Cannot win Prince to save my life

[ANightDude]

So I've been playing the Civ series since Civ3 (a long time) and I have done pretty well on most of them, but of course as the games advanced it became more and more difficult for victory.

I can play the game fine until I reach Prince. Whenever I get there I just have to quit around 1500 - 1700 because I'm behind in technology, low on gold, or weak in military. In all honesty, I feel sort of stupid when I do this level because I'm always on the losing side of history.

So what can I do? I've got low production often (to be honest, I'm not totally sure how to get production to work to my advantage) my cities starve sometimes (no idea how to get food surpluses) I'm only getting as much as 20 GPT, so it's impossible to upgrade and please my citizens. Happiness is almost impossible until I discover Astronomy and other civilizations that I'm able to trade with, and I have to build Wonders like Notre Dame to keep them happy. Also my culture tends to be low, the highest being 30 Per Turn. I'm also a bit lost when it comes to specialists and how they work - I've got an idea but I never feel as if I'm using them to their full advantage, or even correctly.

I usually play as the Iroquois, Russia, and I used to do Rome until I discovered how challenging that empire usually is.

Is there any tips on what I can do? Am I doing anything wrong?

 

[Heerlo]

Do you usually get any luxury resources?Those are important for happiness.Also if you have more than one luxury resource of the same kind they don't give you any additional happiness, so you can sell them and get some good money for them.

Build plenty of farms around cities to give them plenty of food.And you can also build trading posts if you need more money.

If you have enough money to do it, research aggreements can help you keep up in tech.

Connecting your cities with roads also gets you additional gold.

I'm not the best in the world, but I hope this helps some at least.

 

[civplay]

This is pretty easy strat.
Play as France for their extra culture per city

Re-roll untill you have a solid first city with multiple luxury resources you can sell off

build order in capital
!) Scout (search for second and third city sites)
2) monument
3) worker
4) settler
5) library
6) national college

Use liberty to get a free settler around the same time as you start building your settler. Sell luxuries to buy libraries in your outher two cities

There build order should be
1) monument/ buy library
2) archers

You liberty to get free worker. Then start filling out tradition trees and patronage.
Sell luxuries to buy out as many city-states as possible. First friend cs that have luxuries you dont then go in order 1) Culture 2) maritime 3) military

Make sure to get the patronage policy that gives you science from CS allies.

Win in any fashion you want.

Domination: Rush to and Mass an army of longswords into Riflemen into Foreign legion upgraded into mech

Culture: Use tradion to "build" free temples in your 3 or so cities. After you build the NC build the wonder that gives you a free great person plus adds makes them appear more often. Rush through and build culture buildings (Don't do piety. keep with Tradition and patronage, make sure to get the first policy of freedom)

Science: the added science from the CS's should allow you t win on prince w/o RA pretty easy, especially if you use your army to conquer and puppet-city your continent.

Diplomacy: Ally as much CS's as possible, declare war on your chief rival. All your CS's will do the same and make it imposible for them to win through diplomacy.

OK this is one pretty easy winning strat that is quite flexible. Just Settle your second and third city as fast as possible. THen build NC and you'll be golden

 

[dexters]

^ Ditto on the above

Just some general comments

Social Policies: Liberty is the way to go. Free Settler/50% production speed for all future settlers / Free Worker and 1 free happiness per city in your trade network / Basic production boost to all cities and a Free Great Person.

It's a balancer SP in many ways, as most people use the free GA to get an engineer and grab a wonder. It guarantees most Civs a wonder, which is nice.

Early game: build order scout>scout>monument>warrior or if you unlock tradition to legalism, you can skip building temples in your first four cities as you get them for free.

Expand prudently. settler spam is a bad idea. But get to at least 3 cities of your own (not puppets) to be competitive. I usually don't build more than 4 cities of my own with the rest puppets in most games.



Defense: Get some archers in your border cities as you expand. Archer + city bombard can hold off early units fairly effectively until you can get reinforcements in.

Diplomacy: Keep your head down, make friends. Be weary of warmonger civs (Montezuma, France, Germany, Alexander) and cutthroat 'war' happy civs because of their early strong UU (China, Sukhotai)

It should be obvious how the sides lineup, and you'll usually get a cascading friend of friend type alliances going. Try not to DoF with your friends enemies. This is sometimes difficult if you haven't paid attention and they ask for a DoF. I would recommend infoaddict here as they added a tab to let you examine relations /global diplomacy before agreeing to any deals.

Also keep the warmongers at war. Their price for war is reasonable, but it may require 200+ gold, or a luxury you only have 1 off, putting your empire in unhappiness for a while. But it is worth it. It seemed like I never had enough gold in the early game, between buying CS influence and building roads, but bribing the warmongers to contantly war each other or a rotation of civs you deem a threat will make your game much much easier. The AI also get warmonger penalties and denounced while you play mr. nice guy.

I should also say not just warmongers will go to war for cheap. if you see 2 civs fairly close in score and are near or next to each other, there is often the opportunity that one side is willing to war another for almost nothing.

