My first game on Prince (Louis XIV, Standard Pangaea, Normal speed)

[rfcfanatic]

As I have gained some level of confidence on Noble, I have decided to try Prince difficulty. Here's my starting situation:

Spoiler :

Not so promising start. I settled on the spot. From the very start I made a terrible mistake of violating the rule - food first. I teched Hunting while training a worker, but I should have teched Fishing while training a warrior and should have switched the production to a work boat as soon as I got Fishing.

Before I got out my settler, I finished Stonehenge and before the next settler I finished The Oracle which yielded Metal Casting as the free tech. Violation of the first rule and wonder-whoring brought me to a situation where I couldn't expand as quickly as I usually do and always had a shortage of workers.

Here I am in 1110 AD (the save has also been attached):

Spoiler :

The poor starting situation wasn't the only problem. There's even a bigger problem - no horses. Lib rush towards Military Tradition doesn't make sense, because I can't use my favourite strategy of using cavalry (and cuirassiers a little bit earlier). So I guess I have to rely on rifles (I don't like them at all because they are slow and not as strong as cavalry, but the speed is the main factor).

As I didn't want to aggravate Toku, on his demand I stopped trading with Mansa. I'm kind of worried of Mansa pulling ahead in score and power. Lincoln is up to no good either. He's in a heathen religion and building up military power - it's kind of unusual for someone like Lincoln.

I'm trying to go for Feudalism - Guilds - Gunpowder, because musketeers are basically my only option to counter Mansa's crossbows.

Here's how I have decided to specialize my cities:
Paris - Bureau capital
Orleans - hammers
Lyons - commerce
Rheims - commerce; probably need to redesign the irrigation path to rice
Tours - hammers
Marseilles - commerce
Zhou - commerce
Avignon - hammers; quite poor but it was the last spot left decent enough

Spammed courthouses in every city to combat the maintenance costs that always bog me down in every game.

The main questions:

- How's my city specialization?
- Should I prioritize Gunpowder?
- When to attack Mansa?
- Is there some problem with emphasize production feature? It has been turned on in Tours, but the city is still working farms instead of mines, although there's more than enough food to grow the city. At least - a mine should be worked instead of that pointless 2F1H forest tile. I haven't manually played around with the tiles.

 

[rfcfanatic]

Lincoln says:

"Soon my numberless Horse Archer shall destroy you all!"

Oh...that means that it's time to spam pikemen.

 

[rfcfanatic]

Mansa's even scarier:

"Cower before the might of my Knight!"

 

[Robert FIN]

Hello! I think that I can't help you much (I'm playing my 1st game in noble lvl), but in this case I'd probably vassalize/capture some noobs I understand if you don't want to backstab Gandhi cuz he'll be your research buddy but You can wipe out Tokugawa right? It means more cities against Mali noobies and then ur ready to go Seems like Mansa is getting serious problem, try to do something.. And if AI says "Cover before my horses" or whatever it is, does it mean that he is really building that unit or what?

 

[barbertje]

The poor starting situation wasn't the only problem. There's even a bigger problem - no horses. Lib rush towards Military Tradition doesn't make sense, because I can't use my favourite strategy of using cavalry (and cuirassiers a little bit earlier). So I guess I have to rely on rifles (I don't like them at all because they are slow and not as strong as cavalry, but the speed is the main factor).

I think trying to get steel from liberalism was very possible here.
Steel is the #1 military tech to go for if you don't have horses.
With industrious and marble, going for the marble wonders, would
have been very good. The AI's aren't building a lot of wonders BTW,
pyramids and HG still available, also The Mausoleum. (and you have
marble, and haven't had a golden age yet)

As I didn't want to aggravate Toku, on his demand I stopped trading with Mansa. I'm kind of worried of Mansa pulling ahead in score and power. Lincoln is up to no good either. He's in a heathen religion and building up military power - it's kind of unusual for someone like Lincoln.

He isn't plotting war on anyone yet, and he isn't bordering you. I wouldn't worry.

