Noob needs help: hit plateau at Prince difficulty

If you look at your previous save. You built 7 mines. With one being built near Ur. That worker should of been cottaging or improving the silver for happiness. The minute one of your cities uses one of these zero food mine tiles that cities growth will be zero or once every 10-12 turns. The 1f3h tiles near the capital are fine but I would always use all the 3f floodplains tiles first unless building a wonder like Pyramids. I guessed you whipped a bit for horse archers but growth with granary is so important for larger cities later on. Another reason to turn off city governer.

Lagash 6 turn worker at size 2 was not good. Once it has a granary let it grow. Learn to use forest chops or whips for quick workers early on. Your first build was a worker so you only built 2 more.

You actually only had 3 workers in your game. Of which many were improving tiles you were never likely to use. Including a plain cottage and a farmed grassland when you were not even using the flood plain tiles..

This was an odd map as normally a city would have a 5 food tile which is more forgiving when you use a mine. This map pretty much spammed flood plains.

My other thoughtn is if you build less mines the city governor can not suddenly decide to build a mine and stop city growth for x turns.

It might be worth replaying this map to see if you can finish with a larger capital. If you are not tweaking city tiles when they grow maps like this will punish you.

The only key building you need here is the granary and maybe a few libraries. Barracks, stables, city walls are just spent hammers till you go to war. Even then you can have 1-2 cities used just for whipping units.

I mostly used the second city to whip settlers/workers. Usually 6-4 or 4-2. I made sure I got the granary first.

Tweaking use of workers/settlers and how you build them will result in much bigger cities for your empire. Removing the bad options from the Ai choice will only improve your game. Come 1000bc generally no city should be building worker or settlers over 6-10 turns with slavery.
 
So, now just play. Doesn't really matter this map or another. Ask when you have questions!
 
Two ways to play, either whiz through a variety of maps trying different strategies and getting a clearer idea of which strategy fits which map or playing one map slowly, posting every 10-15 turns and waiting for feedback to get a clearer idea of build order, worker turns and dot-mapping. The latter is more likely to benefit you long term but it can get boring waiting for feedback.
 
If you look at your previous save. You built 7 mines. With one being built near Ur. That worker should of been cottaging or improving the silver for happiness. The minute one of your cities uses one of these zero food mine tiles that cities growth will be zero or once every 10-12 turns. The 1f3h tiles near the capital are fine but I would always use all the 3f floodplains tiles first unless building a wonder like Pyramids. I guessed you whipped a bit for horse archers but growth with granary is so important for larger cities later on. Another reason to turn off city governer.

Lagash 6 turn worker at size 2 was not good. Once it has a granary let it grow. Learn to use forest chops or whips for quick workers early on. Your first build was a worker so you only built 2 more.

You actually only had 3 workers in your game. Of which many were improving tiles you were never likely to use. Including a plain cottage and a farmed grassland when you were not even using the flood plain tiles..

This was an odd map as normally a city would have a 5 food tile which is more forgiving when you use a mine. This map pretty much spammed flood plains.

My other thoughtn is if you build less mines the city governor can not suddenly decide to build a mine and stop city growth for x turns.

It might be worth replaying this map to see if you can finish with a larger capital. If you are not tweaking city tiles when they grow maps like this will punish you.

The only key building you need here is the granary and maybe a few libraries. Barracks, stables, city walls are just spent hammers till you go to war. Even then you can have 1-2 cities used just for whipping units.

I mostly used the second city to whip settlers/workers. Usually 6-4 or 4-2. I made sure I got the granary first.

Tweaking use of workers/settlers and how you build them will result in much bigger cities for your empire. Removing the bad options from the Ai choice will only improve your game. Come 1000bc generally no city should be building worker or settlers over 6-10 turns with slavery.
That's all sound and detailed advice, and I get the point too, thanks!
 
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
But all he has to eat is fish.
 
I've restarted the map. Initial expansion and city growth still feels slow.
I tried to focus on the flood plain and the cow tiles first.
I know the worker near Kish is not doing what he should be doing - I realised a turn later.
Thoughts?
 

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  • sumr˙ BC-1360.CivBeyondSwordSave
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I think it's a lot better than your AD-save was. Still, a ton of room for improvement.
Spoiler :
Civ4ScreenShot0093.JPG


Worker actions
  • improve food
  • chop
  • cottage
  • connect
in that order. Mine if nothing better to do. You have spent some ~15T on useless roads. The eastern city would be connected via river with one tile roaded (marked on the map). You have hooked up stone and horse yet do nothing with them. You have spent 8T on two completely moot cottages. Cottage your best tiles (=floodplains).

City placement is fine, though I'd put the western one 1N to work the horse that is now unworked.

