Are you winning at Prince Level? If so, how?

[rgbender62]

I kick ass on Noble level (won 5 out of 5 games: 3 via Space Race, 2 via Domination) but when I shift to Prince level I generally get my ass kicked! Out of the 8 Prince level games I have played I have only won 3 and all of these have been on points (Time victories). The game seems to make a drastic shift between Noble and Prince levels because the strategies that work well on Noble level don't seem to cut it at all on Prince level.

Again my experience is similar to what everyone else is advising. I start off strong and get 4 or 5 cities out there. I push so that I get the essential resources (horses, copper, iron, stone, marble) and I get a decent military up and running. I generally have my research level at 90 to 100 percent and seem to be climbing the tech tree fairly well. With the stone and marble resource you can usually get the Wonders built before your neighbors although you might not get them all unless you get lucky with Great Engineers (go for Pyramids just because they dramatically increase your odds for GE's). In short I seem to be doing pretty damn good and usually am at the top of the heap in ranking. Then it all starts to decline.

The AI's suddenly seem to make huge tech leaps and have 4, 5, 6 techs more than me. I don't know how you get them to trade for tech because they sure as hell never want to trade me except on the most unfavorable terms (2 tech for 1 kinds of deals, or their tech for my tech and a huge amount of cash). Clearly they are trading with each other and doing so on an ongoing basis. This then leads to other unpleasant consequences.

I have noticed that the AI's are VERY agressive when they get a tech advantage over you. If they get to knights before you, they will attack. If they get to cavalry before you, they will attack. If they get to tanks before you, they will attack. So, the situation I seem to always find myself in is that my neighbors get tech advances before I do and then attack me as soon as they can. Usually I can fend them off, but it slows me down and makes the tech problem worse. By the end game the AI's seem to be able to get to Robotics and build Mech Infantry usually about the time I am just getting to first generation Tanks. Which means that my only hope of preventing them from getting a Space Race Victory is to ruthlessly attack them and disrupt their economies. As I noted earlier, all of my victories have been due to preventing the AI's from getting spaceships, not on building my own.

Many of you had good tips and suggestions but what I want to know is how many of you are consistently winning Space Ship Victory at Prince Level. If you can do that, please give us some clues! At Noble level the game seemed as if a variety of strategies were viable and that naked aggression was even "gently" discouraged. At Prince Level the game seems to be all about warfare and trying to screw up the other Civs. Because of the maintenance issue for cities empire building doesn't seem to be a vialble strategy so all I have found that works is "slash and burn" everyone else. Surely there must be more?

 

[larsonwd]

For me, it's all about the start. I play as Elizabeth (English) or Tokugawa (Japanese) and chop like hell. I try to chop just outside my opponents borders so to minimize barb. risk and maximize chopping potential.

Japanese:
Research mining
1) worker
you have 4 turns before bronze working--I usually make a mine
2) worker
Bronze working done, Adopt slavery

English:
Research bronze working
Bronze working done
1) worker
adopt slavery
2) worker

Then with both:
3) settler
city 1: settler, city 2: worker
etc.
i like to have about 3/1 chopping/improvements until the forests are gone. I usually do manual for the first bit, then switch to automatic.

In terms of tech, I research worker production techs, then b-line for currency (more trade routes), then the elite unit requirements, then nationalism, then liberalism.

The strategy is basically to get to a fast start with 8 or so economically productive cities. Skip all religions and extraneous techs and only go for what matters. If you get lucky and are keeping up with tech and at the same time have a production bonus resource (stone, marble), it is worth it to divert research for 1 or 2 techs to get a good wonder (stonehenge, pyramids, oracle, lighthouse). Then, once you get the unique unit, become mr. aggressive and draft/produce military like crazy. You should have no trouble taking over a good chunk of the world (sometimes i keep going for domination or I will hold back for a space race victory if its too annoying).

 

[QuikPik]

I just started playing on Prince level and am in the middle of two games. Doing quite well in both of them as I have changed my strategy a little bit from Noble. As the previous poster stated, forego an early religion. You can pick up one later on if you'd like. In both games (Persia and India) on a small map (Lakes), I declared early war on my closest neighbor. I killed off their satellite cities and pillaged everything around their capital. This pretty much crippled him and let me expand at a more conservative pace. Also build cottages early. I've run into some economic problems and if I had built these sooner I would have been much better off.

