Prussia , Emperor Help!

[outofthebox]

Hi,

So I am doing Prussia atm normal/emperor. I tried a couple´of strategy but i have a hard time conquering all europe+russia in time!

This is what i do, maybe you can improve my gameplay for the uhvs.

1) 2 turn revolution from start: Republic/Secularism to get rid of - for religions and to improve GP spawn rate.

2) Dont settle Berlin yet! Wait for Francfort and other cities to join so francfort becomes the capital. Then found Berlin and make it a tiny crappy city where to put 7 great persons.

3) Upgrade all troops to riflemen, Kill Austria, make sure to get Rome. Italy UHV done, never seen Austria respawn yet.

4) Here either kill France before they get riflemen but usualy France respawns just in time to mess up my UHV at 1940:-( Or go for early Russia as the goal isnt to eliminate Russia just conquer a part of it.

5) By the time I have France/Italy and Russia. I dont have any more turns/time/troops to get England and Scandinavia... What to do?


So I guess my question is what is the Conquest order? (I mean which country to conquer first etc. Like first Austria, then Scandinavia, maybe England and Russia last or something)

 

[artyom]

try playing them on marathon speed. you'll have plenty of time for numerous wars, periods of peace, and you can even lose a few wars and still eventually win. i played them like 7 times on empreror/marathon and main difficulty seemed to be the technological advances.
on marathon speed, you can just sit back from 1700 until 1900 with just germany and italy in control and then capture everyone from 1920's to 1940.

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

It seems like a lot of advice nowadays is: "Play on Epic/Marathon".
That does not help.

Do not forget that Normal speed is still the baseline.
(Which irks me because a lot of the Epic/Marathon feedback makes a lot of changes
to Normal gameplay, which ends up making certain UHVs impossible on the base speed)

That being said, even though I don't play Emperor, I can help out with some Normal speed specific issues. And hopefully help you win with Prussia.

First off, the 1st turn civics switch is alright; you want to be running the democratic civics + capitalist civics
(Republic, Capitalism, Free Market, Secularism) ASAP. So don't worry, you're doing fine with that already.

The Francfort thing is actual very novel and a good idea; most of the GPs you will be settling in Berlin will be Great Generals anyway. I only maybe settle 3-4 Great Scientists in Berlin and the majority end up being Great Generals. You'll want to maintain a roughly 25-35-40 ratio of Farms, Workshops and Watermills for decent growth and good production to pump out your armies.

Because as Prussia, you start out behind all the other Europeans, you will have to play the diplomatic arena craftily. Usually, the strongest AIs in Europe are England, Spain or France. Start imposing economic sanctions to cripple England by convincing everyone to close their borders with them and with the latter two, negotiate continental coalitions against them. HRE, Greece, Italy, Russia and Vikings are usually woefully behind in technology; save the worst for last and focus your efforts on the heavy hitters before they get out of hand in strength. By the time those civs have Riflemen, you'll probably have Infantry.

Likely, your first target will be France; and you will want to levy a navy as quickly as humanly possible to start taking on England.
Rushbuy and sell technologies to support your fleet building if you have to.
I should actually specify; you don't need Frigates. Only Galleons are needed.
It's a short distance to England anyway so you don't need that much protection
and building Frigates will only waste time.

Also, make contact with the Far East as soon as possible to obtain Calendar resources; the raised happy cap will help out immensely and you should sell techs to China/Japan/Mongolia/Thai/Indonesia for cash since you're never going to be fighting them. You can sell to Iran and Mughals/India too; the latter of which is great because you'll be supporting each other in your fight against the English. Do not trade with the Turks.

I hope this helps your Prussia.

 

[iOnlySignIn]

Best strategy for Prussia is to start as HRE/Austria and minimize the number of crap cities in Europe & leave some room for Berlin.

TD, DoC needs slower speeds like Epic/Marathon because the game is too fast-paced. DoC is a lot faster than RFC due to the many additional civs/Wonders/events/mechanisms. RFC itself is a lot faster than BTS.

In BTS I never play Epic/Marathon unless I'm on Immortal/Deity. In RFCE, even RFCE++ I wish the games were faster because there simply aren't much going on. In DoC though, if you play on Epic/Marathon you'd be able to employ a wider variety of strategies due to the fine-tuning it allows.

Also, as I've said before Epic/Marathon is more historically realistic. On Normal it takes centuries for the Mongols to expand across all of Asia, not 70 years. It takes Prussia/Germany years to conquer France, not 1 month. Normal speed forces you to stay at war too often, simply because troops move so slowly. On slower speeds you can choose to alternate between long periods of peaceful growth and sudden bursts of violence, attacking only at the most opportune moments. That is especially important for a civ like Prussia due to its UHVs.

That said, I never advised people to play on Epic as a solution to any specific problem. I agree with you that that is not the proper solution to problems on Normal. However, I do advise everyone to play Epic on every occasion simply because I believe the game is a much richer and more enjoyable experience that way.

 

[outofthebox]

Thanks all for the help!

I am going to give in on my pride of doing normal speed only since its simply impossible to move units through all the cultural borders, especially in russia. Its culture is just deadly especially if you are forced to rush forward with wounded units due to lack of time!

I gave a few more good tries. Got to 1934 got Moscow and on the way to few others russian cities and landed a okay force in England (about 15 units)

BUT!!!

I found out that England has around 45 units on its Island!!! And Russia just launched 3 Stacks of Doom towards Moscow with 10+ Cossacks 10+ Riflemen + some Grenadiers.

I am going to Lose Moscow next turn and i wont get Englandin time simply cause i cant eliminate 45+ units + some reinforcements in time + culture borders slowing me aswell...

