Tough time keeping up on Prince difficulty

[isuru]

Hi guys,

I'm new to the forums and fairly new to Civ 5 as a whole. I've been playing on Warlord difficulty for a while now but the lack of a challenge made me kick it up a notch and play on Prince.

I'm having a hard time keeping up with other civilizations. I find myself constantly struggling with gold and/or unhappiness. While other civs advance fairly quickly and easily.

Any guidelines, tip & tricks to get ahead on Price difficulty? I searched and found This guide here but it's on Civ IV.

Help!

 

[HVS5b]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=530940
Should be a good starter.

I also found this to be of great help.
http://www.carlsguides.com/strategy/civilization5/

Happy reading!

 

[Dushku]

Without specifics on how you're playing, I can only offer general tips. You should probably start by researching Pottery and building a couple Scouts. Your first goal should be exploration. Find out the lay of the land, meet city states, locate other civs. They'll act as trading partners as well help you to know how contested some of the lands you might want to settle will be.

Expansion should be your next priority. As you've seen, this can challenge your happiness. So you'll want to buy/build a Worker to improve luxuries. Your first copy of a given luxury increases your happiness by 4. Don't be afraid of stealing Workers from others. This requires a declaration of war, but that's okay. Just make sure you don't declare war on ANY city state more than once, or else there will be permanent side effects. If you manage to steal an enemy Settler, it will become a Worker for you while depriving them of an expand. On Prince, this alone could make an easy win.

After that, just make sure you're improving your tiles, have enough of a military to defend the lands you have, focus on science, and start working towards victory. Juggling all of this at once is one of the challenges of Civ. As you play more, you'll be able to better plan this out. The tighter an early game you can play, the higher the difficulty you'll be ready for. Good luck!

If you click on the link in my sig, I have some videos on youtube that focus on tips, tricks, opening, and happiness management. They're almost all narrated in a way to help newer players to understand the thoughts going into the various decisions.

 

[isuru]

@HVS5b Awesome guide. I started reading some of the important parts. Very comprehensive. Thanks.

@Dushku Thanks for the detailed write-up. I watched your happiness management video and learned quite a lot. I'm currently playing a very successful match on Prince. I'm currently the most powerful civ with a large army and a massive science lead.

 

[CivAddict2013]

@HVS5b Awesome guide. I started reading some of the important parts. Very comprehensive. Thanks.

@Dushku Thanks for the detailed write-up. I watched your happiness management video and learned quite a lot. I'm currently playing a very successful match on Prince. I'm currently the most powerful civ with a large army and a massive science lead.

Well if you're having trouble keeping up with science; there are a lot of things you can do. I know this because I play on Emperor where the AI techs much faster.

One of the key components to Science is growth. So make sure you research Pottery for granaries and The Wheel for water mills. If you want your cities to grow fast, you should place them on a river.

Having an Aqueduct is also a must for growth. You can get aqueducts by either completing the tradition tree or researching Engineering.

The National College will help early science. You can build it after you research Philosophy. However, the National College can only be built once you have a library in each city.

Once you research Education and build universities; make sure all your Science specialists slots are being worked. Science specialists will eventually spawn Great Scientists; which can help you get through techs.

Something else that will also help greatly is to adopt the Rationalism tree once you reach the Renaissance Era.

You can also sign Research Agreements with civilizations that you have made a DoF with.

As for happiness, there are many ways you can deal with this. Once you search Construction, you can build Colosseums which will give you extra happiness. If you adopt Tradition, you can get the Monarchy policy which will give you extra happiness. If you go Liberty, the Meritocracy will give you extra happiness for every trade route.

If you're playing G&K or BNW you can also get happiness from religion. The founder belief Ceremonial Burial will give you +1 happiness for every 2 citizens following your religion.

If you're struggling with gold, the "Monarchy" policy from Tradition will give you extra gold. Also the founder belief "Church Property" will give you extra gold for every city following your religion. Building Markets once you research Currency and connecting cities with roads will also help with money. In BNW, you can use caravans to establish trade routes which will help gold. And lastly, you can adopt the commerce policy; which will help with gold.

 

[Dushku]

@Dushku Thanks for the detailed write-up. I watched your happiness management video and learned quite a lot. I'm currently playing a very successful match on Prince. I'm currently the most powerful civ with a large army and a massive science lead.

This makes me smile! Glad to hear you're able to get that much more out of your games

 

[Browd]

@Civaddict: good post. Just a couple of clarifications. Ceremonial Burial provides 2 happiness for every 2 cities (not citizens) following your religion -- the only per-follower founder belief that provides happiness is Peace Loving (1 happiness for every 8 followers in non-enemy foreign cities).

