Best approach for a domination victory

axlroze89

Chieftain
Joined
Dec 16, 2009
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I was playing with the germans and tried to go for domination but got my ass kicked really bad early on. So I was wondering what are some approaches you guys use when going for this victory. And Iam playing on Warloard difficulty.
 
I recommend looking at the strategy articles on this forum, there are plenty of good ones that should show you how to set up your civ for any type of victory.

The Germans are pretty good for a domination victory. There's many ways to do it, with their most powerful way being upgrading their elite units into advanced units. How you do this is to build a barracks in a city and start producing warriors. German warriors start out vetern, so a barracks will make them elite units. So, make a bunch of warriors in a city with barracks, and then start teching up. When you get Iron Working, those elite warriors will change into elite legions, when you get Feudalism, those elite legions will change into elite knights, and when you get Combustion, those elite knights will change into elite tanks.

For Warlord difficulty, you get +50% attack as well, so this will make things easier, you could finish the game off with legions if you wanted, or horsemen.

But, you should probably focus on playing the game a little better. You need to learn how to custom manange your workers in a your cities. Don't select balanced. You should be selecting what tiles you want to work on in every city.

You should look to build more settlers too. You should first target getting your 100 gold, and then start build settlers after that. Once you get to Code of Laws, you should try to create a lot more settlers. Learn how to do this well, and you'll play this game to its highest level. More cities= more power.

Eventually, the goal we like to set out for players is to learn how to have 10 cities by 0AD, or 40 turns. That's not going to come easy, but once you learn how to do it, the games will become so much easier and you'll never lose to Deity.

If you want an easier domination victory, select the Aztecs or Arabs, tech horseback riding and horserush the other civs.
 
Playing game of the week on deity but I can't stay at peace long enough to get a good set of cities and as soon as i go to war they have armies and I can't defend against them. And I cant keep up in tech while expanding. When I get to the enemy cities they already have an army waiting with 18 or more defense and i cant take it.

Should I try to build all of my cities close and in such a way as to be more easily defendable or should I build them in order to claim territory?
Should I try to get that first army to take a capital?
Should I be settling in an area witha lot of food and concentrating on growing size at first? or concentrate on production?

I can win a OCC with the Spanish easy enough but a normal game with the germans - can't seem to do it.
 
Ax, even if you are going for Domination, remember that you have to get ahead in Tech. The only way to take a heavily defended city is to have superior units. Horse/legion armies can conquer a city defendant by warriors or single archers, but not archer armies. Knight armies can beat archer armies (absent walls or really powerful upgrades like engineering) but cannot beat Pikeman armies.

The key to domination is to aim to get one of the offensive techs soon enough that the units can reach the enemy and attack before the opposing civ invents the relevant defensive tech. So you get basically three windows to attack.

1. You can research Horseback Riding (HBR) right away, hit a couple of barbarians, get upgraded, look for an enemy capitol, form an army and attack right away. This will only work if you move really, really fast. Most civs will research Bronze Working (BW) early and start building archers. Once they get an archer army dug in in their capitol your horsies cannot win, even with infiltration. You might be able to root them out by using a spy to break their defenses. However, you will need a spy from a village because you will not have time to research HBR, Alphabet and Writing while pumping out horses, so that is a limited option. This approach will rarely get you more than one capital, but one enemy cap in the early BC era is a massive advantage... also, the horse rush has the advantage of putting you on the offensive and other on the defensive early in the game. If you know when to stop and switch to settler spam, it can be followed up by very rapid expansion which can form the basis for any type of victory. On the other hand, a failed horse rush (i.e. you fail to take enemy cities) will usually mean defeat for you unless the game is single player on a low difficulty setting.

