Noob needs help: hit plateau at Prince difficulty

[Whisker]

Here is starting screenshot of the game Gumbolt posted and a save with BUFFY already loaded, if anyone is interested.
Settling in place (SIP) is not bad here as we have plenty of food. That said I would strongly consider moving to plains hill (PH) 2E1S for a faster start. 2 hammers from PH city center means our worker will be out in 12 turns instead of 15, netting us two turns.If you are still iffy about moving settler, you could first move warrior 1 SE to see if there is anything to sweeten the deal. Tech wise we definitely want agriculture, but do we then go animal handling (AH) or bronze working (BW) will depend on what we find on surrounding land. If cow is our only AH resource it's better to go mining -> BW first.
@pattison1100 Are you aware that you can delay, your first tech choice for up to five turns? This will also gain you a small bonus if meet any AI that already has the tech you want to research.

asda

 

[pattison1100]

GK had a stack of 4 units. You could of whipped cities.. You can chop forest. worth 20H each in your cultural borders. Tiles further away get less hammers (H). No reason why you could not of started planning a war 2000bc or even before. Don't wait for the AI to attack.

If you whip a axe for 2 pop with only 4 hammers invested the overflow (OF) from a 2 pop whip is 29H. So often you can use this with a forest chop or OF to complete 2 units in 2 turns from the same city.
Same is true for all units. HA. If you have 19 hammers invested from previous builds you can whip for 2 pop and have 29H OF. One chop might complete a second HA.
Chopping/whipping and use of whip OF will build you huge armies.

So a city producing 4 hammers a turn. You produce axe for 1 turn so it has 4 hammers invested in it the next turn. At size 4 you can then whip for 2 pop. This complete the axe. And you will have 29 OF next turn to put into another build. If you have 5+ hammers in the axe it would be a 1 pop whip as each whip uses 1 pop which is effectively worth up to 30 hammers

Axe 35H build.
4/35H whips to 29H OF at pop 4 or higher in city.
6/35 1 pop whip with 1H OF.

HA 50H invested whipped at 4 pop gives 29H OF.
18H invested gives you 28H OF

Add in chops to this and you can build a large army very quickly.

To be perfectly honest at the beginning I tried to play this game without slavery, but it seems it doesn't work.
In the JAP game I was whipping though, just not for HAs, rather Granaries and Settlers.

I'll start a new one with the attached map.

 

[Gumbolt]

The plains hill does look nice for the extra base hammer on the city tile. Generally takes 3 turns off a worker.

There is a lot of forest and food near this start so Agriculture and BW will be important. Then a decision on AH for the cows.

The isolated plains tile could be a resource too.

Just have a plan. On a normal game AI start 8-10 tiles from your settler. Prince Ai will expand just before 2000bc. Which allows you to have a 1 city advantage by that date. They start with 1 warrior. On Immortal they start with 3 archers, 2 scouts and a worker. Plus 1-2 more techs.

Prince ai start with no workers and a single warrior. Some will even build warriors and scouts for 5-6+ turns. So by time they have a worker you should have an improved corn.

Generally try to expand where there is grassland and some food. Build up 3-4 cities and decide if you should expand or perhaps start a war. Chariots very early against warriors should win the day if you had 2 cities. Of course you need to find copper/horse for an early rush. HA will work really well against Prince AI due to their slow start.

Avoid switching to religions as this will make AI dislike you very early on.

 

[pattison1100]

