Domination Advice? Especially RE: Allies (King)

I am relatively new to Civ - I am looking for a little advice on Domination Victories - these seem the hardest to me. It is a common song on these forums - but I have some specific questions.

I typically get 250 turns in, then retire thinking I have done something wrong after only stealing one capital in half the game. It seems like I am far too slow. Am I giving up too early, or is this typical? Maybe you experts can share your best practices?

What era/event makes you attack capitals? Do you go after them one at a time or simultaneously? What units are a must for you?

How large is YOUR army when you begin the attack?

How do you develop allies/bribe others to war? (Never succeeded on King while pursuing DomV) Is it embassies, trade, gifts, specific leaders, military power?

I'll share my last attempt:
As Kamehameha, I was blitzed by Shaka in the ancient era. I successfully defended, and he offered a decent city for peace. I had two factions friendly with me, but not friendly enough: when the treaty was over, I finished Shaka, only to have the ENTIRE WORLD make a DoW. This file is still in progress, but I do not see it ending well. Is this because I eliminated Shaka? Should I have skipped taking the non-capital in the treaty? Maybe waited for ally support/more advanced military units?

I just don't want to get to turn 490 and still need 3 capitals. Thank you for tips! Civ on

*Edit - I've been playing Small (seems to assist me in learning due to speed), Pangea or Continents, Standard Time, King, all Victory conditions.

When going for domination victory (I usually play large map, marathon and immortal), I generally will have taken a couple of capitals by mid-game, but this is not necessary in my opinion and most of my conquests come in the latter half of the game. Keep in mind that everyone has their own play style and what works for me may not work for you. You need to develop your own style.



As far as your diplomatic problems when waging war, I highly suggest you read up on some of the suggestions in this forum on diplomatic victory and play a few games trying to achieve a diplomatic victory. This will teach you what you can and can’t do when it comes to diplomacy and allow you to anticipate the AI’s responses to your actions. For instance, if you DoW a civ that all the other civs get along with, they will all denounce you. But if you DoW a civ that all the other civs hate, you will not be denounced, unless you take their last city, they don’t like you wiping out a civ completely. Also, liberating cities during conquests will go a long way in helping you diplomatically (just don’t liberate a capital, you want that).



I will usually train my army with barbarians and city states before beginning my conquests and because the units are highly trained, I don’t need a very large army, 2 or 3 melee units as shields for the ranged units, 3 or 4 ranged units to attach the city, 2 mounted units for defending the flanks of the ranged units and a great general. I also have one unit, either mounted or melee with double medic promotions for healing units quickly.


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Something is seriously off there. On small? On king? The three things I can think of are, first, you might be wonder hoarding. We've all done it. It's okay to get beat to some wonders. If you're going domination, don't bother with the Louvre and Uffizi and get military out. Second: happiness. Do you have positive happiness numbers? Third, your diplomacy. Any diplomatic options which constitute lying are bad. And don't declare war on city states--if they go to war with you, okay, but don't you start it.

Diplomatic victory and diplomacy are two different things. DV is about allying all the city states. Diplomacy is about allying the other civilizations.

DV is about allying all the city states.

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This is very true on Gods and Kings, but not as much in BNW.


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NomadMan284 said:

This is very true on Gods and Kings, but not as much in BNW.


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it's still very important imo. otherwise you're never going to get enough leader votes even if you manage to buy the base votes from AIs and have globalization.

zgort said:

I am relatively new to Civ - I am looking for a little advice on Domination Victories - these seem the hardest to me. It is a common song on these forums - but I have some specific questions.

I typically get 250 turns in, then retire thinking I have done something wrong after only stealing one capital in half the game. It seems like I am far too slow. Am I giving up too early, or is this typical? Maybe you experts can share your best practices?

What era/event makes you attack capitals? Do you go after them one at a time or simultaneously? What units are a must for you?

How large is YOUR army when you begin the attack?

How do you develop allies/bribe others to war? (Never succeeded on King while pursuing DomV) Is it embassies, trade, gifts, specific leaders, military power?

I'll share my last attempt:
As Kamehameha, I was blitzed by Shaka in the ancient era. I successfully defended, and he offered a decent city for peace. I had two factions friendly with me, but not friendly enough: when the treaty was over, I finished Shaka, only to have the ENTIRE WORLD make a DoW. This file is still in progress, but I do not see it ending well. Is this because I eliminated Shaka? Should I have skipped taking the non-capital in the treaty? Maybe waited for ally support/more advanced military units?

I just don't want to get to turn 490 and still need 3 capitals. Thank you for tips! Civ on

*Edit - I've been playing Small (seems to assist me in learning due to speed), Pangea or Continents, Standard Time, King, all Victory conditions.

Click to expand...

I don't think you should quit if you've only taken one capital on turn 250. In one of my games on Emperor I started to attack on like turn 280-300 and I managed to win with no hurry. I used primarily xcoms, rocket artilleries and infantry. I don't know if it will go as fast for you if you don't use xcoms since you can do some quite fast and smooth rushes with them.

As for bribes I didn't really do any since everybody hated me and were unwilling to co-operate right off the bat when I took the first AI capital.

For army size I tend to leave a few units defend my cities that are closer to the enemies' cities. For offense I have (roughly) 2 rocket artilleries, 5 xcom and maybe 3 infantry. They often get the job done pretty well.

However, I think my strategy is sub optimal and I should probably start attacking earlier, but I think it works fairly well regardless. Don't know how it fares on the highest difficulties though.
Settings: Standard speed, Pangaea, Standard size

Follow some strategy guides here and make sure that you know how to get a decent start.

Learn how to compie rush, learn how to x-bow rush etc. And of course, there's Shaka and his very OP impies.

Thanks for the fanatic tips. I'll keep going with the Kamehameha file and try some of these. I'll let you know how it goes