Domination victory (but not so fast)

[MKamp]

Hi everyone!

So yes I'm new. New to the forum and quite new to the game. I've played a few games (vanilla) at easy difficulty level to get the hang of it. Now I'm playing at prince and I want to go for a domination victory. However, I don't want to go quite so fast.

Now my question is this. I get the feeling I am kind of forced to expand fast to prevent the enemy from taking all the land (and important resources) around me. The AI is pretty quick with this so I conquered my two neighboring civilizations before they became too big.

But now I am left with a bunch of cities I do not really want (yet) and a very unhappy population.

So, is this good strategy? I'd rather not worry about war so fast but slowly build op my empire and economy before I go to war. But then I think I will be quickly surrounded by the others and will not have the valuable resources I need.

Any suggestions are very welcome. Thanks!

 

[Unresolved]

You can go to war whenever you want as long as you plan for it. In my current game, I want to win with airplanes, so I'm turtling with a tall empire until I hit Flight. In other games, I sometimes plan to take 1 person out with CB's, 1-2 with Crossbows, and the rest with artillery. Anything can work as long as you know what you want to do ahead of time. You're playing on Prince, so you should have plenty of opportunities to decide what you want to do. It's not necessary to be as rigid in your planning as you have to be in higher levels.

 

[MKamp]

Thanks for the reply. Appreciate it.

 

[Mesix]

Create puppets out of your captured enemy capitals. If they have other good cities, create puppets out of them too. Burn cities you don't like. Only Annex a city after you have the technology for a Courthouse and only if it is important for you to control the city production (e.g. if you want to use the city to build units or wonders).

Make sure you are trading resources with the other AI players. Explore as much of the map as you can as fast as you can. To accomplish this, you will almost always want to build a Scout first. You can get the bonuses from huts and meet the CS for more early. As you develop commerce resources, sell them for early and as the agreements expire, trade for other luxuries you lack to get more .

If you took the two AI closest to you, then you probably are doing just fine with unit production and tactics. Make sure that you have a lot of ranged units. I typically build about 3 ranged units for every melee unit. You could think of these four units as 1 company of troops and organize your forces accordingly. Early in the game, 1 company can take a civ's only city. Later you will need 2-3 companies to attack a civ. Use to upgrade your units as they advance.