Help - Warlord = Easy, Prince = Impossible

[Nutteria]

Ok few things I liked at the OP files :

He does seemingly ok job at building improvements and citys.Could be better but not bad for a starter.His army in general is ok too.A bit more "AI-ish" for my taste(read ton of pikes everywhere ) but what is really lacking in all his games is the fact that he is trying to be everywhere with his civ.

He wants a decent army while going for above average culture and still want to be reasonably happy while keeping 5-6 Citys.And as a result he sacrificed the only two things that matter the most in the game esp. on the earlier difficutlies(and even more so on the higher ones when using certain strats ICS I am looking at you) aka science and money.Without science and money you can`t have the rest of the stuff and in general you have your hands tied to do anything "extra".

Also remember this - don`t be fooled by the fake glamour of the Wanders.They can help but I have to disapoint you and say that most of them are worthless in general esp. if you are going with your jack of all trades thing I see in your games.

As an end of post tip :

Try to specialise.For example you start your first 40-50 Turns and have some overview of the map the surrounding civs and city state.STOP RIGHT THERE.Don`t do anything but just look at the map and the possition you are in and think about what do you want to do in the long term.Only if you have a Strategy (eg I want to kill stuff) you proceed with the next thing.HOW am I going to do that in the near future? Then the answers will start runnin.Say you want to kill stuff and you see you have some good hills with river nearby.Good go there and find a new city that will produce those units.To conquer you need strong army.See what you can research and prioritise.Do you really need Sailing? or Currency? or you really need those horses for chariots and horsemen.Also Do you need iron working at all when you see your opponents army? or whould you rather switch to writing to boost your science so you wont fall behind.

Its a long tip I know but the TLDR version is whenever you are insecure hold on for a minute and just think it through.Hell come to the forums and lurk some guides to see if you do things right.REMEMBER INFORAMTION IS KEY! Obtain it and soon enough it will turn in to knowledge

 

[Methos]

I'm curious if there are others here who are having trouble moving beyond Settler, Chieftain, and Warlord difficulty level? If so, I was considering starting a training succession game if enough players are interested. We only need between three and five players, but I'd prefer people who stick to the easiest levels and consider Prince to be too difficult.

If you prefer not to publicly post your desire to play, then you can PM me.

 

[CrazyCelt]

Nah, Mostly struggling on Emperor. Trying the ICS way, not sure if I like it, but it is the first time I am having a healthy economy. Last night 3 of the civs (I am playing on standard map) just declared war on me. Still fighting it out.

As to the new guy. If you are having issues like this. Try doing the cultural victory on a huge map with only one or two AI civ's to give you some space. The Civs in this game love to war, but you can make a quick buck from trades.

Learn how the game plays out on that difficulty. Also I found that as peaceful I want to be in a game, for some reason I always end-up waring a bit. Things I would suggest would be to own your continent first. Wipe out the CIV's and leave the city-states. Try Germany, or Russia as a CIV, as they have some good civ abilities that will help you on the Prince difficulty.


Also I would not say winning by points is actually winning... Try doing a conquest victory. This will help you in building armies, defending your cities, and managing money, AI trades etc.

Read some of the stories in the forum. See if you can repeat their games on lower difficulties e.g. Prince.

GL man.

 

[SnuggilyD]

The biggest issue to me based on that screen shot is population...it appears as though the majority of your cities are struggling to grow, and without that extra population you can't work additional tiles to bring in more gold, and you don't increase your science output.

Early in the game you want to try and make sure your cities are growing at a reasonable rate, even if you take a hit to production. Food resources are important early in the game.

Also, avoid building wonders that aren't super useful for your victory type. In this case the Great Wall, which is actually not that great a wonder at all.

In general I find the best way to stay focused in a game is to decide on my victory condition before I even start the game, and then pick the best leader to achieve that victory. Theres nothing wrong with taking an advantage right from the start.

 

[gornard]

I'm not the best player, i find prince easy enough and king pretty challenging. But I'll give you my tips anyway:
-First city. I like to try and get to the medieval age pretty quick, the tech tree allows you to do this without too much trouble. First of all i build a scout, then a worker, settler, warrior, settler. Looking around you will probably be near some kind of luxery resource, your first research should be whatever lets you exploit it: trapping, mining, calender. Get that taken care of and then go for pottery and then writing and finally philosophy. If you grabbed trapping i think civil service may be available, don't research it yet! After your second settler your capital should be free to build the great library (the AI has never beaten me to it if i rush to writing) usually for about 20 turns or less. The great library will give you a free tech which you can spend on civil service (or theology if its not available), you'll suddenly be in the medieval age with a farming boost (and a few other benefits from getting to this age early) and you can upgrade your warriors to pikemen. From here research what you like.

