First Prince game, not sure what to do now

[FreudianSlip172]

Hey, everyone, first post.

So I'm playing through my first game on Prince, huge Pangaea map, marathon speed. I'm Persia, and there were 17 other civs when I started... aggressive AI turned on too. (The entire world is a beautiful mess now.)

I got off to a pretty good start, cranked out some fast immortals and took out the Arabians and Dutch before they even got their second cities. (Maybe I should've actually let them build a little for me? Hindsight...) Saladin had the courtesy to invent a religion for me before I took over, which is giving me a little bit of gold now.

Now it's 705 AD and I'm hanging around the top score-wise, but I can't seem to make any progress. I'm almost to knights but I'm still stuck with the same stack of immortals I've been using for 4000 years, and they're hopelessly outclassed by everything.

My empire is strung out in a long line, desert on one side and tundra on the other. To my west I have Justinian, eying Mecca lustily and occasionally making noise. The Romans and French are both east and we're on cordial terms for now. North of me are the Incans, who have chosen to park a stack directly outside Amsterdam.

The Incans are way too friendly with the Romans. Augustus is out ahead right now, he's not busy doing anything, and I don't trust him to sit quietly while I fight the Incans.

I want a domination win, but I feel like I can't move. There are too many threats on all sides to concentrate an offensive army in any one direction, and my empire is too strung out to rapidly shift forces around. I'm on even tech grounds with my immediate neighbors, I'm not losing, but I'm not winning either.

Thoughts?

 

[coanda]

First off, welcome to the forums!

Ok, moving on... here's what I'd recommend you do from this situation. Stop attacking. Get more workers, improve your land, grow your cities. You've got 10 cities, but your population is only about 2/3 of what it could be, and you're working over a dozen unimproved tiles. Also, forges are your friend. You've got gold and silver, and Caesar has spare gems. Cancel your sheep/corn deal (you already have 2 other corn), and trade the sheep for gems instead (you might need to throw in some gold per turn; I'm not sure). A skilled warmonger probably could push through and get a domination win without halting the attacks; I just think it'd be simpler and easier to take a break and come back when you're going cannons vs. rifles (or maybe even cannons vs. muskets if you're quick about it) instead of catapults vs. longbows.

 

[mariogreymist]

I mostly agree with Conada. I don't think "stop attacking" is necessarily the best advice in the world, but it is certainly time to be very selective about attacking anyone. The diplomacy here is complex, but if you have the opportunity to pick off an easy target, I'd suggest you do it. (or preferably, convince them to attack your superior force) I do think you have enough land to get to a fairly long-lived cannon monopoly, and you'll probably be able to close the game out with grens/cannons long before you need to worry about seeing infantry, and perhaps before anyone else even has cannons.

There is one other thing to bring up: civics. Vassalage is a far superior civic to barbarism. If you have few enough troops to make vassalage the more expensive option then you don't have enough troops for the situation here. HR and OR are also far preferable to despotism and paganism.

And a last note: I noticed a CGII, low level general in your army....take care to not let that happen. GGs are best used as medicIII super-healers.