A massive granary mistake in the western city. I presume you know how the granary works? When stagnating, it does nothing. Absolutely nothing. Thus you should not first build a granary and then stagnate on worker/settler, but always whip it. Chop the two forests there earlier to get the settler out and have an extra city working fp cottages. You've had pottery for 17T and you are working one cottage, that's a clear sign that it could be done a lot better.

My suggestion is to 1.try again and 2.not worry about it.
 
I was able to get moving and launch the offense by 275 BC.
Thoughts about this development? Makes sense?
The cottages seem to develop nicely along the river.
 

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  • AutoSave_BC-0275.CivBeyondSwordSave
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your 275BC
Spoiler :
It's not great, but a lot better than what you had in the previous HA-rush try. Connect the silver city for +1 :) in all the cities, as the :)-situation is very bad. Your workers should be connecting your new cities in the west also, as that gold is also another +1 :).
 
I think it's a lot better than your AD-save was. Still, a ton of room for improvement.
Spoiler :
View attachment 706450

Worker actions
  • improve food
  • chop
  • cottage
  • connect
in that order. Mine if nothing better to do. You have spent some ~15T on useless roads. The eastern city would be connected via river with one tile roaded (marked on the map). You have hooked up stone and horse yet do nothing with them. You have spent 8T on two completely moot cottages. Cottage your best tiles (=floodplains).

City placement is fine, though I'd put the western one 1N to work the horse that is now unworked.

A massive granary mistake in the western city. I presume you know how the granary works? When stagnating, it does nothing. Absolutely nothing. Thus you should not first build a granary and then stagnate on worker/settler, but always whip it. Chop the two forests there earlier to get the settler out and have an extra city working fp cottages. You've had pottery for 17T and you are working one cottage, that's a clear sign that it could be done a lot better.

My suggestion is to 1.try again and 2.not worry about it.
Well I did NOT know about the connection through river - even if it makes so much sense. So thank you!
Those other forests I eventually chopped. I tried not to chop everything so early on. May be a bad idea.
The worker action order is what I tried to keep, although I was in a misunderstanding about roads.
The stone and horse I wasn't working because I was focused on making the city grow - so food tiles. I might not have a good understanding about growth and when to work hammer-intensive tiles instead.
Probably this is also behind the granary mistake in the west. I really tried to have a sensible worked tile selection, but I think I'm missing some points about city growth.
I think the cottages were doing significantly better in the 275bc save though.
 
The stone and horse I wasn't working because I was focused on making the city grow - so food tiles.
Yeah. But if you are not planning to work them, why improve them? If you are not building horse units, is it worth 2 workerT to road it and so on. Very accurate worker usage is a big part of improving your game!

Here you should farm/cottage fps and chop most forests asap (probably leaving capital with 2 for extra :health:).
 
Shame not to get fishing sooner if you want the cow/fish/horse city. That is a 5 food fish tile once worked. Best food tile you have and would of made city growth so much faster. I like the fact you settled the western city. It's a good city.

The barb city is defended by a single warrior. Take the easy wins when you can. Losing that city site was a mistake.

Not sure why your army attacked and moved to the first gold tile. Why delay the attack on his capital by 1 turn? I am not convinced the stack will be able to take the capital anyway. 275bc is late for an HA rush.

You needed the fur and silver here for happiness. Mids too for happiness. Play the map. I don't think this is an HA rush map. The land is just not great food wise. Maybe better to out tech AI and go catapults with mace or axes. Catapilts with reduce defences and cause collateral damage too.

What have you against settling on the plains hill?
 
Okay focusing on the basics as this is where you are going wrong.

Why is your second city 2200bc? I did a quick test settling in place. Not posting save.
T1-15 worker.
Worker improves cows. Switch to cows in city.
Worker improves horse. Switch to horse at size 2.
At size 2 immediately switch from warrior to settler. No point growing on a 3f tile.
If you work cows and horse once improved you settle the fish site 2600bc.
3rd city is settled 2320bc if you go double settler and chop a forest. I would then either chop a worker or move to improve the 2nd cow.

What are you doing differently to get second city 2200bc and third 1520bc? My third city is out before you even have 2 cites. Yet we started in the same place. I did little to no micro to achieve this.

Can you see the snowball efffect here. Not having fishing only made this worse for you. My third city will be size 2-3 before you even settle it.

If you have sailing you don't need road to connect the silver. Just a clear explored coastal route and 2 cities settled on the coast. You can then just road from the western city. You could even settle on the silver.
 
