Yet another "Need advice" thread - Prince

[Dizzy75]

Sorry I can't post a save yet since I'm at work.

The game I left before bed last night was about 1685 AD. I'm HC on standard/continents/Prince/normal speed/6 civs. As I recall, the situation looked like:

1. Me ~2500
2. Isabella ~1800 (Annoyed)
3. Catherine ~1700 (Friendly)
4. Julius Caesar ~1500 (Pleased)
5. Cyrus ~600 (Cautious)
6. Montezuma 0 (Dead)

Catherine, Julius, and Cyrus share a continent and border each other. Catherine has pounded Cyrus down to 3-4 cities, and Cathy + Julius are friendly with each other (and happy with me).

Isabella is the only one left on my continent. She and Cathy have been exchanging the #2 spot, but Isa's land mass is bigger + better (I think), so she could be in #2 to stay.

I feel like it may be too late for Domination - my continent looks like less than 2/3rds total land area, so it would require conquering some of the other continent.

My instinct is to build rifles (have 8-10 already, 6 with city raider 2+), research cannons, and blow Isa up. But I'm not sure how I would achieve a non-points victory by doing that.

Would I be better off letting Isa stay in second place? Would that basically allow Cathy to vote for me in UN elections?

Imo the only way for Cathy to take over #2 would be to kill Cyrus...so maybe I should galleon-up and wipe Cyrus myself, to prevent her expansion.

Any thoughts?

 

[johnny_rico]

If you're just looking to win the game, I would say diplomatic is an easy option. Kill Cyrus, keep Isa off your back, stay friendly with cathy and julius, and maintain the lead. If you're not able to get the majority vote for a diplomacy victory, just build the spaceship. Your large lead indicates you are the tech leader.

However, I still don't think it is too late for a domination victory. How many islands have you found on the map that are unsettled. Usually on a map this size, you can gain an additional 8-10% of the total land by settling all the islands.

For the diplomacy victory, I would probably keep isa in second place meaning julius and cathy would continue to vote for you, given you current relations with those two continue.

 

[Dizzy75]

I think they will continue as long as I don't attack them - they both converted to my religion (Confucianism) early on and I've been feeding them old techs regularly.

I did settle one tiny island, but don't remember what the rest of the map looks like. Will get back to it hopefully later tonight...

So basically, if I do kill Isa and vault Cathy into #2, I will likely be *competing* with her for diplo victory?

 

[opensilo]

One option is the domination-diplomatic victory. Conquer Isabella and grow your cities as large as possible to get the necessary population to simply vote yourself the winner.

If the war between Cyrus and Cathy is still going on, declare war on Cyrus. That was you get even more "common struggle" diplomatic points with her.

The ideal situation would be if you can get Cathy and Julius to start fighting each other. Julius might be easier to bribe. It might cost you many techs if they are friendly, but it may be possible.

If you can maintain and increase your huge tech lead and be the first to tanks, you can use ships to bombard coastal cities to zero coastal defence, then level them with tanks and artillery. Then you can decide if you want a domination victory (keep the cities) or a diplo-domination victory (raze them). In the latter case, the total population of the world goes down, so your percentage goes up, plus you don't have to deal with managing a huge overseas empire. If you still don't have enough of the vote, do the same thing to Rome.

With a sufficient tech lead and a good land/economic base, you can dictate your victory condition. At 1685, there are still many turns left.

Bottom line: take Isa's cities ASAP. Then reassess.

 

[Dizzy75]

Ah, very good points there opensilo. Sounds like a plan! Somehow it just "felt" wrong to let Isa get more powerful, when she so badly needs a kick in the ass.

Cyrus and Cathy aren't at war as I recall - it would take about 5 turns for Cathy to wipe Cyrus off the map at this point. More reason to grab cities now, I guess.

 

[Crighton]

Take out Isabella pronto. If Cyrus is still alive take him out next and fortify the hell out of his cities since they will be your launch pads to driving across the other continent. Even if Cyrus isn't alive but youhave thew whole of your continent and the remaining two are friendly you still have spaceship and diplo victories left available depending on how long it takes to off Isabella.



