Domination

I've finally managed to win a domination win on RFC-DoC without collapsing

I took Rome, which seemed a decent choice : they have an average amount of Core/historical and lots of contested area to expand into. They also don't spawn too late, giving you a decent amount of time to prepare your war machine.

I took out Greece - which is an obvious thing to do - ,founded Rome, Pompei, a city on the PH hill NW of Constaninople and a city some tiles south from Vienna.

I did the usual wonderspam, and with Greece dead, managed to get most of the classical wonders. Then I just defended against the barbarians, prepared some legions and catapults and waited for the Euro-civs to spawn.

Germany (Austria) started at war with me, so I took them out, and kept Frankfurt (Bona Mansio).

Spain peacevassaled to me! I love how Spain, France and Germany have the tendency to vassal themselves out to Rome

I then had major stability trouble, probably because I conquered Germany, so I moved all my armies to my capital. After the inevitable collapse I took most of them back. A few turns later, my stability rating was very solid .

Portugal declared for me for whatever reason, so I took Lisbon. They hadn't founded Ponta Delgada yet, so it finished them off.

After this the Turks attacked me. One thing I'd like to say about warfare in RFC is that you shouldn't start wars yourself : neighbours are bound to declare at you once, and declaring yourself may lead to a dogpile. I took Angora, Tyrus and Jeruzalem and peacevassaled them. Their vassal, Persia, was still at war with me, so I took Tehran and Persepolis.

By 1700, I had rifling (I had a somewhat mediocre tech rate, but I beelined it) and I moved my troops to the border of Prussia, preparing to take Frankfurt back once their spawn period was over (1730). But the cowards became a protectorate of Russia! I bravely ignored the Russian bear, declared anyway, took my cities back, and conquered Eastern Europe, capitulating the Russians. It was around that time that Britain peacevassaled to me.

Egypt collapsed, so I conquered the independents down there, leaving me about 5 % short of Domination. So I had to fight one final war. I declared war on the Unstable/Collapsing Mughals, who promptly collapsed (thank you very much). I won after conquering India and some cities in Thailand from Mongolia (Mongolia was incredibly stable - it was 1900 AD - and already had Machine guns).



One turn before victory. As you see, I don't control terribly much land myself - my vassals had about double the amount of land I had.



I experienced major stability trouble (at the end, I was unstable in a golden age). Could anyone of you here who has more experience with domination give some hints on how to improve your stability after conquest or in general? What civics should I use? In this game, I went Autocracy-Imperialism-Representation-Free Market-Patriarchate. Should I have gone for Totalitarianism if the game lasted longer?

Should I have razed more cities? Liberated more cities?

I think vassals are key in domination. But were my vassal choices the right ones? Especially about England I have doubts.

Thank you in advance.

1) Autocracy
2) Totalitarianism
3) State Property
4) Emancipation
5) Patriarche / Free Religion
6) Occupation / Viceroyalty

Has the best syngergy for Conquest / Domination.

Representation is a horrible idea for those games because of the city / stability penalty.

You are correct about the vassal thing; what hurts the most is actually
the Astronomy rule; you can't vassalize faraway civs that are good choices to expand.
Back in vanilla and pre 1.8 SVN, it was possible to snag 4-5 Euro civs as vassals
as an Asian civ or vice versa so you could focus on being a regional hegemon.
As well as being able to gift away cities as needed. Now, you're pretty much
forced to take weak vassals, or, if you're lucky, get a vassal that has potential,
but was screwed over by some circumstance:

England: Occasionally overrun by Vikings now and then,
good colonizer map.
Mongolia: Sometimes overpowered by China,
one of the best possible vassals because they can
receive and hold onto A LOT of land.
China: Is pretty much always dead in every game,
you can try to fish them out and leech tech off of them
if you're close enough to rescue them.
Arabia: Not always dead, but almost always severely weakened.
Russia: The ideal Domination vassal. And now much more easily
obtainable for Euro civs because of their tendency to get overrun by Mongols.
France: They seem to get screwed over a lot in 1.8.
I've been able to rescue them a few times.

Tomorrow's Dawn said:

2) Totalitarianism
3) State Property

Click to expand...

Corporate Russia Domination
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=455567



The Instability from Representation depends on city numbers. If you have relatively few (anything less than 25 is OK really) cities, but with high Culture in them (Sistine Chapel and/or Eiffel Tower), Domination with Representation is entirely doable.

Thank you! So Occupation is better for world conquest than Imperialism? When should you use Imperialism, then? As the trading company/conqueror nations?

When you're still in conqueror mode, Occupation is better (the "no unhappiness from revolting cities" effect is even more useful than the flat +2 bonus imo). Imperialism is more to sustain a certain expansion after you've stopped waging war (for example, Germany holding on to foreign cores for their UHV).