Domination victory strategies on Deity - input wanted

Although there are specific questions I would like to ask of the warmongers in the Deity player base, my hope is that this will become a kind of catch-all, share-all thread where all manner of tips are shared with regards to DomV on Deity. In time, I may link this thread to others - for example, VidLP threads that demonstrate a specific strategy in use, complete with timestamps, for examples.

To start us off, I want to share a major failing of mine and get some feedback on it, in order to personally improve: the problem of overstretch. I should also say that my level is somewhere between Immortal and Deity. War feels SIGNIFICANTLY easier on Immortal to the point where I don't find myself experiencing overstretch anywhere near as much.

Overstretch is: 'being unable to properly prioritise in order to maintain growth of the empire as well as keeping the army's economy going, keeping happiness in check, and maintaining an overall game-long strategy for the DomV, so that I run into a situation in renaissance/Industrial where I cannot catch up on tech.'

Of course I could post a dozen screenshots and so forth, but the basic scenario can be easily described like this:

T50-75: I am happy with my tech-ing and unit building, and end up with a decent army, and sometimes even put it to use during this time to capture my first capital.

T76-100: After construction, I tech education, then go back to machinery, and the army keeps going, economy is OK, I'm using diplo to keep the economy going and stop people from hating me, and I either take a 2nd capital in this time or am hatching a plot to do so once I get to XBs.

T101-125: At least one more capital falls, sometimes two, but my army is starting to run into sterner opposition and no amount of good movement or good terrain is going to keep the army alive. Cities can one-shot my troops if I carry on past this point.

T126-150: Usually, I am forced to completely stop warring and concentrate on growth, and making culture, science, happiness and trade buildings to stop my empire imploding.

Sometimes this last stage works, and I can stay 'on top', but sometimes I end up falling too far behind the runaways, and no amount of diplo or troop numbers can help me crack those capitals. Since I've had to puppet the captured capitals, they've stalled, and I've been busy doing other things in MY capital so it's stalled, and my workers have been used too much for bait and haven't been, well...working.

I feel that if I can find an understanding of the game that allows me to properly analyse what I am doing, I won't get 'carried away' and end up in these overstretch games. I'm not going for fast victories at all. I'd much prefer to learn to consistently win DomVs on Deity.

Now, I have seen games where the early rush picks up speed and carries on through until victory, such as Acken's Babylon game. But I've not seen enough with commentary to properly explain what must be done in order to repeat this consistently.

I know that there are other approaches, such as staying peaceful and tech-ing to artillery, THEN starting the wars, but I find this a little boring, and it comes with its own challenges. When I don't capture any capitals before T150, it makes it much harder during the industrial period. Again, wars can get out of control, and end up taking way too long and destroying my economy or even my empire.

I realise that one can sometimes 'bail' for a diplo victory, but I'd like to learn to avoid this, and also one doesn't always have the CS allies for this.

So please, warmongers, tell me what I am doing wrong and how YOU keep yourself disciplined and following strategies that consistently win DomVs on Deity*.

* = Or, am I under a misapprehension. Do the top players sometimes change direction mid-game and go for SV or CV?

first off I'm not a huge warmonger (I only try it with cheesy stuff like attila)

but I think there's a lot of sense in the CB/XB rush for 1/2 capitals and waiting for artillery for the rest, considering you probably can't have the infrastructure to sustain the war for more than 50 turns. the other thing I saw a lot was the use of roads to get troops to the front line fast, and putting workers out there to pillage heal. The main point in making domination work is having enough GPT through TP spam in the puppets, IMHO. without the economy, it's often hard to get the production to make troops when you'd rather make buildings.

I am not the most optimal warmonger but I almost always try to warmonger in all of my games. If you read up on your warmonger strategies and watch hours of LPs of people who enjoy warmongering you will see some differnt things. When I watch elceeplaysciv or some of madjinn's older LPs you will see these guys actually hold back on things so they do to not take advantage of the AI too much. For instance I never seen any of these two Bootcamp troops like others. Also they try to make the trade a little more fair or like in one game they would not steal all those free prophets that they could of had.

When I play this game I really do not try to handicap the AI. My style handicaps the AI enough by not being optimal which allows the AI to tech very close to me and I lose more troops than optimal play which also helps the AI.

