Domination on Immortal/Deity - a noob's guide

Oh on Continents map I just love clearing the continent. Often I don't mind getting caught doing it either. It's unlikely anyone can take you down after that

I agree that completely taking out a Civ makes the others hate you more than not doing so. Every time I check a Civ's last remaining city the warmonger penalty is "extreme".

The real question should be is it better to take them out completely for a larger warmonger penalty, or receive a 100% likely denouncement after getting their capital? I always get as few cities possible for as fast a win as possible, so I end up leaving them alive and getting denounced. If they're the 3rd or 4th Civ you've taken cities from, the others will normally hate you no matter what you do.

The hate, warmonger is independant of difficulty level. What I have seen on Prince is the same as on Emperor/Immortal. So should be the same on Diety.

At start (Accient/Classical even Medieval), finish it. Exterminate first civ. You don't want them to denouce you, make DoF with others and so their friends will also denouce coz "friend did it". Denounce/DoF starts a chain reaction.

If you have civs capitol, hate never goes away. You have their cap. So you could just as well finish it. Others, over time will become a bit softer (you don't have their cities, especialy capitol).

Religion helps. Adopting, not founding. You may be a evil warmonger, but there is hope coz we go to the same church!

Like Bimblecrumbs, I like to conquer as fast as possible, which means as few cities as possible. This way, the game is over before a coalition can form against you, and/or the opposition is too crippled to actually mount a threat.

However, there have been times when I've had to wipe people out, or have even chosen to, and it's not the end of the world.

The most important thing is getting that superior army as quickly as possible (from the time you start), and I think that's best done ASAP within the game, too.

Though in the next DCL I would like to try being nice until really late (Artillery/Rocket Artillery) and seeing how a Dom sweep goes at that stage. I've tried Stealth Bombers/XCOMs and seen how effective that can be. Maybe I can reload my England T160ish save and try for Rocket Artilleries. I just got bored with that game.

consentient said:

I think you're wrong, but how can we find out for sure?

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I have noticed that the mouse-over warning for taking out a CS or last AI city is not always Extreme Warmonger Penalty -- sometimes it is just Major Warmonger Penalty. With the current Songhai DCL this came up for me as in one of my tries India had their last city in my territory. That was Renaissance or earlier, and was the first city I captured. I was quite surprise that no one denounced me for that, and friends stayed friends.

consentient said:

Though in the next DCL I would like to try being nice until really late (Artillery/Rocket Artillery) and seeing how a Dom sweep goes at that stage. I've tried Stealth Bombers/XCOMs and seen how effective that can be. Maybe I can reload my England T160ish save and try for Rocket Artilleries. I just got bored with that game.

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Have you seen peddroelm clear out the map with Modern Armors in the Songhai game. By unlocking Blitzkrieg and getting double tap, he was able to effectively one shot anything the AI could put at that point (GWIs mostly). It was terrifying to watch

Of course that didn't happen in my game, instead I'd have to mobilize and clear out a certain (recently praised ) bloodthirsty maniac as soon as I can

consentient said:

I think you're wrong, but how can we find out for sure?

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I don't know about finding out "for sure", but this thread explaining warmonger hate makes no mention of a penalty for eliminating civs. The formula does give an explanation, however, for why a civ's last city often generates so much hate: one factor in determining how much hate capturing a city generates is how many cities the conquered city has. If the answer is "1", then the warmonger formula generates a much high number.

That's actually very promising for my Huns effort

Plumfairy said:

I don't know about finding out "for sure", but this thread explaining warmonger hate makes no mention of a penalty for eliminating civs. The formula does give an explanation, however, for why a civ's last city often generates so much hate: one factor in determining how much hate capturing a city generates is how many cities the conquered city has. If the answer is "1", then the warmonger formula generates a much high number.

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Interesting formula.

Because it's devide by actual_num_cities * victim_num_cities, early war gives you huge hate, while late game capitol sniping very little.

Kriogen said:

early war gives you huge hate

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Yes, but since the Halloween patch, early warmonger hate dissipates really pretty fast. Plus you start with a blank slate, so you can take a few cities before any AI get wary. As I wrote before, pay attention to the mouse-over text before taking the city. If it is not warning of Extreme warmonger penalty, there is no reason to pause!

Before I thought its a flat number, like +100 per city, bonus for eliminating civ. But its more a combo between the number of cities on the map and how many cities victim has.

It's interesting that Hiawatha is good news for warmonger. The more he spams cities, the less hate you get

Ok so I've been playing Shaka while following this guide, and Ive run into a pretty big problem, Greece has taken almost every city state in the map and he needs to be dealt with. I've got a mix of cav and arty in my army but I don't think this is good enough to take him on. He's just after building the Manhattan project too so nukes are a possibility. Im wondering is it ok if i post a save with the game? I really have no idea what to do in this situation.

Oh and every other AI in the world has denounced me, the joys of civ v diplomacy

Edit: attached the saves.