The other is even more minor-- because of the trade route changes in BNW, Meritocracy provides 1 happiness for each city connected to the capital by a "city connection" (formerly trade routes in vanilla and G&K) -- I.e., a road or harbor connection. BNW trade routes have many benefits (including a trickle of science if the player you are trading with has researched techs you have not yet researched), but not happiness.

 

[Volcanon]

The real happiness from religion is from the buildings (or the much worse buffs to temples and shrines, etc). At Prince you should be able to get stonehenge guaranteed and may get faith from ruins as well. Getting stonehenge early should let you get pagodas as a follower belief, and, later, one of the other religious buildings (Cathedrals are great if you want to do a lot of relic digging in the industrial age, mosques offer a +3 to faith, monasteries are not quite as good).

Pagodas go a long way to solving happiness problems.

At prince you should not have too much difficulty spreading your religion at least on your continent. If you spread it early enough a lot of other civs will like you more because they share the same faith as you.

There's fun to be had by going piety at some point, as the reformation beliefs can offer some nice buffs ("free" science buildings, "free" great people) or sacred sites, which is a win condition on itself.

By Prince if you wondermonger too hard you might end up behind. Avoid building too many wonders too early, especially the not-so-good ones.

 

[Dushku]

The real happiness from religion is from the buildings (or the much worse buffs to temples and shrines, etc).

I just wanted to point out that Asceticism, Religious Center, and Peace Gardens don't give you culture and faith, but they are a way to use religion to get bonus happiness in puppeted cities. Still inferior I agree. But not only do they help with puppets, but they can be a way for you to get more happiness out of your religion if you have low faith generation and won't have enough to buy TWO buildings in every city AND great people later on.

 

[Sclb]

They only give you happiness if you spread the religion to those cities first, and you need to spend faith to do so in most cases.

 

[Primacide]

For future reference (to the OP), any time you move up a difficulty level, remember to "trim the fat." Do not build wonders, particularly early wonders. Focus on growth and science and don't get distracted by nice-to-haves like Petra or your own religion. Core buildings (libraries, markets, collesiums) are powerful and are sufficient to bounce you into the lead. Try to find ways to stay "lean" and the transition between difficulty levels is much easier. After some success, you will get a feel for what nice things you can still grab at the higher levels.

Oh and forget the great library. Just forget about it. Doesn't exist as far as you're concerned.

 

[beetle]

For future reference (to the OP), any time you move up a difficulty level, remember to "trim the fat." Do not build wonders, particularly early wonders. Focus on growth and science and don't get distracted by nice-to-haves like Petra or your own religion. Core buildings (libraries, markets, collesiums) are powerful and are sufficient to bounce you into the lead. Try to find ways to stay "lean" and the transition between difficulty levels is much easier. After some success, you will get a feel for what nice things you can still grab at the higher levels.

This is all good advice. One contrary opinion I have from the general consensus is that early shrine in build queue is worth the investment in most games. The bonuses you get from any pantheon that matches your dirt are really pretty good. Don't put any more work than that into founding. Some players even plant GPr if they get them.

 

[Volcanon]

At prince he should have no trouble getting great library. Even at emperor I had no trouble teching to theology and getting all three of the religious wonders.

You might want to build two scouts early game. If you're lucky you pop some faith points and then an early shrine is unnecessary.

I never have so little faith that I can't at least spread religion to my own empire.

That said, if you *don't* found a religion you'll lose your pantheon and the AI will probably spread it's usually crappy religions to you. Sometimes your empire will get converted and reconverted a few times over a longer game. Keep checking on the religion tab, because if this is the case you *could* end up with a city with three or even all four of the religious buildings because of this (pagodas and mosques, etc do not "shut off" if your city goes from muslim to christian or whatever).

Also keep in mind that if you conquor a holy city you can build the grand temple in that city, which gives you absurd amounts of faith over the course of a game. You can eliminate bad religions by inquisitoring the holy city.

 

[reddishrecue]

Faith does work out. A small investment could somehow eventually pay off.

 

[beetle]

At prince he should have no trouble getting great library.

Agreed. But I think the larger idea is to develop play habits that work as one progresses up the difficulty levels.

You might want to build two scouts early game.

Agreed: scout, scout, shrine, monument. Seems pretty reliable every game, every map, for every opening SP tree. Kind of boring really -- but what the scouts turn up changes every game so those first 30 turns still have plenty of variety for me.

If you're lucky you pop some faith points and then an early shrine is unnecessary.

That is not my experience. Faith ruins are only available after T20. That is too late to start the shrine.

I never have so little faith that I can't at least spread religion to my own empire.

If you are founding most games, then you are ready to bump up the difficulty level!

But that is the neat thing about getting a pantheon early: It is valuable even without founding.

 

[Volcanon]

I don't found all games.

I usually play immortal games so difficulty can only be further bumped so much. Cheatyface computers in Deity don't really interest me that much.

On *prince* he should be able to always found even on the back of Hagia Sophia or a later wonder.