Domination on Immortal/Deity - a noob's guide

beetle said:

I think I can make it work for me. I won’t be winning by the Modern Era, but that is okay.

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As soon as I got one cap, two other civs DOW’d me. I lost the cap I took and one of my own cities (just for one turn, but it was still devastating). No amount reloading could save me this fate. I kept playing for long while, because it was fun, and got the caps of those two civs -- but it was getting into the 300's and I am sure the runaway will launch before to long, so I gave up and went back to my T23 to try Liberty.

consentient said:

Everything is primed for an attack on the weak neighbour. This map would definitely have been slightly stronger going Liberty instead of Honor IMO, but maybe that's because I'm still a better Liberty player?

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I am totally new to 3-city Liberty. What is the advantage there? I feel like I can get 3 cities out with Tradition and Honor about as fast as I do with Liberty. I would like to understand more about what makes this map better for Liberty than Honor.

My Liberty run is going much better than my try with honor did. But does Liberty DV have even faster expectations for getting that first cap? I have fewer problems with gold, but also I did not forget about Calendar and someone other than my chosen first target got the Great Wall. Those two variables might be the real difference.

Update T130 Pause
I've still only taken the one capital, and the mid game would no doubt be a bit tricky, but I feel I've done enough to show the basics of the early game, and I'm eager to provide multiple examples of that here, rather than full LPs, at this stage.

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Are you pretty confident that your DV is a forgone conclusion at T130? I agree with all your reasoning regarding gaming priorities. The first 150 turns is where I think I need to improve the most.

Except for Education, I feel like I am on the cusp of getting close enough to your goals for T50 and T100, and I can get a city or even two by T130, but I am not close to the cap at that point. One problem is going North, when I presume you went South? Are the goals for T50/T100 the same whether going Honor/Liberty/Tradition?

I think I already said this before in this thread, but 3-city NC Liberty Domination is the best for early war because you only have to hard build 1 settler (which, since the other 1 is free can be done anytime in the BO before, during, or after the Collective Rule policy), because you get a hammer boost, and because you get a free worker, and probably 2 more free workers from The Pyramids, and faster improvements, and happiness and culture to compensate for the expansion, and pillage repair and other stuff.

If someone wants to for example show me a Tradition LP of the Persia game I made a Liberty LP of, and they get a better thing going with 3 city NC Tradition, then I'd be very interested to see it, but as of now I just happen to think that Liberty is much better. I don't think it's what the developers intended, to go Liberty and only self-found 3 cities, but really it helps get those CBs out and ready to take your other cities by conquest. Bear in mind that because of Meritocracy, provided you get the new cities connected with roads early, the happiness hit is less than going Tradition. Tradition relies on a big capital for its happiness, which is not optimal for Domination, where all you need is a fast start.

As for foregone conclusion, not exactly, but I have promoted crossbows and knights and once I build momentum I will get Cannons and Artillery in short order. In my experience, the AI can't really handle you beelining across the bottom of the tech tree. It's the only variation on standard optimal play. If you want CV or SV or even a faster DiploV, you go Education > Sci Theory > and so on, but with Domination you beeline Dynamite and/or Navigation and screw Public Schools, a lot of the time.

I just didn't want to continue the game as much as I wanted to start new games. Now it looks like I'm not gonna be playing any more for a while anyway.

The goals are not the same for Lib, Hon and Trad, no. While you still want to hit the right techs ASAP, the way you play will be somewhat different. Did you see the stuff I added about the tech tree?

consentient said:

For all the reasons you mentioned and more, I agree with you. This is the reason that I play Continents a lot, because it's more consistent. Pangaea is OK but those peninsulas do of course suck.

I also like to use Rotate Start Positions mod for help selecting starts and saving maps, without giving away anything away about the larger map.

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Ever tried playing on the Ring map? There will be a lot fewer city-states, but I think it could be pretty interesting for a DomV playthrough

consentient said:

...and faster improvements, and happiness and culture to compensate for the expansion, and pillage repair and other stuff...

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First of all, thank you for your effort!

How much of the success of your strategy is due to the gold from pillage repair? Or which strat would you day is most dependant of it?

For me my main issue is usually the balance between leaving enough of the ai so that the trading keeps me afloat money wise while not being big enough so that i have to keep defenders at home.

(If i allow myself to pillage repair gold is never an issue and it just feels like such an abuse of an obvious bug that it takes away the fun for me.)

ToborajniN said:

Ever tried playing on the Ring map? There will be a lot fewer city-states, but I think it could be pretty interesting for a DomV playthrough

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I've played it before, and it makes diplomacy simpler (as in, more obvious) but more difficult (as in, it gives you less choice). Plus it's unfair to the AI since they try to swim SO many settlers to the mini islands and get them taken by barbs.

But I'll consider making a VidLP of it someday

Thorrez said:

How much of the success of your strategy is due to the gold from pillage repair? Or which strat would you day is most dependant of it?

