I give up at Prince level

[buck beach]

Ok my last game is totally on me! Stupidly chose the Mayans and settled in jungle surrounded location for two of my major cities (my bad). Epidemics practically every turn that kept me beat down. This plus the overwhelming opposition pressure turned the trick to my "white flag". However this game not the first that beat me up with the same issues at this level. Other game at this level hammered me from both sides by aggressive AI players while those afar beat me in all other major areas (civ and city sizes, economy, science and military.) until they could invade by sea and kick my booty.

Since they're so many of you that can handle these burdens even at higher levels, I am smart enough to know not to blame the game mechanics. I feel inept not to be able to juggle all the balls.

Once issue regarding epidemics did seem out of balance, in a game that wasn't plagued by jungles, was while my cities were being hammered down to lower populations. My closest warlike opponent , the Polish, amassed a city of a population of TWENTY-SIX. This was after years and years of me dealing with another warmonger "the dreaded Aztecs".

Not giving up on the game but its back to Noble for me.

Buck

 

[[Y]]

RI has a very significant learning curve. It takes a while to learn what things to focus, which techs are important and when, etc. Took me years. But it's worth it.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Generally, I feel the main piece of advice starting players need is "try not being an attractive target". Basically, at least early on, try making it so that when AI is picking a target for its next war, it's not you. Army size, the number of defenders on your border with that AI, your relations, etc. - lots of things factor into that. Helpful interface even tells you when you're someone's "worst enemy", which means you'll likely serve as his/her war target. To stay up in relative power ratio, don't hoard generals early on - found early doctrines or traditions for a significant power boost. Also, "AI plays to win" option makes AI much more cutthroat (not even more aggressive, but rather more "gamey"), so you should see whether playing with this option on or off suits you better.

 

[plasmacannon]

Hey Buck. I have been playing RI for over a year and still have difficulty on Prince and need advice myself too. So don't feel bad.
I have figured out a few things that might help you.
Try choosing a leader that has the Political or Charismatic trait or both. These traits give you a bonus (+2 and +1 respectively) to relations when dealing with other empires. It makes them less likely to declare war on you and more likely on someone else.
Also, don't take a religion too soon. That 'heathen' penalty usually gets them simmering over you and before long you have a stack at your front door.
Traits like Administrator and Agrarian help reduce that epidemic chance if you choose them and happen to land near a lot of jungle again.

 

[buck beach]

Damn, damn, damn!!! I just lost a long winded reply to you all. Too tired to try to repeat.

Thanks ever so much for your replies and advice.

 

[Lewy_lizard]

I have only recently starting playing RI and am loving it! I won myl last game at Noble mostly because i was in the industrial era before anyone else was out of the middle ages. I have attempted several Prince levels since and either have terrible starts or find i am attcked and lagging behind in tech and military.
What are people first moves in terms of build order? What is the balance between unit/building/worker settler production?

 

[H4run]

Prince difficulty is easy with my recipe:
1. Put a good spot for your capital, take as many resources as you possibly can.
2.If you live near the sea go for fishing first let your city grow and build warrior.
3. After the research finish go for workboat and after finish your work boat and your city add one population, go for worker.
4. After that build enough warrior to fence off nearby barbarian and directly go for wonder, this statue that give you production in the sea.
5. Build as many improvement as possible with your worker. And after Great Person arrive always make them work in your capital, you gonna make super city.
6. Build settlers after that put it in the most productive filed, this will be your production city.
7. Now your capital gonna be always making one wonder after another ejecting great person, goes for alphabeth and build library, as soon as your capital goes fat and cannot develop more or it becomes unhappy, put scientist to work on your library. And always aim for science wonder and building, try not to let anyone to finish science wonder.
8. Your second and maybe third city do all the work, like making adequate troops to defend your city, don't bother to attack anyone.
9. Always put all the great person to work in your capital (except if there is a good wonder the scientist can build in capital, it must be really good, if not just consume it to work in your capital). And goes for pacifist line, and concentrate or the great stuff in your capital and eject as many GP as possible.
10. Pay every tribute, just don't let other civ bother you. Your aim here is to get as advance as possible.
11. After you already reach flinch lock while everybody still swinging sword or researching guild, consume your GP to start golden age, change the civic for war mode civic, and start ejecting high end unit.
12. Conquer the world.

