Many Leaders Game 3 - Prince Domination

Just to start, I would say that the research, from this point of the game, became irrelevant.

My plan was easy : take off Mansa, Wong, colonize north islands and attack backward Khmer with promoted Cavalry and cannons.

The last years (or centuries ) of AC's reign was an almost infinite blood bath

For this turnset I adopted, and never changed since, Universal Suffrage, Slavery, Theocracy, Vasselage and Decentralization.

At first, Wong went off pretty fast. He was stucked on a small island, having only 3 archers and a hwatcha... WTH?
No need to say that 2 cavaleries were an overkill. Anyway, it wasn't a great loss as they continued on some barb settlements nearby.

I attacked Djenné with the main strike force, establishing a strong presence on Mansa continent. From there, THE army went for Timbultu and Kumbi Saleh, getting them not very fast but without major casualties.
Though Mansa started to defend with Muskets, he was no match to Combat 2,3,4 or Flanking 2 cavalry.

Two Korean cavs captured a barb city and, reinforced by another two, Mansa's city of Walata. I lost Navajo to Khmer by one turn, but managed to get it from them later on.

To Mansa's west, my cleaning force (cannon and 2 cavalry) captured Gao, the Tao holy city.

At this point, Mansa was over. I went for Amanghast and Niani, leaving him pants down, with only one polar city to the north.
Army was dispatched to the south-west, on the Khmer border. Some reinforcements followed from the mainland too - Cavalry, cannons, some rifles.

The plan was to strike on the Khmer from both sides - main strike from west ( 8 full galleons of cav & cannons ) and a small strike from east (3 galleons). Two of my ships got sunk though in the east, so I was left with a small party - 2 cannons and a cav, whiwh still managed to capture Avar - Khmer border city to the north-east.

I DoW on Khmer somewhere around the turn 265 (don't remember exactly, sorry ).

First cities were the hardest to get, but the progression was nice, without too much losses. More troops were on the road.

The major achievement of this war was my capture of this holy Hindu shrine and Wonder packed Khmer capital in turn 279:



During this period I was suffering very badly from the 40 turn oversees WW - I switched every mainland city to wealth and put culture slider @ 60% to cope with this revolution times.

Still, I wanted to go for as long as it was manageable, and the war lasted another ten turns, ending with this capture:



I settled for peace with Khmer, to recover a little bit from my FIFTY turns of oversees warring... He handed me another city, leaving him with two last cities. The problem is that his culture was just too much, so it was just a matter of time when I will get back to him.

I almost forgot to say - sometimes around my khmer capital capture, he managed to capture Ravenna on our mainland, attacking the lonely rifle with a bunch of trebs and knights. He lost about 20 units, but still got the city for a turn or two.

No pixies (or almost) before, so here is a small sum-up of the war (I missed several though):



All the cities were kept for domination of course, hurting my poor WW-affected eco even more.

Also, while visiting my new cities, I heard some nasty stuff about me:



Villain, maybe, but soon a victorious villain

Getting ten turns of recovery time, I managed even some more troops for the remaining Khmer cities (I have to live up to this reputation).

So, in turn 299 (full ten turns after the peace treaty) I DoWed poor Surya again (wouldn't his culture hurt my domination plans, I would leave him alive gladly), getting two more cities:



I was going for the last one, the one that he gave me with peace and got back from me on turn 299 - sending all his poor army for the lonely rifleman, and killing on it more than a half of it, when I noticed that I wasn't necessary any more :



So, time to see the globe ( not an easy thing to put all ones cities on the same screen ):



No surprise than getting this message on the next turn:



A little bit late, I agree, but I am not used to the domination pace. Being a builder-space guy, I'm rather reluctant on sending so much troops oversees ( maybe it's the lack of time ).

However, as Domination was the condition here, I complied

At the end of the game, I learned that my place in history is alongside, well, me :



How many of you will be able to say the same ?

Regarding your (for those who already achieved it) wins, I am the only one going for Mansa. Also, in my game Wong sucked.
I would never go after Justinian - even at the end of the game, he had more army than me and techs allowing a hard match for my promoted Cavalry.

