Best Social Policies for a Domination victory

[MrDerpington]

What are the best Social Policies (and in what order) for a Domination victory?

I've only aimed for a Cultural victory so far (although I often end up with a bunch of puppets in my continent). Choosing the right SPs seems pretty important. I used to have trouble with said cultural victory on standard-sized maps on King (smaller maps were OK) until I've read that you're supposed to start with Liberty, and not Tradition like I used to. After that, going Tradition opener > full Liberty > full Piety made things a lot easier

Is something like Tradition opener > full Liberty > full Honor a good choice for a warmonger? What about the next one, Order or Autocracy? How many trees can I expect to fill out if I'm playing for military victory and not cultural?

 

[That nerdy kid]

For domination: Honor, Liberty, Piety, Autocracy, Commerce

 

[The Pilgrim]

Full Liberty asap, skip Tradition, Piety - Organized Religion. Then if you have tons of culture, which is unlikely, right side of Honor for happiness boost. But to fully capitalize on that you need 4 policies, probably you won't be able to pick that many, so Patronage can be viable as well, since cash is usually not a problem and allying CS helps with happiness. After you hit Industrial, Order opener for more happiness and the rest of Honor/Patronage or Autocracy, if you plan to rush buy many late game units and/or annexed many cities. Left side of Honor when fighting with strong medieval-renaissance UU is also an option, but the biggest obstacle is unhappiness, so you'll have to prioritize dealing with it over other things.

 

[Tiber4321]

@That nerdy kid Are you ever going to get a fifth SP tree in a Domination game? Also, I agree that full Liberty from the start is just way too strong not to go with. It also fills in fast, so you can still open Honor very early if you are so inclined.

I thought Order is ideal for domination games? If not, what is the use for this SP tree? I guess if going for domination wins, you either choose Fascism (Autocracy), or Communism (Order). Is one better than the other? Also, I think you would need to finish one of these trees sooner rather than latter, So, after Liberty, you would only have a few available SPs to get bits and pieces of Honor, Piety or Patronage, and you would most likely never get the finisher for any of them, unless you stuck with only one of them. I think Honor would probably have the best finisher for domination.

So, I would guess the best path would be Liberty-all, Honor-all, maybe open Piety and Patronage, and take Organized Religion and Philanthropy. By that time you should be to the Industrial era, then take either Order or Autocracy -all. I'm not sure how many SPs you would get after that.

 

[joshua43214]

I usually play domination standard/standard immortal.

Invariably my SP path is
full liberty
left rationalism
As much autocracy as I can before I am forced into annexxing puppets.

I find order to be much less than optimal for domination games. You get an immediate hapiness bonus, and basically nothing else. Autocracy lets you afford a war on multiple fronts, gives a huge bonus to courhouses, and if you can wing it, double strategic resources.

If I end up rolling in culture after I have finished my last RA, I will start on piety. I find taking rationalism + PT to be extremely powerful on domination games.

 

[Tabarnak]

For fast domination games completing Liberty and going through Honor is what i do. I don't have time to complete honor if i play below deity. Even less if it's pangea. Well at deity it's another beast and it's usually better to go elsewhere than honor for many reasons. Your units will fight so many times and kill so many foreign units that deity is litterally an honor tree by itself

 

[smallfish]

I love me some Liberty, Commerce, Rationalism/Piety (depending on whether you want a Science vic halfway through or just plain tech superiority), Autocracy.

 

[thefran]

I usually do raging Barbarians and get honor opener fast for a steady earl influx of culture.

 

[pspboy7]

If you just want to play warmonger from the start, Liberty first (expasion in own lands), Honor (for military experience and free general), Piety (happiness), Patronage (if you plan to ally with CS) or Commerce (for navy and trade route benefits), and Autocracy (bonus strategic resources is crazy). Just get full Honor and Liberty, every other policy is taken as you see fit.

 

[turacu]

What social policies should you use in BNW for a Domination Victory?

 

[Arachnofiend]

Tradition or Liberty depending on what the map looks like (Liberty is generally going to be better for dom though since puppet empires aren't as good as they were in G&K, though Tradition can faith buy an Engineer for Prora), Commerce, Rationalism, Autocracy.

