My struggle in Prince difficulty

[Makaz]

Ok...

I do am getting better at Civ 4 ! I can feel it ... I can see it ...

But now as I advance, I get to harder difficulties and hence new questions, more questions... Damnit !

I have now what I think being a "good starting strategy" and a good middle - ending strategy ... providing I cope with a 1000 BC - 1700 AD problem that slow me down.

---- Here is how I go

* as Stalin.

1./ The start

+ produce 2x4 warriors before everything else (achiveable in 24 turns)
+ Uncover a min of 2 ennemy starting town
+ Tech full religion until I discover one

2./ Capture 2 ennemy starting town (usually turn 24 and they come with a free worker )

+ Build 2 workers per town
+ tech road, bronze working, agriculture, potery etc in whatever order is fastest)
+ Build 2 archer per town to deffend against early barbarians.
- Usually at this point I am 1st in point with confortable advance and there is plenty of gold due to small barbarian villages plunder.

3./ Specialise towns and expand

+ Turn 1 town into prod, 1 into GPF, 1 into money
+ Build settlers
+ start pumping out missionaries between the cities (making a rota so they all grow at the same spped)
- Usually at this point I am still 1st but with not so much advance, gold is diminishing little by little.


4./ When it goes all wrong

+ I set more towns around (optimally, on good spots, unfortunately more often "wherever I can") to be either cottage monsters or production centres)
+ I still have not a great prophet
+ Cost of cities start to drawn me very near 0 and my research bar falls with only 7 cities (inc. 4 very early ones) to 40% and I start lagging behind in tech for a while
- At this point I accumulate lateness on tech, I drop in the middle ranks and if a war starts, I struggle badly but usually survive without loosing more than improvements.

5./ It then goes a bit better.

+ Great prophet kicks in and I go back to a normal research rate
+ I focus teching on War elephant
+ I produce mass war elephant that I use to push back invaders and possibly conquer a few more cities
+ I focus tech on cavalry
+ I upgrade my war elephants to cossack giving me a leading edge
+ I conquer a lot more cities with cossacks feeding my research with plunder only
- At this point, I get top position, have the strongest army, very mobile, the most land ... but for all other tech aside cavalry, I am far far behind everyone.

6./ And then the AI techs infantry

+ And city are no longer conquerable with cavalry only
+ And no gold for plunder + no economy related techs = no more money = very slow teching.
+ And the end of the game is a nightmare where I struggle against computers all more advanced than me that catch up on points at an alarming rate
- No conquest victory and if lucky time victory, but it has been a though one.



So I obviously have an early problem as I don't manage to get immediate benefits from my aggressive start.
+ I try to go quickly to 6 or 7 cities, I pay too much maintenance and I end up lagging on tech despite building cottages all over the place and being purely economy oriented...
+ If I don't, I get "invaded by the AI" who build towns even between my own towns, cutting roads sometimes. In that case I also cannot manage to produce enough units with 3 towns to make a difference in terms of conquest, let alone protect myself...

So I must be missing something - there is something wrong I don't do, a tech I should better research, I don't use spying ever for example, maybe I should ? Maybe I should't do a GPF straight from the beginning but do 3 cottages based towns and then only go for production and GPF (but at that point I cannot really chose where I put my towns anymore)... Or is that religion is not an effective way to do money ? I don't know - I struggle - help !

M.

[oranje willem]

I'd recommend to attack your neighbours later than you do now, with chariots or axeman depending on which you have access to.
Start with a worker first, improve your land, get access to horses or copper attack when you have 2-3 cities and 7-8 axeman/chariots.
Oh and don't found an early religion, trust me its a lot better.

[DMOC]

---- Here is how I go

* as Stalin.

1./ The start

+ produce 2x4 warriors before everything else (achiveable in 24 turns)
+ Uncover a min of 2 ennemy starting town
+ Tech full religion until I discover one

The first error here is that you are trying to lay out your strategy before you have even seen the map. What if your capital has only 3 hills in it and none are forests? If it's one of those water-heavy capitals you would take too long to make that many warriors.

The second error is that usually building a worker is best first (it stagnates growth, but it lets you improve food tiles sooner, which snowball into faster growth later). If you're coastal, and start with Fishing, a workboat (at maximum production) is also often a good alternative.

