Help on Prince level...

[Uvtha]

Well, I've been playing on prince level lately since I can beat the level below it fairly easy, and I just cant seem to get anywhere. I can start out pretty well, but then after a while, the opposition starts to rocket ahead of me, and before I know it I'm in last or second to last place, points wise.

I'm more of a peaceful player, and on my last game all was going well, I had avoided wars from several cranky opponents but then the leader starts dropping cities every turn just sucking up land I had planned on taking, but couldn't afford, at the time. So I start to struggle trying to get any of the remaining property, but it seems like its too late, I'm loosing money, I'm all the sudden in last place, and like 1000 points behind.

I can do a bit better and hang in on water maps, but I just cant do it on large land maps.

So its clear my old methods just wont work. Is it possible to not instigate war on this level and still compete? Or at least not a ton of it?
I usually try to have one cottage city, one produce city, and if possible one food city going with specialists early on, then try to expand new cities suiting to the location, I keep the slider on as much tech as I can afford, try to chop to speed up things that seem important... dunno, it seems I'm clearly not expanding enough, so how can I afford to do so at the same rate the AI does? I start racking up -20 a turn after I get like 6 cities going... I must be doing something wrong.

Its just weird cause I usually just make enough military to keep the AI from running me over, so most of my time is spent on improving cities. Am I just adding too many extraneous buildings? How many religions should I go for, or is it situational?

Well... any help would be appreciated, or I may have to move back a level from frustration. =P

 

[slobberinbear]

Welcome to the forums, Uvtha.

I feel your pain about peaceful expansion. I am a Builder by nature too, and the idea of expanding peacefully is appealing to me, too.

Your post is really about city maintenance -- it is getting the better of you, so much so that the AI is beating you in the land grab phase of the game.

To overcome city maintenance (and the AI's inherent advantages, starting at Prince difficulty), we must either find a way to "power through" it by making more money or find a way of reducing the cost.

Here are some common solutions (in no particular order) to the problem: "How can I keep the AI from expanding into my land without bankrupting myself?"

* Block the AI with good city placement, so that you have a back area that he can't easily settle
* Research Code of Laws and build courthouses to reduce maintenance
* Research Currency for trade routes and build marketplaces in your commerce cities
* Research Calendar and improve tiles into Plantations for extra resources
* Secure city sites that have lots of commerce potential, particularly gold, silver, gems, and sites on rivers.
* Found one or more religions, build the holy shrine with a great prophet, and spread the religion(s)
* Raise the happiness in your cities with civics, luxury resources, and religion. Bigger cities have a higher commerce potential than smaller cities.
* Go ahead and expand beyond your comfort zone a little. Just make sure you have workers ready to improve commerce tiles and are researching technologies to help you make money or spend less money.

I suspect that you are indeed making too many buildings and not enough workers and settlers and military units.

The game favors expansion, either "horizontally" (new cities) or "vertically" (making your current cities bigger). If you focus exclusively on the former, you'll go bankrupt from city maintenance. If you focus exclusively on the latter, you'll miss key resources and get out-produced fairly quickly.

And finally, remember that your score is an amalgamation of your population, techs researched, wonders built, and land area. In your case, the low score is likely telling you that you have a low population and land area. Normally the score is a bit misleading, but here I think it is sending a message.

 

[Belisar]

First, welcome to CFC

On topic:
The key to expansion is increasing commerce and lowering maintenance.
You mentioned city-specialisation which is good but in general, 1 out of 3 cities is not a good ratio for your commerce cities. If you are running a CE (using cottages), usually the majority of the cities specialise on commerce and a few on production.
Try to get good sites for them like commerce increasing ressources and rivers and grassland (and coast if financial)
Get CoL and run courthouses, get currency for the additional trade and the markets.
Sign Open Borders with the AI to get foreign trade routes in your cities.
Later, when your science-slider remains high, you can run a specialist-city with a lot of merchants and wall-street.
If you get a religion (usually easy at Prince-level), build the shrine and send missionaries (your own cities and the AI)

Checkout the strategy article forum for "Hybrid Economy", a nice guide for specialising your cities. There are also a lot of other interesting articles.

A final note: If you post a screenshot and a save, more detailed advice could be given.

x-post with sb

 

[nullspace]

Well, I've been playing on prince level lately since I can beat the level below it fairly easy, and I just cant seem to get anywhere. I can start out pretty well, but then after a while, the opposition starts to rocket ahead of me, and before I know it I'm in last or second to last place, points wise.

