Need help making transition from Warlord to Prince

[JackHammer]

I am a lifelong Civ player,(i.e. I played 1 on my PC when I was 7.) Anyway, I've never been very good mostly because I've never studied optimal play styles. So two years ago I decided to become a student of the game and really focus on my strategy and work on getting better. I've watched a hundred let's plays,(my favorites from TheMeInTeam,) and I'm on the forums every day, but I can't seem to take my game to the next level, that being Prince. I'm pretty good at starts, but I fall apart between 800BC and 1AD. Either I focus too much on expansion and not enough on military, or I end up running a terrible GPT deficit and no matter how many Mints, Markets, and Banks I build, I can't seem to get ahead. I spend the rest of the game focusing on that, and get creamed. OK, so what am I looking for, I would greatly appreciate some general Prince level strategy. I know that everything is situation based, and there is no cookie cutter approach. What light bulbs went off for you when you were making the step up? All thoughts and comments would be greatly appreciated. Oh, and before anybody says, "maybe you shouldn't be playing Prince", let me say that I absolutely crush Warlord. I win 90% of the time with every style. Not bragging, just saying. I've attached some screen shots from my recent failure. your criticism is requested.

 

[GfxJG]

I can see from your culture that I suspect you build the culture buildings fairly quickly in the game, right? Generally, your problem seems to be a mix of city placement (I see very very few gold tiles) and too many buildings.

 

[Roxlimn]

Jackhammer:

I'm not a high difficulty level player, but I do win all my games on King. I hope my advice will be helpful while you transition through the middle levels.

Comparing your games to mine at the same time signature, your cities are tiny. Like, little, itty bitty cities. At turn 93, you have 5, 4, 3, 2, 2 cities. I have 8, 6, 5, 3, 3 cities. You have 2 happiness excess. I have 4, and have 4 more happiness imminently on the way.

From an examination of your screenshot, here's what I would say:

1. You have too many culture buildings. You're already on a more advanced Policy, and you have more culture per turn than I do (by 7). Your income obviously can't support that. You need more tiles, and you need more population.

2. You have improved and are working crappy tiles on crappy city sites. Tours' immediate environment is nearly all desert! The lone marble luxury resource up top isn't worth the happiness hit you took in founding that worthless city.

Lyon is in a similar situation. Its tiles aren't desert, but there are no especially good tiles to work for three tiles all around!

A better site for these cities would be north of Venice, capturing the Horses, Stone, Wheat and the riverside tiles. Put extra value on riverside tiles - they give extra food after Civil Service (which you've researched) and give you extra gold as well. Do not Trade Post the riverside tiles. In your early development you need people more than money, and you can't milk the AIs for money to grant to Maritimes.

3. I don't know what the hell is going on with Troyes. It's got the tile acquisition of a much larger city, even though it's size 2! What'd you do buy all the tiles?

4. Two of your five cities are unconnected to the Trade Network (and they're tiny). This reduces your overall Trade Route gold. My output is 17. My total income is 49; my total expenses are 38.

5. Other points: at turn 89 I was 2 turns away from Hanging Gardens (which I get) and 11 turns away from Education. My Social Policy completion of Liberty is set to finish in 8 turns. I will use the Great Engineer from the Liberty finisher to build the Notre Dame, which will give me 10 happiness with which to grow my capital (and other cities, too, actually)

 

[Ravellion]

The advice above is all solid. A few things I can add is that you seem to have quite a few workers improving desert tiles, or other worthless tiles. Better to disband most of your workers when you don't need them anymore. From the demographics screen it looks like you are using tiles that are mostly food neutral (that is a bit of a guess, the demographics screen doesn't give that good info). You probably are using tradeposted tiles? There is very little use in tradeposted tiles, use farms instead. Trade routes from larger cities make more money than small cities using tradeposts.

 

[jbsoccer]

I have been playing prince, and hoping to move up to king. My first prince game i remember i was like WTH when everyone attacked me. My advice is to build 1-2 extra cities at most, forget culture in the beginning and conquer an opponent when your UU becomes available. Garrison cities with ranged units and add defensive buildings. When you have money either buy culture allies or rush build military for an attack. Build production buildings, hammer tile improvements and food. Settle your first great person (other than a GG).

 

[basta]

You're playing as France and their UA gives you free early culture so that you can use your production for other things, but you're wasting it on even more culture buildings. A monument is really enough in a city early game.

Your cities are too small for this time period. get your food surplus up early game to grow them, along with production.

Since you've got 4-5 cities, you should be using the Liberty tree for the free settler and worker, otherwise you're wasting time and production.

