Domination on Deity is beating me

I have been trying to achieve a domination victory on deity now for quite some time.
I've been playing on epic or marathon because I like the added realism of unit movement vs. time etc.

So far I have tried this with England. Sometimes I go full Tradition, sometimes also open Honor for barbarian culture (raging barbarians). I also have tried Tradition + Patronage etc.

I have either first built all the infra and NC, then beeline to Longbowmen or I've tried to build an 8-strong army right from the beginning if I had a good starting city location.

The problem is how the AI always has 8-10 tech levels advantage before England's spies kick in. If it was a defensive war, things would be way easy, but with the speed the AI builds units on deity and how quickly they get the city defences up, I am really struggling. Mid-way through the first war, the AI will always find a way to upgrade their troops to a tech level above mine, and the nearby cities somehow always seem to have walls as soon as they reach 8 pop. Coastal cities are worst when they will have twin ranged units inside.
Even if the AI city (10 pop, defence of 25) was on an ideal flat land, I would need 5 composites and four spearmen at least. And if I tried to build catapults (just one is always useless as it is one-shotted when it's first on spot) that would just take more time and let the AI creep further ahead.

I don't know how I could beat the game at this level - I have succeeded on other VCs, but early - mid-game domination seems very challenging. I might get lucky that the enemy didn't have a defensive religion or some strong early-game UUs, but the cities still feel quite difficult to take (tough terrain doesn't help either)

I think I'm mostly looking for advice on how to get the game rolling faster from the very beginning, because I would have to catch up with the AI quicker.

Maybe I should just stick to Immortal when I go domination, maybe I should try with Assyria instead, I don't know.

Maybe full honor with raging barbs? Or maybe liberty for 6 cities asap?
Building the National College always seems the toughest thing. At that time I feel like I should be buildings units or trade units to boost money, but while I build the NC, the AI gets a lead. I try to finish the NC at the epic equivalent of turn 100 on standard.

If you want to go for a domination victory with England, why not play on Small Continents/Archipelago and stick to the top end of the tech tree? Parking a Galleass and a Composite Bowman in your city should be enough to stave off most offenses, and once you get your Ships of the Line supplemented with a few Privateers, England is pretty hard to stop. You also got your twin spies helping out picking up techs from lower on the tree at that point. England's not particulary great at early-game rushes. Longbowmen are great, but on Deity, they do tend to be better on the defense as far as I'm concerned. England's real strength comes in the Rennaisance or in the early Industrial, when they have 2-range Gatling Guns.

It seems you have two problems. Early development and war tactics.

Try watching how other people play deity (let's plays). The amount of information you can get from a let's play is immeasurable. It would take an essay to describe the same on paper. I can link you to a couple, if you wish.

As for war tactics, yes, sometimes you have difficult terrain. But, you have forts, citadels. You can lure enemy out of his cities to go chase someone else few turns before you move in. (bribes) You can place cities in favourable places, forward settle on your potential targets. And you don't HAVE to start warring with bows if you feel that you struggle at this point. You can start your first war with cannons, triplanes, bombers, hell, there was a guide around here (by peddroelm) where he shown how he does it with autocracy xcom beeline.

Thank you for your comments!

Loucypher said:

...and once you get your Ships of the Line supplemented with a few Privateers, England is pretty hard to stop. You also got your twin spies helping out picking up techs from lower on the tree at that point. England's not particulary great at early-game rushes..

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I get what you're saying. I guess I'm just one of those crazy immersionists, wanting to achieve a long medieval war scene all with knights and bowmen, you know. With ample challenge but still winnable with common sense. Maybe I'm stretching my civ choice and quite likely my skills too far here.

Moriarte said:

Try watching how other people play deity (let's plays). The amount of information you can get from a let's play is immeasurable. It would take an essay to describe the same on paper. I can link you to a couple, if you wish.

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I would really appreciate good LP links. I have actually watched some, but so far I haven't found many deity/domination ones with BNW. For some reason that VC feels the most difficult for me. Come to think of it, however, I could also probably use some help with my culture... Good links if you have'em, please do share!

Moriarte said:

The amount of information you can get from a let's play is immeasurable. It would take an essay to describe the same on paper.

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An essay would still be shorter to read than watching 20 hours of LP.

However, I completely agree that watching LP's is simply priceless. I learned a lot from watching yours, Moriarte.

Here are the names of you tubers, which concentrate on either deity, mp, or on both. Browse through their channels and you can find solid BNW deity domination games.

Yoruus. Strong mp player. Recorded god knows how many MP games by now, with occasional deity play, and i bet the number is close to a hundred.