2. Try to get to Chivalry as fast as possible and get your knights out to attack. This approach might work as a follow up to the Horse Rush strategy above, but only if you are really quick with it or if you pick up the Knights Templar artifact (IIRC that is the one which upgrades your horses to knights). Otherwise just research Chivalry as fast as possible . It will not be possible to build Knights fast enough with just one or two cities, so you will need to spam settlers first. IIRC correctly, you need Code of Laws> Monarchy >Chivalry, so you might as well get Code and enter Republic for your settler spam. This approach works best if you pick up a great leader pre-chivalry and can form elite armies around Knights built in the leader's city. Even without a great leader, you will want a Barracks so that your Knight armies are Veteran. Doing this will require you to skip some of the early techs with the cool 'first to learn' bonuses like Irrigation and Literacy. Unlike the horse rush, the knights rush stands at least some chance of winning the game outright. On the other hand, if you are too slow and everyone has time to get Pikemen dug in before your knights arrive, your only real hope in the game is to somehow get Leonardo's Workshop so that your knights become Tanks. Without 'first to learn' tech bonuses and behind in other things you are in some trouble if your Knights cannot conquer. Remember to use spies to break city defenses to help you knights out.

3. You can always conquer the old fashioned way, with Tanks. Here, you focus on research for most of the game. Try to get as many 'first to learn' bonuses as possible, culminating in being the first to research Industrialization (+5g/city), Corporation (+5g/city) and Railroad (+2 production/city). By the time you are ready to learn Combustion, you should have factories built or at least on their way. At least some of your cities will need Barracks so that your armies will start out as veterans. Rush the factories and start spamming tanks. Also, get at least one or two Cruiser/Battleship fleets prepared. You will need those to beat dug in Rifleman and Modern Infantry armies, especially in Capitols. Spies never hurt, either.

You will notice that I did not put specific years on the 'windows' you have to use the conquest strategies. That is because it depends on who your enemies are and what difficulty level you are playing. Fast researching civs like China and Japan will be ready for you earlier. The Greeks start with Democracy, so they will defend Athens with Pikemen almost from the beginning of the game. The English research BW right away to take advantage of their nasty +1 Longbow units. As a rule of thumb you have about 15-20 turns to attack with a veteran horse army before enemy caps are too strong to take, maybe a little longer if you get infiltration. For knights you can do it if you get a good basic start and aim right for Chivalry. Tanks can take their time, but remember, if you are just peacefully teching away, so are your enemies.
 
the most conventional way to win a domination victory is to get an advanced tech like Feudalism or Combustion, and then strike before the enemy more advanced defenders like riflemen or modern infantry.

But, the Germans are one of the few civs that do not need to be in the tech lead to win a comfortable domination victory. Their elite armies upgrade, so it's usually wise to delay iron working, build a barracks, and make a lot of warriors that will upgrade when you get iron working, feudalism, and combustion. Their medieval bonus, +1 production from forests makes it easy to get warriors out really quickly, espeically if you have 3 or more forests by your city. Note that you do not want to get your beaker count above 30, as this will usually backfill iron working.

Those elite armies hit really hard. Getting march, blitz, and infiltration is usually the best setup for your armies. You can get an army of 3 elite units, or you can build 2 more warriors/legions for 10 hammers, and then form an army with one elite warrior and then they will upgrade as you advance in tech.

Get feudalism and then Relgion, switch to fundamentalism, and you have knights that can attack at 27-36 or more, depending on upgrades and bonuses.

But, Game of the Week means each AI cap will have a Great Leader, a Barracks, Iron Working and Bronze Working to start the game. Usually you want to try and kill them before they get an archer army, because those archer armies have 27 defense in Deity GOTW. If you are going to play a long game, you'll either need a lot of elite knights quickly (with practice, you should be able to make about 5-10 elite knight armies by 0AD from 5-7 cities, only teching to feudalism).

GOTW on Deity isn't an easy win by any strech. Using spies to steal their Great Leaders helps if you get locked into a long game.

I usually don't expand that much with the Germans, I try to be efficent in tech and production, trying to get 5-7 cities, and then teching bronze, alphabet, writing, code of laws, iron working, monarchy and feudalism. That's if you want to strike quick. This works really well for online play. If you want a more well rounded game, you should target navigation after code of laws and try to get to the islands to help increase your tech.

They are not the best techers, but it's easy to stay alive with them because of their military bonuses, as well as their production bonus. You should always be looking for how the extra production can help you win, whether it be building more libraries, settlers, units, wonders, temples, or whatever you can do to convert that advantage into a win.
 