Why do you need so many warriors that early, by the way? One warrior is usually enough to scout out 2 enemies on a standard map. On deity I generally build only 3 warriors the whole game.

Third thing - skip the religion. It's useless. Does Stalin even start with Mysticism? I thought he starts with Hunting/Mining.You would be better off focusing on the GOOD technologies such as Bronze Working and Animal Husbandry. The other bad thing about religion is that ... say you found Buddhism and convert. Then what if your neighbor (say Suryavarman II) founds Hinduism and converts. So now you are heathens. Did I also mention that Suryavarman II is a very WARLIKE leader ?

2./ Capture 2 ennemy starting town (usually turn 24 and they come with a free worker )

+ Build 2 workers per town
+ tech road, bronze working, agriculture, potery etc in whatever order is fastest)
+ Build 2 archer per town to deffend against early barbarians.
- Usually at this point I am 1st in point with confortable advance and there is plenty of gold due to small barbarian villages plunder.

I see that you want to do a warrior rush. However, while it's technically the best thing to do at your difficulty level, you will want to abandon it now. Why? It won't help you on Monarch+ where the AI starts with archery, up to Deity where the AI's start with something like 5-6 technologies, 4 archers, 2 scouts, 1 worker, and 2 settlers.

2 archers per town is not needed to defend versus barbarians. In fact, Archery is usually a waste of a technology unless you are on a large map with lots of barbarian space to spawn. My advice: do not resesarch Archery. Research Bronze Working and Animal Husbandry to get copper and/or horses. Chariots are the best early game barbarian defense unit (due to 2 movement points). You can put your axemen, chariots ... heck, even warriors out in the open land to "fogbust." Barbarians cannot spawn on any 5x5 square with your unit in that center square.

Also, if you are first in score at this point already, I advise you to move up a difficulty level. In general, if you play at your true difficulty level, you will be in the bottom half in score until perhaps the AD's. On deity I am last or second to last in score until around 500 AD where my economy and/or warfare kicks off and catapults me forward.

Finally, do not research The Wheel, BW, Agriculture, and Pottery in whatever order is fastest. Do it according to what the land dictates. If you have a ton of floodplains, pottery (Cottages). If you have a ton of forests, Bronze Working. If you have 3 agricuture resources nearby, research Agriculture.

3./ Specialise towns and expand

+ Turn 1 town into prod, 1 into GPF, 1 into money
+ Build settlers
- Usually at this point I am still 1st but with not so much advance, gold is diminishing little by little.

Excellent! I see you are specializing cities!

When you say build settlers, that means once your capital has reached about size 4-5, right? That's usually the best thing to do since it means you can build Settler - Worker - Settler right after each other, for fast settling.

+ start pumping out missionaries between the cities (making a rota so they all grow at the same spped)

Aaaahhh ... I see this is where it goes wrong. You do not want to be building missionaries this early. You want the AI to waste production building missionaries while YOU focus on what is actually important to your science (libraries for research, granaries for growth, monuments for culture if not creative, military to CAPTURE AI cities, etc.).

4./ When it goes all wrong

+ I set more towns around (optimally, on good spots, unfortunately more often "wherever I can") to be either cottage monsters or production centres)
+ I still have not a great prophet

+ Cost of cities start to drawn me very near 0 and my research bar falls with only 7 cities (inc. 4 very early ones) to 40% and I start lagging behind in tech for a while
- At this point I accumulate lateness on tech, I drop in the middle ranks and if a war starts, I struggle badly but usually survive without loosing more than improvements.

If your research is down at 30 -40% while breaking even, then good. You have usually expanded enough. Now is the time for economic recovery. Focus on technologies such as Currency (requires Mathematics as a prerequisite) and Code of Laws. Currency is usually better than Code of Laws since it provides you with IMMEDIATE commerce.

5./ It then goes a bit better.

+ Great prophet kicks in and I go back to a normal research rate

If a Great Prophet provides you with that much gold, then how many missionaries did you build? I bet you could have built more granaries, libraries, workers, and settlers in that time span.

+ I focus teching on War elephant
+ I produce mass war elephant that I use to push back invaders and possibly conquer a few more cities

What if you don't have ivory? You must have an alternative strategy.

Also don't forget your catapults and anti-spear units (typically axemen will do).

