Domination Victory on Higher Difficulties ?

Which are the Key points to succeed on this Vitory Condition?

Which are your own experiences ?

Welcome!

The key is Artillery.

If you are just learning, beeline to Artillery and give it a shot.

Artillery is nice but on higher levels in my experience has been slowly learning, balance. You almost need to get lucky on Deity not to be in a position to be steamrolled by two Warlike backstabbing AI. I have set Oda on 4 or 5 other Civs and he still had time to turn back on me after he was done and no matter how good you are, it will set you back.

Terrain and a little luck help. I usually befriend and protect a CS as a buffer zone so I can expand. You really need more than 4 cities for Domination Victory on a fair sized map, so delaying tech may be required. On lover difficulty levels...good development and you can run a map with CBs and a few wise well placed units.

To sum it up, there is no one way to own domination victory on higher levels, you can go about any way you like. I have never won on Deity so far but I have sort of reloaded a game(after I fell asleep playing turns during Insomnia as Bismark, I have neutered the AI Elizabeth and I have a loyal friend, Gandhi to my back and now I'm pushing on what is the best next decision for me) I prefer Pangea and quick pace... something just fun but you will lose time to use some of your earlier units

Key Points would be:

Know your time of attack and with wath type of unit you wanna attack. Focus on Science to get there ASAP!

Example with XBOW's: National Colledge as fast as possible, then straight to Machinery. In the meantime you build your very core infrastructure and about 8 Archers/Composite Bows and save money. As soon as you hit Machinery, Upgrade all and attack!!. One fast mounted Unit to take the City, one Spear/Sword to tank some hits, one worker to bait out dending units.

Hands down the best units to use are the Ranged Units. CB's, XB's, Horse Archers(Huns), Keshiks(Mongols), Camel Archers(Arabia), Frigates, Artillery, and then Planes.

You can go for combined arms War(Musketeer, Canon), but it is much harder. Mobility is a Huge plus.

EDIT: In bad terrain you are in trouble. Build and use 2-4 additional workers to build roads, clear Jungle. Also, your first warrior should not die, train constantly with a City State and become a Medic.

should i destroy most oft the conquered cites ?

monghol and learn how to invade the other continent... kehsite are good until bomber

and depen,ds a lot of the number of cities the other civ has (ghandi, aztec, byzance at least go tall generally ) look at your happiness if you are to low you did not destroy enough ... or did not get the good policy

I've been tinkering with trying to pull off a domination win at the higher difficulty levels too, and I'm finding it difficult to get a straight DoV. Things will either not go well, and I'll abandon the game because I know I can't win, or I'll dominate the game, but the game will time out at turn 500 because I can't get the last 2-3 capitals (but I'll still get the points victory).

Here a few things that I've found that hurt me, and what I've done to try to counteract them, I'd like to see what people think about them or if I should do something differently:

Diplomatic relations are always a huge drain, as people hate warmongers, but you can't take capitals without being a warmonger. Ideally, I'd like to conquer a Civ, move on and be peaceful until everyone likes me again, but if I did that eight more times, I'd time out. I've also found that it helps to take out a Civ completely if I know that I want to fight them and take them out early. No retaliation and nobody sticking around talking crap about you to everybody else. But it leads to....

Too many cities. I don't like having too many cities as they slow things down and make people unhappy, and can also be difficult to guard. I like the slash and burn tactic but all but capitals and the most superior cities, but I've been reading that you get extra diplo penalties for razing, is there any truth to this? I'm also not a huge fan of puppeting once the resistance is over because there are extra unhappiness penalties, they build the stupidest buildings that you have to pay maintenance costs for, and you can't make military units with them.

Unit maintenance costs. These can be prohibitive and can be especially hurtful during times of peace where you want to keep your unit's promotions and be ready for the next battle. The finisher of Honor is awesome for this, as it basically pays you to fight, but does this basically mean that once you decide to start invading that you need to be at war the rest of the game?

Ideology. It seems like autocracy is only really good for domination (and it's the best for domination), but you're inherently going to be a cultureless empire if you're fighting all of the time. So I find that I lose support for it more than other VC's. Are the mechanics that the dominant ideology is mostly determined by the number of Civs with the ideology and the tourism for those Civs, or are there other factors?

Powerful units timing out. I've noticed that it's near impossible to get to the final units on Dom victory, and if you do it's only for a few turns before you time out, or somebody snatches up a victory. In fact, I feel that by the time you would have researched them, you could have just achieved a scientific victory at that point! Maybe those units are just for fun, and the creators just assume that if you're going Dom victory you'll be doing it well before the late game techs?

