Prince Level Strategy Questions

[doriengard]

Dear Civ Gurus,

I have been trying to develop a strategy merging some elements from others for a Prince level game using Qin as the leader.

The initial strategy involves researching Bronze Working and chopping with workers to get to 4 cities as fast as possible.

Question 1: What are the advantages/disadvantages of switching to Slavery after the discovery of Bronze Working?

Part two of the strategy involves researching Wheel to allow workers to build roads and then Mysticism to allow for an early build of Stonehenge. My cities will expand to the fat cross size allowing placement to take advantage of the early culture growth.

Part three of the strategy involves researching Meditation and Priesthood to set up an Oracle build.

Question 2: What technology should be targeted for the Oracle? Options include Metal Working (research Pottery to allow this) to get cheep forges or Code of Laws (research Writing to allow this) to get the religion and Courthouses.

Question 3: What to research next. Of importance is Iron Working (offense), Animal Husbandry (pasture), Horseback Riding (if I see horses), Alphabet (tech trading), Calendar (happiness and health), Construction (catapult), Monarchy (happiness via heriditary rule)

I understand that question 3 is very situation specific, but I would appreciate any general strategy tips tha can be had.

Thoughts?

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I have been trying to develop a strategy merging some elements from others for a Prince level game using Qin as the leader.

Civ, or Warlords?

The initial strategy involves researching Bronze Working and chopping with workers to get to 4 cities as fast as possible.

Question 1: What are the advantages/disadvantages of switching to Slavery after the discovery of Bronze Working?

Disadvantage - you lose a turn of development.

Advantages - you get to start converting food to hammers immediately. There's a nice little optimization available, for instance, that allows you to take advantage of Slavery, when you have a 3F tile and a 3P tile and a couple of 1F/2P tiles. This lets you squeeze out a warrior before rushing a worker in the same amount of time it would take you to build the worker by hand.

Part two of the strategy involves researching Wheel to allow workers to build roads

I think you'll find that's early on most maps. The wheel, of itself, doesn't do much for you in the opening. But it is on the way to Pottery, if that's your target ( a good one for a financial civ ).

Question 2: What technology should be targeted for the Oracle? Options include Metal Working (research Pottery to allow this) to get cheep forges or Code of Laws (research Writing to allow this) to get the religion and Courthouses.

Industrious? There's lots of good things that come of Forges. Slavery + Granary + Forge + Whip is a whole lot of food going on. Even one luxury metal makes this a no brainer.

Question 3: What to research next. Of importance is Iron Working (offense), Animal Husbandry (pasture), Horseback Riding (if I see horses), Alphabet (tech trading), Calendar (happiness and health), Construction (catapult), Monarchy (happiness via heriditary rule)

I'd suggest looking at three things: how are you going to exploit your traits? how are you going to exploit your uber unit? What are you going to do with the prophets you spawn?

Can you fit the answer to those three questions together?

 

[karr1255]

I don't like a strategy that relies on wonders, especially the oracle. That said however you have to use your traits. If you want to expand quickly I wouldn't go for stonehenge. Early slavery is nice and you can easily whip a monument/obelisk for 1 pop in new cities. If you can build the oracle grab metal casting, get cheap forges and you have the colossus guaranteed. Also I don't like chopping all the trees down if your capital could have been a great production city later on. That's why there is no general strategy in my opinion, you always have to adapt. Use your traits, use your UU and your UB (if you play warlords) but be flexible.

 

[Mr. Civtastic]

I go for alphabet almost all of the time.

 

[Admiral Kutzov]

Part two of the strategy involves researching Wheel to allow workers to build roads and then Mysticism to allow for an early build of Stonehenge. My cities will expand to the fat cross size allowing placement to take advantage of the early culture growth.

Part three of the strategy involves researching Meditation and Priesthood to set up an Oracle build.

I'd suggest looking at three things: how are you going to exploit your traits? how are you going to exploit your uber unit? What are you going to do with the prophets you spawn?

Strongly concur.

Any strategy in C4 is map and opponent specific. Having said that, if you're going to grab Stonehenge, you may as well grab Oracle too. Grabbing both generates +4 GP in the city (make sure you build both in the same city). Industrious speeds the wonder builds.

The wheel isn't imperative unless you need to connect resources for health or happiness.

In general, using your strategies, build Stonehenge, then build other things as appropriate, then time your build of Oracle for just after writing. Oracle finishes, you take COL as your freebie. Make sure you haven't discovered masonry to this point. Learn polythesim. Use the GP from Stonehenge and Oracle to bulb civil service. Burn to metal casting and machinery and you've got maces to go conquer. somewhere in there, learn alpha.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

If you want to expand quickly I wouldn't go for stonehenge. Early slavery is nice and you can easily whip a monument/obelisk for 1 pop in new cities.

