Conquest Victory Strategy Discussion

At this stage, I've only achieved three conquest victories - so I'm no expert. Others have achieved far more than I have with regard to conquest victories.

Two of my conquest victories were with civs that start in 3000BC (Babylon and Egypt), where conquest was achieved before Persia spawned in both cases. The other was with France, where the conquest victory was around 1900AD. It is the strategies required to keep win a Conquest victory in the mid-late game that this thread is about.

Discussion about which category and priority is welcome.

1.Techs to research yourself (bold means really necessary):
Literature (easy to do, good for wonders)
Education
Liberalism--not necessarily doable if you are a late civ
Optics--early map making, circumnaviation bonus and conquistadors means much less work later on, and the money/goodwill generated from map selling will net you enough cash for researching at higher rates.
Printing Press
Constitution
Democracy--early enough to beat everybody to the Statue
Corporation (immediately after Economics is stolen to boost your lost castles)
Communism (this before physics to steal other techs first, and by this time you should be big enough to use state property and yet small enough able to switch your civics in 2 categories in 1 turn, I usually choose state property and emancipation)
Physics (it's OK if you get beaten to the GS)
Electricity
Radio (can come after AL if needed)
Assembly line
Fascism (quick and Mt. Rushmore is invaluable for maintaining happiness)
Industrialization (OK if you don't have combustion yet)
Rocketry
Computers (for Internet and mechs if you have a lot of other civs with infantry)

2. Techs to steal or trade (because the AI prioritizes it or specifically to direct vassals to research):
Biology
Music (prereq for military tradition)
Drama
Divine Right (from Mali--find Mansa ASAP and trade some commonly known techs to him)
Astronomy (from the Western European civs)
Military tradition (from Germany or Russia)
Military Science
Rifling (nearly everybody prioritizes it)
Steel
Railroad (nobody will have enough universities to build the Chunnel)
Nationalism (America)
Artillery (very useless tech IMHO, only good as prerequisite for rocketry. Cannon built in the 10th century are equally good at bombardment and bombers work much better in dealing damage, and don't cost stability as when you do lose artillery pieces)
Fission (from France/Vikings/Portugal)
Ecology (to clean up your nuclear messes)

3. Techs that can go either way:
meditation (depends on how early you spawn)
Chemistry (you need this relatively early to go to Assembly line, and grenadiers/ships of the line are a good counter to rifles/frigates)
Medicine (just in time to beat the plague in the 1800's)
Scientific method (choose at your convenience when you have enough observatories and universities built)
Economics (Japan, Netherlands and England prioritize it)
Combustion (if you have industrialism research this ASAP)
Flight (if you don't have artillery stolen as a prereq for rocketry, this would be a good tech to research to enable spies and troops to be quickly flown out, and it's a boost for economy; however, I would not prioritize this over industrialization, and it can be stolen from a vassalized America)
Plastics (England gets it early)
Mass media (sometimes stealing it from your vassals is quicker--you should have enough production to beat your vassal for the wonders)

4. Best techs to bulb or get for free
Education
Physics (if you have a spare GS)
Economics (if you have a spare GM)
Astronomy (as free tech from liberalism if nobody else knows it)
Constitution (as free tech if you already know or about to learn Astronomy)

The way I see it, there are two discrete phases to your game when going for a conquest victory:

1. Preparation and empire building
2. Total war

My goals during the preparation stage are as follows:

• Get a technology lead on the rest of the world
• Establish a large empire that is mostly within the historical area that your civ occupied
• Build up several stockpiles of military units in different parts of the world
• Secure a couple of "good" vassals, but without filling your quota (4 vassals under 1.181 and 5 vassals in 1.183)
• Build or control all the key world wonders (especially Christo Redentor, Pentagon, Statue of Liberty and Mt Rushmore)
• Save up some Great People and Olympic Park to be ready to launch at least two consecutive Golden Ages

When you have acquired all of this, switch your civics to Police State/Nationalism/Occupation, launch your two Golden Ages and declare war!

Try to capitulate at least one vassal that had a historically large empire in each of Europe and Asia - Mongolia and Russia are good choices here.

I managed to conquer almost all of the other cities in the world during the 16 turns of Golden Ages. I was a couple of turns too late, and it nearly cost me (and my vassals) everything in terms of stability. All 5 of us were Collapsing on the final turn.

