This post is intended as a summary of everything Ive learned from a few months of solid warmongering. Im no master, but can win DomV on Deity around 75% of the time, now, I feel.
Main idea: I've come to feel that the key to Domination on Deity is maintaining a unit edge. Science really isn't important as long as you have the edge.
There are several factors that Ive identified as playing into this:-
1. Your own tech: You dont have to be the tech leader, but you need to arrive at key military techs in good time. What constitutes a good time varies, but really you should always aim to get there as soon as possible. This means founding 3 cities, in good locations that have food, and growing them as much as possible. Granaries, water mills, aqueducts are all important and should not be neglected.
2. Food: If your starting location does not have sufficient food, youre gonna have a hard time on Deity pursuing any VC, but diplo can still be achieved without having the highest population or the tech lead. I would argue that although it IS possible that you will be able to take the nearest capital and have that compensate for a poor food start, I still think DomV on Deity is situational and should not be attempted on all starts, nor should Honor-Commerce-Autocracy be used on all maps. Peddro himself showed this on DCL #9 when he went Liberty instead.
3. AI tech: Sometimes they go a lot faster than others. The same factors that play into Human tech speed obviously affect the AI, too, but they also tend to be a bit odd and inconsistent, and make much poorer decisions. Sometimes you can be in the middle of a Pangaea sweep and its obvious no one has tech-ed enough to be a real threat, and youre gonna be able to take the whole thing down with XBs and Horses. At other times, especially with Continents, there is some tech runaway 12 techs ahead of you, and you will be lucky if you can kill him before the Modern era. Be flexible and try not to underestimate or overestimate what you need to do to find the edge. Sometimes you build a huge army and when you get to the city, the AI has medieval era troops that stand no chance against your Industrial. It would have been better to divide the army and send some to another target. Conversely, sometimes a runaway has a better army than you and you will need to overwhelm them with numbers and human cleverness. If your units can kill their army and besiege their city without dying, you have the edge. If you need to be really careful with unit placement and you might lose some troops, youve probably lost the edge.
4. Terrain: most Pangaea are quite easy to sweep. If you keep some GGs, you can use them to break mountain passes, hilly areas, jungle, river crossings and the GW. What you cant use them for is to replace a navy. Sometimes you WILL need one, so you should build or annex a coastal city where you can make ships. The terrain will also determine the optimal order for capital sniping. I am still working on this aspect, and I think its very easy to overlook the importance of who to attack next, as this determines diplo and trading and so much else. If it takes a long time to get somewhere, you might lose the edge on the way.
5. Momentum: Any time you spend recovering or trying to catch up in tech is almost lethal to your DomV attempt. If you are going full-out war from the Classical or Medieval eras, then catching up in tech is rarely possible with 1 or 2 good AIs in the game. By the time you are at their door, if you waited, they will slaughter you. So keep pressing all the time, use every resource you have. Dont worry about negative GPT or happiness as long as you can keep the train moving. Aim to finish the game before T250, and really, I think, every turn over T200 makes the game 1% more difficult.
This works especially well when playing Mongolia or Arabia, where you wait till chivalry to start killing the AI.
