I usually play Warlords difficulty because in Prince I have never enough happiness for early expansion.
Believe it or not, last game I tried was on Prince... man, the gap between it and Warlords is so much frustrating ! While I had only 2 cities (TWO CITIES !!!) Everyone hated me and two AIs declared war on me in the same turn. the only thing that I did before was declaring war to Siam which was overexpanding towards me, preventing me to set my third city. I razed its 8 strenght city with one pike and two legions.
Later in the game, Siam were overexpanding as well, and conquered Russia which were overexpanding as well. When i stopped the game, Siam had nearly every russian cities, capital included.
I tried up to catch in science, building universities, and finally public schools in EVERY city, no matter, Siam could upgrade its units into rifles before me, and its rifles into infantry before me. I was aiming a science victory (space ship) In those conditions, I just quited.
Now I really wonder what is the famous "improving" bit people in this topic is about... I have more than 700 hours playing, most in Warlords (easy victories - I don't take the pain to complete the game, what I prefer is the start of the game with its flavor and feeling resources are important), and I still can't bare Prince difficulty, although I already won in this mode by the past.
Because I don't feel there is enough space into "improving" in that game, indeed it is streamlined to death, you haven't much choice well it seems like it to me at least. If improving is reading the fanatics posts about how to not raze cities because you will be declared war by everybody, I don't think it's improving, it's just cheating, well, not, but kind of, technically (let totally aside the moral aspect of it). It's not playing the game as it as we have it in front on us, but playing it the way a calculator would do. And playing like that, is just not fun to me.
