Mid/Late game tips on Prince or Monarch

[Posex]

I finally learned playing well in the first turns (first 100 turns I think) on Prince. However, I am suddenly lagging behind at mid game.

First of all, my gold (gold from tax, not commerce) never rises, after a while I have to reduce the technology to 50%, I don't understand how to fix this, I build courthouses, i build grocers, I establish cities where there is plenty of commerce, but when i recruit some units all my gold runs out. For this reason, I have always much less cities than other civs because each city brings extra maintenance.

Secondly, I'm lagging behind in technology, I have a lot to research and I guess I'm always researching the wrong things. If I go to Maceman or gunpowder rush, I fall behind in terms of commerce and culture. If I care about commerce and culture, I fall behind militarically.

Third, I can't find anything to do with the workers, after a while I build all the necessary improvements to the places I want, even road to every tile within my borders (let me know if it's a bad idea btw), but after a while I have no choice but to zzz the workers to sleep. Because there's nothing they can do. In this case, does it make sense to kill some of the workers if there is no forest left to chop? I'm also never use watermill, windmill, workshop improvements (i only use mine, farm and cottage) and from what I've watched noble's club videos the pro players do the same. What are you thinking about this?

Fourth, on the socreboard, I'm always first in the first 100 rounds. But then I always come last. I know I shouldn't be paying too much attention to the scoreboard, but when there are 500-600-1000 point gaps between me and the sixth, I start to think that I'm doing something wrong.

Thanks in advance and sorry if my English is broken.

 

[Fish Man]

I finally learned playing well in the first turns (first 100 turns I think) on Prince. However, I am suddenly lagging behind at mid game.

First of all, my gold (gold from tax, not commerce) never rises, after a while I have to reduce the technology to 50%, I don't understand how to fix this, I build courthouses, i build grocers, I establish cities where there is plenty of commerce, but when i recruit some units all my gold runs out. For this reason, I have always much less cities than other civs because each city brings extra maintenance.

Secondly, I'm lagging behind in technology, I have a lot to research and I guess I'm always researching the wrong things. If I go to Maceman or gunpowder rush, I fall behind in terms of commerce and culture. If I care about commerce and culture, I fall behind militarically.

Third, I can't find anything to do with the workers, after a while I build all the necessary improvements to the places I want, even road to every tile within my borders (let me know if it's a bad idea btw), but after a while I have no choice but to zzz the workers to sleep. Because there's nothing they can do. In this case, does it make sense to kill some of the workers if there is no forest left to chop? I'm also never use watermill, windmill, workshop improvements (i only use mine, farm and cottage) and from what I've watched noble's club videos the pro players do the same. What are you thinking about this?

Fourth, on the socreboard, I'm always first in the first 100 rounds. But then I always come last. I know I shouldn't be paying too much attention to the scoreboard, but when there are 500-600-1000 point gaps between me and the sixth, I start to think that I'm doing something wrong.

Thanks in advance and sorry if my English is broken.

At work now; may reply more in-depth later. But: see here and here for recent examples of how I gained and snowballed from an absolutely dominant position on noble and emperor difficulty, the latter being with a rather difficult boxed-in start.

 

[Fabled]

I'm not a strong player (still pushing for an emperor win), so take this all with a grain of salt and trust other advice over mine.

Tech slider at 50% is fine, what matters is beakers per turn. I tend to build up a gold surplus and then do heavy deficit spending to finish techs. You can leverage any source of gold (sell techs and resources, conquer cities, great merchant mission) to buy beakers via deficit spending. Since gold can become beakers, the trick is to get a consistent gold income.

The biggest thing I've been noticing lately is how much trade routes matter when setting up your economy. Once you have currency and a trade partner new cities pay for themselves almost instantly (2 routes at 2 gold each). If you can break even like this you can expand to match or the AIs, at which point your economy (and tech!) will become much stronger once your cities grow and work improved tiles.

 

[krikav]

As @Fabled mentioned, what % your slider is on is irrelevant. It's what the total beakers are at thats important.

I think it sounds promissing that you don't have anything to do with your workers, that should indicate that you build enough workers which is quite rare.
However, perhaps you are expanding or conquering to slow...?

MId/Late game problems tend to stem from suboptimal openings, but it's hard to say without seeing any screenshots.
Perhaps you are not greedy enough? Try to adopt a mindset that you should take everything from all the AIs. The entire map should be yours, it's just a question of making a plan for how to do it efficiently!

 

[krikav]

And also, welcome to the forums @Posex ! So fun that we have alot of previous lurkers jumping on board!

 

[6K Man]

Don't build Courthouses and Grocers. Build Wealth. In fact, try this out: Build Granaries everywhere, Forges in most places, Libraries in your capital and GP farm, Barracks in a half dozen production cities, and nothing else. If you have nothing to build in a city, build Wealth or a unit.
Don't worry about Culture.
Go ahead and delete most of your Workers after Railroads are built.
I don't know what videos you are watching, but by the late game (Electricity and State Property), Watermills are the best improvement in the game, Workshops are quite powerful when you need fewer Farms post-Biology, and the extra food from Windmills makes them superior to Mines generally.

 

[Heathcliff]

The most important is to understand that the AI is decent at empire building but bad at combat.
So you as a human with practice can easily beat the AI, because the AI will spread out their troops and not do effective attacks, even with a smaller army.
So dont give up even if you are behind after 100 turns, once you start warring you will quickly catch up.

