Prince Shadow Game

[jmwalker]

hi all, long time lurker, first time poster here.

First off, this forum is amazing! When I got BTS about 3 months ago I was still messing around on settler (don't laugh...) but now, since following mad's RPC, looking at sistuil's beginners guide, reading through strategy articles and looking at the noble club I think I'm ready for prince.

My first prince game was a small pangea where I won domination with Hannibal. However, I usually play a standard fractal, so this is where you come in. I'm sure there are loads of mistakes that I make, and ways I could improve, so if you'd be so kind (which i know you are ) I'd like you to shadow my game.

So, what do we have?

Setting: standard, fractal map, medium sea level , temperate climate

Leader: Random

Others: All victory conditions on, permanent alliances on, BTS 3.17 with BUG Mod

Our random leader:

Good old Sal! UU is a resourceless knight which can withdraw from combat; UB is a library with 2 extra culture and which can turn 2 citizens into priests (could be useful for a SE?)
Spiritual is a nice trait to have, but I haven’t had much experience with it. Protective is not great, but I could use that wall overflow trick.
So, onto the start:

Initial thoughts: we have gold! Unfortunately not in our BFC. I’m thinking settle 1N on jumbo to gain the gold, at the expense of a grassland hill. Or possibly settle 1 E on the cows to gain a plains hill, but you lose a grassland hill and a few riverside tiles. Over to you guys- where do you think I should settle?

EDIT: aplogies for large pics,how do you make them smaller?

EDIT 2: i'll get the hang of this one day, heres the save:

 

[dirtyparrot]

Go with your plan and settle 1N. The Gold more than makes up for the loss of the glass hill.

 

[michmbk]

I agree - 1N makes sense. What do you plan to do as starting techs (I assume AG is first to work the corn).

 

[jmwalker]

i'm thinking agri->mining-> one of the religions-> AH

and build order- worker, worker, settler (unless theres a really nearby civ)

 

[Ghpstage]

i'm thinking agri->mining-> one of the religions-> AH

and build order- worker, worker, settler (unless theres a really nearby civ)

On tech path I would personally go: Agri, Hunting, AH, Mining , BW
My initial thoughts on a BO would be: worker, warrior, warrior, warrior, worker, settler
I wouldn't go for any religion till at least CoL. Remember to abuse the Madrassa in your early expansion, its culture is a killer

 

[Fluxx]

I would like to shadow this game, sadly enough though I am an emperor-immortal player, so things might look out of perspective.

What is gamespeed?

 

[jmwalker]

sorry, should have said in op- its normal speed.

@ ghpstage- why do we need hunting? won't setttling on the jumbos give us them, cos if they do then surely hunting can wait a bit.

 

[michmbk]

I'll try to shadow too - emperor/immortal level player as well. On second thought, with saladin, probably makes sense to take a religion, then go AG.

I'm not fond of the worker/worker/settler start. I typically would go one worker, improve corn, and not build a second worker or settler until size 3 or 4. Another approach on prince is to start with a few warriors - if anyone is relatively near - instant second capital. That might be my approach - at least build one warrior while trying to find a nearby neighbor.

You don't get credit for ivory until you unlock hunting, I think. But it's not that urgent - I wouldn't go for it until I hit happy cap.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Initial thoughts: we have gold! Unfortunately not in our BFC. I’m thinking settle 1N on jumbo to gain the gold, at the expense of a grassland hill. Or possibly settle 1 E on the cows to gain a plains hill, but you lose a grassland hill and a few riverside tiles.

Improved cows are a particularly good tile, so you should be very reluctant to settle on them.

Settling on plains elephants, however, is a very different story. The camp doesn't improve elephants nearly as much as a pasture does, so the opportunity cost is lower. The big win, though, is that your city will produce an extra hammer every turn (the center square will be 2F:2P:1C, rather than the usual 2F:1P:1C).

