Onward to Prince! (Need help)

[knight508]

(Success achieved for those wondering so the post below is outdated)

Hi all,

I checked out a few articles and found a bunch of little tips that help, or at least prevent me from being steamrolled in Prince but I'm still having some troubles.

Posted is a 500AD and 1917 Save (unfortunately the earliest save is 2120BC).

I've seen this question asked before here but to verify should I at least get 6 cities before 0AD as a goal? I just don't like the idea of having a bunch of little crappy cities but as you'll see it worked out just fine for Washington (though I think I recently read AI gets a good discount bonus for maintenance). But, with the little expanding I did I feel as though I didn't have the raw power to get the science and military I needed. I was able to really focus scientists and certain cities with research but at the end this cost me since my capital got taken over near the end of the game. Somehow Ghandi pulled off a Culture victory though Washington has an army to melt just about everyone.

Also, should I always utilize the river/plains tile for cottages with the exception of a farm or two if I don't have a food resource?

Moderator Action: Moved to the Civ4 forums.

 

[capnvonbaron]

Well, looking at the save, we see a lot of GLARING problems here....

First and foremost, your expansion is waaaay underdeveloped here. You should have more cities by now, and the terrain around them should be more developed. One problem is the auto-mated workers. BIG NO NO. They aren't improving anything they SHOULD be improving. You need to take control and make them do your bidding! It looks like you are also missing the big picture on a lot of things like diplo, religion, civics, and... well... a lot of things. Here's a more detailed list.

1) This is my personal opinon (as well as many others'), but Charlie of the HR is one of the tougher civs to play as, since his starting techs suck and his traits aren't the best.

2) You have too few workers, too few cities, and the city placement isn't the best either. Nuremburg is in the tundra... I see you were probably going for the iron there, but its use to your empire is wholly worthless otherwise. Prague should really be 1 NE of its current placement, and Vienna, while not badly placed, isn't very good either. There should really be a city NW and S of its position to better take advantage of land resources. Don't settle in the spots suggested by the game... use YOUR judgement. Also, (this goes back to the automated workers gripe) you need to chop more forests to get those early settlers and workers out. The shorter time you halt growth while those things are being built, the better.

3) Your diplo situation is a mess. I have no idea why you don't have open borders with anyone, and you could be a lot further ahead in techs if you'd trade with some people.

3.5) Religion is your friend. Open borders with Washington and Hannibal, get on the Buddhist bandwagon, and make some strong allies!

4) The builds in your cities are fairly mystifying. In your capital, for one... why the colliseum? Why the monument?? You should NEVER have a monument in your capital, unless you built stonehenge! I'm thinking you may be missing the picture on what buildings are good for and when they should be built. I'm wondering again if you are listening to the "suggestions" given to you by the game....

5) civics.... By now you should have about half of the useful civics in place, but you only have two available and are using the worst of the two... Caste System. Slavery is key to building an early empire, sir! Whip out vital buildings, use the overflow to build more workers/settlers/units.

There is a lot of other little things (kinda too many to hit on here), and I'm thinking you need to cruise through the War Academy again. Really the biggest problem I see here is worker management. Fix that and a lot of your problems will be solved... Second to that, start searching for ideas on what you need to build and what doesn't need to be built early game, and learn what techs are vital and which ones you can skip. Hope that gives you some direction...

 

[knight508]

Thanks for the detailed response!

I actually just realized having the open borders would help in regards to a little extra income...(I tested this in my new game based on your suggestions!)

But, in regards to the new game I actually installed the BUG Mod and wow, it's amazing with all kinds of extremely useful reminders. In addition this helped optimize whipping and the compounding effect of that later on really adds up since the lost population is quickly rebuilt and saves a lot of turns. Thanks for the tip on monuments in the capital...must have been some subconscious thing from CiV.

In addition I expanded much more thoroughly in my new game with 6 cities just past AD and additional workers to get them connected/improved. I certainly felt like I had a strong position, science was a little behind always hovering between 60/70 but once my cities developed more I was able to get cottages/markets etc. going but then it happened. I had Lincoln to the east and Native American guy and Charlemagne to the West. Apparently they were jealous of my new skills and both decided to trounce on me. Native American guy captured one of my northern cities but that one was more or less for me to capture some resources (it was near tundra, not a huge loss). Charlemagne captured my southern most city Which was pretty good but I was able to stave off attacks on my capitol and recapture the southern city. Unfortunately, even with all my cities producing armies I just didn't have the power/resources to defend the capitol against two strong foes. I retired after that but overall it was somewhat amusing and probably a lesson that I should make friends when possible. I think a denied I couple "freebie" demands and one of my spies got caught.