Light Cleric. Has 4-5 games so far. All of them deity, all domination, all involve early war. The last LP of his is germany honor start. Great 18+ commentary. My favourite

PrimEvalCiv. Mostly mp player but likes to play deity once in a while. Last one of his i watched was Shoshone. Good show on how to get yourself out of a complete mess (one can get himself into, occasionally) and a terrible starting location by knowing the game in and out.

Last, but far from being the least - tommynt. This guy rocks, whether it's land, sea, air, or city screen. Micromanaging to the max, thinking 50 turns ahead, using unconventional methods to progress yourself ahead, that kind of stuff. No commentary, and it isn't needed. Everything he does is logical. Games range across all difficulty levels, but an mp player at heart. His channel is a good place to start if you want to know how to abuse the inner wheels of civ and play smart every single turn.

Also, here is my Iroquois LP. Continental domination.

Enjoy.

Thanks, already started watching!
One thing that always surprises me though is the significance of early luck - 6 ruins for someone, sometimes only 2 or even one for me :/ But I have to say those LPs are impressive

Fun times.. Playing my own domination epic and watching those above

Moriarte said:

Enjoy.

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Thanks.

TurboJ said:

I get what you're saying. I guess I'm just one of those crazy immersionists, wanting to achieve a long medieval war scene all with knights and bowmen, you know. With ample challenge but still winnable with common sense. Maybe I'm stretching my civ choice and quite likely my skills too far here.

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One thing of note about that, if you look at the actual medieval period, you'll see that very few empires during that time actually managed to become huge. Yes, you had the Mongols, but they were a case on their own. The actual Knight/Bowmen kind of armies in Europe, which you seem to base yourself upon, were scattered amongst a LOT of tiny countries/duchies. As a result, it's actually rather realistic that barring certain civs, medieval domination is a lot harder then Rennaisance domination (Which is when naval supremacy became hugely important, see England/Spain/Portugal/The Netherlands) or Classical era (Which is where you had empires like Rome). Medieval wars are fun, but it's probably supposed to be hard.

Unless you're playing as the Mongols.

Also, check out klaskeren's videos. He's pretty efficient with his early warfare.

Those LPs are great stuff. Learning new tricks as I watch.

One thing I could benefit from is more experimenting. I always resist the urge to reload earlier save games so if I did that more, I could try different things with 'less to lose'. But that takes the edge off the game imo, so I don't do that much.

I feel I succeeded in my England game eventually. I'm not sure because the game became tedious in the industrial era and I restarted when I felt like I was winning.

I played continents plus with high water level. That ended up providing a really authentic-feeling Britain as I was alone on my small continent. The map scipt and dice roll did result in no available trade routes until Compass and not being able to complete any city-state quests at all... until caravels, basically.

No science from trade routes, no city states and no-one to war with early, I decided to wait until ships of the line. Only 4 possible city spots and two of them in tundra, actually only one decent city. Food/hammer caravans helped early on, but I was lagging way, way behind the AI.
Because of the aforementioned handicaps, I actually had no money, no culture, no faith at all :/

So I built everyhing for production and had no land force other than 6 longbowmen only waiting for later upgrading. So when SOLs came along in year 1000 (rushing with low beakers), I started spamming them like crazy. 8 SOLs and 3 privateers quickly, and then I went to war. No land force for conquest, at all.

Babylonia was constantly 10-15 techs ahead of me, the others I could compete with. But I wasn't lucky with my spies, 5 or six got killed while trying to get tech... So I focused everything on keeping a steady friendship with Neb.

Early on, I was alone in my continent so I decided to keep two culture farms. Raging barbarians with honor opener and I farmed those two camps for 5000 years. It was a challenge to protect the camps from the AI, but as I did succeed, I was able to kill an average of one barb per turn for all those 5 millenia. That almost allowed me normal levels of culture in the early-mid game, with all my building and science focus being on reneissance naval domination.

OK, I got the SOLs out. After a while they got range and then I just took cities at will. For 770 years I ruled the oceans and took my war to whomever was not in favour of Neb. I was at GPT deficit ALL the time. So what I did, I liberated all the cities I could, and most importantly, I was the global city trader In all, I sold like 20 cities to various Civs. All my economy was based on that.
As I had no ground force, I always instantly sold the cities upon capture. Then, after a long grind, the ships had range, logistics, supply and all the nice stuff. Then they were able to dominate even 100-defence cities, for logistics allowed them to get out of artillery line of fire each turn. The dominance ended exactly when the rival AIs developed great war bombers. But by that time I had also beelined to battle ships so I quickly took two of the last enemy cities close me and sold them to Neb for a great lump sum of money. Then I made peace with everyone and retreated to upgrade to battleships, and bought a carrier with 3 triplanes to protect them from enemy bombers.