So I gave the linked map a try, but it failed to load. Some kind of version discrepancy.
Here's my latest game - I think I might have launched the HA offense too late... As you see the chances are low. I tried to play this further like twice, but both times my army was slowly ground down by the Egyptians, despite the fact that I've carefully plundered all their resources.
You'll probably say that I'm finding excuses but it also doesn't help that I'm regularly losing battles with combat odds between 75 and 80%. Even when it's a 98.8% battle and I win, I'm ALWAYS taking casualties, typically one or two of my unit members die, and then another random enemy unit can finish it.
I've been playing tabletop strategy games my entire life, so I'm used to dice rolls but this feels sketchy, honestly. Somehow the outcome is always less than expectable, and it adds up to the point where my army slowly evaporates.
Without artillery, there doesn't even seem to be a point in attacking cities.
Idk how the HA rush is supposed to work, but I'm probably too late with it, and yet, I've been whipping and chopping like there's no tomorrow. Am I supposed to go against stone age warriors?
And I am now expecting the same comment again: "your expansion was too slow". YES, because I was busy producing Horse Archers. I tried to find a balance, so I postponed having 3 cities to 1880 BC instead of 2000, and the further expansion was completely hindered by the HA industry.
Idk, it just feels that there's too many things to do at once, and then even if I sorta do it, it's not having an effect.
At Noble with this kind of army I could destroy an entire country, and here I'm not even able to take a major city (I took a tiny one on the border that got automatically razed). At the time of the save I've lost like 3 HAs from the stack.
At this point even if I won the war against the Egyptians (which is unlikely, as I'd need double the size of an army I think, and with Catapults), I'd expect one of my neighbours to attack me very soon as I don't have a defensive garrison.
I was really paying attention to my city placement, trying to avoid jungles at first, going for food and good resources and fertile flood plains. The first part of the game seemed promising tbh, but then the offense was disappointing. Not to mention that my southern Khmer neighbour managed to rocket from 2nd worst on the leaderboard to near the top in the meantime. At least we have the same religion and good trade relationships. Not that this usually prevents the AI from backstabbing me.
Getting discouraged a bit here. :/

 

[sampsa]

And I am now expecting the same comment again: "your expansion was too slow". YES, because I was busy producing Horse Archers. I tried to find a balance, so I postponed having 3 cities to 1880 BC instead of 2000, and the further expansion was completely hindered by the HA industry.

Idk, it just feels that there's too many things to do at once, and then even if I sorta do it, it's not having an effect.

Yes, your expansion was slow, but the main issue is that you didn't really understand how the chosen strategy is supposed to work. The game is in the ADs and you haven't even taken any cities! It is safe to say that it's been a failure, even though I'm sure you can still win. That's a bit beside the point.

HA-strategy: get 3-4 cities as fast as you can, then don't settle any more cities! They should be at max size working cottages. That will get you the techs, then you need to produce the units (chop/whip).

I don't think going HAs is the only way you can play this map. There is stone, you have lots of good land so a high -cap would help. Mids!

 

[Gumbolt]

I moved your stack to his capital and it fell with loss of 2 HA. Not sure you needed the Vultures. The hill city was a distraction. However the empire has huge issues.

HA attack is very late here. It's a tough map with very little health resources. You didn't secure any others beyond the cows. No happiness resources and the cow/fish/gold site not secured.

The land cottage wise could of been great. The capital has many tiles not even improved. Expansion at start slow but you had no 5f tile. Cow is still a good tile.

Imagine 6-7 cities wiorking 5-6+ cottages each with mids and you have a vision. Fur city and gold city too. Capital hopefully size 10+ by this date. Libraries and granaries in most cities. Double production with your traits.

I am guessing Sampsa has already done a brief play through so I will leave that to him.

If not I may give it a whirl tomorrow.

 

[sampsa]

Well, I did play to T50, just a normal expansion

Spoiler :

T0 you should always consider the ph spots, because it speeds up the early game tremendously.

3 cities, 4 workers. Capital stagnates for a while working the three strong tiles, then finishes granary, then starts Mids (have masonry and hooking up stone next). 4th 1N of eastern horse I guess. I think you need a lot of workers to cottage and put a chop towards granary, 1-pop whip. Need to get via trade.

 

[pigswill]

An alternative strategy

Spoiler :

One city chariot rush, took out Sury by 1640bc. Lost four chariots. Only two cities but 4 workers, 4 chariots left. Space to expand. Time to rex

 

[Gumbolt]

Had a quick go to 1ad. Flood plains can be pretty nice for research.

Spoiler Up to 1ad :

Played out to 1ad. By no means perfect and happiness at size 12 is an issue. Need to attack someone to grab resources so i have 5 or so HA being built. Lots of AI at war and Celts likely plotting against me. No big stack spotted yet. Need to connect my iron.

Settling on plains hill here made a really nice settler/worker pump. I eventually switched to my 2nd city to allow the capital to grow.

I went double settler once I got to size 2 and a further worker. Then started to grow and focused on mids in capital while the second city helped whip workers and settlers once it had a granary. I got my granaries up pretty early after i got pottery. .

Built mids, Hanging Gardens and Oracle in capital. Got to about 200bc and I noticed Oracle had not gone either. Beelined Codes of Law and took civil service with Oracle. Should be first to music.