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No good DomV strategy is dependent on pillage repair. It's just an optional exploit that makes things a little easier.

For me my main issue is usually the balance between leaving enough of the ai so that the trading keeps me afloat money wise while not being big enough so that i have to keep defenders at home.

(If i allow myself to pillage repair gold is never an issue and it just feels like such an abuse of an obvious bug that it takes away the fun for me.)

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If you go Honor, Commerce and Autocracy you will solve your gold problems.

Thorrez said:

First of all, thank you for your effort!
For me my main issue is usually the balance between leaving enough of the ai so that the trading keeps me afloat money wise while not being big enough so that i have to keep defenders at home.

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Is that really useful? I would guess that after taking the capital and other really good cities, the remaining rump is not that useful as a trading partner, and you might as well trade mostly with your friendly neighbouring city states?

Thorrez said:

(If i allow myself to pillage repair gold is never an issue and it just feels like such an abuse of an obvious bug that it takes away the fun for me.)

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I agree. I refuse to pillage anything that I repaired myself. It's really strange that something that costs no money to build does yield pillage gold...

@consentient: one request for the guide: what do you do policy-wise after opening lib/hon/trad? Complete it asap or sometimes mix and match? After completing say lib, do you go for patronage, commerce, rationalism, or get back to e.g. honor?

You said you were planning to write a section on manoeuvring as well. Do you often declare war before you're ready to invade to draw their units away from their cities so you can kill them in the field and get some XP while preparing the main siege force? In a siege, do you move melee units forward asap to soak damage so your archers are safe? How do you deal with rough terrain?

vanatteveldt said:

@consentient: one request for the guide: what do you do policy-wise after opening lib/hon/trad? Complete it asap or sometimes mix and match? After completing say lib, do you go for patronage, commerce, rationalism, or get back to e.g. honor?

You said you were planning to write a section on manoeuvring as well. Do you often declare war before you're ready to invade to draw their units away from their cities so you can kill them in the field and get some XP while preparing the main siege force? In a siege, do you move melee units forward asap to soak damage so your archers are safe? How do you deal with rough terrain?

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Once I've completed my move to China, I'll have a lot more time on my hands to finish off the guide and really polish it. I wanted to get the bulk of it out so people can start absorbing the basics. I promise I'll leave nothing out by the end.

Commerce is always the 2nd tree. I'll try to find time to expand on this sooner, but it trumps Rationalism every day of the week. Patronage is useful IF you have a lot of CS allies early, but normally you need massive gold FIRST, which you can get through Commerce.

Honor should be completed ASAP if it's opened. There should almost never be a reason to stop progress through Honor to take something else. The finisher is awesome.

If you go Tradition or Liberty first, I'd still go for Commerce 2nd. The reason being that most of the Honor benefits are better early and don't scale so well if its your 2nd tree. It's a great 3rd tree if you need stuff to invest in after completing say Liberty and Commerce and a couple of points of Autocracy. Let's say you win the World Fair and Clausewitz is not going to help you win the game, I'd put the extra policies into Honor to get more XP (left side).

I had overlooked the updates on the first page regarding the tech tree -- very helpful, thank you consentient. That is a big piece of what I was missing.

My Liberty went to almost turn 400 (!) before Isabella launched. Playing DCL31 for now, but I will try the Greece map at least a couple more times.

Hi there,

Thanks for the guide. I finally tried a H - C - A with China on Continents and so far it's great. By turn 170, I have overrun my continent with Chuko's. But what now? I researched Frigates next to find the other guys, so far nobody from the other continent appeared. Difficulty is Immortal, I guess they are a lot slower than on Deity.

You wrote something about a Conquest - Culture mix on Continent maps. Can you elaborate that a bit? Thanks in advance.

If you like you can watch my Poland ICL video. That is a domination culture mix on Immortal, with Salt for a strong start. I may even do something similar on my LP of the England DCL. It depends on the dirt. My decision making will be commented and explicit


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I'm currently playing the huns DCL, and trying to convert an early conquest into a peaceful culture (although I think I'm going to be too slow, but we'll see). The power of logistics horse archers lends itself well for a conversion because you can stop building units once you have 10 or so - but of course the huns don't really give any advantage for the culture play. My mistake was opening tradition with a bad capital location, I should have opened liberty...

I'll watch it, thanks. I am always having the same problems on continents. Between conquering #1 and #2 I completely lose my advantage and momentum and every time there is a religious rumaway on the other continent with a tech lead and a massive army. I guess I am just too slow.

Indonesia deity challenge 13 has a pretty perfect/easy map for liberty domination (even easier for diplo).. (plenty of room for expansion, tons upon tons of extra luxuries and strategic luxuries ) ...

My LP of the map should hopefully be up in the next 48 hours (ended up settling 8 cities ) and teching up to destroyer/battleship without building/buying a single public school .. Very forgiving map, easy T260 win in-spite of many failures (didn't spot the culture CS in time, waited too long to settle 8-th city, didn't built public schools (game would've been faster with them) ) ,didn't secure some CS before DOWs ..