If you read up on Glory_7s games you will see that he is a huge fan of bootcamping his archers on cities to get those Log/Range promos. Also he likes to build roads all over the place to move his troops in and out. After he captures he goes back and deletes the roads. The biggest of these two is the Log/Range promo. Most people believe this promo on your range troops is OP, which I suppose it is but I love it! Two is enough but if you have four XBs with this promo it isn't hard to take out high numbered defense cities.

If you read up on Comagnus's tactics you will see that he believes in speed, speed, speed. This means you never let up, you keep pressing in on war after war. The faster the better.

One common theme I have noticed is that if your going for Domination most people would agree that you have to play very precise and it can be a difficult act of balance. After reading some of your games you seem to get caught up in builder mode and torn between the two. If you want to dominate the whole world you really have to commit to warmongering and alot of times forget things like National Wonders and other buildings that are easier to build in peaceful play. If your trying to dominate, do it early! Get in the habbit of rushing and keep rushing starting around turn 50 or so.

Another common theme is Liberty/Honor or just full blown Honor. Remeber once you have gone Full Honor you need to keep wars going on and on to keep that gold comming in! In my games sometimes retreat is the only option and since the AI will just charge in it is a nice trap to wipe out a huge army.

Ofcourse you want the AI your going to attack to be at war with someone else and if you can wait 3-5 turns to attack that can help since his troops will be moving away. I could go on and on but we have much better warmongers on this site who can give you better tips than myself. Domination is by no means easy but as you keep taking over cities it can get easier and easier. Practice is key and I suspect you just need more and more hours to learn what best fits your style. I think the worst thing one can do is try to be a warmonger and play like a peacemonger. Sometimes it is hard to get out of the mindset of peaceful play but that change will come sooner or later.

Although Science is nice and if you have more advanced troops that makes things easier but if you look at Peddroelm's latest games on these Challenges you will find he suggests you can disregard science after a certain point and has proven it on alot of maps/games. If you like go back and read up his post called: Honor/Autocracy 3 city Industrial era domination guide.

Last thing, if you like, you can play a peaceful game and get a huge tech advantage and use Stealth Bombers/Xcoms and Nukes if you like to wipe out all the caps. I think I read an Xcom strategy a ways back but I forget who wrote it. Anyway I know for sure it is a way to play and I seen Grendeldef do some things like this where at the end 3 caps were taken on the last turn.

EDIT: I agree with what tetley says but that means you better not lose any of your troops. If you play reckless like myself you will need to build troops through alot of the game which will hinder buildings. Ofcourse we all have our own style and that is why sometimes you will see clashes of what to do or what not to do. Im a strong believer in that you have to find what works for your style of game and go from there taking advice from everyone else but not following exactly. I wouldn't want to play exactly like anyone else anyway, I want to play the way I want to play but that means taking advice and making it my own.

You can do both building and war. But you have to build your units first, and farm experience on them. That delays your building. But once you do, the warring has very little to do with the building. Your diplomacy and trade gets a little complicated, and your units pay for their own maintenance (and then some) in plunder.

Build 6 to 7 archers in early game and you can just rely on them until flight. I like to supplement with melee horses unless my civ has foot UUs. These horses will later turn into tanks to help you finish off the game. First cap using cbows, second/third cap using xbows. Third/Fourth cap can often be taken using your super promoted ranged gatlings. I often find that artillery an unnecessary detour if you using cbows and xbows in the early-mid game. At that point I'd rather tech flight to defend against bombers and then swing down for landships. Research labs are absolutely unnecessary.

I really like the honor 3 city opener. I think pedrolleum found the sweet spot with 3 cities. More cities will delay your troop production and cause unhappiness, less cities will make you fall behind in production and science.

OK, pro-warmongers, I have an example save for analysis. In this game, I gained the tech lead in the late renaissance but recently lost it to Carthage who are pushing hard for a CV, I think.

Ashurbanipal, despite the experiences of people in the thread for DCL #11, has been busy in this game, chewing up most of the southern half of the landmass. It's obvious that he must be stopped before the end of the modern era.

But how to do it? I have my work cut out, not being that good a player.

Please tell me what you would do from this position, to preserve troops and win the war.

