playing on Prince, feeling like a Pauper

[suzi17]

I used a lot of the ideas on this site and worked my way through Noble this weekend and easily won. So, I decided to try Prince last night. I build immediately on the best spot (2 or 3 hammers). I figure that founding a religion will be very helpful, so I immediately research to either get Buddhism or Hinduism. Every time I started the game, I would get to the last turn of the researching and someone else would get it at the beginning of my turn but just before it was my turn! I expanded quickly and beelined to bronze working, chopping forests to speed production of important buildings, etc, diversified cities, and did everything I did on Noble, but I am last or next to last on the ratings and, having exposed most of the map with a galley, the other countries have expanded across a bigger area than I have. I have 6 or 7 cities but am locked in now with nowhere to go until transports are possible, and I'm sure they'll get there first. What am I doing wrong?

Also, how many cottages are advised to build for an average city? Is there a cottage/people ratio? I was building too many, I think, and starting building a lot more workshops and watermills everywere to increase hammers in cities without hills ---- is this good? It seemed good, but now my people are saying it's too crowded. Don't the cottages grow with the population?


Also -- do you guys pack the cities together and backfill as much as allowed? How far apart do you like to place them?


suzi17

 

[budweiser]

Prince level just really annoys me right now, so much so that I went back to Noble. I just had 2 or 3 hard fought losses on Prince. They were mostly my own fault though because I was trying to do all the research my self with no tech trading. And was also pretty much operating as a rogue state not paying much attention to diplomacy.

 

[ElJojo]

To know what you're doing " wrong", i guess we would need more details.
Concerning religion, there's no way you can be sure to get it.
You compete with other civ on the map and they may have a better spot for their city.
If you really want to get the religion you should check that your city is working the tile that produce most commerce. And you should not make a worker or a settler first. It may mean working the sea or a lake, which means no hammer... Hindhuism or Buddhism is a bet. But you should be able to get judaism, because it will be less dependent of your starting spot.

6 or 7 cities is fine on a standard map size, what makes you think you should have more in the initial phase ? Getting more cities could lead you to bankruptcy anyway.

About cottages, well i guess there's no ratio, depends on the tile you have to work, your priorities and strategies. I have some cities with only cottages, which means a size 8 city with a production of 1 hammer for example. That's nice for science and gold once you've whipped a library or a market.

"Too crowded" has nothing to with cottages, it only depends on city size, for each point of pop you'll have one point of "too crowded". Cottages do grow and each time they do, they produce more commerce, that's why you should not destroy a developped cottage, it's like wasting dozens of turns.

Hope that helps,

 

[ohioastronomy]

First, I'd recommend that you start at normal speed. Long/higher difficulty games make tech development slow. Get the feel of a higher difficulty without the tech slowdown first.

Second, the key thing you'll have to master for the start of harder games is the way that maintenance costs cap early growth. Code of Laws and courthouses are really required to expand past the initial few cities without crippling research. Currency is also important. 6-7 cities before courthouses is actually larger than I'd typically run; I shoot for 3-4 well-placed cities with plenty of specials.

For religion, getting an early one can actually be counterproductive in harder games. The AI players get them early, and if they dislike heathens they will attack you for your different religion. Consider the Oracle slingshot to Code of Laws/Confucianism, or go for Judaism. Another strategy is to get Stonehenge, which you can get up to pretty high difficulty levels. It'll give you a Great Prophet, which you can leverage for a later religion (i.e. research Mysticism, Polytheism, Monotheism and get Theology and Christianity for free).

I'd recommend worker/worker/settler for the first builds, get a core of 3-4 cities, and then pause to develop them. If you're lucky and have gold, lots of sea resources, etc. you can afford to stretch the initial expansion by a couple of cities.

Alphabet is very useful. Be careful about whom you sign Open Borders agreements with for harder games; they will cross your empire to grab good city sites and they will attack you if they know you don't have much military force.

 

[azzkicar]

Courthouses become paramount in Prince onward. I know this because I lost one that way, rethink my strats, and came up on top consistently on Prince now.

