The gap between prince and king

[Jussiut]

I've been a casual but consistent player of the series since the first version in 1992 when I was five and watched my brother play and then played it myself. I've never been a hardcore gamer of the series, never learned the optimal micromanaging strategies of any of the versions but I know the game and the basic concepts and strategies. Let's just say that I know the game, I love it so much, but I'm not what you would call a great player.

The thing is, I absolutely crush Civ5 on Prince level. No matter what the starting position, no matter what the civ, I always find a way to victory. Sure, the game is still fun, but it's not much of a challenge.

However, the last few weeks I've been trying King level and it's absolutely crushing me. I just get raped every time and I'm not even close to victory. I just find the gap between the levels to be overwhelming. I just don't understand how the AI has 30+ happiness every time and can just expand and expand while I'm limited by the happiness. I can sort of keep up but sooner or later I'll fall behind because a) one AI is miles ahead in tech, or b) I'm doing ok but then the AIs gang up on me and I'm toast.

The point of my thread is this: I really wanna beat Civ5 on King and I know it can be done. I just don't know where to start since I feel the bonuses AI gets are so unfair and overpowering. Does anyone else feel like this or are most people here hardcore gamers playing on Deity etc.?

This is really frustrating me, and I wish there was a difficulty level between Prince and King because I feel that would be perfect for me.

 

[Aristos]

AI plays at Chieftain level no matter what your dif level is... some discussion going on about that in another thread ("AI Technology cheating"), you may want to check it out to understand the far reaching implications of the unhappiness blatant cheat... don't feel bad.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Well, that's it ! Welcome in Civ5 !

I have the same problem, although I don't win every time in Prince, especially when an AI starts to over expand, like Greece.

Last game (Prince) I was on a peninsula, Alexander blocked me, I managed to send a settler away for catching iron, but then Germany declared war for no apparent reason, and it was going to this far undefended away city... so I could not take Greece and I was screwed. All this in Prince.

Generally, I find that the happiness limitation are too high in Prince. I believe they are the same in every difficulty level since Prince. That's why lately I started to play Settler/Chieftain/pre-Prince difficulty levels, but when I saw that i could roll over all the AIs militarily before starting to win in a peacefull way (Ais encourage us to kill them, by insults, denouncing, treachery, DOWs, etc.) I was just disugusted and now I don't want to play anymore to Civ5. (AIs still had warriors when i had infantry, it didn't know how to improve its land, etc.)

I wish there is a pre-Prince difficulty level with a competent AI. Or a Prince one with the Pre-Prince happiness. Happiness is a real pain in Civ5, it's so nerfed ! A shame. Now when there's still plenty land to conquer, a player is blocked by happiness, and soon or later it will be the AI land...

The only good reason for hapiness now is that it makes luxury ressources valuable. It puts interest on them. That is the ONLY good reason I see. Other way, a game without happiness would be 10 times better. Now, new cities are so rare that the settler unit is kind of anecdotic. I don't see a reason to keep settlers. They should replace them by another system.

And still, the interest we put on luxuries is just a kind of "wow effect", it doesn't affect gameplay much. Like : "cool, a shiny ressource, yummy, my happiness will grow". I don't say this kind of effects are bad, on contrary, but basing the whole happiness system on it is just wrong.

Happiness shouldn't exist. An expanding way of playing would be far more interesting. I didn't have anything against city spamming in the past. The only hurting thing was ICS, because in multiplayer it was unbalancing things. But talk about multiplayer in Civ5... it is so broken that only the most insisting people would ever play at it.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

When I made the jump from Prince to King, I found that I thought I was falling severely behind, but just kept with it, and I actually was able to win.

I find that the major points to focus on for a successful jump from Prince to King are:

1) Learn how to manipulate the AI with diplomacy. It may not be as varied and fun as Civ4, but it is just as easy. Know the AI personalities and how their diplo behavior is affected by where you start in relation to them. Gifting gold gives a "You've traded with us recently" positive diplo modifier and can be quite useful.

2) Realize that RA (research agreements) are extremely powerful, and grabbing wonders and social policies that boost them will only overpower this feature of the game. Manual research and empire output is still important, but learning how to utilize research agreements (in conjunction with diplomacy) will make the jump easier.

