immortal domination, always get left behind in science

death_relic0

Chieftain
Joined
Mar 12, 2011
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4
hey guys, was hoping you could help me out.

I started playing on immortal difficulty a while back, and I usually try to go for a domination victory which is the best one for me right now (its challenging and I can win it). But mostly what happens is that somewhere close to mid/end game, the AI surpasses me in technology by an era and no matter how much stronger my military is, their superior technology just blows me away..

I tried a lot of tactics, with england you get an extra spy, so stealing technologies helps for a while but not for too long..

I tried assyria, and although I am able to get about like 15 technologies for free with them, and am able to compete in terms of technology for a while, but eventually they still do surpass me (which kind of seems patehtic, cause 15 free technologies and im still behind).

Anyways, I was hoping I could get some tips on what I'm doing wrong, or how to prevail.

This is how a typical game is for me with time set to standard

turn 1 to 50: game is difficult since the AI gets quite a head start.

turn 50 to 150: game starts to get easier as I conquer, and more and more easier as my miltary gets stronger and stronger and my empire expands

turn 150 to 175: I acquire almost all the luxury resources and unhappiness starts to rise SHARPLY, and I am forced to hold off pretty much everything and focus on making my poppulation happy.

turn 175 to 200: with my empire now happy, I think I can own the game, and I do during this period , but then....

turn 200 to 250: only 3 or 4 civilizations remain, and I start to realise that they have surpassed me greatly in science.. I attack a city with like 15 units.. but every turn I lose 1 to 3 units from air attacks because I dont have flight technology yet.. even if I am able to conquer that city, my losses are so great that its better to just quit.

if its not flight they surpass me in, then they have battleships that destroy my units, or something.

well you get the picture.
 
Maybe raze more cities? With the new penalties for number of cities with science, this can make a huge difference. I usually only keep the most developed when I go for domination.
 
I play on Fractal mapping, Immortal. If you're on a big continent (with like 7/8 civs), you don't need to keep up with science that much. However, if you know there are at least 2 civs on another continent who have a higher score than you on tech rate, I'd slow your conquers and boost your science up.

In general, no matter if I'm playing domination or not, I'd get that National College up before T100 (at the latest), I'd get Education as the first pre-Renaissance tech other than unit-oriented techs. I'd get Public Schools after Industrialization. And so on.

If you can't keep up with science in the early game, I'd wager you should only wage war after you're ahead. Some people prefer late game monger when they unlocked Flight.

And yeah, raze unnecessary cities. I hear the 5% gets inconsequential after a certain point though. No idea what the math is.
 
Much depends on map size. I find warmongering extremely tedious and ineffective on anything above standard sized maps. You just cannot be at war with everyone at the same time and AI will not only use this time to expand their economy, but they will gang up against you. It means trade, friendship, less conflicts between them and more science treaties. You are bound to fall behind in mid game in comparison to tall civilizations and starting from industrialism, also to wide civs, which will dominate from now on. Immortal simply gives them too much %bonus to everything.

I find the %penalties mostly negligible as you don't need a new Silicon Valley to defeat this tiny increase (dependent on map size). Culture is a bigger issue, because for a long time your main sources of culture are gilds and the few early works of art you can get. There is no way to compensate it in a wide empire. Don't count on city states in this aspect for there are not always available cs's at hand.

If you really must wage war from day 1 to domination victory, leave most cities alone. Attack the closest ones and conquer them. Occupy the strategic ones and burn the rest. Let your map look dotted with your cities, leaving this way a lot of unclaimed land.
When fighting civilizations located further from you, and it's a must to engage them in this approach, don't try to conquer them. Use a mix of ranged and cavalry units to destroy as much of their military as possible, plunder their trade routes, brake road connections and starve them out. Burn land improvements of coastal cities and use your navy to deny them access to water tiles. You'll be able to get a lot of money from their land, you'll steal all the workers you need and your enemies will be crippled. You can also count on high level military units. AI will focus on rebuilding their army, what in practice means that you will be constantly attacked by 1-2 fresh units and little to none infrastructure will be constructed. Easy as pie. Assyria seems to be a civ designed for this tactics. So are the Zulu, who can create faster units perfect for "foraging".

To make this work you need:
1. High-production start to create pre-plunder army;
2. A map with rather less water* than more;
3. Titanic resolve to spend 5 minutes on a turn instead of 30 seconds.

* many people choose to play on maps like small continents or islands when they move up to immortal/deity (or tiny single landmass maps, but that' a topic for some other conversation). It's much easier to defend there, frigates can work magic and all trade routes operate with +100% modifier, however your enemies will be harder to reach making domination victory virtually impossible on bigger maps.
 
Turn 0-100ish:
If you play as a tall empire, grow your 3-4 cities, get your libraries up, and although National College before turn 100 is nice, you can delay it up until somewhere around 130-140 and still get a science victory on deity. I can't recommend it though, getting it around turn 100 is something you should aim for.

Turn 100ish - 200
- Build universities, put specialists in your universities
- If you're befriending city states, get Scholasticism in Patronage.
- Get Rationalism and the specialist increase in science (left side)
- If you're signing RA's, get Porcelain Tower
- Build public schools in your high production cities, consider buying them in low prods

Turn 200ish-forward
- Get the right side of Rationalism
- Try to get Plastics as quickly as possible, consider buying research labs in high science & low prod cities as soon as it pops
- Keep signing RA's if you can (not with the tech leader though).

Ideology choice:
For a tall empire, consider going Freedom for Civil Society and build the Statue of Liberty. This means a bunch of specialists, and they all produce +1 hammers. Since you want to go domination, go for Arsenal of Democracy in tier 2 of Freedom (25% production to military units, and a boost to gifting them to CS).



General note: you'll need a good food production to be able to use specialists, so try to settle your early cities something like this:
- River for Civil Service farms (+4 food for Grassland or Flood Plain tiles).
- Flat Grassland tiles for later gain (Fertilizer in Industrial era)
- Mountain nearby? That's good, but it's more important you can grow. If you can, this is indeed a good location.
- Cattle

You can of course also artificially grow your cities in less advantageous locations by using the internal trade routes.


Also I recommend that you choose the manual specialist option, and put in your desired specialists yourself. Important to note is that this means you have to remember putting in your specialists manually whenever you get a new science building.



Remember that you should annex very few cities. Keep them as puppets if they have wonders or science buildings, otherwise raze them.


This should get your science rolling from the mid-to-late game.


I hear the 5% gets inconsequential after a certain point though. No idea what the math is.

Might be easier to think of it as a function of your beaker/turn instead. If your newly acquired city produces more than 5% of the current beaker/turn, congratulations, you've increased your tech progression and not slowed it down. The more cities you get, the more difficult it gets to reach the 5% of the current beaker/turn, but the more cities you have also means that getting another one that is slightly below doesn't really impact the overall tech progression as much (possibly not even a turn difference in the closest techs). After all, no city is going to have exactly +0 science (which would indeed mean that you just got a 5% tech progression slowdown).
 
Thanks a lot guys for the tips..really thorough.. will definately give it a try again, hopefully soon. With my uni on now, it gets difficult to play civilization..

From your posts, the basic idea I got is:

  • start with 3/4 cities, dont expand to fast.
  • only conquer cities with good tiles around and that you are sure will increase your total sience output by 5%. and spread your cities out.
  • get the NC before turn 100 (I usually got this really late)
  • dont just use raw power, fight with strategy and plunder (I usually followed the strategy of kill-all-units then conquer-all-cities :p)
  • spend more than 30seconds on a turn....
  • micro manage specialists...
 
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