Prince level and barbarians

[MxM]

I am playing my first game on the prince difficulty level, after two wins at Noble, through the space race.

I am in the first half of the game and I have 5 cities (1000 AD). So far I am sharing the first place in the score.

Anyway, there are two things that are much more different from the Noble level.

First, it is much more difficult to grow cites, probably because there are more penalties for crowding. As it stands right now, it will be very difficult for me to grow any city to size 12.

Second, the barbarians. There are just to many of them. Normally, by this time, I would have some units to spare for my military campaign, but now, I just have to produce them to keep barbarians away from my tile improvements.

In short, it is much more difficult to play on prince, even without wars with AI (I intentionally do not chose the state religion, to keep good relations with others. I do not think that I can afford any wars at this point).

Those who like challenges, will like this. I can only imagine how hard would it be on higher difficulties.

[MxM]

The level of barbarians may be related to this particular map. As you can see on the screen short, I am practically in the middle of the map, and the rest of the civs are to the right of me (there are 4 other civs). The west and south parts of the map are empty. Normally (Civ II and III) I would love that, because there is room to expand (This is highland map, so it is not a globe). Over here though, I can't. I am already only at 80% of science, and I am behind the others in research. So, I can't afford one more city.

Instead, that free space to west and south is an excellent barbarian generator. I could use it for my benefits, capturing the barbarian cities, as I did with my fifth city ( the top one), but first, I can't afford to maintain another city, second, even if I could, the city is probably not in the best location, and third, just to go and raze barbarian city takes too much military effort. Plus, if I do not populate the aria, new cities will span.

In short. I am just defending from the waves of barbarians from the south and west.

[Sartaq]

I'm going to start my first prince game tonight. Barbs I can live with but I don't like the sound of those difficult cities tho...

[MxM]

Opps, the screenshort (esp. minimap):

[MxM]

Originally posted by Sartaq
I'm going to start my first prince game tonight. Barbs I can live with but I don't like the sound of those difficult cities tho...

There are more difficult, but not "game braking" type of difficult. They are just smaller. And resources become REALLY important, as oppose to noble difficulty.

But I am at the first/second place in score, that means that I have lots of population. Plus, this time I had specialized wonder city, which got most of the wonders so far (more than half anyway). So smaller size is not a show stopper, it just make you think more

If anything, the barbarians give me much more problems now.

[MxM]

Actually, after browsing the screenshorts on the other thread, where most people play on noble, having 11 size city at 1000AD is actually quite good, despite of the prince level.

[Sirian]

Highlands is probably the toughest map in the game.

Water maps (Archipelago, Islands, sometimes Continents) are about a whole difficulty level easier than land maps. You would probably have to play Monarch on Archiepelago to get the same challenge level.

fyi...


- Sirian

[alva]

Highlands is probably the toughest map in the game.

Indeed it is. My personal favourite but boy...can this be a though nut to crack.
I was able to beat monarch on this one but there is no way I'll be going emperor any time soon.