3) Is my starting location better for a thin/tall empire or a short-med/wide empire? This question is something that needs to be decided on fairly early. Chances are, if you have a lot of room to settle without incurring a diplo penalty with your neighbor, you may want to ICS (infinite city sprawl) with short (low population) cities. If you don't have much room, it is better to settle capital and 1 or 2 other cities and grow them as large in population as possible and focus on improving each city. I find this strategy allows for more diplo options as the AI doesn't worry about your fast expansion or settling lands too close to them. But both styles have their applicability. If there are a couple city sites near your capital that have this kind of luxury clustering, then a thin/tall empire is ideal (3 cities to grab 5+ different lux resources). If lux resources are more spread out, you may want to consider the ICS and prepare for an eventual DoW because of fast settling. Which leads me into my next point...

4) City sites and happiness. In the early game, lux resources and Natural Wonders are your only means to . While getting a scout out early to find Natural Wonders will help you, it isn't going to provide you with a very good amount of . Targeting city locations that will get 2 - 3 more lux resources (that you didn't already have) is the best way to up your happiness limits until social policies and buildings are unlocked to provide more. Social policies will be your #2 way into happiness.

5) City States. These guys can REALLY boost your game. No matter what my victory condition, when I started King level, city states became more of an important game mechanic. For thin/tall empires, maritime civs can provide for fast growth. For faster social policies (and culture victories), the culture based city states are awesome. You can avoid building units if you ally with a couple military city states. I've had games where I manually built maybe six or seven units and the military city states provided the rest. Once you ally with them, in addition to these primary boosts, each city state will provide luxury AND strategic resources that they have access to. This can be huge if your starting location only has 2 or 3 different lux resources or an abundance of 1 (which has happened to me before).

5) Strategic resources. Believe it or not, if you don't plan on conquering, you don't need to put as much weight on early iron/horses as you did in Civ4. You definitely want to have the ability to build a couple iron based units and 1 or 2 horse units to add to your spearmen/archers. But if you don't plan on invading a neighbor, you can do with a single 2 iron source and a single 2 horse source. There are social policies that boost city strength and utilizing this with a fortified archer, one more archer, and a couple spearmen can stop just about any invasion on King level. But having access to one or two catapults will allow you to defend more of your land simultaneously.

6) Puppeting. When I played prince level, I found that I could invade to my heart's content and annex most of the cities and rush buy a courthouse. I thought this would be an optimal strategy for more . However, doing such things will destroy your per-city options as each annexed city acts as a settled city with respect to required buildings and social policy costs. I found that once I puppeted the captured cities, I was still acquiring social policies quickly and was able to build Oxford U, Ironworks, Circus Maximus, etc because I didn't have to wait for all my conquered cities to build the required buildings. Also, learning to manipulate puppeted city governments helps big time on King. I like to lay down Trading Posts all over puppet city lands and allow the automatic gold-focus governor to do his magic. This will significantly increase your gold income allowing for more Research Agreements and CS alliances.

7) Social policy planning is important in King. I found in Prince I could basically just grab whatever seemed cooler or more interesting. On King, you need to be a little more deliberate in your social policy choices and remember that the order of the policy is quite important. There are several strats on the forums regarding good opening game soc policy choices. I'd go read them.

Well, that's my 2 bits. There's probably a lot more that can be said, but for King level, I found this to be the difference between frustration and success.

 

[Ellye]

I had about the same impression, the jump from Prince to King is a bit big (and the jump from King to Emperor is small).

In Prince, the game was still a bit entertaining, but not a challenge at all. I was always clearly ahead in all relevant aspects, victory was always guaranteed.

But, in King, I was always behind in most aspects. There was always an AI with more research, an AI with more military strength, at least one -huge- AI empire, an AI allying itself with all City-States, etcetera.

In the end, the AI still struggled a bit to actually use those advantages efficiently though. But yeah, the gap from Prince to King is probably the biggest one in Civ5.