It's definitely tough. My win ratio when going for DomV is about 1 in 10, at the mo, so please let that stand as a disclaimer to my advice.

But when I do win, it's by having a great early game, and then tech-ing well for a good while until I can regain the military edge.

All the games I have won I have taken at least 1 or 2 capitals by T80, then sat back and progressed until crossbows, artillery or tanks, then gone to town with my by-now upgraded and promoted army.

The only issue, as discussed on a similar current thread, is the runaways. And I find that prevention is much better than cure in this respect. If you see an AI 20-30% ahead of the others in score, and he dominates the demographics screen, you need to kill him next. Build a much bigger army and decapitate the SOB.

[EDIT: A couple of weeks later, and I'm having a lot of success with Honor starts and being at war almost continuously from my first DoW until win. N.B.> I've been using strong military civs to achieve this, not just anyone. Poland, Germany, Mongolia, Arabia, etc.]

Trackmaster said:

I'll dominate the game, but the game will time out at turn 500 because I can't get the last 2-3 capitals (but I'll still get the points victory).

Click to expand...

What difficulty level are you playing at? I would very much like to see a time victory. My games are pretty slow, early 400s Immortal. If I take much longer, an AI will get a SV for sure. I have been trying to speed things up before moving onto Deity, but I am having a hard time of it. I find the late wars to be fun!

Deity is different than Immortal. Huge difference... I tend to turn off the Clock and have unlimited turns and turn off all but Dom Victory!

Keeping my people happy in a very tall Civ is hard as you progress in 30-40 Million and you are boxed in. There are Social Policies and(in Immortal I loved using Commerce all the way down to get the bonus in Happiness there) Religion is not to be ignored, I have noticed as I progress in my game the AI has stopped spamming my cities with Missionaries(This is just odd) and you can use several Religious methods to up happiness. Ultimately though without taking out other Civs and just burning them to ground at some point you're going to hit the Wall...

To boot with World Congress when they make a Lux like Cinnamon an endangered item cause you have an enemy, this is very funny... Also the advantages the AI gets with the CSs burns a lot of your hope there. I have a lot to learn but certain AI is inept and other AI tends to do the runaway. No matter how much you win in the short term, it's true if you do not KO a few AI Capitols early and lock down all the good real estate early you will have issues winning a long term Domination Victory Deity game.

I usually run around 0 Happiness by the time I'm pumping out 500-600 Science. This is really a pain to me!

I would suggest adding in Civs like Gandhi and pray he's to your back and use him... He's loyal and just about never DOWs me. Then put in some inept warmongers like Ramses and what few others... They are Wonder Whores who will never really amount to much. I need to focus on my early game it's where my weakness is.(There are so many little advantages you can take early)

P.S. Remember liberating a Civ or a CS gives you a great advantage. There is no point to a Military that's great, big and advanced and yet not used.

BurnBabyBurn said:

I tend to turn off the Clock and have unlimited turns and turn off all but Dom Victory!

Click to expand...

Yeah, Dom Victory is pretty straightforward if you have disabled the other victory conditions. Without the time constraint, you can just turtle until you reach the end of the tech tree, then slowly push through. I enjoy those late era wars. Best perk is that the Dom Victory screen (and any associated achievements) pops up even after you have lost a SV!

you do get an extra diplo penalty when razing cities

Haha, my biggest 'Key Point' is time

Having to take out 7 or 9 other opponents is just too time consuming. If you're 10+ tech ahead then you can line up artillery, rocket artillery, and all the fun tricks to decimate an opponent... bu then you have to march forever to get anywhere. RR isn't that fast, and Naval flotillas take forever.

I just can't do the micro.

But yes, my advice is go tech-focused as long as possible to generate a massive tech lead and then go for 'head shots' with focused groups of advanced units.

Nick31 said:

Haha, my biggest 'Key Point' is time

Having to take out 7 or 9 other opponents is just too time consuming. If you're 10+ tech ahead then you can line up artillery, rocket artillery, and all the fun tricks to decimate an opponent... bu then you have to march forever to get anywhere. RR isn't that fast, and Naval flotillas take forever.

I just can't do the micro.

But yes, my advice is go tech-focused as long as possible to generate a massive tech lead and then go for 'head shots' with focused groups of advanced units.

Click to expand...

I just had a terrible game as Russia. Small pangea quick low sealevel.

