some questions about deity domination!

started going honor and doing timed pushes(spearmen, then xbows, then musket...etc) to take capitals, usually get one or two before turn 100.

thing is the cities dont have time to get good, so i dont really want to take all their smaller cities, just straight capitals.

should i capture, and maybe raze their other cities? ive been letting them live for now, but when i get to the last 1 or 2 capitals i get backstabbed by everybody else that i attacked but left alive.

puppet or annex?

how much should i grow my capital? captured capitals? and hte other cities?

seems like im always pushing to new capitals, leaving my old cities undefended :/
but if i dont move fast 1 or 2 AIs get a free science game
any tips?

1. Capture as many cities as your happiness allows. Raze the ones who are happiness sinks.

2. Puppet until the city is out of rebellion, then annex if happiness allows. Usually you'd want to annex a city on the front lines so you can quickly get a few more (rush bought) units so you don't lose momentum.

3. You never leave your cities undefended as you will get attacked even by weak civs. The general rule of thumb is that if you have a strong enough army, the weaker civs would leave you alone but I haven't really seen enough of that to confirm, a forgotten and irrelevant AI may attack your undefended city and cause you to waste time moving some units back to defend. Lastly, the key point in that part of the game is when do you time your Artillery as they pretty much mean game over if you get them before AIs, and they won't really be able to have a good science game if under pressure. Another thing that can help is to bribe the AIs to go to war with each other, so that nobody ends up too strong by the time you arrive

Disclaimer : i'm not a great warmonger, but i managed to get some Domination victories on Deity with Honor opening.

gnubbish said:

should i capture, and maybe raze their other cities? ive been letting them live for now, but when i get to the last 1 or 2 capitals i get backstabbed by everybody else that i attacked but left alive.

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stormtrooper412 said:

1. Capture as many cities as your happiness allows. Raze the ones who are happiness sinks.

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I think what stormtrooper412 means is don't bother with cities that don't bring you a new unique luxury (unless they are particularly well developed or strategically placed).

If you can wipe a civ before you have contact with other civs (hard to do unless playing Attila), then do it as there will be no consequences. However once you have contact with the other civs, wiping someone will get you a lot of hate. Wiping 2 civs will mark you as the main villain. Taking only the capital and letting them live will keep your relations with other AIs better longer but those civs you let live will hate you because you control their cap. In the early game, you'll have a better diplomatic game and possibly some trade if you let them live, in the late game you'll have more troubles if you let them live (spies couping your CS, pitiful attacks that force you to bring some troupes back). There is no clear winning move. I tend to take cities later (never before XB) and not stop until i've taken the whole world so usually i wipe someone who's close to my mainland and push thought other AIs if i can to get the far away capitals.

2. Puppet until the city is out of rebellion, then annex if happiness allows. Usually you'd want to annex a city on the front lines so you can quickly get a few more (rush bought) units so you don't lose momentum.

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And here, i tend to only annex capitals or very good cities and keep the rest as puppets until Autocracy and the Police State tenet (+3 from courthouse). Less cities to check for production, faster National Wonders. I simply spam Trading Posts around those and they give me money to buy more troops as i tend to play HCA when going for dom-V

how much should i grow my capital? captured capitals? and hte other cities?

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You capital should be as big as you can afford while keeping a good production. There is no excuse for size 6 capitals by turn 160. You can afford to stop growing if you know you can win before industrial but you need a good civ (Huns, Mongolia, Arabia) on a suitable map (pangaea with not too many rough terrain). A bigger capital gives you more science and will produce better units faster (you won't be able to buy every unit until you have full HCA running) and more allows you to maintain a bigger army (ever got this red ! in the top bar, your production will drop fast once you hit supply limit). You don't want to work plenty of 4 grassland and get no production of course, but you want to keep growing. Food caravans (or better cargos if you are coastal) can help you grow and work production tiles and they are less likely to be plundered when warring anyway.

Don't kill off the AIs entirely, just leave them with one crappy city.

Raze cities that don't bring in new luxuries.

I generally don't go for the fastest speed, so I love to do complete domination games where I capture every city on the map eventually. Of course only going for capitals is the fastest but you run the risk of backstabs if you don't capture enough cities.

There are ways to avoid diplo hits from capturing cities. For example a civ at war with the civ whose city you capture will not care about your warmongering hate. So the idea is before you declare war with a civ, try to bribe that civ to DoW on as many AI as possible by trading all your lux/gpt, so that effectively makes many AI hate him and won't mind your capturing cities. You can get back everything once you DoW anyway.

The other way is instead of you capturing the final city of a civ (for huge warmonger hate of eliminating civs), you can just let an allied CS unit do the job. AI won't hate the CS.

By doing some combination of above, it is possible to stay friend with AI until it's their turn for elimination. Warmonger civs are good candidates for this, and in addition you can sell all the crappy cities to them so that it kills their science/happiness. Never do this with Alex as he loves to liberate cities. Attila is especially good as he always raze cities.

Sclb said:

The other way is instead of you capturing the final city of a civ (for huge warmonger hate of eliminating civs), you can just let an allied CS unit do the job. AI won't hate the CS.

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Not always very reliable thought as even if i gift a CS a strong unit and put an AI city to 0 HP, sometimes the CS won't capture it. In addition the AI takes it's turn between you and the CS so the city will regenerate health and this can be too much for the CS troops.

OTOH, what i love to do is finish a civ by liberating a city. Obviously your target must be a warmonger. Gengis is great for this as he always have a number of occupied CSs. It seems like either you don't receive the genocide hate, or the liberation bonus is enough to balance it.

Another thing i always do whenever possible is revive a fallen civ. They will love you and will be behind in tech so even if they ever turn against you (i never had this happen), they will pose no threat. You can only revive a civ you were not at war with when they were defeated so better bribe some AI to go after them than join them in a war.

Bob Morane said:

Not always very reliable thought as even if i gift a CS a strong unit and put an AI city to 0 HP, sometimes the CS won't capture it.

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I hate when that happens. Especially since city states auto raze every city that's not a capital, saving me some tedious work

Bob Morane said:

It seems like either you don't receive the genocide hate, or the liberation bonus is enough to balance it.

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This is terrific when you can manage it. From my experience, it seems to me that city capture is binary: so warmonger hate or liberation bonus -- but not both. The tactic turns what should be a harsh penalty into a strong boon.