[BTS] Help with large maps on Prince

[Gumbolt]

My thoughts.
I can't tell on settling dates as I loaded world builder save. 3-4 cities by 2000bc is a nice target.
Mastricht needed the corn in it's city area. I would of cottaged all the flood plains and farmed the corn. Irrigating flood plains takes forever. So 1-2 tile difference in settling can be huge! Even having a 2 tile gap with capital can help work the capital's cottages. In this case that city could of grabbed the corn too. Food is king for cities. You have 3 dead flood plains tile north of the Hague. Which is shame as you are financial. Do plan city locations even if you settle to grab horse. Why you didn't settle the flood plain x2/corn/gold city I don't know. Amazing location!
Your capital has zero cottages. With bureau civic coming that is a big mistake. Normally why you sometimes have helper cities 2-3 tiles from capital.
Worker use. Not just priotisiting key food resources/chopping to lead onto cottages. Also which cities to focus on. The Hague has a lot of plains cottages where capital has grassland rivers you should of been working. 2f cottages more important than slow growth 1f tiles. Plains tiles are a really low priority.

Sampsa grabbed the corn and the flood plain tiles by his settling cities.

Lots to improve on here.

 

[sampsa]

Lots to improve on here.

There certainly is, but I think that is clear if someone is playing at prince difficulty. He is outexpanding and outteching AIs, that is important. Also a clear sign to move to the next level imo.

 

[Gumbolt]

There certainly is, but I think that is clear if someone is playing at prince difficulty. He is outexpanding and outteching AIs, that is important. Also a clear sign to move to the next level imo.

I never sugarcoat advice. Reality is it can take a long time to adjust playstyles on Civ 4.

Scouting could also be an issue here. How much of the land had the OP seen before settling cities? I would like to think he circled around his starting location. Others may just send warrior or scout to explore entire map. With Prince level you get 1 free win vs barbs. Plus barbs don't appear till turn 30 so some nice risk free scouting too. Barbs spawning should also be less.

 

[sampsa]

I never sugarcoat advice

Oh I'm sure you've noticed I don't sugarcoat either. But if someone says in his opening post that he struggles on prince, you need to expect tons of fundamental mistakes. Improvement comes at in small steps and while I agree that it's important to point out where the mistakes lie, it often seems to be a bit too much for the improver and they are not to be seen again.

 

[sampsa]

T132

Spoiler :

Just to update from the same turn you did.

19 cities (6 captured), around 25 workers. Very small army. Have mil trad, but lack guilds+gunpowder for cuirassiers. Started music GA right after MoM finished and Taj is a few chops away. Probably running 3rd consecutive GA. Ignored liberalism, because I think paper, education and liberalism itself are rather useless techs. Rather just run merchants and get some upgrade . I don't know what map script this is, but it looks like you can't meet everyone pre-astro. I'm going to ignore it though and see if taking the continent is enough for domination.

Getting Mids 450AD. No resource trades because AI is so incompetent so some -issues. Switched to confu to starve from southern confu cities first but certainly will alternate between buddhism/confu.

I'm doing ~500/turn at breakeven slider, albeit in a GA. Without it maybe 350 or so. It is because I expanded very quickly and grew my cities to grow cottages. I have only a few libraries even.

 

[SlimJim01]

Right, well, I had a very interesting/educational game!
First I would like to thank @jnebbe, @Gumbolt and @sampsa, all of your advice was invaluable!

Now, for my game.
After I had amassed ample forces of elephants and catapults I invaded the Romans, because I was paranoid that they'd attack me while I was in a war with someone else. The elephants and catapults (I never even considered this combo! I usually always
go for swordsmen based armies!) made short work of anyone and everyone, and I had just taken Rome, when the Romans became a vassal state of the Zulus.

I was pretty miffed, but I've taken over plenty of cities and was willing to make peace... except Zulu didn't want peace. So, I took a couple of his cities to get him to leave me alone, but he wasn't having it. Fine.
I whipped and chopped more elephants and catapults and started taking his cities, got nationalism and started drafting some macemen, and finally finished off Rome, and then focused on taking Zulu.

Even though he manged to get Cuirassiers it didn't save him from my elephants and riflemen (I got riffling too at some point). I'll be honest this took 6 hours, and the whole thing is a blur of elephant's dying screams and cities burning.
But I eventually got him. And since I had riflemen now, I decided to invade the Greeks, because why not? Once again my riflemen made short work of his woefully antiquated forces and took him too. That's when I noticed something.

