Prince show meh the way

Tiepolo

Somewhere on the ceiling
Joined
Apr 30, 2005
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So, having had numerous troubles with BTS and prince level, I thought I'd post a game in hopes that others would play it and show how they all handled the same start. I already played by accident, I meant to do like ten turns and ended up going for 4 hours :lol: but I find myself in a very favorable position, I'm curious as to how the much more advanced members of the forum fare.

Leader is De Gaulle of France
Fractal, Temperate, Standard
7 opponents
Choose Religions is on
All victories enabled
 

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Played 50 turns...
Spoiler :

Settle in place. Worker>warrior
Ag>AH>Mining>BW, had horses in BFC so rushed Sury with 5 chariots. Turns out he only had 2 warriors :lol:
Build TGLH in second city then spam coastal cities, make Sury's cap a cottage city.

Should be an easy win afterward.
 
Gah, I hate choose religions.

Also 50 turns

Spoiler :
A bit slower than Kosin, as I moved riverside on turn 0, improved the horses instead of the pigs, and slipped a barracks into a build queue that included too many chariots. Then I got careless and razed the holy city of religion #3 (Sury placed his second city near the copper) on my way to claim the prize.

At the point where his cities fell, Sury was already up Polytheism, Monotheism, Hunting and Masonry to Pottery.

Other news from around the globe:

Joao revolts to slavery in 3880.

England scores both Waters of Life and the herbalist event.
 
Oh shoot you were supposed to play prince...

Spoiler :

Assumed Worldbuilder file meant we pick, so Immortal

Plan was to do a build to show off his traits, e.g. stonehenge, so agriculture bronze working mysticism. Discovered khmer, who would trap me in a corner, so I realized my build was a mistake and war was the way to go. I build stonehenge, when I should have switched to a fast second settler and grabbed inland the inland copper and rushed his capital.

Stonehenge had put me behind enough that I went for a 3rd city (sheep/fur) for a power axe rush, along with a total of 4 or 5 workers (1 to improve the 3rd city, 1 to build a road to the enemy, the rest to chop)


With 10+ axes, attacked, captured inner copper city, but his capital had 4 axes and a wall in defense which would take around 12 axes to safely capture. I decided to raze his outlying cities to weaken him and cut off his copper, and move my stack away from his capital. He graciously moves 3 axes out of his capital towards his other cities, so I move back to his capital and capture it.


He has left a size 1 seafood city, an unknown city to the southwest, and possibly a 3rd city. I move towards the 3rd city with my healthy axes to scout, but I see his 3 axes coming back, find out he has alphabet, and settle for a free tech. He's mortally wounded, I'm #2 in land (with his city in revolt) with a double gold second capital. Unless he has an enraged friend sucking up all the land to the east, the game's almost an easy win.

So the general advice is, if you're contained, kill them early, consolidate.

Sorry about the screenshots, testing this imageshack toolbar for uploading images.
 
Did almost the exact same thing as kossin!

Spoiler :
Once I saw that the vile creative/expansive Khmer was so close, and was working gold, marble, cows, and floodplains ($$$!), AND that I discovered horses in the BFC with my first research project, the path was pretty clear.

When I showed up with my five chariots (and another lagging three turns behind them), I found two archers, a warrior and a scout. Five chariots were about two short of what would have been good policy. First one died. Second one actually won at very, very low odds, and Sury was dead shortly thereafter.

Plan after that was to settle around the coast; build the Great Lighthouse in the rice/copper city to the SE of Paris, tech towards Aesthetics and Literature to take advantage of the Industrious/Marble bonuses I get (since it appears I've isolated myself, some wonders might be more useful than a bunch of units right now.)

Looking forward, and it is not yet 1AD, and the GLH project is just about to get under way, here's what I think.

I'll probably run five cities until the GLH is up. This will keep the slider at about 40%. Then I can expand again.

Not sure what to do on the tech path after I open up the wonders I want. Metal Casting will need to slide in soon, since it opens up my half price forges, and adds a happy face to each city for the gold.

