Prince Nightmare

[hotstuffjsn]

Hi fellow civ fans! It's been a long time since i've posted...I am an avid reader of the site though.

The reason for my post today was that no matter how much I read in the war academy or through this strategy forum, I don't have the right knowledge to apply what i've learned in-game. This is pretty apparent as you'll see if you take a look at my uploaded save game. This is one i've worked on the past few days and it went fine and well until I got blocked in by two civs. I used to have iron but lost it halfway through my war with Shaka. This pretty much ended all possiblity of a positive outcome. I've tried to do the best I could with just three cities, one production, one great person farm...though I haven't been able to farm without biology and the other is a coastal commerce. What could I do to possibly survive? My research isn't terribly far behind, in fact I thought I had been keeping up kinda lol Without strategic resources, i'll never increase my land any ideas?

Oh ya, I don't like to play easy difficulties because it's boring...but I cannot survive on the highers ones. What does everyone recommend because for having this game for almost 2 years you'd expect i would be at Monarch by now!! haha

I've come across some ALC games on here and was thinking about sersiously reading those entire game posts to maybe learn something more.

Anyhow, I hope a few looks at my game and can provide some positive feedback and criticism, thank you

 

[hotstuffjsn]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/43306/AutoSave_AD-1440.CivWarlordsSave

 

[Mr. Z]

Can't look at the save right now, but not having access to metal is no big deal I find. Catapults, catapults, catapults. Longbows for stack/city defense if you have feudalism, otherwise archers and promote a few cats up the combat line. Cats can get the anti-melee promotion to defend against swords against axes too. You are really only vulnerable to horse archers.

Even when I have metal, I often think of my stacks as just seige weapons and a few mixed units to defend them.

Z

 

[hotstuffjsn]

I ended up quiting around 1620 AD as the AI had about 15 times my military power. I lost one of my 3 cities and decided it wasn't long after that my empire would dwindle to nothing more then a puddle. Contrary to the previous post, all my catapults and trebs were no match for their elephants even with my gunpowder. I guess it wasn't the fact that my units were too weak, but I could not muster the military like the AI could. I'm not sure if they were cheating or not but I swore they had almost 20 guys in their capitol at a time, not counting their mobile army too! Just thinking here for a moment, how many cats and jannisaries would i need to take them out? i'm figuring like 40 haha with one production city...ahem i think not. I did give it a shot but I think i'll drop my difficulty level to something more manageable

 

[InvisibleStalke]

You need more than three cities to compete. Your production won't be enough to build enough cats to keep up with their defensive production otherwise.

The game probably isn't salvageable - what you need to do is go back and find out why you only had three cities and fix your game at that point. Earlier settlers, earlier war, fewer wonders and more focus on expansion might be the answer.

The time to go to war with catapults is early - when you get construction. If you are limited in metals and have only three cities, beeline construction, whip an army of catapults plus some archers for defense and go on the warpath immediately to get more cities. If you wait until gunpowder its way too late.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

First thought: in fairness, you did not get dealt an easy hand. Your capital is find, but the surrounding lands are a bit sparse, and the peninsula runs the risk of getting trapped.

That said, you didn't address any of the problems the opening put to you, and got trounced. Game over, insert coin.

Your capital is pretty backwards. Those trees are nice to use, but remember they are also nice as lumber, and the flat green ground underneath can be turned into food or commerce, depending on your preference.

Ankara, in addition to being founded late, is in a terrible spot. The center piece of the game is food, and this city doesn't have any. That little spot of land across from your capital? with the green soil and the cows? That's a place to put a city.