So, I ll stop the masochism here and try a slower speed and Go for England first (around 1750 with 4-5 Galleons loaded with stuff) , then Vikings, then Russia at around 1850 with Cavalry/Cannons and finally I am going to Save France for last as its easy.

Btw speaking of France. OMG whats is the respawn probability on them?

In this game they declared on me as soon as i spawned so i slowed down on Austria and went all in France. they broke down in 1740, then respawn 1805, got beaten again and respwaned in 1875!!! seriously, i had to beat France 3 times in 140 years!!!!

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

Raze every French city other than Paris.
Prevent sneaky Spain from settling in the wasteland after razing,
because that will trigger an eventual respawn as well.

 

[outofthebox]

Finally Job Done Epic speed /Emperor level!!!!! Wohooo!


I did vikings first early 1800, then Russia+England at 1900 to 1940.

I went France like 1920 or so, didnt want to have them respawn 3 times like last time.

USA and Spain were my main allies, mainly to keep England busy. Spain vassalized france so Russia didnt dare attack me at all since i had a pact with spain.

What i learned on how to conquer Russia/England

vs Russia.

Dont worry just declare war even if your attack groups arent ready, just play def at first and let the russian waste most of his cavalry on your cities.

I used Bait cities like Kiev /novgorod with not that many defenders to make sure Russia would go all out on them with cavalry without even using artillery. I lost Kiew/Novgorod a few times at cheap costs and Russia lost like30-40 cavalry on taking those cities a couple of times!

For England.

Then again England had massive units so hard to land a good force and expect it to hold vs cannons/cavalry and infantry.

So I did the viking thing that is so annoying when playing England: Land a good first stack of 10 + forest defence promoted infantry on the Deer forest! Of course England wasted most of its artillery/cavalry on that stack.

Then i landed my real kill force when Englands counterattack power was gone for a few turns!

It did the trick. both England and Russia crumbled slowly but surely after they failed their counterattacks on my decoy forest or cities .-)

 

[Tigranes]

This is a game in progress (turns are VERY slow even on my relatively modern laptop). I am not sure why you found this so difficult? This is my second take (the first one I have abandoned because Russia DOW on my on turn 3 and showed up with like 40+ units). Diplomacy is the key in winning as Germans -- you can make defencive pact right away which work like permanent pacts sometimes . I made a pact with 2 leading powers: Spain and Turkey.

This time Russia declared again but I made for them a new Tannenberg exactly in the historical place but 200 years earlier -- I killed like 30+ Cuirassiers and supper promoted Cannons without single loss of my initial army which doubled when Russia declared on me. I let Turkey to fight with Russia and instead went after England. The order of my victories were England-Italy-France-Russia-Scandinavia-respawned Italy(again). I even managed to conquer Paris almost exactly the year Prussians did in real life

And whoever told you to neglect Berlin was wrong -- it is my most productive and science producing city. It badly needs a Spree river, though. And also Prussia might be tasked with building Brandenburg Gate -- if I am not focusing on it someone always beats me on Emperor to that wonder...

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

^Congrats. That is a very lovely world you have there.
And yeah, England first. Do not let them jump off their island.

 

[iOnlySignIn]

What do you guys think of the Prussian UP? Does 50% make much of a difference?

 

[outofthebox]

Wow That was impressive win you got there!

Yeah defensive pact with Turkey ofc! It was so obvious that I didnt even think of that

I am trying Russia SVN version atm. It was going all well (got conqusitadors both america vassalised and China+Indonesia vassalised aswell. Need 5 vassals for friendly comunists later)

then at 1850 suddenly out of the blue, England built the manhattan project... ending my hopes for uhv nr 2!

 

[fabe]

Is it possible to start as HRE and then switch to Prussia?

 

[strijder20]

^Congrats. That is a very lovely world you have there.

I don't want to know who's controlling Ireland... If it's Spain, it's weird, but I'm not able to distinguish the colour, and maybe it's lots, lots worse

 

[Tigranes]

I don't want to know who's controlling Ireland... If it's Spain, it's weird, but I'm not able to distinguish the colour, and maybe it's lots, lots worse

It's my vassal Mali. English Government went to exile on Hispanola (they built that colony before they took over proud Irish Dublin). I did not want war, did not war any English culture and did not want Dublin (slows tech rate). So I captured Dublin and gave it to German West Africa


P.S. @fabe: It is possible to switch but it really feels as an exploit. Only Hitler merged Austria with Germany -- one civ should not help another civ to win...

 

[fabe]

P.S. @fabe: It is possible to switch but it really feels as an exploit. Only Hitler merged Austria with Germany -- one civ should not help another civ to win...

Thanks! I'm not going to "help" me, I'm just glad I have a choice to switch from HRE to Prussia if I'm in the mood, as I play most times as German

 

[Tigranes]

Very funny -- Russia respawned, but because I was Solid they never flipped Moscow or Kiev (my most productive city at the end) -- they founded Arctic Tzardom instead

Turkish UP is seriously OP -- 69% culture conversion is overkill! 50% would still be one of the strongest UPs in the mod...

 

[strijder20]

Those Turks are also very impressive -but I suppose you gave them cities.

 

[Tigranes]

You're kidding, right? I was afraid to conquer an extra stray city, giving something away would kill me. Turkish culture was pressing me everywhere... Even under Imperialism I was shaking... They expanded in the vacuum created by Germany. At some moment I was fearing they will win UHV (ended game with 2/3). Consider this: Emperor Turkey had 5 (not 4!) Wonders 25 years before the deadline, they had everything except Vienna (guess why and they had best military in 1800. If Leoreth leaves this in Turks hands... all Emperor America starts may end in 1800...