Best Civ to simulate global domination?

[Beefy Ben]

Been playing Civ for decades, all I want to do is crush endless lands of primitive armies as an American superpower.

I'm coming from Civ 2, where I only play World/Earth map, tech up to battleships & stealth bombers, then roll over continents of trembling galleons and musketeers under the flag of a world conquesting American republic.

I kind of figure the franchise may have developed some more fun features in the last 20 years, but can't figure out what and how to play next. Some of the Civs don't have a good Earth map, some don't allow stacking (then how do you exercise the power of industrialization and overwhelming numbers?). I'm also concerned some other country might prematurely end the game with some lame victory like culture, which I think is ******ed in the face of my legions of tanks. The main feature of Civ 2 that I liked over Civ 1 is that hitpoints solved the phalanx-kills-battleship problem.

Could someone give me some direction in which civ game to play and how to achieve my world domination goals in some semblance of the current American government/religious system?

 

[Elbow_Jobertski]

Civ 5 really doesn't work for this because of global happiness. There are mods that might help.

The completed version of Civ 4 has a 18 civ world map. Use that and disable non-conquest victory options, and fire away. That's probably what you are looking for.

 

[Scribls]

There are a couple "kill the world" type strategies in civ 5 but they aren't terribly efficient. Depending on difficulty level you may not even reach parity with the AI until Renaissance Era and you certainly won't have a battleship v galleons sort of war on the higher difficulties until stealth/XCOM. Problem with this is that it is generally quicker/easier to just win via diplomacy or science at that point. The other niche strategies involve heavy specialization - here are the few I can think of off the top of my head:

The Huns can make a valiant attempt at killing the world and even succeed at lower difficulties or if the terrain is very favorable. Horse Archer spam with tons of promotions and honor can buy you enough time to do some serious work.

Poland (well, any civ really just Poland is best at it) can do an autocracy purchasing strategy that allows for a very strong mid to late game war using Honor+Commerce+Autocracy (Poland gets extra policies compared to other civs and a good unique unit for it)

Those are my two favorite but a few others to try out:

Liberty China is fun for a Chu-Ko-Nu rush
Autocracy Zulu gets some bonus promotions late game with a very strong medieval unit
Babylon/Korea get enough science to get ahead and build advanced units
English Ship of the Line are ridiculously strong plus you have longbowman to kill land units
Arabia has probably the best UU in the game with Camel Archers (comparably dominant to SotL on the water)

 

[claudiupb]

I would also add the Mongols as a potential world dominating civ here, since they also have one of the best units in the game.
Spain can be very OP with some Natural wonders nearby and it also has great UUs, the Tercio is pretty much a tank, and the conquistador has no penalty attacking cities so in the Medieval/Renaissance/early Industrial you will be able to conquer like crazy.

But I would say the best are Poland since they can balance happiness well and have a lot of flexibility regarding strategy.

 

[Volcanon]

If you want to conquor the world Civ 3 might be better. That game has no penalty of any kind for a unit in a Stack of Doom dying. Having 40 of whatever the strongest unit plus 20 artillery was the dominant multiplayer strategy since in that game you could also instantly raze a city. If the stack of doom hits your core cities and they vanish overnight you might as well scoop.