4-5 is about max for cities before courthouses. I wouldn't even bother with getting an early religion. It is a weak strategy and it costs you techs you need right away. For example, you simply need bronze working, pottery, writing, and techs that allow you to use your resouce squares.

If anything, shoot for a relatively late religion. Confuanism is great since the tech for it (Code of Laws) is what allows you to build courthouses.

Also, unless you are industrious and have access to stone or marble, don't bother trying to build multiple early wonders. Depending on the map and leader, I may go for either Stonehenge, Oracle, Partheon, or the Great Lighthouse. Choose one and only one of these (2 if you have stone / marble, 3 if you are industrious AND have stone / marble) so you can focus on growth and building units.

The only wonder in ancient era that I'd consider a practically must have is the Great Library. Early Great scientists are awesome (Academys rule).

 

[ohioastronomy]

Courthouses become paramount in Prince onward. I know this because I lost one that way, rethink my strats, and came up on top consistently on Prince now.

4-5 is about max for cities before courthouses. I wouldn't even bother with getting an early religion. It is a weak strategy and it costs you techs you need right away. For example, you simply need bronze working, pottery, writing, and techs that allow you to use your resouce squares.

If anything, shoot for a relatively late religion. Confuanism is great since the tech for it (Code of Laws) is what allows you to build courthouses.

Also, unless you are industrious and have access to stone or marble, don't bother trying to build multiple early wonders. Depending on the map and leader, I may go for either Stonehenge, Oracle, Partheon, or the Great Lighthouse. Choose one and only one of these (2 if you have stone / marble, 3 if you are industrious AND have stone / marble) so you can focus on growth and building units.

The only wonder in ancient era that I'd consider a practically must have is the Great Library. Early Great scientists are awesome (Academys rule).

The Great Lighthouse is essential for an Archepelago map; it has the same impact there that Courthouses have on other maps (2 extra trade routes effortlessly gives you 4+ gold per turn per city, even before harbors, etc.)
On other maps it may or may not be useful (examples: Lakes, Highlands).
Stonehenge is easy, cheap, and fast - it is usually worth 2 forests unless you have creative/free automatic culture. Others, as you indicated, depend on strategic emphasis and your civilization/position.

 

[Firebot]

I've never founded a religion deliberatly in a Prince game mainly because the AI will usually dislike you much more. Even when aiming for a cultural win, there is absolutly no reason to go for an early religion like buddhism or hinduism as you are never garanteed of getting it at higher levels. Unless my aim is for an early domination win, I pacify the AI while my military and civ grows. One of the things that almost never changes for me though, is beelining straight to Alphabet as soon as I can (ensuring getting bronze working or archery in between as defense before I get there). Once you have Alphabet, you can trade with the other civs to bring myself back up to tech parity for the short term. By then, my civ has survived the initial growth pain phase, and I can then take the offensive while my economy has built up a solid base. Courthouses are huge for a growing civ, so are Forbidden Palace and Versailles.

Workshops and Watermills are useless. With universal sufferage, you also get 1 hammer per town along with the huge commerce. Some like to build cottages on grassland, while building farms on plains to keep the 2 food per tile growth going. You also need to start building specialized cities to survive. Cities specialized in commerce, cities specialized in production, and a GP city. You have to work the cottages btw for them to grow - you will often need to work them by selecting your citizens manually. Happiness also becomes a much bigger issue at later levels, so your city will be stuck at a population limit until you get new techs to raise happiness. It's one of the reasons why many like to build the Pyramids and switch to the Representation civic for the +3 happiness in 6 cities.

 

[Andrei_V]

I've never founded a religion deliberatly in a Prince game mainly because the AI will usually dislike you much more.

The AI dislikes you not for founding, but for adoption of a religion, regardless of whether you founded it or somebody else did. (Once you adopt Free Religion, all the diplomatic religious tensions are gone.)

If you want to found some religions, go for it, just say "no" to the question whether you want to "convert".