I'm trying to go for Feudalism - Guilds - Gunpowder, because musketeers are basically my only option to counter Mansa's crossbows.

You can also trade for horseback riding, and build elephants to counter crossbows.
You don't seem to be trading techs at all.

Here's how I have decided to specialize my cities:
Paris - Bureau capital
Orleans - hammers
Lyons - commerce
Rheims - commerce; probably need to redesign the irrigation path to rice
Tours - hammers
Marseilles - commerce
Zhou - commerce
Avignon - hammers; quite poor but it was the last spot left decent enough

If you are planning to go to war soonish, for example using trebuchets, It's better to just farm and mine everything except Paris and Lyons, wich are the only 2 cities to have enough cottages already worked. A new cottage anywhere else won't pay soon enough

Spammed courthouses in every city to combat the maintenance costs that always bog me down in every game.

The worst maintenance without a courthouse is about 6, I wouldn't build any courthouse at all, but wealth, or world wonders.

The main questions:

- How's my city specialization?
- Should I prioritize Gunpowder?
- When to attack Mansa?
- Is there some problem with emphasize production feature? It has been turned on in Tours, but the city is still working farms instead of mines, although there's more than enough food to grow the city. At least - a mine should be worked instead of that pointless 2F1H forest tile. I haven't manually played around with the tiles.

- Your City specialization is ok if you want a peaceful space race, but you really shouldn't build more cottages or get more commerce if you want to war soon.

- You can do without gunpowder, altough it's on the way to steel and the 2 move musketeers make good reinforcements. The most important thing is to get enough trebuchets.

- I would maybe attack Mansa after attacking Toku, and maybe also after attacking Gandhi. Toku is the slowest techer, can't bribe anyone and is 3 techs away from samurai, and very far away from engineering. If you build 10 trebuchets, you can take him with what you have now. Do build/upgrade some crossbows, because Toku will have a stack with melee somewhere (he has no horses), and crossbows will be good in mowing them down.
Mansa might get engineering soon, and if he gets castles this will slow down your attack a lot.
Try to trade for monotheism/theology and switch into theocracy to get CR2 trebs.

-Tours is very far below the happy cap. You should at least let the city grow to size 8 ASAP, so you can work all mines without starving. You'll get even more hammers out whipping the city at size 11 or 12. (at the cost of extra micro to work just the right amount of food and whip at the right time). To prevent the governor from working the grassland forests, chop them and build more farms. You should really have built even more farms instead of mines, so you could use your extra happy cap to whip trebuchets every other turn until the city becomes unhappy.

 

[rfcfanatic]

And if AI says "Cover before my horses" or whatever it is, does it mean that he is really building that unit or what?

Yep, I guess that's the strongest (or the most numerous) unit the AI has.

 

[rfcfanatic]

I think trying to get steel from liberalism was very possible here.
Steel is the #1 military tech to go for if you don't have horses.
With industrious and marble, going for the marble wonders, would
have been very good. The AI's aren't building a lot of wonders BTW,
pyramids and HG still available, also The Mausoleum. (and you have
marble, and haven't had a golden age yet)

Thanks for reminding that Chemistry - Steel is also an alternative Lib path. I always thought that the mess of techs towards Rifling is the only alternative to Military Tradition. Btw, I'm wondering if anyone has used cannons with medieval units?

Yes, and this is another example of a game where I get diverted from the Aesthetics path. It's so difficult to get rid of the habit of beelining medieval military techs while neglecting Aesthetics in the process. But Mids available in 12th century AD is really hilarious , especially on that difficulty level.

He isn't plotting war on anyone yet, and he isn't bordering you. I wouldn't worry.

How (or where) to check whether an AI is plotting a war or not?

You can also trade for horseback riding, and build elephants to counter crossbows. You don't seem to be trading techs at all.

Yep, the tech trading thing, I take this sorta challenge of not doing any tech trade in any game before I learn how to finish the Lib rush before 300 AD and to do so without tech trading. I have seen people doing it in GameSpy with tech trade off and I want to understand how.