I have a great engineer but undecided what to do with him.

Science at 100% is 217 beakers a turn at 1ad. Pretty sure I can whip 10-12 HA easily with 6-7 decent size cities.

Memphis has 2 defender. Capital hopefully the same. I need the Egyptian resources here.

 

[lymond]

And I am now expecting the same comment again: "your expansion was too slow". YES, because I was busy producing Horse Archers. I tried to find a balance, so I postponed having 3 cities to 1880 BC instead of 2000, and the further expansion was completely hindered by the HA industry.

Horse Archers are part of your expansion strategy . As said, early you grab a few good spots like Sampsa did and then setup a horse archer rush. HA rush means build HAs. Big advantage is their movement so bringing vultures with them is slowing them down. Also, when one is in war mode that is your focus. You stop building units, and you are building a settler with no plan for it.

You are learning, don't be discouraged . But I do think that you really need to take it back to the very basics. Please roll a map with standard setting (Temperate climate too). This time, at least for the first 50-100 turns you will play very slow, getting early advice from us including at the very start. You are missing several basic concepts right now that will revolutionize your game, but better explained in context at the appropriate turns.

Civ IV is big on having a strong early game. Making good tech and settling decisions. Making good use of workers and having enough based on cities.

Going back to your Toku game I took this screenshot:

Spoiler :

All three of those cities should not have been settled. You had decent spots near your cap to get up 3-4 cities and then go after Genghis yourself. It's really about making good early decisions and then having a concrete plan of action.

Post a new game and lets take this one step at a time for now. Screenshots help too.

 

[lymond]

Here are just a few general guidelines, some of which may have been mentioned before:

1) Worker: Most important unit in the game. You will almost always go worker first to start the game, with very few exceptions (usually resource and starting tech dependent)
2) Granary: Most important and really only important building in the game. All others are situational.
3) Do not be afraid to overlap cities and settle compactly. There are advantages to this approach that we can go into more detail later. Gets really important on higher levels.
4) Once you settle your first city - other than cap - you go into what is called "deficit research", i.e., you start losing gold per turn (GPT). That is when you should be maxxing gold (0-100 rule). Run 100% tax/0% research to max gold until the next tech can be funded. (This game does have some Maths )
5) Have a plan and stick to it. Initially, you have the expansion phase getting up to 4-6 cities at least. Meanwhile you assess the situation. Neighbors? Who those neighbors are (Genghis Khan )? Am I going to peacefully expand due to all the nice land and resources - and relative safety. Or do I need to just focus on a few cities and go kill somebody . The idea here is after settling your first couple of cities and the initial scouting your vicinity one should start formulating a plan on how the early game will play out - regardless of long term goals or victory condition chosen.

 

[pattison1100]

I moved your stack to his capital and it fell with loss of 2 HA. Not sure you needed the Vultures. The hill city was a distraction.

As I wrote, I have taken this save further twice before posting and one of them was taking the army to the capital.
In my "timeline" I bounced off the capital with 2 HA's surviving from retreating... All the rest died. You somehow take it there and you win with 2 dying. What were your combat odds? I was not attacking through a river or anything...
In the other attempt I managed to move to the south and take his southern city but then I got slowly ground up.
I tried to win this war twice from here and never succeeded.

HA attack is very late here. It's a tough map with very little health resources. You didn't secure any others beyond the cows. No happiness resources and the cow/fish/gold site not secured.

The land cottage wise could of been great. The capital has many tiles not even improved. Expansion at start slow but you had no 5f tile. Cow is still a good tile.

Imagine 6-7 cities wiorking 5-6+ cottages each with mids and you have a vision. Fur city and gold city too. Capital hopefully size 10+ by this date. Libraries and granaries in most cities. Double production with your traits.

It's quite demotivating to read a list of what I did wrong and where I should be instead of some few tips about how to get there.
This is more like as if this was a competition and you're the jury.
I can imagine a thriving empire but it doesn't mean I can just do it like this.
The HA rush was also never explained, instead I got "why no whipping HAs" and "expand more and earlier". Now when I try to do both it turns out it's not even reasonable to do so.
I don't want to sound hostile but helping out and showing that you can do better is not the same.

 

[pattison1100]

Well, I did play to T50, just a normal expansion

Spoiler :

T0 you should always consider the ph spots, because it speeds up the early game tremendously.