As for resources, not a calendar resource on the whole damn island. We've got plenty of health, but only gold and fur to keep us pleased.

I'm thinking that the land I see off the coast to the NE of Paris might actually be more than just a little island, so I need to send a boat off to take a look. There probably aren't any civs too close in that direction, since I would have expected one of them to come down to visit by now, but you never know.

 
Played up to about 900AD. Let me know how this compares to you:

Spoiler :
Since I isolated myself so damn early, I did some funky research paths. As of 900AD, I recently picked up optics (which means machinery) and am about to complete civil service. Other advanced techs I own are Philosophy (bulbed with a GS), and Music (bulbed with a GA). As I set off to explore with my caravels, I was still lacking technologies like archery, HBR, calendar and construction. I also held off a REALLY long time on monarchy, because I had so little trouble with unhappiness. Between the charismatic monument, the gold+Forge, and the furs + Market in a couple cities, I could grow to size 10-12 with no issues. Pretty cool without a single calendar resource.

I built a butt-load of wonders including the Great Lighthouse first. This let me expand steadily while never really dipping below 40% on the slider. I went for aesthetics and literature early, and was able to build the GL, the Parthenon, the SoZ with ease. I also dropped in the colossus, and the SP which let me switch to free religion for the 10% research, despite having absolutely no religion and no intention of discovering one.

The old Khmer capital is a commerce giant. Paris got the National Epic and is a fine city just waiting for me to complete civil service to become a great city. The city that vicaroo has in his screenshot as Lyons is my heroic epic city. I'm using it to build a navy, but will soon switch over to build some decent units like maces and x-bows for a little while. It really cranks them out.

Discovered Joao to the immediate east. He's a weakling and just got declared on by Wang. (Christian and Confucian respectively.) Wang's not much better, but I decided to trade with him and blow off Joao. I also discovered Islamic buddies Saladin and Shaka (!) to the west. I trade with them as well, and picked up some old techs for Aesthetics and Code of Laws from Saladin, which vaulted him to pleased. Still missing one civ, but it won't be long until I find it.

The plan is probably going to be to race towards some sort of massive technology advantage (steel?) and then run over the civs to my east.


 
Up through 1345 AD:

Spoiler :
I like playing prince again. It's fascinating how strategies that are important at Monarch completely rock at Prince.

For example, the whole idea of leaving giant sections of the tech tree untouched while I focused on a few key things let me end up with Astronomy centuries before the rest of them.

So, between 900 AD and 1345 AD, I made a couple tech trades, the most interesting were Philosophy for Feudalism with Wang. At this point, the only tech anybody has on me is Theology, and I have no interest in that one.

I moved along, explored the entire world map, and found very little land that wasn't settled or owned by barbs. There was one Island up in the northern sea that had a barb city with access to Crabs and Stone (and the other side of the island has sheep and fish) and it is currently guarded by three warriors. I made a mental note to capture it. I have neither of those two resources, and the stone could still come in handy later. The crab will just free me up to not have to trade for it later.

Tech path was to pick up Astronomy from Liberalism. Why? Well, with the Great Lighthouse, I have four trade routes in all of my coastal cities. It would have been absolutely no problem to research gunpowder/chemistry and use Liberalism to bulb steel, and then go back and research astronomy while I build cannons. However, that is dozens of turns without using all of those extra rich intercontinental trade routes, and that didn't make any sense.

I continued to pump out great people from the two capital cities. Wonder driven from the Khmer capital and NE/wonder/specialist driven in Paris. I used scientists to bulb most of education, and then when another one was born while I worked on Liberalism, I burned him on most of Printing Press (which I then completed before going back to Liberalism.)

Once I took astronomy, commerce jumped by 70 or 80 per turn. I was also able to trade off some resources to up the happy and health caps a few levels.

I loaded three macemen onto a galleon and set off for the two still-standing barb cities. The GLH trade routes will help pay the maintenance until I can slap up a courthouse in each of them.