Your research path... well, lets take a look:

Spoiler :

Turn 0, 4000BC:
Istanbul has been founded.
Turn 5, 3800BC:
You have discovered Fishing!
Turn 6, 3760BC:
You have discovered Mysticism!
Turn 11, 3560BC:
You have discovered Hunting!
Turn 20, 3200BC:
You have discovered Meditation!
Turn 21, 3160BC:
Turn 28, 2880BC:
You have discovered Mining!
Turn 31, 2760BC:
You have discovered Masonry!
Turn 33, 2680BC:
Turn 35, 2600BC:
You have discovered Archery!
Turn 47, 2120BC:
Turn 48, 2080BC:
Turn 49, 2040BC:
You have discovered Bronze Working!
Turn 52, 1920BC:
Edirne has been founded.
Turn 57, 1720BC:
You have discovered Pottery!
Turn 58, 1680BC:
Turn 65, 1400BC:
Turn 66, 1360BC:
Turn 67, 1320BC:
You have discovered Animal Husbandry!
Turn 68, 1280BC:
Turn 74, 1040BC:
Turn 75, 1000BC:
You have discovered Sailing!
Turn 77, 950BC:
Ankara has been founded.
Turn 82, 825BC:
Turn 83, 800BC:
Turn 84, 775BC:
Wang Kon has completed Stonehenge!
Turn 85, 750BC:
Turn 89, 650BC:
You have discovered Iron Working!
Turn 91, 600BC:
Turn 95, 500BC:
You have discovered Writing!
Turn 98, 425BC:
You have discovered Priesthood!
Turn 100, 375BC:
Turn 102, 325BC:
The Great Wall has been built in a far away land!
Hatshepsut has completed The Oracle!
Turn 103, 300BC:
Turn 109, 150BC:
You have discovered Mathematics!
Mao Zedong has completed The Pyramids!
Turn 110, 125BC:
Turn 112, 75BC:
Turn 114, 25BC:
Turn 122, 175AD:
You have discovered Calendar!

It's slow - but worse than that in my mind is that it is completely chaotic. Don't tell me that you were letting the advisers dictate your research order?

You needed a plan.

 

[hotstuffjsn]

Thank you Voice for taking a look at my game. Only when someone takes a part piece by piece my work and criticizes it will I ever learn.

I agree with a terrible starting location. My capital was surrounded by forests and hills, as such I figured i'd keep it a production city. Having the trees once lumber mills come by is the best for production yes? I also know they give health, is there a better strategy?

As for Ankara I really did not like the position at all myself, but the computer indicated this was a good choice for a spot?? I'm not very swell on determining city locations and usually take the blue city site locations as a hint to the better sites...guess this one wasn't so great lol

As for my research path, I don't normally have a plan and just go for what looks like it could be useful at the time. I let the advisors show me a few techs and I choose which one is more useful at the time. Is that bad? I don't like to beeline to a tech far down because I tend to forgoe a lot of lesser techs and miss out on things. What could I have done for a plan?

BTW I do appreciate the tips and anyone else willing to look would be appreciated.

 

[Uncle E]

I'm a long time prince player who finally can win on prince and moved up to monarch today! Man even the barbs are tougher on monarch ... i made the mistake of defending an early city w/ only an axeman and got trounced by a solo combat III archer ... I've never seen one of those wandering around on prince, but oh well!

Nuff about me - from looking at the tech tree spoiler above, I can see that another problem of your is that it seems that you are researching all the techs by yourself. This is not good ... I've been using this tactic w/ elizabeth on prince and it works pretty good.

Wheel - Pottery (for early cottages) - Writing - Alphabet (now u can trade techs to others). I then have met most of the civs on my continent and trade writing to them for all the other techs like agriculture, hunting, bronze working etc. I'm careful not to give them alphabet too early in order to keep them from trading w/ each other.

I then zoom to drama for early border expanding theaters and then mathmatics and then music for the free GA. By now I'll have about 3~4 cities and one worker for each. Ill trade mathmatics to back fill all the other lower techs that I didnt research and get 2 for ones alot and save myself many many turns of research. That's how i stay ahead of the tech tree and end up with cavalry attacking into horse archers and at the end of the game i had modern armor vs. riflemen.