Problem is, you cannot make use of any religious civics, like pacifism, since they only work for cities with state religion. Well, there are many options. You may found some religions, but adopt the one from your closest neighbour, especially if he has 'spiritual' trait.

With Free Religion, the more religions you have, the happier your cities are. Building temples increases happiness even more. So religions are quite useful even on highest difficulty levels. Of course, you don't have to found them yourself, just wait until they come to you from abroad.

 

[rgbender62]

I'm fascinated by the way all of you just blithely say "oh I expand to 4 or 5 cities". When I play on Prince Level unless the available ground is large (ie low sea level, lakes scenario, etc) or I am isolated (which has it's own set of issues) the AI's are ruthless bastards who consistently crowd in on me. If I don't move fast and decisively the game is pretty much over before it even really gets started.

For me, the opening strategy that seems to work consistently is to go straight for Bronze working (at Prince and higher the AI's always beat you to Budahism and Hinduism, don't even bother trying). Explore, explore, explore you need to find horses! Make sure your city is working a one food, two hammer square to start, the default is for it to work the high food squares first. You don't need\want high population cities in the early game you cannot keep the population happy anyway. Small populations with high hammer productivity that can crank out units are what you want.

My builds are warrior/warrior/worker at which point I should have Bronze Working, next tech is always, always, always, Wheel (you have to connect any specials to your city to take advantage of them and you cannot build any roads without Wheel so going for anything else is a waste of time). Start on Settler and put the worker to work chopping a forest and take the Slavery Civic. Some people hesitate to chop forests for Settlers preferring to save them for GW production. I find that getting Settlers out there and grabbing the prime locations (ie next to HORSES) is more important than trying to play the GW game. So, I chop two forests to get that first Settler ASAP.

Send off the first settler and a warrior escort to the aforementioned prime site. At this point you have to make a decision about the game. If you are not playing the Romans and there are no horses within say 10 to 12 squares of your home city IMHO you might as well call it quits (assuming you are not on an isolated continent). If you don't have horses no matter what you do in the early game you are going to get eaten alive in the mid game when the AI's get Horse Archers, Knights, and Cavalry. Don't kid yourself, if the AI's have those units and you don't you will be at a huge disadvantage and they will ruthlessly take advantage of that fact (same as you would). If you are the Romans you might be able to overcome this with the awesome Pretorian units but without them forget it.

Assuming life is good and there are horses within an 8 to 10 square radius, send off that first settler. If is far, far more important to get the horse resource under your control than it is to build a 2nd city close to your home city. If you have to go a bit far to get those horses, then do it. Marke sure you settle RIGHT NEXT TO the horse resource. Don't be fooled into thinking you can settle 2 squares away and that your influence will bring them under your control in a few turns. At Prince level it can take forever for your secondary cities to expand their zone of influence past the squares directly next to them. There is nothing worse than building "near" a resource and then having one of the AI's come up 10 turns later and build a city 3 squares from yours that immediately gets control of the resource you wanted. IT WILL HAPPEN! Particularly with the really important strategic resources like horses, stone, and marble the AI is ruthless about horning in on them. Unless they are directly next to your city it will make a play for them if it can. Don't give it the chance. Get that second city founded and put it to work building a worker (12 to 15 turns).

By now you should have Wheel and you have to make a choice about the next tech. If you are really lucky and have stone or marble near your home city go for Masonary (which will lead to the Pyramids GW). Odds are though that you will have resources that fall into one of the three categories: Animal, Agricultural, Sea Food. My preference is to focus on the Animal resources because you need the Archery tech anyway. So, I do the Hunting, Archery, Animal Husbandry tech sequence. You will need animal husbandry to take advantage of the Horses anyway so why not make that your focus?While I am working through this I use my Worker to build roads to the resource squares, put in a mine on a hill square, and chop 1 more forest to speed along the second settler.