Thanks to the AI, Surya did as usual in my games. An early powerhouse stays backwards, pursuing too many wonders and too many cities... Not that I would complain about it

I would never have the courage to go for all Justinian cities - it would take eternity.

Btw, I had the same problem with girlfriend's computer until last month when I got my work laptop

In my world Justinian was in a strong position. He had pushed Mansa and Wang off most of the good land leaving them with island empires.

My target was Sury, but after that it had to be Justy, because Wang and Mansa's land would give few tiles of land for domination.

The other task was to clean Shaka off his island empire to the north.

Galleon spam, Rifling, and traded for Nationalism for mass drafting. Globe city did a redcoat every turn.

The stack included a great spy and I used the spys a lot to drop the defences.


I declared on Sury afraid that the AP would send my econ into a nose dive with "defy" modifiers . But, of course, my empire is all Buddhist, with no AP religion at all. No city was affected. I defied any talk of peace and rained redcoat hell down on Khmer.


The war was fueled by a golden age, and later I got a second one.


War wariness and emacipation blah got pretty bad, but I just used the slider



Next was Justinian.

This war was not about cavalry sweeping away longbows. He had Grenadiers and big stacks of cavalry.

I weathered the onslaught with drafted redcoats on a wide wide front.



He picked up ironclads which left a lot of my units stranded on the first continent.

I gradually got a chance to attack his cities and scrapped my way to dominance.


Hard fought win which turned out to be a lot of fun.

A quick writeup as I had the forces to win, and all I had to do was finish.

From Turn 240 I had Surya down to 4 cities. By turn 250 he was gone and it was time to turn to Justinian
One of Surya's cities had the Pyramids, so I changed to Police State the turn I captured that city to combat WW. Might not have been the best move as he was dead soon after.



Turn 254: Communism in, switch to State Property. Great Spy gets on boat to Justinian.

I took 2 of Justinian's cities, he was a lot tougher than Surya. His cataphracts stood up to my cavalry pretty well.

On Turn 258 I razed Constantinople, I had real bad luck in taking it, lost 2 or 3 rifles with 85% odds. I couldn't hold it so I burned it to the ground.

Turn 260: I dropped a great spy bomb on Justinian. Tried to revolt the last city to take pressure off my formher Khmer cities but failed.

I got it to revolt the next turn and took and kept the final city, it was just a matter of time for borders to pop.

I spammed some more cities to the north including this beauty



And on the next turn





I think this is my earliest domination win, and it's my highest scoring BTS game. I'm happy with the way it went. Gilgamesh is brutal early with Vultures and Ziggurats, and I leveraged that to a big tech lead so I could finish domination with superior units. Creative's good early, Protective got some use with the free drill on rifleman. Free City Defense didn't get so much use. Ziggurats were a nice early courthouse for a large empire early. Vultures were sick, I cleared my whole continent just using them, and a spy. No catapults were needed.

Not a lot to report. Finished the game. The Khmers were a pushover and then I went after Korea. Lost some cities as they flipped to Justin-Ian (he had Sistine and other stuff closeby). Once Korea was driven from the continent I declared on Justin-Ian and rolled over him with cannons and infantry. He was down to one city when I reached the domination limit on turn 305.





It was a fun game for a while but I find the mopping up in Domination tedious.

I had a really good report to show, but my computer decided to have a critical error while I was writing ( and, as always, forgot the "save often" rule :suicide: ). So I'll offer you almost a comic book... but, besides the war, this was a uneventeful round.....

