Fastest Domination Victory

[Blatc]

The Fastest Science Victory thread turned into an excellent place for players to share strategy and support each each other in pursuit of personal best finish times and top Hall of Fame finishes. This thread is intended to do the same for fast Domination Victory.

With Deity SV, there were a few different civs capable of contending for a top spot. With Domination, I think we either need to focus on individual Civs or categorize into 3 types of Domination style:

1) Huns - vadalaz has the fastest Deity Domination (standard) finish at T60 with the Huns, with a huge gap to the 2nd fastest finish. The potential for an early Battering Ram from ruins warrants putting the Huns in a category of their own.

2) Water Domination - this includes both naval units capturing coastal cities and Polynesia using their unique ability to travel over water early game. The fastest Deity Domination (standard) appears to be Manpanzee with Polynesia T106 on an Arborea map, followed by vadalaz T119 with Byzantium on Archipegalo.

3) Land Domination - primarily (or exclusively) land battles with no specific bonuses towards water conquest or movement. Depending how you would categorize Byzantium on a Pangaea map, the fastest HoF finish here is either vadalaz T132 (Byzantium) or moriarte T153 with Arabia on Pangaea.

I acknowledge there may be disagreements on how to categorize Domination victories; hopefully vadalaz will chime in and perhaps we can get a consensus on DomV styles. I think the simplest categorization would be that Land Domination would not include:
*unique unit naval attacks
*UA bonus impacting movement in water
*'water-based' maps

Otherwise, we can focus on individual civs and pursue our own personal best finishes, as well as fastest HoF finishes for that civ. Following the excellent Arabia map recently posted by beetle, I'd like to get into specific strategy for optimizing a fast Arabia DomV. vadalaz has estimated that sub-T120 is doable; I'd suggest Great Plains/GPP are likely the best Arabia maps.

Please note: I am focusing on Deity with this post. Players are welcome to discuss other difficulty levels; however, please be clear if you are writing about lower difficulty levels, otherwise we should assume Deity.

 

[vadalaz]

Agreed the Huns should have a category of their own. Egypt might come close, and if I remember correctly people had reported low T70s victories, but I've never seen any confirmation of that. I think I'll try some Egypt games after Arabia.

Pretty sure the t132 Byzantium game was a Chariot Archers + CBs into Crossbows game without any Dromon support. I think Cromagnus experimented with those and made the conclusion that just focusing on land units is stronger on a Pangaea.

To follow up on the discussion from the Arabia thread:

I found a t126 victory by tommynt in an Arabia/Deity GOTM:
TSG76 After Actions. That map looks pretty cramped - high seas Pangaea could probably compete with Great Plains. It also seems like he went Tradition there.

He mentions upgrading 12 chariots and building 2 more armies, for a total of 4 armies presumably.

In my best games on lower difficulties and standard size I usually get 3 armies, the first one takes 3 capitals and the others take 2 each. On Deity I rarely manage to get 3 armies in time, since each army needs many more units and Great Wall can be a real problem that you have to account for.

A 4/3 capitals split with 2 armies and reinforcements from the core cities is good, but likely slower than a 3 army game. With the Huns on Deity Lakes, getting 3 armies as early as possible was key to winning it before turn 70. Lakes is excellent because it has a preset layout with two lanes of 4 civs just like GP and GPP, but it also wraps, so you can clear the lane you spawned in with your first army, and send the other two to the second lane in different directions.

With Camel Archers you can run into not having enough Horses for 3 early armies... I wonder if two Camel armies + one CB->XB army type of game is viable? Machinery shouldn't take very long to research since you're going for Guilds already. CBs could help early on because chariots are a bit fragile.

 

[Blatc]

One useful area of theory to look at would be the Tech and Buildings we believe to be optional or unnecessary; I'll start with the tech. In a Chivalry focused run, every tech required for Chivalry is, well, required. Every other tech is optional, and we can assess it's value, ex. can it help with tech (additional trade route, science building), can it help with happiness (luxuries), can it help with gold (iron, luxuries).