For economy a good guideline is to quickly build four cities and work cottages, then after you get currency you can expand to 6 cities and later you can get 8-10 cities and after you get communism you can conquer the whole map. If you dont get communism you can still conquer the whole map, but leave weak cities for your vassals.

 

[civac]

For economy a good guideline is to quickly build four cities and work cottages, then after you get currency you can expand to 6 cities and later you can get 8-10 cities and after you get communism you can conquer the whole map. If you dont get communism you can still conquer the whole map, but leave weak cities for your vassals.

I don't think this is good advice. It may be appropriate on small maps (pangea, medium sea level or something) and deity level. Moreover, it sounds like OP's woes stem exactly from insufficient expansion. Good score early on and then falling massively behind is indicative of that.

On Prince level you can just keep expanding forever. You can have 20+ cities and self-teched currency on turn 100, space allowing of course.

 

[krikav]

[...] it sounds like OP's woes stem exactly from insufficient expansion. Good score early on and then falling massively behind is indicative of that.

Yes, I think so too, this tidbit caught my eye: "I can't find anything to do with the workers, after a while I build all the necessary improvements to the places I want"

So dont give up even if you are behind after 100 turns, once you start warring you will quickly catch up.

This is good though.


For most of my games, I'm dead last in score untill I start bashing in skulls.

 

[Heathcliff]

I don't think this is good advice. It may be appropriate on small maps (pangea, medium sea level or something) and deity level. Moreover, it sounds like OP's woes stem exactly from insufficient expansion. Good score early on and then falling massively behind is indicative of that.

On Prince level you can just keep expanding forever. You can have 20+ cities and self-teched currency on turn 100, space allowing of course.

Im talking generally for your level the expansion pace I wrote is good. Of course if you are a diety level player you can do whatever on prince.
It seems his problem was not lack of expansion but instead not developing and growing the cities enough which you probably are good at and then you can have more cities than what i wrote. Also if you have a commerce rich start you can have more.

but your claim that it is good strategy to have 20 cities before currency on prince is ridicolous and you show should show screenshot where you do that and have a profitable empire.

 

[pigswill]

@Posex. Welcome to CFC. Maybe you could post a save c T100 when you start falling behind.

 

[Stibi-shimi]

... try this out: Build Granaries everywhere, Forges in most places, Libraries in your capital and GP farm, Barracks in a half dozen production cities, and nothing else. ..

What do you think of espionage buildings and jails specifically for war unhappiness?

 

[sampsa]

What do you think of espionage buildings and jails specifically for war unhappiness?

In general, not worth building. Maybe if you are playing a very -focused game, which is probably worth it only on deity. Best cure for war unhappiness is fighting faster, more efficient wars.

 

[Stibi-shimi]

esp seems essential for space race victory, no?

 

[6K Man]

What do you think of espionage buildings and jails specifically for war unhappiness?

I don't like them. If you have unhappy people, use Slavery or Nationhood to turn them into something useful, like units.

Even if you were seriously worried about war weariness, Jails only alleviate 25% of it. Not worthwhile.

 

[pigswill]

WW can really stack up in modern attritional warfare between two large empires, more likely to happen on a huge map. Jails are only real worth building if stacked with Rushmore and Police State

 

[krikav]

Heh, saw I had this in a draft but apparantly I had not posted it in this thread yet, but @pigswill did it before me!
This is what I had:


If war drags on in the lategame, jails are pretty much an essential building in cities you need large (capital, heroic, ironworks and perhaps a few others), As is MtRushmore and police state.
It's also something that you build if you want to play catchup with espionage and tech stealing.
So all in all, very situational!

 

[Fish Man]

esp seems essential for space race victory, no?

Absolutely not.

See here and here for recent examples of how I gained and snowballed from an absolutely dominant position on noble and emperor difficulty, the latter being with a rather difficult boxed-in start. I won space t211 and t236, respectively, on standard speed, without basically a single espionage building built in both. Also, I did it on deity recently here and here.

 

[Gumbolt]

Very difficult to judge your actual game from your initial comments.
Slider is hardly important. Especially on lower levels where 10-11 HA could roll over 2-3 AI. Assuming you are whipping them.
Hardly build markets. Same for CH unless maintenance is 9-15 i cost a turn. On lower levels it shouldn't matter.

I think your issue could be lack of cities, poor city management plus judging expansion by what Ai do on prince/monarch. 3-4 cities by 2000bc is a good aim. 8-10 by 1ad is not impossible either. Focis on key food resources, then chopping, with roads, mines and cottages later.

Learn to grow your capital and know when to use it for a cottage/bureau city with an academy.

Make sure you are using great people to bulb science techs. Beating prince level should not be hard. They likely don't get a second city before 2000bc? If you sit at 4-5 cities all game the AI will keep expanding and eventually become a challenge.

Learn to keep slider at 0% or 100% science. Don't be afraid to crash your economy by over expanding as long as you have pottery and writing. Pottery=cottages. Writing = libraries and scientists.

Do post a save.

 

[Stibi-shimi]

Absolutely not.

See here and here for recent examples of how I gained and snowballed from an absolutely dominant position on noble and emperor difficulty, the latter being with a rather difficult boxed-in start. I won space t211 and t236, respectively, on standard speed, without basically a single espionage building built in both. Also, I did it on deity recently here and here.

Of course, at these rates the opponents aren't going to have the capabilities of performing espionage.