A few more turns and you should have your second settler and a second worker should be showing up in your second city. Put that worker to work developing the Horse resource (you did develop Animal Husbandry right?) and put your first worker to work building a road to the second city (even if you are lucky and the two cities are "joined" by a river so that resources flow between them you will want a road tying them together to move units on). Start building an Archer in your first city (should take about 4 turns). After you get that Archer start building a Barracks. By the time you get a road between your first two cities that barracks should just be finished and your second settler should have founded your third city; near stone or marble if you can at all manage it.

Of course, the AI's are not holding still while you are doing this. They have been aggressively scouting out the map and you should have run into most of them. What you will find is that at least one and possibly two of them are far to close for comfort and are aggressively colonizing to get control of the good resource locations. While it takes forever for your cities to expand their influence it will seem that their influence jumps over the map very quickly and locks you out of good areas. This is all true, remember AT PRINCE LEVEL THE AI'S GET AN EDGE! One of these edges is that their zones of influence expand more quickly than yours do. Don't be caught off guard by this and don't be complacent about how much territory you think your cities will bring under your control. The AI's have no hesitation about building cities as close as they can to yours in order to steal territory out from under you.

In any case here you are with three cities, control of a Horse resource, a capital city with an Archer and a Barracks in it and hopefully some other developed resources. You have some neighbors who are too close for comfort and who are agressively colonizing all around you. How do you survive and get to the next level on top? Answer, you overrun the bastards with Chariots. For some reason the AI's rarely use Chariots very much. Even the ones that have access to Horses tend to take the grab a Copper resource build Spearman and Axeman route. If you move fast and crank out 5 or 6 Chariots right off the bat you should be able to catch your closest neighbor off guard before he has a chance to build up his cities into impregnable forts. Chariots can take cities that are defended by Archers and Warriors and they will give you a big mobility advantage. Go after your nearest neighbor and cut them to shreds. Don't give them the chance to develop copper or iron and build heavy units; swarm over them and take all of their cities.

Usually I find that I pick up 2 or even 3 cities this way. I get a fair amount of loot that helps with the early game expansion financial crisis, a pool of experienced units that unlocks the Heroic Epic build, control of a wider variety of resources than I would have had, and control of a lot more territory. During the campaign I always switch my capitol city over from building chariots to building a GW. If I have access to stone or I'm playing an industrious civ I go for Pyramids. I know that others love the Great Library but the ability to jump to Representation and the increased likelihood of produing Great Engineers make the Pyramids a "must have" to me if there is any chance of getting it.

If I don't think the odds are good for Pyramids I shoot for the Oracle and Parthenon. In any case I find that I can almost always pick up one or the other. In a really good game when I am on a roll I can make a clean sweep and get Stonehenge\Pyramids\Oracle\Parthenon\Chichzen Itza\Colossus\Hanging Gardens\Great Library. Even with a lot of the GW's and a big lead in points going into the mid game you can still loose, it's a tough game at Prince level and above but at least you should be in good position.

A few other notes and that's it.

Barbarian Units
One of the HUGE annoyances of the game and one that can actually bleed you to death if you are not careful is barbarian units. These will start showing up soon after your second city comes online and then will pretty much be a constant in your life. IMHO the game is rigged so that barbarian units go after your civ and ignore the AI civs. If you are not careful barbarian units will start showing up on your borders in groups of 2, 3, or even 4 and frequently they will be strong units that you might have a hard time killing. If you try and "fort up" in your cities they will march from resouce to resource and destroy your developments. They are insidious and can be a serious drain on your resources (which is what I think their function in the game is). Don't let this happen! Be proactive about controlling these scum. Barbarian units show up only in territory that is not under someones control and that is not under observation from a unit. When you build Archers to replace the Warrior units to garrison your cites do not just leave the Warriors sitting in the cities. Move them out and position them so that you have the maximum amount of territory around your civ "under observation". The more ground you can watch the fewer barbarian units will appear. The amount of time and effort you save from positioning 4 or 5 warriors around so that no barbarian units show up to attack you makes a huge difference in your early game success.