The worst maintenance without a courthouse is about 6, I wouldn't build any courthouse at all, but wealth, or world wonders.

Btw, which type of cities are suitable for building Wealth/Research? Hammer cities have a lot of hammers that can be converted to or , but I'd normally want to build military units there. Commerce cities have so little hammers that turning them to research or wealth has little effect.

-Tours is very far below the happy cap. You should at least let the city grow to size 8 ASAP, so you can work all mines without starving. You'll get even more hammers out whipping the city at size 11 or 12. (at the cost of extra micro to work just the right amount of food and whip at the right time). To prevent the governor from working the grassland forests, chop them and build more farms. You should really have built even more farms instead of mines, so you could use your extra happy cap to whip trebuchets every other turn until the city becomes unhappy.

I've heard that food-positive tiles (3+ yield) should never be whipped. Given that whipping is more efficient than working the mines, should I then whip mine tiles instead?

 

[thbrown81]

The biggest problems I see are in the early game, which is affecting you now, because you are way behind on tech, which shouldn't happen on Prince.

1) Stonehenge (as you already realized) is a complete waste. It's normally a complete waste for ANYONE to build it, but ESPECIALLY a Creative leader. Once of the nice things about a Creative leader is that you don't have to build monuments because you are going to get border pops without them. So you definitely don't need to build Stonehenge.

2) That ended up corrupting your GP pool, which was exacerbated by waiting way to long to get Writing. You were chasing a lot of small techs that you should let the AI research for you. You should never self-tech archery on Prince UNLESS you are going for a quick HA rush, but you teched it before AH, so you didn't even know if you had horses anyway. Barb pressure on Prince doesn't require archers, especially with this many AI close to you. Pottery, AH and Writing should've come before Mysticism on Archery (neither of these are tile improvement techs, and as mentioned, you don't need Mysticism right away when you are Creative). Anyway, once you get your basic tile improvement techs and (including Masonry, which would've sped up building the Oracle) have Writing, you want to grab a tech that you can trade, which is usually Aesthetics or Math. Of course, this requires that SOMEONE gets Alphabet. I have to say, I'm actually a little impressed that you have made it to 1100 AD and still don't have Alphabet.

3) You need to make it a point to get Lit early. You don't have the National Epic built (again, not capitalizing on the Marble), so you aren't doubling up on your GP points (I have committed this same error myself many times).

4) Your first attack target should be Gandhi. You can cap him quickly by taking his two cities. At this point you don't want to mess with attacking anyone else until you get to Rifles and Cannons, but you can probably get his two big cities with tech parity. You were actually set up nicely for a Culture victory, and you could still go for it if you wanted, but SH and the Oracle are going to make it take a lot longer to get the GAs you need.

Anyway, big picture, you just want to be a little more intentional about your early teching. Make sure you know what you are going to do with a tech before you get it, and work deeper down one line instead of trying to fill in all the simple techs.

 

[rfcfanatic]

The biggest problems I see are in the early game, which is affecting you now, because you are way behind on tech, which shouldn't happen on Prince.

Yes, many things went wrong right in the beginning. Instead of Fishing, I teched Hunting to hook up the ivory. Then my only warrior got killed while attacking a lion at 70% odds. That misfortune and no copper from BW led me to prioritize Archery and so on. Yep, that's my usual strategy - if I fail copper, I'll research Archery. But I don't quite agree with what you said about barb threat. Even on Noble I have abandoned several games because of barb warriors, archers and spearmen pillaging my tiles and against all odds capturing my cities.

 

[thbrown81]

Yes, many things went wrong right in the beginning. Instead of Fishing, I teched Hunting to hook up the ivory. Then my only warrior got killed while attacking a lion at 70% odds. That misfortune and no copper from BW led me to prioritize Archery and so on. Yep, that's my usual strategy - if I fail copper, I'll research Archery. But I don't quite agree with what you said about barb threat. Even on Noble I have abandoned several games because of barb warriors, archers and spearmen pillaging my tiles and against all odds capturing my cities.

