Really really need help

I just cannot seem to make the jump from difficulty 3 to 4. I am slaughtering opponents in difficulty 3 by Civ victory score of well over a thousand, my games usually end anywhere from 1975-2005. I have had various Scientific victories and Diplomatic victories, so I am not settled on one play style. My settings are Random Leader, Continents, standard pace, huge world 12 civs 30 city states-------I don't want to change these settings so any help please bear that in mind.

My problem is on difficulty 4 I Just cant seem to get off the ground. My first try with the Huns was abysmal. Battering rams? Forget about it. Too busy fending off waves of barbarians by the time I was deep into Classical Era I was in 11th and 12th place in every category. I tried with the Austrians. I had 5 military units and COULD NOT keep up with the barbarians , who just seemed to spawn camps endlessly. I actually almost got overran in this game by the time I quit. Once again 11th and 12th in the classical era in almost every category.

What should my build order be for the first 5 or 6 things? How fast should I get that second city? How fast should I get the third city down? How many cities should I put down before I start to get into a groove and feel like I can expand at ease? What should I primarily be concentrating on? Any help for guiding me to transistion from Warlord to Prince would be grateful. Thanks.

 

To start I suggest Scout-Monument. After that it depends on your map. You want a library ASAP!!!!!!!!! 2nd and 3rd cities, ASAP!!! I am a tall player and would need great sites to ever go past 4 cities. I prefer 3-4 cities total.

What you should focus on is working your capitol. Buy, build or Social pop a worker ASAP. Economy should be 1st priority, get GOLD incoome up so you can support a military and science buildings. In BNW Trade is your make or break, you want to have Ocean trade, not needed to be sure. But it makes your life easier.

When you jump a level, you will find your self lagging. It happens to all of us when we jump. Just dig in and keep at it.

 

I always build monument then worker ( assuming you have the tech to improve what there) , then scout. Getting improvements done quick makes a huge difference. I tend to play with ruins off and barbarians off ( I don't like random luck interfering) so in those cases I don't bother with scout for quite awhile.

The main advantage you have over the AI is upgrading units. Save some gold then when you hit a new unit upgrade and attack and its hard for them to beat that. Always try to capture or attack after a new unit tech.

I tend to wait for trebuchets and have 2-3 catapults waiting to be upgraded.

Also a lot of people like to get national college. On prince that should be no trouble to get quickly.

if your on the defensive composite bowmen are very good at the start.

 

Try to get Great Library in the capital. That way, you can slingshot into the classical era via philosophy and build NC if needed. Get your first settler with Liberty social policy, your second by production (or if you have enough money) gold. Try to get an army of 3 archers, then upgrade to comp bowman ASAP. This, along with your warrior, is enough defense, at least until the AI gets classical units. Produce 1 worker for the capital, buy another one for 2nd city, and get the 3rd by social policy.

Just a few things I learned in my 20+ prince games

 

k so these guy's have some neat strategies but I think instead of particular moves to make, you could use help looking at the game from a more strategic view if that makes sense. anyways, three things that might be holding you up.

first I know you want random civs but unless your proficient in all victory types, it won't work. you can't won with the Huns if you've never won conquest for example. so go back a difficulty and win through war. you'll find the more varied your victories, the more civs you'll be able to work with. and in your circumstance, a game played militarily will also definitely help you deal with barbs in the next game, even if you want to go for science or diplomacy with a non militaristic div.

also, if barbs are an issue, consider honor. or buckle down with tradition and it's garrison bonus.

the moral of the story? the secret to success isn't some perfectly planned out game built on particular wonders or which units you build first. its about learning reading the game as it unfolds around you unknowing which play style will be to your advantage. look at the civ it gives you and textiles around your starting position. thesee two things should decide the direction you take. what happens in the turns to come should show you what you need to do to make that direction work.

good luck, hope I mad sense. and I am on a phone so I am not sure how long I blabber on lol

 

the other guy said he's played 20+ games so it's worth noting that I've played over 900 hours and I've played on empoer for quite some time now.

 

This.

Also, I build a scout first and I'm usually glad I did.

 

yea scouts are usually a good call. usually.

 

Just a heads up in case you'll move up to King, and especially Emperor and beyond - the Great Library is a noob trap on harder difficulties, because the AI will have the techs and the intention to rush it. It's a horrible gamble - if you win you get a meager tech boost and two slots for writings, but losing is likely and yields a disadvantaged position in the tech race.

On Prince it's still easy to get if you want it, though, and certainly not all terrible on King either.

 

Scouts help you find goodie huts, city-states, barb camps, other civs, and good spots for new cities.

Goodie Huts give you, well, goodies.
City-states give you gold and quests, and eventually, goodies.
Knowing where Barb Camps are lets you know where to send your army to kill them, and where not to send your settlers.
Finding other civs is good for setting up trade routes [BNW]
Finding good spots for new cities lets you know where to send your settlers.