So, in an Arabia DomV, can we reach Chivalry faster or significantly better prepared for a Camel Archer rush by researching or avoiding optional techs such as:
*Sailing
*Bronze Working
*Philosophy
*other (feel free to add more)

In the CDG Arabia map, Sailing brought both trade route and luxury value early on, as well as being required for Optics later. This made it a high priority among 2nd column techs for me (it was a lux in the 1st capital I planned to conquer, so it made sense to research it early and benefit from the extra trade route); however, on a GP map Sailing loses value and - pre-chivalry - can be viewed as only providing an additional TR. Does the AI still research Sailing on a GP map? If so, that can impact (improve) TR values if you don't research it. How best do we consider whether Sailing is worthwhile in such a scenario?

Philosophy I've posted about recently and I think, all things considered, it's a definite 'pass' when pursuing fastest possible DomV; put these hammers into chariot archers.

Is the gold we receive from selling iron worth researching another tech before Chivalry, or rather how much gold is required for this to be the correct move, when considering all the drawbacks:
*your beakers going into an additional tech before Chivalry
*you may be lowering the value of your TR by researching this tech
*worker action could be used elsewhere, ex. start/finish roads earlier
The answer to this may be impacted by how quickly you build the unique Arabian markets; if we can trim early game production to a bare minimum, that should allow us to get the double-luxury markets up faster, which have a huge impact on income. Tough to assess; experience will tell us if we can reach Chivalry with enough gold without needing iron.

 

[vadalaz]

Bronze Working is pretty cheap and shouldn't delay Chivalry by more than one turn even when you factor in the weakened trade routes. If you get lucky and have a 6 iron tile, you sell it for 12 gpt for about 50 turns by the time you reach Chivalry, 600 gold in total, enough to buy two chariots or upgrade four of them. There's also that potential CS quest asking for Iron.

If you get no iron, BW still unlocks Spearmen, Barracks and Statue of Zeus. SoZ is irrelevant for Liberty (could be interesting with Poland going for a Liberty/Honor mix), but Spearmen are pretty nice and upgrade into Pikemen at Civil Service. I don't know if Barracks are worth it. HOF allows promotion saving, so with barracks each unit would start with an emergency insta-heal, which can be quite useful. It costs 75 production to build which is roughly 1.34 chariot archers worth of hammers. So a 3-city Liberty empire loses 4 potential CAs, but gets 15 xp on all subsequent units.

Sailing pays for its beaker cost with one 30-turn trade route cycle. The trade route gold doesn't fully compensate for the hammers (or gold) spent on the caravan in one cycle, but it should in two, and later you can use the caravan for internal trade routes or CS quests. I think Sailing is a yes.

Another tech worth discussing is Masonry because it unlocks the Pyramids. With a start that has no Stone or Marble tiles, are the Pyramids good enough to offset the production and research investment, including slightly weaker trade routes? Personally I'm thinking no, mostly because of how powerful Camel Archers are. I think 1-turn repairs and 2-turn roads are overkill when you have a UU like that.

 

[Blatc]

I've got Bronze Working as costing 63 beakers (just started a new game, so 1 city and haven't met anyone yet). If we're including a negative impact on trade routes (plural), surely researching Bronze Working is at least a 2 turn delay to Chivalry. I won't build barracks, but see value in having Spearmen as an option, and obviously the gold from selling iron. For both BW and Sailing, if we're going to research it, we should do so early to improve/sell the iron and build/send the 2nd TR; this means they would have negative impact on our TRs for quite a while. They are likely both still worthwhile.

Masonry is a hard 'no' for me. I may choose my first target based on Pyramids or SoZ being nearby, to get those wonders early, but I'm not building Pyramids in this fast a game and I'm avoiding Marble starts with this in mind. I realize that it's unlikely, but I'd love to get lucky enough to play a map where I could even delay Calendar until after Chivalry.

 

[vadalaz]

What is your opponent list for this challenge? I'm not very familiar with how well certain AIs perform on Deity, so I've been trying some random mixes of moderate warmongers and friendlies. In my latest attempt I played with Pacal, Enrico, William, Darius, Suleiman, Napoleon and Hiawatha. It seemed fairly good but I'm thinking about benching Darius because of his UU and UA, and Hiawatha because he seems to do quite well and has the potential to spam too many cities. Suleiman has a Musket UU but he's been weak in all of my test runs so far so I'm keeping him.