Make sure that you're active in diplomacy. Trade techs often in particular. If you don't want to war, it can also be useful to drive a wedge between other civs by paying them to cancel deals, start wars, or switch religions. This will slow their research speed, and reduce their tech-trade partners.

I'm more of a peaceful player, and on my last game all was going well, I had avoided wars from several cranky opponents but then the leader starts dropping cities every turn just sucking up land I had planned on taking, but couldn't afford, at the time. So I start to struggle trying to get any of the remaining property, but it seems like its too late, I'm loosing money, I'm all the sudden in last place, and like 1000 points behind.

Settling new cities is usually worth it even if it forces you to lower your science spending. The territory you control is a large part of your score, so that's probably why you're in last place. Research currency and code of laws early on, with those two techs, it is fairly easy to make any city profitable. And use more cottages and specialists if your science rate gets really low.

I can do a bit better and hang in on water maps, but I just cant do it on large land maps.

So its clear my old methods just wont work. Is it possible to not instigate war on this level and still compete? Or at least not a ton of it?

Winning without war is possible, but it is a useful tool, especially when you are unable to settle enough land. If you completely refuse to fight, you should settle very aggressively. It will slow your tech in the short run, but you need a lot of land to compete in the long run.

I usually try to have one cottage city, one produce city, and if possible one food city going with specialists early on, then try to expand new cities suiting to the location, I keep the slider on as much tech as I can afford, try to chop to speed up things that seem important... dunno, it seems I'm clearly not expanding enough, so how can I afford to do so at the same rate the AI does? I start racking up -20 a turn after I get like 6 cities going... I must be doing something wrong.

I'm not sure what is going wrong here. If that is -20 at 0% science, then you need to be focusing on commerce much more by working gold mines, rivers, coast, cottages, and things like that. Or running merchants. If that's -20 at a high science %, then that's expected. Lower the science rate when you have to, research the important techs first, and trade techs. A save from this point in the game would be very useful to get better advice.

Its just weird cause I usually just make enough military to keep the AI from running me over, so most of my time is spent on improving cities. Am I just adding too many extraneous buildings? How many religions should I go for, or is it situational?

Well... any help would be appreciated, or I may have to move back a level from frustration. =P

I think that founding a religion is only worthwhile if you make an effort to spread it to several neighbors by building the shrine early and making missionaries. Instead, you can focus of other development, wait for religions to spread to you, and then switch to a religion (or none at all) based on who you want to be friends with.

I hope that helps.

 

[triacontahedron]

The only way to win in prince and above is War then Diplomacy then War again. Basically higher difficulty level more war is required. Diplomacy is crucial because it lets you win wars. If you see somebody getting ahead in tech or score make them fight somebody else. When AIs fight they are wasting resources that is they are slowing each other and this will let you get ahead. The most pleasant sight for me on the diplomatic screen is red lines.

This is long term strategy but at the start of a game the goal is to wipe out one of the neighbors. In other words rush with axes is pretty much required. Of course, if there is no neighbors or copper you have to come up with some other plan. I usually start with researching towards BW and getting 2 workers and a settler. 2nd city should be places near copper after this chop/whip 10 or more axes, kill your neighbor. Next: get 2-3 production cities and >5 cottage cities, monarchy or
representation from pyramids. The second war usually should be on the way after you get maces/cats though if there is juicy neighbor crash him with swords.

One of the cities should produce units all the time (unless it builds forge or upgrade structures.), second production city builds wonders and units right before and during war. Cottage cities must work cottages all the time, at most one pop is allowed to work production square. Create GP city only if you have a plot with lots of food resources 3-4, there is no need to rush and build this GP on the other hand cottages require time to grow so settle these towns as soon as possible.

 

[weimingshi]

The only way to win in prince and above is War then Diplomacy then War again.

Not really, peaceful wins like diplomatic, cultural, can be achieved with not much problem at emperor level.

What kind map do you play? If you play continent or any map with decent water around, and you happen to start off the coast, one very easy way to ensure city building rush and not tank your research is build great light house.

Get couple open border agreement with AI's along the coast and make sure you discovered all the coast tiles that lead to their cities, this will enable you to do coast trading with them. Once you built great light house, any new coastal city you build, will pretty much bringing in more commerce than it costs to maintain from the get go. This will allow you to expand pretty much freely even before you get to currency.