There's also the very small benefit that you get the happiness benefit from the elephants sooner (not immediately - you still need Hunting, but you don't have to also wait to build a camp).

As an additional note - gold plus rivers looks to me like a commerce driven capital, with production upside in the late game. So the loss of the grassland hill doesn't worry me at all.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I think I would start Agri -> Mining for worker techs, with the upside of working a gold mine as soon as possible. Since we'll want the camps anyway, probably Hunting before Animal Husbandry to get the discount, and Writing from there.

Now, the Wheel does nothing for us at the start, and Mysticism does little unless we try for a religion or Stonehenge. We've got gold, and Gold + Meditation + Production points toward the Shwedagon Paya, which is a great toy for a spiritual civ that can swap civics on the cheap... if you have a religion to take advantage of it. Meditation would also open up a monastery, giving a cheap research boost to what figures to be a commerce capital. The risk, of course, is that missing the religion means that the initial research was a waste.

Not quite sure where to slot in Bronze Working. My feeling is that it can wait, here, as we have plenty of tiles to improve before we need to start chopping the trees, and we can use protective archers for barb prevention if willing to divert some research to archery.

In conclusion: Meditation? - Agriculture - Mining - BronzeWorking? - Hunting - Archery? - Animal Husbandry - Archery/BronzeWorking? - Writing ... Aesthetics.

I think there's something to be said for Settler first here, because you need time to catch up on tech for your worker (especially with Mediation in the queue). But realistically Warrior (for time) Worker is what I would do.

 

[Ghpstage]

sorry, should have said in op- its normal speed.

@ ghpstage- why do we need hunting? won't setttling on the jumbos give us them, cos if they do then surely hunting can wait a bit.

As has been said by others you need hunting to use the elephants, however researching hunting will allow another tile to be imroved and reduce the cost of AH.
Wow playing this game a bit is leading me to amazement to the Madrassa, its an awesome UB! :shock:

 

[michmbk]

To 1 AD - emperor/immortal level player shadowing. I was pretty darn sloppy though, but everything turned out ok.

Spoiler :

1N to claim the gold.
Tech path: poly for what I thought would be hindu, then AG/AH/Mining/BW
Build order – it’s prince, so warrior makes sense first to see if warrior rush is viable. Monarch or above, it’s worker start. Meet this guy:

And this guy:

So clearly it’s more warriors – one has to die – just a matter of who’s closer. I’m then shocked and appalled by this message:

Someone had already founded Buddhism, and I got beat to hindu by 1 turn on PRINCE???? That pretty much sucks. So I built 6 warriors total, and off to kill Hammy since he’s closer:

He’s dead – I didn’t get his worker unfortunately, but at least he hooked up horses for me. After warriors, went worker/settler. Settled in the spot below to start blocking Zara, since I know he’s to the east, and it appears it’s just him and me.

He won’t make it to oromos. Oracle nets a religion:

I don't build oracle much anymore, but Saladin is a good person to build it with since it's only 2 techs away. Getting my madrassas built while heading to monarchy. Meanwhile, chariots are being built – if Zara doesn’t have copper hooked up fast, he’s in trouble. And chariots come calling:

I got sloppy and didn’t see a roaming warrior who killed my worker, but oh well. Another city:

I take peace for a bit to let my chariots heal and bring in a few axes to help finish the job. 10 turns later, he’s done:

I was really stupid and forgot to research pottery – sloppy play - obviously pottery should have been teched a long time ago, and alphabet really isn't that important since I'm isolated, so teching alphabet and forgetting pottery is clearly very dumb. I also forgot fishing - dumb with all this seafood Zara and Hammy had. Doesn't matter though - once I get my courthouses in, spread my religion, all these cities will take off. Barbs were kind enough to build a city too:

So I then limped to 1 AD – tech rate sucks, but doesn’t matter – just need to get a few key techs and get religion spread, and it’ll take off. This guy sure helped:

Empire at 1 AD:

With all this food, might have to run slavery a long time in this game. Tech rate is abysmal, but it'll take off soon. I'm still building settlers because there's a lot of nice sites out there still, and starting to actively specialize cities.