 

[Noatz]

King difficulty is the first level where the AI starts to get bonuses to gold + pop growth and other factors (aside from its happiness cheat), so I guess it can be a bit rough coming to it from Prince where you will always outgrow even the best placed AI.

Of course this also means the AI will have more gold to buy useless crap like open borders and luxuries it doesn't need off of you. This increased gold works in reverse of the existing difficulties, and to some extent offsets the AI's advantage (you can sell so much to Deity AI for example that you can actually buy a lot more than you could on say, Prince).

 

[UGABulldawg98]

OP, what is your general strategy when you play? If you're like me and you're a 'builder' then you need to force yourself to deploy military units and go to war. I play King all the time now and if I lose, then I have spent way too many turns constructing buildings and wonders and not enough time beefing up my military.

 

[Kerosene31]

I'm kind of going through the same thing now. I don't get destroyed, but I usually end up on the bottom end of most demographics and score.

Do people just attack a civ who is running away or do you try to compete with them peacefully? I try for peaceful wins and that seems hard.

 

[Cheeseisgood]

I found on the Prince to King jump, that you will get a lot more early war decs than you're used to - make sure you're not neglecting your military early. Also try and play a "balanced" game, don't start a game aiming specifically for one thing like conquest. Many of my first King games were failed because I went all out conquest from turn 10 or turtled up for culture/science and forgot my military. At that level, you can pull off any kind of victory really even if you don't decide to "specialise" your empire till about the Renaissance. My biggest mistake was trying to warmonger early, taking out one or two Civs then being taken out from behind as ALL of my forces were up front and I had fallen behind on techs while rampaging. I cannot begin to explain how often I made that mistake (And still do, despite moving up to Emporer now.)

 

[Jussiut]

Thanks for all the replies, they've been really useful and it's good to know other people are experiencing the same thing.

Blitzkrieg, I think your advice is very solid. I haven't really put that much effort into AI diplomacy but I probably should start really manipulating the relationships carefully. Another big aspect that's lacking from my game is utilizing city states. Maybe because they didn't have those in the previous versions, I've always considered them as a nuisance and not really part of my strategy. That's obviously wrong.

I just find it hard to find the cash to ally myself with city states. 500 is a lot of money and I like to build, so most of my coins go to building maintenance. I probably build too many buildings.

OP, what is your general strategy when you play? If you're like me and you're a 'builder' then you need to force yourself to deploy military units and go to war. I play King all the time now and if I lose, then I have spent way too many turns constructing buildings and wonders and not enough time beefing up my military.

Yeah, I'm usually a builder. You're absolutely right, I love to build stuff and I'm not used to being declared war upon so quickly by the AI. Or especially getting ganged up on. It's hard for me to find the balance between building troops and buildings though, because if I don't build libraries and a few wonders etc., the AI gets so far ahead of me in techs.

I'm kind of going through the same thing now. I don't get destroyed, but I usually end up on the bottom end of most demographics and score.

Do people just attack a civ who is running away or do you try to compete with them peacefully? I try for peaceful wins and that seems hard.

I think I'm in exactly the same situation as you. I don't always get conquered, but I fall behind and I usually quit before the modern era when it's clear I have no chance. Peaceful games seem to be pretty much an impossibility beyond Prince.

I found on the Prince to King jump, that you will get a lot more early war decs than you're used to - make sure you're not neglecting your military early. Also try and play a "balanced" game, don't start a game aiming specifically for one thing like conquest. Many of my first King games were failed because I went all out conquest from turn 10 or turtled up for culture/science and forgot my military. At that level, you can pull off any kind of victory really even if you don't decide to "specialise" your empire till about the Renaissance.

You're right, a lot more early wars than I'm used to and I don't know how to adjust. That's interesting that you say I should go for a balanced approach, I was under the impression that especially on King and beyond you have to choose an early strategy and stick with it.

 

[Noatz]

I'm kind of going through the same thing now. I don't get destroyed, but I usually end up on the bottom end of most demographics and score.

Do people just attack a civ who is running away or do you try to compete with them peacefully? I try for peaceful wins and that seems hard.

