Moving up to Prince Help

[ColossusCrusher]

I play Civ for the fun aspect rather than the challenge most of the time, but I've recently been finding that Warlord has just become me moving along until I reach the technological supernova that you can get in the later part of the game on easier difficulties and then I just steamroll into my victory condition of choice.

So I tried a Shaka/Pangea/Standard/Prince game and promptly overextended on my early conquests, ran into Unhappiness and got hit by Sweden and Greece on two fronts. :/

I know most of you can probably do Prince in your sleep, but I'd really love to get some advice from you all. If it helps, my play style is to generally build up a powerful economy, whether by hammers or gold and then leverage either of the two into whatever I need to win - I love getting attacked and then turning my war machine on into overdrive, for example.

 

[xTopesx]

Im in the same boat as you. I planned on moving up to prince after I finish my latest game. I was just a little worried about it so here I am on the forums looking for help. Any vets have any advice for us?

 

[TheWaffleTaco]

I'm by far not the best player (prince and sometimes king) however going into prince you really need to play you civs to your strengths rather than get ahead of everyone w/ technology at ease.
Overall try to keep in the top 1/3 of tech. Do not ignore military early on because this is the point when civs will be ready to DoW within the first 1/5 of the game on you if you do not have an early one. Keep an eye on the other civs for a potential AI victory. Trade extra resources to get back if you are falling behind. Most importantly: It's OK if you aren't first. Score, tech, soldiers, whatever. You do not have to be first to win (just as long as you arent last XD).
My personal experience with the zulus (1 game) is to hang back at the start and focus on building/growing cities until impi, which can pretty much crap on most civs.
But then again, im still not amazing at this game.

 

[Alzadar]

Well your strategy certainly sounds decent enough for Prince so there's probably some kind of basic fundamental mistake crippling you.

Are you annexing cities indiscriminately (the AI frequently builds cities in the crappiest locations possible)? Are you choosing good settling locations with at least one unique luxury? Are you making sure to improve your luxuries and trading with the AI for spares when needed? Are you overbuilding roads?

 

[Catan_Settler]

The main trigger for the AI to attack you is if your army is weak, so you can prevent most of your problems there by keeping an eye on the demographics screen and keeping yourself at least 3rd in solider count. Better yet, aim to keep yourself at #1. The happiness thing is due to the fact that on Warlord you get a bunch of base happiness for free, so you don't actually have to micromanage that stat at all on Warlord. On the other settings you do, obviously. Main thing is plan ahead for happiness. You get 4 per new luxury resource, and there are a bunch of buildings that give you 2 in their city. There's also several ways religion can get you some more happiness.

The thing is, you need to factor your happiness into your game plan. So don't go invading another country if you only have a point or two of happiness to spare. My rule of thumb is 8+ happiness means it's time to go take or settle some more cities. If I don't have the spare happiness, adding another city to the empire is not going to help me, it's going to slow my economy by hurting growth everywhere else. So, you only start adding cities when you have a buffer of extra happiness to accomodate. The other upshot is, found new cities only when they're giving you new luxury resources. You can of course get around that by using religion for bonus happiness instead, but a mixture of happiness from all sources (luxuries, buildings and religion) is your best bet. Especially if you're trying to take over most of the map, you're gonna need hundreds of happiness to support that size of empire.

 

[ColossusCrusher]

In my first attempt I was making a lot of puppets - I love having cheaper social policy costs, so I generally only have three *real* cities and then just puppet my conquests. Seems like I should focus on scouting and city placement though - how useful are the suggested location icons that the game provides? I've had decent results putting cities down around them, but I'm sure it's useless at high-level play.

 

[joshua43214]

reference this chart
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ5/difficulties
As you can see, you are basically playing now with no advantage, and the AI is playing with a very slight one. The AI gets 1 free tech, its happiness modifier is a tad more generous, and it is able to produce a tiny bit faster. You on the other hand have lost all advantage and start with 3 less happiness.

What this boils down to is that you get one less city happiness free, you have to focus more energy on tech to catch up, and you have to prepare a defensive force a tad bit sooner. On the other hand, the AI still will fail to win on Prince in a timely fashion, so all you have to do is hang in there.

The real danger is that you will still learn a lot of "advanced bad habits" on this difficulty. I suggest that after you log your first win, move right up to King then into emperor as quick as possible. Emperor strikes a nice balance that many players like. The AI will win in a timely fashion and has a nice advantage over you, but on the other hand you can still get a lot of shinny wonders and have your way with the game.

 

[ColossusCrusher]

Wanted to give you guys an update:

Japan/Prince/Standard/Earth

I went for an Honor start and managed to stay even with the AI, teching along and biding my time until samurai. Once I got them I rampaged through Gandhi, taking his Petra-city and Delhi before peacing out. Now I've got muskets and am getting my happiness up before ripping Portugal apart - she's my direct competition according to score, since I jumped to the top of the list after I ripped Gandhi apart.

Since it's an Earth map, I started near where real China is - the bad news is Montezuma and Theodora are the ones in the Americas, and Monty has something like six spices in his capital (embassy-vision). Attila's got a crazy amount of luxuries too, but he only has the one city. Overall, I think I'm doing pretty well, although making sure my happiness is higher before going to war is an interesting limiter. I plan on going Autocracy once ideology matters and see if I can get the Prora, but we'll see what happens.