DoC Domination Challenge

[iOnlySignIn]

^ Yeah. You should decide your Financial Capital early in the game. A few criteria:

(1) Coastal: much better Trade Routes;

(2) River: better Trade/Growth early; better Production late w/ Levee;

(3) Food Rich: you'll be running pure Merchants in this city with settled Great Merchants. Larger city size also gives better Trade Routes. In general, you want to Farm this city to run Merchants, instead of Cottage it up. Specialists are much more flexible and work much better with the Wonders that you will spam in this city;

(4) Shrine(s): Obviously;

(5) Preferably with Palace: Less Maintenance, Palace also gives a flat +8 Gold;

(6) Decent Production: You'll be building quite a few Wonders in this city. Although if it is sufficiently Food Rich, you can just use GE hurries.

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The Wonders you want to build in this city are:

(A) Artemis/Porcelain/San Marco/Empire State: Flat bonuses, pretty straightforward;

(B) GLH/Colossus/Forbidden Palace/SoL/Eiffel: These Wonders do not boost the commerce of this city per se, but they provide Great Merchant points, which synergizes with the pure Merchants that you will be running in this city;

(C) Trading Company: It does more than just boost Trade. It also provides Health and Happiness, allowing for larger city size, and hence more Trade and Merchants;

(D) Wall Street: No brainer. It also provides 3 Merchant slots. If you're doing things properly, you need every one of those 3 Merchant slots;

(E) Opera House: This will usually be your largest city (due to settled Great Merchants providing extra food). OH is sometimes not needed - Palace & Trading Company both provide Happiness. If you can gather enough Happiness resources, you might be able to skip OH;

(F) CERN/Channel Tunnel: If you're keeping your Research slider up most of the game, then Commerce = Research and you'll need this wonder. Otherwise (if you're going pure Specialist Domination) CERN may better go to your pure Scientist GP Farm (with National Park).

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List of Financial Capitals on the map:

S-Class Financial Capitals: London; New York/Philadelphia; Shanghai/Hangzhou; Tokyo; Rome; Constantinople; Königsberg/Memel; Amiens;

A-Class Financial Capitals: Amsterdam; Los Angeles/San Diego (new map only); Bejing/Qufu; Kyoto; Hamburg; Novgorod/St. Petersburg; Mumbai; Bangkok;

B-Class Financial Capitals: Mecca; Buenos Aires; Rio de Janeiro; Jarkarta; Dhaka (on coast)/Calcutta; Lisboa; Yax Mutal; Edinburgh;

C-Class Financial Capitals: Alexandria; Shiraz; Carthage/Tunis; Macau/Hong Kong; Barcelona; Athens; San Francisco; Hancheng.

 

[Gruekiller]

Is that an Egypt sitting in Italy and Greece I see in the Thai victory? o.0

 

[Jusos2108]

Is that an Egypt sitting in Italy and Greece I see in the Thai victory? o.0

Yes it is, they got Messana from a congress and then conquered Rome (or it flipped to them when France collapsed). They also got Milan and Budapest from congress later on when their culture expanded to those areas. Germany respawned and took Budapest from them, but iirc they conquered another Balkan city after that.

(5) Preferably with Palace: Less Maintenance, Palace also gives a flat +8 Gold;

Just to set it right, Palace gives 8 commerce.

Trading Company is more preferably placed in your science city.

My Science cities, Gold city and production city from the Thai-game:

Spoiler :

 

[morff]

Btw i forgot - good idea is placing corporations to one coast city (ideally holy as bonus, or with some other wonders buildings) and combine with stock exchange.

My best cities can do alone over 1000 gold after corporations (maybe it could be even lot more that than in cities like Qufu with 2 religious shrines and some merchants), and lot over 500 research (i'm not sure about this i may have once reach the 1000 - thanks to representations, corporations, and channel tunnel - but i'm not completely uncertain about it).

Anyway early corporations (Sushi and Mining imho best because of the number of resources) can boost your economy later very much.

 

[Jusos2108]

But corporations spread on their own in DoC...

 

[Jusos2108]

I rolled a 3000BC start to get a shot for the pantheon wonders and I managed to build a great bunch of them, including th Great Cothon, the Great Lighthouse and so on. I didn't flip any wonders though. Naturally I had to turtle for some time, although I did conquer Italy after Rome collapsed, in the beginning. Meanwhile I built a bunch of other wonders, founded Islam and Protestantinism, crabbed the conquerors and vassalised Russia and Aztecs.

Around 1650 I had encounter with the Mongols, which lead to their capitulation after I took a bunch of their cities in Russia and Middle East.

Spoiler :

Soon after China respawned and vassalised as did the Incas. I also took the NAn lands right before the Americans spawned via GA (notice the empty America in 1700 screenshot). I fought off Spain and Germany twice, which lead to Germany's collapse and my culture ended up covering most of europe. Egypt gifted me Benghazi and collapsed the turn after, which tempted me to taking Egypt under the Byzantine arms. I also whipped the Iranians and took Parsa. With those acquisitions and another culture bomb in NA I got the land.