Wow thanks for the awesome responses, iam about to play right now and ill start practicing those tactics.
 
Thans guys, I agree that was really good and detailed.

I actually managed to pull it off today. Well actually my playstation crashed - but I had taken 3 capitals and the 4th belonged to a fairly weak civilization.

At the end the computer showed some amazing abilities to defeat 72 attack artillery with 30 defense units. Was I just unlucky or can you get secret bonus defense points that dont appear in that number?
 
I believe that on higher difficulties the AI gets a combat bonus. I have played enough Deity games now to be sure that the combat outcomes are not just the ratio of the two units' combat power. I almost never win a fight which is even or when I am at a disadvantage. I lose surprisingly frequently when I have an advantage less than 2 to 1. I think that the AI gets a bigger bonus when defending. The occasions where I win an even fight are almost always when I am the defender.
 
I believe that on higher difficulties the AI gets a combat bonus. I have played enough Deity games now to be sure that the combat outcomes are not just the ratio of the two units' combat power. I almost never win a fight which is even or when I am at a disadvantage. I lose surprisingly frequently when I have an advantage less than 2 to 1. I think that the AI gets a bigger bonus when defending. The occasions where I win an even fight are almost always when I am the defender.

While it may seem to be this way, it's really not. The AI does not get some hidden defensive bonus on Deity. It's just normal.

It may have to do with conditions being a little tougher for you to get the units to the other guy quick enough, or just a few unlucky battles, but it all evens out. Anything that's not overrun (7:1) has a chance to win, though it's rare to see anything over 3:1 lose.
 
:lol:

You're not even going ahead and you want to win by domination?

First read a bit and get some practice in how to get ahead. Then just beat the hell out of the AI, vassalize some, conquer the rest and wait until you get the necessary percentage of land and population.
 
Is there still a score board for the GOTW?

I hear people were able to finish before 2000BC but is that before they started giving the AI the barracks and the great leader bronze working and iron working? That sounds like a pretty determined attempt to make their capitals untakable until one has a large team of elite knights... or tanks.
 
While it may seem to be this way, it's really not. The AI does not get some hidden defensive bonus on Deity. It's just normal.

It may have to do with conditions being a little tougher for you to get the units to the other guy quick enough, or just a few unlucky battles, but it all evens out. Anything that's not overrun (7:1) has a chance to win, though it's rare to see anything over 3:1 lose.

Do you know this for a fact? Has anyone tested the game by repeating fight scenarios? I find it doubtful. I can tell you that, without a doubt, I win far less than half of my even strength fights on deity. And I almost never win a fight at less than even strength. I lose at 3:1 or more at least once per game, usually more. I know that Civ2 was riddled with special bonuses for/against the AI and the Barbarians, depending on what difficulty level you played. That was proven by objective tests by many players.
 
Lol terra, i lose far less than half of my even strength fights on king. Ive found that unless you're on warlord or cheiftan, "even" basically means you lose. I never fight unless i have a bare minimum of 1.5/1 advantage on king. 2/1 ratio is the minimum ill attack on emperor, and i dont play diety lol. Furthermore, ive found that the AI has a much bigger win percentage when they have the disad than i do. For example, i probably win about 4 percent of my disadavantage fights, meaning 4 in a hundred. The AI wins about 10 to 15 percent of their disad fights, unless of course theyre down like a 1/3 ratio.

The other day i was playing emperor and i was going for a domination victory. I had a ninja tank army attacking a french city with a riflemen army inside, but i had naval support by a single cruiser, and a ranger knight army on the square. I had the advantage, 60 to 45 and lost. I know percentage-wise thats not TOO big of an advantage, but cmon man, advantage means advantage.
 
There seem to be some defensive bonuses (like the hills attack bonus) because I actually win a few I should not win on defense even on deity but rarely on attack.
 
Do you know this for a fact? Has anyone tested the game by repeating fight scenarios? I find it doubtful. I can tell you that, without a doubt, I win far less than half of my even strength fights on deity. And I almost never win a fight at less than even strength. I lose at 3:1 or more at least once per game, usually more. I know that Civ2 was riddled with special bonuses for/against the AI and the Barbarians, depending on what difficulty level you played. That was proven by objective tests by many players.

