I'm a very casual player. I've had Civ VI since it came out and have only within the past year played enough to start moving up the difficulty ladder. I'm currently on King and although I do win consistently, I know from some of the other forum posts I've read that my victories are taking too long. I've played four games as Alexander going for Domination on a pangea map, small world, standard speed. My average number of turns to victory is 346 and my personal best is 301. My problem is that I can't seem to figure out how to get it done sooner. When I try going to war as early as Ancient or Classical, I get creamed because of the tech advantage the AI has. When I spam cities like crazy I'm able to get a foothold into conquering another Civ and from there can accelerate my tech and civics to victory, but as I've said that takes a long time. What do you do in order to win more quickly on King?
How to get better at King
- Thread starter SRVclctr
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rocksinmypath
Chieftain
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I play on Deity, so my advice may not be entirely suitable on King. In my opinion, Macedon isn't really a very strong civ. Civs like Macedon, Rome and Scythia that are focused on early-game domination have a very small window of opportunity in which you can quickly expand through conquest. Once that window closes, aside from a lot of land, you don't have any substantial bonus toward any particular victory condition, so it's somewhat natural to find it difficult to close out the game quickly with them. If you're going for a domination victory, you might want to try a civ that gets substantial boosts to either combat strength or movement. I think Mongolia is a very straightforward, powerful domination civ. With Genghis Khan, you can easily get up to +15 combat strength (+3 to cavalry units, +12 from two levels of diplomatic visibility using trading posts and spies) and your units are generally very quick. You also have a much wider window of opportunity with Mongolia because you peak later in the game.
Another domination civ I recommend is Basil's Byzantium, another Medieval-era cavalry-based civ. Byzantium is arguably more straightfoward than Mongolia for two reasons. The first reason is that Basil's cavalry units can destroy walls easily. The inability to break down walls is one of the things that can really bottleneck a domination push. The other reason is that Basil has a very simple game plan: get a religion, maximize culture to quickly unlock Tagmas, and build Hippodromes to get free units. You don't need campuses because everything you need is unlocked via culture. You don't need commercial hubs because your units are free. You don't even need encampments (although they're helpful) because the combat bonus you get from spreading your religion is so strong (Taxis + synergy with Crusade belief) that a Great General isn't strictly necessary.
Another domination civ I recommend is Basil's Byzantium, another Medieval-era cavalry-based civ. Byzantium is arguably more straightfoward than Mongolia for two reasons. The first reason is that Basil's cavalry units can destroy walls easily. The inability to break down walls is one of the things that can really bottleneck a domination push. The other reason is that Basil has a very simple game plan: get a religion, maximize culture to quickly unlock Tagmas, and build Hippodromes to get free units. You don't need campuses because everything you need is unlocked via culture. You don't need commercial hubs because your units are free. You don't even need encampments (although they're helpful) because the combat bonus you get from spreading your religion is so strong (Taxis + synergy with Crusade belief) that a Great General isn't strictly necessary.
Alashiya
Warlord
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I'm trying to do the same with my gameplay I've developed what I call the 100 turn Kata I'll upload my spreadsheet for monitoring progress later in this I aim to
- actually, measure progress in the first 100 turns
- identify weak points in my game & understanding
- eliminate weak points
- try again with new expertise on a new map
- rinse and repeat and progress from an average king player to an excellent diety level player
- does build order x or y work best, ditto tech ditto civic leave this as a consistent factor then adjust weakpoint
As rocks in my path says there's a lot of difference on diety level (and to a lesser extent Immortal level) where Civs are a LOT more belligerent and will wipe you off the map hence the importance of a sizeable defensive force as quickly as possible
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Thank you very much, this has been quite helpful. I wasn't aware of Basil (as I said, very casual player, so I don't check out the digital content much), and even though it took a bit to get the hang of using him, I've already beaten my best Alexander try at King by 16 turns on my first go. So, now that I'm getting the hang of Basil I think I'll be able to start doing much better at King.
This is good stuff. I'm going to steal it
Alashiya
Warlord
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go for itThis is good stuff. I'm going to steal it
I just need a mod that'll automate recording of the figures
Alashiya
Warlord
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by the sound of things Trajan offers a solid civ for casual players to learn domination, Legions are awesome.