You've got too many workers--1 per city, tops. You pay maintenance on them. If you found cities near the capital, they can share workers. Your cities have such low pop that they can't work the tiles you've already improved anyway.

Roads don't pay until a city hits 4 pop.

Your city sites are poor. Frankly, the whole map is poor and I would have rerolled--you're hemmed in all round by CSs. Settle your cities on rivers with good resources all around.

At this point in the game, everyone has money problems, so you have to be creative. Sell extra strategic resources for 45 gold to far off civs that can't attack you. Sell them Open Borders, too.

The best way to make money is to build an army when you hit steel and conquer your neighbor and trade-post spam his puppeted lands. You will be rolling in money for the rest of the game.

 

[JackHammer]

I can see from your culture that I suspect you build the culture buildings fairly quickly in the game, right? Generally, your problem seems to be a mix of city placement (I see very very few gold tiles) and too many buildings.

I was trying to expand quickly toward my neighbors to ensure that I could get my cities out. I've noticed at Prince, the AI tends to get their cities out there much faster. I should have done a better job of placement. I tried to compensate by spamming workshops, but I'm learning that early game pop is crucial.


So what I am taking away from everyone's comments is that early game population and production is more important than science and culture. Keep a ranged unit at home to ward off early rushes. Be more selective of my city sites(as one poster suggested I should have rerolled). Don't settle near dessert if though your workers can improve them to 2 food before any tech bonuses. Prioritize river-front and luxury resources. Spam farms and not workshops. Am I on the right path with this?

 

[anandus]

@Jackhammer:
Yeah, that's about right I think

I just did a testgame with the French to see how I fare, I'm also a beginning Prince player (mostly because I'm more of a very casual civver).
At turn 93 I only had 2 cities (I had a river-desert start), size 11 and 3, my science was also +27, my gold was 116 (+16) and my culture was +13.
I made a screenshot of my game here

Now I'm a beginning player as well, but I wonder:
How did you get so many cities? I only have a second one because of the Liberty policy, working on my NC in my capital and was planning on a settler after that.
Did you rush buy or build them?

Oh, and I'm not trying to hijack the thread (although I wouldn't mind any tips ), I was mostly wondering about how to get 5 cities up and running in turn 93

 

[JackHammer]

@Jackhammer:
Yeah, that's about right I think

I just did a testgame with the French to see how I fare, I'm also a beginning Prince player (mostly because I'm more of a very casual civver).
At turn 93 I only had 2 cities (I had a river-desert start), size 11 and 3, my science was also +27, my gold was 116 (+16) and my culture was +13.
I made a screenshot of my game here

Now I'm a beginning player as well, but I wonder:
How did you get so many cities? I only have a second one because of the Liberty policy, working on my NC in my capital and was planning on a settler after that.
Did you rush buy or build them?

Oh, and I'm not trying to hijack the thread (although I wouldn't mind any tips ), I was mostly wondering about how to get 5 cities up and running in turn 93

Liberty for 1, rushed 1, and built 2. I had it in my head early that I'm going for Domination, so I wanted to make sure I had cities early on to have time to get production up before I started to spam military. From what everyone is saying. I grew too fast, and crushed my GPT. What the screenshots don't show you, is that I was at -26 happiness 30 turns before. I spent all that time trying to sell excess luxuries and open borders, just to get my science to grow, JUST to be able to get techs that offered buildings I could build to generate gold. It's kind of a downward spiral. You have to stay balanced across the board, because if one thing gets F'd up, it takes a long time to recover and you get left in the dirt by the AI. I just recently posted another thread of a game I played late last night. I spammed cities early, but did a much better job of placing and managing them. Doesn't look like I'm gonna win, but second for sure.

 

[anandus]

Ohhh... Are you playing on quick speed maybe?
I only just now noticed on your screenshots it's 590 AD in turn 93 (instead of 550 BC).

I tried again and again to get 5 cities on turn 93, but couldn't get it (or barely, foregoing everything else). But on quick speed it's a different story.

 

[ipris]

My first thought was: Did you sell your extra resources to the other civs? I see you have 8 horses, you could sell half of them for a few bucks most likely. Perhaps you have other extras as well?

 

[Roxlimn]

As a rule of thumb, any new city you found must have these elements:

Good food (freshwater + Civil Service, multiple Cows, multiple Granary Resources, multiple Fish)
Good Production (Hills, Horses, Iron, Stone, any Forest with Iroqouis)
A new unique luxury you don't have yet, or multiple luxury resources you already have.

Your start is poor because you don't have any sites that fulfill all of those criteria, and even your capital barely does. I've seen and played poorer starts, but I've also seen MUCH better starts.

