Now on Prince, I'm near the top of the tech race, but not quite there. On the scores I flip between second or third.
Some of this will conflict with what's below. How seriously do you want to stay ahead in the tech race, as opposed to holding your own? A lot depends on what leader you're playing, as well as on the map. Although at Prince, really you have some flexibility.
There are two ways to approach the tech race: commerce and specialists. People talk about running a "cottage economy" or a "specialist economy." My own opinion is that a mix is best. Ideally, choose how many different types of specialist you want to seriously go for. (One -- scientists -- is the minimum. In descending order after that, in my own quite biased opinion, are merchants, spies, and then everything else. EXCEPT that if you are going for a culture win, artists are more important than anything else, even scientists.) Anyway: however many types of GPs you want to gun for, have one city specializing in each. Usually, for me, it's just one. For that one, max the farms, max the scientists -- if you have more, do the same for merchants or whatever. And build stuff in that town that enhances your chance of GPs of the appropriate type.
All other cities will specialize in either production or commerce. For production cities, lots of farms and stuff to crank out hammers. For commerce cities, lots of cottages. What terrain is good for each should be obvious.
One thing to bear in mind is that there's usually a trade-off between research and military expansion. That's always been true in Civ. This brings me to what I mean about leaders.
There are, in my opinion, exactly four hard-core military leader traits: Aggressive, Protective, Charismatic, and Imperialistic. Each of these traits is lying unused if you aren't at war. There are also three pure builder traits: Commercial, Philosophical, and Industrious. These traits aren't being used to full capacity if you ARE at war. The remaining four traits -- Spiritual, Organized, Expansive, and Creative -- are flexible and can assist either a warmongering or a building strategy. Given this, it's possible to categorize the leaders as follows:
Warmongers: Boudica, Brennus, Catherine, Charlemagne, Churchill, Cyrus, Genghis Khan, Gilgamesh, Hammurabi, Joao II, Julius Caesar, Justinian I, Kublai Khan, Mao Zedong, Montezuma, Napoleon, Qin Shi Huang, Saladin, Shaka, Tokugawa, Washington. All of these leaders have at least one military trait and no builder traits.
Builders: Asoka, Bismarck, Darius I, Elizabeth, Frederick, Gandhi, Huayna Capac, Louis XIV, Mansa Musa, Pacal II, Pericles, Peter, Rameses II, Roosevelt, Willem Van Orange. These have at least one builder trait and no military traits.
The remaining leaders are more balanced, having either no military or builder traits or one of each.
This is not to say that if you're playing a "Warmonger" from the above list you should never have any periods of peaceful building, nor that if you're playing a "Builder" you should never go a-conquering, only about which way you should lean in your strategy towards winning the game.
Militarily, I'm strong enough to keep from being attacked, but I never feel like I can build up a decent enough force to go offensive. And I just kind of default to trying a cultural win somewhere around 1200-1500, which of course doesn't happen.
I would say plan ahead for your wars of conquest, and if you're playing a warmonger leader plan on having more of them. There are certain windows of opportunity, in my opinion, based on technology and leader traits (and to some extent on UUs). These should be kind of obvious. Set one production city up as your unit factory. You should almost always have this city cranking out units. The only time it isn't, it should be building military buildings (barracks, stable, drydock, airport, Heroic Epic) or else whatever health/happiness buildings are necessary to keep it running smoothly. Some production enhancers may be OK, too, depending. (Remember a Forge is also a happiness building.)
Lastly, when do you commit to a win? Do you pick your route as soon as your game starts base on your leader, or do you let it play out some first?
Thanks
Some of both. What I would recommend is that if you're playing a warmonger leader, push for a domination win. That's easily shifted into diplomacy or space race if you decide either that's the way you want to go or that domination isn't doable in that game. Thing is, with a warmonger leader you have to have a bigger empire than the AI builders, and about the only way you're going to get it is to conquer it. So you might as well start out going for domination, even if you change your mind later.
If you're playing a builder leader, decide early whether you want to go for a cultural victory or not. If you do, you'll have a different strategy from the very first than if you don't. But if you don't, then you can make your choices among space race, diplomatic, or even domination (using your tech advantage) as events unfold.
If you're playing a balanced leader, pick either of those roads and it should be workable.
?)