Planktonic
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The original post is concerned with Domination victory. I'm a middling Domination player at best, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but I do play GOTM regularly and there are some really excellent Dom players there, and I've learned quite a bit from their approach. So a few observations:
1. They typically build no more than 2 - 4 cities before committing to the first campaign, which is usually a horseman rush.
2. In line with that, research animal husbandry first or very early, so you can settle your 2nd and/or 3rd city where you have access to a horse tile if it isn't in your capital, and start accumulating strategic resources ASAP.
3. Beeline to horsemanship in terms of your science research; you may, however, also want to prioritize mining because:
4. Many players seem to chop out units to get a temporal jump on the AI.
5. In order to do that effectively, consider using Magnus' Black Marketeer promotion (which allows you to build military units for 20% of the required resource)
6. Which means you need 3 governor titles, so get to Political Phil ASAP and build your government plaza as a priority for that 3rd governor title.
7. A Great General helps a lot. The first Great Generals only cost 60 great people points. You can frequently pick one up even without building an encampment if you plug in the card for +2 Great General points per turn.
I personally find legions to be pretty meh. Infantry is just too slow to get good timing unless your neighbor is very close. Infantry does, however, become important a bit later when dealing with walled cities, where using a battering ram or siege tower can reduce your need to build siege units, which have no card to speed their production.
The first GOTM I tried was an Immortal level game with Vietnam on a standard Pangaea map. I think I got a victory in about 300 turns, similar to you. The best players were winning in about 140 turns, iirc. The fastest player didn't build a single campus in any of his cities- most of the top players only built one or two, relying on population boost from conquered cities to keep driving the science.
1. They typically build no more than 2 - 4 cities before committing to the first campaign, which is usually a horseman rush.
2. In line with that, research animal husbandry first or very early, so you can settle your 2nd and/or 3rd city where you have access to a horse tile if it isn't in your capital, and start accumulating strategic resources ASAP.
3. Beeline to horsemanship in terms of your science research; you may, however, also want to prioritize mining because:
4. Many players seem to chop out units to get a temporal jump on the AI.
5. In order to do that effectively, consider using Magnus' Black Marketeer promotion (which allows you to build military units for 20% of the required resource)
6. Which means you need 3 governor titles, so get to Political Phil ASAP and build your government plaza as a priority for that 3rd governor title.
7. A Great General helps a lot. The first Great Generals only cost 60 great people points. You can frequently pick one up even without building an encampment if you plug in the card for +2 Great General points per turn.
I personally find legions to be pretty meh. Infantry is just too slow to get good timing unless your neighbor is very close. Infantry does, however, become important a bit later when dealing with walled cities, where using a battering ram or siege tower can reduce your need to build siege units, which have no card to speed their production.
The first GOTM I tried was an Immortal level game with Vietnam on a standard Pangaea map. I think I got a victory in about 300 turns, similar to you. The best players were winning in about 140 turns, iirc. The fastest player didn't build a single campus in any of his cities- most of the top players only built one or two, relying on population boost from conquered cities to keep driving the science.
Alashiya
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this is great advice
5. In order to do that effectively, consider using Magnus' Black Marketeer promotion (which allows you to build military units for 20% of the required resource)
6. Which means you need 3 governor titles, so get to Political Phil ASAP and build your government plaza as a priority for that 3rd governor title.
I tend to find horsemen a bit squishy and like Legions they are the irresistible force of the ancient/classical eras very tough despite being slow moving
5. In order to do that effectively, consider using Magnus' Black Marketeer promotion (which allows you to build military units for 20% of the required resource)
6. Which means you need 3 governor titles, so get to Political Phil ASAP and build your government plaza as a priority for that 3rd governor title.
I tend to find horsemen a bit squishy and like Legions they are the irresistible force of the ancient/classical eras very tough despite being slow moving
If you want to be aggressive, the best tactic that I know is to declare war and wait for AI to come to you. Use rivers etc. AI usually suicides units in horrible odds for them, don't attack just heal every turn with melee, after dealing with their army just counterattack and send some reinforcements if you think you need them.
