists to make the investment worth it unless you are industrious and have stone or something or get a GE from the Great Wall, but rep/caste/pacifism really rocks if you have enough food to run 4-5 specialists in a couple of cities. Liberalism at 600-700 AD isn't usually a problem, but it's better to hold out for a while I think. I usually try to pick steel. If you manage that and have decent production (police state from the mids is really helpful here) you ahve the game in the bag. Cannons against longbows is just nasty.

And I'm really sloppy when it comes to city specialization as well. Especially beyond the first 6-7 cities. But those first cities are your core cities on the other hand and often the ones where national wonders end up so if you specialze those well, much is won.

Sisiutil said:

/.../

As you keep playing on your new level, you'll eventually find that you can, once again, achieve many of the "small victories" that you were used to winning on the previous level. Eventually, though, once you become dominant in each game, it means it's time to move up a level again, when the whole cycle starts anew.

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Great.

Thanks for a thorough and informative post. I'll be sure to take all your advice to heart.

Gone Dark said:

About Representation and Pyramids. The Pyramids are addictive, that's for sure, and you can almost always get them on noble. But if I'm financial I prefer hereditary rule, since I won't run enough specialists anyway to make up for paying 500 hammers.

So the Pyramids are a bit more situational on Prince, and you really want to run lots of specialists to make the investment worth it unless you are industrious and have stone or something or get a GE from the Great Wall, but rep/caste/pacifism really rocks if you have enough food to run 4-5 specialists in a couple of cities. Liberalism at 600-700 AD isn't usually a problem, but it's better to hold out for a while I think. I usually try to pick steel. If you manage that and have decent production (police state from the mids is really helpful here) you ahve the game in the bag. Cannons against longbows is just nasty.

And I'm really sloppy when it comes to city specialization as well. Especially beyond the first 6-7 cities. But those first cities are your core cities on the other hand and often the ones where national wonders end up so if you specialze those well, much is won.

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All points duly noted. I'm grateful; you guys are fantastic.

I looked on your save, 1584 AD, Saladin/Arabia. You're researching Paper on a race to Liberalism which will likely be lost given your economy. A more useful tech to you now would be Astronomy, enabling overseas trades. Only from selling ressources you could get 73 GPT more.
However you don't have that many ressources due to very few cities while you have soooooo many land to settle. You neighter have Copper nor Iron nor Horses but they are all available. Medina is being pillaged by two Barb lbows. You only have Archers (ok the city is in no danger due to protective Archers, but still). Medina is your second city. It is in a very poor location - the reason obviously was Stone as you built The Pyramids. All the other cities are between Medina and the coast. One city even is on a 3-4 tile island. But there is no city any further east. There are however Two barb cities (two you can see anyway) and a Goodie hut (!). You didn't explore so much. You have no units fogbusting, which is likely to be the reason of Medinas pillage.
Mekka will not be able to work all the tiles it has as is Medina, they both lack a farm, which, in Medinas case won't be built due to lack of irrigation. Your whole empire has no production city. I'd say ~80% of the tiles are covered in Cottages. There is no city specialisation. Two Workboats are missing so Kufah (iirc) can't work it's two Fish tiles and The northern island city will also need a Workboat once the borders pop.
You're in Serfdom and Free Religion. I don't understand why you're in Serfdom as there are almost no unimproved tiles in your BFCs. You founded Islam in Mekka. Every city has Islam but you have no other religion. So from FR, you only get +10% research bonus in every city. Organized Religion would be a better choice imo. The main reason you have no other religion in your cities is that you have no OBs with ANY other civilization (!). This is very important!
Looking at your settings I see you enabled Premanent Alliances. Can you explain why you did this?
The demoscreen tells me you're 6th in GNP, 8th in MfG, 9th in Pop, 10th in Food, Power, Land. And there are at least two vassals out there (Churchill and Peter you've met).
The main reason for your weak position is all the land you didn't settle. There isn't even a single settler in production, only Aqueducts in your best production cities (which still are very poor..).
The lack of Copper/Iron is also easily felt as you don't have any units besides Archers (as far as I've seen).

edit: Cross-post with Gone Dark and gopher666.

Gone Dark said:

... GE from the Great Wall ...

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In BtS, The Great Wall gives Great Spy points

mystyfly said:

In BtS, The Great Wall gives Great Spy points

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Yeah, that's true.

