How to Conquer the Map

[johncross21]

I've been playing various versions of Civilisation for years.

I've never taken over the whole Map on Emperor. I probably play lower

but I can't do it on Civ 5 even on warlord. theres too many penalties for unhappiness and the units costs too much. any tips ?

[strijder20]

Play as Mongolia. Tech Chivalry. Build Keshiks, Keshiks, Keshiks and Keshiks - and the odd horseman to cap the cities- , puppet everything, ignore unhappiness and just kill off the revolting barbarians.
Oh, and of course take cities with those Keshiks, in case it wasn't obvious yet

[FeiLing]

so your goal is to not raze any cities?

limit growth everywhere. raze cities down to 1-3 pop (3 with colosseum is fine) then annex and buy courthouses. Use autocracy (police state?) SP in that game too.

but it becomes much easier if you raze all those super bad cities to the ground and just keep those that are somewhat reasonable.
of course you can't raze more than 1-2 usually at the same time, so that slows you down quite a bit.

[johncross21]

i usually keep cities if they are good but burn the poor ones. that helps.

what is the best number of cities to keep

how do you reduce the pop of cities you own and can you raze them

[joshua43214]

As you conquer, you will end up with an army of workers. Have them trail your army and build a trading post for 1 turn over every farm, and a fort over the wheat. put Tp's on all the hills that don't provide food, they will starve down to something more managable.

Try to conquer up the happiness wonders as well. use nukes to capture cities that down have wonders, they wipe out population and pillage the country side. 2 or 3 dozen stealth bombers scattered arround the map will deal with rebels - just ignore hapiness. Once you have all the SP's you need just start annexing.

I usually don't make a total victory since its just more grind, but it would not be a problem to do so. I just ended a game where I started to steamroll with 9 SB's, ended with over 33 of them. I played the last 200 turns negative happy, and was in the negative teens or lower for over 50 of the last turns until I got the capitol of the games wonder whore. Once you reach a certain point, all that matters is gold. Loss of production and the very unhappy penalty in combat does not stop SB's from being overpowering...

[joncnunn]

Originally Posted by johncross21

I've been playing various versions of Civilisation for years.

I've never taken over the whole Map on Emperor. I probably play lower

but I can't do it on Civ 5 even on warlord. theres too many penalties for unhappiness and the units costs too much. any tips ?

Raze the useless cities the AI founds (those not taking in any resource not already within 3 hexes of another city.)

And while you want to initially puppet the city, annex it after it comes out of resistance when you can cash rush a court house. (This removes the base city unhappiness)

Honor has several good happiness features for conquering:
1. Happiness from defense structures. With the policy build them in your base cities for the bonuses. And Walls are actually high priority to puppets.

2. Obsolete units can be used as MP with Honor. That includes the lowly scout.