Also:

6. Montezuma 0 (Dead)

priceless, I love seeing that

 

[opensilo]

Ah, very good points there opensilo. Sounds like a plan! Somehow it just "felt" wrong to let Isa get more powerful, when she so badly needs a kick in the ass.

Yeah, she usually needs it bad. One of the best things about her is that she usually builds a few shrines to help you decide which of her cities to target first!

 

[Dizzy75]

Ok, so I wiped Isa, got enough population to secure UN Secretary-General each time but not enough for Diplo victory without Julius' vote.

Cathy ended up wiping Cyrus, and then actually declaring war on Julius. A few turns later, he *still* abstained from Diplo victory vote, so...wtf. I ended up joining Cathy and taking some cities, making peace and winning via Space Race in 1976.

Thing is, my "normalized" score on Prince was less than my Domination score on Noble (1963 AD). Didn't make much sense to me since I felt Prince was a pretty big step up from Noble - wars were harder anyway, and it was a lot harder to keep ahead in tech and score. What can I do to get a better score? Are some victory types worth more than others? Does # of turns left make that much of a difference?

 

[Darkhrse]

The key, apparently, to getting high scores is winning early. Ironically, the highest score I've been able to attain was in a Prince game I finished two days ago with 12k points because I won by Domination by the early 1800s. I was Tokugawa (by random choice), playing a Continents map on Marathon speed. Basically, the earlier you win, the higher you score. Everything else is secondary.

The next question you'll ask then is how to win early. Since you seem to be comfortable with wars, the best answer for you is to start warring early. This is best for Conquest and Domination type victories. As soon as you have Axemen, build tons of them and don't hesitate to attack. As a matter of fact, in the beginning, don't build anything but Axemen. When you've beaten the first few civs (if not taken them out) so that they won't trouble you for next several centuries, then you can focus on building your support structures. And then go back to building your army. There are lots of strategy threads about this from better players out there.

Cultural and Diplomatic victories, IMHO, require quite a bit more planning and both must begin really early also. For the former, you must recognize immediately which cities will focus on culture; for the latter, you must recognize which civs to be really friendly with. The key, again, is "early".

And to answer your last question: I could be mistaken but the type of victory does not have bearing on the score. Just how early you can win.

 

[cabert]

The key, apparently, to getting high scores is winning early. Ironically, the highest score I've been able to attain was in a Prince game I finished two days ago with 12k points because I won by Domination by the early 1800s. I was Tokugawa (by random choice), playing a Continents map on Marathon speed. Basically, the earlier you win, the higher you score. Everything else is secondary.

true, time is the key
wrong, everything isn't secondary : the population is VERY important. If you feel you'll be winning, don't stress on more units, stress on food! growing is the key to population, population is the key to score! Don't raze all you neighbours

The next question you'll ask then is how to win early. Since you seem to be comfortable with wars, the best answer for you is to start warring early. This is best for Conquest and Domination type victories. As soon as you have Axemen, build tons of them and don't hesitate to attack. As a matter of fact, in the beginning, don't build anything but Axemen. When you've beaten the first few civs (if not taken them out) so that they won't trouble you for next several centuries, then you can focus on building your support structures. And then go back to building your army. There are lots of strategy threads about this from better players out there.

Cultural and Diplomatic victories, IMHO, require quite a bit more planning and both must begin really early also. For the former, you must recognize immediately which cities will focus on culture; for the latter, you must recognize which civs to be really friendly with. The key, again, is "early".

And to answer your last question: I could be mistaken but the type of victory does not have bearing on the score. Just how early you can win.

space race gives less points than domination at the same date
There are modifiers to the score. search through the forum, you'll find all the details.

 

[Darkhrse]

Thanks, Cabert, for the clarifications. Like I said, there are better players out there with more accurate answers

 

[Dizzy75]

Ah, thanks for the info. I suppose it makes sense that Domination would yield better scores, since you're likely to also have higher population.

I've read a couple threads, but I can't seem to find one that explains how "normalized score" is calculated (the one that "really" matters). I've had 50,000+ game scores on small Prince maps that reduce to pathetic 1,200+ scores in HoF...while my last Standard map Prince game came out to 12,000ish game score but 6,200ish normalized. Anyone have a link to a thread that explains how the "normalized" score is calculated?