a question on two different topics

[ZefPrimus]

Hey, first time posting, been reading for awhile. My questions are first: what is the best strategy for growth? Population wise. I've been doing great with science and energy, however my pop and culture seem to really drag during mid and end game.

Second: does anyone have a good build order/strategy for a domination win? I've been trying to figure out how to amass and maintain an army as quickly as possible.

Any and all help will be greatly appreciated.

 

[EpicWestern]

Hey, first time posting, been reading for awhile. My questions are first: what is the best strategy for growth?

Farms into biowells, and just skipping non-essentially units/buildings and using agricultural development. You should still go academies though, just maybe less of them. Growth buildings are OK, but not really worth going out of your way for. Prosperity is obviously the best virtue tier.

Second: does anyone have a good build order/strategy for a domination win? I've been trying to figure out how to amass and maintain an army as quickly as possible.

Any and all help will be greatly appreciated.

Honestly it shouldn't be that much different from your normal games. You try and get to 13 affinity ASAP via mass academy. Have combat rovers ready so the moment you hit level 13 for levitation you can move in for an attack. Hit strong harmony opponents first as mind flower is your biggest threat. If needed, snipe the mind flower in a hit and run attack. You might be able to take down an opponent or two with just 5-6 gunners before this, but on the harder difficulties its really difficult to do that and stay competitive with tech at the same time.

This might seem weird, but tech, prosperity, and industry tiers are all about equal for a domination victory while might is almost completely worthless.

 

[ZefPrimus]

Thanks EpicWestern, I'll tweak it up tonight with biowells!

 

[Ryika]

Focusing heavily on growth isn't really a good thing though, as the food curve becomes really steep really fast - at best you get a few pop extra per city and due to the lack of extensive % and "per X population"-modifiers an additional pop isn't worth too much. If you want to be somewhat effective, then you'll need to opt out of growth relatively early and replace a lot of the biowells with academies to make use of the additional pop that you got early on.

For quick military strategies: You really only have to reach Affinity 2 before you can go and successfully conquer a few cities. Rangers with the "Cover"-Promotion can take out quite a few cities without being killed easily until the AI comes with t2 rovers. Just make sure to not overextend too much with your conquering - if you conquer too many cities with too much population, then the amount of negative health will hurt your empire more than the cities will really help your empire.

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

Yeah, population is not good in this game. Population has a pretty much stable value the entire time, giving you the worth of one tile, no multipliers. But they cost you health and they cost you..... all that food.
Pops are only as good as the tiles, then, so you have to improve tiles as a priority even hypothetically thought you that pop growth was a strategy.

All the +X buildings literally make this game about city improvements, not people. It's funny: Civ V goes overboard on +u%, making tall concentration outpace all other risks and costs... Civ BE forgets, in overshooting the reverse, to give a feedback loop to big city growth.* Or, well, maybe the citizens being overshadowed by structures and technology is part of the message or aim.... but it's still flawed gameplay, those pops have rising costs and flat benefits. Ew.

*It could be contributing, that the specialists are so terrible. They, at least, are an alternative to tiles and require some surplus food. It would be nice if a certain off-the-path Virtue combination would power up the specialists so you could try that sort of economy. But you'd still be looking at the slot problem.