While my galleon was sailing, Wang came calling and asked if I could join him in wiping out Joao. It was a little ahead of schedule (I had just started building maces, and set the research path to be engineering-gunpowder-nationalism-military tradition, with the thought that trebs/musketeers/cuirassiers would be a terrific way to start quickly wiping out the Portugal/Korea continent largely protected by longbows, axes and horsemen.

So, while I work on doing exactly that, I start loading up CR Macemen and some catapults and capture the two closest Portuguese cities on the coast. As I quit for the day, trebs and muskets are dashing across France to load up and join the push towards the Portuguese capital. Joao is actually coming at the first city I captured with a stack of about 10 units, more than half horsemen. He would be better served to attack my city raiders moving towards his cities, but that's not gonna happen, now is it?

Actually, it makes a little sense, since I did leave that city only protected by a C1 Mace and a C1 spear. When I load back up, however, that spear with turn into a pike, and a galleon is going to drop a couple musketeers in that city. His stack will be annihilated if he attempts to retake that city. The pike alone will kill all six horsemen.

I'm only a couple turns from Military Tradition now, and I'm building a couple stables to get ready for the event. We'll probably go all out war for a little while (although I think I need one more university to build Oxford, and the old Khmer capital is just such a powerhouse that I can't see not getting Oxford up and running there ASAP.)

Tech path after Military Tradition. Hmm... I think I can't leave Chemistry until later. Frigates would be most excellent to blow away some defenses, and a few privateers would be fun to abuse my Islamic buddies for a while while I concentrate on the other guys.

Then, of all things, I think I might shoot for Democracy. I'm a trade route/cottage based economy that will soon be expanding to another continent. Plus, the other guys will eventually go into mercantilism, so I'm gonna want my cottages to pick up the slack.

If I do that, then depending on how the war is going, it will probably be either steel or rifles. At some point, I'll probably trade for Guilds/Banking since they aren't really key to what I'm doing right now. I'm going to completely avoid scientific method, since I'm really rather enjoying the benefits of the wonders it obsoletes.


 
Spoiler :
Instead of Joao I declared on vicky with trebs and cuirassiers and took her whole island. After that I just settled down for a space race, wonder spamming late wonders, and nabbing the UN for a possible diplo victory. Shaka was still in the middle ages when I reached the future age but quickly caught up having vassalized saladin and was building up troops to invade the former english territory. I ended up decimating his first wave with destroyers, attack subs and battleships vs. galleons and caravels. But as I went to on to finish, his troop build up of cavs, rifles, cannons and grens was overwhelming and I declared and dropped modern armor and mech inf backed up by two huge fleets (my third between me and joao). I moved along Sals southern coast, having taken mecca, and the two closest cities in teh first war, amphibiously, landed an army in the north of zululand, and attacked with rush bought stack of about 20 modern armor and 10 or so mobile arty from Mecca, I cleared the island after winning the space race, it was fun to kick his ass nonetheless.
 
I can see how that would happen. I figure that once I start with the fighting, it won't make a lot of sense to stop and shoot for anything but domination.
 
Just so you know, I'm gonna play this out. Will probably finish tomorrow. As of 1748AD:

Spoiler :
Went ahead and steamrolled through the Joao/Wang continent. Started with maces/trebs/musketeers/cuirassiers and ended with cannons/rifles/cavalry. Still using the maces until they hit CRIII. As I regrouped on that continent, I realized I didn't have enough galleons to properly annihilate England in under 10 turns, so it took me a while to build a decent invasion fleet. As a matter of fact, by the time the fleet was on its way, I had discovered both combustion and scientific method and turned them into transports during the trip. In about three turns the Invasion of England starts. That shouldn't take very long. Longbows versus ANY of the three things I'm bringing isn't a very fair fight.