EDIT: To 1100 AD - 1 turn from lib. Always a good update point.

Spoiler :

This segment was about wonderspamming. I forgot I was building this:

Rep is a good thing, I guess, but my cities are all getting so big I'm actually needing HR still anyway. Barbs built another city right where I would have settled it.

And more wonders:

Here's the empire where I left off - the tech rate has obviously recovered:

I figure I'll go ahead and get lib out of the way, and take taj - seems like the easy approach. Do that while heading to astro to meet everyone else.

 

[Phatshady912]

To 1 AD - emperor/immortal level player shadowing. I was pretty darn sloppy though, but everything turned out ok.

Spoiler :

1N to claim the gold.
Tech path: poly for what I thought would be hindu, then AG/AH/Mining/BW
Build order – it’s prince, so warrior makes sense first to see if warrior rush is viable. Monarch or above, it’s worker start. Meet this guy:

And this guy:

So clearly it’s more warriors – one has to die – just a matter of who’s closer. I’m then shocked and appalled by this message:

Someone had already founded Buddhism, and I got beat to hindu by 1 turn on PRINCE???? That pretty much sucks. So I built 6 warriors total, and off to kill Hammy since he’s closer:

He’s dead – I didn’t get his worker unfortunately, but at least he hooked up horses for me. After warriors, went worker/settler. Settled in the spot below to start blocking Zara, since I know he’s to the east, and it appears it’s just him and me.

He won’t make it to oromos. Oracle nets a religion:

I don't build oracle much anymore, but Saladin is a good person to build it with since it's only 2 techs away. Getting my madrassas built while heading to monarchy. Meanwhile, chariots are being built – if Zara doesn’t have copper hooked up fast, he’s in trouble. And chariots come calling:

I got sloppy and didn’t see a roaming warrior who killed my worker, but oh well. Another city:

I take peace for a bit to let my chariots heal and bring in a few axes to help finish the job. 10 turns later, he’s done:

I was really stupid and forgot to research pottery – sloppy play - obviously pottery should have been teched a long time ago, and alphabet really isn't that important since I'm isolated, so teching alphabet and forgetting pottery is clearly very dumb. I also forgot fishing - dumb with all this seafood Zara and Hammy had. Doesn't matter though - once I get my courthouses in, spread my religion, all these cities will take off. Barbs were kind enough to build a city too:

So I then limped to 1 AD – tech rate sucks, but doesn’t matter – just need to get a few key techs and get religion spread, and it’ll take off. This guy sure helped:

Empire at 1 AD:

With all this food, might have to run slavery a long time in this game. Tech rate is abysmal, but it'll take off soon. I'm still building settlers because there's a lot of nice sites out there still, and starting to actively specialize cities.

EDIT: To 1100 AD - 1 turn from lib. Always a good update point.

Spoiler :

This segment was about wonderspamming. I forgot I was building this:

Rep is a good thing, I guess, but my cities are all getting so big I'm actually needing HR still anyway. Barbs built another city right where I would have settled it.

And more wonders:

Here's the empire where I left off - the tech rate has obviously recovered:

I figure I'll go ahead and get lib out of the way, and take taj - seems like the easy approach. Do that while heading to astro to meet everyone else.

Wow... I really need to war early more often. Edit: wow... just wow seriously how the @%#^*%?

Im gonna shadow this, even though I just started playing noble, watch me get stomped

 

[michmbk]

Wow... I really need to war early more often. Edit: wow... just wow seriously how the @%#^*%?

Im gonna shadow this, even though I just started playing noble, watch me get stomped

Aggressiveness pays off in this game big time, especially at levels below monarch. Pretty much built 6 warriors to take Hammy, and his city had just hooked up horse, so it started building chariots. Some aggressive whipping and chopping and 15 or so chariots was enough to beat Zara. Even with tech being abysmal for awhile, once you get all the courthouses in and properly specialize cities, you'll vault ahead.

