Suggestion for next civ to play?

Other good civs for domination are the Mongols and the Zulus.
I still think that the best civs for domination are the civs that are the best... period. I'd take Babylon, Aztec, or Poland over Zulu or Mongols, even for domination.
That being said and if I'm allowed to completely contradict myself :), to the OP I'd recommend an aggressive game as Denmark. Not necessarily a domination game, but a game where aggression plays a big factor, to the extent that diplomacy has been pretty much chucked out the window. While the Danes are certainly a bottom tier civ, the game often plays out much differently than other civs that can be used interchangeably with similar, even identical strategies. Not as differently as Venice or, to a lesser extent, India, but quite unique due to the advantages of berserkers, the unique situation of the availability of berserkers, and the new options that are enabled by their distinct UA (particularly having a siege unit land, setup and fire all in the same turn.)
I'd hate to say, "the correct way to play Denmark is..." but a strategy that has almost exclusive effectiveness to them is researching Metal Casting before Education, Theology, maybe even Civil Service. This leads to several distinct qualities about the game.

1.) Your overall BPT is going to be less, or at least delayed. On lower levels, you can still pull ahead of the AI without too much of a problem, maybe a little delay. On higher difficulty you need to balance your aggressive targets with ones that you can still have trade routes with for the extra beakers, and maybe try to establish a single trading partner who wars with you against targets throughout the early and mid-game that you can still get RAs with.
2.) Even on deity difficulty, it's possible to get Lsword replacements (with some great bonuses, most importantly 1 extra move) when the opposition is still using swords, maybe pikes. Since metal casting is one of the prereqs for physics and all pre-artillery siege units are basically UUs for Denmark (as long as they can disembark within 2 tiles of the target), you may want to go this extra step, again before considering some of the clearly better research options like education. A team of Berserkers, who can tolerate city bombardment and quickly compensate for them with the dual advantage of 1 extra move and no movement cost to pillage, with Trebs hammering cities and a few Cbows or Xbows to do their usual thing (exploiting the game's ranged unit problem) can lead to some truly berserk action.
3.) While your tech is going to be behind because you've made what almost inarguably is considered "the wrong tech path" your production will likely be a little better than usual since you have access to workshops earlier. Nothing like the German or Hunnic bonus, but a little better. More importantly, you're treasury can often be spilling over due to the extensive pillaging you're doing. More hammers means more units. More gold means more units. Which brings me to the next point.
4.) A situation that arises frequently and almost exclusively with Denmark is the ability to accrue a massive treasury with a very low, even a negative GPT score. It gets to the point where your civilization almost needs war and pillaging income to survive which, although simplistic, is historically accurate.

I'd summarize Denmark games using 4 words: inferior, different, crazy, and fun.
 
I have to say the idea of playing as Denmark sounds appealing, especially since their UU is well-geared to a water-heavy map like Archipelago. I've been struggling to get a good feel for that map, since I have too little space to establish an empire. Once with Ottomans, once with Siam, and again with Byzantium.

Currently, I'm looking to play games with a peaceful victory in mind, though war is still always inevitable one way or another. I mean, I played Greece for a diplo victory, and I didn't just sit around and farm influence points with CSs. I actually went around with my army keeping the peace when one civ got too powerful. Same thing with Arabia for a sci victory, and Ethiopia for a cul victory.

Would you say that a cultural victory is possible with Denmark? Or any victory non-domination for that matter?
 
I have to say the idea of playing as Denmark sounds appealing, especially since their UU is well-geared to a water-heavy map like Archipelago.
IMO Archipelago actually has *too* much water for Denmark to really shine. Denmark's abilities all center around military units that are, at heart, land units. And Archipelago often have too little actual land for land units to matter much. Instead, Archipelago games tend to feature ships, more ships, and yet more ships. Oh.. and maybe two land melee units & two or three land archer-class units.

Denmark really shines on maps ranging from small islands (I think it's called "Small Continents") and Large Continents. They also do well on the Oval map type... although it's a pangaea map type, but they can use the numerous inlets & bays as both highways & invasion routes. Basically, Denmark should hug the coastline, hopping into & out of the water for maximum speed. Their movement pattern is kinda counter-intuitive. Remember, disembarking always consumes only 1 movement point, even if you disembark on a hill. In addition to the obvious movement benefits, their UA allows them to land a siege weapon on a hill, set up, and then fire, all on the same turn. Ideally, Denmark doesn't use archers at all; they go to war with nothing but Berzerkers (many) and siege weapons (several).


