How the hell do you win on prince+ with neerby neighbors

[Nikolai]

To clarify, what I described above can be used for ICS, but I don't. Use the same procedure but with larger spacing and taller cities, and you will do just fine. I almost never go below 0 happiness.

[Mr Justice]

AusSpyder:

you gave a little more info in your last post.

let me analyse this becuase imo it highlights where your going wrong.

The only unessisary buildings I think I had was a couple culture buildings (no museams or anything beyond that) 1 barracks and armory and a workshop in every city

i disagree, nearly all of those buildings are unnecessary. the only buildings i feel are necessary are monument and library. every other building is situational.
remember each building contributes maintenance, so when you say you are having gold problems im reading you built too much infrastructure.

I had NO UNIVERSITYS cause at the time when i could build them my army was getting disbanded every couple turns so I set every city to build only wealth for a bit.

to me this is poor planning. the return on wealth is very low. i would much rather convert mines to trading posts and continue to build useful stuff, but you continued on to state,

I recovered gold situation after converting a lot of tiles to trading posts, even hills (I usually build mines) forrest tiles (usually build lumbermills) and rivers (usually farms)

this highlighs what i feel is possibly the root of your problem. you value gold too lowly and production too highly. i rarely build mines and almost never lumbermills, i will change that if i am making a city which produces units or if i decide i want a higher production city for wonders. but otherwise every tile is a trading post unless i justify why it shouldnt be (the city has low growth so farm. ect).

REMEMBER you can buy all your buildings or units quiet cheaply.

my hapiness was in the pits this whole time and it allowed Alex and Japan to double declare on me in about 10 turns even though my millitary was 4th in the world

without knowing the details i think you stagnated, your ranking deteriated and AI smelt blood (i find the AI acts like a pack now, when they sniff weakness they all declare). happiness needs to be planned for. consider that it will deteriate at say 1 per 2 turns (number plucked out of air), therefore at 10 happiness you have 20 turns till it runs out. this gives you a rough schedule by which you need another 10 happiness. (2 new resources or 2 coluseums and a circus.)

I like siege weapons over archers for defence cause they shoot further and do way more damage, but I still lost my cities.

i agree, but combined forces rule in Civ, unless you are counter atacking half damaged units your only stalling the enemy (i viciously exploit the AI's lack of ability here)

So in a nutshell, its the happiness/gold thats killing me

Correct

even though i'm barely building anything

Not correct.

I usually have pretty crappy luck with resourses though

i like to start with 2 lux within 3 hexs, not uncommon and i will restart if i dont

I don't remember a game when I started neer a luxury resourse I could sell

whar? your even thinking about this at that point in the game? thats civ 4 thinking imo.
resources are vital in this game. from the minute you start playing you need a plan for how you'll get your next resource. happiness can be problematic in this game, resources are the cheapest, easist meanss of getting it. i'll place cities specifically to grab resources. granted my 2nd city wont be a thudra city with its 1 redeeming tile being a silver. but i'll build that city 5th/6th no problem.

to sum up it all up.
stop building so many mines/lumbermills/farms.
build more farflung cities for grabing resources.
target your city production, less infrastructure.

[MxM]

Just for fun, make one or two more workers than you usually do, and put most of them on auto except may be one, which you will use to get strategic resources and roads. Current worker AI does quite good job prioritizing improvements depending on your happiness, money situation and city focus. See what it does.

[MxM]

Prob is, ICS strategy doesn't really allow for me to win culturally and i've never had a legit culture win (only when i turned off domination and wiped everyone out first). Hell i've never had any wins on princ.

I played another game last night, this time as Rome.

For cultural victory you have to chose Egypt or France. I would recommend Egypt because of their special building and chariots rocks (especially if you have problem in the beginning of the game, they are cheap and do not need horses. 3 chariots an warrior may take a weak city.) And yes, extra bonus for wonders is very welcome.

[Jaybe]

For cultural victory you have to chose Egypt or France.

Or, with additional (successful) experience, any other civ.
SPQR, for instance, at least at Prince difficulty.

[AusSpyder]

So I basicly build a monument, library and gold making buildings only? See this is what I don't understand, I mean I thought I was being real stingy in picking what buildings I would let a city have but apparently I was being way over generous? I just don't see what the point of all those buildings are for then if building thems gonna run me into the ground.

Also reason ive tried to have some high production is cause i'm a bit of a wonder whore. Ive quit games when I didn't get a good early wonder I like (stonehenge, pyramids or the one that reduces new tile costs by 75%) but I never get all three unless i'm on settler

[Jaybe]

You don't NEED no bleepin' wonders, AusSpyder! Yes, they ARE nice, but NOT necessary. Don't sacrifice other necessities for wonders.

