Help me with my shortcomings (Prince level difficulty).

[automator]

I'm getting back into the game after a six month break, and am realizing just how difficult it really is. Wow.

I rock Noble. It's no longer a challenge, even with Aggressive AI and Raging Barbs turned on. But I'm having a heck of a time at Prince. Before I took a play break, I'd won maybe 2 out of a dozen Prince games.

I tend to hit trouble in one of two spots:

1. Not expanding fast enough. That's my usual folly. I get spooked by city maintenance so I stop settling after 3 cities. Then I'm too timid about making my first war, so by the time I've got my six or more axes and a couple archers marching at the AI's cities, they're only a few turns away from upgrading to Maces or even Longbows. So I end up taking one, maybe two cities, before having to call for peace and I'm stuck with a larger, more powerful enemy who is now royally pissed off at me. In these games, I'm usually in the bottom third for scores until I finally quit when the big, bad enemy rushes my spearmen with Knights.

2. The 1500 AD war. The couple times that I was able to get myself over the fear of expansion, I hit the wall around 1500. Most recent game, I was Ragnar. Settled five cities, kept up on developing tiles, hooked up resources early, and even got to build Stonehenge and Pyramids (my capitol city was an early game production powerhouse that would translate to a economic powerhouse easily later in the game). Took out Frederick by warring early with more compact forces. Grabbed a few of Mansa's cities, but left the rest to Kublai Kahn, since we were basically allies, and the rest of Mansa's cities were behind his borders. I kept even/ahead on techs throughout this time, and was on top of the scoreboard. However, to the south of me, Napoleon was growing. Originally, I was going to turn on him after finishing Fred -- he was at the bottom of the scoreboards, and I figured he'd be an easy target. As I busied myself in the west, he'd researched through Knights, started moving into Guns ... and as the 1400s and 1500s hit, he crossed the border. Even by upgrading my promoted units I couldn't do much.


So, my question is, now that I've improved my early game, how do I prevent defeat in the mid-game? (If I survive to late game, I'll win, usually by space race if I'm small or domination if I'm large.) If I hit Pyramids early, I like running Police State so I can churn out an axeman or archer every turn or every other turn. After the first war is over, I like to capitalize on now being huge by switching over to Representation and running a specialist economy for a bit ... but that leads to a reduction in military might that encourages neighbor aggression.

Ideas?

 

[svv]

What units are you using at 1500? After the whole music/philosphy/liberalism thing is settled, I like to go after gunpowder (don't build any new units yet), chemistry (start building grenediers, combat promotions, maybe pinch later), and steel (switch to cannon, city raider promotions). A bunch of grenediers and cannon are pretty formidable; I don't bother going after the techs for rifiling/cavalry for a long while.

The other good thing about steel is that it allows you to build the ironworks, which I like to put in my gp farm to generate great engineers.

After steel, start teching toward assembly line (infantry, pentagon, factories) and industrialism (tanks). Trade or extort everything else.

 

[Meanness]

On Prince, you have some options.

If the map is fairly open, you can land-grab 5-6 cities and simply out-research your opponents with a good economy. You can win the Liberalism race, bee-line to MT, and wipe out an opponent with cav.

If the map is tight, then you simply have to force yourself to go to war early. The key to winning early wars is single-mindedness. Don't get distracted by wonders and/or improvements...just build units. Hook up copper or horses with your second city, and pump out nothing but units until you have a nice stack of 8-10. Cripple one opponent, make peace, then pump out a stack of cats to cripple the next one. Game over.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

The difference between Prince and Noble is that you start behind the AI's - they get advantages you don't. So you have to leverage your strengths.

For example in the Ragnar game. Ragnar is agressive and financial. So what are you doing building the Pyramids? Representation gives you a bonus for running specialists - but why run specialists if you are financial and get huge income from cottages? Aggressive suits early war, so why spend hammers on the pyramids when you could be building axes?

Your opening for Ragnar should probably be something like:

- Research bronzeworking, then head towards pottery to build cottages, then head towards Alphabet to trade (and oppress techs) and then Monarchy (to get Hereditary Rule which will let you run big cities with lots of cottages).

- Build worker, warrior, settler (partly chopped/whipped), settler, barracks in city 1
- Build warrior, worker, barracks in city 2
- Build barracks in city 3

Chop and whip 8 or so axes (all cities build just military) and take over your nearest neighbour. If they have horses add some spears and remove some axes. Keep building reinforcements until the war is over, but use your workers to build cottages on the now cleared land of your capital. At the end you should have at least six good cities and can cottage them to boost your research.

After that you probably need to consolidate your economy for a bit and tech towards construction and code of laws which should set you up for the next war. Then civil service and machinery for the one after that.

I think your game falls down on not optimizing your leaders traits. On Noble you can play any leader in any way without worrying too much about the AI.

You do need to plan on getting at least six cities early to be competitive - which will mean either early war, or rapid expansion, or big culture borders (think creative or industrious).

For the 1500 AD war, you need to consider a couple of things:

- You want a lot of collateral damage units like catapults and later cannon. They allow your middle sized armies to destroy large armies.

- Don't turn your back on an aggressive AI like Napoleon - Napoleon is very effective in the Renaissance period.

- The AI's can promote their units very cheaply - so when they acquire a key military tech like guilds or military tradition their power can grow very quickly and this is often a signal for war. You probably should have built a lot more units and looked easy prey. You can't just build a small number of elite units in this game - you need a significant number of units too. Do you have a couple of military cities (one running HE) that produce nothing but units?

- Cavalry and Knights are the AI's favourite attack units around this time. Pikemen are really good vs Knights so make sure you have a few of these in reserve.

- Generally I try to be first to either Chemistry or Military Tradition - the advantage of using Renaissance units vs Medieval is huge.

 

[automator]

Thanks for the response, especially Invisible ...

I had my last two games messed up -- the Pyramid/Napoleon fiasco was a scrapped Cyrus game.

I'm currently rocking a Ragnar game (it was going pretty well when I made the OP, hence the confusion.) I've now run into the gunpowder-era problem of Vassal states. Had just crippled Hannibal (he and I entered Medieval times neck-and-neck for power, production, size, etc.) after taking out Ramses and, um, someone else. I took a quick break while I waited to upgrade from catapults to cannon. Then invaded to finish Hannibal off. Unfortunately, I was too much for him, and he immediately capitulated to Hyuna -- who had an edge on me in terms of having Riflemen, which he shared with Hannibal. So far, so good -- traded my butt off to get rifles, and have been able to successfully defend against Hyuna's advances while still taking down Hannibals remants.

Which leads to a question: Pikes are great against Knights, but how about an anti Calvary unit? I know Rifles cut them like butter, but they seem quite a bit further down the tech tree, unless you skip on getting cannons until later. As an aggressive player, the 5 to 12 increase in power from cannons is pretty important to me.

 

[vormuir]

There's no anti-Cavalry unit until Riflemen appear. This means there's often a period during which Cavalry rule the battlefield. If your neighbor has Cavalry and you don't... well, it just kinda sucks.

About the best you can do is crank out lots of Pikemen. Two Pikes can usually kill a Cavalry. The first Pike dies (he'd be attacking at something like 10% odds) but wounds the Cavalry enough so that the second one can usually do the job. Since Pikemen cost 60 hammers and Cavalry cost 120, this is a good deal. However, it means you have to keep several stacks of two or three Pikes hanging around, which ramps up your maintenance costs.

Nevertheless, I agree that you'd rather get Cannon. The upgrade in power from Catapults is too big to ignore.


Waldo