I also soon got destroyers to detect any subs and meanwhile was pumping out great war infantry to actually hold the cities I took.
I bulbed a GE for Brandenburg gate, so my land troops started really nice. Iron works, forge, armory, military academy and twin hammer caravans to my military city, I could pump elite troops out quickly.

The game got slow and frustrating at the end, but with 9 of those elite battleships and Cover II GWInfantry plus the intercepting carrier, I was able to dominate once more against all but Babs, even though most had a tech lead on me at that point.

I am almost sure I could have ended the game in one, huge sneak attack on Babylon after I had taken all the other capitals very easily. Of course, Neb was 16 techs above me, but I doubt that would have saved his capital in a surprise war where each turn I could bombard his shore tiles 3 or 4 tiles deep 18 times. With that support, my eventual landing force with 6 Cover II infantry, 2-range machine guns and artillery must have survived. I guess.

Too bad such a game experience is tedious to say the least.
I don't think I will be doing such an underdog game again and will just restart if I can't get at least a decent start.

But I do like the fact how you can dominate even with lower tech, if you have those elite promotions. I mean, in real life, if your nation had been at victorious war continuously for 800 years, that would mean your forces knew a thing or two about warfare..

Next time, it's either composite bow rush right away, or a long tech-focused build until industrial.

TurboJ said:

Next time, it's either composite bow rush right away, or a long tech-focused build until industrial.

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Good plan!

I would practice getting a composite bow army up by t55. Make that a goal until you can do it fairly easily. Just restart if you don't have them attacking a city by t70, until you can do it by t55. You'll learn a lot from that. Domination requires focus. You don't have time to build anything you don't absolutely need. Figuring out what you need and when you need it takes practice. Tech order especially. If you've been playing builder mode for ages you'll have bad habits for domination.

TurboJ said:

I feel I succeeded in my England game eventually. I'm not sure because the game became tedious in the industrial era and I restarted when I felt like I was winning.

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Was this still on epic or marathon? I don’t think I would have the patience to play either through to the industrial era. But, since it would be telling, were you ahead in score? While I have won games that I though were hopeless, I have also lost games that I thought were in the bag. Surprises are part of the appeal of Civ5, and you may have quit too soon.

Also, scouting efficiency really really matters. Lots of priorities for those scouts, archers and the starting warrior... . One of the keys to early domination is not having your units all over the place on the turn you need to start attacking. The challenge is often that you want to kill a barb camp, or explore, but on t45 you should really start shooting. You have to think roughly ten turns ahead... like, for example, managing the tech/build queues. If you start building a granary on turn 10, and finish archery on t17, you either have to interrupt that build, or delay the archer. If you're delaying the archer, you should have teched mining first, or something. If you're teching the wheel on t27 to get early chariot archers, but didn't start building your worker by t14, you won't have a pasture by the time you tech the wheel, so you can't build or buy chariot archers.. So you should have teched something else, or build that worker before the second scout. On Deity, of course, this means you really *need* to steal a worker by t20 at the latest, not build it, but you get the idea. I play the first 50 turns like chess. I often concede if I manage them wrong, but I always learn from it. Conversely, I often play out games after a mistake is made, because I always learn something from making lemonade out of lemons. Sometimes I come up with new strategies by doing that. Plus, it's fun to occasionally finish a game.

But, don't feel obligated to finish every game. If there's one tip I could give to Deity beginners, that's it. Don't spend ten hours clicking next turn, when you could restart 20 times instead and refine your early game, because the early game matters sooo much. Once you have your early game refined, then focus on your later game. Why in that order? Because the early game is the difference between a t350 finish and a t250 finish. And why does that matter?

Well, case in point, if you're achieving the industrial era 100 turns earlier, it drastically affects your build order, policy choices, attack strategy... everything really. There are strategies that just don't work if you're 100 turns behind due to a slow start. So, I think it's best, when trying to learn Deity, to focus on the early game until you get it down, then focus on the mid-game, then focus on the late-game.

Cromagnus said:

Good plan!
I would practice getting a composite bow army up by t55. Make that a goal until you can do it fairly easily. Just restart if you don't have them attacking a city by t70, until you can do it by t55. You'll learn a lot from that. Domination requires focus. You don't have time to build anything you don't absolutely need. Figuring out what you need and when you need it takes practice. Tech order especially. If you've been playing builder mode for ages you'll have bad habits for domination.