Hammy's and Zara's capitals are both such amazing GP farms that this game practically plays itself if you take their capitals. Tons and tons of food mean great prophets and scientists constantly popping (parthenon and NE help that as well). 1100 AD save attached if you're interested in seeing how the specialization worked.

 

[jmwalker]

So, I settled one north, and Mecca was born.

Techpath went meditation-> agriculture-> hunting-> priesthood->writing-> fishing-> masonry-> animal husbandry

I started off building a warrior, as a worker would be hanging around until I got in some worker techs. I also added in a couple of extra civs before I started the game, so the chances of their being one near me is bigger.

And look what I popped from a goody hut:

Pretty sweet. I contemplate changing to a worker to get the gold, but by the time it’ll come out the warrior would have lost some of its production, so I let the warrior finish before starting a worker. Besides, it only has two turns left.
Turn 7 I meet my first civ-

Why hello. You appear to have a spider on your face. Or is that your beard?
One turn before I finish meditation:

I’m not happy, I even worked the ivory tile at the expense of 1 food to gain the extra commerce. I finish meditation and start agriculture.
Of course, since I need to take my anger out on somebody, I decided Hammy would my punch bag. I swap Mecca from worker to warrior.

Turn 18- I meet Zara.

I wish him peace.

At turn 23 I have three warriors outside Hammy’s gates. Sure enough:

Babylon is mine! It might not have been though; he had two warriors at that point, and put one with his worker rather than guarding the city. Means I didn’t steal his worker, but I’d rather have the city than a worker.

I’m thinking Babylon will be a good gp farm with all that food.

Bronze working finishes- do we have bronze?

You bet we do, in Mecca’s bfc as well. I swap to slavery- without anarchy!
I decide to go for an oracle- COL slingshot, so in 2160 bc, Medina is found:

Don’t know how to specialise this city yet, but the marble should be darn useful for oracle. Possibly a draft city? Btw, why are those desert tiles not floodplains?
Anyway, before I manage to get that marble hooked up:

I go for code of laws, mainly for the religion and courthouses. Caste system would be useful usually, but with our UB giving 4 specialists I think slavery is the better option atm.

Animal husbandry in:

2 lots of horsies in our borders!

I stop at 1400BC needing a bit of advice.

Firstly, how should I specialise Medina? Specialising cities is one of my weak points, so help would be appreciated.

Secondly, what should I research next? Here’s my current tech situation:

Sooner or later I want aesthetics and polytheism for some more wonders, but do I want alphabet for some tech trading, or go construction and take over Zara before that?

Finally, I do want to be running a SE don’t I?

heres the file:

 

[michmbk]

Looks like you're off to a good start - you got lucky with Hammy's capital - a warrior rush with 3 warriors is tricky - 5-6 is usually what I bring.

I would say don't be dumb like I was and forget about pottery. Mecca is a nice cottage city (in my game, anyway), and pottery allows you to cottage it up while getting your all important granaries in.

Not a lot of happiness resources past the ivory and gold, so you might think about monarchy to raise happy cap.

In terms of economy - I mainly focus on what's best for each city rather than a broad "SE" vs. "CE" concept - you're right that Hammy's capital is an amazing GP farm, but Mecca is a nice cottage city. I cottaged up Medina - it's not a great city, but it's decent and gives the all important marble.

i'd also make sure you either go after zara or aggressively block him. With CRE and ORG, he's very tough especially once he hits gunpowder. Unless you get him friendly, he won't likely trade with you (since it's you and him), so you probably want to think about taking him out sooner rather than later.

But you're off to a good start nonetheless.