Thanks.

It is more map and civ dependent:

1. Pangaea:
Close AI terrains mostly rough, which block LoS -- War with Artillery then Flight.
Close AI terrain mostly flat, war starts from CB, then XB then artillery should finish jobs.
If your terrain is rough and AIs are far away --other VC, or war with artillery.

2. Continents:
Similar as above but may settle for other victory as getting lead in both naval and land tech may not be possible.

3. water map:
Find irons or trade irons, war with frigates.

As for empire management: only keep capitals or wonder city or city with unique lux that can't be obtained by CS or other capital in the future. Use trade route internally to your capital or to fulfill CS request when safe.

Social policy: either tradition or liberty can work. If you war early, liberty right side; if war late, full tradition or liberty left then liberty right. But if determined to go full domination, I would go full Commerce asap.

If I might suggest something, read up on some of Moriarte's posts. He often plays in the style you seem to be shooting for, which is to say, warmongering throughout the ages without sacrificing continued research and empire development. So, his strategy guides (and videos especially) might come in handy.

However, the most recent patch has changed early warmongering *dramatically*. There is now greatly reduced warmonger hate for capturing CS and early warmongering. Unfortunately, a lot of the strategies out there reflect the longstanding (pre-patch) warmongering code, which necessitated a specific strategy, which I will outline below.

Get 3-4 cities, beeline Construction, upgrade 4 archers to composite bows, build libraries and National College, attack between t50 and t70, *but don't capture a single city until t80 or t90*.

Capture a capital or two.

Beeline Machinery, aiming for t100 machinery (or t110 at the latest)

Capture a capital or two.

On pangaea, Beeline Artillery, aiming for t150 (t180 at the latest)

On continents, Beeline Navigation, with similar timetables.

Capture a capital or two. (Or the rest)

Beeline Tanks, bombers and/or battleships.

Capture the rest.

Three keys to success here:

1) micro-management
2) beelining key military techs
3) managing warmonger hate

#3 is now much less of an issue, and it really was half the reason to delay capture.

The other VERY valid reason to delay capture is that capitals start to get JUICY after t80. They have wonders, they have universities, they have greatly expanded cultural boundaries, they have tile improvements.

This is the last (and very important) key: Using the AI's Deity advantages to your advantage. Let *them* build it, then take it.

Of course, all of this is predicated on well-timed research, carefully spent gold, good city spots, getting lots of workers up quickly (usually via theft) and a host of other factors.

Basically, this strategy relies on efficiency. But it's fairly reliable. And still totally valid.

However, post-patch you can also just start moshing your opponents early without as much hate. This is key because without the hate you can (presumably, I haven't tried) get trade deals, friendships for better trade deals, and oh, more trade deals... Trades = happiness and gold = win.

Thanks for all the tips guys, really appreciated.

So how should I get out of the jam in the above saved game?

Hold back and beeline more advanced techs?

I feel if I can roll back Ashurbanipal's tide I will have the game in the bag because Carthage and Persepolis are coastal.

consentient said:

Thanks for all the tips guys, really appreciated.

So how should I get out of the jam in the above saved game?

Hold back and beeline more advanced techs?

I feel if I can roll back Ashurbanipal's tide I will have the game in the bag because Carthage and Persepolis are coastal.

Click to expand...

Do you have a Turn 0 save?

Sure, but I'm more interested in turning this game around for my current position. The strategies above I will put to use next time, but what can I do from here? I am sure I could win a battle of attrition eventually and take a delayed Dom win before Dido makes a CV, but I'd like to smash Ash as efficiently as possible, and I really want to win in the next 100 turns.

I can't load the save because u are playing with mods.

Nope. No mods. Since I started posting the DCL, I disabled all mods.