 

[Blatc]

First, some opponents I decided to avoid:
most AI with a UU that will come into play early and are generally competent
Zulu and Hiawatha (too strong/city spam), and Darius (3-move Golden Age with early UU)
Brazil, having been reminded that for some reason they usually perform very well on GP maps
India (avoid AI will that denounce you at the drop of a hat, we should be starting the wars, not playing defense from multiple AI)

AI I definitely want are Enrico (extra trade routes to receive or pillage), William (luxuries)
Also going with Mayans, Morocco, Korea, and Byzantium. I convinced myself it was a good idea to include the Huns. However, in my current play-through, the Huns ended up as the first capital I took, and are now somewhat isolated, so most of the reasoning for selecting them has been wasted.
I've considered using Suleiman and Napoleon. I haven't looked back at the Civ Stats/AI flavours recently, but will likely make some changes and replace the Huns after this game.

 

[claudiupb]

Bronze Working will also add hammers on the map. Having hammers on grassland or hills make quite a good tile.

Regarding worker time, I think you can easily steal one more worker and the cost of selling just 1 iron will offset the maintenance cost.

 

[Blatc]

That's another valid point, that BW will add a couple more hammers on the map - definitely looks to be worthwhile before Chivalry.
If you can easily steal one more worker, you should already have done so; that's not impacting whether or not I research BW. Maintenance cost isn't much of a concern, it's getting hit with the production penalty early that requires adjustments. In my current play-through, I received a two units from Military CS and had so many worker steals that I reached 50% production penalty when I had 3-4 cities and was still building chariot archers, so I deleted excess workers.
I hope a few other players will take on the challenge of pursuing fast DomV with Arabia and other AI, even if not going for HoF times. This could become a helpful thread for lots of players!

 

[KingVercingetorix]

How much potential do you think Babylon has for a fast domination victory? Getting an academy down around turn 20 (or much earlier if lucky with ruins) means one can get Machinery, Civil Service and Chivalry all before turn 100 if played well enough. Is a turn 130 victory plausible with Babylon or are we looking at 140/150? 8 Bowman could take out the first capital. A weak Piety neighbour that has been further weakened by worker steals etc. That could be done before turn 60 I'd imagine. Then two more capitals with CBs before turn 85. The four remaining can be done with XBs, Pikeman, and Knights. Do you think I'm being too optimistic?

It would take a very strong starting location and a very domination friendly map layout. If I found a potential map would you guys be willing to give it a go?

 

[Blatc]

I'd be interested in playing some Babylon maps and discussing specific strategy; perhaps hold off a bit on sharing maps and keep the focus on Arabia for a little while. We could even have a bit of a schedule, keeping the primary focus on one (or two?) civ at a time for 2-4 weeks. That would give us room to discuss strategy, share maps for those that wish to play shared maps and discuss, and roll/play HoF eligible maps for those that plan to submit.

It's fair to assume we're exclusively talking about strong starts and domination friendly maps on this thread, ex. GP and Lakes.

 

[vadalaz]

We could even have a bit of a schedule, keeping the primary focus on one (or two?) civ at a time for 2-4 weeks. That would give us room to discuss strategy, share maps for those that wish to play shared maps and discuss, and roll/play HoF eligible maps for those that plan to submit.

Sounds very good to me!

I've run into a problem on Great Plains, and the problem is city-sates. It's pretty hard to beat AIs to quests since the map is so cramped, and CSs get a LOT of units on this map script, presumably because almost every tile has at least one hammer. AIs with CS allies in strategically important locations slow things down quite a bit.

I think I still favour starting the conquest as early as possible with Chariots and not waiting for Chivalry. I'll be aiming for Chivalry and 3 capitals down by t95-100, most likely grabbing Construction along the way. 4 remaining capitals in 20 turns should be doable with Camels.

What do we do if we manage to secure an early religion? Is anything better than 100g + Holy Warriors in the capital and take whatever the AI spreads in the expos? I was thinking about the +2 bpt from road connections pantheon, but it might get overrun by an AI religion quickly in the expos. There's also the founder belief that gives you beakers if you try to convert an AI city with a different religion, but I'm not sure how powerful that is.


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Edit: I got a t124 victory on a Terra map with the plan I described above - 3 capitals down and t98 Chivalry with enough gold for upgrades. Unfortunately my armies had a lot of distance to cover to get to the next set of capitals, so the Camel Archer sweep got delayed.