If you really plan to go for peaceful game, be a wonder whore, grab all you can. When you start out build as little military unit as you can, you want to plan a bit and have 1 worker out just after you get bronze working, so you can start chopping right away, chop at least 2 other workers then a settler. after that just concentrate on wonder building at your capital. Build more workers, settlers or military units with other cities. My general rule for worker is start out with 3, after that worker should equal the number of cities I found. At prince level, if you can secure stone and marble, you can pretty much build 90% of wonders. use the great persons to pop techs. The more important early wonders are, great light house, artemis temple, pyramid, parthenon, great library, oracle, apostolic palace, if you can secure marble, you can pretty much build them all in your capital city, if you can't secure marble, you can still build 2/3 of them.

To have a healty economy, get currency tech early, and open up border to all the possible civs, trade income do make a big difference, and trade your extra resources for gold per turn, even if its only 1 gold per turn, still better than nothing. BTW you should be able to found the later 5 religions with no problem if you built all those wonders in your capital. Holy cities can be located all in one city, theres a formula about holy city placement, the most dominant factor is # of religion present in a city, so if you manage to spread newly founded religion to all your cities and make all cities have same # of religion before you discover next religion, you have a big chance of founding it in you original holy city. I managed to found 4 religion in one city on emperor, build a wall street and 2 corps there and I'm swiming in gold.

 

[Killmister]

Hi all, i also just started at prince and i would like to add some questions
1. What's the AI bonuses after noble
2. When i have to build cottage city and how it must be constructed to increase my money.
3. How can i increase GP birth except pacifism civic and wonders

Well, i've never used cottage cities on noble, in early game i prefer to increase my population with heredary rule and build some merchants, while i am collecting enough recources to adopt representation.

 

[Uvtha]

I think I am seeing some of the mistakes I'm making and why my score is getting low. I really never work diplomacy as much as I should, I always mean to then get absorbed in fighting people off heh.

And I'm not a total peace kind of person, usually ill attack early on when its just me and one other leader in a small location, and also when people war me I tend to try and give it back to them a little before peacing out.

I usually like to play either archipelago and medium and small cause I like to use navy and explore the waterways, and I also do highlands often, which seems the most challenging.

I will try out some of the advice tonight as see how that goes.

Thanks again for the welcome and the advice!

 

[slobberinbear]

Uvtha: be careful about relying on your score as an indicator of your success in the game. The score does not account for many things, including your strategic situation and size of your army. Similarly, don't be lulled into a false sense of security about a neighbor simply because he has a lower score.

For these reasons, I sometimes turn off the score display on the lower right.

@Killmister:

1. At higher levels, the main AI bonuses are progressively higher research and production multipliers.
2. There is no requirement that you build a cottaged city. If you do, though, try to put them on a river with grassland tiles so that you get the bonus commerce and sufficient food. You will probably still need a farm or two and a mine or two for hammers. If you are relying on the cottage cities to generate a lot of your income, I would start them as soon as possible.
3. Great People come from Great Person Points. Great Person points come from wonders (and some other buildings) and specialists and are multiplied by certain leader traits, wonders/buildings, and civics. If you don't build a lot of wonders, try setting up a "Great Person Farm," which is a city that has a lot of farms and food sources that grows large and uses its food surplus to run multiple specialists. This works best with Caste System and Representation civics, which gives you lots of flexibility and bonus research for each specialist.

 

[Killmister]

slobberinbear many 10x I have one more question. Is the watermill (with state property) the best improvement and if the city is not situated near by river, can i increase the production with mines and workshops and just build wealth. The reason for that question is that if someone declare war i can easy switch from wealth to army production, what's your opinion about this?

 

[weimingshi]

slobberinbear many 10x I have one more question. Is the watermill (with state property) the best improvement and if the city is not situated near by river, can i increase the production with mines and workshops and just build wealth. The reason for that question is that if someone declare war i can easy switch from wealth to army production, what's your opinion about this?

Watermill is the most "balanced" improvement even without state property. My rule of thumb is build watermill as much as possible, only exception is in those specialized cities. About build wealth in a city, it is the most inefficient way of using a city's production. It is only recommended in 2 conditions, you built all the possible buildings you can build at time and don't need more military units or you need to get out of a big temporary financial hole for whatever reason or you absolutely need to get that next tech before AI does or you are close to a culture victory, I guess thats 4 reasons. Frankly, if you got nothing to build in a city and you don't need that critical temporary boost to get something done, its way better to stock pile up military units and go kill somebody than build wealth.

 

[Uvtha]

On my latest game with the advice I as so far able to stick up in the top with the high scorers, but sadly louis got a big island to himself and went buck wild, thus I must attack my neighbors to gain some land.

But its going well so far. Thanks again.