+ I focus tech on cavalry

Hang on a second. You went from war elephants to cossacks? That's a huge time span. Focus on the time period between Construction and Military Tradition + Rifling, and perhaps somewhere in that time period you could improve on. (Such as growing cities, prioritizing worker improvements, technology trading, etc.)

+ I upgrade my war elephants to cossack giving me a leading edge
+ I conquer a lot more cities with cossacks feeding my research with plunder only
- At this point, I get top position, have the strongest army, very mobile, the most land ... but for all other tech aside cavalry, I am far far behind everyone.

Do you do technology trades? Do you have at least 6 universities (on normal sized maps) so you can build Oxford University? Typically, Oxford should be built before 1500 AD.

6./ And then the AI techs infantry

+ And city are no longer conquerable with cavalry only
+ And no gold for plunder + no economy related techs = no more money = very slow teching.

What happened to cottages and science specialists? If you had focused on workers instead of wasteful missionaries earlier, you could possibly have 20 to 30 more cottages that would have matured to TOWNS by this point, and that will boost your research greatly, especially if you had Great Scientists that built Academies in your cities.

+ And the end of the game is a nightmare where I struggle against computers all more advanced than me that catch up on points at an alarming rate
- No conquest victory and if lucky time victory, but it has been a though one.

Again, this is related to worker movement, but also to city population.

Your cities by this point should be at least size 15, with the best and oldest cities at lesat size 20, if possible.

So I obviously have an early problem as I don't manage to get immediate benefits from my aggressive start.
+ I try to go quickly to 6 or 7 cities, I pay too much maintenance and I end up lagging on tech despite building cottages all over the place and being purely economy oriented...

Hang on a second ... you said you are being purely economy oriented, yet you focused exclusively on your military here? (Beeline war elephants, beeline horses, and you skip the economy techs?) There is a contradiction here.

One more thing - are your cities working the cottages? (Check the city screens to see if the circles there are on a cottage tile.) Cottages are useless unless they are being worked.

+ If I don't, I get "invaded by the AI" who build towns even between my own towns, cutting roads sometimes. In that case I also cannot manage to produce enough units with 3 towns to make a difference in terms of conquest, let alone protect myself...

The AI cannot build cottages inside your cultural borders.

If you mean the AI is building CITIES between your cities (with settlers) then keep checking the F5 screen for settlers coming your way, and whip one ASAP to take that spot. Alternatively, you can "block" that spot as AI's do not go past your cultural borders to settle until after 1AD IIRC.

So I must be missing something - there is something wrong I don't do, a tech I should better research, I don't use spying ever for example, maybe I should ? Maybe I should't do a GPF straight from the beginning but do 3 cottages based towns and then only go for production and GPF (but at that point I cannot really chose where I put my towns anymore)... Or is that religion is not an effective way to do money ? I don't know - I struggle - help !

M.

I only use spies to see enemy demographics. Of course, on deity, I get Boudica and Peter who put FIFTY points on me since 1AD (every turn!) so sometimes that's impossible to do.

Religion is an incredibly inefficient way to "do money" (whatever that means ).

My advice: Post a game up here, do rounds of 40-50 turns and I can critique.

I am also running a Willem game (Deity/Epic/Large map) here and you can check that if you want, as I am trying to make it as instruction-based as possble.


Finally ... there are some other things that you did not mention that I will advise you on.

• What civics are you using? Generally, Slavery is a must (although in rare cases you can delay it). Hereditary Rule (Monarchy technology) or Organized Religion (Monotheism) are usuaully the next civic changes people make.
• A general rule is 1.5 workers per city. As you move up in difficulty level, you will improve to the point where you can easily do 1 worker per city on non-jungle maps. For instance, I generally have an even ratio of cities to workers, but that was only after I learned the most efficient way to move workers.
• After Construction, I would advise you to beeline to Civil Service. The Bureaucracy civic is incredibly valuable early, as it boosts commerce/production in your capital, which is typically your best city. After Civil Service, consider beeling to Music if possible (free Great Artist) or Liberalism (free technology). Sometimes you can do both, but if you can't, Liberalism is more important. In fact, if you have researched all prerequisites correctly, you can get Military Tradition or Rifling as your Liberalism free technology!
• Wonders ... you did not mentinon them, so I assume that means you skip all wonders? A problem many new players have is building too many wonders, so that's not a bad thing here. I advise you to build National wonders, though, and it should be easy with Industrious Stalin.