3 cities, 4 workers. Capital stagnates for a while working the three strong tiles, then finishes granary, then starts Mids (have masonry and hooking up stone next). 4th 1N of eastern horse I guess. I think you need a lot of workers to cottage and put a chop towards granary, 1-pop whip. Need to get via trade.

View attachment 706192

Thanks.
What are "ph spots"?
What are "Mids"?

 

[pattison1100]

Horse Archers are part of your expansion strategy . As said, early you grab a few good spots like Sampsa did and then setup a horse archer rush. HA rush means build HAs. Big advantage is their movement so bringing vultures with them is slowing them down. Also, when one is in war mode that is your focus. You stop building units, and you are building a settler with no plan for it.

Now it does make sense. Wasn't explained like this before, I was just reading a big list of "you should have done"-s.
I do feel an improvement compared to my previous Prince games. Some basics are definitely still to be obtained.
Those 3 cities you took a screenshot of from the JAP game were a desperate attempt at pushing out the boundaries between myself and China. My thought process was "let me block them off even if it's not an ideal city position".
Blocking was also emphasized several times, but most probably I wasn't doing it well.

 

[sampsa]

Thanks.
What are "ph spots"?
What are "Mids"?

ph= plains hill (for +1 city center)
Mids = Pyramids

Blocking was also emphasized several times, but most probably I wasn't doing it well.

Blocking is not a concept you should be considering really. You should found good cities, and once the AI has settled good cities, you should take them. It really is conceptually that simple, but you need to learn how to do it.

 

[pattison1100]

Here are just a few general guidelines, some of which may have been mentioned before:

1) Worker: Most important unit in the game. You will almost always go worker first to start the game, with very few exceptions (usually resource and starting tech dependent)
2) Granary: Most important and really only important building in the game. All others are situational.
3) Do not be afraid to overlap cities and settle compactly. There are advantages to this approach that we can go into more detail later. Gets really important on higher levels.
4) Once you settle your first city - other than cap - you go into what is called "deficit research", i.e., you start losing gold per turn (GPT). That is when you should be maxxing gold (0-100 rule). Run 100% tax/0% research to max gold until the next tech can be funded. (This game does have some Maths )
5) Have a plan and stick to it. Initially, you have the expansion phase getting up to 4-6 cities at least. Meanwhile you assess the situation. Neighbors? Who those neighbors are (Genghis Khan )? Am I going to peacefully expand due to all the nice land and resources - and relative safety. Or do I need to just focus on a few cities and go kill somebody . The idea here is after settling your first couple of cities and the initial scouting your vicinity one should start formulating a plan on how the early game will play out - regardless of long term goals or victory condition chosen.

1) Yes. I always go for worker first. And then I usually try not to have less than the number of my cities, except when everything has been worked on already.
2) I'm always building one. I never skip it intentionally.
3) I started to do this recently and it works well. Still not mastered it yet though, but I've seen some good results.
4) Okay, I did not know about the "settling 2nd city" trigger. I instinctively did this "saving up for techs" strategy where I sometimes save up a thousand or two and then get some techs researched quickly.
5) This is definitely something I need to work on. Honestly, I'd rather play a peaceful game with the occasional "setting boundaries" clash, but somehow I don't enjoy the "eliminating civs" play. Especially when I'm the one being eliminated, lol. But it seems to me that you need to seriously prepare for war in order to prevent war. And even then it's not guaranteed, I think most likely your "best allies" will backstab you. At least that's what happening to me most of the time. There was another game in the meantime before the one I posted where I was doing okay, then I went for the weakest civ which was a bit far from me on the map. I was doing well against them in that war, when 3 other civs declared war on me (one was cautious, despite my best effort, a direct neighbour, another two were pleased but it seems they've been plotting.

 

[pattison1100]

ph= plains hill (for +1 city center)
Mids = Pyramids


Blocking is not a concept you should be considering really. You should found good cities, and once the AI has settled good cities, you should take them. It really is conceptually that simple, but you need to learn how to do it.

Okay, thanks!
I do look for plains hill locations normally, as the city is also getting a defense bonus.
Pyramids I never got to build yet at this level, lol.

Interesting point about blocking. Thank you.