Leader Traits
This doesn't get talked about much but it makes a big difference in the game. IMHO some leader traits are better than others. The four that I think are the best are Industrious, Financial, Philisophical, and Organized. My reasons for these choices are:

Industrious: Gets 50% hammer bonus in building GW's, in the early game if you have this type of civ and stone or marble you can make a clear sweep of the GW's.

Financial: Gets extra gold in every square that puts out 2 gold (ie a 50% boost). This is more subtle advantage but it is a large one. There are several "crisis" points in the game when it will get really hard to balance your budget and maintain research momentum. The first comes when you try to balance early expansion against growing maintenance costs. If you have over expanded you will find that your research budget shrinks to zero and your units may even go on strike. You just cannot pay for all the cities you have. The AI civs will race ahead on the tech tree and then will gobble you up. The extra gold generated by the Financial trait is a constant buffer against this. Used carefully it can ensure that you never have a crisis and always have plenty of money.

Philosophical: Gets 50% bonus in generating GP's. Philosophical civs may generate 2 or even 3 times as many GP's as the other civ's and that is without any GW influence. I've noticed though that this tends to be heavy on the Great Artist, Great Scientist, and Great Prophet types and light on the Great Engineers. Still, it is a big advantage and if you are playing against AI civs that have this trait try and make sure that they don't get the GW's that will multiply their advantage. A philosopical civ that has the Parthenon and becomes Pasifist will generate GP's like crazy and the AI civs tend to use their GP's for tech gains. Philosophical civs can climb the tech tree really really fast if they have a good resource\population base.

Organized: City improvements have 50% less upkeep. This one is the flip side of the Financial trait. Financial trait civs generate more gold, Organized trait civs cost less to run. Of the two the Organized trait has a slight edge in my mind because you always have the expenses but you cannot always count on getting locations that will generate lots of gold. The Organized trait is very powerful in the early game before Code of Laws and Courthouses show up. It ensures that you will either have more money than your neighbors if you both have roughly the same number of cities or that you can have twice as many cities and still be on par with them financially.

Look at the leader traits carefully and tailor your gameplay to match them. What works well with England-Elizabeth (Financial\Philosophical) is not going to work with Rome-Julius (Organized-Expansive). Rome tends to be a favorite here on the forums I've noticed but I prefer England-Elizabeth or American-Roosvelt (Industrious\Organized).

Anyway, I've gone on long enough. Hope this is helpful and leads to a higher win\loss ratio for you.

 

[ds61514]

Note: I'm a Monarch/Emperor player (probably leaning more towards Monarch but have won and played to a winning position on Emp a few times).

Every time I started the game, I would get to the last turn of the researching and someone else would get it at the beginning of my turn but just before it was my turn! I expanded quickly and beelined to bronze working, chopping forests to speed production of important buildings, etc, diversified cities, and did everything I did on Noble, but I am last or next to last on the ratings and, having exposed most of the map with a galley, the other countries have expanded across a bigger area than I have. I have 6 or 7 cities but am locked in now with nowhere to go until transports are possible, and I'm sure they'll get there first. What am I doing wrong?

1. If you are finding a religion (which is perfectly viable on prince), you might want to micromanage your first tile so that it is on max commerce. Governor will often put it on max food shields. Also helps to have a civ that starts with mysticism. OTOH Religion isn't THAT powerful and oftentimes it's better to just adopt a neighbor's religion.

2. If you run out of space attack! Go with stacks of axemen with a few chariots, later getting swords/catapults. Attacking cities gives you cities AND workers. Each city is worth at least 100 shields while workers are worth 60 a pop. Therefore it's perfectly ok to have 3-4 axes die if you can get a good city site.

3. Don't worry too much about buildings. Barracks/Granaries/Liabraries will serve your home cities well.

4. Don't be afraid of being behind in tech. Beeling for advanced techs and fill in the gaps later. It's not uncommon for Emperor players to be behind 5-6 techs and then regaining the lead around Education.

