DoC Domination Challenge

[SantoSubito]

Starting with Marrakesh, Cartagena and Carthago, but without major unit or wonder flips. Spain was eliminated ASAP and Italy was quickly grabbed.
France and HRE didn't like my early expansion, however my veterans were enough to capitulate the French and eliminate Germany.

After that rather simple: teching ahead, conquerors, slow expansion pre-fascism, crazy expansion post-fascism. Maya and Inca capitulated, China and Indonesia peace-vassaled.
Stability was no problem until I hit a sudden -70 expansion hit just before reaching the territory treshold.
The resulting Spain respawn took 3 major cities; of course not for long, but this resulted in Iberia looking rather mediocre and a near-collapse stability.

I could have easily won many years earlier, but I wanted to wait for a congress to start a controlled war instead of an all against the Moorish Axis scenario.

 

[Barbuesque]

Great stuff Jusos!

Couple of questions/comments:

You can settle Constantinople before the ERE spawn, and Athens as well; You just need to be solid in 335 AD to cancel the spawn. The best way to achieve that is to delay entering the middles age before that date, as that will severely hurt your civic stability rating.

Rusadir; Yes it can be settled before the wave of euro spawns, but isn't it a burden once better options open up?

 

[Jusos2108]

Thanks!
Turkey flips Constantinople and I was definetly solid when the Byzantines spawned, but they still wanted to flip Sparta..?

 

[Barbuesque]

Thanks!
Turkey flips Constantinople and I was definetly solid when the Byzantines spawned, but they still wanted to flip Sparta..?

It seems you need to be solid in both 320 and 335 to cancel the ERE spawn. Not sure if you dipped below in either turn.

As for Turkey flipping Constantinople, Razing Angora did the trick, because they are expelled by culture on turn 2 of their history and Constantinople flips on turn 3. Sometimes they do not even get near Constantinople before the defection phase is over.

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

It seems you need to be solid in both 320 and 335 to cancel the ERE spawn. Not sure if you dipped below in either turn.

As for Turkey flipping Constantinople, Razing Angora did the trick, because they are expelled by culture on turn 2 of their history and Constantinople flips on turn 3. Sometimes they do not even get near Constantinople before the defection phase is over.

I experienced the same thing as Phoenicia.
Make sure Anatolia and Armenia are empty before the Turkish spawn.

 

[Jusos2108]

Pretty straight forward game. I took Alexandria with the starting LBs and couple of mercs, waited for the Arabs to collapse and then took Cairo and Jerusalem. I settled Durban with one of the initial settlers for happiness. My Redcoat TC event happened in 1600 during which I conquered almost all of India. After rifles I teched rapidly towards Biology and Radio, while settling the Americas patiently. In the end I stopped teching and turned the culture slider up to get land together with one CB in NA.


The development of the world:

Spoiler :

The Empire:

Spoiler :

TC yields and London!

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Other pics:

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[Barbuesque]

Wow impressive.

So your first 4 initial settlers were Ireland, South africa, London and scotland?

Wouldn't it be better to send one into tunisia to start and get ireland through the indep city?

And how did you conquer Egypt early- nm read it. How repeatable and reliable would you judge this move?

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

Wow impressive.

So your first 4 initial settlers were Ireland, South africa, London and scotland?

Wouldn't it be better to send one into tunisia to start and get ireland through the indep city?

And how did you conquer Egypt early? Which cities did you keep? Razed any?

Tunisia is usually occupied by Spain, Moors, Egypt, and occasionally Arabia as of late in the more recent SVNs.
I usually send my third Settler straight to South Africa anyway as well.
With England's UP, it incentivizes that particular play even more than in vanilla.
You can rack up loads of XP on one Longbowman by playing "tower defense" against the Impis as well.

 

[Jusos2108]

Wow impressive.

So your first 4 initial settlers were Ireland, South africa, London and scotland?

Wouldn't it be better to send one into tunisia to start and get ireland through the indep city?

And how did you conquer Egypt early- nm read it. How repeatable and reliable would you judge this move?

Yep, that's right. The spawning Dublin is in the wrong tile for me. Arabs controlled Tunisia when I came to horizon with my galleys.

I took all my Longbows, hired a 3xCR swordman and a spearman, so I left England completely defenceless. Taking Alexandria with them was easy as it wasn't heavily guarded. Keeping it is more difficult, but the trick is to time this around the Seljuk spawn, so Arabs have their hands full elsewhere. I signed peace asap and sent reinforcements from England. The Arabs were collapsing when declared war on them again and after I took Cairo they collapsed and I quickly grabbed Jerusalem and razed Luxor.

