Long-time Warlord player moving to Prince - need strategy tips

[capella]

I've logged nearly 600 hours playing Warlord and am at the point where I can pretty much win any game I start.

Here are some of my game habits/strategies:

• I pretty much only play Inca now because I like the movement and financial bonuses (I always set the map to 3billion years old - I run all over those hills and the AI just creeps along )
• I have never tried manually managing specialists
• I've never manually managed population/production in the city screen either (except setting building/unit production, of course)
• I usually improve every tile within a city's borders (do we pay for improvements, or just roads/railroads?)
• I never automate workers
• I try to maintain friendly relations with as many civs as I can, but due to the large army I always build, I have no problem managing any hostile civs
• I never wipe out a civ - waaaay too much of a diplo hit
• I've never really worried about what buildings to build beyond immediate needs and I usually can build the majority of the wonders.
• I usually end up with a Science or Diplo victory - Diplo mostly because I've got, like, 15k gold in the bank and just buy up all of the CSs before the vote

I'm wondering, when I move up to Prince level, how much more micromanagement I can expect, in terms of specialists and population management.

I've been doing a bit of reading on posts mentioning Prince level and have come across some good ideas.

I understand that at the Prince and higher levels, right from the beginning a large army is the key to fending off the inevitable early AI aggressions. I've seen a suggested ratio of 2 melee and 1 ranged per city as soon as possible, as a rule.

What else can you guys suggest? What strategies/habits will I need to adopt/change/abandon at the Prince level, as compared to Warlord?

Thanks!

 

[Mariner91]

LOL @ 600 hours on Warlord, I think you can safely try Prince using the same strat and you'll know what needs changing in 1% of those hours

 

[chazzycat]

Inca is a pretty cool civ, but I'd recommend changing it up and not giving yourself such an advantage with the map every game. Try some random civs/random maps some time. Learning how to react/adapt to your surroundings is the key to winning consistently on higher levels.

I would definitely recommend managing specialists. At the minimum, build universities in your high-pop cities and staff the 2 scientists. Leave them there and they will generate great scientists for you pretty soon, which are very powerful because they can get any tech instantly.

Managing city production tiles can be very beneficial as well. Generally you want to emphasize food at first, to get your city up to ideal size - i.e. working all the good tiles. Once you hit that size you generally want to switch over to more of a production focus.

For a defensive army I actually prefer a ratio of 2 ranged to 1 melee, and if a city is coming under fire you want to be able to bring in a 3rd ranged/2nd melee pretty quickly. 3 ranged units is a key number because that will generally kill any unit in 1 turn. (sometimes 2 ranged plus the city shot is not enough to finish the kill, then they auto-heal, which is not cool).

As long as you can get 3 ranged units and enough melee to protect them to a city quickly, that should be enough. So you don't really need 3 units per cities if the cities are close together and connected by roads (unless you are surrounded by belligerent AIs of course)

 

[capella]

Thanks a lot for the tips, chazzycat - exactly what I'm looking for!

What about focus on which buildings to build? In my Warlord games I pretty much build whatever is newly available due to an advance in tech, or what I need at the moment.

In Prince do I need to be more mindful of what I don't need in a city?

 

[chazzycat]

building every building is generally not recommended, the maintenance can really add up. Try to specialize your cities a bit. If they are on a river with grassland, thats good for science and commerce so build those buildings first. For smaller cities with no rivers, often its better to just emphasize production and have those be unit factories. A bank or public school in this type of city is just a waste of hammers and gold, as is a barracks in the city that will never build soldiers. There are of course a few exceptions, builidngs that should be built in every city:

- monument
- library
- market
- forge
- university

If you notice, these are the buildings that are required for national wonders, which is no coincidence.

Most cities are probably going to want to build all the happines buildings as well, its just a matter of timing them to avoid stalling growth.

 

[capella]

Great stuff chazzycat!

Since you mentioned growth, can a city be allowed to grow too fast?

 

[Fluffball]

I understand that at the Prince and higher levels, right from the beginning a large army is the key to fending off the inevitable early AI aggressions. I've seen a suggested ratio of 2 melee and 1 ranged per city as soon as possible, as a rule.



Thanks!

That may have been from me as i have mentioned that a few times but it is a rule of thumb rather than a hard and fast rule.
In the early game, when your cities are often spread out and not connected by roads, a city will often be quite isolated and thus each city should be able to hold out by itself, at least for a while as it will usually take quite a number of turns to bring up reinforcements.

I tend to prefer a ratio of 2 melee and 1 archer as i find that most robust and suiting to the early game circumstances.

It may not be so prevailent on prince but on immortal i find that early DoWs mean a quite large army moving in which can often swamp you, particularly with a single melee unit which can be quickly surrounded.

