Prince Game Playthrough

[mtr12]

Hey guys. I used to win with some regularity on Monarch, but since I took a long break from Civ, I've been really sucking. I can still regularly win on Prince, but I get pwned on Monarch, and I have a nagging feeling that I'm doing things wrong, or only just getting by. More specifically, I think I need help with things like city specialization, dotmapping, teching, and expanding. Therefore, I've decided to play an online game on Prince so you guys can help me. I plan to use a Specialist Economy for this game, since I'm not very strong at it.

I'm playing Alexander (Aggressive, Philosophical), on Epic Speed, Continents, Standard Size, Standard Settings.

Also, if you play the save game, exercise common sense on spoilers and stuff. Thanks!

Here's the start:

I'm thinking I'm going to specialize this city as a production city, and a general-purpose unit pump. I'll probably put Heroic Epic here later in the game. I believe I settle in place. My capital has potential 20 hammers, with more than enough food to run it, making it great for making stuff that kills people. Tech path is

Agriculture --> Mining --> Bronze Working --> Random Stuff

Build order is

Warrior --> Worker --> Settler --> Barracks --> Random Stuff

Basically, I get that planned out and continue exploring. In a little bit, I run into

Yeah, a tech whore, and he's got access to multiple Gold resources to boot. Fortunately he's quite close to me, so I'm going to put him in a body bag by 1000 BC max. I'm already planning out an early rush, likely with Phalanxes.

Hot on the heels of the first contact, I run into

Shaka isn't a very strong AI. By midgame, he's usually living in a cave unless his wars happen to be successful, in which case he's a threat. He's not quite as bloodthirsty as Monty, and I'm fairly sure that I can dispose of him with ease. I think I have 1 AI left to kill before the continent goes to me.

State of my Tribalism

Yeah, not much to look at, but after I build my first settler I'll post a big map for dotmapping. Probably the location of my first city will be based on the location of Copper or Horses if I can't find Copper.

Starting Save:

 

[kossin]

Worker first would have helped you a lot.

 

[mtr12]

I figured that with Alexander's horrible starting techs, I might as well delay the worker. But I have a save at 4000 BC, so I can retry it later.

 

[babybluepants]

Well, you're starting with Agri (which is correct, btw). Your worker would have plenty to do here. Just go worker first - it's almost never wrong, and, even when it is, it's not too, too wrong.

 

[UWHabs]

With 5 FP in the cap, I'd go for cottaging them, maybe trying to swing an early pottery beeline.

Never underestimate Shaka. He's not as crazy as Monty, but that makes him a stronger player.

But yes, with the persians quite close, I'd definitely think of a phalanx rush, or if no copper, then a chariot rush. If you have copper in your BFC, then just build barracks/phalanx* and only use one city to take Darius out. If not, then settle a second one towards him near a resource and use 2 cities.

But otherwise, worker first is what you want in at least 90% of cases. In this game, you could have built worker while teching agriculture, then go mining, and by the time that comes in, your worker will have finished farming the wheat. Maybe a turn or 2 of down time, but then you can go mine some hills (mine the wine early too to get extra commerce) as you wait for bronze working.

 

[OJimiJam]

As above, worker first is nearly always the way to go. Farm the wheat, maybe a floodplain, then mine the wine hill and you can then cop away at BW. As well as that i would rethink the production capital thing, unless you find NOWHERE else to put a prod city or 2 this would be a killer beuro capital. Obviously you can multi task but my first thought here would be oxford rather than HE. Rushing Darius looks pretty easy with copper or horsies, but if not a city 1SW of the gold looks like a nice early site.

 

[mtr12]

Actually this is a point I would like to address before playing further: what to do with the city?

Because of all the hills and the high level of production, I was going to make it a unit pump and farm the floodplains, maybe running a priest/engineer with the extra food. But should I cottage it?

EDIT: Err, the Hybrid Commerce/Production Capital under Bureaucracy looks quite appealing as well. Thanks!

 

[Amao]

tech BW then toward Pottery, then writting.
get 2 workers, use the first to chop the 2nd after irrigate the wheat, and mine a plain hill or 2, build another warrior then you can chop a settler. settle it at 5E of the capital and connect the gold asap. build more worker and settlers afterwards.
BW might show the copper, which could change the city planning.