[Ghpstage]

1./ The start

+ produce 2x4 warriors before everything else (achiveable in 24 turns)
+ Uncover a min of 2 ennemy starting town
+ Tech full religion until I discover one

What is the purpose of those Warriors? While warrior rush works fine on Prince often its a bad habit to get sucked into all the time. Equally relying on enemy cities being nearby is too much of a gamble, your better off scouting out your nearby land for city sites. Religion first is generally considered a bad move, it delays key economic techs like Pottery, Writing and all the Worker techs.

A better start would be to build a worker first looking for nearby sites and maybe finding a rival rather than relying on it, while researching the things your Worker will need to improve your better tiles, AH for Cows, Ag for Corn etc.

2./ Capture 2 ennemy starting town (usually turn 24 and they come with a free worker )

Build 2 workers per town
+ tech road, bronze working, agriculture, potery etc in whatever order is fastest)
+ Build 2 archer per town to deffend against early barbarians.
- Usually at this point I am 1st in point with confortable advance and there is plenty of gold due to small barbarian villages plunder.

Again capturing cities is all well and good but relying on it too heavily will slow your learning of the basics.
The worker number is fine but be sure to use them efficiently, roads are only useful for connecting citieis and some unit movement at this point, theres no point spamming them everywhere as they will eat up a lot of worker turns. Be sure to improve your resources first.
2 Archers for defence in every town is excessive, most of my cities tend to have just a Warrior! Defending against barbs is far easier if you are aggresive towards them, kill them with your Axes/Chariots or fortifiy units in forests and on hills outside your borders to intercept. Better yet learn to spawnbust, barb units can only spawn outside of 2 tiles from any unit, in most stanhdard sized games its possible to prevent barbs becoming any real threat with Warriors alone.

3./ Specialise towns and expand

+ Turn 1 town into prod, 1 into GPF, 1 into money
+ Build settlers
+ start pumping out missionaries between the cities (making a rota so they all grow at the same spped)
- Usually at this point I am still 1st but with not so much advance, gold is diminishing little by little.

Missionaries are very expensive, and its unlikely all of your cities absolutely need a religion right now. Plus if you founded a religion then provided no other religion spread to a given city, autospread is reasonably reliable. A lot of the time you are going to be much better off spending those Missionary on more important things like Granaries, Libraries, Workers, Settlers or units. Oh and cities don't have to grow at the same speed at all, theres no advantage I can think of in doing that.

4./ When it goes all wrong

+ I set more towns around (optimally, on good spots, unfortunately more often "wherever I can") to be either cottage monsters or production centres)
+ I still have not a great prophet
+ Cost of cities start to drawn me very near 0 and my research bar falls with only 7 cities (inc. 4 very early ones) to 40% and I start lagging behind in tech for a while
- At this point I accumulate lateness on tech, I drop in the middle ranks and if a war starts, I struggle badly but usually survive without loosing more than improvements.

The reliance on early religion can be painful if you can't get the Prophet, be sure to run a Priest, or preferably 2 in a city early on if you must go this route, well either that or build an early Prophet wonder likje Stonehenge. Your research % isn't very relevant, what matters is output, but if your falling behind already something has gone seriously wrong. Unfortunately theres not enough info to find a cause, post some screenshots or a save game to get accurate help in finding the causes.

[alhill]

In my experience, the biggest difference between noble and prince is that prince is quite a bit harder to pull off a rush on. Not impossible by any means, but you have to be more precise, need resources and location to line up decently, and you have to really commit to it. On noble, I found that I could axe rush pretty much anyone before 1000 bc, and even cheat a little and sneak a few extra workers and settlers in the process or even (gasp) a wonder out of one city while using the other to pump the axes. On prince, such a lack of focus will cause your rush to fail.

If you are reliant on rushing, like I used to be, then prince can be a tougher adjustment than it otherwise should be. After the initial phase, noble and prince play very similarly.

One strat I've started using that works well on prince is a choke rush. Go in early with just 3-4 chariots or axes, pillage all improvements and choke the capital. This will keep the AI backwards and small, as they will just lamely pump out archers, while you expand, tech, build core improvements and units to finish them off. Once I got this down, I found it worked better than an all or nothing kamikazee rush.