There were following enemies: Greece, Assyria, Korea, Germany and England.

Basically I started in the middle of the map. Which is both good and bad. Sadly, there was very little defensible locations to the west of me.

I managed to forward settle against Germany, with two cities, and even captured GErmany's liberty settler. This forward settle in the west, was actually in good location in a mountain pass, which made for good defensive location. I also settled my fourth expand city into mt.kilimanjaro.

At this point Greece and Germany were behind the mountain pass in the west, but Assyria was behind jungle in the north, and England was in the east behind some hills.

Korea was totally isolated in some peninsula for the entire game. I was backstabbed by Assyria, but I took out his second city with x-bows and horsemen. Then, I citadel-bombed his luxuries after peace, for good measure, so now he only had one lux remaining, LOL.

AT this point England attacked me with longbows, but knights and xbows took Lizzy out easily.

Then I tried to destroy Greece with a couple unsuccessful attack wars.Greece had tons of bad cities cluttered together with massive unit spam. I had cossack and arty push into Greece but only raized down his border city in front of my mountain pass. Then he offered me some lux and gold.

I went autocracy and took Germanys capital easily. Then I tried to push into Greece from a wider frontage, with tanks, cossacks, artillery, gatlings and bombers. I started getting HUGE unhappiness from Korea's tourism. I had 4 barbarian tanks in my capital because of unhappiness.

Then I figured out that I could quickly get rid of that unhapiness If I simply give to Bismarck, some of these crappy Greek captured cities. That way, he gets a free city, because he's not getting his capital Berlin back any time soon... He can also decide if he weants to raze it or keep it

This tactic worked perfectly and I only kept a straight line, of cities, into Greece's capital as puppets.

Then I rushbought some nukes, bought some carriers, and finished off Korea with modern armors. The game took bloody long to finish because I never had access to many city states in early game, only 2 CS allies, And greece and Korea simply took most of the city states as their allies. My happiness sucked a little bit even though I was fricking autocracy!!!

I did have sistine chapel, and some early wonders though. Bismarck got alhambra but I took it from him. It feels sometimes really hard to fight back vs enemy tourism. Korea was freedom ideology, but there was not world ideology yet.

Nick31 said:

Haha, my biggest 'Key Point' is time

Having to take out 7 or 9 other opponents is just too time consuming. If you're 10+ tech ahead then you can line up artillery, rocket artillery, and all the fun tricks to decimate an opponent... bu then you have to march forever to get anywhere. RR isn't that fast, and Naval flotillas take forever.

I just can't do the micro.

But yes, my advice is go tech-focused as long as possible to generate a massive tech lead and then go for 'head shots' with focused groups of advanced units.

Click to expand...

The fastest way is either panzers or xcoms. But by the time I can get to xcoms Id rather just win the science/diplo victory and get over with it.

Vitruvius said:

The fastest way is either panzers or xcoms. But by the time I can get to xcoms Id rather just win the science/diplo victory and get over with it.

Click to expand...

Ditto. Nuclear Subs and Xcoms just seems too unfair on the good people of other civilizations

OBRkenobi said:

you do get an extra diplo penalty when razing cities

Click to expand...

Screen shot please? Razing causes extra, but temporary, unhappiness. I have seen negative diplo text, beyond war, for capturing original capital and nuking. I have never seen anything like “you razed our cities”.

You can gift captured new puppet cities to some weak AI....

Sometimes this AI even razes them for your benefit! (that means, they take the unhappiness and also often times raze it)

I think this will mitigate unhappiness greatly. Because then you only have to keep a line of cities, to the enemy's capital.

budweiser said:

Welcome!

The key is Artillery.

If you are just learning, beeline to Artillery and give it a shot.

Click to expand...

That is the key land unit, yes.

But if most of the opponents capitals are in coastal cities instead of inland, then the key units are first Frigates & Privateers

Later the Frigates upgraded to Battleships (and also even the Frigates started life earlier as the first midevil ranged naval unit) and those Privateers upgraded to destroyers.

Artillery comes between those points so I've listed both of them.

This is less of a strategy and more of a "if you find yourself in this position go for it" in a recent Poland Diety Domination game I set all the AIs against eachother and then I found myself with 20 arty units and some WHs. Nobody was paying attention so I posiitioned all my units for a mass invasion of all civs. 20 turns later I had 6 more capitals, the AIs were crushed and I won shortly after. T197 win.
One thing to note, none of the AIs DoW'd me the whole game, and up until I declared "World War P" I didn't fight one war even against a CS.