Balancing Expansion and Research on Prince

[John Lennon Jr.]

Hey yall,

I've been having trouble balancing research and growth on Prince. It seems that once I get past 3 or 4 cities, I start running deficits. I build cottages, but since I am also trying to build cities at a similar pace to the AI, it seems that cottage growth is never fast enough to pay maintenance and research. What might be the problem here?

 

[Seraiel]

Post a save.

 

[John Lennon Jr.]

This is the most recent instance of the problem. Please let me know if you have any questions - I'm not sure what information is relevant.

 

[Choggy]

Not able to open your save as I'm not at home, but a few general pointers for Prince level early on in the game.

- Cottages are slow burners in terms of the commerce they bring in until later on in the game when they really take off. Riverside cottages help early on as they give an immediate +1 commerce boost, however non-riverside cottages are pretty poor in terms of commerce early on for non-financial civs and aren't really worth building until your economy can afford it.

- If you find yourself falling behind the tech rate early on then get a few scientist specialists running with cities that have a Library. Most people have at least one city dedicated to running specialists even if their economy is cottage based to help with the tech rate.

- When settling your early cities, an 'out-to-in' strategy oftens helps (settle your first cities at the edge of your planned empire borders to block the AI off and then backfill towards your capital).

- Building Wealth in your cities is a great way of boosting your economy whilst waiting for your cottage cities to mature (so Currency should be a priority tech). Even though that city isn't doing anything, your cottages will continue to develop.

- If your maintenance costs are getting too high then whip Courthouses (as opposed to building them) - whipped population will reduce maintenance costs still further in addition to the maintenance cost benefit the courthouse brings.

- Go kill somebody early on!! Nothing like an early commerce boost from capturing or razing cities.

 

[barbertje]

This is the most recent instance of the problem. Please let me know if you have any questions - I'm not sure what information is relevant.

1 Build more workers. use these to

2 Chop more forests, espescially along rivers, and then

3 build cottages on the freed riverside grass tiles. You have exactly 0 riverside grassland cottages.

Mine riverside hills before non-riverside hills as well, and if necessary chop the forests on them first.

My tech opening here would be AH - mining - bronzeworking, build a worker in paris, then some warriors, and then a second worker before a settler. Since the capitol will grow so fast on the 2 pigs, you need to continue improving the capitol as well as the second city, as well as connect them with a road. You probably need a third worker shortly after the settler,

Police state helps with war-weariness (wich you don't have) and producing military units (wich you do only in 1 city). Do you think you made good use of the pyramids?
Same goes for the Shwedagon Paya.

The first build in a new city should be a granary or a monument, not a christian monastery.

 

[Seraiel]

Ok, here are your problems:

1. You're building too few Cottages. For the beginning you'll do ok if you specialize at least 50% (notice the at least, some advise values up to 75% here) of your cities to have almost only Cottages.
2. You are not working the Cottages you've built. This is a problem that is caused by you using the City-govenor who is, basically said, stupid like . You have to learn to micro your cities. Manually advise them to work specific tiles by assigning a citizen to it (click on the tile you don't wanna work, then you get a normal citizen in the lower right corner of the city screen, now click on the tile you want to work, a white circle marks the tiles that you're currently working) .

There are things helping your Commerce (the "coins" you see on the city screen) immensly:

• Keep your cities small, via using the Whip more often, only work improved tiles. Your save looks like you make no use of Slavery at all, Slavery is the biggest source of production and the best Civic available until you're force out of it because the other Civs switch to Emancipation. Every point of population costs 1 (notice the difference from to , 1 is only 1 if the Slider is at 0% Reserach = 100% Gold production. So a tile giving 1 can only pay for itself under the circumstance that you're running 0% slider. You have to go through this with working your Cottages so they grow to Hamlets, Villages and very late to Towns, this will make them produce more . ) .
• Build more Workers to improve the land faster so you don't have to work so many unimproved tiles (rule of the thumb is 1.5 Workers / city, in your save you have 3 Workers for 8 cities, you nead about 6 times as many) .
• Run Civics with lower cost (the cost of Police-State and Organized Religion is tremendous, those are only worth it if you plan on building a huge military out of all cities (PS) or if you plan on building a lot of buildings in all cities (OR)) . Try to fully Cottage your Capital, and run Representation (if you have the Mids, otherwise hereditary Rule is fine) , Burocracy (yer, that one is high-maintenance too but with a fully Cottaged Capital the Commerce gets multiplied so it is very powerful) or Nationalism (later, cheaper and possibility to draft) , Slavery, Free Market (if having Corps) or State Property (if not having Corps) and OR (when building buildings) , Theocracy (when building Military) and Pacifism for the rest of the time (cheap and enhances Great Person Production) or Free Religion (very late, also cheap and enhances Research) .
• Not directly helping with but helping with (which again can be translated to Workers improving the land, or Settlers founding cities) : Chop! Chop every Forrest there is (except the Tundra-ones) . Chop like there is no tomorrow, chop and whip and chopwhip! Choping everything into Workers and Settlers is the best use of Forrests, you'll experience some crazy production increase (every chop is worth a lot of , so you can build a lot more of what you need) .
• Very much later, build multiplier buildings like Banks, Markets and Grocers (notice again I say Gold, not . There are also buildings multiplying , which is the other part of the that doesn't get converted to , now at a latest you should have understood what the Slider does) .
• Build via building Wealth with Currency.
• Get to Currency as early as possible! (Currency is probably the most important tech and should be chosen after the basic-techs, like / and techs have been researched) .
• Get Code of Laws after Currency, build Courthouses to reduce the maintenance caused by the cities (your empire has 8 cities, that's a critical size, the larger your empire, the more your cities cost, Courthouses reduce that cost) .
• Play a FIN and / or ORG leader.
• Win earlier (inflation causes a lot of lost in the late-game, 1000 AD is late-game) .