Would you say that a cultural victory is possible with Denmark? Or any victory non-domination for that matter?
Sure. Any victory type is available to any civ, pretty much. Ideally, Denmark will go to war when they get their Berzerkers. But after some conquests, it often makes sense to settle down & then pursue a non-Domination victory. This is especially true if you settled your original 2 or 3 expansion cities with an eye to an eventual non-Domination game. See a good city site adjacent to a mountain? Grab it for your first or second expansion. Ditto for a good jungle site. They can act as typical warlike-domination cities until mid-Renaissance (i.e. build mostly units), and *then* build 'em with infrastructure.
 
Thanks for the info. Honestly, that is the problem I have with archipelago. Just too much water and not enough room to build cities or make use of land units. I'm more a land war-wager than a naval war-wager, anyway. So, for the future, I'm sticking to Continents and Pangaea.

Since undoubtedly war is inevitable in this game, at what point do you stop conquering? How many cities? Obviously the capital you don't touch unless it's the only city left, and even then, you don't want to take it lest you want that big warmonger penalty.
 
Korea with its turtle ship or england with their ships of the line could be good for such a map. The turtle ship has melee strength so good that it could be stronger than the privateer which is the unit that the caravel upgrades to. The turtle ship replaces the caravel but it cant sail in deep waters which is ok in archipelago because of its many waters that are next to land.
 
Korea with its turtle ship or england with their ships of the line could be good for such a map. The turtle ship has melee strength so good that it could be stronger than the privateer which is the unit that the caravel upgrades to. The turtle ship replaces the caravel but it cant sail in deep waters which is ok in archipelago because of its many waters that are next to land.

I've played with England once before, so maybe I should go back to them if I ever want to take on Archipelago again. Unfortunately, I don't have the Korea DLC....
 
Thanks for the info. Honestly, that is the problem I have with archipelago. Just too much water and not enough room to build cities or make use of land units. I'm more a land war-wager than a naval war-wager, anyway. So, for the future, I'm sticking to Continents and Pangaea.
I kinda dig naval warfare. Yes, it seems to suffer from a dichotomy: it's nearly impossible to wage a fully naval war before you get Ships of the Line, and after you get SoL, it becomes kinda trivial. (Just build 6 SoL and a melee ship, and bob's your uncle.) But getting the resources to create your warships is itself a challenge on Archipelago, so it's not *that* trivial.

Since undoubtedly war is inevitable in this game, at what point do you stop conquering? How many cities?
That depends on what you're trying to accomplish. The really good players will decide early on which victory type they're chasing, and conquer accordingly. Cultural VC? Go conquer the capital(s) of culture-oriented civs. Science VC? Conquer choice cities (or city sites) that have the potential to become science powerhouses. Diplomatic VC? Conquery strategically important cities to help you better defend your empire while you bribe, cajole, and otherwise influence city-states.

But those are the really good players, players who have a lazer-like focus and achieve rather impressive win times. I'm not one of them. (I play on Immortal, not Deity.) As for myself, I often only have a vague idea of my VC type. My "Domination" game sometimes changes to a Science game if I encounter a well-entrenched civ that I can't be bothered to methodically exterminate.

I generally play with the aim of creating a stable, powerful empire, rather chasing after the quickest possible win date. To that end, I conquer whatever territory and/or cities that will help with that... and I generally stop conquering either when my empire is becoming difficult to manage. (either due to happiness or due to logistics: roads & tile development & whatnot) Sometimes that means I conquer only two or three cities, sometimes it means I completely exterminate half the other civs.

Obviously the capital you don't touch unless it's the only city left, and even then, you don't want to take it lest you want that big warmonger penalty.
Actually, the capital is usually the city I most want to capture. It's usually one of the best city-sites withen the enemy empire, it's usually the most developed, (i.e. highest population, most buildings, and most developed land) and it usually has whatever wonders the civ has built. The capital should be your principal target, if at all possible.

BTW, you don't get a special warmongering penalty for capturing capitals. Rather, your warmongering penalty for capturing cities is based (among other things) on how many cities a civ still has. So capturing a civ's last city, regardless of whether it's a capital or not, will usually give you a large warmongering penalty. But if you can somehow capture just the capital of a large, sprawling empire you receive very little warmongering penalty.

