Couple of questions from an inexperienced player

[asprabhu]

Im a newbie and playing on chieftain. Got all victories except domination and conquest. Needed a few tips about war waging to get these victories so that i can experiment with higher difficulty levels.

Q1. If I am attacking a city which has all the improvements and im confident of getting that city should i raze these improvements ? Will those be mine after i get the city and expand ?

Q2. Also resources that are near cultural borders, do i lose them when neighbors culturaly strong get that area ?

Q3. I find warring easy till copper and iron are the main resources. After gunpowder conflicts become difficult ? I mainly play continents and pretty much wipe all the civs from my continent. But till the time i get astronomy and discover places other civs become decently strong for me. Any tips for this setup ? I find warring across the continents difficult.

 

[MrCynical]

1)Don't destroy terrain improvements if you're planning to take the nearby city, they'll be yours once they're inside your territory and it saves rebuilding them.

2)If the tile the resource is on shifts into their territory, yes.

3)Attacking another continent is always a pain, and I'd advise against it without tech superiority or greater numbers. The key is to take one city (no matter how rubbish) to use as a beachead.

 

[automator]

I love, simply love a war over the ocean, but only in the Modern era.

I very much dislike warring with just galleons -- even frigates annoy me.

But there's something really satisfying in arranging three invasion forces of battleships, destroyers, aircraft carriers and five transports of tanks, marines, SAMs, artillery ... then simultaneously taking three coastal cities in one turn, then watching the enemy scramble to respond.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

If you are in the position of having dominated your continent, you should be able to acquire both a tech lead and a production lead - the AIs should not be able to compete with you and stop you pulling ahead. Some things to consider:

- Have you built enough cottages. If you can get about 50% of the terrain of your continent cottaged, the AIs will fall massively behind in research. They don't build enough and you have much more land to build on.
- Make sure you have a good number of production cities. With a whole continent these should be well sited and capable of churning out a lot of troops in a short period of time.
- Make sure that you trade effectively (if you can) with the civs on the other continent - at least to neutralize the effect of any of their own tech trading.
- If you can bribe the civs on the other continent to start fighting amongst themselves that can really help.
- Build your fleet first - I usually start building my invasion fleet with galleons before I have finished off my own continent so that they can carry the elite troops across. But its better to be carrying top of the line troops on outdated ships than the other way round.
- Even if you can't gain a tech edge, you must surely have a production edge. Now is the time to build a huge invasion force - to be followed by several more waves. Divide and conquer.

Its also the time to decide what victory you want. For domination try and get some great artists - you can raze enemy cities in a circle around the target city and then instantly claim a great chunk of the map. At this point don't try and develop the cities you capture - its all out war and the only thing you want these cities doing is throwing out culture to claim land and minimizing their upkeep through courthouses (at this point state property is strongly recommended).

If you are going for conquest, simply raze everything except your beachhead.

 

[asprabhu]

Thanks a lot for the tips. Will try them out.