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

[AusSpyder]

As the title suggests i'm far from good at this game but I enjoy it somewhat despite of that :P

I can steamroll chiefton, settler and warlord, but on prince if I have anyone on my continent they declare war on me really early on which I repel, I bring my only worker out to continue working and war begins again. I can hold them off well enough but i'm not growing while they are. By time I get set up enough to have enough units to take a city the enemy is usually 6+ cities and building new ones in rediculous spots half the time quicker than I can destroy them. I struggle along conquoring one stupidly placed city after another while my happiness plumets and I go broke, then I just sit there with my 4-5 crappy puppet cities and my 3-4 created ones with my production slowed to a crawl and unable to grow.

If I raze their cities they plonk a settler down again within turns of me moving troops out of the area.

This also ruins my culture victory as I've never won this way before.

On warlord I can often keep happiness in the green and I all but drown in gold.

More info, I've tried three games on prince. First game I had one city. I had built a worker, a monument and a couple other buildings, probably stonehenge and france came rolling in with 4-5 units.

Second I got attacked roughly the same time, this time by Alexander but he had even more troops and I died

Third time GHANDI of all people attacked me, he didn't do well but I was squashed between him and Cathrine who got sick of me hogging wonders (built Stonehenge) and took my capital in two turns while my army was defending my third city from Ghandi who had refused to declare peace without me giving him everything I own.

Also, as an additional question. Does rampaging barbarians only affect me? The first two games I got harassed by Barbarians the entire time I was at war (as well as before and after) but the barbarians didn't seem to bealine to my enemy, and I never see barbarians enter computer civs in huge groups

[Snotty]

A lot of the time the AI will attack you if it thinks you are weak and therefore easy pickings. It seems you are struggling to build a military to defend yourself in time. Perhaps you should focus on hooking up horses and iron as your very first priority. A few early horsemen, swords or even archers will increase your survivability drastically.

If youre feeling secure in your position you can then use these units to prune your neighbours putting you in a much stronger position to be the local top dog. Be careful to preserve your units. More than once I have lost all my units taking out civ B only to have civ C declare war on me because of my now weak military

If you want to post a save, say...something around turn 80-100? I would like to have a look at it and maybe I can give you some advice on the economic side of your game

[AusSpyder]

All three times I got attacked before getting Iron. The reason I remember this is cause I wanted catapaults to defend myself and didn't yet have iron

[Snotty]

Most games I start by researching animal husbandry so I can see if there are any horse nearby. If I have horses I can hook up near my capital I will research horseback riding and make some horsemen.

If there are no horses I will research up to iron working and hope there is iron nearby and then build swordsmen. You can upgrade warrior units to swordsmen when the iron is hooked up and instantly have a few formidable early units.

I prioritise gaining and building these strong, early units and I am rarely troubled by the AI

[Jaybe]

I wonder what size map we are talking about here. On large maps (continents, standard nr of civs & CS, prince diff) they always seem far away. Spend my time bonking barbs.

Your capital doesn't need a monument so early. My first monument is in my 2nd city (my 1st builds in non-cap cities is usually a monument). Your 1st 3-4 capital builds can be scouts/warriors/a worker.

[Zoetstofzoetje]

there's more than one way to Rome, AusSpyder. in part, your ability to win is a personal accomplishment that has to suit your character, personality, and style. you'll have to incorporate these tips within your own methods, rather than supplant your existing methods altogether.

Snotty's suggestions for a save game is good though methinks

[Mr Justice]

i think your trapped in builder mode logic.
you dont "require" the most advanced military to defend yourself. you can do so with warriors, however, when in builder mode that is not easily done becuase you effectively write off the hammers you used to build them (if they last till you get iron working great, you can upgrade them). dont be afraid to lose more units than you kill (thats desperate last ditch defending). as a defender you get the bonus of choosing the battlefield, allow the enemy attack your cities, it softens them up, allowing you to pick off some attacker units.

my first non warrior unit is usually an archer or chariot archer. they are very useful but only in conjunction with at least 1 other unit.

one other hint i would give is that you can go without many units so long as you keep plenty of gold. this is relevant where you want to risk having a small army, you purchase your defence when its needed. thats not purely a defensive tactic either, i used 2 hastily bought warriors with my pre existing warrior and spearman (4 units total) to wipe Ghandi out in my current game after he partially blocked me with his 2nd city. (i was lucky to have a spear man, he was curtosey of a tribal hut)

As i see it the higher up the dificulties you go then the more you will have to implement less than ideal stratagies (from your perspective) to survive. a prime example is the desire to hold off building units till you have units worthy of building. i found that very hard to give up.

[Nikolai]

If you do ICS, all the military you need to repeal attackers is an archer in every city.

[AusSpyder]

I don't know what ICS is.

I tried another game playing as songhai (I thought the barb bonus would come in handy, only found 1 camp all game.

Standard map. I was pretty pleased with myself with placement of my second city. While I wasnt quite as good as one tile over I cut a largish portion of the continent off from the rest, including a maritime city state. Third city was next to napoleon. I didn't want to put it there but there was zero iron anywhere neer me. I got a couple upgraded units from ruins which I think is the only thing that stopped me getting stomped on.