When scouting, always work your way out in a spiral, not out in a line, because it does you no good to know what England is doing when you don't even know what's in the fog directly north of your own borders. So many times, there are goodie huts 2 inches into the fog that you didn't know were there on the first pass.

 

Scouts are so important, that's why I build them first. The more civs you meet, the less beakers it takes to research new techs, if those civs have already researched those techs. Also, once you get a good grip of the map, scouts are excellent for escorting workers and settlers around. with bnw there are more barbs, so just research archery around the time you get workers and have two or three archers clear some camps. It's up to personal taste, but i like to settle a second city asap. I usually do a liberty start, and so when I get the free settler under the third social policy, I start settling my second and third cities.

 

A small tip to possibly help you move up in difficult: try playing at the easier difficulty with Raging Barbarians ON and/or AIs set to Aggressive.

This will get you ready for the quicker pace of the early game on the higher difficulties.

 

My strategy for Emperor early start.

1. go scout-monument-Shrine-Great Library
2. techs Pottery-Writing-(anything to improve tiles for production)
3. i go liberty 9/10 games. Cause my Capital is going to spamm wonders the first 100 so turns.

 

like I said I am skeptical of taking any particular path, like a social tree, based on anything but the look of the particular game, but if your going to advocate a policy you've got to either get it right or explain why you recommended it. because it won't let me quote...The A.K.T "i go liberty 9/10 games. Cause my Capital is going to spam wonders the first 100 so turns. " liberty helps with expansion, tradition is "traditionally" (haha) the first pick for wonder builders.

this is because tradition helps develop your capital. gives you extra food in the capital, more gold and less unhappiness to deal with the higher population. it gives you better bombardment power so you don't have to be too distracted making units to fight barbs. tradition also gives you a free culture building which is two things, culture, and a bunch of turns you might have spent elsewise on a monument instead of Stonehenge or whatever. finally, it gives you a 15% boost to wonder production.

liberty can also help you build wonders but it comes at it from a different angle. it gives you more free stuff. a free settler and worker. like I said this is great because it means you can spend more time building wonders. a worker (with a bonus) will also help you develop your tiles which will help production. liberty also gives a little production boost, a golden age and a great person.

the great person, if you pick the engineer, will definitely help you build everything, including wonders. but you only get this after buying all 5 policies. tradition gives you the 15% boost as your second buy.

http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Social_policies_(Civ5)

 

I agree that there is no single "cookie-cutter" strat to follow... but especially given that you are playing on huge continents, in this scenario I would say you should definitely be doing a scout as your first build, every time. Maybe even 2 scouts, I forget exactly how much free land you are looking at in huge, but I recall it is pretty big.

Scouts will help you track down barbs earlier, nab more ruins (which again will be more plentiful due to more land), and discover more CSes.

I'm not sure how you handle barbs, but 5 combat units should be more than enough. The scouts can be very helpful in dealing with them as well. Barbs should be handled more defensively. Don't make a move that might cost you one of your units. Use terrain to your advantage. Put your scouts on fortify and let the warriors attack them a couple times. Your scout should be able to heal enough to outlast the barb.

I think your problems mostly stem from the fact that huge maps are just generally more difficult, so jumping from huge warlord to huge prince is more of a step than standard warlord to standard prince. The extra land gives civs and barbs alike more room to expand/spawn and, in the case of civs, exploit their bonuses.

 

Go scout-monument first, or scout-shrine-monument if you want religion. If you see that map is huge with lot of empty spaces, think of building seconds scout too (maybe right after the first one)

Settle your Capital where there's enough food\production (2-3 hills).

If you're playing as The Huns, build scout, or maybe two first. Scout for closest neighbor. If there's one close to you, go straight for Horse Archers (Wheel), fallowed by Bronze Working (Battering Rams).

Steal a worker from CS, maybe even the second one. Just keep on producing Horse Archers until you have around 5-6 of them, build\buy 2-3 BR and demolish your neighbor.

Then move to another one closest to you, and after that to another one. Maybe take out some CS on the way.

Note that other civs won't like you because of that, and pretty much everyone will hate you, but what the hell, you're not playing it nice, you're playing it to cause chaos and rampage through the map.

or if you want to play more "peacefully" with the Huns, do the same build order, attack the civ but don't take their cities. Wait for them to ask for peace, then take all of their luxuries, gold and gold per turn. Once the deals are off, attack him again, and force him into same peace treaty deal.

 

It seems like barbarians are the main problem you are facing in your games. If so, you might want to try going for Honor as your second SP (second because usually they haven't become a real problem at the time you get your first).

The extra 25% bonus helps a lot with those barbs, and being able to see their camps when they spawn also helps you deploy your scarce units more efficiently.

 

Also, I'm going against the grain and recommending Scout-Worker, unless your randomly picked civ has an awesome early building like Pyramids. In my experience the bonus food/hammers from the worker improvements are more useful early on than the extra culture or faith. Naturally, you would want to have researched Pottery/Mining before your worker is done.