Things that will also greatly improve your game:

• Build less World-Wonders (especially not useless ones like the Shwedagon Paya)
• Build more units (but be careful, those also cost ) .
• Build less unnecessary buildings (i. e. Monestaries) .
• Build a Granary in all of your cities (a Granary is the most important building and the only building that really every city must have. I've won games with cities having Granaries only on highest lvls. )
• Learn about city-placement. A city needs a source of Food (and it needs it in the 9-tiles-square if you aren't CRE and get free borderpops) . Places without Food = no good. Tundra = no good. Jungle = good very late, but not in the beginning.

Hth, Seraiel

 

[barbertje]

I played on from the last save, and managed to put the tech situation around with one great scientist. Code of law could be teched in two turns with leftover cash, then switch to Caste, rep and pacifism and hire as much scientists as possible and in 1120 AD:



changing this 1050 AD tech picture:



in



6 techs from 1, with more than 4 times the beaker value. I don't think I ever got quite as much from one bulb.

 

[Ghpstage]

You're building too few Cottages. For the beginning you'll do ok if you specialize at least 50% (notice the at least, some advise values up to 75% here) of your cities to have almost only Cottages.

While building more cottages is a reasonable solution to the problem, a lack of them isn't in itself a cause of the problem, games can comfortably be won without using any at all.

I've been having trouble balancing research and growth on Prince. It seems that once I get past 3 or 4 cities, I start running deficits. I build cottages, but since I am also trying to build cities at a similar pace to the AI, it seems that cottage growth is never fast enough to pay maintenance and research. What might be the problem here?

Running defecits isn't a problem, runnning down to even 0% science can be a strong move in many games. The real problem you have here is that your population is both low and very unproductive.

The main cause of your poor outputs is that your working something like 20 unimproved tiles, thats half of your total population contributing little to nothing.
The only way to solve this and prevent it happenning in more games is to build more workers, 3 for 8 cities is less than a third of the recommended 1.5 workers per city during for players still learning the basics.
In case your thinking it is, leaving forests till you get lumbermills is very rarely a good move, especially leaving so many. Occasionally leaving plains forsts can be ok (though usually its a case of chop them last!) and leaving tundra forests is the best move for them, but anything green should be deforested before the BC years end !.


The lack of population comes largely from not building the number one economic building in the game, the granary. The fact you have only 1 Granary while having 3 Walls is a major mistake!
After something cheap to gain culture (typically a Monument), which is not always needed, a Granary is going to be top of a cities priorities at east 9 times out of ten.
Stop building so many Monasteries. Outside of big producers (like a Bureau capital) the 10% bonus isn't going to do much and the culture is expensive. While they do have uses, Monasteries of a non-AP religion are niche builds.
Another problem is some of your cities are seriously lacking in food, especially food thats available quickly as your settling with resources in the outer ring then waiting ages for Monasteries to be built for a border pop. Try to settle closer to food (unless your using a Creative eader), if thats not possible at least build more farms.


Also, I don't see the purpose of running Police State here, if you end up in a war your probably going to be crushed in the state your in, and even if you do survive you won't catch up. Run something economic instead, in general if you don't plan on making good use of Representation theres no point in building the Pyramids.
To be honest if I had played this game with Ind, stone and that capital I probably wouldn't have bothered with cottages at all going for a wonderspam capital instead and stuck with Representation the whole game.

 

[Seraiel]

No offense Ghp, but what is there in your post that I didn't already mention?

 

[Htadus]

Hey yall,

I've been having trouble balancing research and growth on Prince. It seems that once I get past 3 or 4 cities, I start running deficits. I build cottages, but since I am also trying to build cities at a similar pace to the AI, it seems that cottage growth is never fast enough to pay maintenance and research. What might be the problem here?

I think the problem is mainy in your expectations. The game is designed to increase maintanance as the empire grows. There is nothing wrong with that. What you do not want is to fall behind AI. Everything is wrong with that.