At this point I hunkered down having about 5 cities and my closest neighbor in rebuild mode. I make it a priority to get Code of Laws and Alphabet at this time. Code of Laws will allow me my next assault wave and keep captured cities or expand my empire further into the unclaimed areas. Once you get Alphabet, hope that you are the first one to research and start trading with other Civs to backfill the techs you wanted. If at all possible, try not to part with Alphabet unless you get a really good deal for it. In one of my games, I got a 3 for 1 and couldn't pass it up.

Once I get a few catapults, I will go and finish off the civ that I had put a hurting on earlier. By now, you should have 3-4 more cities than the highest civ scorewise. You should be able to fend off in the tech race area as long as you expand a little bit as you go. That's about as far as I have played so far in my Prince games.

 

[MattJek]

I started my first prince game last nite. Im currently in last place scorewise with Asoka. This is probably due to the large number of barbarians I had to deal with early on in the game which kinda hampered my growth. However, i managed to thward Caesars attempt at invading me an and Currently at war with Elizabeth who is on a different continent. Most of the larger civs are 'pleased' with me thought and Egypt keeps giving me techs for free

 

[The Duff Man]

You need to use the benefits of whatever leader you are playing.

I am playing right now as Greece and using slash and burn but have managed to keep up with techs.

Get great library. This is key. I saved most forests and chopped EVERY forest in my city radius to make sure I got it. Two free scientists! I built a library in my city and have enough food to run two more scientists (with library). Boom. 12 beakers per turn from these 4, plus 12 great people points (doubled to 24 because I am philisophical).

I was pumping out Great Scientists in record time. That is without Parthenon or National Epic. I used only 1 scientist for an academy in my capital. The rest of my cities were focussed on the war effort so the others I used for a free tech.

I wiped the Spanish, English and Malinese from my continent. By the end I was bankrupt and had to start razing. It took me a good while to get things in order with courthouses and forbidden city. By this time I found out that the other 3 civs were on another continent and were all well ahead of me in techs. DOH

Keep at it, great people giving me techs and cities switching to infrastructure. I constantly checked what techs the other 3 had. They were usually the same (because they all traded with each other). I tried to get a tech that none of them had then build up some gold. I could usually trade it to at least two of them, getting 2 more techs out of it. Basically my great person was giving me 3 techs.

I am now into the modern age and have just passed the AI in techs. My civ is at least 2.5 times the size of any of the remaining three and I am running at about 80% research so I should easily be able to keep ahead.

Now I'll send some infantry across the ocean to raze the lands of the enemy, slowing them down further (focussing on high income tiles such as gold resource) They have riflemen, so my infantry should be able to take out a few tiles each before they get overwhelmed.

 

[Magnumaniac]

Instead of using your early workers to chop, get to Pottery and lay down cottages on your grassland / flood plains immediately - the extra commerce they will generate over the course of the game far outweighs the short term benefit of a few hammers. Do this for your first 2-3 cities (and build libraries & markets in these cities ASAP) and watch your opponents disappear in the dust of your tech advancement.

Trade techs only when it is beneficial to you e.g. only you have a pretty meaningless tech like Democracy and a few AIs have different techs you skipped and are willing to trade - trade Democracy to each of them and effectively get 3/4+ techs in return for one of yours. Then trade it to the remaining AIs for whatever gold they will offer, or even give it to them just to improve relations.

My current (1st) game on Monarch has seen me found 5 of the 7 religions and build all but 2 early wonders. It's about 200BC, I'm researching Gunpowder and no-one else even has a longbowman yet. Cottages rock, and the sooner they are there, the sooner they become towns. Works with a non-financial leader too, you just won't be quite so far ahead. Can't say whether it's OK for Emp / Imm / Deity levels yet.

 

[Divi Filus]

In my last game on Prince I research Bronze Working straight away, discovered copper next to my capital, chopped out 4 Axeman and eliminated Montezuma (my nearest neighbour before he could get a settler out... Sweet)

The early war got me off to a rocket of a start...

 

[Ex-Cop]

You got to go to war early and relentlesely on Prince. Dont make peace until complete genocide is achieved. Thats what I found. That is what civilized nations do.

 

[cleverhandle]

It's awfully hard to give advice without seeing a save game. Any of what the above posters said could be accurate, or it could be something you're already doing. Try playing up to the point where you just start to feel the AI snowballing and then post a save game here. You'll find that many very helpful people will study your game and you give much more useful advice than we can with the limited information you've provided us so far.

 

[GenericKen]

One thing about most good games is that there are often many possible paths to victory, which is why you're getting such varied advice.