Started by discovering how to make frigates:

A critical part of my plans ....
Then I started backfilling the way to Rifling:

Burned a GM in Constatinople.... the money will serve to upgrade my berserks to rifles and my trebs to cannons when the tech is avaliable

It was official: we were the top dog.... I wonder what they will say when we make the rifles upgrade:

With the stage set it was about time:

For the two people that are actually reading my reports, this may sound strange.. I said that Wang was my target, but , after thinking a while, the last thing I would want was to attack a CG3 longbow garrison with the culture still up ( like it would happen if I relied in frigates to cut culture defences ( too slow ). Surya was conveniently weak and his territory serves well as a staging arena for the final attack to Justinian ( that has to go down... )...
First city falled easily:

Another tech in the path of rifling:

Second city falls:

Here I suffered a violent conterstrike, but my pike + berserks team + phants holded well. Besides that, Surya had only one coastal city and no one helped him ( Justinian even saved me from the defy of the AP vote, by blocking a vote to stop the war ( he had his hands full, so I suppose he wanted to dogpile Surya...) ), so I had a nice naval line of troop supply... but the war would had been much harder if this didn't happened:

Upgraded my berserks ASAP to rifles ( except some I wanted to get another promo ) and captured next city with them:

More cities joining our empire:

This one was a real price... double shrined city

Other crucial tech for the war effort ( shutted down research for 2/3 truns to upgrade trebs to cannons ):

And another city fell... Surya was with 2 cities at that time

And finally Surya is no more:

Last 2 turns were only used for healing troops.

Reminders for next turnset:

War with Justinian is iminent... Shortly will revolt to PS + Natio and build some jails, do a drafting round, especially in ex-Surya's cities, and declare war to Justinian before he researches Gunpowder and upgrades his UU to cuiraseers ( and before he finishes communism... with SP , his eco can become viable.... ). After that will smash Korea ( when reach Physics to Airships... Korea is pursuing it )

Yea. Finally done! I actually did better than I expected, as I just rushed my turns to get to the end. There were one weird thing I noticed about my game, after reading the other dominations: I am the first victory, so far, to win on maces, knights and trebuchets

When I invaded Khmer in my last forty turns, they were relatively "backward". I was up against longbows, but with my plethora of trebuchets, they were no problem.

I quickly finished off the Khmer, reducing them to an island, and extorting Guilds from them. (I won't bore you with pictures).

Along the way, Angkor Thom flipped to Justinian, which made me mad and led to my declaring of war on him. Similarly, I was up against relatively weak defences besides those annoying Cataphracts. But after the first few cities, the defences were just pathetic.

Once Justinian was off the large island, I turned against Wang, who was peacefully teching away with Mansa. However, his garrisons were even sadder. I did sacrifice a LOT of troops on the odd Musketman or Grenadier, but it didn't take long to get this:





I have a ton of other screenshots, but I'm too busy to upload them all.

SHORT ENDGAME ANALYSIS:
- Killing off Shaka and Izzy early was extremely detrimental to my tech pace and game
- My economy was the pits, but in the end, I was just running 0% anyways

The turn before the victory: http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/96336/Charlemagne_AD-1818.CivBeyondSwordSave

Impressive! I didn't think it could be done with the Knight/Mace/Treb setup - but that was a really nice looking win from you!

Have you gotten much use from the amphibious promotion those beserk > rifleman promotions got you? IIRC, there were quite a few rivers they'd work nicely at?

With a beachead on the mainland, figure you'll roll everyone up there pretty fast now?

The fact that I dinn't want to wait for Rifling for the attack was the main reason for attacking Surya instead of Wang.... even CR berserks are no match for pro longbows fortified with cultural defense still up. But the fact that we can can attack crossing rivers ( a thing that AI simply doesn't understand ) helped a lot.... Now it is time to attack justinian ( before he upgrades his UU .... strangely AI in my game negleted Gunpowder ) and I'll have to do some island hopping... maybe I'll finish with a naval aproach to Mansa ( that has his territory scattered in the northern islands ). More time consuming, but more fun...

Well apologies for taking a while to finish my game off but at least its done now.

Well the final domination push was the long grind of moving troops, capturing cities and then waiting for resistance to subside.

How did it go. Straight on resuming we went after Wang, although with retrospect I probably should have gone after Justinian who had a bogger empire and was only slightly more advanced.

Having captured and of Korea’s territory I wnet after Justinian finally booting home off the large island in turn 280 to achieve domination.

I stuck with keeping a large financial rich economy as per my theme hence the ridiculous population of 77%...

Economy still strong at the end.