For instance, in my last game, Zara was nearby and his capital was on a hill. I had horse in my capital BFC, chopped and whipped four out real quick, and then just choked him in his capital. Waited for nearly 1000 years to finish him off when I got construction, while I teched and got infrastructure in place. Doing this also has the advantage of not bottoming out your economy so bad by adding too many cities early.

[Makaz]

Well thanks for these first early comments ! And sorry if sometimes my language is being a bit confusing (do money hmmm or town vs cities hmpf) but that's due to the fact that I am not native english and still make some silly mistakes.

Though I start to see the main errors I do:

+ I found out that in Prince or Noble, early warrior rush was working easy. Most likely one hill in the 9 starter group - 3 or 2 hammer gives you a warrior in 3 or 5 turns. Now 4 warriors at turn 12-20 is enough to take any AI city at this stage. I was the seducted by the idea of easily owning such rich cities and got blinded by my own greed...
--> This slows down my early developpment and I tend to wrongly think that as soon as I put up a cottage, it brings loads of money while if I wait 40 turns to build it, it ll still be pretty useless until much later.
--> This tends to stretch my growing empire, forcing me build cities to "link" my capitals, instead of building cities where it could be more profitable.
--> This won't be viable in monarch so better forget it.
Conclusion: While, owning 3 capital cities at turn 40 does puts you 1st on the score, it also slows you down so much that it is not worth it.

+ Religion rush and yes I was not speaking of hinduism or bushism but more Judaism or even sometimes confutianism (I have long ago found out that the others are out of reach)... then pumping missionaries... Well makes half of the AI your "brother in faith" and bring awesome benefits when there are 50 cities converted and your Great Prophet kicks and while this is appropriate with a full warrior start (as I don't have workers to build anyway), this:
--> brings buildings such as library, granary, etc so late that I'm rubbish.
--> slows even more my own development as missionary take time to build
--> fails if I am beaten to discovering the religion so too much of a luch parameter.


I think I will go back to a more traditionnal worker / settler / agriculture /cottage start and develop less far away from my ground, making sure that my cities are doing well and focussing on what is important for the now... instead of planning too far ahead of the game !

Please keep feeding feedback ! Really helps !

M.

[Makaz]

Alright, I have given it a try... (no early rush, no early religion)...

Went with Napoleon (still regretting the choice of the damn French). Developped Buildings and workers as priority to get a good economy flowing - with settlers one after another (not 3 at the same time as I tended to be) when economy permits expansion. No capital city stealing.


Situation end of BC: I am leading with a advanced research, a total 4 well placed cities with nice improvements and road and useful wonders. I have not managed to add get any other other city out as Joao, Suleiman and Shaka expanded too fast taking everything and leaving nothing. Still uspet of failing to get that last spot and now having 1 settler sleeping with no reasonable place to put a city without straining my existing cities.


But then it goes all wrong again... All AI have around 8 cities working and although they are a little bit behind in technology (knight vs muskeeter) their 8 cities pumping units overwhelm my 2 lonely production cities. Shaka is my worst neighbour and I was just able to contain him when Ragnar decided to sign with him and come in my back with 2 stacks of death.


Really have a problem of expanding at a reasonable rate without falling to city maintenance problems :/

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Originally Posted by Makaz

Situation end of BC: I am leading with a advanced research, a total 4 well placed cities with nice improvements and road and useful wonders. I have not managed to add get any other other city out as Joao, Suleiman and Shaka expanded too fast taking everything and leaving nothing. Still uspet of failing to get that last spot and now having 1 settler sleeping with no reasonable place to put a city without straining my existing cities.


But then it goes all wrong again...

No "but then" - this position you describe here is broken. You need to go back and review again what you are doing between turns 25 and 75.

You haven't provided enough information here, but it sounds to me as though you are over emphasizing buildings and wonders at the cost of development and units.

What are you doing that you think is more important than training settlers?