Are you familiar with fog/spawn busting? A few properly placed warriors is normally all you need. But losing one to a lion is definitely a pain.

 

[rfcfanatic]

Are you familiar with fog/spawn busting? A few properly placed warriors is normally all you need. But losing one to a lion is definitely a pain.

I guess that fog busting simply means driving away the fog of war, right? However, I don't quite understand what spawn busting is.

 

[shulgi]

Barbarians can't spawn in the 5 by 5 square around a unit (yours or AI). Spawn busting refers to using extra warriors, fishing boats or anything else to prevent barbarians from appearing. It's best used when you have a large chunk of land blocked off and it will take quite a while to settle.

 

[barbertje]

How (or where) to check whether an AI is plotting a war or not?

If you have the bug or bat mod a red fist appears next to the leader name. If you don't, you have to ask them to go to war with someone, and hover your mouse over the name of the targets, if it says "We have enough on our hands right now", they are plotting war, or at war"

Btw, which type of cities are suitable for building Wealth/Research? Hammer cities have a lot of hammers that can be converted to or , but I'd normally want to build military units there. Commerce cities have so little hammers that turning them to research or wealth has little effect.

Hammer cities are better. You don't need so many units as you have. Commerce cities should probably slow build some commerce/happy/health building and whip them when the city gets unhealthy/unhappy.
As an industrious civ, building wonders is better than building wealth. At this level, you can often afford to build many wonders, after you've settled your land and established borders.

I've heard that food-positive tiles (3+ yield) should never be whipped. Given that whipping is more efficient than working the mines, should I then whip mine tiles instead?

A grassland farm and whipping does produce more hammers than a grassland hill, until size 10, and more hammers than a plains hill at a city size of 14 IF the happiness allows you to whip often enough.

In the long run, if you can get the city to size 10, when working all the grassland-mines you have, you should then work all the grassland mines, and only whip to use up any surplus food. If you don't have enough mines, you should aim for a food surplus of 4, wich will enable you to 2pop whip a size-10 city every 10 turns. (Aztecs will need more food to whip every 5 turns).
Growing the city bigger than 10 only makes sense if you can work more mines.
Tours can produce 22 base hammers/turn, doing a 2pop whip every 20 turns.

You really should be ignoring the paragraph above however.

The big advantage of a city with a lot of farms, is that you can store up a lot of food in the form of population, and convert it to hammers quickly with the whip, once you've reached a tech such as machinery/engineering/militariy tradition etc.
I just farm everything I can, and then build mines and leave the rest up to the city governor. I also sometimes build grassland cottages, if I can't farm yet before civil service, and I have no qualms about whipping them away later or farming over them.

You can then quickly produce a lot of up to date units, instead of gradually building up a huge stack of axes, wich will cost more upkeep, and for wich you'll need a fortune to upgrade them to macemen before the attack.

For earlier wars with horse archers or catapults, you often end up whipping the cities from 4 to 2 all the time. This has the advantage of not having to build too much improvements, because you really can't afford enough workers to clearcut all forests and to do a lot of tile improvements on higher levels.

 

[Ghpstage]

I guess that fog busting simply means driving away the fog of war, right? However, I don't quite understand what spawn busting is.

Spawnbusting is the new fogusting that came about after the code was dived, it was found that barb units cannot spawn within 2 tiles in any direction of any existing unit (even other barbs!).

Basically theres a 5*5 tile no unit spawn region around any unit, using this its easy to make use of this to lock out spawns from large areas. Its effective to the point of usually not needing anything more than warriors to deal with barbs on any difficulty provided its standard speed and map size.
Do note however that barb cities don't follow the same rule, they can spawn anywhere in the fog.

 

[rfcfanatic]

You can then quickly produce a lot of up to date units, instead of gradually building up a huge stack of axes, wich will cost more upkeep, and for wich you'll need a fortune to upgrade them to macemen before the attack.