-The rest of your empire. Build a monument first in each new city. At the least, each city should have a library, Colosseum, market and monument (i like to build temples everywhere and banks as well) After the cities have grown a bit (you should have befriended a maritime state as soon as possible) make one focus in science and pick another to focus on production (use specialists wherever possible). Make sure each new city is based on a new luxury or resource.

-Conquest. Conquered cities should only be kept if they have a resource/luxury nearby or for strategic reasons. If they don't just raise them or liberate them if you can. Keep them as puppets for as long as you can, if you need an extra city to pump out units, make sure you have surplus happiness and annex a puppet. You'll need the excess to cover the unhappiness untill you build a courthouse.

As someone already mentioned, don't sit your units on the border, put them on hills and garrison border cities with artillary. The initial shock is the AIs best chance of winning, so lead them into your territory and take them out, when you have thinned out the main army, then you can move in and take out the cities.

 

[Centerfinger]

Thanks for all the comments. Here is another save file that is 250 years before the screenshot.

View attachment Washington_0290 AD-1350.Civ5Save

The Washington game was a mess from the get go. The large patch of desert really sucked, but I had to head south to get the silver. I wasted a bunch of time trying to go for the good wonders and was beat to the punch by a couple of turns so a lot of time was wasted. Siam was friendly the majority of the game and I wasn't worried about him spreading all over my future territory, but then he started moving quick. About the time of the first save I knew I was in trouble. I tried for a quick expansion and wasted all my funds on purchasing units. I figured I had enough units to get a couple of his cities, but then realized I was to far behind in techs and military and he stomped all over me.

The workers (automated) were pissing me off too. They build trading posts, things are looking ok, Washington gets hungry so they turn all the trading posts into farms. I have since tried to handle the workers manually to micro manage things a bit better.

I started another Prince game last night with Russia and things seem to be going good. I'm doing what I did in civ4 and going for rapid expansion. I'll try and get a screen shot when I get back home.

I'm curious if there are others here who are having trouble moving beyond Settler, Chieftain, and Warlord difficulty level? If so, I was considering starting a training succession game if enough players are interested. We only need between three and five players, but I'd prefer people who stick to the easiest levels and consider Prince to be too difficult.

If you prefer not to publicly post your desire to play, then you can PM me.

I would be interested in this. I was looking at a couple of those succession games yesterday and it was pretty good reading.

 

[FornaxTorak]

For small maps:

Beeline ironworking, local lux, wheel, archers, then katas with math. Build swords and katas in a 2:1 ratio.

2-3, maybe 4 cities. Go kill! Have 27 hours logged now, gone past King. Still haven't seen the modern era If you wanna ubercheat go Roman

Can be modified in countless ways, but works so far for me.

 

[TheBlackHole]

Just as a general note (nothing to do with strategy or anything), you should definitely not pay too much mind to people who say Deity, Immortal, etc. are too easy. It may be for them, but they are not you. The CivFanatics community houses probably the highest level of Civ players around ("Fanatics", after all). Also, there are some well-known almost-broken strategies that are used (horseman rush, trade post spam, etc.) that help them accomplish these easy victories. You can choose to learn these strategies just to get a taste of them... or you could continue to play in the way that you enjoy best, even if not optimal. The key is that you enjoy yourself and don't ever think about what level you "should" be beating.

Here's what I might suggest you doing if you're having problems going up the next difficulty level. Apart from reading strategy forum posts (which are very helpful!), play on Prince but with the BEST combination of game options possible, suited to what you like and what you excel at. So play with who you really think is the absolute best leader, most optimal map (archipelago, pangaea, whatever), etc. By tipping the odds totally in your favor, hopefully you'll be able to get a win out of it (maybe with some luck sometimes). From then, with a victory under you belt and your confidence up, vary some of the options to incrementally increase the difficulty a little (for example, choose a slightly worse leader or a leader with a UA that doesn't fit your preferred style).

Or, alternatively, play Warlord, but with the WORST leader you can find and maps or options that do not suit you at all. This can add a lot of challenge to Warlord to help make the game less of a steamroll. Remember, this is a single-player game.... don't feel obligated to HAVE to be able to beat Prince, as nobody knows or cares.

Playing one difficulty with the worst leader/options is, in my experience, not that different from playing a difficulty higher with the best leader/options... so between some combination of that stuff, there should hopefully be a suitable difficulty level for you.

 

[OTAKUjbski]

...

What he said. All of it.

When troubleshooting any issue, you want to start by eliminating as many variables as possible. Once you've standardized your testing situation, you'll be able to more easily identify exactly what went wrong and thus address it. When you can win in optimal settings, start changing one thing at a time (just the leader, just the map, etc).