[Derakon]

I've played several games on Prince that have largely played out the same. Here's how they tend to go:

* Start with a settler and a warrior/scout. Settle where I am almost always. Send the other unit around to look for neighbors. Start building a worker.
* Find neighbors. If I have a warrior, then I stick him on the neighbors' borders next to a visible resource and wait for their worker to show up. When they do, I declare war, hop across the border, and steal the worker. Free worker!
* Tech Bronzeworking and Animal Husbandry ASAP. The only reason I'll delay these is if I need Agriculture to farm corn/rice/wheat. Scout out copper and horse resources. If I don't have them in my capital's BFC (likely), then make a settler for a new city, settling right next to the resource so I don't have to wait for a border pop. Tech Wheel during this period so I can make roads.
* Workers focus on hooking up the strategic resource while my capital makes a barracks. Now I can build axemen/chariots (depending on the resource).
* Make 6-8 of the relevant unit and go storm my neighbor. Take his capital. If he's built other cities, no big deal; the capital's the main prize. I can stomp his other cities later. Typically they don't have enough production to be a threat.
* During this period, I'm teching Writing for libraries, then Alphabet for tech trading.
* If he didn't have other cities, and I know about another neighbor, I leave one rush unit behind as a garrison and go storm the other neighbor. If not, no big deal.

Now my economy is in a shambles. Time to fix that. Go for Currency for the trade routes (and start building long roads to connect all my cities together so they can trade). Get Calendar if I have plantation resources, since they tend to be worth lots of money/food. Get Code of Laws for the courthouses. Oh man, courthouses. Not quite as important as Currency, but they still make a huge difference. I'm continually hitting up AIs I've contacted for tech trades, even if they aren't very favorable ones. Especially, I don't want to waste time researching Mysticism/Meditation/Polytheism/etc, which I've completely neglected up to now.

Around about this time I'll check over my territory for any good city spots I've missed, and plug them up. I'm looking for either a couple of food resources, or a nice big floodplains, or rarely several happiness resources and a bunch of grasslands. Floodplains make my favorite Great Person farms since you can farm the plains for 4 food each, 5 with Biology. Great Scientists are my favorite Great People because they can bulb lots of good techs and early academies are majorly helpful. My workers should be done improving my existing cities, so they can all storm over and mass-improve the new one to get it on its feet quickly.

Now I set my eyes on Liberalism. There's lots of useful techs en-route, like Civil Service and Education. I get the Liberalism pre-reqs out of the way, and then start unlocking pre-reqs for the free tech I want. If I think time is tight, I'll go for free Steel for cannons. Otherwise I like to research Scientific Method and get access to either Physics (free Great Scientist) or Biology (awesome farms).

Somewhere in the middle of the Liberalism race, I've probably built up an army of about 10 Macemen and a similar number of catapults/trebuchets (plus any other mixed units I feel like throwing in), and nibbled away at a new neighbor. Keep flexing that military muscle and any AIs that you aren't currently eating will leave you alone. Go for the easy targets so your army's in better shape to move to the next target -- if you have to suicide all your siege to take a city, then your military's stalled for at least 10-15 turns and you may as well extort peace for that period.

Once I get Liberalism, I generally go Riflemen + Cannons and take another neighbor. But honestly, by this point I'm so big the game's already won unless someone's trying to sneak away with a cultural victory.

The important thing is to fix your economy between wars. The first war is the rush, when you take one or two extra capitals. Then you don't go on the warpath again until you're healthy and you have the tech for the next era of fighting. Rinse and repeat. As your civ gets bigger, you'll be able to gulp down more and more cities in one war, because your economy will be bigger.

[DMOC]

Alright, I have given it a try... (no early rush, no early religion)...

Excellent, excellent. However, if you see an opportunity for an axemen rush then you should do it. It's only the warrior rushes that you want to avoid.

Went with Napoleon (still regretting the choice of the damn French). Developped Buildings and workers as priority to get a good economy flowing - with settlers one after another (not 3 at the same time as I tended to be) when economy permits expansion. No capital city stealing.

It shouldn't matter what leader you get, as you will be fine with any of them.

For the capital, a good way to build settlers-workers (if not whipping) is to have settler - worker - settler - worker so you get 2 of each quickly, and then afterwards you can fill in with barbarian protection/city garrision protection. Of course, in emergencies, you may need more military.

If you want to whip, and have a high food capital, you can whip a settler, put overflow into a warrior/archer, and grow back to size 4 or 5, then create another worker or settler.