Depends on a few things:

Map - if your playing on continents and the runaway is on a different continent its often difficult to stage an effective invasion if you're playing towards a peaceful VC.
Your own plan - If you're playing domination then you can either take on the runaway to ensure that you will be the strongest, or leave them until last and then "crack the nut" with nukes and bombers etc. The latter works well if they have a capital on or at least near the coast.

If you're playing for science or diplo and have managed to get a solid lead on tech then you can use it to take down a runaway a few notches, but this is difficult if they are on the other side of the world (not to mention it leaves your core cities vulnerable).

If you're playing for culture, just don't go to war.

But its worth noting, the AI is bad at actually winning the game. Don't be concerned that someone has a higher score than you do, just keep an eye on victory progress once the game hits the modern era. The AI always tends to tech to nukes, then build the Apollo Program (even if its not going for science). The thing to look out for most is CS alliances; bleed their gold stack as much as possible and keep any one civ from getting too far ahead in this regard in the lategame.

 

[apocalypse105]

I'm kind of going through the same thing now. I don't get destroyed, but I usually end up on the bottom end of most demographics and score.

Do people just attack a civ who is running away or do you try to compete with them peacefully? I try for peaceful wins and that seems hard.

Just beat up the AI Not in the end game atack at least one AI for example you're nieghbour So you can get more land and more gold as result stronger military

Sitting back on a level where the Ai gets bonusses to production and happiness is a bad idea

 

[Tabarnak]

Take a big care of early luxuries trades and RAs later. Beeline a military tech for domination or go through education and currency for long term peace benefits. Take care of barbs quests too, very useful.

 

[headcase]

I'm Prince level, the King game I won involved a lucky roll river-wise, a fairly militaristic early game taking a 3 cities from 2 civs (that deserved it) before the renaissance, heavy science throughout, and a tech victory.

I played Germany, just got two or three barbs from the UA, used Landsknechts later on, but never got the oil for the Panzers.

 

[KillingMeSoftly]

In my opinion, the biggest difference between Prince and King is the military factor.

When I was first tackling King I had major issues with fighting the AI because they seemed to always have more units, and/or better units, and typically more cities than me. More cities = more science, and with the bonuses the AI receives on King this will allow them to run away and gain a big lead on you Technologically-- which ultimately translates to having a superior military.

The core of this problem is that I didn't build enough units. You can get away with this on Prince because the AI has no production bonus; but on King the AI can and will outpace your production, especially if you aren't focused. This gap will steadily grow until the AI is confident it can defeat you in a war, and if you have a few units (that likely aren't well trained) then it will be harsh.

The key that ultimately settled into place for me is to always maintain a strong military. Even very early you should try to squeeze in an extra warrior/archer or two. It will discourage the AI from early rushes. Also you should always expect the AI to be hostile, even if they aren't. That way you will always be ready and prepared to defeat them. I also try to make it a point, unless I'm going for a Culture win (and even then, maybe) to find iron and build a few catapults and swordsmen. Supplement your force with a few Spearmen, Archers, and Horsemen. Find your nearest AI, preferably a warmonger Civ, and simply take them out.

Puppet all of their cities so that they don't increase National Wonder or Social Policy costs, and build trading posts in all the tiles that don't have special resources. Taking a couple extra cities early in the game is a big boost to your science and gold output and over the course of the game will help you to close and overcome the advantages of the computer. Even of you are going for a Cultural win you can do this as puppet cities don't increase Social Policy costs. I also like to specialize one of my cities with high production (w/ Ironworks) along with all of the +experience buildings (Barracks, etc). If I can I construct a Brandenburg Gate there as well. I use this city to build most of my military, when possible, so I can free up my other cities for other things. Also don't forget to take advantage of City-States. Militant City States are nice as they'll gift you units that you don't have to recruit.

Also you should consider selling your first luxury to an AI, when you don't really need the extra happiness because you only have one city. This extra gold is enough to purchase an early unit flat out, or add to getting another early Worker or Settler. Later you should sell any excess luxuries, and even open borders, to the AI to keep a steady flow of gold to spend on buying units and City States.

Anyway, that's my advice. Keep a strong and modern military and it will discourage most AI from constantly declaring war. And if they do, you'll be more than prepared to defend yourself and even take some spoils. Everything else is secondary.