Is there anything to be said for using the swordsman and catapult line because of the amount of promotions you can accrue before those units really come into their own? While the effectiveness of a timing push with c/x-bows is clear you can still easily succeed with melee and siege units, having those units be highly promoted can be useful when the biggest, spammiest warmongers are your furthest neighbors. I've had games when the second continent has been completely consumed by one AI and in those situations you have to do more with less.

I love the Swordsman line, but it isn't really a unit that can survive the AI cities until Muskets. Until then it can be used away from the cities, but that's not ideal. I only bother with this when there is a UU that can be played with.

Catapults are just way too fragile. Trebuchets are less so, but then by the time you get to Physics, Chemistry is really close.

I'd love to see someone using Trebuchets to devastating effect to make me change my mind on them, but I think Cannons are where it's at.

consentient said:

I love the Swordsman line, but it isn't really a unit that can survive the AI cities until Muskets. Until then it can be used away from the cities, but that's not ideal. I only bother with this when there is a UU that can be played with.

Catapults are just way too fragile. Trebuchets are less so, but then by the time you get to Physics, Chemistry is really close.

I'd love to see someone using Trebuchets to devastating effect to make me change my mind on them, but I think Cannons are where it's at.

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I gave up on trying to farm for the range/logistics promotions for catapults because they got one-shot too often. its a bit of a catch-22 in the sense that you want to build siege units to take down cities, but cities all too often destroy siege units within one or two turns because they don't receive terrain bonuses which composites can use to at least tank a turn or two.

However, in my recent game, i was able to supplement my comp-bow army with 2 catapults due to the early production boosts of 3 city-liberty opener. This time, i took cover promotions instead of the range/logistics line, which saved them from one-shots, and, if the AI focus-fired another unit, enabled me to sneak in siege volleys to quickly pull down cities.

It happened to be quite useful because, after taking out my first opponent relatively easily, the next cities i had to take down were surrounded by difficult terrain (lots of jungle and awkward hills) which meant that i couldn't farm range/logistics promotions efficiently on my comp bows and had to rely on the firepower of my siege units to keep up the speed of my conquest. Unfortunately, the cover promotions weren't very useful when i upgraded them to artillery!!!

Yeah it's a shame that the archery line is so OP compared to melee and siege, it takes away quite a number of interesting choices up till the renaissance era.

I also think that it is ridiculous that ancient era archers can shoot further than modern bazookas / machine guns or even infantry. I have to say I much prefer the Wesnoth model, where ranged is like a normal attack, except that if the opponent doesn't have range he doesn't get to shoot back. Having siege units as the only true ranged unit and lowering the strenght of cities a bit and only giving them range 2 on discovery of cannon would make for a much more interesting tactical game, I think...

Junnies said:

This time, i took cover promotions instead of the range/logistics line, which saved them from one-shots, and, if the AI focus-fired another unit, enabled me to sneak in siege volleys to quickly pull down cities.

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I should try this since I love the cover promotion for the melee line. Also, when I had Rams and Siege Tower (both are born with cover and can get cover 2 as the first promotion -- so just from barbs) I was very impressed with survivability of the units after upgrading.

vanatteveldt said:

I also think that it is ridiculous that ancient era archers can shoot further than modern bazookas / machine guns or even infantry.

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Overall, I don't disagree with you. I am glad Acken is nerfing ranged units and boosting melee in his balance mod, which I'm currently having fun playing with.

But I have to say that bazookas and machine guns do actually have a lower accurate range than archers. Archers in battle did not aim for targets but fired volleys that crippled infantry units. Watch 'The Last Samurai' for a pretty accurate rendition.

Machine guns aren't really accurate at all, and do not shoot 'up and over' like archers but horizontally. Their job is really to provide covering fire for units that are assaulting positions, so that the defenders just keep their head down and don't fire back. Bazookas are very inaccurate, and very short range. A bazooka is not an RPG.

Anyway, slightly OT

lately I've been experimenting with full liberty + full honor + full commerce + ~6 autocracy policies on maps that allow 7+ "early" founded cities .. No blazing fast victories since there is a lot of culture required ..

Oracle is somewhat of a safe bet with liberty finisher GE. Winning WF also very easy to pull off with 7-9 cities .. 2 free autocracy is usually doable since AIs don't often like autocracy .. For same reason Prora is pretty safe bet most of the time .. Missing some of these "freebies" puts extra hammer strain (archaeologists + hermitage to make up for lost culture ) .. Will need good CS play (at least one mercantile ally mandatory to allow empire happy grow, culture badly needed, maritime benefits are multiplied by the number of cities .. Religious ones help buy great merchants from commerce finisher.. Many cities also help make decent faith output for the same purpose .. Aqueducts & workshops before universities .. Factories before public schools ..

Pretty safe play all game long (wide liberty can spare a few hammers for defensive units in need be) ..
Strong endgame economy when dropping the huge science buildings gold drain with commerce TP spam to power lategame autocracy snowball ..

Safe, easy, fun and a little late .. (morroco, indonesia , germany , celts & ottoman LPs)

I'm thinking about trying that out. I have played a few games where I deliberately didn't go Rationalism, and my science wasn't particularly good.

You Songhai Modern Armor domination was a thing of beauty though