 

[capnvonbaron]

Yeah SB and Chuckles are two guys you want to be friends with... or else. If its a choice between the two, get on Charlie's good side and just ignore SB. For one, Charlie will be your friend as long as you share his religion, and he will be a good friend at that. For two, SB doens't spam offensive units quite as bad as Charlie and even if you're SB's friend he'll still pick on you with spy missions and stupid demands. I'm guessing you're still a little weak on the diplo. Caving to a small demand now and then isn't a bad idea... if the AI wants mysticism from you in 500BC, just let it go man! I'd tell them to take a hike if I'd just research education, of course, but sometimes you have to accept it when you are in no place to survive an invasion from a grumpy, powerful AI.

BUG is a great tool to feed you some useful info, good job on that. I think you'll be ready for Monarch in no time if you get that diplomacy shored up

 

[capnvonbaron]

Also I must note that if you have one of the more aggressive civs as your neighbor, it may benefit you to build cities on hills near that neighbor, and keep a supply of catapults and strong units near that border. Horse units upgraded to flank2 are also a great thing. The best defense is a good offense in most cases.

As an enemy stack approaches, often your best bet (assuming your units are on tech parity with his) is to hit the stack on open ground (ie, not forested or hilly terrain) with your catapults first. You will lose the cats, most likely, but the stack will be softened up severely. Now attack with your flanking mounted units. These will more likely withdrawl than be destroyed, and you will further softened the stack's top defenders. Then hit the stack with everything else you have and don't stop 'til its dead. Then, heal up and march on thine enemy! Show no mercy

 

[ohjames]

I have a few suggestions re: the game you posted.

I see that you haven't created any Great People yet. GPs are a very effective way to get a leg up on the competition. The most effective way to pump one out early is with a Library. GPs are one of the reasons food is probably the best resource: the wet corn in Aachen or the pigs on your western border could support a couple of Scientists, for example.

You have a dearth of cities considering that you're at 500AD - and a surprising amount of forests around. One of the easiest ways to expand quickly is to chop forests - Charlemagne even gets a 50% bonus to this from being Imperialistic. Plant your settlers directly beside high-value resources (not two tiles away!) so that you can work those tiles ASAP. The copper east of Aachen, the pigs on that western peninsula, and the iron south of Aachen are all tiles worth getting operational ASAP. (In general, any tile that gives a total of 5 food/production is quite good, and any tile that gives a total of 6 is exceptional. Grab 'em.)

Your building choices seem a bit unfocused. Nuremberg doesn't need a monument, you're just getting ice with that (actually, Nuremberg is not a very good city site at all, due to lack of food.) You have colosseums all over and those are generally not helpful buildings. The buildings that I would put in almost every building are Granaries, Forges, and Courthouses; beyond that, I would only have buildings that address the city's specialization.

I see that you're in Caste System but not running any specialists from it (and you don't have workshops). That doesn't make sense to me. Run Slavery. Don't be too timid about the whip, it is an efficient way to convert food into hammers (which is another reason why food is the best thing to have.) I also see that you're building the Pyramids, but they don't do anything for you here: you don't have enough farms going to support a combination of Representation and specialists, and you're researching Monarchy so you don't need them for HR. Universal Suffrage is not great in the first half of the game, generally, since it takes a very long time to grow cottages into towns.

At 500AD you have about 350 hammers sunk into the Pyramids - that's just shy of six elephants. Whip four Catapults in your other cities and you have a stack that take Seattle and rampage into America - it looks like their capital is close enough to take too! At the very least I'm surprised you haven't taken Hittite, it's not like Hannibal is in a position to do anything.

Diplomatically - Gandhi was at Pleased when I loaded your save and I begged Monarchy from him with no penalty. Have you been needling him for techs? One of the benefits of Pleased is holding the bag out. Everyone else is at Cautious, which puts you at risk of being a war target. You'll probably want to join the Hindu power bloc and start smashing the Americans, since taking Hittite will cause you grief with the Buddhists anyway. But one way to get a civ's relations with you up quickly is to found a city and give it to them. It can be a low-quality city (like something up in America's ice/tundra) and if you want to be really devious, give someone a city that encroaches on someone else's borders... you might get them to go to war!

Regarding your tech - it's best to head straight for techs that offer significant immediate advantages. Calendar is not so important to you despite those dye tiles - you can just farm those for now. Civil Service might have been a better pick.

How is your current game going? Do you know how to post screenshots?