 

[Cam_H]

Well I gave it a bit of a run; it's in the 1890's and I've expanded to nine cities. I vassalised Shaka (who rather helpfully took one of Wang's better placed cities before I took it off the Zulus) who was down to a junk city, and have taken Tokugawa's two northern cities - almost entirely done with Janissaries, Grenadiers, and Trebuchets (now Cannons). Unfortunately this has progressed the Ottomans only to a medium-sized technologically backwards empire. At this point in my game I can't see a clear way to victory.

With that said - the better warmongers of CivFanatics would probably be able to leverage a much more compelling outcome than this, and as such I wouldn't say 'unsalvageable' - but it's not remotely convincing.

I tend to agree with the other posters - when hemmed in like that, you need to go on the offence.

 

[Harbourboy]

More often than not, it tends to be better to chop the trees for some sort of decisive early advantage as opposed to the possibility having more production 100s of years into the future. I can't see what you did in the early years but chopping forests to rush your first settler a dozen turns earlier, or to grab a key early wonder, or to raise an army, could have made all the difference in establishing yourself and staking a claim to the key locations.

 

[hotstuffjsn]

Thank you for the extra tips. I have a question about trading techs...I find that when I do have an extra tech to trade, often times the AI will not always trade it, that and precious strategic resources. Is there a way to force them to?

As for chopping, I think i'll make a go of it seeming as how most of you prefer it over keeping them around. Maybe this will give me an early decisive advantage

Cam, it's good to see you were able to expand my empire a bit and get your foot in the door; which was more then I could have done myself. I think maybe i'll give Prince another try...even if I lose I will still learn valuable lessons along the way, much more so then if I played an easier level!

 

[OTAKUjbski]

Thank you for the extra tips. I have a question about trading techs...I find that when I do have an extra tech to trade, often times the AI will not always trade it, that and precious strategic resources. Is there a way to force them to?

As for chopping, I think i'll make a go of it seeming as how most of you prefer it over keeping them around. Maybe this will give me an early decisive advantage

Cam, it's good to see you were able to expand my empire a bit and get your foot in the door; which was more then I could have done myself. I think maybe i'll give Prince another try...even if I lose I will still learn valuable lessons along the way, much more so then if I played an easier level!

After looking at your save, my response looks almost identical to VoiceOfUnreason's post.

To expound on tech choices, going a few turns longer than his breakdown shows this dismal sight:

425 AD: You have discovered Alphabet!

That's way too late ... WAY too late. Tech trading is the name of the game, and the only way to gain the upper hand is with Alphabet.

Prioritize Alphabet, and your trading will go much more smoothly.

The AI doesn't prioritize Alphabet as much as it should, so being there fast and first will give you a great many turns of being the sole source of technology trades. So if the AI wants something, they can only get it from you, which increases your chances of getting the trades you want on your own terms.

Focus your research only to what you need.

Arguably, you really only need 4 techs before beelining Alphabet:

• One to make . You started with Agriculture, but researching Fishing is a good choice, too, since it let's your capital grow while building the Work Boat.
  
  
• One to make . Mining was a good choice. BW soon after for chopping is also very nice.
  
  
• One to make (actually just an economy). Pottery, Writing or founding/spreading are necessary for building an economy. Each are equally viable, so take your pick.
  
  
• One to make (war). You were dealt a very tough hand here, since Iron was your only real combat resource. (I would've made an early strong effort to wipe Wang Kon off the map. He has nice land and tends to be a GNP monster as time goes on.)

Some specific criticism:

Masonry? Why? Had you settled the stone across the bay, then I'd say it was a good research choice. Being Industrious would've also made this a good choice.

Hunting? You have no 'Camp-able' resources, so unless you're going for Archery or desperately want a Scout, it can generally wait until later. In your case, though, with the lack of combat resources, prioritizing Archery probably wasn't so bad.

Land is Power.

Ideally, every city should have at least one food resource. As mentioned, Ankara has no food, and the only resource was settled on top of.