Well, the Henge does cost less than a settler when you are industrious; if you build a third obelisk (@ 30 ) then you've invested more production than you would have by building the wonder.

This may be my own bias - I don't like Obelisks very much. They have very little impact beyond the first 10 turns after they are built, and to get them I need the tech that unlocks the wonder anyway.

Also I don't like chopping all the trees down if your capital could have been a great production city later on.

This one I'm going to disagree with fairly confidently. My feeling is that commerce generation is much more important than production in the capital (specialization, palace, etc), and hammers now are much more important than hammers later (5 per turn in the opening is doubling your production or better - its not without cost, but lets not kid ourselves into forgetting that this is a major expansion excellerant).

On some maps, it can be a problem (production was an issue in Epic Two for those who mowed the lawns), but I think in general it's a very strong play (assuming the rest of the opening is tailored to match it).

 

[cabert]

Vanilla or warlords is really a big question.
I assume vanilla.
If it's warlords you aimed for, it's a different story.

First, I can't see how you could build stonehenge after having 4 cities.
Maybe I understood you wrong, but it doesn't seem right to me.
I'd go stonehenge in city 2 while building workers/settlers in city 1, but that's just me (and my habit of settling a high production city as n°2 in 99% of the games).

Question 1: What are the advantages/disadvantages of switching to Slavery after the discovery of Bronze Working?

You will need slavery sooner or later.
1 turn of anarchy when you have almost no output isn't a big loss and if you're not into a race, it's really no problem.
Later the loss will be higher.
that's for "early switch"
Why switch?
To whip, of course. In emergency situations if not more often.
If you're not spiritual, you really should consider staying under slavery for a big part of the game.

Question 2: What technology should be targeted for the Oracle? Options include Metal Working (research Pottery to allow this) to get cheep forges or Code of Laws (research Writing to allow this) to get the religion and Courthouses.

Like VoU said, for an industrious leader, Metal Casting is really big. Cheap forge is the one reason I like industrious.
If you can manage a CS slingshot it's better, but it's a gamble (unless you have gold, silver, or another high source of commerce).
Go for Metal casting. Pottery leads to writing anyway...
A good slingshot for a religious friend is theology, but you need monotheism and writing. Quite a lot of techs if you went to priesthood via meditation.

Question 3: What to research next. Of importance is Iron Working (offense), Animal Husbandry (pasture), Horseback Riding (if I see horses), Alphabet (tech trading), Calendar (happiness and health), Construction (catapult), Monarchy (happiness via heriditary rule)

it really depends on what your looking for.
Alphabet is great for trading.
Currency is great to keep you economy afloat.
Construction is great for war.

HBR? you don't see horses without Animal husbandry, there is a flaw in your question...

 

[karr1255]

To VoiceOfUnreason:

To your first point:
I know the cost and use of Stonehenge. But he stated, that he wanted to build 3 settlers, Stonehenge and the Oracle too. Sorry, but that's simply not happening, so you have to make your cuts. If I want to expand quickly and build that many settlers, it's just not possible to also build SH, except maybe on chieftain difficulty. I did not say SH sucks and don't build it or anything, I just responded to this specific scenario.

To your second point:
If your capital is in plain terrain with lots of hills, how are you going to make a commerce city out of this? Of course if it's nice grassland, you chop the trees down and cottage everything. Again it always depends and you can't have 1 universal gameplan for everything. The game is just too complex for that.


I think you have generalized my post too much. You always have to adapt and I think that stands above all strategies like "chop everything and build wonder X in every game".

 

[pigswill]

Advantage of going for BW when industrious and hunting for early wonders is that each chop gives you 30 hammers/chop for a wonder; chop for wonders and whip for units is a reasonable principle in this scenario.
Also if industrious it makes sense to get metalcasting from oracle for half price forges.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I know the cost and use of Stonehenge. But he stated, that he wanted to build 3 settlers, Stonehenge and the Oracle too. Sorry, but that's simply not happening

That is a lot of hammers, isn't it. 300 + 60 + 80 + 100 = 540 hammers in 75 turns, with 2/3 of them being growth stunters? So you would have to be averaging 7.mumble hammers per turn, and we haven't added in any warriors, assuming that 1000 BC is soon enough for the Oracle, which may not be reasonable. City #2 has to pull full weight, 3 and 4 will be responsible for defense, such as it is.

I suspect it can be managed at Prince, but the outcome may be something less than favorable.

If your capital is in plain terrain with lots of hills, how are you going to make a commerce city out of this?

Oh come on. If the capital is plain terrain with lots of hills, I sure as @#$#$% don't need the trees to turn it into a production monster. The trees are strong, my lord. Their roots go deep.