Then everyone keeps trying to get me to declare war on cathrin, so I do and pinch 4-5 workers off her, and later take 2 of her citys. By time my land is worked im running seriously low on funds even though ive built next to nothing and i've been sitting at -4 happiness for about 70 turns. I go about converting all russias farms to trading posts and napoleon decides my armys laughibly week and he wants to show me how its done (something like that) according to demographics I was 3/8 in army size. I reload the game to earlier save and move my army to his border before the DOW comes (cheap I know but i'm getting left behind and struggling) I hold him off, then nebudcadnezzer declares war on me saying i'm standing in the way of his world domination. By by russian cities.
Few turns later America decides i'm a war monger and is sick of me and declares. This is the guy who all game has been greating me like i'm his BFF, he's been getting luxuries I couldnt afford to give him simply because I couldnt afford to play turns with negative income either. So america invades, at this point i'm pushed back to my second city with 3 enemies hammering away at me. And let me tell you, that city DID have an archer. A crossbow man even. He died, so did the city.

Babylon had a good 20 or so units, he was FOUR TIMES bigger than the average army size, washington and france had pretty big armys too.

The whole game I declared war on only one person and at the request of my "friend" who ironicly enough is the one who decides i'm a warmonger. Taking russia would have put me first in land, at least on the continent I was on, but I was never first in millitary or bottom 1/4 either. It just seams there is zero way to not have the AI angry at me unless I give them tribute every time they demand it which I refuse to do

[Zoetstofzoetje]

sounds to me that you should place your cities in better places (with new luxury resources), maintain a larger army if only to scare off opponents. and in general you have to pump out settlers faster. remember, population = science = gold = production.

one way to get rich and stay it is to use that army to puppet other civs.

by building a good road network you can get your army from A to B quick. it also helps you to make money if you place the roads smart.

generally speaking, i think you should get a better feel for the game mechanics on warlord. there is no *right* way, it's about making the most of what you have there and then, and knowing the rules of the game by heart is all that differentiates a deity game from a chieftain one, save for an initial AI lead you need to catch up with.

[Zoetstofzoetje]

thinking about it: civ is like a game of poker. push all-in when you've got the nuts, and defend your weak spots!

[Nikolai]

You need more cities, and they need to be more tightly packed, I'm sure. ICS is all about getting lots of cities, fast. Myself, I'm no good ICS played and frankly don't like it. But it's efficient.

What I do, in short, early in the game: (there probably is way better ways to do it, but it works fine for me )

1) Settle where you start. Look around and pick the tech that gives you access to luxuries fast. If you have marble nearby or resources that can be mined, go for mining. If you have resources needing calendar, beeline to it.

2) Build a warrior first. Use the first to scout around.

3) Build a settler next. Defend it with one of the warriors.

4) Build a worker when the settler is finished. New city 3-4 tiles away, no more. For ICS, 3 tiles out and (IIRC) one up is most efficient. You want your cities packed so close they can aid each other on attack.

5) New cities build monuments first, then colloseums. All of them need an archer ASAP. If you have one archer per city and a couple melee in addition, you will soon be among the most mighty in the world if you get enough cities.

6) Your capital should build the Stonehenge after the worker. New cities should be able to feed you with enough workers while your capital, which probably is your most productive, builds settlers and military. Also try to get some key wonders, IMHO the Angkor Wat is most important. It gives -75% culture requirement for tile expansion in EVERY SINGLE CITY you have! It's VERY powerful, believe you me!

7) Only build improvements your cities can use now or soon. Anything else is a waste. Connect your cities to the capital ASAP. Build mostly trading posts, you don't need that much growth, the cities gives you plenty.

8) Get currency fast. It gives you markets. Markets = money. Also get education and universities fast. Science is king. By turn 150 in a normal speed game you should at least be around 100 science per turn with your cities alone. More if you conquer your enemies. They won't dare to attack you most probably. You should also be able to get some 40-80 gold per turn by that time. The pros even more, I'm sure. This is what I usually get as far as I can remember.

9) As such you can afford to build city states. Go for maritime and the occational cultural or military depending on your need. I'd say go for military CSs from what you write here.

[MxM]

I don't know what ICS is.

ICS is Infinite City Spam. However, I disagree with Nikolay that ICS is a good strategy in the beginning of the game. You CAN however expand relatively fast to 4-5 cites, but then you will stuck due to happiness. Coliseums will take forever to build in those small cities (and some of them are in bad locations because you are packing them), so those cities will not contribute for quite long time and it seems to me that you have problems long before that.
I would suggest you to build more military units, to place new cities only if you see important resource, even if it is not very close to your capital. Research technologies that give you a view of horses and iron. It is bound that you will have at least one of those not very far from your capital. And if everything fails, ally with city state that has horses or iron (I prefer iron first).

And you do not need archer in every city. You need an archer in every city that is under attack on in danger to be so.

[Zoetstofzoetje]

I rarely do ICS, only at deity due to a lack of choice. I don't like it, it makes the game uninteresting. When I get the chance I cherry-pick my cities' locations no matter how far, save for strategic considerations (e.g. I can close a mountain pass, bridge two oceans, etc.). It works for me. Others will hate it, no doubt.

Don't let anyone fool you into thinking that their way is the only way

[AusSpyder]

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. I was winning but the happiness and gold crippled me. 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 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. 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) but this took ages and 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, and I like siege weapons over archers for defence cause they shoot further and do way more damage, but I still lost my cities.

So in a nutshell, its the happiness/gold thats killing me even though i'm barely building anything. I usually have pretty crappy luck with resourses though, I don't remember a game when I started neer a luxury resourse I could sell, most of the time I get costal cities, if not its typically cows or something