If you only have 1 archer you can camp that in your city where it will be safe from attack where as with two archers the one outside the city is vulnerable, especially if your melee unit gets swamped and often means you need to withdraw a lot quicker to save your exposed archer.

Two melee are a lot harder to surround and can also work together to protect themselves from attack with flanking bonus, the bonus for adjacent units via the honor tree and if your farming barbarians as well can quickly earn the medic promotion. If you are in a position where only one melee unit needs to be exposed also you can rotate them when the frontline unit is getting low on HP.

Partly as chazzycat mentioned you should also look to have reinforcements that can quickly re-act to an attack, but as i mentioned, in the early game reinforcements can take a while to arrive until you have roads, especially if your cities aren't packed in tight and that is the time where the 3 units per city ratio is most prevailent, you have a small army at each city.
As you build roads that ratio can start to be relaxed and i tend to aim for a ranged unit in each border city and the ability to have at least 2 melee units at the city within a single turn.


As for buildings, it depends on the situation but the first tier buildings...monument, library, workshop and market should be built in every city. Barracks are the main exception and they should only be built in cities you are going to produce units in.
As for what you should or shouldn't build, you should look at your cities and the policies you choose to help you decide. If you choose honor or have an exposed city then city defenses become more attractive. If you choose piety or are looking for culture then cultural buildings become more attractive.
If you have a city with few production tiles surrounding it then there is little point in building production buildings like factories. Same with a city with little gold production which is pointless building gold buildings like banks.

What you should choose and when is dependant on your situation and the city.

 

[Fluffball]

Great stuff chazzycat!

Since you mentioned growth, can a city be allowed to grow too fast?

Generally you should expand as quickly as possible without heading into crippling unhappiness.
Depending on the cities you build there may be specific cities you may want to prioritise for growth.e.g. i tend to have tiers of cities. If i have less than 10 happiness i shut down the lowest tier to allow my better cities to grow as much as possible. Once i hit 0 happiness i shut down all but my main cities and shut down all cities once i reach 9 unhappiness.
A 'trick' i use is generally not to shut down a city completely but tick the cancel growth button as this means the city will still stockpile food until it reachs 1 turn until growth and then stay there (at that point it is worth shutting down growth completely) when you have enough happiness you can then turn on growth and get instant growth on that turn.

 

[chazzycat]

Since you mentioned growth, can a city be allowed to grow too fast?

Yes, you have a finite amount of happiness. So you generally want to use it to expand to good tiles. Expanding to bad tiles just to get more population for science is not really doing a whole lot, which is why once you hit the ideal size, you switch over to production focus. That will generally slow growth way down and boost production.

I would say the exception to that rule is your capital/NC city. Because science comes from population and the NC has such a good multiplier, I'll keep my capital growing longer than other cities.

Also if you have any puppet cities, these are not as productive as your regular cities, so most players prefer to keep the population low and save the happiness for better cities. Building trading posts on hills in these puppets will do the trick.

 

[capella]

Generally you should expand as quickly as possible without heading into crippling unhappiness.
Depending on the cities you build there may be specific cities you may want to prioritise for growth.e.g. i tend to have tiers of cities. If i have less than 10 happiness i shut down the lowest tier to allow my better cities to grow as much as possible. Once i hit 0 happiness i shut down all but my main cities and shut down all cities once i reach 9 unhappiness.
A 'trick' i use is generally not to shut down a city completely but tick the cancel growth button as this means the city will still stockpile food until it reachs 1 turn until growth and then stay there (at that point it is worth shutting down growth completely) when you have enough happiness you can then turn on growth and get instant growth on that turn.

It took me a while to figure out what you meant by "Shut down" a city. For as long as I've been playing, I've never done anything with the citizen controls in the city view (or with the specialists, for that matter!)

That's something I'm sure I'm going to have to learn how to master if I want to have a chance in the higher levels.

 

[chazzycat]

I tend to prefer a ratio of 2 melee and 1 archer as i find that most robust and suiting to the early game circumstances.

It may not be so prevailent on prince but on immortal i find that early DoWs mean a quite large army moving in which can often swamp you, particularly with a single melee unit which can be quickly surrounded.

If you only have 1 archer you can camp that in your city where it will be safe from attack where as with two archers the one outside the city is vulnerable, especially if your melee unit gets swamped and often means you need to withdraw a lot quicker to save your exposed archer.

Two melee are a lot harder to surround and can also work together to protect themselves from attack with flanking bonus, the bonus for adjacent units via the honor tree and if your farming barbarians as well can quickly earn the medic promotion. If you are in a position where only one melee unit needs to be exposed also you can rotate them when the frontline unit is getting low on HP.

