Domination Questions

Hey guys, I was hoping for some help figuring out how to actually be a warmongering civ, as all of my previous games won via non-violent means.

To start, what are some of the best War civs and what makes them great?

Secondly, as I'm not super familar with progression lines for warmongers so I was hoping for help with the following:
*Research Order - I assume any war-based upgrades are good but I feel like it should be more complicated than that.
*Policies - I'd assume Honor to start but I've heard its terrible, even with war in mind.
*Build Order - Do certain buildings take priority over units? If so, which ones?
*Wonders - Simular to the build order, should any of them interrupt my surge of units?

Lastly, I could greatly use tips on how to manage my empire as I conquer the world.
Such as, how many cities should I make on my own? How to deal with money and unhappiness during war? Whats the optimal size/vary of an army to take a city? (playing on 6) and anything else I should know that I didn't think to ask.

Any answers, tips, suggestions, or even links to specfic guides would be -greatly- appreciated.

There are different kinds of war civs, and it depends on what difficulty level you're playing on a little bit.

Tell me what level you're playing on and I'll give you a coupla tips.

I mentioned it in my post but I'm playing between level 5-6(King-Emperor)

Want an war machine to terrify the world? Here's an excellent guide to Domination victory with the Zulus.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=504129

Mahasona said:

Want an war machine to terrify the world? Here's an excellent guide to Domination victory with the Zulus.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=504129

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Hmm, that is a Deity level guide. It has some great tips in general but I learned the hard way that deity doesn't scale down incredibly well. Also, not using citystates as I personally find them annoying (though it definately hurts not having them)

One last thing, it mentions pillage/repair to get gold? Does it mean pillage an enemy and then let them repair or what?

Tyken said:

Hmm, that is a Deity level guide. It has some great tips in general but I learned the hard way that deity doesn't scale down incredibly well. Also, not using citystates as I personally find them annoying (though it definately hurts not having them)

One last thing, it mentions pillage/repair to get gold? Does it mean pillage an enemy and then let them repair or what?

Click to expand...

Deity tips work pretty well on lower levels EXCEPT for the fact that the AI doesn't have any gold.

Moriarte's Liberty Domination guide will still serve you very well.

Btw, pillage/repair means you take workers to the front line, pillage the AI's tiles and then repair them so you can pillage them again. With Liberty + The Pyramids, it's completely broken.

I'd suggest if you're just starting out with domination that there's two good guides to follow. Firstly as Consentient said, the liberty domination guide by moriate is great because it focuses on being able to war with cbs and then being in a position during the industrial era to go all out, meaning you still have a great base to go into modern etc and get bombers if you aren't efficient enough with things like troop movements. It's a conquest strategy with a sort of safety net. It will also stay you thinking about domination windows and what sort of running you need to aim to have certain units by. Learning how to have cbs early is great and will teach you a lot that can be transferred to how you see and use unique units. To go with this advice I'd suggest using a civ that has this sort of conquest in mind. Once you learn how to win with the "good foundation empire" safety net behind you then try different things like playing the Mongols where you go all out after chivalry.

The second guide that helps a lot is peddroelm's honor, commerce, autocracy route. I would recommend watching his dcl America play through.

Once you try and understand the strengths of a few different strategies you'll start to be able to form your own a bit more or try some more specific strategies like the Zulu domination guide linked above. Keep in mind though that one is pretty much all out without the safety net that moriate's guide has.

Also the Zulu guide talks about getting the trade routes out early for science. That's not really as much of a worry on emporer, although the money is also important.