 

[ohjames]

I've seen this question asked before here but to verify should I at least get 6 cities before 0AD as a goal? I just don't like the idea of having a bunch of little crappy cities but as you'll see it worked out just fine for Washington (though I think I recently read AI gets a good discount bonus for maintenance).

The key benefit to having 6 cities or more is that on a standard sized map, you need 6 Courthouses for a Forbidden Palace, 6 Universities for Oxford, etc. But honestly 6 is a bare minimum! On the very high levels it might be harder to get more than 6 going but at Prince, with Rathauses too, you could have 12-16 cities by now. Even if you have to turn research down to 0% you can keep progressing by running Scientists.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I've seen this question asked before here but to verify should I at least get 6 cities before 0AD as a goal? I just don't like the idea of having a bunch of little crappy cities

Wish I had spotted that question on the my first pass.

Six plus cities that are going to contribute to your empire. At a minimum, they should each have one food resource, "enough" production (which I'm deliberately leaving vague), decent tiles for the citizens to work.

BUT they might be crappy in the sense that "hey, it's one AD and these cities only have one building in them". Most of the cities aren't going to look pretty yet; the immediate goal is to claim food and space for citizens to work.

So you might find that you have a capital, a city with a library and nothing else, a city with a barracks and nothing else, and three cities with a granary and nothing else, all surrounded by improvements for the citizens to work.

As a human, playing at the Prince handicap against the AI, you should look at that and say "yup - I now have a winning position."

Admittedly, it does take a certain amount of practice to convert that position to a win. Ohjames is quite right to point out that more cities would be better (aka easier to convert to a win).

 

[ohjames]

A helpful thought exercise might be that every time you consider producing a building, consider whether it might be better in the long run to produce a settler and found a new city, instead. If all of your colosseums had been settlers, you'd have a much stronger position now.

(The next step would be to consider whether it might be better in the long run to produce $Whatever Attack Unit and go TAKE a city from your neighbors, which is even better than founding one yourself.)

 

[Revent]

A helpful thought exercise might be that every time you consider producing a building, consider whether it might be better in the long run to produce a settler and found a new city, instead. If all of your colosseums had been settlers, you'd have a much stronger position now.

(The next step would be to consider whether it might be better in the long run to produce $Whatever Attack Unit and go TAKE a city from your neighbors, which is even better than founding one yourself.)

Not necessarily Sometimes the AI settle garbage cities when 1N or 1S, etc.. could've been so much more optimal.

 

[Cam_H]

Welcome to CivFanatics knight508!

For me, it's the 1917AD save that highlights a fair chunk of the problem - knight508 is not trying to win the game!

With that said, I agree with the suggestions about city builds, and automated Workers (Heaven forbid!), chopping, and the benefit of a few more cities, and so on.

[Generalisation warning]

More often than not, the focus should be to put yourself in a position where you can choose which Victory Condition to pursue, and typically that means finding a way to control your neighbours' turf. Of course there are exceptions, but successful expansion through war will commonly put you on to a more solid pathway to securing a Victory Condition. As such, looking at the two saved games and the subsequent post about trouble with getting invaded in the follow-up game, I think a bit more experience with using military forces purposefully (ultimately to put the nation in a winning position) would be helpful to knight508.

In other words, it's not just 'what' you're doing, but 'why' you're doing it.

 

[knight508]

Hello again,

Well, I've on my second game since the discussions (lost again on the last one) and now my problem seems to be getting enough cash flow to expand and fund research. This game I actually hit 0% research, barely made 6 cities before AD and am barely holding on (I only see it going downhill from here).

My main goal thus far is to try and block out the other civs from taking over some of the more valuable land. But, as I mentioned earlier, pumping out cities nuked my funding and now I've hit 0%. I'm trying to get cottages up so I think this will improve slightly but it seems like I've ultimately gimped myself that will remain noticeable until the end game. Am I still picking bad locations for cities? I find this is the crucial point, especially trying to get settlers/workers out since the stop growth. Thanks.

 

[Ghpstage]

First mistake was most likely moving your starting settler around before settling.
Next was your initial tech path, with 2 floodplains and a pig as your only food sources you should have gone for Agriculture and AH first, delaying the use of your strongest tile (the pigs) till you got mining, BW and IW was a major error!

Settling your 3rd city in a massive swathe of jungle was probably your most devastating mistake however, jungle sites take a lot of worker turns and research investment to make useful, too much to afford so early in the game.
When settling your earliest cities, the primary concern is how long they will take to become useful, not how good they will be in the late game. With this in mind settling right next to food resources tends to be the best move, meaning the region Satsuma is in really should have been your second city site, and it should have been settled quite a bit earlier than you second city was atually built (1640BC is awfully late).