First of all, I greatly appreciate the advice! Secondly, you're right on most of your points, and in general. With that said, I'd like to defend a few of the points you bring up, just to explain my reasoning; at best, proving I'm not stupid. At worst, perpetuating the same notion.

mystyfly said:

I looked on your save, 1584 AD, Saladin/Arabia. You're researching Paper on a race to Liberalism which will likely be lost given your economy. A more useful tech to you now would be Astronomy, enabling overseas trades. Only from selling ressources you could get 73 GPT more.

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True, and I can't defend it. Around the time of the save game, I realized what you tell me, but I suppose I had started to give up at that point. But, yes, pretty dumb.

mystyfly said:

However you don't have that many ressources due to very few cities while you have soooooo many land to settle. You neighter have Copper nor Iron nor Horses but they are all available.

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Both of these points can be answered by this: I find my economy to be very strained, and I didn't want to cripple it even more than I already have. Still, you may very well be right that in the long run, I might be better served having more cities providing commerce.

mystyfly said:

Medina is being pillaged by two Barb lbows. You only have Archers (ok the city is in no danger due to protective Archers, but still). Medina is your second city. It is in a very poor location - the reason obviously was Stone as you built The Pyramids.

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Well, I decided that the Barbs really weren't a problem, as the lbows have pretty much settled on an unworked tile. Also, I'd upgrade my archers, but I don't have the gold. As for the location, yes, it's pretty much to get the stone fast. I suppose I'll have to let my Pyramid fetish go; in this instance, though, I wanted to get the Pyramids/Shwedagon Paya due to playing a Spiritual leader.

mystyfly said:

All the other cities are between Medina and the coast. One city even is on a 3-4 tile island. But there is no city any further east. There are however Two barb cities (two you can see anyway) and a Goodie hut (!). You didn't explore so much. You have no units fogbusting, which is likely to be the reason of Medinas pillage.

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The city on the small island is simply to try to grab Iron without having to pay so much in maintenance; I was pretty desperate at that point, and I suppose I would be better served biting the bullet and settling a city further south to get the resources.

As for the barb cities and goodie hut, I hadn't gone around to getting to them; having access to warriors, longbows and archers, I didn't have any units that could match the barbs axemen and longbows. Finally, I rarely fogbust, which I probably should start doing. The reason, though, is that the barbs send routine galleys filled with units, and there were more or less no barbs appearing on my part of the island.

mystyfly said:

Mekka will not be able to work all the tiles it has as is Medina, they both lack a farm, which, in Medinas case won't be built due to lack of irrigation. Your whole empire has no production city. I'd say ~80% of the tiles are covered in Cottages. There is no city specialisation. Two Workboats are missing so Kufah (iirc) can't work it's two Fish tiles and The northern island city will also need a Workboat once the borders pop.
You're in Serfdom and Free Religion. I don't understand why you're in Serfdom as there are almost no unimproved tiles in your BFCs. You founded Islam in Mekka. Every city has Islam but you have no other religion. So from FR, you only get +10% research bonus in every city. Organized Religion would be a better choice imo. The main reason you have no other religion in your cities is that you have no OBs with ANY other civilization (!). This is very important!

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I can't really defend most of this. I specialized poorly here, and, although the thought was to make Medina a prod city, it was probably poorly planned. As for the cottages, is that a negative? Without them, my economy would be even worse than it is, wouldn't it? I usually build as many farms as I need for a city to reach population 20, and no more; I'm led to believe that excess food, except for a GP farm (which I thought to make Mecca; alas, I decided I desperately needed the cottages at this stage of the game). At least two work boats are lacking; one (island city) lacks cause the cultural borders haven't popped out yet, the other (Medina) lacks because it has been pillaged by a barb galley.

Why I'm in Serfdom is a very good question. I'm even Spiritual, so a revolution would be easy peasy. My bad.
As for Free Religion, I chose that out of diplomatic considerations. I hardly want to piss off the entire world. Then again, the bonuses gained from other civics might be better... As for no OBs with other civs; I don't have astronomy (neither do the AIs). Will religion spread without it? I'm not sure.

mystyfly said:

Looking at your settings I see you enabled Premanent Alliances. Can you explain why you did this?