Situation end of BC: I am leading with a advanced research, a total 4 well placed cities with nice improvements and road and useful wonders.

What wonders?

I have not managed to add get any other other city out as Joao, Suleiman and Shaka expanded too fast taking everything and leaving nothing. Still uspet of failing to get that last spot and now having 1 settler sleeping with no reasonable place to put a city without straining my existing cities.

If you are in desperate need for diplomacy you could always found a city near a leader and then gift it to him/her. However, on prince difficulty that usually isn't needed.

But then it goes all wrong again... All AI have around 8 cities working and although they are a little bit behind in technology (knight vs muskeeter) their 8 cities pumping units overwhelm my 2 lonely production cities. Shaka is my worst neighbour and I was just able to contain him when Ragnar decided to sign with him and come in my back with 2 stacks of death.

If you were ahead in technology, you could try to bribe one of those leaders to be at war with each other. Of course, you may need to get to Pleased or Friendly, which goes to show the importance of diplomacy.

Also, you have 2 production cities ... what about your others? My commerce cities can occasionally whip a military unit.

Really have a problem of expanding at a reasonable rate without falling to city maintenance problems :/

How many cities and at what date?

[Derakon]

One thing I've noticed about my games is that a huge portion of my economy comes from raiding other civs' cities. Getting 150 gold from sacking a city is huge in the BC's, and is enough to run a deficit on research for many turns. Don't forget to pillage towns you don't plan to use, too. One town is worth 50+ gold right now.

There have been times I wished I could pillage my own improvements for gold...

[coanda]

So while people are making excellent points about areas where you can probably improve your game, I'm going to chime in specifically on war-mongering. Just glancing at your described strategies, it's not clear to me whether or not you are following what are generally accepted good practices for warfare in Civ4. There are some excellent articles about this in the War Academy if you want to go read them; I'll try to hit some highlights here. Maybe you're already thinking about all this and just didn't mention it, in which case this is all unnecessary.

By the time you get a significant number of elephants, you'll probably be facing cities with +60% or more in defensive bonus, and reasonably well-promoted defenders. As a rough rule of thumb, for every elephants you bring along, bring along a catapult as well. This is true basically for any army of movement-1 units in the game: half your attacking stack should be siege if possible. First the siege bombards to lower city defenses, then it attacks first to soften up defenders and cause collateral damage before your actual troops go in.

Because catapults are slow, people often don't want to bring them along with knights/cuirassiers/calvalry, so in that case they often use spies. A common alternative is to pile up espionage points against your target, have some spies wait in the target's cities for at least 5 turns before your stack arrives, and incite a revolt in the city as you attack. That lowers city defenses to 0% until end of turn, which helps your units survive a lot better. Also, when using mounted troops it's common to give some of them withdrawl 1 + 2 promotions to go in first, just to soften up the strongest city defenders. They'll have maybe a 50% chance of dying, but that's a lot better than units with combat 1 + 2 who will probably have more like an 85% chance of dying.

Make sure your main stack includes at least one "medic" unit. Ideal is to use a great general for this - attach him to a unit to give it the experience needed to get the medic 3 promotion (and, if possible, try to grab the forester 3 promotion as well). That unit never attacks, and hopefully never defends either; it's just there to help your army recover from combat faster.

Once infantry come into play, your three major options are cannons (if you have to, although you'll take heavy losses), artillery (which will absolutely crush an infantry defense if they're present in large numbers), or blimps/airplanes (this is the best option).

Speed is king. You want your entire army assembled before you ever declare war, and you want to crush their biggest army as soon as possible after declaring war (preferably in a non-hilltop city). Then you head for their biggest, most valuable, highest-production cities immediately afterwards.

Anyhow - if any of this is new to you, you might want to check out the war academy articles on warmongering.