Being on Prince here are some ways you can save money:

Build the Stonehenge instead of Monument and Temple in your Capital. It'll give more culture and save you 2 GPT.

Build the Pyramids instead of two Workers. The hammer and maintenance is about the same, but since the Pyramids will boost the efficacy of all your Workers, you should not need to build any once the Pyramids complete (and you will presumably have your Liberty Worker + 1 Worker Steal).


Wonder whoring is something of a crutch, but as it gives you a simpler game plan along the lines of a classic plan, it's useful to do on Prince or lower. Play Egypt to get a feel for which Wonders do what. Once you start appreciating them individually, you can start figuring out how to replicate their effects using other means.

For my part, I get one Settler from Liberty, build one if I have a site I really like, and generally buy one if I have another site I really like. If there are no such sites, I have no problems sticking with 2 or 3 cities and growing them as fast as I can.

The game I chose to relate to yours was not as bad as yours, but it wasn't that good, either. I have since loaded up and examined several games where I had more pop, more income, more everything at around turn 90-ish. Also, all those games were on Standard speed.

Building a Library too early at the cost of growth is not smart. Your pop 5 city with a Library only generates as much Science as my pop 8 city without a Library (and I actually do have a Library in there), and I generate more trade route income, and work more tiles. As another rule of thumb, and city with a pop of 5 or less needs to concentrate on either growth or tile acquisition (not necessarily Culture - tile acquisition) until it reaches pop 5, unless you need to specific building for an important National Wonder.

 

[grandad1982]

If your playing on quick speed and still finding it hard I suggest you drop to standard speed. Quick speed can add half a difficulty level!

Other than that I'm just going to eco the above advice.

Only settle cities that will be worth it (luxury capture, good food or gold potential, strategic capture etc).
Don't build so many workers early. You only need to improve the tiles you can work or can work soon.
Grow you pop size. Don't let this get out of control but do let at least on of you cities (probably your capital) grow quickly to take up the science duties.
Don't build stuff you don't need! Lots of buildings just aren't needed, e.g. stables unless you are getting at least 2 if not 3, or forges almost ever!
Sell stuff you don't need to the AI. This is you bulk income for the early game along with working lux resources.
Prioritise improving unique resource tiles first then food and production. Gold comes way down the list as trade posts are rubbish till Economics(?).

 

[Kerosene31]

Managing your economy is a typical problem on prince. I went through it as did many others, so don't get frustrated.

I can't tell you the one moment where I got it, it is just part of the learning process.

It was already said, but is worth repeating, only build buildings you absolutely need. Maintenance costs will catch up to you later on when you need to support a bigger army and don't have the money.

 

[Sigvardt]

I keep a close eye on how many gold are available from tiles before I settle a city. I a city does not earn any gold itself from tiles then your other cities must, obviously, carry the burden.

Another thing I micro quite intense is what I build in each city and how much gold that city earn. So if a city earning 3 gold per default it can afford a lib, a granary and a monument. Then a trade route might add 1 gold profit so I can afford to spend 4 gold.

It's obviously always my gold to make each city earn me gold since this goes towards my army. If you can only keep your skin on your nose you cannot afford an army.

As an example take a wheat next to a river. With civil service that tile will make you 1 gold and four food if you build a granary. A granary cost 1 gold to maintain so thats a no brainer. It's more than a break even tile since you can support 3 citizens with that 1 tile and 1 gold. The two others can work lux for more gold or hammers or a mix.

I will skip on Temples in most games untill I start running a better economy.

Edit: early on the game, before you can convert hammers to wealth/science, I will build wonders I might not even get just because its better to get that extra gold compared to building more units or buildings that just drain my coffers. Sometimes I end up with a wonder tough which is fine too.

 

[knighterrant81]

I recently (a few months ago) made this transition. Here's some suggestions.

1. Don't ignore City-States. This was the first thing I noticed going from Warlord to Prince. No matter what I did, I couldn't keep up without city-state bonuses (at least at first). A cultural City-State ally (especially one you earned without paying gold) early in the game can be really helpful. Pay attention when they want you to clear a camp - that is a huge boost.

2. Scout. Not just the unit, but the action. Make sure you have enough troops to protect your fledgling Civ though, or your Warrior can get back to your Capital if/when needed.

3. Science. Stay ahead, at least a little, no matter what the victory you are going for. The Great Library is a real help with this if you can snag it.

4. Military. The AI gets a bit more aggressive, and you will want to keep a close eye on your Military Advisor - if he's telling you "they have a military that could wipe us off the planet" you need to start building up (or reload to an earlier point, build up, and count it as a learning experience). Also, remember, you don't have to outrun the bear, you just have to be faster than the other guy the bear is chasing - if there's an aggressive Civ on your continent building up for an attack, make sure you are stronger than your other neighbors if you can't build up a force equal to the aggressive Civ's.