Spoiler :

The Empire:

Spoiler :

Some stats,
Notice that Constantinople has 10 million more pop than any other empire

Spoiler :

 

[morff]

But corporations spread on their own in DoC...

Oops, that's probably why i forgot it

 

[Jusos2108]

The stability was really crappy after just conquering and resettling China and setting the Persian frontier. Eventually it got better and I collected the conquerors, burned Aztecs and Mayas and settled some great spots in NA just before the American spawn. Meanwhile I was building a huge army in Asia. However, for some reason I didn't get any good vassals early on, only Japan, so I had to capitulate Indonesia, Thais and Incas. So eventually I covered most of the land (>22%) by myself.

Spoiler :

The Mongol Empire:

Spoiler :

The first time (that I have noticed) when I have GNP above 10k.

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

 

[Fresol]

Mongolia has really poor expansion stability, mostly because they'll have to take many foreign land tiles early on.

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

I'm attempting a Japanese Domination game, and I've achieved all my immediate goals
of vassalizing China & destroying the Coreans, Indonesians, Khmer & Thai
but I'm a little unsure of how to proceed from here.
I'd appreciate it if one could go over the save and sagely provide some advice.

(I get uncomfortable whenever Europeans get big and advanced,
so a lot of my issues are just anxiety, if that helps.)

 

[Fresol]

Is it 1.81 or SVN? I think you should proceed to settle NA and try to control all of it.

I'm playing an India game myself, looks quite promising.

Edit: Turns out I failed at domination. I only had 1 vassal (England), and I didn't grab enough land in the Americas fast enough (India sucks at expanding, you get nothing at all in your new cities). The world ended up divided into several powers, with France being the most competitive one. I really could use some help in acquiring vassals. How to get them?

 

[秦始皇]

Actually the ottaman is not a good vassal in Domination mode(but maybe the best vassal in conquest mode ) With large army and advanced military tech, it is not easy to be conquested,you may lose so many stabilities and only get about 5%-6% land area, not a good idea. To the european civilizations,making russia vassal(and spain or inca another) is quite enough.In this way ,you can get domination win in 1800.(emperor level)

 

[Tlönitte]

Actually the ottaman is not a good vassal in Domination mode(but maybe the best vassal in conquest mode )

My favourite conquest vassal after Germany

 

[Jusos2108]

I'm attempting a Japanese Domination game, and I've achieved all my immediate goals
of vassalizing China & destroying the Coreans, Indonesians, Khmer & Thai
but I'm a little unsure of how to proceed from here.
I'd appreciate it if one could go over the save and sagely provide some advice.

(I get uncomfortable whenever Europeans get big and advanced,
so a lot of my issues are just anxiety, if that helps.)

You seem to be behind in tech, so you definetly need to catch up. Few things you can do:

-Trade your resources to Europeans for gpt and get the science slider up, run merchants as well
-Make China research some techs you want to trade/steal from them
-Trade everything else around too for cash and run at net decifit
-Beeline for expensive techs that others don't have and then trade them for everybody for lesser techs that you need.

 

[秦始皇]

Maybe a better way for west euro country.

 

[iOnlySignIn]

^ Uber-Inca. You gifted them cities?

A French Domination in 1736 without any French presence in Africa OR South Asia. Game needs to become more historical.

My favourite conquest vassal after Germany

Seconded. They sit on my Oil.

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

While historical, it's not exactly optimal (except for Hanoi).
If you look at my France Domination game,
I pretty much settled all the same places as well.

 

[iOnlySignIn]

While historical, it's not exactly optimal (except for Hanoi).
If you look at my France Domination game,
I pretty much settled all the same places as well.

Yeah. That's the problem.

The French Stability maps in Indochina and India are useless from a gameplay point of view. This needs to be changed. Either remove them completely, or alter other aspects of the game to give them some significance.

The Trading Company event, as I understand it, is an attempt to fix this problem. In case of England, Portugal, and to a lesser extent (because of OP Indonesia) the Netherlands, the problem is fixed. But not in case of France.

One possibility is to scale back the Historical Area for France in NA. But I doubt even that will change anything - every Euro Domination pretty much settles Louisiana. Instead we need to make Indochina, India, and Africa more interesting, especially from a French point of view.

 

[Fresol]

Tried a domination after Chinese UHV. I left Japan alive, capitulated Mongolia, and vassalized France and Spain at some later point, but still had no luck on Russia. I tried Urbanization+Free Market civic combo (switched to Egalitarianism some time later) and didn't build any cottages until near the end, it provided better production power but possibly worse economy (could also be Porcelain Tower).

Spoiler :

Also I got independent Parsa with Mausoleum of Maussollos in it (also Islam), so I managed to get Versailles + Taj Mahal + 2 GA from Great Persons + GA from UHV, a 60-turn long Golden Age, which was rather pleasant. Near the end I built the Olympic Park and used 4 GPs to get another long Golden Age.

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

^Impressive.

Also, lol that 17 people have appeared to look at my Japan save.