Sword of Islam: Domination thread

[AnotherPacifist]

One thing I've consistently argued for (both in RFC and other mods) is equality of the civs to achieve victory: I really, REALLY hated Rhye's implementation of certain things that count against early civs and Eastern civs. (like worker speed, free buildings with settlers, expansion stability) You've done quite an equitable job here (all civs get free buildings after reaching a certain era, workers are equal, etc.)
However:
To tie stability to control of Anatolia means that all other civs are at a disadvantage, i.e. it's much harder for civs away from Anatolia to occupy it (at a stability disadvantage already since it's not native to them).

It's only a game: weird history is what mods are for.

-50% stability is still not enough--as of right now, the minimum stability hit you have to endure is -100 to -150 to win domination (see all the screenpics I have), and for smaller civs, it's even worse.

Maybe you can reimplement stability bonus for certain buildings like inn and debtor's jail.

 

[Jusos2108]

What's wrong in Domination Victory currently is that you have to worry about stability at all after taking Constantinople. This makes it is just a rampage for land, in other words, really easy. In basic RFC domination must be carefully planned for each civ, even more nowadays because Rhye reduced the city liberating bonus, and conquering too early will collapse you.

And AP as you can see from my Abbasid game you don't need the title to win domination, so your minimum -100 stability hit in order win is really a load of cr*p, no offense. It just shows how you can completely ignore stability while going for domination.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Abbasids have an extraordinarily large land entitlement. So do the Ottomans.

Feel free to post pictures (I'm eager to see the one for Yemen).

OK Jusos, do a domination while stable as an Indian civ (try Sindh), and I'll believe you.

 

[Jusos2108]

Not every domination should be easily doable. For example in regular RFC some civs are extremely difficult (Mali, which hasn't been done) while some are really easy (England). Some civs just aren't meant to dominate.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

OK, please do a domination for Seljuks, Ayyubids or even Timurids with a STABLE or SHAKY stability. I want to see proof.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Here's a thought--spread plenty of religions (as many as possible), save enough great people for GAs, switch religions 3-4 times during GAs, and build lots of temples for each religion for stability.

The underlying problems are:
1. There's too much land that is uninhabitable, and 25% of inhabitable land has to trespass on other civs' core land.
2. There are often not enough civs alive, and 27-29% might be required sometimes.
3. There are not enough stability buildings (right now there's the temple and courthouse, but in normal RFC there's courthouse, IE and SB)

 

[MessageMan]

As soon as these were available, I used Empire, Religious Law, Free Labor, Agrarianism and Organized Religion. Free labor and agrarianism are an excellent combo!

So did you use cottages or farms? What about watermills in Iraq? Any tips to remain stable by the end of the game? Wouldn't your economy stability rating crash after a 60 turn golden age?

Abbasids have an extraordinarily large land entitlement. So do the Ottomans.

They are also Islamic. By the endgame any Christian/Hindu civ has a poor foreign stability rating.

 

[Jusos2108]

OK, please do a domination for Seljuks, Ayyubids or even Timurids with a STABLE or SHAKY stability. I want to see proof.

I am quite busy right now, although I am playing one domination game at the moment, but that might take a while to be finished.. Actually Seljuks are probably quite easy.

So did you use cottages or farms? What about watermills in Iraq? Any tips to remain stable by the end of the game? Wouldn't your economy stability rating crash after a 60 turn golden age?

Both and watermills for the production poor cities. Stability never was a real issue in my game, iirc I saved some of the +1 stability (temples) buildings until I needed a buff. No it didn't, because it was so high before it ended.

 

[Jusos2108]

Here as AP requested:

Founded my capital 1E of starting plot, Mazar-e Sharif. It is much better than Balkh and can reach size 17. Second settler founded Gwadar, in which I eventually builded Kizil Kule, Al-Jaziri, Grand Bazaar and so on. I also conquered Kerman early. After the Ghaznavids spawned, I conquered them and after that Sindh, who respawned once.