 

[michmbk]

To end - culture win in 1845

Spoiler :

Continuing to notice my sloppy play, after I went lib-nationalism, I realized I had forgotten metal casting for forges, and IW for iron. Wasteful, because I have several nice production cities. Anyway, beelining astro this segment. I presume I can build galleons while teching towards guilds, and maybe invade someone with camel archers, which will do fine against any pre-gunpowder units.

Also started to run merchants, as it dawned on me with all the seafood this could be an easy & quick sushi culture win, so trying to pop a great merchant, which might point me to culture instead.

A second golden age via Taj:

First meeting of another civ:

Yeah – tech rate is a bit ugly for Qin. And bingo:

Definitely culture now – beeline for sushi and it’s all over – fastest way to win from here. Also meet Wang, who’s doing better, but well behind. Hatty doesn’t have alphabet in 1350 AD. And the artists start running in my 3 culture cities. Think I’ve met everyone in 1370 – tech looks like this:

Culture should be fast. This makes it faster:

Earlier, I was asked to build 7 colosseums – why not turn that into a golden age:

I have the communism spy and physics scientist ready for another golden age too. Thanks to MoM, that’ll be 48 turns of golden age in this game. Hey, the knight random event – pretty good when your UU is a knight replacement:

Sushi isn’t too bad, is it:

12 food, 46 culture – not shabby - that's after I traded all my excess resources (including horse and iron) for more seafood. Then, just building wealth, culture, and all the late cultural wonders, like this one:

Late wonders didn’t matter all that much – sushi and artists carry the day. Empire and 3 cultural cities one turn before victory.

Didn't really spread sushi everywhere - if I had, could have had ridiculous cities with 12 food. Still had a tech lead – all those artists under rep were still contributing a bunch of science.

And it’s over. Stats and save below – score was 52k.

 

[jmwalker]

Looks like you're off to a good start - you got lucky with Hammy's capital - a warrior rush with 3 warriors is tricky - 5-6 is usually what I bring.

I would say don't be dumb like I was and forget about pottery. Mecca is a nice cottage city (in my game, anyway), and pottery allows you to cottage it up while getting your all important granaries in.

Not a lot of happiness resources past the ivory and gold, so you might think about monarchy to raise happy cap.

In terms of economy - I mainly focus on what's best for each city rather than a broad "SE" vs. "CE" concept - you're right that Hammy's capital is an amazing GP farm, but Mecca is a nice cottage city. I cottaged up Medina - it's not a great city, but it's decent and gives the all important marble.

i'd also make sure you either go after zara or aggressively block him. With CRE and ORG, he's very tough especially once he hits gunpowder. Unless you get him friendly, he won't likely trade with you (since it's you and him), so you probably want to think about taking him out sooner rather than later.

But you're off to a good start nonetheless.

yeah, I was a bit worried as I haven't warrrior rushed ever except with quechas or on earth 18, and I got lucky I suppose.

I'm building pyramids so when thats done I could consider monarchy/ rep for the extra happiness.

So i'm thinking pottery-> maths-> currency (depending on how my economy's doing)-> construction (to take out zara ) . maybe alphabet to get a few techs of him before I destroy him .

Build wise agressive settling and preparing for war sound good?

 

[pigswill]

As you go up in difficulty levels the most important lesson (far more important than lib slingshots or wall-overflow tricks) is deciding on a strategy with a series of objectives then focussing on them.
It would appear that your stategy is grabbing the continent first.
You've done the first bit, get rid of Ham.
Second bit is getting rid of Zara. The longer you leave him (by building pyramids, researching currency) the tougher he gets. Maybe think about building axes and couple of spears while researching pottery, maths and construction (you'll need masonry of course if you don't have it). Once construction is in build/whip some cats and go to war asap.
The third bit is building the economy and expanding to fill the continent. Once you're at war you can think about currency and CoL to restore your economy. You could even research monarchy instead of building pyramids.

 

[jmwalker]

thanks pigswill.

hmm, how about replacing currency with HR then, to get jumbos?