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Simply out of personal preference; I like Permanent Alliances, giving an extra unknown factor in the later game stages, both for the AIs, and for myself.

mystyfly said:

The demoscreen tells me you're 6th in GNP, 8th in MfG, 9th in Pop, 10th in Food, Power, Land. And there are at least two vassals out there (Churchill and Peter you've met).
The main reason for your weak position is all the land you didn't settle. There isn't even a single settler in production, only Aqueducts in your best production cities (which still are very poor..).
The lack of Copper/Iron is also easily felt as you don't have any units besides Archers (as far as I've seen).

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Well, as far as the lack of settling, I'll have to blame my poor economy. Then again, on second thought, my poor economy is a result of a lack of settling, I guess. Back to school, I still have a lot to work on.

Thanks a lot for the in-depth post, this is the kind of criticism I can learn from.

gopher666 said:

First of all, I greatly appreciate the advice! Secondly, you're right on most of your points, and in general. With that said, I'd like to defend a few of the points you bring up, just to explain my reasoning; at best, proving I'm not stupid. At worst, perpetuating the same notion.

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It was not my intention to mark you as stupid. I merely want to help you improve your game.

Both of these points can be answered by this: I find my economy to be very strained, and I didn't want to cripple it even more than I already have. Still, you may very well be right that in the long run, I might be better served having more cities providing commerce.

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Wouldn't more land mean more cottages?
And health/happy ressources allow you to get better cities. Meaning you can increase your population more than your maintenance increases by growing your cities.

Well, I decided that the Barbs really weren't a problem, as the lbows have pretty much settled on an unworked tile. Also, I'd upgrade my archers, but I don't have the gold. As for the location, yes, it's pretty much to get the stone fast. I suppose I'll have to let my Pyramid fetish go; in this instance, though, I wanted to get the Pyramids/Shwedagon Paya due to playing a Spiritual leader.

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A 'normal' city has 20 tiles. Most of Medina's tiles are Desert/flatland, Desert/Hill or Coast. It has two plains and one grass tile iirc. This is very poor. And then even one of those two plains you can't work. This city is not really worth it.

The city on the small island is simply to try to grab Iron without having to pay so much in maintenance; I was pretty desperate at that point, and I suppose I would be better served biting the bullet and settling a city further south to get the resources.

As for the barb cities and goodie hut, I hadn't gone around to getting to them; having access to warriors, longbows and archers, I didn't have any units that could match the barbs axemen and longbows. Finally, I rarely fogbust, which I probably should start doing. The reason, though, is that the barbs send routine galleys filled with units, and there were more or less no barbs appearing on my part of the island.

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You only need to fogbust if you want to settle the land. Otherwise, like in this game, you wouldn't need settlers, you only need to capture barb cities. Cities on another landmass than your capital pay more maintenance, so-called colonial expenses (not sure there). It would've been better to settle your island as you can't win the game with your small empire.

As for no OBs with other civs; I don't have astronomy (neither do the AIs). Will religion spread without it? I'm not sure.

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Ever heared of Missionaries? I heared rumours that they spread religions... Also, having OBs create diplo bonuses (only small ones but still...)

With respect to founding a religion, I find my problem with not doing that isn't happiness, it's money. There are ways around the happiness problem; just keep your cities under rebel size until you get Monarchy. But that nice income from the shrine + a flood of missionaries is a huge help. What do you infidel atheist types do for cash to fund those big empires/armies?

I always go for Hinduism or Buddhism and I cheat a little; save the game when I start researching Polytheism, and if someone beats me to it but I can see I'd get Buddhism, reload and switch to Meditation instead. If I can't get either one, start over. I agree beelining for Judaism you give up way too much other research. Seems to me by the time you get to Confucianism without beelining your missionaries will have a hard time making headway against established multiple faiths in most cities.

One problem with what I'm reading about your save game is that you're all alone on your continent. I've never been able to win a game where I started all by myself, except on ridiculously low difficulty (not even Noble). By the time you get up to Optics and make contact with people, they've pulled so far ahead of you because they've been tech trading with each other while you've been isolated that you don't have anything they'd want in trade.

Anyway, advice on what to do for cash if you don't start with a shrine would be appreciated. I understand that on higher difficulty, like Monarch+, it's almost impossible to found an early religion. I can do it on Prince something like 80% of the time if I start with Mysticism, and half the time otherwise. So as I move up I'm going to have to figure that out.