Domination Victory without War

[wilcoxchar]

I recently got a domination victory is Civ 4 without going to war with ANYONE. It was on a duel/18 civ/Pangea map, and I only built my capital city. Yay, culture flipping!!!

Anyway, here's my strategy:

1. Get as many monasteries as you can before researching scientific method and if possible, delay research of scientific method.

2. Build tons and tons of culture buildings, and when a city flips to you, do the same with it. Also build missionaries after you build the monasteries to get as many religions in as many of your cities as you can.

3. Great Artists can be useful for creating specialists as well as great works. Especially since they give you +12 culture/turn.

4. Wonders to go for are Parthenon, Notre Dame, Hermitage, and other Great Artist wonders.

5. You may need to reload until you get a good strating place; a.k.a one that is in or near the center of the island horizontally.

With this strategy I had 4 civ's defeated due to their only city defecting to me and two other cities already had one revolt. I was Frederick (Phi/Cre) so I was pretty geared towards culture. If anyone would like to post reactions or additions to this strategy, please do.

 

[Jsyudo]

I am curious which level of difficulty did you achieve this? How long did you take to finish the game?

 

[LeSphinx]

3. Great Artists can be useful for creating specialists as well as great works. Especially since they give you +12 culture/turn.

I think it's +14 culture/turn


Does a lot of foreign cities flipped to you civ ?

LeSphinx

 

[wilcoxchar]

I do amdit that I was playing on settler difficulty and I did it again. The earliest I've done itr in the two game is by 2013 (other one was 2017). In the last game, only 3 cities flipped to me but I had either 4 or 5 almost surrounded and one of those already had a revolt.

@LeSphinx: Yep, and they're all capitals and the only cities my "enemies" have. What I am now going for is getting a conquest victory without any wars on a 18 civ map.

 

[LeSphinx]

Great!
Not even a war: it's huge!
LeSphinx

 

[Me_]

I've been doing this with 1v1 duel lakes, just to learn the game, and did it on Noble last night. Actually, I got the culture victory when I was less than 1% territory shy of domination victory. I got 4 cities to flip, plus all of the land on the outside of their empire. If you build an archer for each city, then build a spearman later, and keep pace with new defensive units in your border cities, the AI won't declare war easily. Found a city inside your empire (not overlapping too much, but not a border city) to produce the units, so other cities don't slow down culture.

Read "A strategy for consistent cultural winds on Monarch" post 138647 for tips, this is basically a variant on that. I'm considering spreading out the cathedral-type buildings, as having 2 decent cities pressuring theirs may be better than having 1 killer city. Or maybe not. Financial and either creative (for early land grab, worthless after theaters) or philosophical seem best.

On Noble, though, after around gunpowder, I was ahead of the AI in tech, so I could have just done a military victory. I don't know how this will work on larger maps at higher levels, but since it's basically a culture victory, you should still be able to win.

Also, a question: does having your religion in a city make it more likely to flip?

Me

Edit: On Noble, the win came around 1950

 

[Xerol]

3. Great Artists can be useful for creating specialists as well as great works. Especially since they give you +12 culture/turn.

I think it's +14 culture/turn


Does a lot of foreign cities flipped to you civ ?

LeSphinx

They're normally +12, but there's a wonder that gives +2cpt per specialist.

 

[LeSphinx]

Oops! Thanks for the tips Xerol!
LeSphinx