Then I just waited for the mongols to tear the Seljuks and Abbasids apart and sweeped in to take their former lands. I vassalised Ajmer in the end, because Gujarat annoyingly collapsed before submitting. I had the land requirement when the Timurids spawned, but their flip took away most of my capital's plots, so I had to pop some borders and conquer Malwi lands for the Ajmer's. Again when I had enough land the Malwis respawned and took away Ajmer's cities. Anyway after reconquering some of them I finally got the job done without ever entering Anatolia..

My empire in 1372:

Spoiler :

World in 1201, 1271 (after Mongol invasion), in 1300 (note really strong Byzantium) and 1384:

Spoiler :

Other pics (at least I wasn't Guy):

Spoiler :

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Yeah, I founded Mazar-e Sharif too. Currently for me it's 1156 for me and I have all of north India to myself as well as the traditional Samanid lands, fighting the Ghorids, and was about to build my stack to take over Persia and Iraq after 1220 and the Mongols.

But you have to admit that Samanids' UP helps quite a bit. Without it, if you were any other civ, say, Timurids, you would have been shaky or collapsing by now (+2 stability per city conquered). And the Samanids also have quite a large area which is native to them.


Try Sindh with your next attempt.

Have you noticed the opium bug?

But I'm getting really sick of this mod by now...

 

[Jusos2108]

Yeah, their UP does help. I think I'll try the Seljuks or Timurids next.

You mean the text bug?

Why?

 

[AnotherPacifist]

No, I had 2 opiums hooked up (the one 2SW of Mazar-e Sharif and one next to Delhi, I think), and I kept getting the Ghaznavids offer me opium because it wasn't in my capital.

 

[Jusos2108]

No I didn't have that kind of a problem. Did you have Medicine?

Yeah they have a historically large territory, but not all of those areas are their border provinces. The Turk requested that some them should be included, but Edead didn't include them, because they controlled some of those areas for such a short period of time.

 

[Jusos2108]

This was actually easier than the Samanid one. My stability solid or very solid 95% of the game.

Starting strategy was to conquer Persia and found the 'missing' cities. Then I waited until 1160 or so, when it was clear that the Abbasids won't respawn and stromed Iraq. After that I raised massive armies against the Mongols, which I killed 127 btw. Zengids vassalised for the price to declare war on Ayyubids and Georgia was capitulated. After that I went for Byzantines, not Constantinople though. When it was clear that this wasn't enough I conquered Yemen.

The annoying part was that the Ak Kouynly spawned eventhough Zengids were solid. For some reason I had always thought that they wouldn't. This delayed my victory by about 10 turns, but it was still quite easy. My army relied heavily on fast moving and highly promoted Heavy Horse Archers and later Heavy Lancers. For the fun of it I attached one GG to my starting Seljuk Horse Archer and he became quite a monster.

World in 1223, 1302, 1402 and 1420:

Spoiler :

Other pics:

Spoiler :

 

[embryodead]

Since you guys are delaying the start of the next Domination succession game, I figured I'd rather warn you about the specifics of Roman Emperor change. It's really hard for me to tell if it's not overdone. I'll just sum up all 0.3.4 changes that are related to Domination:

- Empire civic now reduces Expansion stability penalty by 40% instead of 25%
- Topkapi palace comes 1 tech earlier and has the old effect replaced with another -40% to Expansion stability penalty (so with Empire + Topkapi you only get 1/5 of the usual Stability hit for expansion).
- Temples and Courthouses provide stability for the owner, not just the founder; this is a small change but it's much more logical than the usual RFC mechanic, and will provide extra stability for players that flip/conquer developed cities.
- Roman Emperor no longer provides complete immunity to Stability issues - while you can't collapse, whenever it should have happened you instead lose a number of cities - from 1/8 to 1/3, depending on how bad your stability is (i.e. -80 is worse than -50). This only affects cities in foreign provinces, with distant and unhappy cities being cut off first. All your core & border provinces are immune to this and will never secede.
- Vikramaditya title changes all of India to border+ provinces, but only if you're Hindu.