Well I did NOT know about the connection through river - even if it makes so much sense. So thank you!
Sampsa's info about roading is really important. Worker turns or so hugely important, especially early game, that it is vital not to waste turns on unnecessary roads. So it is good that you have learned about the impacts of rivers and how to gauge whether or not just 1 simple road is needed to get the connection.
Those other forests I eventually chopped. I tried not to chop everything so early on. May be a bad idea.
I know SAmpsa is a big chop it all away early and I pretty much subscribe to that idea as well. there might be occasions where I will save some but usually they are a great way to get the empire up and running fast.
The worker action order is what I tried to keep, although I was in a misunderstanding about roads.
Yeah, Mines generally are your last thing to improve especially with food since food is production. Really depends on food - as in your case you have very little to no food on this map which is why I don't like it. So mines can help if not whipping much and also IMP and EXP traits benefit from the hammers for slow-building settlers and workers respectively

Honestly, not liking this map for its start and land but it is sufficient to get up an early HA rush. Let's see if you can get that going earlier.
 
Some things I noticed about your 275bc.
No open borders.
No tech trading.
If you've launched a HA rush you should keeping HAs until the war is finished, its too soon for libraries. General rule: you need to do different things to develop your empire: grow cities bigger;build settlers and workers, research, go to war However it generally works better to do one thing at a time, if you're going to war only build units, if you're building research work commerce tiles, if you're building settlers don't build units etc.

I played a shadow, last posted after my 1640bc chariot rush, here's my empire at 1ad.
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  • Felhasznÿlÿ AD-0001.CivBeyondSwordSave
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Shame not to get fishing sooner if you want the cow/fish/horse city. That is a 5 food fish tile once worked. Best food tile you have and would of made city growth so much faster. I like the fact you settled the western city. It's a good city.

The barb city is defended by a single warrior. Take the easy wins when you can. Losing that city site was a mistake.

Not sure why your army attacked and moved to the first gold tile. Why delay the attack on his capital by 1 turn? I am not convinced the stack will be able to take the capital anyway. 275bc is late for an HA rush.

You needed the fur and silver here for happiness. Mids too for happiness. Play the map. I don't think this is an HA rush map. The land is just not great food wise. Maybe better to out tech AI and go catapults with mace or axes. Catapilts with reduce defences and cause collateral damage too.

What have you against settling on the plains hill?
Yeah, Fishing was late. I also realised during the game.
The Barb city I've taken since then and now it's one of my bigger cities. Could have happened by the time of the HA offense start, it's true.
I moved the army to the gold tile because I did not see where the capital was - it was still uncharted. I knew about the general direction, but not the exact shortest route.
What happened at the end is that I took and razed two of their towns, then went up north and took the one on the tip of the peninsula too. They were left with only their capital. Then I asked for Capitulation which they've accepted and became my vassals. Is this stupid? The northmost city later revolted and returned to the Egyptian Empire, but the vassalage seems to work fine.
I understand what you're saying about the HA rush on this map. I'm not hellbent on it but I wanted to try it at least once with at least a semi-decent result.
Silver I got quite early, as soon as possible, furs a bit later but also not very late. Mids I almost got, but someone built it I think 5 turns before I could have finished it.
Which plain hill are you referring to? Maybe I had a tunnel vision on the resources?
 
They were left with only their capital. Then I asked for Capitulation which they've accepted and became my vassals. Is this stupid?
In general, you should take every good city from the AI and often capital is the best city they have.

Which plain hill are you referring to? Maybe I had a tunnel vision on the resources?
Your choice on T0. Settling the ph is significantly better IMO.
 
Worker turns are the most important resource to manage in this game. In the early game, 2 simple principles allowed me to go from struggling on Noble to playing comfortably on Emperor:
1) do not waste time with your workers in the early game (which means don't build useless roads, prioritize improving food resources above all else - this includes quickly researching the techs that allow you to improve the food resources in your immediate starting area), and
2) build your first few cities close to the capital and with a food resource in the inner ring. This last point is absolutely CRUCIAL, unless you are playing a Creative leader who can expand borders without building any cultural buildings, it is MASSIVELY IMPORTANT to have a food resource you can improve in the inner ring (that is, one or more of the 8 adjacent tiles) of your cities. On the very highest difficulties the optimal play is often to build a second city that can share already-improved food tile(s) with the capital so you spend even fewer worker turns on improving your food.
 
@pattison1100 as a lowly Prince/Noble player myself I can only offer one suggestion; you don't seem to be giving yourself the best chance in terms of Civ selection. I would maybe suggest playing as a Financial leader if trying to move up a level, it's the best trait in the game (free money 🤑). I know you've probably just left it up to random selection, but judging by the screenshots I've seen, you've ended up with Protective leader each time (Gilga/Toku/China?) which is generally considered one of the worst leader traits.
I know it's not as helpful as a lot of the other pieces of advice already given, but I thought it was worth mentioning
 
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