When Ankara was founded in 950 BC (very late, imho), neither Namp'o (450 BC) nor Hyangsan (350 AD) had been founded.

It's always easier to backfill, so choose the furthest city site in most cases (especially if it's superior).

The Hyangsan site has food and the much-needed Iron.

The Namp'o site is without food but has Copper/Ivory/Dye and plenty of farmland around the river. This puts you in close striking distance to Shaka's capital. It also puts you on a trade route with Ulundi, for the PeaceMonger in you.

I would also like to point out that Tokyo wasn't founded until 900 BC. Had the Ankara Settler been chop-/whip-rushed, it very likely could've beaten Toku to the Cow/Stone site Tokyo is settled on.

I generally try to have 4 cities pre-CoL and 8-10 cities post-CoL.

Capital function.

Istanbul is building nothing but military troops. So, why doesn't it have the Heroic Epic, and why aren't you running Bureaucracy?

Vassalage is cool and all, but Bureaucracy is tops in my book.

You need a Level 5 unit for HE. Either get your 1st GG early and make a high-level Medic III unit, or beat the crap out of your neighbor. Or both.

Lightbulb, lightbulb, lightbulb.

It saddened me to see three GS's in Anakara (Academy & two settled).

Nine times out of 10, lightbulbing a tech is the better choice. The 1st GS as an Academy is about the only exception.

Learning the lightbulb order (will be made simple in BtS) and using it to your advantage can mean an extremely decisive advantage.

Okay. I'm done. This post is way too long.

-- my 2

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I had a longer answer written, but tossed it away when I read....

As for my research path, I don't normally have a plan

There's no point in worrying about strategy without one.

Your one advantage over the computer is human judgment. Without incorporating that into your play, Civ is just Clock Solitaire with fancy audio and graphics.

 

[Mango]

I could probably salvage it pretty easily if it's still in the 1600s, but by then there is only one way: massive WAR. I might give it a go later tonight and see what I can do. Of course I'm assuming you were stretching it a bit when you said FIFTEEN times your military...

I hope it really isn't that big of a gap.

 

[Mango]

Oh man you're worse off than I thought. Shaka won't offer peace without one of your cities and you are building markets for some unknown reason. I have a strategy but doing it while fighting off the elephants is hard. You have a nice easy avenue to Shaka's capital thru Wang's land. Just build a mighty stack of Longbows and Trebs and give the Longbows hill promotions (I forget the name because I never use them). Make sure you have some city garrison promotions too but I expect the majority of the battle will be getting the trebs safely to that hill on the other side of the river next to Shaka's capital. You can do it in 2 turns and hopefully he won't attack you while you're on the grass. Once you get up to the hill you'll need enough trebs to take the city in 1 turn I expect. That'll be 7-8 to bombard to 0 defense and then probably the first half dozen Trebs will die going in. You could probably use catapults for collateral damage if you have to but Trebs with city raider are the way to go. After that you'll need plenty of Longbows to Garrison the city (so make sure you bring enough with Garrison promotions). I think the real battle is staying alive to build all those units, so you might as well stop building the markets and start whipping units in all 3 cities. You'll have to do it while at war with Shaka.

Then hopefully you can get him to vassalize so you can use his military to take on more people. I'll try again later tonight, but I don't think a domination win is entirely out of the question.

edit: I'll give some tips on what you did wrong though. For one you have settled great scientists in some city with marginal land for cottages. 2 of them I believe. That is a terrible waste. Your capital has hardly any commerce. You should have built some cottages there. Luckily the forests will make chopping those units a lot easier. You also probably shouldn't have been building markets while you were being attacked. In fact, your military was so much smaller than everyone elses... you shouldn't have been building markets BEFORE you were attacked. I imagine you probably just weren't aggressive enough.

 

[hotstuffjsn]

OTAK, you had a wonderful post in reply to my game and i'm very grateful. I think what i'll do is play as Hannibal for a few games and plan out a tech route through the entire game so I know and maybe write it down before I start the game.