(BTW, I play on King & Emperor)

My 2 :

• Settle cities faster (my default build order is Scout>Worker>Settler), and make sure your first 2 grab new luxury resources (3 & 4 can grab duplicates).
  
• Trade your extra luxuries for . Use that to rush-buy and/or bribe City-States (use their luxuries to grow larger and/or trade).
  
• When you conquer, puppet the city. Only after the Forbidden Palace should you really annex a city. The exception is a high-production city [preferably with Marble].
  
• Explore more. At the very least, you should have one Caravel out on the seas after Astronomy. The more AI's you meet, the more [and better] trading you can do. This will also give you a better idea of what the other players are doing and where you stand.
  
• Only build Wonders you need (i.e., the ones that fit into your strategy).
  
• If you have a close neighbour, just set yourself on conquering them early and be done with it. Beeline the Horseman and/or Catas.

The large patch of desert really sucked, but I had to head south to get the silver.

Not necessarily -- at least not immediately. I would've recommended settling north into the AI just east of the river two tiles south of the Sugar/Silver. Use the American cheap tile buying to quickly snatch one or both of them.

From there settle east for the Gold/Silver, west for the Sugar, south for the Silver. Trade the extra luxuries along the way to the AI and bribe one of the local CS's for their Dye.

Somewhere along the way build a few Spears/Horsemen/whatever and puppet the Siamese capital.

I wasted a bunch of time trying to go for the good wonders and was beat to the punch by a couple of turns so a lot of time was wasted.

/nod.

Every Wonder you build is basically two or more fewer cities you could've settled. IMO, the only early Wonders worth having every time are the Great Library and Oracle.

 

[SGRaaize]

Also remember that those who say that they can beat this game in a breeze at the hardest difficulties may be lying
And don't forget that this AI is very easy to rush, but far harder to defeat at late-game

 

[DalekDavros]

His army in general is ok too.A bit more "AI-ish" for my taste(read ton of pikes everywhere )

The pikes are good. The Siam UU (elephant) is vulnerable to pikes and the AI has a habit of attacking with nothing but elephants once they're available, so pikes ought to be your first line of defense if you have a border with Siam.

Some specific thoughts (based on the Washington-Siam screenshot only):

I'm most concerned by the length of the border. Ideally, you'd want to capture Phitsanulok and everything to the southwest: then the combination of hills, rivers, and forest/jungles will make your (now much smaller border) really easy to defend: just bring up a couple of cats and you'll be able to kill anything pre-artillery before it can pose a serious threat.

Unfortunately, you aren't in a good enough economic position for a war right now (-10 happiness = end of the war). You'll want to focus on improving happiness, science, and gold first. Alternatively, one (risky) gambit would be trying to take Luang Prabang right away and then razing it (to remove the extra staging area from the AI). It looks like the city isn't well-defended, so you can probably take it easily and I suspect that your army along the border is strong enough to withstand counterattack long enough to convince Siam to agree to an even-terms peace treaty. With all the pikes, you'll probably come out ahead in terms of attrition, and having a smaller army left on your border temporarily will be great for your economy (looks like unit maintenance is probably a large part of what's killing it). Also, build a ship in Boston ASAP to deal with the embarkation from Nakhon Sawan. Looks like Siam doesn't have a navy either, so just having one ship (unless Siam starts building ships too) could be an easy way to cut off the extra front along the coast near Boston.

Also, while this would normally be a horrible thing to do, in this case I think you might want to consider disbanding your workers. That ought to be enough to put you in positive gold per turn, and your population (and population growth) is small enough that you won't be needing more improved tiles for quite a while anyway. This will, of course, come back to bite you in the long-term, but right now I'd be more focused on making sure you survive to the long-term.

Some thoughts for future games:
1) Build happiness infrastructure earlier. Unless you're pursuing an advanced strategy that ignores happiness, you don't want to have negative happiness.
2) Build fewer troops. The AI will often build fewer troops as a result also. And even when it doesn't, it's good to get used to being able to fight a defensive war when outnumbered, because if/when you get to higher difficulty levels, you'll have to do that.
3) Think more about the defensive potential of terrain when placing cities. A river, mountain pass, etc. with a couple of catapults in a fortified position is much more important than having massive number of troops. Along this line of thought, try to expand to coasts, etc., in order to make your border with the AI as short as possible.
4) Build fewer wonders. I'd suggest you focus on those that provide science boosts.
5) I'm not familiar with tech times at Epic speed, but an Normal speed you ought to be getting a tech every 6-10 turns at most. If tech times are getting too slow, you're either not building enough science infrastructure or not having enough population growth.
6) Your road network is a bit odd (in the screenshot). If you're letting the AI automate it, stop that. E.g., the road between Washington and Boston is longer that necessary (go over the hill or to the right of it instead) and it'd probably be better for mobility if you had a road from Washington to Philadelphia instead of from Boston to Philadelphia. In general, try to make roads a) as short as possible, b) covering as much rough terrain as possible, c) crossing as many rivers as possible, and d) connected as directly to the capital as possible. (a) will save you gold and (a)-(d) will improve troop movements in most circumstances.