Trading: Don't bankrupt yourself with RA's early, hold your cash for buying CS influence (focus on maritime and cultural - military CS are only useful in rare occasion) ; pick ones close to you who are friendly, neutral, irrational (in that order) ; hostile cs are expensive to hold in the early game. Proximity will help you with quests, like saving their workers, killing a barb camp, or a road to capital.

You can safely start RA's right before you get Pearl Tower (+50% beakers on RA) and Rationalism opener (+50% RA beakers) to get more bang for your back.

Sell open borders for 50 gold in the early game. Free money to finance your wars.

Have fun!

 

[headcase]

I'm not the greatest but here's some advice:

AI's weakness is war (they get boosts on almost everything... yes, even on Prince). Although diplo wins are very much possible on Prince, it's better to build a military and take a few cities. If you have iron, you can do this early on with swordsmen, otherwise you can attack with slightly later units against weaker civs. Rifles, and especially artillery, are fantastic later on if you can keep a tech edge.

Tech is mostly about population, so be bold about expanding early too (having minus happiness is usually necessary so you can claim spots others will take if you don't; growth almost stops but having those pieces of land is well worth it most of the time in the long run).

 

[bonafide11]

The best way to gain an advantage on the AI is through war. Take some cities, raze the bad ones, puppet the good ones, spam trading posts around them, and watch how much more money you'll be making, which can be used to buy units/buildings and bribe city-states. On every difficulty level, war is the most effective way to win and compete with the AI. Happiness can become a problem, but can always be compensated for with buildings, luxuries, and the proper civics.

Use diplomacy right too. Trade your excessive luxuries for other luxuries or gold.

Specialize your cities. At least one early city should be a production heavy military city. Have a gold city, science city, etc.

Don't try to build every wonder, just important ones. You can always steal wonders from opposing civs by taking their cities. Pay attention to who has what wonders too. If China has the Great Wall, you'll have a difficult time breaking through when they have their Cho-Ko-Nus.

 

[dexters]

I'm not the greatest but here's some advice:

AI's weakness is war (they get boosts on almost everything... yes, even on Prince). Although diplo wins are very much possible on Prince, it's better to build a military and take a few cities. If you have iron, you can do this early on with swordsmen, otherwise you can attack with slightly later units against weaker civs. Rifles, and especially artillery, are fantastic later on if you can keep a tech edge.

Tech is mostly about population, so be bold about expanding early too (having minus happiness is usually necessary so you can claim spots others will take if you don't; growth almost stops but having those pieces of land is well worth it most of the time in the long run).

Don't really agree on expansion.

My 2nd city is usually my production/barracks/ war city. I usually try to pick a good hammer location, with hopefully a 3rd luxury, horses, cows, for stables later on, and maybe iron if I'm lucky, though I usually settle my 2nd city before iron.

Although science is tied to pop, negative happiness means no growth, I would grow capital over no growth on 3 whimpy cities. 2 cities early on is usually ok, but your 2nd city needs to have 3rd or 4th lux or stone stones for stoneworks or horses for circus for growth to be sustainable. negative happiness early is bad. It stall growth and you fall behind. I would recommend against early expansion to a 3rd city without the luxuries to support it (lux from a CS ally is also good and will speed expansion). The 1st GA is also crucial in any slingshot, RA dependent strats that need the gold income from that and negative happiness means no GA until late in the game. As for population and science, I still out tech the AI with 1/4 or 1/5 of their population in the end game.

Population as a metric is actually really meaningless in Civ5, because the AI gets such a happiness boost they always have these monster cities.

 

[Mariner91]

Coming from someone who's still playing @ prince but have won multiple times


Try:

India and rush the Garden. Go for Scientific and just have enough military for defense. No more than 4 cities for most of the game (and don't really need more than that).


(I used to love Rome, until I hit 4 games with ZERO Iron... )

 

[chazzycat]

Don't really agree on expansion.

My 2nd city is usually my production/barracks/ war city. I usually try to pick a good hammer location, with hopefully a 3rd luxury, horses, cows, for stables later on, and maybe iron if I'm lucky, though I usually settle my 2nd city before iron.

Although science is tied to pop, negative happiness means no growth, I would grow capital over no growth on 3 whimpy cities. 2 cities early on is usually ok, but your 2nd city needs to have 3rd or 4th lux or stone stones for stoneworks or horses for circus for growth to be sustainable. negative happiness early is bad. It stall growth and you fall behind. I would recommend against early expansion to a 3rd city without the luxuries to support it (lux from a CS ally is also good and will speed expansion). The 1st GA is also crucial in any slingshot, RA dependent strats that need the gold income from that and negative happiness means no GA until late in the game. As for population and science, I still out tech the AI with 1/4 or 1/5 of their population in the end game.

Population as a metric is actually really meaningless in Civ5, because the AI gets such a happiness boost they always have these monster cities.

A good general rule: expand to settle any new unique luxuries you can find.

 

[manu-fan]

I can win on Prince, but find it a slog because of the constant balancing of happiness and gold (especially early on). It seems like more drudgery than fun, so I choose to play Warlord. It suits my play style better because I want to build lots of cities which in turn leads to more change of Iron, luxury resources, more gold, etc.

So, OP, if you really can't win at Prince, or find it a slog, there's nothing wrong with playing Warlord IMHO.

Cheers.