Having said that, you *do* get a moderate diplomatic penalty against the civ whose capital you captured, just for capturing it. But really... who cares? If you've captured their capital, they probably don't matter anymore.
 
Crap, I mistyped.

Of course the capital is ideally the best city to take, and it's the one required for a Domination victory, obviously.

Honestly I'd say playing on any level higher than king qualifies you as a skilled player, short wintime or not. Right now I'm comfortable at Prince, but I would say my strategy generally is the same as yours. I don't normally go into games with a set victory in mind unless it's a certain civ geared to one in particular (France or Russia, for example).

Future wars won't be mass extermination (IE all cities captured). I've found that to be incredibly time-consuming and a real drain on gold and other resources. Lately I've fought in wars where I conquer almost all the cities, force my enemy to the negotiating table, and just give all cities back because I don't want to hassle of managing or puppeting them. I've found it works well when you're playing to a peaceful victory.

When I was Greece, I essentially fought "Wars of Liberation," where I freed City-States that fell to Rome. Then as Arabia, I fought wars of liberation again, and in support of allies on the other side of the continent. Askia was making mincemeat out of Suleiman, and I came to his aid. Both times it managed to make the game exciting rather than just camping out, waiting for the diplo or sci victory to roll around.

Anyway, we're getting off-topic.

Right now, I'm going back to Siam for diplomatic victory, and then for Byzantium. Then, if I feel brave enough, Poland, on King difficulty.

Sticking to Pangaea/Continents.

Objections?
 
I once had a siam freedom cultural victory a long time ago when bnw was new. I had taken screenshots about it and had showed it to my friends on Facebook. Those were good times :)
I had used tradition, rationalism and on prince difficulty when tourism started to be fun.
 
Incidentally, I've heard some horror stories about higher difficulties. Figured that it's better to just stick to King for a workout and not move up if you want to avoid frustration. Thoughts?
 
King and Emperor are about the same. Try an Emperor game for start and if that works well go to immortal (if you're not comfortable try an op civ like Babylon or Poland for starters). Put priority in expanding to 3-4 cities, then building the National College as soon as possible, and beeline to Education. Don't neglect military. You should catch up with the AI in renaissance or industrial era, and after that it's pretty easy.
 
Emperor could be a challenge if you try a non traditional start or any social policy in which you're not familiar with. Another thing that could make emperor difficult or king even is the lack of science. Being successful at these levels requires research and with plenty of it, these levels won't be such a nightmare.
 
When moving to a higher difficulty level, I highly recommend using a "God tier" civ for the first couple games to help you get used to the new settings.

BTW, I believe the generally accepted God tier civs are:

Babylon
Korea
Poland
Mayans

I would also add the following civs to the God tier, but these civs may require that you reroll the map a couple times; they're only "God tier" with the right starting location:
Spain
Inca
 
Speaking of difficulty, I had a two part question.

Is it fair to say that a military victory is more difficult at King and higher? Would I be better off going for a peaceful victory instead? Not to say I won't be fighting any wars, I'm sure the AI will be coming after me, but is it better to play safe on those higher difficulty levels?

To help offset some of the bonuses the AI get, is it better to have an advanced era start? I've done this before, mainly because I don't like waiting around for that first worker to be produced. Normally I only go one or two eras up (Classical or Medieval) in such cases.

UPDATE: I grew a decently-sized Siamese empire and have contacted plenty of CSs though I don't have enough money to make allies. Suggestions?
 
Completing cs quests could help you in diplomacy ddepending on what city states are asking for.
Or you could purchase them by saving gold and making gold buildings.
 
IMO Archipelago actually has *too* much water for Denmark to really shine. Denmark's abilities all center around military units that are, at heart, land units. And Archipelago often have too little actual land for land units to matter much. Instead, Archipelago games tend to feature ships, more ships, and yet more ships. Oh.. and maybe two land melee units & two or three land archer-class units.

Denmark really shines on maps ranging from small islands (I think it's called "Small Continents") and Large Continents. They also do well on the Oval map type... although it's a pangaea map type, but they can use the numerous inlets & bays as both highways & invasion routes. Basically, Denmark should hug the coastline, hopping into & out of the water for maximum speed. Their movement pattern is kinda counter-intuitive. Remember, disembarking always consumes only 1 movement point, even if you disembark on a hill. In addition to the obvious movement benefits, their UA allows them to land a siege weapon on a hill, set up, and then fire, all on the same turn. Ideally, Denmark doesn't use archers at all; they go to war with nothing but Berzerkers (many) and siege weapons (several).