But if you prepare well enough, 16 turns should be enough to conquer the rest of the world.

1. Capitals: you absolutely do not want a respawn, so when you can control your stability late game by liberating/trading cities, you do not want to give capitals to vassals. The AI has to be very solid to prevent a capital from respawning a civ, while you just need to be solid. So I always keep at least the capital (which usually has some settled great people and wonders) and maybe another productive city in a civ's area, and liberate/raze the rest.

2. Raze enough area around the conquests you want keep so that they can grow large, e.g. you just want Moscow, not 2-3 cities around it. If you have vassals who you give close-by cities to, you can sometimes even disband cities when they flip to you.

3. Trash cities must be gotten rid of soon. Sometimes a good solution is to give them to your next target to conquer, so that they won't have enough time to build troops, and they will cost them maintenance. Razing a desert city when you're solid will actually help your stability next turn, since you have less area to occupy and less damage to your economy.

4. Congresses: Sometimes you just don't want any new cities because you're already too big. Don't ask for cities you cannot possibly dominate culturally. E.g. an independent Constantinople is good to get, but if you have a super strong Russia or Turkey next door you should think twice about getting it.

AnotherPacifist said:

1.Techs to research yourself (bold means really necessary):
Literature (easy to do, good for wonders)
Education
Liberalism--not necessarily doable if you are a late civ
Optics--early map making, circumnaviation bonus and conquistadors means much less work later on, and the money/goodwill generated from map selling will net you enough cash for researching at higher rates.
Printing Press
Constitution
Democracy--early enough to beat everybody to the Statue
Corporation (immediately after Economics is stolen to boost your lost castles)
Communism (this before physics to steal other techs first, and by this time you should be big enough to use state property and yet small enough able to switch your civics in 2 categories in 1 turn, I usually choose state property and emancipation)
Physics (it's OK if you get beaten to the GS)
Electricity
Radio (can come after AL if needed)
Assembly line
Fascism (quick and Mt. Rushmore is invaluable for maintaining happiness)
Industrialization (OK if you don't have combustion yet)
Rocketry
Computers (for Internet and mechs if you have a lot of other civs with infantry)

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Whch techs you need depends somewhat on how much of a tech lead you want to have before launching into total war.

You mainly just need lots of tanks. That means Assembly Line, Industrialization and Combustion are your priority. Nukes are nice toys, but not essential.

As for all the rest of the tech tree, certain techs help you to build a bigger tech lead and so these should also be prioritized. In this category, I put Education, Optics (map trading and circumnavigation), Liberalism (no brainer), Astronomy (colonial expansion), Constitution (Taj Mahal) and Physics (Free GS).

My other plan to get a tech lead during the mid-game is to have wars with my two closest tech/colonial rivals along the way. England is usually one of these. The entire civ doesn't need to be conquered mid-game, just razing London should be enough to prevent England from settler spamming colonies all around the world.

I agree with blizzrd regarding rapid conquests, but not in 16 turns. If you load my Mongolian game you'll notice it took me about 30-40 turns to go from my "base" cities to conquering all the other civs. You want to start early as soon as you have infantry, but some civs are best tackled with tanks (Russia and her mother) which may take some time to research. You want to collapse smaller civs first so that you don't win domination prematurely.

I almost never stack many armies but churn them out bit by bit, bearing in mind that you need to have a constant stream to the frontlines to replace lost ones, but not keeping so much to cost me a fortune. You want to have a stack in each continent you're at war at, and sometimes I divide them into 2 little stacks and attack from different directions. You want to start bombardment and isolating vulnerable cities even before your core troops (tanks/marines) get there, so I usually get some infantry and cannon plus a destroyer or battleship to work while I transport superpromoted tanks from one place to another. (I once had a tank commanded by a general with 7 promotions)

Units can heal while on ships, so I usually transport my almost healed units to a closeby target, while more seriously damaged units either stay in cities or take long journeys to another theater while they heal.

You mainly just need lots of tanks. That means Assembly Line, Industrialization and Combustion are your priority. Nukes are nice toys, but not essential.