Even worse... after I gave these axes CR promotion, I upgraded them to rifles. It cost 6-7 turns of technological standstill.

 

[rfcfanatic]

It's time for an update. 1720 AD. Meanwhile I got backstabbed twice by Tokugawa and twice by Suleiman. I understand that warmonger like Toku can backstab, but why Suleiman??? Residing at the other end of the continent and backstabbing at pleased, with no provocation whatsoever!

Fought two defensive wars against Toku. The second war ended with Toku's capitulation. Never thought anyone could capitulate after a defensive war!

In the midst of this mess Mansa declared on me (by the way Mansa had beaten me to Liberalism). At first, my pikes and musketeers did well and repelled Mansa's knights and I even managed to capture one of their cities. Then Mansa got a temporary military tech lead (cuirassiers and grenadiers), but as soon as I got rifles Mansa lost several cities and was forced to capitulate.

Lincoln has grown too big and too powerful and I guess it's time to deal with him and his vassals (Gandhi, Suleiman). You were right to advise me to go after Gandhi.

Spoiler :

How can Lincoln have greater power than I do while all I can see is elephants, maces and longbows? He certainly doesn't have Rifling.

I don't know if I can win this game. My only hope is that the AI stays on the research path of useless peacemonger techs (Physics, Electricity) and stays away from Assembly Line and Industrialism.

By the way, is it safe to give Rifling to my vassals Toku and Mansa? My main concern is that they may trade it away to unsavoury elements like Darius.

 

[thbrown81]

OK, here's my save at 1AD. I started by settling on the elephant, which improves my capital and also frees up room for another city to work the clams. Best thing to do is look at my tech order. By getting Writing early as well as Masonry, I was able to get up an early Academy, and a couple scientists to bulb techs to trade, and I still completed the Oracle in time for the CS slingshot. Also notice my warrior placement up north, which is keeping barbs from spawning. I didn't place them that precisely, but I've only had a couple barb warriors wander down, and they are easy to pick off. I'm way behind on workers, partly because of building boats, but I'm only working two unimproved tiles, so it isn't a big deal. Other misstep was letting Gandhi beat me to a city spot. But I'm more worried about walling off the other AI, so he is just building more cities for me to take later. I'm about to pop another GS and get Lit, which will get me the NE in Paris. I have the option to do a Cataphant (Catapaults and Elephants) rush, which I would use on Gandhi, Toku or Lincoln, basically whoever doesn't have longbows yet. However, I can also just fill in four more cities and work on improving them. With a big tech lead I can grab Education, build Oxford and work towards Libbing steel, and use France's UB to pound the map, or just wait and grab Rifles. Either way, I'm in excellent position to steamroll the map.

 

[thbrown81]

Forgot to add one other thing. On games that you are posting to the forum for advice, it's best to turn off huts and events. These can distort gameplay quite a bit and mask some deficiencies in your play. For example, I popped quite a bit of gold and got an event that let me run at 100% research much longer than I normally could. And I got another event that gives my capital 3 happy people forever (appropriately the "I am the state" event), which means I can egregiously spam GP because I won't hit the happy cap ever.

Anyway, playing without huts and events will create more consistency from one game to the next and help you fine tune your gameplay quite a bit.

Edit:

Here's a great thread with more tips on how to maximize help from the S&T forum.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=248918

 

[rfcfanatic]

Against all odds the first victory on Prince came to home! Domination victory, 1860 AD.

Spoiler :

Yes, Lincoln didn't even any have gunpowder units. Longbows, trebs, maces, elephants and airships were basically everything he had. Suleiman had a little bit better army (cuirs and janissaries) and he was a few turns away from Rifling before he capitulated. Suleiman had already researched Mass Media, but he didn't even have Rifling...

Thank you everyone for the advice! I'll start working through it step-by-step.

 

[jarhead_leif]

You're welcome.