5. Don't worry about score!

My preference is to focus on the Animal resources because you need the Archery tech anyway. So, I do the Hunting, Archery, Animal Husbandry tech sequence. You will need animal husbandry to take advantage of the Horses anyway so why not make that your focus?While I am working through this I use my Worker to build roads to the resource squares, put in a mine on a hill square, and chop 1 more forest to speed along the second settler.

Early bronze makes archery (and thus hunting) superfluous. Tech BW, mysticism (optional) and wheel. Settle your second city near bronze and chop oblisk/stonehenge and you connect the bronze. By the time you are ready for a third city you will have axes to defend your cities and can easily summon them for an attack. Chariots are nice for attacking but when you have to take out a capital city city raider axes (better yet axes + cats/swords) do a much better job than chariots (unless you are playing Cyrus/Hatty).

 

[Xerhid]

The jump from Noble to Prince was difficult for me as well. Here are a few macro-strategies that made a huge difference for me:

(1) In general, be more aggresssive than on Noble. I am a bastard to my neighbors.
(2) Specialize your cities so you'll have more hammers to constantly get out more units. Only build the necessities and then pump out units.
(3) Use the cultural slider. Throughout my games I pretty much had research at 60%, culture at 20%. I guess I was an idiot for not using it before, but I found the use of it much more effective than pumping Research as high as possible.

 

[Andrei_V]

(3) Use the cultural slider. Throughout my games I pretty much had research at 60%, culture at 20%. I guess I was an idiot for not using it before, but I found the use of it much more effective than pumping Research as high as possible.

Once you jump from Prince to Monarch and above, you'll have to learn not to use the cultural slider anymore, unless you are after a cultural victory.

There are plenty of other ways to fight the red faces in your cities. Resources, buildings, even religions. If there is absolutely nothing you can do to increase the happiness in your cities, just do not let them grow above their 'happiness limit'.

 

[Andrei_V]

Also, how many cottages are advised to build for an average city?

As many as your city can work on. The cottages are the principal source of your income and science/culture. You may also need some farms to support the population working on cottages.

However, you also need a few cities specialized in production, build them in the places with lots of hills around, as well as food tiles, like rivers and floodplains. Then build just enough farms to support the population working on mines, and if you still have some grassland available, build cottages there.

Is there a cottage/people ratio?

The more cottages, the better. Of course, if you build cottages, make sure the city pop works on them. They are useless otherwise, just like mines and farms.

Don't the cottages grow with the population?

No, they grow with time, but the city must work on them. On normal speed, the cottages (+1 commerce) become hamlets (+2 commerce) in 10 turns. After another 20(?) turns the hamlets become villages (+3 commerce), then the villages become towns (+4 commerce).

Once you develop the Printing Press, your villages and towns give you one more commerce.

Once you adopt Emancipation civic, the growth time is halved. The cottages become hamlets in 5 turns, and so on.

Once you adopt Universal Suffrage, the towns give you +1 hammer, so your heavily commercial cities become decent production centers as well. I had once a rather funny situation when my best commercial center had better production than my best production center. I was about to chose a city for Ironworks, and I was a little frustrated, because my commercial center already had Oxford and Wall Street.

Another advantage of the Universal Suffrage is that you can rush buy whatever your cities are producing. You just need some money, but with lots of cottages it is not a big problem. You can rush buy observatories/universities, as well as markets/banks in your commercial cities, even if they have only 1 hammer per turn for production. It is real good to have Kremlin (develop Communism right after Scientific Method, and then rush buy it), since it halves the cost of rush buying. Of course, you can also rush buy the most modern army in no time. If you are doing well with cottages/ Kremlin, most (if not all) of the remaining world wondres are also yours. You just set science to 0% for a turn or two after the tech, then rush buy the wonder.

So, you see, with the time and certain techs/civics the cottages become like gold mines, only better.

Also -- do you guys pack the cities together and backfill as much as allowed? How far apart do you like to place them?

I personally prefer large cities, I try to build them as close as possible, but so that their city radiuses do not overlap. It is normally 4 or 5 tiles away.