Let me know if this is sensible. The goal was to make Domination victory challenging but geographically universal, rather than being dependent on capturing Constantinople.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Actually it's a Conquest game, and we only plan on occupying 1 city per civ spawn area. But the changes sound good.

 

[embryodead]

Actually it's a Conquest game, and we only plan on occupying 1 city per civ spawn area. But the changes sound good.

Oops, right, still assumed the stability will be a problem. But thanks, at least I know it's not something that puts off immediately

 

[MessageMan]

Since you guys are delaying the start of the next Domination succession game, I figured I'd rather warn you about the specifics of Roman Emperor change. It's really hard for me to tell if it's not overdone. I'll just sum up all 0.3.4 changes that are related to Domination:

- Empire civic now reduces Expansion stability penalty by 40% instead of 25%
- Topkapi palace comes 1 tech earlier and has the old effect replaced with another -40% to Expansion stability penalty (so with Empire + Topkapi you only get 1/5 of the usual Stability hit for expansion).
- Temples and Courthouses provide stability for the owner, not just the founder; this is a small change but it's much more logical than the usual RFC mechanic, and will provide extra stability for players that flip/conquer developed cities.
- Roman Emperor no longer provides complete immunity to Stability issues - while you can't collapse, whenever it should have happened you instead lose a number of cities - from 1/8 to 1/3, depending on how bad your stability is (i.e. -80 is worse than -50). This only affects cities in foreign provinces, with distant and unhappy cities being cut off first. All your core & border provinces are immune to this and will never secede.
- Vikramaditya title changes all of India to border+ provinces, but only if you're Hindu.

Let me know if this is sensible. The goal was to make Domination victory challenging but geographically universal, rather than being dependent on capturing Constantinople.

I like your change to Vikramaditya, Roman Emperor, and the temples but I'm not sure on the others. I don't think it's necessary to make a domination victory any easier. Domination victory wasn't dependent on capturing Constantinople as Jusos proved. And I don't think many civs should be able to achieve Domination in the first place. Big empires had to constantly fight against insurrections and revolts to keep their territory intact. Isn't that the whole point of the stability system? It's easy to conquer territory but hard to keep it.

 

[Jusos2108]

I agree with MessageMan, domination victory shouldn't be too easy.

 

[Power_of_Beer]

With the new version released (props to embryodead), I thought about finishing the list in this thread, starting with Makuria.
They start from the very beginning as the most backwards civ, isolated, lots of flood plains and not that much production initially. Their UB/UU/UP all synergize well and the outcome are fearsome drill IV / CG I Longbowmen out of the gate.

The capital was founded 1S of the starting spot, the other city to the north (stone, sorghum, camels, hemp). Civics to Aristocracy and Vassalage, later Slavery + Agrarianism. I didn't spread Orthodoxy to the capital until Sunni autospread, which allowed me to build the Spiral Minaret with the stone, a great boost to Makurias bad economy in the beginning. Research was Botany, Currency, Long Distance Trade. After that, I only researched the important techs myself (Engineering, Guilds...) and traded them to backfill the other techs, mostly with Byzantium and Georgia. Settled & conquered everything south of Egypt, and grabbed some Islamic wonders (Kutlug-Timur and Minaret of Jam).
The Mamluks had no chance against hordes of Longbowmen, after that I slowly conquered the Levant & Hejaz and vassalized Kingdom of Cyprus. Civics were switched to Empire and Persecution, tech towards Topkapi Palace. Killed Ak Koyunlu, conquered Iraq and vassalized the Safavids. A few more cities in Iran, and Timur vassalized for the last %'s.

The core area:

Spoiler :

World in 1200:

Spoiler :

Constantine score :

Spoiler :