Setting were 5 billion, Temperate/Arid. Wine/Silver start with double wheat and a lot of plains around, so I thought I'd give it a try and see how many horses there are. Not the greatest ruins (got Mining with 1 turn left to research, no culture) but AH revealed my capital had 4 horses and there were two other 4-horse spots to settle. Capital BO was Scout - Monument - Scout - start Warrior - Caravan - finish Warrior - Granary (chopped) - Caravan - Settler - Library - Chariots. I've been using this build order in most of my attempts so far, I like how the Granary fits in the gap between the trade route techs.



Took Venice first, then attacked William (had to take 3 cities on the way to his capital), then Napoleon. They had surprisingly few units, I bribed them into a war around 8 turns before attacking, so they must've suicided their armies into each other. My CS ally finished Napoleon off a bit later.

My trade routes got plundered a few times by stray scouts which probably delayed Chivalry a tiny bit, and so did taking Calendar, Bronze Working and Masonry (Marble in Amsterdam). I ignored Construction because I had enough Horses this game to skip CBs. I don't think the tech detours mattered here, because I took Paris the turn before I got Chivalry.

Final sweep order was Istanbul first, then Marrakech and Palenque simultaneously, then the Moroccan army and some reinforcements took Honolulu which had the Great Wall, a bunch of land units and 3 Galleasses.

I sold all the monuments after finishing Liberty and similarly sold all the libraries and granaries after reaching Machinery, then starved my cities to 4 population (so it's sustainable by Circus + Colosseum).

 

[KingVercingetorix]

I'd be interested in playing some Babylon maps and discussing specific strategy; perhaps hold off a bit on sharing maps and keep the focus on Arabia for a little while.

My apologies. I'm sure a lot of Deity Dom players on this forum would appreciate the spotlight being on Arabia. Learning a Chivalry rush and the strategies associated with them is a lot of fun.

When it comes to rolling maps which settings do you recommend? The majority of maps I've rolled since I started playing Civ 5 are as follows; Pangaea, 4 Billion Years, Temperate, Normal Rainfall, Medium Sea Level, and Standard Resources. I find the vast majority of these games provide me with jungles, mountain chains, large forests and rolling hills. Which settings are needed for flatter and more open terrain?

 

[Blatc]

Well done vadalaz!
I just submitted a T130 DV on GP+. There's considerable room for improvement, so I plan to continue with GP maps. My capital was great; my early game luck with ruins/CS/barbs was average at best, which in the context of this thread means 'bad'. I experienced minimal issues with CS units attacking, but also derived very little value from quests. I went 3x scout, as I'm expecting 1 to either upgrade or get trapped by barbs and die, so this keeps 2 scouts exploring and causing trouble. I was not able to get any AI to enter a meaningful war, and ended up getting DoWd twice, following early denouncements.

In future attempts, I'd like to get a 12 horse start and aim for 2 capitals by ~T85; Chivalry was T87 in this game.

I agree on early religion as 100g and Holy Warriors, don't spread just get a few units. Late game when purchasing a unit in capital is trivial, consider buying a pagoda or mosque as available to help with happiness. As I'm playing GP+, there won't be any faith mountains coming into play. Perhaps the biggest impact we can get is the ability to quickly faith-purchase 1-2 chariot archers immediately following the 1st city capture (assuming 2+ horses), which helps speed up the 2nd or 3rd capital capture.

Good tip about selling monuments, libraries, and granaries. Are you building GW guild? I have been, but I'm also aiming to finish Liberty sooner than you are. I think if culture is going well (CS ally or 2), it may be worthwhile to keep the monuments until Mercantilism. Alternately, if not planning to reach Merc, then finishing Liberty is sort of your end-point, which raises the question of whether you can finish Liberty on time (GS for Chivalry) if you don't build a monument in 1 or both of your expos?

KingV, you want to go with 5 Billion years (less hills), arid, and high sea level. You have to go with standard resources to be HoF eligible. Or, as I'm doing, go right to Great Plains maps, which have some rough terrain but very flat in the middle (and you want to start in one of the 4 middle spots) and good potential for horses. I believe GP has the most potential for the Salt/Wheat/Horse starts I'm looking for, though there are potential negatives as vadalaz has correctly pointed out.

