Need help at key juncture of Immortal Domination attempt (save included)

Hi guys, so I ended up doing a SV with Assyria due to an isolated location in my last game; so I've decided to roll with a Domination game on fractal with Pocatello. I am at T207 and I feel I've done pretty well.

Achieved so far:
- Solid science
- Soon to slingshot into Modern era with OU
- Have taken a 5-wonder capital.

Possibly areas of moderate mistakes:
- Never had a game this diplomatically convoluted; not sure if I'm doing good or bad on diplo in this game.

I need some advice on areas of improvement and what you would do in the upcoming turns; would be greatly appreciated as I'm trying to make the leap from Immortal to Deity and Domination is an area i need improvement on.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Edit: just noticed I derped a little on specialists while I was at war - have fixed them now.

Don't take this the wrong way but your science isn't solid. 400 bpt at t207 isn't good. With all specialists worked I got to 620 bpt. Your capital doesn't have a lighthouse, even though there are no sea resources the lighthouse provide +1 food to every sea tile. Agiwhatsitsname hasn't built it's observatory yet, did you know if you settle a NW you can build an observatory?

You are starting to build banks these should have been built long ago. Most of your units aren't garrisoned and are on America's borders. You will suffer(to varying degrees) if Washington asks you to shift your troops.

Diplomatically you aren't in too bad a shape considering, Were you the one to eliminate Maria? I would have let Isabella do that. Interestingly Cathrine offered me a DOF.

Culturaly you've made a huge mistake in not trying to win the world fair and not building many culture buildings. Had you done so you would have gone through your chosen ideology a lot quicker. all your guilds are in your cap, a big ask of a pop 19 capital.

A level3 spy in your cap and a level2 spy spying on America. I put the level2 in the cap and the lv3 to work couping CS, resulting in 20 happiness. If Washington catches your spy you may loose half your friends.

You haven't explored the map. Granted for a domination victory you don't want to meet everyone too quickly but since the WC has been founded you want to explore everyone's lands and find every Cs.

phillipwyllie said:

Don't take this the wrong way but your science isn't solid. 400 bpt at t207 isn't good. With all specialists worked I got to 620 bpt. Your capital doesn't have a lighthouse, even though there are no sea resources the lighthouse provide +1 food to every sea tile. Agiwhatsitsname hasn't built it's observatory yet, did you know if you settle a NW you can build an observatory?

You are starting to build banks these should have been built long ago. Most of your units aren't garrisoned and are on America's borders. You will suffer(to varying degrees) if Washington asks you to shift your troops.

Diplomatically you aren't in too bad a shape considering, Were you the one to eliminate Maria? I would have let Isabella do that. Interestingly Cathrine offered me a DOF.

Culturaly you've made a huge mistake in not trying to win the world fair and not building many culture buildings. Had you done so you would have gone through your chosen ideology a lot quicker. all your guilds are in your cap, a big ask of a pop 19 capital.

A level3 spy in your cap and a level2 spy spying on America. I put the level2 in the cap and the lv3 to work couping CS, resulting in 20 happiness. If Washington catches your spy you may loose half your friends.

You haven't explored the map. Granted for a domination victory you don't want to meet everyone too quickly but since the WC has been founded you want to explore everyone's lands and find every Cs.

Click to expand...

I'm fine with criticism; if I don't get told bluntly, I won't learn faster. I notice the specialist issue and applied them correctly just after I uploaded the save. Yeah, the world's fair was just a complete oversight, which is a shame as the free social policy is a biggie like you say.

In regards to guilds, what would you advise? I was thinking that you internal-route your capital to pop30+ asap and use it for all guilds but I could be sorely mistaken as I'm not anywhere close to experienced at this game.

On a side note, the reason my troops are on America's border due to my intent to attack New York and Washington once the DoF expires in some turns but I admit I've lined them up very prematurely which is probably not the best move.

Hey HollowRain. Please don't take my input as gospel, since I'm pretty much an Emperor/Immortal player myself, despite a few Deity wins under my belt. But I play almost always on Deity because I find I learn much more that way.

Some things I noticed which I would personally like to have done something about, in approximate order of importance.

1. You only have one other capital, and I think it will be really tough to get more than one or two more as you move into the later eras. At this stage, I'd like to have at least 3 capitals under my belt and be looking to finish off with the 2/3 most difficult ones in a big sweep. What is your plan? To tech to bombers and X-Com and take them all quickly? From your current position I cannot see artillery getting the job done, plus you don't have a very big army. Madrid is easily do-able but Carthage, Delhi and London will be a tough ask. Plus Moscow is miles away and you don't even know what's in between :S

2. You seem to have built a lot of non-essential stuff which might have slowed you down. Musicians guild is not something I ever saw a DomV player build, for instance.