Mango, the reason why I was building markets in those two citiese is because the one with scientists is a commerce city and the other is a great person farm only. From what i've understood from the community so far is that you only want to build military from production cities and never anything else. Correct me if i'm wrong also but wont whipping soldiers out of my cities seriously handicap me on my economy and do more damage then good?

I'll check in later for your reply to the game you're playing. So far i'm going to implement a technology strategy to gain a lead. I seriously didn't think it made a difference on the outcome of the game, but I was mistaken I guess :/ Other then that I guess I need to build more military, though I had about 20 guys before i went to war with the Zulus and lost them all at their capital lol

 

[OTAKUjbski]

OTAK, you had a wonderful post in reply to my game and i'm very grateful. I think what i'll do is play as Hannibal for a few games and plan out a tech route through the entire game so I know and maybe write it down before I start the game.

Just a quick bit ...

Planning out your entire gameplan can almost be as bad as having no gameplan at all. Planning is good, but don't let a rigid gameplan determine your enitre course of action. Instead, let the game itself determine your gameplan.

I can't tell you how many times I've started what I wanted to be a peaceful Cultural Victory only to see Copper in my capital's fat cross and my nearest two neighbors 10 tiles away (begging to be conquered).

Or (similar to your game) started with grand hopes of domination only to find myself lacking Copper/Horses and even then having Iron 9 tiles away.​

Check out Sisiutil's All Leaders Challenges.

Similar to how S breaks up his ALC's into a series of rounds, think of your games in the same way. You'll find most of them can be broken down into dateless "stepping stones" or "milestones".

Instead of planning your whole game out in advance, get to each new milestone, stop and think about what the best/most logical step is and which milestone is the best to shoot for at the moment.

It's just a habit more than a rule, but I typically find myself thinking about my games in blocks of 5 technologies. Once I've researched my 5-tech "block", I look at how the game's unfolding and figure out which block is next.​

Post a screenshot and saved game early.

You can do this with the 4000 BC save if you want, but typically once you've scouted the area, it's a good idea to post a screenshot of the land and request a "dotmap".

That way, you can get some ideas early on how to take an advantage instead of asking later for help on how to salvage.


Once again, I've made a long post. Luckily, I have work to attend to, so you don't have to worry about another wall of text from me until tomorrow.


Good luck and happy gaming.


-- my 2

 

[Mango]

I'll check in later for your reply to the game you're playing. So far i'm going to implement a technology strategy to gain a lead. I seriously didn't think it made a difference on the outcome of the game, but I was mistaken I guess :/ Other then that I guess I need to build more military, though I had about 20 guys before i went to war with the Zulus and lost them all at their capital lol

Well, I can list some of your problems. Let's start with the capital. I think you wanted to make your capital your production center, but this is a terrible idea. Your capital gets +9 gold from the Palace and it benefits from Bureaucracy if you're running it as a civic. It also has very ideal land and should usually only be used as a science center. I'm not saying you shouldn't be producing units in it, but you need to build cottages as soon as possible there too.

Now you also have a problem with location. You tried to make a GP farm and a science center, but you made some mistakes here. You should usually save the GP farm for your 4th or 5th city (although it is IDEAL to make an opponents capital a GP farm). The first thing you should be doing is finding a production center, which means copper, horses, hills, food and farmable land (fresh water) so you can work those low food tiles. As for commerce cities, they need to be further inland usually. Your commerce city was on the water and had some desert tiles. That is very marginal land for a commerce city.

