Going from Warlord to Prince seems an insane difficulty leap

[Greyhawk1]

I've got pretty good at Warlord on BNW. I haven't lost a game yet at any rate.

So I thought I'd try Prince. I've had to retire twice so far. I know the AI is supposed to get pretty much the same benefits as you are but I'm immediately dropping behind in tech, missing every wonder, being bottom in score and I'm totally nonplussed...

I've been watching Marbozir's play and going for free workers and settlers with the Liberty tree. So I get a free worker but by this time the AI has already built at least one wonder. I like archipelago maps as well. First game I tried to leapfrog to optics to get Great Lighthouse. I was first into the Classical Era, started building the GL soon after and I still lost the wonder. Tried it again to get Colossus, wonder was built a few turns after I started. I was starting to get wonders built before I'd even managed to research the tech. Couldn't get a pantheon either.

Also Barbarians spawn so quickly and are so hard to kill that you cant kill them fast enough before they have repopped.

Second time I couldn't kill a Barbie camp on the other end of the island. Every time I healed up, another unit spawned before I could get to the camp. Another camp spawned at the other end of the island and took my only worker, razed every tile around my only city before I could get back. By then two more barbs had already spawned and my one warrior plus one scout got creamed by barbarians. I didn't even have them on raging...

Any tips for moving up?

Also this forum's forgot password function doesn't work. It doesnt send an email. Luckily I found it eventually!

 

[Chum]

The higher the difficulty setting, the more you're going to have to "learn to play," so to speak. Wonder whoring works fantastic on very low levels. The AI doesn't start with techs and it doesn't know what it's doing. You can basically build them all and it's never going to be a problem.

As you make a jump in difficulty however, you need to improve your infrastructure in order to compete. You're going to need to prioritize science techs -- this means heading for Writing, followed by Civil Service, and then Education, to Scientific Theory and eventually Plastics. This will enable you to be the tech leader faster, as the new science buildings will throttle up your science output considerably. You make necessary detours as needed for techs for luxes (mining, masonry, whatever you have laying around) and then you detour for the military techs when you feel that war is inevitable (engineering, machinery, etc).

You'll find that on prince, you'll still be able to get most wonders (and most importantly, the IMPORTANT wonders) if you follow the right tech path. Stuff like the Great Lighthouse and the Colossus are off these tech paths, and are very situational wonders to begin with.

 

[vivalamexico]

A likely problem if you are falling behind in tech is that you are not growing your cities big enough. Remember, pop=beakers. Build your cities near rivers to get maximum benefit from Civil Service and abuse sea routes whenever possible. Also, make sure you have at least as many workers as cities. Get them early, too. Worker stealing really helps this.
Before going into liberty, I would recommend just playing a classic 4 city tradition game; its much easier.
Of course, these are not the only things, but they are useful.

Might I suggest posting a screenshot so that people can see what specifically you are struggling with.

 

[poekie70]

I also had some difficulty going from warlord to prince and it took me some time to adjust but i find that this strategy works fairly well for wonder whoring up to emperor: first build order: Scout-> Worker->Granary->GL-> NC after this do whatever you like. You will lead in science for the rest of the game as long as you give some priority to future tech buildings.

 

[Xiao Xiong]

Don't forget about granary. Granary is the most important science building. A library doesn't do you any good if you have only a pop 2 city. Prioritize food in the early game, make your city big. Do not churn out a settler unless you REALLY have a great spot for it -- you can win the game founding only a single city. Found a city only because you NEED that city. And at LEAST while your city is small, make sure you are deciding where to put the workers - do not let the city manager do it, and make sure and favour food.

And, even if only ever just once, play a game WITHOUT building any world wonders. Not a single one. Learn to do without. You don't really need them -- they can be fun to build, and give your game a different flavour, but try a game without any wonders at all. (Do build the national wonders, especially national college and national epic.)

My usual build order:

scout, scout, shrine only if I have a good spot for a pantheon, granary, library, watermill if on river, ..., national college as soon as I can. For social policies tradition, popping a free monument from legalism and beelining straight to the policy that gives me more food, which gives me more citizens, which make my library hum.