3. The land to the north of USA may well contain interesting stuff, such as CS to give you quests and influence. I would have scouted it for sure.

4. Since coastal dom is out because of the ice, and your empire will be stretched very wide and thin going all the way down the fractal continent, I would personally abort dom and go for another VC. Science is easily in your grasp.

Don't get me wrong, I think you've done very well. It's great to be the tech leader at T207 on Immortal

But I think you should have gotten more conquest done by now, personally. Maybe it's a play style thing.

Acken recently did a great video of Deity domination here. Plus I love this one by Moriarte, and this one by MadDjinn.

To get a dom victory on Deity, it seems to me that you basically have to select a good, sensible victim order, using diplo to make each victim hated for a period if you want or need to. Acken didn't use diplo too much, but just went all out assault. A very daring and relentless style, but it worked well.

[EDIT: I would personally say don't worry too much about science. I just loaded several of my deity domination games and I was around 400-500 around about that turn too, but I had a much bigger army, so that in the 50 turns that followed, I was able to use diplo and CS alliances to sweep a number of capitals, leaving only the 2 most difficult until later. Build a bunch of artillery and horses and see how many you can take by turn 250. Good luck! ]

As consentient has mentioned since you are going for a domination victory guilds are not needed, although culture is nice regardless of the VC. I'd have put 1 in my top 3(population wise) cities.

If you are planning to backstab(ok technically you'll wait for the DOF to end) anyone I'd backstab Isabella and recall to life Portugal(if you were not the eliminator). You might all but erase your warmonger score and Ghandi and Dido might become friendly. Save before you try this, and denounce before you DOW. Should that happen then you could gang up on Washington with Dido, Catherine, and Ghandi as allies.

The main problem, and this isn't your fault as you've rolled a pretty shody start(the ice to the south prevents cargo ships from Lisbon) is growth. What I'd do when you've finished is replay the map and settle in Washington's face(you plan to DOw him anywho). Just out-tech him.

edit: I've just watched Acken's videos and now say forget science. In fact watch them.....

Yeah, science is truly king if you aim to do what Moriarte does in the Korea game and finish everyone off in a sweep later. But if your aim is to do what Acken does and steamroller everyone starting from pretty near the beginning in an endless war, then science takes a backseat to economy and bare knuckle diplo.

I'm trying to replicate Acken's style with a civ other than Babylon. If I can get a similar win with say, Assyria or England, I'll be really happy

Thanks for the advice guys. Really appreciate it. I'm going to revisit an early point to put it into practice. I did play it through between your replies and got a T350ish (yeah, very slow, but it was my first real Domination attempt) and needless to say I went with XCOMs and a few stealth bombers. Washington crumbled within 10 turns of DoF ending and from there I played friendly with Russia as they were my only real ally. Lizzy and Dido went for Madrid, so I had an easy time just capturing a 4 population Madrid and took the occupied Barcelona and Porto. In terms of Portugal - they are alive somewhere on the map at that point, I'm pretty sure - they got wiped out by Dido before I got sight of Portgual's rebirth. From then I built a medium sized army but tech-wise i was two eras ahead; I then waged war at Dido as she had alienated herself from the other civs by mindless aggression that did her no good. A lengthy siege through their lands from Barcelona through the CS territory (which was massive pain) ended in me taking Carthage and teching for XCOMs just as it fell. I then had a huge military advantage unit-strength wise, so I just smashed through England and Russia concurrently. Russia was a close one as I underestimated my melee-to-ranged ratio; but all went well. I took York really easily, it had no defence after Dido and Gandhi had been bribed to attack Lizzy, whilst I swiftly moved against Dido. Following taking York i took peace with england and went after Gandhi; XCOMs and stealth bombers meant I took Vija-whatever it is after a small delay; Delhi fell very soon after and London was a matter of resuming war with a few nukes and a couple XCOMs.

Definitely not a smooth victory and it is something I'm going to try and improve on drastically as it got to the point where I was so unexcited by the gameplay (since it dragged on so long) that I don't want to drag a DomV over the T300 mark ever again.

So, again, thank you for the advice, I'll put it into practice when I revisit the save in a bit. Just got my first Deity win on the Incan Deity challenge in 287Turns via Science; very chuffed about it since whilst it wasn't anything special - it was my first deity attempt. Doing your homework via Youtube and these forums pays off afterall - heh.