As for blocking AI expansion, expanding more effectively yourself should be enough at this level, but on a small map rushing is usually an option. And on that note you haven't really explored much around you have you? Where is the Celtic capital?

You really should have Currency and Monarchy by the way, both would be key economic techs in this game. Monarchy usually is, while Currrency almost always is a key economic tech.

Theres more wrong here, but someone else can talk about worker usage, building choices, city management and speciaists

 

[May Day 10]

I have a question regarding Slavery.

When do you whip? Is it just before a city grows to be unhappy, or just after?

 

[knight508]

I have a question regarding Slavery.

When do you whip? Is it just before a city grows to be unhappy, or just after?

I usually whip before the city goes unhappy or if I need something pushed out of the way in a low hammer city that has lots of food.

 

[shlks]

Your expansion through this map's equator is crushing your economy. On smaller maps the game increases city maintenance factors so it might help to imagine the map itself is really bigger (I normally play on pretty big maps).

Your civilization is focused on harvesting mostly food and hammer rich tiles right now, it has no commerce based resources improved within cultural borders and has no developed cottages. This doesn't mean your economy is hopelessly dead, there are ways keep it floating even in a time like this with specialists or wealth building, however I am not one be taking this so far! You have not done so well, as you have a library in most cities but no money to fund your research! I assume this is because you are not building monuments, right, without mysticism researched? Not long ago I was much the same way, and creative was my #1 trait, but trust me libraries are too expensive to use all the time for that purpose, and you would have been better off with more workers, or an army to attack Brennus, or just plain wealth building. I suggest you try your next game as a charismatic leader who gets from monuments. You will not be so inclined to build libraries or colosseums in most places. Instead specialize your cities, only building libraries in the best commerce locations, or when you want to harvest scientist great people points in a food rich city.

You are using BUG, which has a many conveniences. The announcements are all too spammy for me, but extra info on the production bar generally about whipping is extremely useful. If a city is food rich at all I frequently 2 pop whip most things. Whips done using 2 or more population cause the same amount of unhappiness for the same amount of time but generate more production for you (on normal speed each pop = 30). I find maximizing overflow is usually a good idea too. For example if a city is 69/100 on the production of a settler if the city has 4 population (since we cannot whip more than half of the population), you will add 60 hammers to your production plus whatever is worked during the turn which will carry over to your next build. This optimizes the working of your tiles and whip unhappiness. I usually been 2 pop whipping my settlers lately, early on I probably wouldn't use any overflow since we just started whipping right, and we need to regrow. Later on I'd tend to use overflow by producing until I got the whip size I want and the bug mod shows me the overflow is close to the value of 1 pop's worth of . This'll use my food for hammers when settling isn't as urgent and unhappiness is stacking up.

Then there is even more advanced tricks of the which I am using in my current game. My capitol is very food rich, there is a nice bay with 2 fishies within. There are a lot of potential resources around, the problem is they require latter techs since they are bananas (one which I settled on), and there is rice and pigs sitting in the jungle. Nothing else good ready to use so I decided to settle my second city 3 tiles across the bay. Other than bronze on a hill, it had no good tiles of it's own since it was swathed in jungle but it could use some riverside grassland and the fish tiles that was originally in my capitol's big fat cross. Basically, with granaries, I could whip harder than normal here, and pass off control of a tile in the city screen by clicking shadowed tiles in the cities' range (called bfc, big fat cross usually), and run scientists when I have heavy whip unhappiness, growing my cities alternatively. By 1000 BC I have 6 cities, produced a great scientist who bulbed alphabet after self teching math, and traded math for iron working. Currently teching currency. Cities are settled really close, maintenance is low, worker turns are saved with less travel time and improvements needed, and it's easy to defend. Wish I could show ya but it's a modded game.

... I could right an article but this game's already covered!

 

[barbertje]

Hello again,

Well, I've on my second game since the discussions (lost again on the last one) and now my problem seems to be getting enough cash flow to expand and fund research. This game I actually hit 0% research, barely made 6 cities before AD and am barely holding on (I only see it going downhill from here).

You didn't expand THAT much. Your problems are the low happycap, and a lack of things to build, so you build more workers, wich won't have anything to do until your cities can grow. You should try to get alfabet earlier, so you can tech-trade and build research.
It's not too hard to solve your problems. You should switch out production tiles for cottages, scientists and even coast without a lighthouse if needed. You should be able to get Calender in 10 turns, and then you can suddenly work a lot more tiles. Start researching alfabet, and try to trade it for math from Washington, after that currency.
don't forget to remove the jungle from the elephants, espescially the one on the river.