Sure. Any victory type is available to any civ, pretty much. Ideally, Denmark will go to war when they get their Berzerkers. But after some conquests, it often makes sense to settle down & then pursue a non-Domination victory. This is especially true if you settled your original 2 or 3 expansion cities with an eye to an eventual non-Domination game. See a good city site adjacent to a mountain? Grab it for your first or second expansion. Ditto for a good jungle site. They can act as typical warlike-domination cities until mid-Renaissance (i.e. build mostly units), and *then* build 'em with infrastructure.
Concur with this assessment entirely.

Denmark has some difficulty on archipelago maps because there isn't enough room to land. You often find yourself needing to attack cities on 5 or 6 tile islands, which isn't enough of a landing zone for your ground units. Double-edged sword is that it also means those tiles are probably occupied, so you'll have to knock them off with ranged ships, and if that's your strategy, you may as well have went with England or a better infrastructure civ (Poland, Siam, Arabia, etc.)

Also as far as victory conditions, any civ can win any victory condition. Recently, I've been playing Deity exclusively and trying to prove that any civ can win any victory condition on any level. A few questions that were brought up in this post on that subject.

1.) Denmark is certainly capable of tourism victory, and the approach this victory shifts dramatically at deity level (at least in my experience.)
On immortal and below, you can follow the same, rinse/repeat peaceful turtling strategy - tradition/aesthetics/rationalism/freedom, pick up pertinent tourism wonders along the way, fill writer/artist guilds early, cross your fingers for dirt culture, get a bunch of artifacts outside your borders, get to hotels ASAP, get your world religion, try to time international games with acquiring internet and concurrently build/immediately fill musician guild and spit out 2 musicians during the last 10 turns of Igames (faith buy extra if needed). Hocus-pocus, there's your culture win.
On deity this doesn't work. Maybe for Babylon/Korea, but doubtful there as well. You'll probably be beaten to most/all wonders, they might pick up most of the artifact sites outside your borders (maybe some inside as well), you might miss a religion entirely and don't want to tick off everyone else proposing it if you do (If he's Islamic and you're Christian, you should only propose Christianity if you have the bombers and he has the swords, not the other way around.)
What I find to be the best strategy for deity is more of a half-focus on turtling/tourism infrastructure and more on a late game all-out aggression. Still try to get the tourism setup with things like aesthetics and, if you can, a few great works wonders in your capital, especially the national wonders (oxford and hermitage). But the VAST majority of your tourism comes from conquest - first from capturing the capital with 20 wonders in it and buying hotels and stuff there, and second from capturing dozens of artifacts. My last game I ended up with 30 artifacts and I think I produced 5 of them, the rest were captured.

2.) Domination victory does become trickier at higher levels, but is doable. For that matter, diplomatic is the same way... potentially. I found that the quicker victory conditions at lower levels end up being harder/impossible at times on deity. Conversely, the long-winded, boring victories at lower levels are the fail-safe victories or back-up plans on deity. Summary:

Immortal and below (from quickest/easiest to longest/most tedious)
1.)domination: get a handful of cheap early units, get good infrastructure for a tech lead, upgrade those units so that rifles are attacking longswords (or utilize some great UU's like impi, Nauressan's elephants, Keshilk, Camel Archer) and bulldoze. Game over in about 150 turns
2.)diplomatic: essentially a science victory like space, but you only need 80% of the techs that space requires. Sure, you need some cash for CSs as well, but who doesn't at that point in the game?
3.)culture: might have an early out with sacred sites, but otherwise need to turn-click your way to the guilds, then turn-click your way to hotels, and then just turn-click until you're influential with everyone. Quite tedious, a snooze-fest, but not quite as bad as...
4.)space: more tedious, you have to fill the tech tree except for 3 or 4 techs, and the most frustrating thing about it is that you could just use your tech lead to knock everyone out or buy a diplo win dozens of turns earlier. It's like an endurance trial.

