I've played DoC on and off for the past two years, most of which was the older version with expansion civics. After discovering the SVN early this spring, I've played some crazy games, centering around the new expansion stability system.
I'm the kind of guy who loves to break a game, and the fact that expansion instability was capped at -25 intrigued me. I first played a Holy Romans into the Prussians game where I ended up holding all of Europe and Muscovy to meet my UHV. Then I decided, why stop? The Prussians don't pay military unit upkeep, so my military can expand forever! I then, from 1960 in an Epic game, conquered the entire planet by 2003, winning my UHV in 1990 from finishing the tech tree, as my pop hadn't climbed up to meet the domination limit. I was barely stable at the end, holding on based on happiness, civic, and economic growth stability. I was solid until the economic growth slowed and I realized I would inevitably go into negative stability.
The only limiting factor in this that I had to worldbuild for was courthouses. With high end game inflation, and over 100 cities, maintenance is unmanageable. I held on for a long time, but after controlling nearly all of the old world my economy was in tatters.
I intended to play that game longer, but a save breaking SVN update hit while I was taking a break from the game (this was March) so when I came back to DoC I had to make a new ridiculous game to play, which I will talk about here. If you guys are interested in the older game as well, I think I have a screenshot or two, and the old, now broken saves, if anybody can use them.
My new game is founded on a different idea. Normally, when you build a massive territorial empire, you want to rush for fascism to get you totalitarianism, building a fascist/communist state (fascist is better, btw). Instead, after crunching all the numbers, I realized the most stable government possible in DoC SVN is Theocracy+Vassalage+Agrarianism+Fanaticism+Warrior Code in the middle ages, with religious uniformity. The economy civic is irrelevant. With max happiness stability, you can reach +35 domestic stability, enough to make the expansion penalty mostly irrelevant. If you want to rule the world, your expansion stability will be -25 no matter what you do, so the minor bonuses totalitarianism and other civics offer to lower expansion penalties are less effective than maximizing stability.
The problems here are obvious. First of all, you have to stay in the middle ages the entire game. Second, if you want to prepare, you have to be a classical or earlier civ, and deal with everybody spawning on you all the time. Lastly, other people will eventually have better units than you. Civs like Prussia will spawn with Rifleman and Cannons, while you'd have musketmen and knights. Not a pretty picture.
So I had to choose what civ to play as. Most are terrible for this. The finalists were Persia, China, Mongolia, and Rome. Persia has a terrible UU for this situation, and while the UP looks good, it won't matter in the long run. China has plenty of time, and a UP that helps prepare for the empire, but a UU that doesn't conquer things. Crossbowman in general have little use. Mongolia has a great UU, good UB, and an ok UP, but spawns too late and with too little for my purposes. It takes a couple hundred years to get Mongolian China in shape to conquer the world, and I wouldn't have that much time before European civs were knocking me down with better units.
No, the answer was Rome. The UP allows for effective economic development of crappy territory, something that would become very necessary in Russia and Asia. The UU, while not in any way better than a Heavy Swordsman, is cheaper, is not outdated by the heavy swordsman (they coexist) while the heavy swordsman's bonus becomes irrelevant in time. Not to mention Roman Roads, which help in a medieval multi-continental empire.
My next posts will be about the game I ended up playing, but feel free to ask questions about anything I did. I'm not sure if anybody has thought to do this before me.
I'm the kind of guy who loves to break a game, and the fact that expansion instability was capped at -25 intrigued me. I first played a Holy Romans into the Prussians game where I ended up holding all of Europe and Muscovy to meet my UHV. Then I decided, why stop? The Prussians don't pay military unit upkeep, so my military can expand forever! I then, from 1960 in an Epic game, conquered the entire planet by 2003, winning my UHV in 1990 from finishing the tech tree, as my pop hadn't climbed up to meet the domination limit. I was barely stable at the end, holding on based on happiness, civic, and economic growth stability. I was solid until the economic growth slowed and I realized I would inevitably go into negative stability.
The only limiting factor in this that I had to worldbuild for was courthouses. With high end game inflation, and over 100 cities, maintenance is unmanageable. I held on for a long time, but after controlling nearly all of the old world my economy was in tatters.
I intended to play that game longer, but a save breaking SVN update hit while I was taking a break from the game (this was March) so when I came back to DoC I had to make a new ridiculous game to play, which I will talk about here. If you guys are interested in the older game as well, I think I have a screenshot or two, and the old, now broken saves, if anybody can use them.
My new game is founded on a different idea. Normally, when you build a massive territorial empire, you want to rush for fascism to get you totalitarianism, building a fascist/communist state (fascist is better, btw). Instead, after crunching all the numbers, I realized the most stable government possible in DoC SVN is Theocracy+Vassalage+Agrarianism+Fanaticism+Warrior Code in the middle ages, with religious uniformity. The economy civic is irrelevant. With max happiness stability, you can reach +35 domestic stability, enough to make the expansion penalty mostly irrelevant. If you want to rule the world, your expansion stability will be -25 no matter what you do, so the minor bonuses totalitarianism and other civics offer to lower expansion penalties are less effective than maximizing stability.
The problems here are obvious. First of all, you have to stay in the middle ages the entire game. Second, if you want to prepare, you have to be a classical or earlier civ, and deal with everybody spawning on you all the time. Lastly, other people will eventually have better units than you. Civs like Prussia will spawn with Rifleman and Cannons, while you'd have musketmen and knights. Not a pretty picture.
So I had to choose what civ to play as. Most are terrible for this. The finalists were Persia, China, Mongolia, and Rome. Persia has a terrible UU for this situation, and while the UP looks good, it won't matter in the long run. China has plenty of time, and a UP that helps prepare for the empire, but a UU that doesn't conquer things. Crossbowman in general have little use. Mongolia has a great UU, good UB, and an ok UP, but spawns too late and with too little for my purposes. It takes a couple hundred years to get Mongolian China in shape to conquer the world, and I wouldn't have that much time before European civs were knocking me down with better units.
No, the answer was Rome. The UP allows for effective economic development of crappy territory, something that would become very necessary in Russia and Asia. The UU, while not in any way better than a Heavy Swordsman, is cheaper, is not outdated by the heavy swordsman (they coexist) while the heavy swordsman's bonus becomes irrelevant in time. Not to mention Roman Roads, which help in a medieval multi-continental empire.
My next posts will be about the game I ended up playing, but feel free to ask questions about anything I did. I'm not sure if anybody has thought to do this before me.