Also, your GP farm had cottages and was building a market. This is not a good strategy. A GP farm specializes in running specialists. You're going to want to build things to help your population grow (graneries, aquaducts) and things to let you run specialists if you're not running caste system (libraries, observatory, Great Library, etc.). Building cottages gives you commerce; you want food in this city. Build farms and skip the markets. In fact, you can usually skip markets entirely unless you have a shrine that is producing a lot of gold or if you have a ton of cottages that are fully developed. Markets don't increase science, only gold, so if your slider is at 70% science and 0% culture then the market will only add 25% of the 30% of your commerce. It does not add 25% to the total commerce. and are seperate things (don't worry, everyone makes this mistake in the beginning). Never-the-less, GP farms almost never need markets anyway.

And lastly, you probably just had a bad draw. Lots of marginal land and blocked in early by two civs near you. The ideal strategy would have been killing one of them off early because as it is, your 3 cities aren't enough to win most games. The strategies you've read about here (making GP farms, production cities, etc.) are often ideal scenerios. You can't always have them, and when you're dealt a poor hand you have to adjust and ignore entire parts of the game you might otherwise attempt.

 

[JujuLautre]

I also gave a shot to your game (Being a "Prince for sure/Monarch perhaps?" player), and ended beaten up by China who suddenly declared war on me... Made a really bad choice in y DoW.
In any case, I was two things not mentioned before (or perhaps I missed them?):

- diplomacy: You have absolutely no bonus from "our trade have been fair". Which means first that you never, or almost never, traded techs. And second, that you have absolutely no good friend. Combine that with a tiny empire, and I understand that you cannot compete against 6 AIs. Imho, starting at Prince, do not be afraid of losing a tech lead if it can make you friends at the beginning of the game. They are invaluable.

- focus: you clearly lack focus in what you are doing. Tech path was already mentioned, as was city placement. Building markets in this situation (war + poor economy) is clearly not the good decision, and did someone mentioned building trebuchet? At this point, you wanted cheap and better catapults to fight in the field, not expensive trebuchets or longbows. They come after, when you're going to take cities. The tiles worked in the cities are also somehow chaotic: in a big commerce city, you want to work a maximum of 3 and more tiles, not poor 2 coastal tiles and underdevelopped cottages. Same for the GP farm, why cottages? Why no food resources?

Ideally, you want that every one of your decision has been thought to be the best one in the given situation: which tech to study? Where to place a city? What to build? What to do with this specific unit? How to place citizens to work? Obv, I will not say that I can do all of this all the time, this would be a great lie But perhaps you can start thinking on easier things, like tech paths and city placement, and for the other things, using the advisors to place your citizens in the good tiles to work (using the "emphasize" buttons), choosing builds (buildings and improvements) based on specialization without too much thinking (science city? Library and cottages!), and having a general - adaptable - plan

 

[hotstuffjsn]

Thank you both for taking a look tonight. I have dedicated hours a day on this forum reading to learn as much as I can to improve my game. I would love to play at high levels on the game and hope I will someday.

There's so many questions I have I wish one of you could be an advisor while I played. I guess one would be city placement; which I lack on. I know that rivers, grasslands and such are great; so are resources. Now keeping that in mind I still end up sticking them in the wrong places, even with resources near, keeping in mind that not all cities can be in good spots with food. Concern comes with lack of cities equals death o_O On the other hand, too many poor city locations equals a economy strain, how best to manage this?

My next question comes to specialization. Emphasizing seems important to you all and i'd like to get it right. I seem to be giving an emphasis on the wrong type: commerce, production, science etc. to my cites. I'm not sure what the best way to determine it would be. The other gripe, and maybe you could help is that with commerce emphasized and no production squares hardly at all, it's often the case I have one production to build my health, science, and gold buildings. There's only a limited number of tress to chop, and after that it's all downhill.

My other question, is there a good answer as to where and when to build stuff like workshops, watermills and windmills, or is it better to always build mines, farms or cottages?

Many thanks to Mango and Juju that have taken time out of their day to help me.

EDIT: I know Prince may be a bit too much for me, but i'm not ashamed to say that sometimes you have to be thoroughly challenged before you can learn and implement new ideas to help you. I know playing at low levels will not help me in the higher levels etc.