 

[vadalaz]

Chivalry on T87 is really fast! Not sure what I'm doing wrong in my tech game, I suppose Calendar + BW + Masonry adds 4-5 turns and temporarily losing my trade routes cost maybe another turn, but otherwise I don't really see how I could've reached Chivalry faster. What was your build order in the capital and the expos? Did the AI send you any trade routes back? I annexed the cities I captured as soon as I could and prioritized Courthouses, maybe Library first is the better choice?

You raise interesting points about culture management. I have been skipping the Writers' Guild, and in my games it never mattered, but I never aimed for particularly fast Liberty or Mercantilism. The guild is 100 production and 2 expo monuments are 80. The guild comes online later but also brings 2 more cpt and generates a GW eventually, Monuments help with border growth. It takes 15 turns of working both specialists to get a GW, on GP I think it's fair to say you're losing at least 1 hammer every turn by working a specialist slot instead of a tile, so at least 30 more production if you want a Writer.

So the total cost of the guild in this scenario is 130+ hammers, the value is 6 cpt * 15 = 90 culture plus what the Writer gives you. Liberty = 3cpt, 3 Monuments = 6 cpt, Guild = 6 cpt, Golden Age = 20%, so assuming you build all monuments you're going to have at least 18 cpt when you pop the writer, making it worth of 8*18 = 144 culture. In total you get 234+ culture for 130+ hammers in 15 turns.

If the goal is Mercantilism, I suppose you could build the guild post-Chivalry, when the production cost doesn't matter as much and the total culture output is greater. Perhaps the Artists' guild as well to raise the Writer's value even higher and get another Golden Age. How quickly have you been reaching Mercantilism and how useful is it?

What do you think about buying AIs' horses? They cost 1 gpt per Horse if you buy them one at a time. I think it helped a bit in my game as the AIs didn't generate as many horsemen as they sometimes do, and in my opinion those are the only dangerous AI units early on. Plus you get some extra Horses for your own Chariots/Horsemen, but you have to keep track of the deals then to avoid the strategic resource penalty.

As for the settings, high seas Pangaea produced some really bad maps in my tests, even at 5 billion years it's all rough terrain and mountain ranges, that's why I switched to Terra. I'll give GP+ another shot now.

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2 capitals and Chivalry by ~t85 sounds really strong. That might be the best realistic scenario, since chariot/CB conquest really slows down after t80 anyway and you're better off upgrading ASAP.

First I want to try a game with only one or no caravans at all though. I was checking my t132 Byzantium logs and saves and I have a feeling skipping caravans in favor of Chariots can yield similar results tech-wise thanks to puppets/annexed cities' science - 6 pop annexed city with a library produces 9 bpt, so every turn of having that is worth roughly 3 turns of caravan science, plus the Liberty finisher GS is stronger. I think you have to start killing things very early then though, like ~t45 early.

 

[Blatc]

In the T130 game I submitted to HoF, I reached Chivalry on T87 including Calendar, BW, and Sailing; I lost one of my outgoing trade routes for 10+ turns, but it was close enough to Chivalry that I didn't bother building another caravan. I don't think our capital BO is much different. In expos I went Granary first, monument, library. Yes, AI sent trade routes back; I think this is an advantage to GP maps.

For culture, if you only want to count the self-founded cities, it would be Liberty (3) + 3x Monuments (6) + Palace (1) + Guild (6) = 16 x 1.2 (Golden Age) = 19.2 x 8 = 1st GW nets 152+ at an absolute minimum. Of the 15 turns of Writers Guild, at least 10 would be with Golden Age, so it's (6 x 5) + (6 x 10 x 1.2) = 30 + (60 x 1.2) = 30 + 72 = 102. The bare minimum culture value here is 254 (not 234), but it's even higher due to:
*culture from captured cities
*work guild for >15 turns (would increase the lost hammers)
*CS?
*natural golden age before 5th Liberty policy?

I think you need 1-2 Cultural CS allies to reach Mercatilism in time to do anything with it; I didn't have these in my T130 game. I did reach it in my T136 CDG game, ~T120-125 I think - I bought a bunch of longswords, which probably slightly sped up my finish (1-2 turns). I had 2 Cultural allies, eventually, in that game. A moderate improvement upon that can make Merc useful for a sub-T120 finish. An ideal scenario would be a Culture CS friend (1 quest completed) with a unique luxury, in a good position to help fight a future target - that would definitely be worth putting gold into. All that said, it's possible Merc might not make any difference on finish time in a given game.