More problematic than taking Egypt was to leave England defenceless while at war with Vikings, luckily they attacked France instead of me. I think that this can be done about 50% of the times you spawn at war with Vikings and 90% of the times you spawn at peace with them.

 

[borhap88]

The spawning Dublin is in the wrong tile for me.

Sure, 1 N is better. I usually raze the spawning independent and found new Dublin on 1 N tile.

 

[blizzrd]

1N is actually a little too much better to be honest. A bit like the old Inverness was disproportionately strong with respect to food availability too.

 

[SantoSubito]

A minor improvement of the HRE record.
This game was ridiculously easy. It felt more like a Rome or Viceroy game.

My only flip was an empty size 1 Wien, my later glorious capital. My starting knights went straight to France and razed everything; Tours was settled on the uranium.
Italy was taken next and I was forced to capitulate Spain since they took the Catholic shrine in Pompeji before me.
From then on (almost) no more problems:
- conquerors and Maya, Inca capitulation
- Ethopia voluntary vassal
- Russia had to capitulate twice, since they collapsed right after my knights took Moscow
- England was kept in the middle ages with my 3 privateers
- Prussia was a joke for my veteran infantry

Some random notes:
- the Austrian tech speed is very fast; getting two ages ahead is really simple
- the stability is a non-issue; even before the final golden ages I've never had any problems
- the Tamils of all people wanted to get my Brazil city in the final congress
- Sydney was called "Vienna", so I was quite surprised to suddenly have to Viennas in my empire. It might make sense to take Vienna from the Austrian city names, or to replace it with Wiener Neustadt.

 

[Akbarthegreat]

For the large civs (Rome, Mongolia), the trick is to collapse at least once, right?

 

[blizzrd]

I don't think so. The trick I thought was (when your empire is large enough, i.e. more than 20 cities) to conquer a bunch of (relatively useless) cities, liberate/gift them simultaneously to your next enemy, then declare on your next enemy and reconquere/liberate them again to your next intended target, etc. Rinse and repeat as often as required to stabilise your situation.

 

[Akbarthegreat]

And BTW, what do you do as Rome when the Euros spawn?

 

[Jusos2108]

For the large civs (Rome, Mongolia), the trick is to collapse at least once, right?

Not really, but for Mongolia that is a good strategy, since you get free Keshiks from the cities and their stability is quite poor just after conquering China.

I don't think so. The trick I thought was (when your empire is large enough, i.e. more than 20 cities) to conquer a bunch of (relatively useless) cities, liberate/gift them simultaneously to your next enemy, then declare on your next enemy and reconquere/liberate them again to your next intended target, etc. Rinse and repeat as often as required to stabilise your situation.

Nowadays you need almost 30 cities to get stability from city liberations.

And BTW, what do you do as Rome when the Euros spawn?

Kill or vassalise them.

 

[Akbarthegreat]

Kill or vassalise them.

But won't the stability hit from them flipping a lot of your cities kill your stability? Unless of course you expand like hell to other places, hence increasing your stability when those cities flip (or at least decreasing the hit). But then the land you grab won't be good either, thus killing your economy.

 

[Jusos2108]

You shouldn't found cities on their flipping zones. Italy, Greece and North Africa are enough at that point.

 

[Power_of_Beer]

Early game i traded techs with Korea, they always seem to research alphabet. Conquered them afterwards, and expanded into Manchuria (after Mongol spawn) and Indonesia. Grabbed all conquerors to reenforce my troops. Only the Aztecs were destroyed because their land is so productive, serves well for colonization of NA. Didn't bother with Incas and Maya. Steadily expanded into non-core areas (NA, SIberia, Australia). This was more or less enough for the land requirement, for the population I had to fight China and blockade a whole lot (mainly Spain, Indonesia). I only had Iran and Thais as vassals, because i can for the love of god not get any good vassals .

Empire&score:

Spoiler :

 

[Barbuesque]

Domination achieved in 1835

Like my previous domination game with France, it's a follow up from my UHV game (score 9437, see 1.10 UHV challenge thread for details up to 1800).

Basically after securing the third UHV I colonized some parts of south america + conquered one city, expanded further in north america, crushed the americans (war with them after my vassal's city was flipped, so no defection), conquered germany and invaded Russia. I was at 22% when Russia capitulated after loosing Kiev and Moscow, boosting me to 28% instantly foir the win.

Attached is the save and 2 screenshots of the final situation.