 

[JofOblie]

Also I remember someone on these forums saying that starting a wonder as soon as you miss another one is a good way to chain-fail wonders.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

Beeline for Great Library and try to focus on as much production as you can (usualy, I just focus on picking out all the production tiles neglecting growth)

I go with tradition opener (free culture) and then beeline for the free Settler.

It is prince, it is normal, you will be ahead, behind, ahead, behind a lot. But you can still win.

 

[Memoryjar]

Build wonders if you don't have anything else to build.
Build two archers.

 

[Ryika]

If you find Prince difficult, then you're lacking the most basic "rules" on how you should play as a human player. I suggest you to watch some guides that are explicitly geared towards beginners or to head over to the strategy forums and read some of the beginners guides there, because let's plays usually don't contain the information about how to have a solid "foundation" - that's like trying to learn how to swim by watching the summer Olympics. They're fun to watch and you get SOME information out of them, but if you really want to improve, you need the basics.

In the meantime SOME easy rules:
- Don't automate anything. Automation is ba-haaaad. Yes, worker-management can be hard and sometimes a bit boring, but it's just the easiest way to improve your games. Citizen-Management is extremely important, too.
- Focus on growth - it's the most important thing. Food, food, food, all the way.
- As a beginner, don't use Liberty. Use Tradition and try to stay on 3 or 4 cities. It's much easier to play - and also quite a bit stronger.
- And I'd suggest: As a beginner, don't build ANY wonders except if there's really nothing else to build that you think would be useful (that includes military units). Yes, they have nice bonuses, but they also stop your cities from becoming the powerhouses that you want them to be, if you build too many of them.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I agree with much of the above, don't build early wonders and work on growing population.

For me, one thing that made a big difference going up to Prince was learning not to be such a peacenik. A good military is a useful deterrent, there's often a back-stabber around, and even a relatively peaceful AI Civ may find it hard to pass up an opportunity to attack a weak opponent when their UU rolls out. I don't know how many times I got blitzed by Greece or Rome or Assyria before I got the hint.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

On Prince i usually don't struggle with wonders, i can get The Great Library, Pyramids and Parthenon/Artemis/Oracle/Colossus (usually 2 of the 4, i usually aim for Parthenon, and Colossus if it's a coastal city, always trying to the Oracelf or free policy)

Surprisingly I do deter from food by focusin on those hammers.

 

[Greyhawk1]

Trying the same scenario but on Warlord. Its only one setting down but its just straightforward to be ahead in tech from the start.

Prince is a massive leap in the other direction. I accept it will be harder but when you are seemingly effectively losing immediately out of the gate it seems to be too much of a jump.

I'm going back to Warlord to work on my score and beating the game earlier - clearly I'm not ready for Prince yet.

Incidentally I tried the science start in my latest game, it did work pretty well despite having a terrible start location.

 

[Chum]

You don't need to be ahead in tech. Get used to being behind. You'll be behind for a good chunk of the game on King or better. That's not a bad thing. It means you get beakers from trade routes, it means techs are cheaper, and it means you don't need to worry about wonders so much.

Although, like I said, if you're prioritizing science, you'll be ahead of the AI pretty quickly on Prince. It doesn't start with free techs. Build Libraries. Build National College, Build universities. If you're not ahead on tech by that point, there's something else going on (like you've got a 6 pop capital or something).

 

[Ryika]

Also keep in mind that "being behind in tech" is not the same than being the last place in the demographics or having your advisor tell you that you're behind, especially not in the early game - if you do it right, then you're beelining important, expansive techs, while the AI tends to grab most of the low-level-techs first that don't really benefit them too much. So while you might find yourself to be behind in techs, that doesn't really tell you anything about your actual progress. If you find yourself to be very low on total techs but the first one to enter Renaissance, then everything's just fine.

 

[Sherlock]

Scout, Worker, Settler, granary, buy archers to deal with the barbs.

I get that 2nd city up as soon as I can.

 

[mrmike1949]

Build wonders if you don't have anything else to build.
Build two archers.

I often take a chance and don't build archers until the barbs are getting just too thick, but I usually play on an island map, so don't need to worry about AI opponents for quite a while