I bought horses off AI in the Deity series Arabia game. It definitely makes sense, given that the realistic scenario for this thread/challenge would be that we've found an excellent start but not quite enough horses. As you said, definitely keep track if you're doing this.

I think 2 capitals and Chivalry by T85 is absolutely doable, just need to roll a great map and execute really well.

 

[raider980]

How much potential do you think Babylon has for a fast domination victory? Getting an academy down around turn 20 (or much earlier if lucky with ruins) means one can get Machinery, Civil Service and Chivalry all before turn 100 if played well enough. Is a turn 130 victory plausible with Babylon or are we looking at 140/150? 8 Bowman could take out the first capital. A weak Piety neighbour that has been further weakened by worker steals etc. That could be done before turn 60 I'd imagine. Then two more capitals with CBs before turn 85. The four remaining can be done with XBs, Pikeman, and Knights. Do you think I'm being too optimistic?

It would take a very strong starting location and a very domination friendly map layout. If I found a potential map would you guys be willing to give it a go?

Consentient's next Community Challenge map is going to be Deity Babylon. We've got a lot of people making maps now, it's great. Even though I'm no good at Deity, I like to give them a shot.

 

[vadalaz]

Just got a T113 victory on Great Plains Plus:

- Got one of the middle spawns and took the other three central capitals by Chivalry (t91, Calendar, BW and Masonry detours)
- Didn't have enough gold to upgrade all the chariots, which slowed down the initial Camel push. I only had about 1000 gold which was enough for 8 upgrades, 4 in each army
- A bit of an annoying start, I skipped Sailing and only got an early caravan at AH, but then I had noone to send it to because Napoleon wouldn't make peace and he was the only available neighbour
- Focused on early chariots (I think I rush-bought three) and managed to complete quite a lot of CS quests, then took Amsterdam on t60
- Early game was DoWs all over the place to pillage trade routes and get good peace deals. Didn't have a single DoF the entire game
- The Ottomans and the Huns double-DoWed around t85. Suleiman didn't do anything, but Attila brought a lot of units (mostly warriors and BRs) and put Amsterdam in the yellow, I had to defend with pikemen and chariots. That was an oversight by me, I saw Attila and Suleiman made peace with each other but didn't think they'd DoW me so quickly afterwards
- No guilds, delayed monument in the first expo (Granary-Library-Monument) and never built it in the second one. I managed to pick up a cultural ally and a friend pretty early (before the worker policy)

With faster Chivalry and enough gold for ~14 upgrades a sub-110 should be doable on this map script, maybe even a very narrow sub-100? Both of my Camel armies had to take 2 capitals and 1 expo, the ideal scenario would be capturing capitals only.

 

[Blatc]

May be worth adjusting opponents to this specific scenario, i.e. want minimal expansion and least likely to surprise DoW. You could even narrow down to the key 'flavours' and produce actual numbers for which opponents would be 'best'.
civdata.com

 

[vadalaz]

The AIs I liked the most so far (other than Venice who is a must-have) have been France and the Maya. Napoleon seems like the perfect psycho, easy to bribe and appears to be friendly enough if he's busy fighting someone else. Pacal has been very weak in every game, but that likely has more to do with his Theology beeline than his personality traits.

Napoleon's key traits seem to be:
- Boldness (9): not sure what this means but only him and Monty have a 9, all other civs have 8 or less. Anything higher than 8 for any attribute is really rare in general
- Expansion (8): this has been true in my games but he's mostly been forward-settling other AIs. Maybe that's the boldness?
- War (8)
- Denounce Willingness (3)
- Warmonger Hatred (3)
- Defense (3)
- Hostile (3; he's actually the least hostile of my opponents)

Attila and Suleiman have low warmonger hatred as well, but much higher denounce willingness (6 and 7) and hostility (8 and 6).

How strong has Sejong been in your games? The numbers make him seem like a peaceful version of Napoleon with low hostile, denounce willingness and warmonger hatred, as well as low expansion, high friendship willingness and forgiveness.