Early cottages for big cities net you buttloads of commerce in the long run. Forest chopping gets you many hammers early, which actually allows you to build settlers more quickly as well, which is also good in the long run. It comes down to whether you can formulate a coherent plan according to the knowledge of the game rules.

I know I personally got a lot better at chess by reading chess puzzles, and I got a lot better at Civ4 by reading many of the succession games in the succession game forum. A lot of the ones by Sirian are a blast. They'll help you recognize what works, and they're pretty entertaining to boot.

 

[handy900]

Try a smaller map and as you gain experience increase the map size. Building cottages and chopping a couple of early settlers also helps get you off to a fast start. Then chop some good military and capture nearby cities.

 

[tempuraki]

my first win in prince was a space victory (roosevelt, huge, continent). i did it without going to war with anyone. I was lucky to start off at the corner of a large continent, with only germany next to me. I was friendly with fredrick early on, and converted him to taoism after i discovered philosophy so he never bothered me.

I didn't build the oracle or great library, and was behind in tech for the first 1/3 of the game. the key for my science comeback was to get alphabet asap. I completely ignored the religious branch of the tech tree and traded for them after i got alphabet. the F4 button really helps me visualize my standing in the tech race, and also allowed me to carefully plan out what tech to trade, with whom to trade, and get the maximum value for one tech. also important is to get techs that AI are not likely to reasearch; check out what the AI has and research something from a different branch. if you find that a tech you are researching is discovered by someone else, it might be better to switch to something else if you haven't put too much points into it.

my first wonder was pyramid, which let me switch to representation gov right away to help research. i gave up on most of the early wonders because i have no stone/marble, and i don't know the religious techs anyway. but I did build all the later wonders after I got a tech lead and the kremlin. i turn off my research for a while, switch to universal suffrage and bought all the wonders, even the space elevator and the three gorges dam. i wasn't the first or even the second to finish the apollo program, but it didn't matter because I had all the techs needed for parts and 10 high production cities (thanks to the dam) to built them.

 

[R3dKnight]

1. turn off tech trading.
2. pick romans.
3. bronze-working -> iron working.
4. conquer 25% of map before gunpowder.
5. decide what kind of victory you want.

with tech trading it's a little more challenging but so far i haven't seen much resistance from the AI against the Praetor march.

The start up objective is simple: find the nearest civ, capture one of his worker to cripple, run back to town, build second town. build barracks. Produce Praetorians with City Raider promotion and start rampaging. I didn't build more than 2 settlers in my current game and already I have control of over 10 cities mostly conquered. Keep 1 archer and 1 axemen on garrison on every city. add another archer on border towns. just keep pushing praetorians until you get tired.

When u see longbowmen or +60% defence it's time to add catapults, otherwise promotion to City Raider fixes almost everything. The only thing that can stop you is mass catapults + axemen but that can be remedied with a little stack spreading and good terrain placement +25%-50% defence will win you most encounters if he choose to attack you.

Let his axemen pillage your border towns as your Praetor forces march to their capital, pillaging copper/iron sources as you go along. Sooner or later, you will wipe a civ off history books and run into -20 gp per turn. That's cue for Code of Laws and a little bump down on the research funding. Slow down a bit on that Preatorian spamming. Don't worry too much about growth and ALWAYS link up those luxury resources, I never built any happiness generator, choosing to rely on Hereditary rule bonus garrison = Happiness and Luxury resources to keep the smiley face. Also, pick a city wayyyyy behind your front line as commerce centre with cottages surrounding it , preferably near a river. This town will make nothing but commerce. Even after it exhausted its build of commerce booster (Market etc) it will produce wealth. This will be the 'sponge' to your losses, because in my experience, courthouses won't be enough to absorb those Praetorian stacks.

Your bread and butter combo of praetorian and catapults will last until Knights come into play, add a dash of Pikemen into the mix if u can, otherwise just bear with it and take the losses like a man or fight fire with fire (read: another Knight). Sooner or later you will notice that you do not need to replace the dead soldiers, instead you emphasize on replacing catapults, since firaxis says suiciding them is more efficient. Bombard till 0. Sacrifice a couple of catapult for collateral dmg, Praetorians march in against half dead defenders. Win. Capture. Wait for siege equipment. Proceed. Rinse n Repeat.

By the time Praetorians are obsolete, it will be the era of Macemen. But hey what do you know, you still can upgrade those vets to Macemen. They will not be forgotten after all!