Even though I'd spent most of my game entrenched in wars with kinda low research (30-40%), and losing gold per turn, I was still somehow the richest civilization and centuries ahead of everyone tech wise. That's when I got it!

You don't need to have a bunch of resources, or a ton of wonders to be ahead. You just need more cities. It doesn't matter that you'll lose money and research at the start of the game, because you can make it all up a bit later!
As for wonders, most of the good ones come later, and the early ones can simply be taken.

Ended up getting the Domination victory. I think I'll try to get a different victory next time! Maybe cultural or diplomatic (science and war seem to go hand in hand).

Here's my final save file if anyone wants to take a look!
Thanks a bunch for your help, guys and gals!

 

[sampsa]

You don't need to have a bunch of resources, or a ton of wonders to be ahead. You just need more cities.

It's amazing how simple it is, right? Slider position etc is irrelevant, just a trap for you to fall into. Just make sure you are working -resources and river cottages and the "economy" will take care of itself.

 

[SlimJim01]

Hi! I'm just popping in to talk about another game I had.
So, this time I went for a map with a bunch of islands, rather than continents (because I wanted an excuse to use ships). I built some cities and noticed that on my little island there was only one Civ beside me, and quickly whipped up some horse archers and wiped them out. After that, I ran into a problem I haven't had in a while, too many cities not enough money. I slowed down my research to 0, and cottaged everything I could. After a while the I started making money again I started research back up.
Now with my old play style, this would have been the end of the run, but since I've unlocked the eldritch secret of: "Just make more fudging cities", this was barely and inconvenience! I whipped libraries, observatories and universities, and was top of researched in no time flat. Barely built two WW and was rock bottom in score.
Since I was very isolated, I spent my time mostly colonizing islands and making a giant armada. You see, I know war is very important in Civ4, but I don't like going to war with Civs! I only do it because I know they're going to attack me the moment they think they can take me. Since I was playing an islands map, that wasn't much of an issue, since everyone is so far away. All I really had to do to guarantee my safety was to build a lot of ships, and no one could touch me!
Anyways, I ended up getting a science victory; no one told me it had a whole build your ship animation thing!
I do have a couple of questions though, and some observations.

Someone suggested that mines are meh, and that no one should build them. I agree that windmills and awesome;I always leave space for them, especially down the line when you get electricity. But I simply found the lack of hammers to be a little bit too much. Things felt like they took a little too long to build, so I think I'll return to my policy of "If it has 2 hammers build a mine, if it's green or if it has one leave it for a windmill".

How the hell do you get good relationships with Civs!?
For what I've found online, there's no quick way to get them to like you, like in Civ5. You need to have good long-term relationships. So how do you get them to like you, without giving in to their ridiculous demands? Do gifts like money and free resources do anything for relationships?

Thanks in advance!

 

[sampsa]

Someone suggested that mines are meh, and that no one should build them. I agree that windmills and awesome;I always leave space for them, especially down the line when you get electricity. But I simply found the lack of hammers to be a little bit too much.

Probably that was me, since I dislike mines quite a bit. The reason why you don't need mines is because you can whip. Also, many of the buildings are rather weak and you are better off building wealth. Space victory can be a bit different surely, you'll need to industrialize and get a lot of from workshops.

Things felt like they took a little too long to build, so I think I'll return to my policy of "If it has 2 hammers build a mine, if it's green or if it has one leave it for a windmill".

That is not a good idea. Plains mines are very weak. I'd suggest building them only if absolutely necessary (maybe to build a wonder), otherwise stick to green mines. I'm sure you realize you can just windmill on the mines later, when windmills become actually good.

How the hell do you get good relationships with Civs!?
For what I've found online, there's no quick way to get them to like you, like in Civ5. You need to have good long-term relationships. So how do you get them to like you, without giving in to their ridiculous demands? Do gifts like money and free resources do anything for relationships?

Cheapest way is to gift a city. Whip a settler, settle somewhere close to AI to guarantee your city gift will be accepted (and you might get a +1 extra from "liberation") and gift. That costs you what 45 or so, not a tiny sacrifice but nothing massive either. You gain +4/+5 diplo bonus which is pretty massive. City gifting should happen after your initial expansion, say around 1000BC. Of course the lower the level the later you are able to do it. Then again, the lower the level the less benefit there is in diplo. Less threat, less good trades.

Other ways are religion, favorite civics. Resource trades too, slowly. What you should aim at is friendly status towards some AI and ignore the rest, it doesn't matter really if they are furious at you, assuming they are not directly next to you and you can't defend yourself.