[generalwar]

I'm having a problem with prince too. Now, I'm playing with tech trad off, huts off and , no random events, no espionage(training for civ 5). Now, I'm owning with noble, I have finally learned to make good GP farms and I'm often warring before cats come in and with rifleman + cannons. Now, I think I can win prince if there is only difference at the beginning. It always amases me how at score I'm bad BC and until 500-1000AD and in 14st cantuary when I got education, liberalism, economy, money start falling from the skies. Yesterday, I played on 2 continents 10 AI's, 4 on my continent.First, took out Hannibal, my neighbour was Gandhi, who likes to build tons of wonders. So, since I took out Hannibal(before construction) about 1000BC-500BC I haven't been warring until 1800 when I stomped Gandhi's lands with riflemen and cannons(He almost took 2 of my cities with culture) and got whole lot of culture. South of me was Roosvelt(Vilem's vassal) and Villem with the strongest and the best army in the world. My tech rate was so good that when I got first panzers out I had tons of infatry cannon and anti-tank and SAM infatry. Rolled in America and in the Netherlands in the same time and while pumping out units I built spaceship parts(before war I got 4/7 corps and 2 corps I took from Villim and 1 I have built later on). When I took their land I have built tons of ICBM's to rock on other continent(Justinians's continent). until spaceship came to Alpha Centauri, I've launched around 50 ICBMs and 4 tactical nukes(for a little invasion forces, because I was bored). And I have almost gave up that round around 1000 AD.
Could you imagine that?

Edit: I think that one of your mistakes are not building siege wapons(cats, trebs,cannons,artillery) but only going with elephants and cavarly.

[DMOC]

Actually, cavalries are a very good unit .... in some cases. Siege cannot keep up with them, so you basically have little choice but to ram cavalry head-first into cities. What you want to be aware of is if the enemy has cities with defensive bonuses (hills and rivers) and if he has lots of pikemen. If not, then cavalry will be a breeze by themselves, typically.

[generalwar]

Originally Posted by DMOC

Actually, cavalries are a very good unit .... in some cases. Siege cannot keep up with them, so you basically have little choice but to ram cavalry head-first into cities. What you want to be aware of is if the enemy has cities with defensive bonuses (hills and rivers) and if he has lots of pikemen. If not, then cavalry will be a breeze by themselves, typically.

But vs equal tech rival without siege you can't nothing. Against mediaval units you can still loose some units only because you didn't want to loose 5-10 turns against weaker rival. With that army you have to secure new cities.

[plasmacannon]

OK.
I have read you used Stalin[AGG/IND] and Naploeon[CHA/ORG].
Try Darius. He is FIN/ORG and should resolve some of your money problems.
If you still want the wonders of Stalin, Try Huayna Capac [FIN/IND].
Another Good one is Willian Van Oranje. With his CRE trait you will have a cultural radius automatically on all of your cities.

When in doubt, check the recient polls of everyones favorite Leader based on 1 trait.
I am sure you can find one tthere that has worked well for another player.
No point reinvinting success.

[DMOC]

Willem van Oranje would be a fantastic leader to choose. His early game advantage AND late-game advantage help you all the way.

[Makaz]

Hi,

I wanted to say a HUGE thanks for everyone who contributed to this post. I have analysed this all in detail and after rework of my strategy been able to win easyily a prince game vs 10 computers on a standard pangea map before 1900 !! What a change compared to before when I was struggling after 500 AD to the point of loosing or giving up.

This is really thanks to everyone who contributed ! I am very grateful !

Here is the non exhaustive list of things I changed for I had them wrong until now:
+ my tech order was lacking focus completely - I wasn't really planning long ahead but more acting on a whip, which was stupid
+ my diplomacy was all wrong... I was continuously rejecting all demands from the AI, creating general unfriendlyness which was hindering the tech trading
+ I wasn't building enough farms... As I was worried about lacking money, I was putting cottages everywhere I should have put farms in my prod cities... generating a general slowness to build / expand
+ I wasn't taking enough catapults / trebs with me on my wars.... making my wars very slow as I was waiting additionnal siege units to come... and long wars were killing my economy!
+ I changed leader by the way, finding Ragnar being a perfect match for me with bonus to money, bonus to war and good uu
+ I ignore religion... or I conquer a holy city if I see potential benefit (e.g. I have a great prophet, half of the world is hinduist... well religion stealing)

And a lot of other small things that I corrected on the fly. Still needing some improvement (E.g. my GPF is miserable and my use of specialists... inexistant ... but it is coming along)

Thanks again

M

[DMOC]

You're welcome, and it's nice to see you improve.

I reject demands from AI's occassionally. However some general rules are if an AI is planning war versus you (or cautious/annoyed/furious, and in some cases, pleased) then you can give in to the demand to gain 10 turns of forced peace.