 

[antimony]

General tips are good, but sometimes as you saw they don't always apply at the same time. You can make a list of things that are important to do / build in most games, but the advice of what to prioritize at any time on a given map is more complicated. I get what you say though than just comparing your position to someone else, say at turn 50, may not help much. If you look at "shadow games" on this forum, the concept is usually that you would play a few turns at a time and invite other to comment / discuss how to move forward at each step. It can be long and there are always many possible paths to take, but that can help more on the detailed strategy.

 

[lymond]

My thought process was "let me block them off even if it's not an ideal city position".
Blocking was also emphasized several times, but most probably I wasn't doing it well.

"Blocking Off" is generally not a good strategy at all. Those cities are just bad and costing you a lot of maintenance for nothing. And really, they are not blocking off anything. As you can see those cities basically have no value for the cost and will be under heavy cultural pressure or already are. On higher levels, this type of settling will invite attacks on you before you are ready. So it is really about settling with purpose. When folks say to expand faster, they just mean more than you had in the best. Cities should still be good with food and resources. Which leads to another golden rule in this game that I forgot above:

FOOD IS KING in this game. Food IS production.

Blocking, if there is any value to it at all, is a very specific thing. It does not mean just throwing cities around in the distance. It's usually more about securing a specific resource.

Settle for value and purpose. Mainly you are just going to be secure the general area around your capital, grabbing good spots with food and resources. Cities that contribute immediately.

 

[lymond]

1) Yes. I always go for worker first. And then I usually try not to have less than the number of my cities, except when everything has been worked on already.

Good. Yes, at least one per city, more if you can. Keep in mind that cities are going to be small for quite some time, usually maxxing at size 4-6 depending on happy resources, leader trait (Charismatic), and whipping. You are generally going to whip quite a bit early to get stuff out, and after initial expansion you want your cap to grow (cap has 1 extra default happy guy). Cap will build a library usually and run your first scientist specialists to get that first great scientist. We can help you with the flow of things if you play a real shadow game as I described earlier. Point with workers though is that you want citizens to work improved tiles, but you don't need every tile in a city improved early. There's also chopping and building roads for trade routes. Lotsta do

2) I'm always building one. I never skip it intentionally.

Good. Sometimes there are rare exceptions where a gran is not essential to a particular city, and cap may delay it for a bit to focus on expansion.

3) I started to do this recently and it works well. Still not mastered it yet though, but I've seen some good results.

We can help a lot with these decisions in your shadow games.

4) Okay, I did not know about the "settling 2nd city" trigger. I instinctively did this "saving up for techs" strategy where I sometimes save up a thousand or two and then get some techs researched quickly.

"Thousands"? No, early on you want to finish any needed techs asap as soon as you have money to fund it. Where you might save up more is when you are building library(ies). This more advanced concept and, again, we can help a lot with getting the feel for it. As the game progresses, you will find more ways to get access to gold, but early on you balance your techs neesd while also funding your expansion. (Just a note: As you move up levels, maintenance costs increase so this concept becomes more vital)

5) This is definitely something I need to work on. Honestly, I'd rather play a peaceful game with the occasional "setting boundaries" clash, but somehow I don't enjoy the "eliminating civs" play. Especially when I'm the one being eliminated, lol. But it seems to me that you need to seriously prepare for war in order to prevent war. And even then it's not guaranteed, I think most likely your "best allies" will backstab you. At least that's what happening to me most of the time. There was another game in the meantime before the one I posted where I was doing okay, then I went for the weakest civ which was a bit far from me on the map. I was doing well against them in that war, when 3 other civs declared war on me (one was cautious, despite my best effort, a direct neighbour, another two were pleased but it seems they've been plotting.

Diplomacy is one of the more advanced concepts and takes time to get a feel for. We can give pointers as you play. There are little things you can do that help improve relations. However, each AI leader has a different personality and a different disposition with the human player, as well as other leaders. Part of this is what is called "Peaceweight". I won't go into detail right now as I feel you need to focus on the simple stuff for now. Just note that someone like Genghis Khan has a very different attitude than someone like Ganhdi ..ha.

The game can be played peacefully, but the best way to get better is to learn about warfare and use it to your advantage. In some starts, you may have to use war as a means to expand your empire to suitable levels early, while at other times you may have plenty of good land to expand into early. This game is very situational which, honestly, makes it so great.

(So planting cities in an AI's face is something that they won't like. Border tension is a thing. In some cases, you might do something like this but you have a plan behind it)