There's been a lot of discussion about this on the 2k forums. My belief is that there aren't any hidden advantages. Has testing been done? Well, I have played a lot of games. Does that count? I don't keep statistics.

The thing is that we don't really know what 3:1 odds means other than that you can lose. Does it mean you have a 1 in 4 chance of losing? If so, then you shouldn't be surprised when it happens from time to time. It could mean something else entirely. The formulas have not been made public.

What we know is there are definitely two types of battles: battles you can lose and battles that have overrun. Overrun means you have 7:1 odds (or 3:1 for the Zulu). Some players believe there is a middle ground where you can't lose but don't have overrun, but I've never seen evidence of this. I do believe I've seen 6:1 losses before, though they are rare. They are rare enough that I don't believe 6:1 is a straight-up 14% chance of losing.

My theory is combat goes round by round and units and armies have hit points. Each round the odds are compared and a hit point is done to the loser. The battle concludes when one side loses all of its hit points. This (if true) causes more normalization in the odds, so a 3:1 loss would be somewhat rare and 6:1 almost unheard of. But we still dont know (a) if I'm right, (b) exactly how many hit points each unit/army has (c) how many rounds a battle goes and (d) how exactly the odds are compared.

For me it's enough to know that you will lose 3:1 once in a while but not very often. You can win 9:15 too. If you want to see it, get the Oracle of Delphi. It's great for that kind of thing.
 
The one thing we can all agree upon is that an absolutely even battle should be a 50/50 proposition. As you suggest, elthrasher, it is possible that the formula for uneven fights is non-linear, so 3:1 odds would not mean the stronger side winning 75% of the time. Unfortunately, without a convenient cheat mode/map editor and given that battles always end the same way after save/load (naturally, I know this from others. I never do it myself. ;) ) there really is not a convenient way to test the outcomes of battles with different odds. If someone wants to do the research, a string of 50 or so battles with exact 1:1 odds, repeated for different levels of units (1 vs. 1 warrior fights, 12 v. 12 with no mods, 12 vs. 12 Ninja Horse Army vs. dug in Archer army and so on) should tell us if there is an AI combat advantage.
 
The one thing we can all agree upon is that an absolutely even battle should be a 50/50 proposition. As you suggest, elthrasher, it is possible that the formula for uneven fights is non-linear, so 3:1 odds would not mean the stronger side winning 75% of the time. Unfortunately, without a convenient cheat mode/map editor and given that battles always end the same way after save/load (naturally, I know this from others. I never do it myself. ;) ) there really is not a convenient way to test the outcomes of battles with different odds. If someone wants to do the research, a string of 50 or so battles with exact 1:1 odds, repeated for different levels of units (1 vs. 1 warrior fights, 12 v. 12 with no mods, 12 vs. 12 Ninja Horse Army vs. dug in Archer army and so on) should tell us if there is an AI combat advantage.

Well, I don't quite agree. Based on my theory, different units or armies have different numbers of hit points. For example, a veteran tank (15 attack) has one hit point. It loses a round, it dies. A vet, fortified archer army (15 defense) has at least three hit points (in that it can be wounded twice - not sure if this translates directly to hit points). This means that despite the 15 v. 15 (1:1) odds, the archer army would have an advantage.

But otherwise, units of the same type and experience should best one another 50% of the time, yes. My experience is that this is about right, but I haven't collected data. Seems awfully boring. Didn't Grayson or someone do some stats? Maybe he'll chime in.
 
Thats funny thrasher, cuz thats always how i looked at it. The unit with the more men in their army usually wins, and ironically thats usually the defending AI. Lets say i have a tank army attacking one of their capitals. Tank armies dont heal so like you said, they would count as "1". The defending riflemen army, although at a 1:3 disadvantage thanks to the hill im using and naval support, counts as "3". Now although i'd usually win with a 3:1 ratio, i find that if i do lose with a nice advantage, its usually to armies that count for more "numbers", i.e. a riflemen army, archer army, etc. I find it rare that both our armies have the same number of units in them and i lose a good advantage. I tend to lose alot when i have a 2:1-ish advantage but have a single unit vs an army. Say i have a single tank on a hill with naval support attacking a dug-in archer army. My guess is i would lose.