To win a domination game, you also need to have a great science to improve your army.
Always attack to civs which can dominate the world with their uniq units in the future for example ottomans,american empire, spain...
Because those civs uniq units got played for more than other units(comparing the time )
The longest played units are musketmen and cannons and lanchers and ottomans have janisarh and sipahi, america has minutemen, spain has a good uniq unit.
But attila's uniq unit's time in the game is really short. Just for a few turns
So you need to defeat civs which gets good in the future. You can destroy attila later because their uniq unit wont appear in the future

Herr JOO said:

To win a domination game, you also need to have a great science to improve your army.
Always attack to civs which can dominate the world with their uniq units in the future for example ottomans,american empire, spain...
Because those civs uniq units got played for more than other units(comparing the time )
The longest played units are musketmen and cannons and lanchers and ottomans have janisarh and sipahi, america has minutemen, spain has a good uniq unit.
But attila's uniq unit's time in the game is really short. Just for a few turns
So you need to defeat civs which gets good in the future. You can destroy attila later because their uniq unit wont appear in the future

Click to expand...

Attila's unique units are relevant (in the hands of a player) until t170 or so. Don't underestimate the awesome power of the horse archer. But yeah, in the AI's hands, not so much.

I have played mostly peaceful games for as long as I can remember, and only recently did I start experimenting with warmongering. My biggest problems are AI hate and terrain/movement. While the hate is a matter of practice and creating alliance/bribing the AI to fight each other, I find terrain my biggest impediment. Seems like you have to send workers to build roads and chop forest/jungle for your ranged units and wait for artillery against hill/mountain regions.

I highly suggest CS bootcamping, though. It feels like an exploit, but you can get logistics+range archers by the time you attack your first target AI.

Herr JOO said:

To win a domination game, you also need to have a great science to improve your army.
Always attack to civs which can dominate the world with their uniq units in the future for example ottomans,american empire, spain...
Because those civs uniq units got played for more than other units(comparing the time )
The longest played units are musketmen and cannons and lanchers and ottomans have janisarh and sipahi, america has minutemen, spain has a good uniq unit.
But attila's uniq unit's time in the game is really short. Just for a few turns
So you need to defeat civs which gets good in the future. You can destroy attila later because their uniq unit wont appear in the future

Click to expand...

Science? You sound like that sissy advisor. Thanks to the lagging behind feature of tech costs and the steal tech ability of spies you need nothing outside what a normal empire generates on its own. The AI is so inept you can win easily on Pangea with just making it to artillery and even before if you play the AI's against each other.

Not sure what I'm doing wrong but I can't break Spain in my current game. She basically spams units every turn and all my time is spent trying to kill them instead of taking capital.

I'm attaching save file, just in case someone can give me an input.

Yeah I have games like this and don't know what is the answer either. More units, perhaps. But the other day I had Marrakesh surrounded with 8 CBs and 2 spearmen and Ahmad just made 2 pikes every turn, stopping me from getting close enough. One of the AI cheats is that they can make more than one unit a turn in their cities (or maybe he was buying them?). Either way, the assault I started around T65 limped on to T100, by which time I was 12 techs behind and I just gave up.

Advice would definitely be valued on this point.

I mean, are we supposed to make peace when we aren't getting anywhere? Hardly good if we went Honor or if taking capitals is the only way we're gonna up our science because our strategy was all-out war.

Problem is that I never see the Pros struggling with these issues, which means they either did something right before hand to not land themselves in this situation, or they simply don't upload the times they wasted 20 turns taking a city.

consentient said:

Yeah I have games like this and don't know what is the answer either. More units, perhaps. But the other day I had Marrakesh surrounded with 8 CBs and 2 spearmen and Ahmad just made 2 pikes every turn, stopping me from getting close enough. One of the AI cheats is that they can make more than one unit a turn in their cities (or maybe he was buying them?). Either way, the assault I started around T65 limped on to T100, by which time I was 12 techs behind and I just gave up.

Advice would definitely be valued on this point.

I mean, are we supposed to make peace when we aren't getting anywhere? Hardly good if we went Honor or if taking capitals is the only way we're gonna up our science because our strategy was all-out war.

Problem is that I never see the Pros struggling with these issues, which means they either did something right before hand to not land themselves in this situation, or they simply don't upload the times they wasted 20 turns taking a city.

Click to expand...

Yeah, maybe peace is the right way? (Make peace, wait for bombers and then go?) But in my case it would be a pretty late win for Domination, if there was any chance.

In my case I also attacked the civ with the highest score, who conquered Brazil and also some of Persia, so she was pretty strong to begin with. Maybe the solution is an earlier attack, but besides Poland/Bab/Korea I have never been able to hit Dynamite before 180.