 

[DangerousMonkey]

The key to the higher difficulty levels is understanding that the AI gets bonuses that you don't. This means that all things being equal (as in simmilar territory size and territory productivity) the AI will win. This means you need to make early gains through sound millitary strategy and empire management. If you play it right you'll be in a highly dominant position by the middle ages so that you can match the AI's bonus production through the sheer size of your empire.

There are two types of early game strategies: Those that loose on higher difficulty levels/multiplayer, and those that take advantage of Worker Chop.
There are articles about many different variations of this strategy on the forums, but this is the jist of it: Get Bronze Working right away, build a worker, use that worker to chop a forest to gain a bunch of hammers to build another worker or a settler fast, expand, repeat. You can also chop to pump out a bunch of millitary units to rush your opponent and capture cities instead of building your own.

The acceleration that the Worker Chop strategy gives you early on will put you lightyears ahead of an AI opponent, or a human opponent that doesn't use it, and you'll be able to walk all over them, either by pumping out settlers at an incredible rate or by taking cities. If you manage your expansion properly (i.e. don't go to fast and crush yourself with maintinence costs) you'll be able to put yourself in such a good position early on that a space race victory will be easy to get in the late game.

 

[Draax]

Lots of good advice here. I'm "graduating" from Prince today. I realized it was time to move up from prince when I won a space race while controlling half of pangea and nuking the poo out of Isabella just because she's always a snot to me in any game I play.

Anyway, the only thing I haven't seen mentioned is that you need to focus on your UU. With few exceptions, your military will never be relatively stronger than it is when your UU first becomes available. Use that. Plan several techs ahead so that when your UU is available, you can pop off a dozen of them in just a few turns and eliminate a civ. On Prince you're usually sitting pretty if you take over another civ quickly. Speed is key, however. One game my redcoats took too long taking out Petey and Julius beat me to the moon.

Another tendency I have is one war per era, roughly. Win one war with axes/swords/spears. Win the next with knights/maces/pikes/cats. Next with rifles/cav/cannon. So forth and so on. More than one war with the same type of units can often set you so far back in your tech that you cannot recover. At least that's how it's seemed to me.

Oh and after your rifle war, it's time to decide on domination or space race (never have I ever won culture or UN ). Make your decision and drive hard to it.

 

[Astax]

Its easy to counter the production bonus by using chopping. You cant really counter the stupid tech bonus except for lot of cottages. But even then you have to trade tech a lot otherwise the AI will blow you away AI will have bigger citties than you atleast at first Especially since you need more cottages :/ Early grainary might help too. If you can whipe someone out its a good idea

 

[Divi Filus]

The AI builds WAY too many farms... Build cottages to keep up and try to get growth bonus where possible (ie; Hanging Gardens).

Think about EVERY decision, be ruthlessly efficient, get Democracy early (for US, EMAN, FS combo)... You should easily dominate on Prince...

Skip the techs you don't need (ie; if you aren't planning to build Horse Archers, don't research it)... Only build what will HELP you (ie; don't build a Library in a city only producing a couple beakers.... Always think cost/benefit.

 

[rgbender62]

Since I first posted, I have played 2 half games and 2 complete games out at Prince level (sleep, who needs sleep). Both of the finished games were Space Race victories. The crucial difference between these games and my earlier games was the effective use of cottages. I already had the chop\build\rush game down but clearly was neglecting the cottage game. That small shift in my game had HUGE repercussions in the late mid and end game. In both of my finished games I completely dominated the AI's. So, how much harder is Monarch level?

 

[DrJambo]

One thing I noticed is that a war is usually inevitable on Prince level. Somewhere along the way one of the AI civs will race ahead on the tech front and this is pretty much guaranteed to be the civ who remains the most peaceful throughout. Because the space race is high on the AI agenda, it's the peaceful ones and not the warlike ones that you have to watch.

If you can get some good land early on and are fortunate to be placed beside a smaller civ then use that to your advantage and somewhere around the swordsman/catapult era capture a few of his major cities! Not only does this cripple him long term but it leaves the rest of his ailing empire ripe for pickings later on.

I find religion and in particular founding an early religion fairly unimportant at the higher difficulty levels. Instead, adopt a nearby civ's religion and when the opportunity's right, take the holy city by force. Hopefully by this stage they'll have done most of the groundwork for you and indeed used a Great Prophet to build the shrine!

 

[Astax]

Monarch is pretty frikin hard :/