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True, but Mongolia, Russia and Germany keep such large stacks that can spring out of nowhere. Even if they're behind you in tech, mass suicide of 6-9 cannon will damage your units enough that their triply-promoted cavalry can take out even tanks. Enough espionage to see where their stacks are and a preemptive ICBM or 2 will save you a lot of grief.

The Roman emperor game I had posted showed my deadlock with the Mongolians who were at a par with me on tech, and it wasn't broken until I had nukes, and Mongolia was conquered in less than 6 moves after that.

South America: Inca is better than Spain. Get Spain only if Inca is destroyed.
North America: America is better than Aztec, but only marginally.
Africa: Mali is better than Ethiopia.
Asia: Mongolia is better than anyone else. Khmer and India can accept a lot of cities but become unstable pretty quickly. Don't under any circumstance choose Japan. Turkey is also quite good but hard to capitulate.
Europe: Russia and Germany are best. Rome is quite good also. England, Vikings and Dutch are not preferable.

Normally, the dictum is to befriend civs far away and attack close-by neighbors. But because of stability issues, this needs to be modified to a technique that basically weaken civs which are in another part of the world without much cost to you, and I prefer no war that I initiate at least until after Assembly Line.

This is invaluable in keeping traditionally advanced or powerful civs a little behind. Say you're Japan, and you have good relations with almost everybody after selling them your map. You're isolated, and nobody's going to be able to attack you successfully. Your defensive pacts should be made with either Russia/Turkey/France and you should war against Germany and Mongolia, or with Mongolia/Spain/Germany and declare on France/Russia. If you have AI tech leader that is small (France), you should befriend Spain and Germany and hope they declare on each other. England is a bad ally because they are so isolated on their islands, while the Dutch are useless because they can be taken out so easily.

What if you're France (lots of close contacts)? You want to befriend the Vikings Germany and Spain, but declare on Russia/Turkey (so that Germany will take the brunt of their army). In the far east your ally should either be Mongolia or China, depending on who's stronger, so that Russia can be heckled on both sides.

What if you're Turkey/Arabia/Persia, Germany or Russia with lots of enemies around? You have to get at least one of your big neighbors to be your friend so that when the inevitable attack comes from the 3rd party, you won't need to defend yourself as much. This is especially true of Germany which has so many fronts to defend; France for that reason I always befriend so that my troops can stay on the Russian/Turkish side.

What if you're a small civ like Portugal and Netherlands? Of course you want all your neighbors to be happy, and you may not even want to sign any defensive pacts unless you're able to defend yourself against your large neighbor (Spain and Germany).

blizzrd said:

North America: America is better than Aztec, but only marginally.
Africa: Mali is better than Ethiopia.
Asia: Turkey is also quite good but hard to capitulate.

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I disagree--America is so much more stable and their tech rate is so much better than the Aztecs. Plus their traditional land area encompasses so much more that you can liberate more easily. And you want Chicago to be unencumbered by Washington's culture.

A respawned Egypt is better than Mali because of stability issues--even though their spawn area is small, being a late respawn their stability is much better. Better yet, don't have any African vassals if you don't need to, since much of Africa is empty/unimprovable land that you don't need.

Turkey (Arabia is even better) is good but the potential for respawning civs in their area is so large that I would get Mongolia any day.

AnotherPacifist said:

I disagree--America is so much more stable and their tech rate is so much better than the Aztecs. Plus their traditional land area encompasses so much more that you can liberate more easily. And you want Chicago to be unencumbered by Washington's culture.

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You are better off owning American lands yourself. But the Caribbean and Mexico valley are not special and I would rather a vassal owned these. America will accept them, but it rapidly destroys their stability.

I once got Russia in a previous version. Now that was a good vassal...

1. Lack of time--they either start with less techs than other civs (Maya, Ethiopia) which makes your timeline doubly as long (to get the requisite infrastructure in place), or no techs and no time (Inca, Aztecs), or terrible land and less time (Mali). America has techs but almost no time at all.
2. Lack of a productive 2nd base--Incans have South America but even with the terraces, the mountains and jungles do not compensate for the lack of good dry hills and grassland to build enough units. East and South Africa is OK but unfortunately it's also very far from America. North America by itself is not enough--all the easy Old World civs have a good base and can get to North America.
3. Terribly small spawn areas--historically they were not big empire builders.
4. Pesky barbarians and natives (as if all the above isn't hard enough).