5. There seem to be stopping points where Happiness and Gold become issues. Plan for these and tech accordingly. The first one (on standard size setting) comes at around 3 cities and 100 turns usually. You should have or be teching towards Markets and Colosseums by then.

6. Be smart about Social Policies. In general, a more focused approach is better. A breakout into another policy might look good, but unless you are grabbing a happiness policy, you probably should just keep to your focus. That said, sometimes if you reload and try interesting policy changes, you could be pleasantly surprised.

After looking at your thumbnails:

Seems like you are overdoing the expansion a bit, either that or your army - if you had Cathy or Alex on your doorstep instead of that wimp Ghandi, you might have quite a fight on your hands, and your army of warriors may not be able to handle Hoplites and Companion Calvalry.

That said, you should check where most of your expenses are going - I'll bet it is in army maintenance. The computer sums you up in raw strength - one 60 strength unit is equal to 10 6 str warriors in the computer's book as far as I can tell. You might want to spend those hammers you used churning out settlers to build some more advanced units to scare off competition, which is easier on the pocketbook.

Demographics look ok, you can make up that ground (gobbling up Ghandi's juicy cities will do nicely). You are behind in Science so you might want to focus on that too.

Again, 5 cities is alot at this point - I consider myself doing good at 3 around turn 100, or 4 if I'm going really expansionist (again standard map). Just realize it comes with a cost in the amount of happiness and the amount of gold to support a military to protect all those cities and your Civ seems to not be up to the gold part atm. More markets! You could also try switching cities to gold focus or just playing with the tiles yourself.

Oh yes, and I concur with other posters, watch out for building spam. This is not Civ4 - you have limited resources when it comes to buildings, thanks to maintenance. Happiness and culture limit your cities, but GOLD limits your buildings and military. Don't build unnecessary stuff. Like Temples until your economy's up and running. I build a Monument and a Library in every new city, and by then the city is up and running and able to fare for itself usually.

One other suggestion: try Prince out on a smaller map size than you are used to. The smaller the map size, the easier it is to manage the ramp-up in difficulty.

 

[ShahJahanII]

I have made the Prince to King shift and may be working on moving to Emperor when I gain the confidence.
Good tips above, but I would change stay ahead in science a little, to stay ahead as much as possible.
If you get to Industrial by 1300, you are on your way to King and maybe above.

 

[Ozzy88]

I'm the kind of player who believes that in Civ 5, money = power, I rarely go for a domination victory as I find it more enjoyable letting the other Civs settle their petty disputes whilst I harvest the world and fill my coffers.

As such I should be able to help you out with why you're dramatically in deficit.

Taking the city of Lyon as an example, I can count 9 improved tiles around the city give or take. Lyon only has 3 civilians, another being born in 4 turns. That means that of those 9 tiles you have, only 3 are being worked whilst the rest sit their and drain your GPT through maintenance.

You are over building compared to the number of civilians in your city. The best way I manage this is to turn set your workers to auto build, they will only build what can be worked by your city based on the number of civilians you have.

To sum up, you are over building! Only build what can be worked, any tile improvements that cannot be worked because you don't have enough civilians are draining your GPT!

Fix this issue, fix your gold problem.

 

[ShahJahanII]

I'm the kind of player who believes that in Civ 5, money = power, I rarely go for a domination victory as I find it more enjoyable letting the other Civs settle their petty disputes whilst I harvest the world and fill my coffers.

As such I should be able to help you out with why you're dramatically in deficit.

Taking the city of Lyon as an example, I can count 9 improved tiles around the city give or take. Lyon only has 3 civilians, another being born in 4 turns. That means that of those 9 tiles you have, only 3 are being worked whilst the rest sit their and drain your GPT through maintenance.

You are over building compared to the number of civilians in your city. The best way I manage this is to turn set your workers to auto build, they will only build what can be worked by your city based on the number of civilians you have.

To sum up, you are over building! Only build what can be worked, any tile improvements that cannot be worked because you don't have enough civilians are draining your GPT!

Fix this issue, fix your gold problem.

I don't think tile improvements (other than roads) drain your GPT.

 

[SarutobiSasuke]

I don't think tile improvements (other than roads) drain your GPT.

But the 8 workers he is using to improve those tiles do.

The problem I see is that you're expanding too quickly, not only that but you seem to be expanding to poor locations. This expansion is probably costing you a lot in terms of happiness limiting the number of resources you can sell early on.