Partly as chazzycat mentioned you should also look to have reinforcements that can quickly re-act to an attack, but as i mentioned, in the early game reinforcements can take a while to arrive until you have roads, especially if your cities aren't packed in tight and that is the time where the 3 units per city ratio is most prevailent, you have a small army at each city.
As you build roads that ratio can start to be relaxed and i tend to aim for a ranged unit in each border city and the ability to have at least 2 melee units at the city within a single turn.

I agree with this somewhat. VERY early a bit more melee certainly doesn't hurt. Terrain is also a big factor. With a hilly/rivery area, you can get away with less melee, but on open ground with no rivers, ranged are vulnerable so they need more protection.

 

[tetley]

The biggest change from Warlord to Prince I noticed by far was happiness. When I first started playing CivV, I viewed happiness as a way to get more Golden Ages. After I was playing Prince, I saw happiness as something I must always keep above 0.

 

[ense7en]

The biggest change from Warlord to Prince I noticed by far was happiness. When I first started playing CivV, I viewed happiness as a way to get more Golden Ages. After I was playing Prince, I saw happiness as something I must always keep above 0.

Yup, came to post this.

I hate to say, but playing below Prince causes one to play in a completely different way as it's just too easy.

Happiness is way bigger issue...you'll have to be careful how many cities you build/capture, etc. and will be forced to build happiness building or annex more cities vs. puppeting in some cases.

Also science becomes more important, though moreso at the harder difficulties.

 

[VikingKing1]

When I started I noticed the easier levels you could take state cities or other leaders cities and still deal with the unhappiness. As you move up that will kill you, like you I manage to expand and have a big army so if I have to thin the herd instead of puppet or capture I just raze them. It took awhile to get used to meeting other nations right away, in other Civ games you could explore for a while before you ever met another civ. I play large, 10 players, continents, maybe I should try huge and go down to less nations. I like science but it seems I am always forced to build troops in civ 5, whereas other civs you could go centuries without building heavy troops. The wonder changes can work to your advantage, I have not learned them in 5 yet, still working the hit and miss and just started looking up advice to see what I am missing.

 

[KM]

Here is the thing 600h + on warlord. Of course you allways win and of course you will never improve. I order to improve you will need to play at a level where you loose as much as you win. Where you do not get all the wonders and you will have to start to think about how to prioritize to get exactly the wonders needed for a certain victory type. Where you will need to try to balance army producction and building producction. where you can t afford to build every building but choose the ones that give you the most value for money. Where you can not choose what victory condition u like to get this time when game nears the end but plan it faar earlier in order to even have a chanse. YÍf you play at a to low level you will stagnate and never get better simply because you don t need to....

 

[KM]

How to improve fast. First go up to King or something that you would feel like it sunds high. For me it would be.. well heck I dont know I only play MP, so lets say play against universal soldier or r-done or tommynth... But I played diety once or twise just to try it out... anyhow.

Now decide something u want to achive. Like dommination victory or science victory or whatever and do this when you start a game. Now lose. If you dont lose it was to easy. Increase dificulty. Do this util you lose. now sit back and think about why you lost. Did they kill you early. Then you need a bit more army early on. Did they outtech you, then how can you get libraries up faster, national college (res. agreements , it s SP after all) etc..

Then try again

 

[The Pilgrim]

- forge.

I assume you meant workshop for Ironworks.

As for OP question - yeah, just go and try it. If you were good at warlord you wouldn't feel much of a difference. If you weren't so good and just got away with it due to level bonuses this is a perfect time to find out and learn how to become better.

 

[capella]

Here is the thing 600h + on warlord. Of course you allways win and of course you will never improve. I order to improve you will need to play at a level where you loose as much as you win. Where you do not get all the wonders and you will have to start to think about how to prioritize to get exactly the wonders needed for a certain victory type. Where you will need to try to balance army producction and building producction. where you can t afford to build every building but choose the ones that give you the most value for money. Where you can not choose what victory condition u like to get this time when game nears the end but plan it faar earlier in order to even have a chanse. YÍf you play at a to low level you will stagnate and never get better simply because you don t need to....

Sage advice, KM! You're right: I like to win, sure, and that's why I play Warlord all the time, but it's starting to get boring and I'm looking for a challenge. I know that Prince level is the "cut-off" point where you actually have to start thinking about a lot more of your empire in detail!

 

[therottweiler]

I have found the higher difficulty the more I tend to warmonger. I am playing and winning on emperor now and even with science / cultural wins knocking out a close foe or giving a bully a bloody nose by sacking one or more of his cities really helps.

 

[capella]

I've been reading Tabernak's 4 cities sword rush strategy and it's making me realize I have a lot to learn!

I've never messed with individual cities' production/growth focus, or specialists, or what tiles to work - heck I didn't even know you could "lock" a tile to be worked!

That's the kind of stuff I need to start learning about...