I've had my first attempt at a domination victory (deity) yesterday with the Songhai ...
Had a seaside start with no sea resources in view ... Moved the settler 3 turns inland trough a heavily forested area ... Was seriously considering restarting ...
So I settled between 2 forest deer .. Scouting the map later revealed I was in the middle of the forest with 4+1 forested calendar luxuries and 4 forested deer ... There were also some forested hills in range ...
Great start that means the opening I used will not work in most deity games ...
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Starting TECHs
Mining, Pottery, Writing, Calendar, Animal Husbandry, Trapping, Philosophy, Civil Service, The Wheel, Horseback Riding, Theology, Education, Mathematics, Currency, ~Turn 100 bulbed Chivalry with the GS from PT...
Starting Build Order (don't remember exactly
)
Monument, Worker , Granary, Library, Scout ... [NC(used some chopping), Mud Pyramid Mosque...]
Chichen Itza(used GE from liberty) ..some horse units.. hard built
Hagia Sophia(more chopping), ...
PT(used GE from HS) .. hard built
Notre Dame[purchased some tiles and more chopping ]..
Policies
Full Liberty , Full Honor, Left Tree Rationalism(went Autocracy but I think left side Rationalism is better ) ...
I allied 2 hostilelol cultured states early (sold luxuries) and built the Mud Pyramid Mosque early -> this allowed me to:
finish liberty very early - GE in time for Chichen Itza
get the GG from Honor in time for my first city conquest T100+
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Around T100+ I was decced by 3 AIs, the forth had already lost its capital and was eliminated before I've got the chance to meet him [not a lot of room for RA spamming - only 3 per round]...
My first conquest was a neighboring CS [had 4 Mandekalu Cav and the honor GG] allied with one of my enemies and geographically positioned between my lands and theirs... Had university and observatory already built[my cities were still building their universities] and some World Wonder(old faithful ?) with +2 science ... Pillaging it provided the money for the courthouse -
annexing that probably jumped my science per turn more than 80% at that point ... (later it turned out this CS had my only coal 3 and aluminium 8)
Next it was Catherine ... she had lots of pikes and it slowed me down -> I hired a medic longswordsman later to help deal with the pikes ... Got 2 cities from her - Himeji Castle, The Pyramids and Mausoleum of Halicarnassus (each GG, GS pop +100
..) and settled for peace asking for some 1500 ish
Her lands later turned out to have
35 oil and 4 uranium ...
Next was Bismark - who had by this time eliminated Alexander - had to settle a third city to maintain a corridor towards Bismark between Babylon and a militaristic city state (which I later brought to distract Bismark). The corridor was narrow, forested and flooded with riflemen ... My tech path took a detour towards Scientific Theory and the Reveal_Oil_tech (industrial age boosted three allied CS cultured bonuses) so I was fighting riflemen in rough terrain with 6 Mandekalu and 2 LS ...Not pretty ...
....
I eventually re-conquered some Greek cities including Athens (sadly no wonders) with my 6 tanks ...Bismark's fighter spam was
VERY annoying. Panzers were hell to deal with later by I was still making - slooow progress [lots of reloading
] - fighting German cities .. Then on T 250 he
my tanks
before I could conquer Berlin and settle for peace ... Not bad for a first attempt (although with that great start I should 've won
)
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Some things I learned
A tank without Blitz is not a tank ...(with hijemi, flanking, GG and triple shock one can plow trough multiple invading Infantry units caught on open terrain and retreat to safety (near medic which will trigger if the tank also has repair (does march work on tanks?)) on the same turn...Also it is also invaluable when you desperately need to capture a city... )
The cavalry promotion for extra movement does work on tanks ..
Mandekalu 's NEED artillery fast to keep the momentum going ...
Rationalism > (?) Autocracy even for a domination game ...[the extra beakers and Scientific Revolution should really help getting the nukes in time ...]
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I will reload a save before the German war and see if can do better ...
Domination is more fun than science victory ...