Deity (from easiest/most reliable to riskiest/most likely to be impossible)
1.)Space: The only victory condition that you can reliably achieve 75% of the time or more without warring. If you have enough of a border patrol and keep them upgraded, you can focus on the infrastructure and use the tricks in this forum to turn-click your way to victory. If things start to look desperate, a war-bribe can get you out of a tough spot.
2.)Culture: see above: while capturing tourism opportunities replaces building tourism opportunities at this level, you can still be pretty peaceful and achieve victory. Usually there's only one or two major cultural target civs, and you can ignore everyone else or even have them help you in removing the one or two civs that are your primary obstacles to victory.
3.)Diplomatic: the problem with diplomatic victory at deity level is that the other civs always have the means to blocking your victory, but fortunately they rarely do. You can't knock out too many civs because then you wouldn't be able to fully utilize the globalization bonus, and since each civ often has 10k+ gold and 200gpt, they can easily each pick a CS, drop 10K into it and remove all your alliances. You just have to hope that they don't. The silver lining is that aggressive civs at diety are often hyper-charged, and frequently a civ or two gets eliminated which you can bring back for 4 extra votes apiece. Still very risky, and there's nothing you can do to stop them.
4.)Domination: When planning a domination victory, better performance by the player (or worse performance by the AI) enables an earlier campaign to take all the capitals. I.E. if you did very well, you may be able to start the ball rolling with a Cbow rush whereas if you didn't have the resources/means of setting up you may have to wait until artillery. At deity, it's usually a later start. The problem then, is not whether or not you can take all the capitals (you can), it's whether or not you can do so before the guy on the other side of the map makes a spaceship. If yo see Neb/Sejong/Hiawatha over there, domination probably isn't an option.
 
Deity (from easiest/most reliable to riskiest/most likely to be impossible)

Good post! I disagree only on the point that I think Deity Diplo is easier, quicker, and more reliable than SV. The only trick I would think is having too much unhappiness/ideology pressure to go Freedom. The 3rd tier trade routes are just too easy. Yes, an AI could easily stop you -- but they don't. A CS-gobbling warmonger AI is no problem because of the 1:1 relationship between votes needed and the number of CS available. I used to think Alex was a real problem -- but if you put more than 500 gold worth of influence into a CS -- he backs off too.
 
Good post! I disagree only on the point that I think Deity Diplo is easier, quicker, and more reliable than SV. The only trick I would think is having too much unhappiness/ideology pressure to go Freedom. The 3rd tier trade routes are just too easy. Yes, an AI could easily stop you -- but they don't. A CS-gobbling warmonger AI is no problem because of the 1:1 relationship between votes needed and the number of CS available. I used to think Alex was a real problem -- but if you put more than 500 gold worth of influence into a CS -- he backs off too.
agree, except I'm not sure about the 1:1 ratio part. I believe (someone else can verify/nullify) that during the era of world leader votes, a CS ally provides two votes for you. Therefore, having that CS be conquered reduces the necessary votes by 1 but reduces the number of votes you have by 2. Granted, having a CS be conquered is certainly an opportunity since liberating it gives you a ton (150?) influence with them (added bonus of nullifying some of your warmonger hate), but location can be a big problem there. XCOM's certainly would do the trick, but my late-game tech path for diplo victory is usually the top of the tech tree.

And for this reason, I simply remove diplomatic victory as an option as soon as I discover that either Austria or Venice is in the game.

I guess the reason why I ranked diplo lower than science (which is completely subjective) is that these and other uncontrollable intangibles can interfere or outright defeat a diplo victory attempt. The only thing that interferes with or outright defeats a science victory is getting your butt kicked, either almost literally through aggression or more figuratively by falling too far behind, but either of these would nullify any victory condition.
 
King and Emperor are about the same. Try an Emperor game for start and if that works well go to immortal (if you're not comfortable try an op civ like Babylon or Poland for starters). Put priority in expanding to 3-4 cities, then building the National College as soon as possible, and beeline to Education. Don't neglect military. You should catch up with the AI in renaissance or industrial era, and after that it's pretty easy.

I'm somewhat curious about that statement; I recently upgraded to King from Prince and to me, the difficulty didn't seem to increase at all. I played four games (Denmark, Maya, Poland, Ethiopia, in that order) and none of them were any problem at all. I got less wonders than usual and I had to fight a few more wars, but overall, I didn't really notice the increase in difficulty. Admittedly, I lost the fifth game I tried, but if you start right next to the Huns and don't build up your military early, you get what you deserve. So that one was completely my own fault and had nothing to do with difficulty.
So what I'm asking is, is Emperor really not much more difficult than Prince even?
 
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