Others who have seen your save have given you some good advise and take that information and try to improve your game. There is Prince level walkthrough I am doing right now. You can find a link in my sig. Take a look at it and see if it will help you.

 

[Gumbolt]

Key points from above

3 workers for 8 cities is crazy! 12-13 would of been ideal.

granaries for city growth is huge!

Don't be afraid to whip cities.

Don't be afraid to set up a great people farm.

Empire growth. 2nd city by 2400bc is fine. 3rd by 775bc is almost 1000 years too late.

2nd city 2800-2400bc
3rd city 2000bc-1500bc
4th city before 1000bc
By 1ad 7-8 cities?

For this start I would of built a 1-2 workers first. Then beelined BW and chopped out a settler. If you had a good food resource others might of gone worker/ grow to size 3-4 on warrior and then settler. I only suggest double worker due to all the forest.

The large world setting makes this effectively a monarch game. You many struggled from too few workers and too slow growth.

 

[pigswill]

I suspect that your problems start about 3000 years earlier than the save. Chop and whip early game, get more workers, settle cities earlier, more workers = more improvements.

Do you have an earlier (or even starting) save?

 

[John Lennon Jr.]

Thanks for the advice everyone. It seems that I need to build more workers, build more granaries, and build cottages on river tiles.

My one question arises on the river tiles issue - my strategy has been to "specialize" a tile - so on flood plains I would build a farm to maximize food output so that the city would grow. My question I guess is mostly addressed to Choggy - Why do you advocate building cottages on river tiles rather than farms? Is it based on a similar principle as specializing tiles, but with a focus on the +1 Gold bonus on a flood plains tile, rather than the +3 food?

Thanks to everyone for the advice, I'll implement these strategies and let yall know how it worked.

-Dan

 

[John Lennon Jr.]

So I started a new game as Sumeria on the scenario of Earth 10,000 years (or w/e number) before the Ice Age from BTS, this time on Marathon, with the difference in strategy being a focus on cottages along riverbanks, production of workers, building granaries, and stopping growth at more easily defensible positions (not attempting to hold past the Bosphorus strait, for example). I'm in first by about 33%, so the strategy seems to be working, thanks.

 

[Choggy]

Riverside tiles give +1 commerce when you work them. Therefore a cottage on a riverside tile gives you +2 commerce instead of +1 for a non-riverside tile when worked. At normal speed it only takes 10 turns to turn a cottage into a Hamlet, which for a riverside tile gives +3 commerce.

Compare that to a non-riverside cottage which takes 30 turns to get to +3 commerce. That's why riverside cottages are so good compared to non-riverside cottages, they generate commerce much quicker.

Incidently, a financial civ gets an additional +1 commerce to worked tiles that already generate +2 commerce. Since a riverside cottage gives you +2 commerce anyway, a brand new riverside cottage therefore gives you +3 commerce straight away, +4 after 10 turns and +5 after 30. Unless you run certain civics, it'll take 100 turns for a non-riverside cottage with a non-financial civ to generate the same amount of commerce. That's why financial civs are so powerful with a cottage-based economy.

Regarding floodplains...they make fantastic cottage tiles - they get the +1 commerce from being by a river and a +1 food bonus. The only downside to them is that they increase the unhealthiness of your city - have too many floodplain tiles in a city's radius and you'll find you city becomes so unhealthy you don't have the population to work them all.

 

[Um the Muse]

You said that you were ahead of the AI by 33%. If that's based on score, I wouldn't put too much importance on it. The score takes account of a bunch of things that are irrelevant to winning and can be very misleading. That said, I'm glad that you found the forum's advice useful

Farms aren't necessarily bad improvements, especially when you are whipping a lot. But if you are specializing a city based on the tiles, keep in mind that food is a means to an end and that you can't trade it to other cities so you can't actually specialize in it. Plus, a food resource provides all of the food that your city will need for much of the early game.

 

[John Lennon Jr.]

About the Muse - On the Ice Age map, I've vassaled Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and part of North America (the Maya voluntarily) and am set to invade Mongolia now, but yeah, 33% doesn't necessarily mean anything if it's early (60-45), or if another Civ is building the spaceship.

I see what you're saying Choggy - good advice.

 

[coanda]

It's not that score means nothing, it's that it doesn't mean as much as it seems. Population and land are a means to production, commerce, and food surplus (which can all be directly checked in the Demographics screen); a lot of population working farmed riverside plains may give you a high score, but doesn't contribute much to your actual strength. It's similar with the Technology and Wonders scores - ceterus parabus a higher score is better, but a little actual thought can usually give you a more meaningful benchmark than the score the game is assigning you. In otherwise identical situations, owning just Pyramids is likely to be better than owning Angkor Wat, Chichen Itza, Hagia Sophia, and Oracle even though the latter set is worth 4 times as many points.