*open border only to nice and primitive civ, never open border to mediocre or strong civ especially if they are sophisticated, you only open border to them to get bonus on research that they already did, after you finish taking all of it and they have nothing to offer, close the border. This is very important.

Always win with this recipe years ago, with many type of civ in large world map, and with mongol in terrastic or soemthing map. It will be crazily over powerful if your leader trait is philosophical like this woman leader in Mongolian (I forgot her name) she is the best leader I ever play, using her as leader with Mongol crazy powerful military is like playing civ with steroid. I always win for domination, because that is the only winning mode I know since CIV 1, and I always aiming for that.

 

[buck beach]

Thanks Haroon

 

[H4run]

I really hope you understand, sorry for my bad English, I really so tired today and too lazy to re-read my post and force myself to form coherence sentence in English.

 

[buck beach]

I understood.

Buck

 

[Shuikkanen]

Going for fishing and building a workboat... Hmm... Look, I'm not going to say it doesn't work for you if it does. But if you have a pasture resource always go for it first. Beeline to animal husbandry either via farming or the wheel, build a worker (sometimes I just start with worker if I'm sure I can get the tech before (or coinciding with the time) it's finished). Build the pasture, then (but not before) switch to pastoral nomadism. Watch your city grow fast and be able to produce stuff more quickly. No barbs should emerge before you're finished with this so you can switch to building protective units by now. Your first warrior should've popped a goody hut or two to gain money by now, so build another warrior while you research woodworking, upgrade them to the next melee unit (STR 3, I think it's Militia? darn, I always forget unit names when writing forum posts). Then build a few more militias and/or archers, build a settler -- I like to know where copper, stone and marble lay before settling my 2nd city, maybe build a wonder at this point (these last three steps, not necessarily in this order.) If you can connect stone, make it Pyramids. If it gets built by someone else, and you're on coast, then maybe build Moai Statues, (the sea production one). Without stone, Pyramids is still an option if you have great production, Great Bath is also cheap and provides -2.0 epidemic modifier even if you don't have jungles around. It gets you Great merch points is the point. Early Great Merchant is pretty decent because it increases city food (which is basically the same as city production in the early stages) and gives you enough gold to jump one or two tiers with your science slider. Don't build Moai if you both don't have stone and don't have several sea-based resources.

(Now, it's a bit tricky to build wonders when you're running animal husbandry. Last time I played a short while ago, it was still possible to switch civics away from it, and the production penalty was gone and I was able to finish the wonder normally. It might be that with the most recent version the production penalty is applied to your production input, rather than your production goal so this exploit is useless.)

I play on Monarch (when I want it easy), and on Emperor (when I want to up my blood pressure medication dosage), so I've clearly found my skill niche. That there above is a very rough generalization of the typical first turns of about 50% of the Monarch games I play. It's almost certain someone that plays regularly on Deity will shake their head and disagree with almost everything I just said. The harder the difficulty, the harder it is to give a generalized guideline of what to do. Everything depends on so many things.

One thing I haven't done in a long, long time is build a workboat in my first forty turns or so. It gets you one food. Or maybe two, I don't even remember. You need lighthouse to get another. That lighthouse is a long way away, on a branch of the tech tree that doesn't unlock any resources, doesn't help you with early defense, and doesn't really unlock any immediately worthwhile wonders either -- certainly not cheap ones. But I must repeat: If it works for you on the level you play, it's fine. And anyone playing on a higher level than I will likely disagree with me about a lot of things.

 

[buck beach]

More things to ponder!