It was also the map the opened my eyes to the awesomeness that autocracy purchased logistic privateers->destroyer spam can be.. They crush huge defense (coastal) cities by themselves and can capture submarines//battleships you might not have the tech for ..

Combustion fist (after flight - Prora) gives access to Neuschwanstein (huge domination wonder: happy + culture + gold), railroad/harbor production bonus, landships & the awesome logistic prize ship destroyers ..

I keep getting bogged down in annoying stalemates where I can't advance without getting my units killed, and the AI just kinda sits there. I'm having a lot of trouble positioning my units so that they don't just get killed. I'm hearing archery units should ideally never be killed and I just can't figure out how people are doing this. I can't attack without getting in range, and when I do, the AI targets my archers/CB/XB instead of my melee units. And when they do target the melee units, they often can't survive another turn without retreating. And they pump out new units so fast that it's hard to kill them all. I know I'm behind in tech early on but I thought that was routine during these honor/liberty domination strategies. And I can't build more units because of gold or unit cap limit. I know this is all probably too generic to really give advice but it's a situation I find myself in often.

Have you tried luring the garrisoned unit out of the city with workers?


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I have not! I'll try it in my next game. Maybe I am not grabbing enough workers early, because they usually still have plenty of stuff to do by the time I'm ready to go war. It's frustrating because I'm doing pretty well in terms of settling cities, building an army and getting out the NC in the reasonable time, but my tactics are clearly not up to snuff, because other people are using the same army I have, but doing a lot more with it. Some Civs are obviously easier to use than others. As Mongolia, I had little problem eradicating large armies and taking over a lot of land but with just average, in your parlance Neutral, units, I'm still struggling to make it work.

But I have to say, I have bought into your mentality wholesale! I clearly see the benefits that successful warmongering bring, and agree that, if done well, makes the game the easiest to win fastest. It's just more fun to be controlling the action, rather than reacting to other AI player's decisions, and the benefits are huge, allowing you to grab things you could have never built yourself without leaving yourself completely exposed militarily. So it's been very fun trying to adopt the warmongering style of play.

johnnybaseball said:

I'm hearing archery units should ideally never be killed and I just can't figure out how people are doing this.

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If a city can one-shot-kill your archers -- then you have to break off the attack. You need to either tech faster (so CBs instead of archers, XBs instead of CBs) or attack soft targets earlier so as to get the +1 range.

johnnybaseball said:

I have not! I'll try it in my next game. Maybe I am not grabbing enough workers early, because they usually still have plenty of stuff to do by the time I'm ready to go war. It's frustrating because I'm doing pretty well in terms of settling cities, building an army and getting out the NC in the reasonable time, but my tactics are clearly not up to snuff, because other people are using the same army I have, but doing a lot more with it. Some Civs are obviously easier to use than others. As Mongolia, I had little problem eradicating large armies and taking over a lot of land but with just average, in your parlance Neutral, units, I'm still struggling to make it work.

But I have to say, I have bought into your mentality wholesale! I clearly see the benefits that successful warmongering bring, and agree that, if done well, makes the game the easiest to win fastest. It's just more fun to be controlling the action, rather than reacting to other AI player's decisions, and the benefits are huge, allowing you to grab things you could have never built yourself without leaving yourself completely exposed militarily. So it's been very fun trying to adopt the warmongering style of play.

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I'm glad you're enjoying adopting a new strategy. Sounds like you've been experimenting with CB rush. Be aware that this is NOT always guaranteed to take out your first victim. If it's Alex or Darius, for example, they will sensibly realise that you are a threat and build a bigger army and Walls and be more prepared. This is why scouting the opposition is so important. To decide who will be the first victim. After that, the strike order is usually determined more by diplomacy than anything else.

Yes, I will definitely have to give more consideration to that in future attempts. I've run into Rome a few times, Japan, Germany ... when I have neighbors like Morocco, or Arabia, or Portugal, it has been easier. Another thing I wonder about is whether the map script I'm using isn't creating pangaea maps that are particularly difficult, because I'm getting a lot of inland seas and small isthmuses and jutting peninsulas and stuff. I think the maps are really interesting, but maybe not suited to these types of rush strategies.

I'm still feeling it all out, but it's been really fun. I have particularly liked Russia so far, but I have yet to put it all together to win a game. It really is remarkable how deceptively easy the really good players make this game seem. I know people here are very experienced players and take their skills for granted, but for most people I've known who play this game, the things the players here can do would floor them. It really is an honor to learn from such skilled, friendly, helpful people, even in something so silly as a game like this! But it is especially fun, after reading so many peaceful, 4 city tradition strategies, and seeing so much consensus on this being the optimal play, to see a school of thought so radically different. Tradition is the safe play but I think a lot of people have an instinct that liberty, if used right, would be a more fun game overall. So it's nice to see someone making a good case for it, and honor, too. Piety is a lost cause!