First Time Domination Attempt Help

[rover6695]

I am attempting to beat CIV domination style for the first time.
I've won all the other ways.

I am following this guide linked here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=547630
Some of the troubles I have had is deciding how many cities to take from my victims.
My first victim had two cities between my borders and their capital.
I thought it was wise to take his closest city to my border, raze it, so I can clear that out of the way in route to the capital.
I took the capital, and then decided to take his final city.
Why? I was uncomfortable with him (Denmark) arising and pestering me.

So en route to victim 2 (I am on a Pangea map all the way at the bottom of the continent), Poland had a secondary city in route to the capital. I took it, razed it.
All of the sudden FOUR Civs DOW.

So I guess I have to ask:

1) How do you manage? Should I for the first victim, the closest victim, take either all their cities (since they are close) and raze? How many should I leave?

2) Does it REALLY hurt if a CIV asks you to DOW or move your troops, you say your troops are just passing through, and then you attack?
-I HATE having to declare DOW when asked, because they get the first attack on me.
-I really like being able to set all my troops up, then attack first, but this rarely happens without me being asked if I intend to war. So what do you do?

Declare when asked?
Declare a few turns before your troops surround their city?
(But doing this can ruin your initial setup)?
I'm just tired of CIVS calling me dishonorable for DOWing after saying I won't OR having to be attached first by the AI.

3) After a peace treaty expires, if you DOW the same AI again, does it really hurt your reputation?

4) If you are given a city by trade and raze, likewise are you seen as a warmonger?

 

[zxcvbob]

2) Does it REALLY hurt if a CIV asks you to DOW or move your troops, you say your troops are just passing through, and then you attack?
-I HATE having to declare DOW when asked, because they get the first attack on me.
-I really like being able to set all my troops up, then attack first, but this rarely happens without me being asked if I intend to war. So what do you do?

If you say you are "just passing through" and you ever* declare war on them after that, everyone hate you for the rest of the game. You just liberated a city and brought an extinct civ back to life that wasn't even around when you declared war? Even they will hate you.

*it doesn't really last forever, but it's an extremely long time (50 turns?) and human players cannot challenge AI's that look like they're about to attack. If an AI asks if I'm going to declare war (and I'm not) I usually reload the previous turn and move a couple of units back from the borders.

Sometimes the only reason your are close to the border is the AI just settled a city right in the middle of your formation, or they captured another AI city that you have open borders with and have a couple of units stationed there.

IMHO it's one of the worst AI cheats in the game.

 

[NebulousJaguar]

1) If you plan to capture all capital cities, an efficient thing to do would be to build up a specialized force for each civ you must take a capital city from. By specialized I mean, a force that caters to meet the demands of the general situation of each opponent (terrain, defenses, etc.). I probably make that sound complicated but it really isnt. When I seek domination victory (which is rare because I usually play large maps and taking 9 capitals becomes tedious to me), I usually wait until I research dynamite, then build small attack forces like 3 artillery and 2 to 3 riflemen or gatling guns or Xbowmen (great war infantry if I have them). I use the artillery to bombard the city and leave my riflemen close by them to defend them if necessary (it usually isnt) out of range of the city until the bombardment is complete.

Sometimes an enemy civ has a notable military larger than my own, this prolongs the goal because I usually need to remove these enemy forces from the map on my way to the capital and the smaller groups of military I prefer to use to conduct this sort of business won't do. It just means I have to train a specialized group of units to handle specifically the problem of the presence of numerous enemy units.

If I focus on a domination victory, my military is usually larger and arranged for this, so multiple civs declaring war is nothing to worry about. This is more like a courtesy among the AI civs.

2) I used to try to set up my troops for optimal, quick city-conquering but it often becomes unwieldy, like you described. Now, I only build up (or select from available troops) a specialized force for the civ who has crossed me, and once it is ready I declare war. I can set up the attack with freedom now without worrying about the whole "your troops are close to my borders" stuff.
keeping the space of 1 tile between your troops and the enemy borders (before war) usually resolves this problem too. With the right kind of terrain, you could set up a good plan of attack even with 1 tile of space between troops and borders. It depends. I usually have to fight through enemy forces before I even make it far within enemy borders, so that is why I personally have just started declaring war without setting up first.

3) Yes, I think it does but I am not sure.

4) I would like to know the answer to this myself. I always assumed the answer to this one is "no".

 

[zxcvbob]

4) Taking a city in trade (or a peace treaty) is not warmongering, it's just business The AI that you coerced into giving you the city will probably covet your lands -- but they don't like you anyway so what does it matter. Nobody else will care.

 

[Libertyforall]

Try early aggression. Try to take an AI's capital as soon as you unlock composite bowman.

 

[rover6695]

Wow....has anybody else found that trying for domination, first time, is completely different than winning any of the other three ways?
Wow...it's longer, time per turn, and just so different.
I'm not used to having unhappy people, high culture costs for social policies, and just pretty much having very Spartan cities with few improvements.

Is this common? Does it get easier?

 

[zxcvbob]

I'm good at modern era warfare and later. I suck at classical era warfare. Renaissance is okay. The difference is how developed my cities and supply lines are.

Try a hybrid approach and see if it works for you. Kill your neighbor as soon as you can (spears and composite bows and maybe one catapult.) Then settle down peacefully and get your roads, markets, farms, and mines up. Annex the former capital, and either build a courthouse or not depending on how much you need the happiness vs. the 4 GPT and the hammers.

When everything is humming along nicely, start spamming crossbows with a few pikes and trebuchets and start your rampage. The pikes are expendable (you'll replace them later with muskets), the crossbows and trebuchets are precious and you need to keep them well protected.

If you want to practice at early warfare, try Greece or The Huns.