 

[knight508]

Well, I'd like to thank everyone for the tips in getting me to now consistently achieve victories at the Prince level. My most recent Prince match was quite tough with having been crammed right in the middle between four other civs but even then I pulled through!

So, for the training Noble here's what I found to help the most with my game.

1) Install the BUG mod. Do it. Do it now.

2) Get a very good understanding of what Food, Hammers, and Commerce do in each city, especially Food. I never really payed attention to the numbers for food and at the ease of Noble it was never really necessary. In Prince you'll need to understand 2 Food per citizen and closely monitor city growth rate sickness and unhappiness. Remember it's not terrible your city is a little sick since it just slows growth (though it will kill if it gets out of hand) but try to eliminate any excess unhappiness outside that (this is where step 2 comes in).

2) When something's going wrong you must whip it! Whip it good! Yea, make liberal use of Slavery as this is KEY even well past 0AD and a virtual necessity before then. Remember how I said to really keep an eye on how much food you have, 2 per citizen and growth rate? I usually whip when it will cost 2 population and I'll know exactly how quickly the city will recover. Also, remember that workers and settlers will STOP growth. This brings me to point 3.

3) Timber! In other words, chop those trees! Especially when pumping out settlers or workers since they completely STOP growth in the city during their creation. That down time can severely hamper your early growth which is vital during the early game. Chop them out and/or certain buildings key to the city.

4) Don't be afraid of open borders as it's extra commerce for you. (assuming you have trade routes.

5) Speaking of open borders check frequently enough with other civs to trade resources, technology, and gold whenever possible. ALWAYS negotiate as many times the AI will give a little extra something for your troubles; in short don't click "Sure, I accept" (like I used to do) right away. The same concept goes for peace (assuming you're the won winning the war). Every time you take over a city talk to the warring civ and see what they want for peace as they will naturally ask for a "Free" peace treaty. If they're losing they'll give something and will even ask for capitulation (become a vassal to you) if they're losing badly.

6) Don't be afraid to nail the science, culture, espionage sliders around a bit. Slam em down to 0 if you need some gold to upgrade some key units. When your done slam Science back up to 100% to burn up the left over gold. If going for a domination victory slam up the culture slider once you grab your final tech.

From these rather simple 6 steps I was able to step up my game in Prince from semi-impossible to fairly easy or satisfactorily challenging depending on the start.

 

[capnvonbaron]

Well met!

Wait until you get around to playing with specialists to keep your REX going. A couple of scientists in one or two medium- or high-food cities with libraries can do wonders for keeping research alive when you have to "slam" that slider down to <50% after pounding out a half dozen cities early on. Those same scientists also serve to keep the city from growing lazy, useless, unhappy citizens in a time before calendar resources. And a couple of GS bulbs can really spring you amazingly far ahead in the tech race. PHI civs can actually be better than FIN civs in many cases for early victories, since they are far more flexible to operate.

 

[blunderwonder]

I also completed my first win on prince, though its probably more like the 3rd or 4th game i couldnt won had i played them all out. I find that small pangea maps are less tedious, and you're more likely to win just because you dont become bored, also its more likely to gain a domination this way without your computer exploding. I imagine its different for every setting, but i dont particular like culture/diplo wins really, and winning the space race at the highest levels i think is supposed to be nearly impossible. In any case, the specialist thing is HUGE in my games, i play vanilla though so im not sure what the difference is, im forever making my capital a specialist city from now on though, TGL and a forge + a couple of tempes and pacifism will make a huge difference if you play anything like me. Bulbing and a great enginner now and then to help finish some of the better stuff like hanging gardens/notre dame/tgl and others is a big benefit both for culture and the specialists it gives you. Ive still not conquered the aspects of diplomacy except for making a civ thats right next to me my state religion even if I only have one city with that religion. Also, im getting much better at teching the correct stuff... its important to know where the slingshots are and if you can beat other civs to them, or taking advantage of a tech that has a wonder you can build much quicker than other civs are all important. It seems that wonders/great people/diplomacy are the biggest changes from civ3 that i can see. Theres lots of changes but after some time playing those seem like the most important things to learn quickly in addition to the different teching and civics changes that are obviously a big change. The military promotions and things i thought would take me longer to figure out but theyre pretty much unchanged, just in a different wrapper.


gl with you new games


/e i suppose learning when to build which buildings also is very important, especially learning the which ones will be the most valuable to you at any given time is also a stepping stone