Struggling with move from Noble to Prince

[barbertje]

EDIT: As per Carboniferous, I have also attached a much earlier save, from 700BC.

I think you should give more priority to improving the terrain, espescially the food.
You should also try to settle near food. The corn/sheep location in the north isn't even explored. I think there should have been time to put a city near the corn SW of the capital

Researching an early religion will slow your growth, and will only start to pay off much later. Researching masonry and building the great wall is a good move on this huge map, but it will slow your growth even more.
researching Iron working and not animal husbandry, and not working a single food resource will slow your growth even more.

The slow expansion problem was however fixed by shaka who put one city where it would be flipped, and he gave a 2nd city away. This a rather unexpected benefit of having a holy city. However, the new cities are undeveloped and are a drain on your economy. You should have built a few riverside cottages by now.
Researching iron working so early, without a clear benefit (gems/jungle/attack on someone) will damage your economy. With so many AI, someone should be willing to
trade it for alphabet

Once you have writing, you should built a library soon, and then run 2 scientists. For this you need to grow your capital, and for that you need to improve tiles that
produce food.

I wouldn't want the pyramids here, since there is no stone, and the terrain seems better for cottaging, and there are also no forests left in the BFC of the city where you're building them.

You have 4 workers shopping a forest to the southeast, and you have built 5 mines, but the governor works 3 unimproved floodplains. What you should have done here, is start with farming a couple of flood plains, and only then build some mines, and finally chop the 2 forests in the 3rd ring (beyond that it's hardly worth it)

Your capital is building a worker using the wrong tiles. You get 3 more hammers/turn by using the horse and the 2 mines.

While your economy is definitely a problem at this point, it should be easy to save it with some cottages, and grabbing the marble and researching the aesthetics line and building the great library. (and some more marble wonders, possibly for failure gold)
No one has Aesthetics and a lot of people have alphabet already.

Grabbing the iron/marble spot soon will be good, even without food near, because you'll want some axes with Shaka around.

 

[s.bernbaum]

Also regarding the relations - I normally never accept AI's trade offers as they are usually not even trades, with the AI getting the better end of the deal. Also I never give in to demands of tribute from the AI as well. Should I change this approach?

If they offer the trade turn them down and then, as soon as it is your turn, offer the same AI the same trade and trade the same tech to as many other AIs as possible. You will find that several lousy trades add up to a good deal for you. The reason for turning down the original offer is that the AI that gets the deal from you may then trade it around to the others before you get the chance to do so. The exceptions to this are: 1) don't trade away a tech that you would prefer others don't get in a hurry, such as military techs when you think there will be war or something you have exclusively when you want to build a wonder that it permits. 2) don't trade techs to AIs who are the worst enemies of AIs that you want to like you.

 

[Abegweit]

I took a peek at the 690BC save. I see two big issues.

1) You need to re-think your tech order. It should have been Agri-AH to irrigate the FP and pasture the cows. Getting food to a city is always the first priority and this one has a lack of it. Instead you went Poly-BW-Masonry. Apparently this was in order to build the Great Wall. Even if you make that a priority, you'll get it faster by starting with worker techs. But it gets worse. You continued with IW & TW. STILL no food techs. Then came Agri (finally!) and Pots (No!!!). The cow is your strongest tile. Animal loving (via Agri for the FP) should have been your first priority.

2) Worker management!! (check obsolete's tagline for more about this). Random tile improvements without any thought. That cow and FP still aren't improved in 690BC. They should have been your first two tiles. Note that AI is suggesting that you work them. The capital does have three mines. Unfortunately it isn't working any of them because of a lack of food.

If possible, the other cities are even worse. Not one of them is working a single improved tile. Lakamha has five mines but is working three unimproved FPs.

You have seven workers, which is a decent number, but their current tasks demonstrate the same lack of direction. Two are irrigating a jungle rice and one seems to have just been built. OK. But the other four are chopping a single forest outside your borders. Meanwhile two cities have no improvements at all.

Also, there's a lot of whip anger going around. Mutal has 84. That's far too much, even on marathon.

In sum, here's two rules for you.

1) Start by researching the food techs you need, in this case Agri and AH. Other maps may require Hunting or Fishing. Next comes Mining and BW followed by TW, Pots and Writing. After Writing, build a library somewhere (often in the capital) and hire two scientists who will make a GS for an academy in the capital. When you can regularly beat Monarch, you can consider deviating from this.

The only exception to this rule comes when you don't have any horses or copper, in which case you can slip in archery or IW.

2) Never improve a tile unless you plan to work it- and never work an unimproved tile. It's not possible meet this rule fully but you shouldn't be off by more than a tile or two across your entire empire.

3) Bonus rule: don't whip a city which already has whip anger.

Edit: x-post with barbertje who says much the same thing. I disagree about the cottages though. The land is too dry.

 

[OneLeggedRhino]

A few thoughts for you:
-Play some games without building any wonders. It's important to master the basic form of the game, then pick a few wonders based on your situation.
-Same deal with early religions. Just skip them. You can always conquer someone with a holy city later, or bulb Philosophy if you really need your own religion.
-Diplomacy. Make one of the dominant religions your state religion (as others said). Then, bribe the guys who share your religion into attacking the other guys. The way to stop a dogpile is by having all your allies already involved.

 

[JustBen]

The reason for turning down the original offer is that the AI that gets the deal from you may then trade it around to the others before you get the chance to do so.

Does this actually happen? There's still no advantage to accepting an AI's trade offer so as a matter of habit I don't, but even when I slip I've never actually seen the tech traded around. As a human player I can't trade away a tech on the same turn that I trade for that tech -- are the AIs exempt from this?

 

[OneLeggedRhino]

Does this actually happen? There's still no advantage to accepting an AI's trade offer so as a matter of habit I don't, but even when I slip I've never actually seen the tech traded around. As a human player I can't trade away a tech on the same turn that I trade for that tech -- are the AIs exempt from this?

Yes, AIs can trade techs immediately after they trade with you. It's because your trade happens on your turn, so they have the tech from the start of their turn, so they can trade it.

But AIs are pretty tight on beakers, so they'll only trade if there's something that will really make an even trade, which means often they'll have a trade available that we'd take in a second, but won't make it because one tech costs 5% more. Also they seem to wait a while before deciding to approach anyone about trades, so you have some leeway to trade to one AI this turn and another next turn (useful if you're progressing several steps along a tech path).

 

[s.bernbaum]

Yes, it can happen like OneLeggedRhino says. I have had it happen. That's how I learned to trade a tech around to all the AIs that I could in one turn, after seeing some AI reap all the benefits of my research!

 

[mikew633]

Thanks for all the advice guys. It seems I need to improve my worker management and tech order, among other things. I have also taken the advice some of you gave about starting out on standard size maps at normal speed. I am faring better at those settings. I will post details shortly.