 

[Centerfinger]

All this good info, I can wait to grab a sixer and get home to play. I have learned multiple things over the last fews days that should help me get over this hurdle. The game I started with Russia on Prince seems to be going good.

I'm also getting in on a succession game for newbs and I know that will help.

In my Washington game, I think I if go back to the save 250 years before the screen shot I would have a better chance to get Siam off my back. My economy and happiness was going along pretty good until I starting increasing / rushing the army and expanding the 2 new cities. One thing I learned in that game is never, ever trust the AI.

 

[SuperJay]

never, ever trust the AI.

A-freaking-men to that, man. I read one of your posts earlier about "I thought Siam and I were friends" and thought "oh boy, they're gonna backstab this poor dude at the first opportunity."

 

[Horizons]

I need tips on how to beat a 'runaway' civ that takes over the other continent at Prince level. Usually this civ will be well-defended with technologically superior units and makes mincemeat of my naval invasions.

 

[ezwip]

Ahh Centerfinger you are very lucky. I'm sure the game is great to a new player. What you want to do is build Stonehenge right away. You need to research everything necessary to unlock it. In that time you should be able to pop a temple and a settler. Once you have that up get a library going. Pop a worker or two with your cash from exploring. Build a wonder in the other city. Pop another settler in your main. Once you have 3 cities going you'll get yourself a great person. Before that happened you should have researched enough to unlock a very large tech, I'd beeline for whatever unlocks Pikemen. I haven't played enough to care the game is a joke to me. Anyways after that start researching to line up crossbows. You'll get another great person and pop that free tech. Bam you have pikes and crossbows in BC. The continent is yours.

 

[Nutteria]

In my Washington game, I think I if go back to the save 250 years before the screen shot I would have a better chance to get Siam off my back. My economy and happiness was going along pretty good until I starting increasing / rushing the army and expanding the 2 new cities. One thing I learned in that game is never, ever trust the AI.

/nod

Remember the AI in CiV V plays to win and that said he will do every dirty trick in the book.

Ironicaly enough this(his play to win mentality) is the biggest blunder of the AI as well on the higher difficulties and its uber easy to abuse it.

As a small further tip seeing your games : Don`t be afraid to settle new citys.Policys are good but unless you want to persue Cultural victory all they do is add flavour.They are shiny yes but usualy the cost of obtaining the good ones is same if not higher compared to the expansion/army you can get left alone the amounts of potential gold you will loose persuing them. Dang there goes the "small" in my tip again.

 

[mihaifx]

@Centerfinger
I would add a simple thing: all these tips on the forum are good, but the most enjoyable thing is to find your own winning strategy. Just take your time before pressing 'next turn'.

 

[biohazard72]

This post might not be helpful. But anyway:

1. REX to start. The AI will not compete if you do this correctly. A good build order is Scout-Worker-Settler - spam Settlers to luxs.
2. Build Horsemen ASAP in all cities. 4 seems to be sufficient.
3. Constant warmongering. Don't attack enemies on rough terrain if possible, play cautious, and heal. Build Colosseums and focus on happiness to keep the warmongering efficient.

This is enough of an advantage to steamroll Prince even if you play suboptimally in large areas of the game. It's essentially how I win on Deity, which I've done twice now.

I'm going to make a thread for new player advice - you should check it out.

 

[AFS]

Just judging from the screenshot (sorry, I can't test the saves right now) I noticed you put your cities way too close from each other. Each city as a radius of 3 hexes, so in your future games try to build them with at least a 6 hex separation; you'll grab more land and you can build a lot of improvements for each city using your workers.

And that leads to other thing: let your cities GROW. The bigger the city is, the more science it generates. With more science, you get techs faster; if you are more advanced, you can fight your enemies using riflemen when they have pikemen. Also, in that case, you need fewer units to fight, and that means less maintenance cost. In war, try to always have a tech lead.

Hope it helps.

 

[JLoZeppeli]

I'm a bit shocked by the difficulties that some are facing with lowest levels...

Maybe i grew up as a player to win so esasily on Immortal. That is a nice finding! ( or i have totally forgot what means starting from scrach a Civ game as a newbie... )

Don't take my wrong, this thread make me feel a little stronger in the game than i thought... I'm pleased by that

PS excuse me if i do not write any advice, it is only a self-proclamation in a rare moment of narcissism, i'm sorry for that if it hurts someone, just ignore me...