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Yep, builder mode for sure I'm a perfectionist and for that reason I haven't tried too many approaches for a fear of wasting time on them... However a bad game, my last Ship of the Line epic was very educational. I learned a lot, but have still to learn how to get things rolling asap. I can, in most cases, catch up with the AI in the renaissance era (not only with England's spies), but I will have to practice very early game.

beetle said:

Was this still on epic or marathon? I don’t think I would have the patience to play either through to the industrial era. But, since it would be telling, were you ahead in score? While I have won games that I though were hopeless, I have also lost games that I thought were in the bag. Surprises are part of the appeal of Civ5, and you may have quit too soon.

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Epic. I like to do Epic because that will allow reasonably fast 'clicking through the uninteresting game states' but still allows me to focus on an era I like. Also the slower game speeds feel more realistic because of the unit movement/time ratio change. In that game, I was ahead in score against all but two Civs (Ottomans and the runaway Babylon). I had all but three capitals already in custody, and knew that I could take Brazil in just a few turns.
My current surprise war with the Ottomans was going very strong and they did not have a change despite their tech lead. I was able to attack them from two fronts and had some real heave battleship bombing capability so that was a won war already. My only question about winning or not, if I was going to be able to conquer both the Ottomans' and the Brazil's capitals before I lost my good relationship with Babylon. If I was able to do that surprise attack on Babylon's capital in the end, the game would be won. Bab's tech lead would not have protected their capital if I even 2/3 of my battle ships would have survived for 3 turns on that assault. Level 10 Battleships are formidable things even against tech lead armies if only you can protect them from subs and bombers..

Cromagnus said:

..... You have to think roughly ten turns ahead... like, for example, managing the tech/build queues. If you start building a granary on turn 10, and finish archery on t17, you either have to interrupt that build...... I play the first 50 turns like chess. I often concede if I manage them wrong, but I always learn from it. Conversely, I often play out games after a mistake is made, because I always learn something from making lemonade out of lemons.....

....But, don't feel obligated to finish every game. If there's one tip I could give to Deity beginners, that's it.
me.

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Yeah, I'll have to do more 'rehearsal games'. The challenge seems to be there are so many variables that will have an effect. Like, sometimes you really do have to build or buy a worker, and knowing that's going to be the case can be too late. Many times the chosen CS doesn't put out a worker until turn 24 and many times the first AI settler/worker you meet and steal will result in a bloody 15-troop assault by the AI 10 turns later, or you just happen to meet 4 different AIs that very turn.

Scouting is a big thing I can see. Perhaps I will have to try first without raging barbarians - the scouts seem to die 50% of the time if they don't have archer escorts But RBs are a double edged sword; in my current game they saved me by stealing the AIs third setller who was going to utterly ruin my game.

Also I think I should just focus on one thing at a time, since trying to go for strong, early culture, or a religion, will mean it's difficult to succeed in early war.
But that's the problem really - often I wouldn't go to war just for the sake of it, but to use war as a means to an end, which could be cultural, scientific, economic or religious. So that rises the question what will happen if you only do war in the beginning.

BTW; thank you guys for all your help, I really appreciate it! I am determined to master this game eventually!

delete

There's another way to get a domination on Deity. To win a domination, you need to be the last civ in possession of its capital.

You can turtle on your borders and look which AI is the domination runaway. You'll be, basically, a follower or a vassal.
You need to follow it in friendship (DoF, WC and Ideologies). Autocracy is the must have, but sometimes you need to go in Order.

So plan to conquest with this AI other capitals. At last, get this AI capital. You don't need a strong army, just enough to capture a city strength around 130 to 150 .
X-Com and Bomber are helpful. Nuke, make the hole. It works better on Archipelago or Large Islands where battleships and carriers rocks.
It's pretty risky, because you're behind until plastics in science and army. And when you go for last capital you need to not loose your own. And because it's late game T280 to T300, the AIrunaway have a very large army.

Economy is waste during initial war (caravans plunder and lux sell only to your ally). Unhappiness is nerf because you sell AI capital to your ally. Play a science game, bulb scientist for Satellites and Nanotechs.

Advantages : Your under pressure all the game. And until last assault you can't really loose. Your don't really have dead time during each era. Game feel more Epic, in a way. Runaway use to be a warmonger. So you have no hurry for culture, science and diplo loose.
Inconvenient : More clicks, more time. You can loose the game T300/320 for just one assault.

I believe they changed domination victory so you have to be the one who controls all the capitals now for the victory. O_O

That is correct, for BNW only.