When markets/banks/exchanges become available, make them HIGH priority (as far as buildings are concerned). They don't cost maintenance and they provide funds to be able to afford other buildings and military. Other buildings are selective: your BIG cities get all the science multipliers, but others may only get a library (science-wise); your army producers may get a minimum of non-military buildings, other than financial buildings; culture buildings can become expensive when all are built so do NOT build them everywhere.

Remember that in late game, your units may cost 7-9 gold each. Have fun managing to afford all of them along with all the buildings you built, or delete buildings & units as you need to (e.g., you've built barracks in all cities to enable Heroic Epic; after it's completed you can delete barracks in your non-military cities).

[Zoetstofzoetje]

i only build barracks in the city with heroic epic. it's just not worth it under most conditions. in fact, i hardly build any building at all, unless they have some derived purpose

[Mr Justice]

AusSpyder:

firstly as Jaybe says, wonders are not necessary. i know its nice to have and all of that but you do have to leave certain stratagies behind as you go up the difficulty level. but a better way of expressing this is at higher levels the choice of building wonders has ramifications, and that is not being able to build other things (example building units to defend yourself).

secondly on buildings i think i am a little more relaxed than Zoetstofzoetje, if you want to know my que is nearly always Monument, library, market, coloseum, university, bank, temple, public school, stock exchange. (this from memory)

other buildings like circus, monestry (where i have wine and incence, rarely if not), observatory my get inserted into the que above, they are all nice buildings too.

Theaters are also built but only when happiness is an issue. i dont like negative happiness and the higher the positive the better (golden ages and if you have the policy, add your 1/2 happiness to social policies)

workshop will only get built occasionaly. the production bonus is nice, but it means the city builds more buildings and generates more maintenece, (its not a problem with workshop itself, just the knockon effect of it) i apply this logic to all bonus production buildings (appart from forge)

i only rarely build food buildings, i prefer spending my gold on maritime CS.

the barracks, armoury and other military buildings may or may not get built in my unit producers, but i would probably build forge. i dont think experiance is that important, if your picking off lots of half dead units with your full healt units they'll get experice quickly and dont need the initial extra promos. generally unit producers will stop the building que at library or market (only if they have nice tiles though). i use great generals to improve my army and will keep my first 2 on standby for the rest of the game.

but one other thing occurs to me and that is the timing of buildings as they become available to you. a trick i have used is to build units and immediately disband them. you get a few gold and you can do this before you have reaserched currency (and can then build wealth). this is a stop gap becuase the i wouldn't want to build any of the available buildings that can be built.

one final point i would make is that as i go through the various eras i will relax the rules. by the time im in renainsence or industrial era im trying to achieve something (like invading that other continent, or laying the foundation to convert some cities to major production cities (for the space ship)).

final point about my game style is that i dont like culture wins. i dislike staying small. i do like social policies though so i do cultivate culture.

[Mr Justice]

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[AusSpyder]

It doesn't seem like the AI has these limitations even at lower levels. I think that could be where I went wrong, trying to learn from them

[Quick]

It doesn't seem like the AI has these limitations even at lower levels. I think that could be where I went wrong, trying to learn from them

I learned in previous versions of Civ that the AI isn't very intelegent. When 10+ workers are moving 3 -4 turns from west to east and a different 10+ workers are moving 3 - 4 tuerns east to west, something is wrong. The day I saw that I quit automating workers. I often see the IA build (or suggest) city locations that are not quite situated for the best resource usage.

The AI wins at higher levels, not with greater intelegence, but with greater advantages.

[wodan11]

I learned in previous versions of Civ that the AI isn't very intelegent. When 10+ workers are moving 3 -4 turns from west to east and a different 10+ workers are moving 3 - 4 tuerns east to west, something is wrong.

It's much worse than that. They will farm a Town, and cottage a farm, right next to each other.

[Jaybe]

It's much worse than that. They will farm a Town, and cottage a farm, right next to each other.

And after they're finished they will cottage* the just-built farm and farm the just-built cottage!
Well, sometimes they will, but sometimes they will go off and do it to some other location; or (maybe) something else entirely that makes sense even.

* Edit: when I say cottage here, I mean trading post. After all, the subject IS civ5!

[Ming]

They also like to expose themselves to danger. In the middle of a war, they will move up to a newly taken city, and start making improvements, only to die shortly after that