 

[nte]

I am having the same problem just moving to king. I am having to go to war early. End up being last in techs, but first in military. My solution both games was to beeline for hg,pt,then rationalism,freedom. Went to number in techs. Was friends with everyone on other continent. Thus ra with everyone. No dof or Dow till I was ready with airplanes, armor, mech warriors. Victory.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Thanks for all the replies, they've been really useful and it's good to know other people are experiencing the same thing.

Blitzkrieg, I think your advice is very solid. I haven't really put that much effort into AI diplomacy but I probably should start really manipulating the relationships carefully. Another big aspect that's lacking from my game is utilizing city states. Maybe because they didn't have those in the previous versions, I've always considered them as a nuisance and not really part of my strategy. That's obviously wrong.

Yeah, this is an issue with becoming used to the Prince level. I played on Prince primarily for my first 12 games and city states were more of an ancillary feature that required very little attention from me. However, my jump to King caused me to start looking at them more for their luxury resources/strat resources than their raw (culture/military/food). However, the maritime CS are awesome if you are keeping a thin/tall empire. Ally with 3 of these guys, and you're getting an extra 12 in your capital and 6 in your other cities. And, as previously stated, if you like to build buildings, you can ally yourself with 2 or 3 militant CS and they will gift you units instead of you having to raw build them.

I just find it hard to find the cash to ally myself with city states. 500 is a lot of money and I like to build, so most of my coins go to building maintenance. I probably build too many buildings.

I usually find that making my first 2 cities / centers and letting my 3rd or 4th city act as mines works nicely. Also, if you go thin/tall empire style, early invasion / puppeting is a good way into gold. I always Trade Post spam my puppets (since the automatic governor is set to GOLD focus in puppet cities) and that usually provides me with a lot of gold per turn. Only building 3 - 4 of your own cities helps you get those national wonders in the capital (which includes National Treasury) and trade routes can add up quickly even if you're only linking puppets.

Yeah, I'm usually a builder. You're absolutely right, I love to build stuff and I'm not used to being declared war upon so quickly by the AI. Or especially getting ganged up on. It's hard for me to find the balance between building troops and buildings though, because if I don't build libraries and a few wonders etc., the AI gets so far ahead of me in techs.

Ally yourself with a couple military CS. Also, if you work on your diplomacy and know your neighbors' personalities, it can go a long way in deciding if you want to build units or a wonder. The build 2 cities, then libraries in both, then National College in the capital is a good way to get science moving quickly and you can focus on some military units before moving on to a Wonder or more infrastructure buildings. Honestly, if you have a bunch of ranged units, a couple melee, and a couple mounted, you should be able to defend yourself pretty well until the Renaissance.

You're right, a lot more early wars than I'm used to and I don't know how to adjust. That's interesting that you say I should go for a balanced approach, I was under the impression that especially on King and beyond you have to choose an early strategy and stick with it.

I find that simply building the most solid empire possible and then going for a particular victory is the best way to handle King level. I think Civ5 is a lot different from Civ4 in this particular aspect where you really wanted to focus on your particular victory type as early as possible in Civ4. Most of my victories on King level have come from just trying to build as solid a civ as possible and then seeing what my options were before selecting between Rationalism and Piety social policies. If you want to go for a culture victory, you might want to make that decision earlier on (since you can adopt Piety quite early on in the game).

 

[Samuil]

I always played Prince, but lately been trying on King, i won 3 times
I also lost a number of times.
Starting position is VERY important imo if you are to survive

 

[Horizons]

I had this exact same problem in Civ4 BTW - noble okay, Prince far too difficult.

Civ5 = Prince okay, King = makes me cry.

Solution: don't play Civ5 on King level.

 

[Steelyglint]

I was surprised by how small the differences were between Prince and King m'self. From all the 'help me play king' threads I thought I'd get blown off the map but in reality King just means you have to think about what you're doing, for me.

If the people who make these 'y u so hard KING!' threads (or, as a matter of fact, anyone who isn't, like the OP said, a 'really hardcore Civ player', but still likes the game) made a MadDjinn-Wainy-style vid then I'd be really interested to see it.