Maybe this has nothing to do with how it actually works. But i have definately noticed this little pattern as i play.
 
I did lots of stats, all on deity level. Mainly to test out "special named" units that don't receive any bonus, to dispell the myth that these units actually get some kind of hidden bonus, and they didn't.

I recorded a few hundred battles of horsemen and knights vs. all different kinds of units and odds. There were no surprises:

Bigger numbers normally win
if the battle is within 10-20% odds, it was kinda a tossup, but over time, the advantage still went to the supreiror number.


The only thing I can find in the game where battle odds changes is when it comes to barbarians. Anything with a 1 attack or higher will win in the first 20-30 turns of the game all the time, but after those first turns, the barbs will often kill units that are not at least 1.5 attack or higher.

But, I've played loads of games on Deity, and there is nothing signifantly different about the battle odds that I have ever seen, whether I'm explitictly recording the data or not. King, Emperor, and Deity all seem to have the same battle system.

The only difference in King, Emperor and Deity is that the AI recieves a production bonus on Emperor (20% bonus) and Deity (40% bonus).

My personal belief is that battles that you lose with better odds stick out more, and you are playing on a harder level, so it's might seem like this is the case, or maybe you didn't fight as much on the earlier levels at close odds. You don't need to bring a 2:1 force to kill the AI on Deity. I get just as many lucky battles as unlucky battles. I think the combat system is pretty good. Most don't complain when they win a lucky battle, but there's not end to the griping from an unlucky battle. I don't play the PC Civ games, but I do know that this is something that has been in all the games, "pikman kills tank" stuff has been around for a while from what I've heard.

The honus shouldn't be on me to prove that Deity is not different, because almost no one that has played a lot says this. It's typcially the people that are just jumping to
Deity that think these things, and then post about them. This has been discussed on other forums, and most agree that it isn't any different. I know that ZsoZso did some battle statistics as well, though his sample sizes where not that big. He seemed to think that the close battles goes to the disadvantaged more often than not, and more often to defenders than not. There really was a significant statistical variance for it to really be that big of a deal, and his sample sizes were not large in all cases. But, mainly he was talking about battles that are 7 vs. 5, or 12 vs. 15. Things like that, nothing like 2:1 or 3:1.

From what me and Zso both recorded, those happen few and far between, but just enough to show up for it to be there, but closer to 5-15% of the time in those type of battles. I'd say that 3:1 is probably lower than 5% for it to lose. 2:1 isn't that uncommon, but still way less than 20% of the time.
 
I generally go Domination until I beat down the AI guys to one capital then choose which victory I want.

I found a good article on here and pretty much follow the same recipe in my games:

1) Switch initial city to 2 Production to get first warrior out at 3 turns.
2) After warrior out switch it back to balanced.
3) Goody hut/barb hunt and try to get to 100 gold.
4) establish 2nd city with free settler
5) build (rush -- AFTER hitting 100 gold) libraries in both cities- these are my only two research cities from now til I take a good one from a bad guy
6) Alphabet -> Writing -> Literacy -> Code of Laws -> Currency (i like the free market if i have 3rd city by then) -> Democracy
7) Buy bronze working from AI
8) start settling as often as possible after converting to republic... all new cities will be gold-focused
9) After getting 10 or so cities total, and having good defenders, go democracy and start pushing out markets/banks.
10) Shoot to Combustion and start buying tanks

That's roughly my strategy. I am sure there are better ones from the experts here. Obviously tweak it depending on opponent AI and special abilities. I nearly got rolled on Diety (no room to expand) but snuck a galleon with a few settlers to some nice islands and the game turned there.

I am sure some folks here have faster strategies and i might switch it up a little. I want to try the french and go culture but just don't know the best way to go about it.

And I love the Japanese... the free harbor effect fits my city spam approach pretty well.

I play Emperor now usually. Diety is more stress than I like usually but will hit it again this weekend maybe.
 
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