Due to the numerous wonders I built back when I was isolated, I have been churning out Great People. Unfortunately, I decided to use the most recent engineer to build Versailles over in Lisbon, and now I don't have one to found Mining Inc. Maybe the next GP will be one. I did get an artist and then with the spy from communism, I ran another golden age (which I'm in now.) Working on Biology now, then will probably circle back for assembly line next.

Will probably keep the entire English continent and just slap up the Forbidden Palace there ASAP while I gather up the troops and head for Mecca. If I don't go over the Domination Limit, making Sally capitulate certainly will. It shouldn't be too hard. I've got more than a 2-1 power advantage over him.

 
Spoiler :
Instead of Joao I declared on vicky with trebs and cuirassiers and took her whole island. After that I just settled down for a space race, wonder spamming late wonders, and nabbing the UN for a possible diplo victory. Shaka was still in the middle ages when I reached the future age but quickly caught up having vassalized saladin and was building up troops to invade the former english territory. I ended up decimating his first wave with destroyers, attack subs and battleships vs. galleons and caravels. But as I went to on to finish, his troop build up of cavs, rifles, cannons and grens was overwhelming and I declared and dropped modern armor and mech inf backed up by two huge fleets (my third between me and joao). I moved along Sals southern coast, having taken mecca, and the two closest cities in teh first war, amphibiously, landed an army in the north of zululand, and attacked with rush bought stack of about 20 modern armor and 10 or so mobile arty from Mecca, I cleared the island after winning the space race, it was fun to kick his ass nonetheless.

I wrapped this up with a domination victory in 1802, score was 110K give or take. Probably could have been significantly earlier if I had planned better. Per your opening post, here's what I did differently than you:
Spoiler :
We both stomped out the Khmer early. Definitely the thing to do. I don't know if you wonder-spammed like I did, but that certainly helped both with the economy (Great Lighthouse, Great Library) but also with Great People Points (plus I build the Parthenon speeding things up even more.) The Great People let me speed research up tremendously, and with HIGHLY focused research paths, I was able to pop Astronomy from Liberalism really early. I had Astronomy and Liberalism before I had archery and most religious techs. Astronomy was a gigantic boom to the GLH powered trade route economy, and I was quickly able to build technologically advanced invasion troops well before the other civs had any chance to either defend themselves or even think about sending troops back to invade my homeland.

Because I was so early to Astronomy, and astronomy was such a great thing for the economy, I had my choice of continents to conquer first. The best option was Joao/Wang, because the other big continent had a couple of troop spammers (one defensive) and Victoria was going to still be backwards and isolated for a long time.

Once the war machine started rolling through Joao, I was pretty much committed to a domination victory, and it was pretty obvious that it was going to be just a matter of managing troop movement and some selective research paths to speed things along.

I chose to use a combination of gunpowder/military tradition to lay down the first round of attacks, but by the time I had taken out the last Korean city (some of the D1CG3 longbows on hills stood up very well to Cuirassiers) I was bringing cannons and cavalry.

If I had planned it correctly, I would have been able to load all of those troops onto galleons and immediately set off for England, but during that entire continental invasion, I forgot to build enough ships to keep up with my unit production. I probably wasted 15-25 turns building a navy and sending it over to the new continent just to pick up my troops and bring them to the next continent.

England fell REALLY fast. I checked the domination limit, and land was just a couple percentages points short. I think that I probably could have waited for the culture to fill up the English continent, but instead I just loaded up the army and sent them to three of the Arabian coastal cities. Captured them in two turns, destroyed the counter-attacking stack in turn three, accepted Sally's capitulation on turn four, game over.

Basically, instead of settling in for a space race, I just kept taking it to the AI.

The other option would have been to run over England first, like you did, and then just use my two continents to build a kick-ass amphibious invasion force to run around the world capturing enemy capital cities and collecting capitulations. I probably would have won the game faster that way, now that I think about it.
 
OK I am a relatively new prince player like the thread starter so this could be fun

Turn 50: 2 city's capital in place and 2nd city by the rice and bronze.
and i am just about to chariot rush "our neighbour" i will take his capital 1st then his second city will be raised.
 
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