 

[Kenji]

u can win the game easily if u start near Stone... with Industrial trait, u can hood almost 80% of Wonders.. (if u dont like military zerg)

forget Religion...if u dont need it to win the game

go for BW 1st, if u need mining then start with Barrack . once Mining done go BW, and switch to Worker (hopefully u got a flood plain so u can get to 2 pop before worker)

BW > Monasry > Road...after these, go for Mystism , chop stonehenge at less important city(1 chop 90 production with Stone+Ind ... can be done within 2 turnslol)

main city if got goooood food , and some (~4 forests) then chop Pyramid , switch to Representation after built... +3 happiness, +3 beakers per scientists , can grow way higher...

since no religion, if first GP spawned is phophet (from Stonehenge), go to capital and place them in +1 hammer/+5 gold/3 beaker per turn is very uber at this point (1000~1 BC) if first GP is engineer (from Pyramid) then go for Great Library for 2 free scientist (total of 6x2beakers lol)

at this point...u can find yourself easy to win now...want religion then raid the other civs with more advanced army~

 

[thordk]

if you want a tech advance build as many cottages as possible. a city needs 40 food to be able to work all tiles. that's equal to 2 food per tile. so cottage everything that gives at least 2 food.
in your production cities farm as much as is needed to work all mined hills. cottage the rest.

this might not be the best strategy, but as long as not concentrating on specialized commercial/productive/GPfarm cities you will get good results from this.

 

[budweiser]

Early bronze makes archery (and thus hunting) superfluous. Tech BW, mysticism (optional) and wheel. Settle your second city near bronze and chop oblisk/stonehenge and you connect the bronze. By the time you are ready for a third city you will have axes to defend your cities and can easily summon them for an attack. Chariots are nice for attacking but when you have to take out a capital city city raider axes (better yet axes + cats/swords) do a much better job than chariots (unless you are playing Cyrus/Hatty).

This is working well for me now. I am playing Mao on a standard continents, Prince game now. I roughed up Caesar and am annexing Toku. This leaves Gandhi and Hapset on MY continent. I am number 1 in military powa.

My caravels just set sail and I expect to meet the others soon and maybe get some trade income.

Anyway I am quite pleased with my position and hopefully I can win this one, my first real solid win on Prince.

OH, and BTW, I did not build any wonders, I built axes instead. I just love axemen, they last for thousands of years.

 

[rgbender62]

Early bronze makes archery (and thus hunting) superfluous. Tech BW, mysticism (optional) and wheel. Settle your second city near bronze and chop oblisk/stonehenge and you connect the bronze. By the time you are ready for a third city you will have axes to defend your cities and can easily summon them for an attack. Chariots are nice for attacking but when you have to take out a capital city city raider axes (better yet axes + cats/swords) do a much better job than chariots (unless you are playing Cyrus/Hatty).

I would love to play you sometime. My experience has been that Chariot centered armies beat Axemen centered armies almost everytime. A lot of this has to do with mobility. You can use Chariots to destroy your opponents Copper mine and suddenly he cannot build any more Axemen. Secondly, Chariots are not Melee units and Axemen do not get the big boost against them that makes them so deadly against Swordsmen and Spearmen. Lastly, for some reason (the gods just hate me or something) I almost never get Copper anywhere near enough to my Capitol to be able to exploit it early enough. I almost always (say 8 out of 10 times) have to get to Iron Working and develop an iron mine before I can build Axe units. By then everyone else has them to and your shot at an early blitz has passed. Anyway it would be fun to see which of us faired better under the same starting conditions.

 

[budweiser]

Why would'nt the player build a few spears to counter all those chariots?

 

[southpawsc]

I find that getting Settlers out there and grabbing the prime locations (ie next to HORSES) is more important than trying to play the GW game. So, I chop two forests to get that first Settler ASAP.

Reading your full topic, it sounds like you're sending your settler out before you have researched Animal Husbandry. AH reveals horses, so you're never going to see any horses until you have AH