For the latter three trees, prioritize getting: Mercantilism, Protectionism, Secularism, Militarism, Mobilization, Total War, and Third Alternative.

 

[joncnunn]

Personally, I'd go Full Tradition first (I would only build a few cities, but conquer a lot).
I'm thinking I wouldn't really need Honor policies for conquering and so would just choose two filler policies while waiting for Rationalism to open (probably Consulates for free city state friendship with the map)
Rationalism to get the key techs faster to get better troops faster.

Then for the Ideology it would come down to how much is left. If I already had a large part of the map, I'd choose Order, otherwise Autocracy.

 

[Maxym]

For fast domination games completing Liberty and going through Honor is what i do. I don't have time to complete honor if i play below deity. Even less if it's pangea. Well at deity it's another beast and it's usually better to go elsewhere than honor for many reasons. Your units will fight so many times and kill so many foreign units that deity is litterally an honor tree by itself

I didn't take honor at all for my current deity Assyria Domination game, and I keep wishing I had. Except to be worthwhile I needed either four or six policies in it and I could never see myself having that option, even if I skipped Rationalism all together. I went Liberty 4, consulates, finish liberty, Ratio open and +2 beaker per specialist, commerce till 25% discount, then whole whack in Autocracy and exploration open. Besides rationalism two and maybe exploration open I can't see myself being able to give up any of the other SPs.

If I had more earlier success with warring I might have went honor, as is it would be a luxury not necessity. I used to go liberty then honor right in deity domination GK but since it got nerfed I hardly touch it, except in immortal and below Doms where you can run the map fast.

 

[kb27787]

I thought honor sucks now?? (I have very little experience with DoV... the last time I got one was on GnK emperor several months ago)
Liberty still sucks IMO never had had a good smooth game with it. The -50% unhappiness from capitol is too huge to skip.

So I might open tradition+piety if you ask me to do it... with Poland.... then holy warriors/happy religion beliefs helps a lot early game...

 

[BroOfTheSun]

My usual picks for domination:
Liberty - Commerce - Rationalism (at least open it to secularism or right side for trade post/university boost) - Order/Autocracy

Honor isn't necessary for domination victories. If you are going to take honor, it is best to finish the tree for the finisher bonus. You can win without honor. If you take honor, it just means that you will win almost every fight, and units won't be dieing a lot.

And you'll have super upgraded units with every upgrade possibly that kill everything on 1 shot and never die. So ya know, if you think that's cool.

 

[heatscore]

You know this is a good thread topic because there appears to be absolutely zero consensus.

I think if people mentioned the difficulty they played on this would narrow it down some.

 

[BroOfTheSun]

I think what you can take away from the lack on consensus, is that many approaches work for domination victory. (fyi...I play Emperor). You can make a case for almost any policy tree to work with domination.

 

[justanotherturn]

I think it depend if you plan on going into war early, or later.

I you plan to go to war late, a "buying" military combo can be great (trad or liberty) then going commerce and autocracy.

If you plan to go to war early, liberty + honor can be good.

In high difficulty, science can be a problem, some point in rationalism can be useful. (rarely finish ratio if i'm going warmongering, except if i do that after finishing ratio and need to kill someone to be "safe"

 

[paralistalon]

I really like Honor, personally. The policy that gives +15% combat bonus for having an adjacent unit is a must, and the finisher is just amazing, espeically on higher difficulties where you're going to be killing a ton of units and making like 50 or 60 goldd per kill. You can seriously neglect your economy as long as you're constantly at war.

I honestly don't know if I'd want to postpone Honor by taking Tradition or Liberty first.

 

[tommynt]

I really like Honor, personally. The policy that gives +15% combat bonus for having an adjacent unit is a must

does it make u sad that u took useless sp as its for melee only or are you happy that u still won games?

I honestly don't know if I'd want to postpone Honor by taking Tradition or Liberty first.

I honestly dont knoiw why some1 d even think about taking a single policy in honor (apart raging barbs maybe)