 

[/solar/]

Virtually every prince game I ever played (now moving up to emperor) I started with worker>settler. Occasionally it can be right to delay the worker if he would have nothing to do, in which case I would probably micro the city grow to 2 and finish the warrior on the same turn.

As it stands you have spent 20+ turns to build a warrior and give your city +2 food. Not worth it.

Worker first almost always. If the worker is going to be done before finishing a required tech (agri) in this case then get a warrior, but get the warrior faster, then switch to a worker.

 

[vicawoo]

Note that working an improved wheat would give you a city producing 4 food 2 hammer. Your 3 flood plains net you 5 food 1 hammer, not to mention you have 2 hills you could improve immediately.

Also, if you irrigate the flood plains, you can go up to +14 food and support 7 specialists, and if you go cottages you are at +9 food and can support 4 or 5. So how many specialists are you planning on running? If you're going to run 4 to 5, go with cottages, if you want more you can farm it.

 

[learner gamer]

Will echo everyone else (who’s given much great advice BTW): worker first was indeed the right way to go. After all, you were able to avoid worker downtime by getting the worker to farm the wheat and a FP, and then mine a hill or the wine (what a great idea UWHabs ) given your initial tech path. Post BW, I agree with Amao that there may even be value chopping in a 2nd worker given the start. I’d certainly endorse the point you made about replaying the original start offline (if only for the early part of the game) so you can see the difference it would make.

Re: city type (commerce or military pump). IMHO, you don’t need to make that decision right now – it’s better left until you’ve explored a little more of the map. After all, who knows, you could well find that a neighbour’s capital would make your best military pump....and the FP / gold site (either 5E of Athens as Amao and OJimiJam have it or 4E, 1SE depending on what’s just out of the picture) could also be a monster bureau site.

Re: farming or cottaging FPs. Like almost everything else in Civ, its situational. In your case, the need for cottages for commerce is offset to some degree by your plans for an early rush – for which you’ll want farms to enable you to work mines and to help regrowth after whipping. Of course, farms will also enable you to run specialists and leverage philosophical for an early GS. Looking at the 4000BC save, I note that Athens has a (pre-biology) food surplus of minus 5 (this assumes that you cottage all the FPs and improve the BFC’s special resources). That tells me you need a couple of farms early on...which, of course, reinforces the benefit of an early worker or two.

Re: tech path. Depends on whether BW shows copper. If not, I’d go AH after BW to see if there are horses around if you’re still set on an early rush. After that, TW will be needed to build chariots. If you have copper in Athens BFC then its TW to connect it IMHO.

 

[ErrantSettler]

Hi guys,

I decided to play through this game on my own. I've reached about 150 AD and there seems to be a bug preventing one of my cities, Sparta, from growing. It reaches max. food where it should grow but then just stagnates there at Size 3. It has been at Size 4 in the past but I whipped it down to 2, it grew up to 3, and stopped growing after I started producing 'Research' (it only made 4 hammers a turn and there wasn't anything else useful to build). I'm attaching the save file, thanks!

 

[OJimiJam]

^havnt had time to look at the save, but check that the avoid growth button isnt checked. Its down the bottom right of the city management screen near the slavery rushbuy buttons

 

[kossin]

Not a bug, you stagnated it, either you forgot on didn't know about it.

Go to the city screen and hit this button:

 

[ErrantSettler]

Ooops thank you I didn't realize Avoid Growth actually stopped the city from growing, I thought it only optimized tile working to bring food surplus to 0. That said, I have no idea why I had Sparta set to Avoid Growth at all.

 

[mtr12]

I am putting this up because I played a short little round in the interim period.

For one, I played the map over with the build order

Worker --> Warrior --> Settler --> Barracks --> Random Stuff

as per your suggestions. Nothing different happened except that I met Shaka 2 turns later than last time, and my Scout became kibbles for a Wolf. However, I would like to draw attention to a few things.

This is a map of my continent so far, barring the jungle, which is really useless to us.

And Darius has Hinduism. I don't think this affects the plans for an Early Rush, but if he gets to 60% Cultural Bonus, then we really need to wait for Construction, right?