[NFP] Domination at Higher Difficulties & Byzantium's Power Curve

[Bojmir]

So I have 2 questions where the latter rolls off of the former. I'm working my way up the difficulties and I'm struggling a little bit with priorities when it comes to Domination victories. In lower difficulties, I just pump out Warriors and a scout and just let the snowball occur. But in higher difficulties with cities being fortified earlier by both a greater # of starting Warriors and walls, I'm perplexed at how to change the approach. How do I prioritize early aggression/pacing against say constructing my Encampment and Campuses? It seems a bit counter-intuitive to pump out Warriors and then an Encampment which would have put out Warriors with bonuses if I had built it asap particularly if waiting would ultimately give me a stronger army relative to what other civs have created at that point. So do I break myself on early aggression and then sort of take a "time out" to build and reform my ranks?

Byzantium compounds this confusion with me because of the necessity of building an early Holy Site. Because a religion is crucial to my bonuses. I'm now behind in constructing an early army as well as an early encampment which by extension means a delayed first campus. Am I to just expect the Byzantium power curve to shift right? By this I mean I just sort of build a tall empire and then once my religion is established and entertainment districts built, I sort of pool an army and then just march forth (kind of like a Religious victory)?

Thanks for any advice.

 

[Vargas1]

I'm no expert on domination, but my thoughts for what they're worth - to my mind, there are basically three separate categories of early domination, though they can overlap a fair bit (this is leaving aside civs with unique early units like warcarts or eagle warriors):

1. Pure ancient era rush. Pump out a couple of warriors, get an archer or two, and try to quickly grab a city or a few before the AI can stop you. This starts a snowball that you keep rolling. This works best if you get a great starting position (production and food right off the bat) and spawn close to another civ without unique bonuses to start. I also find this to be useful against civs that you know will want to warmonger with you later with bonuses, such as spawning next to the Ottomans. In this category, you don't really bother with infrastructure at all - maybe one builder to get the bonus for craftmanship, and maybe one monument to help get you to Political Philosophy, but otherwise just pumping out early (and cheap) units until you've seized a few cities.
2. Targeted classical era rush. Useful if you've started somewhere with good early strategics - lots of horses or iron - and can get yourself set up to beeline one or both of them. In this case, you probably don't need a campus (though could be helpful if there's a good site) so long as you have enough science to get you the techs you need quickly. If you're looking at swordsmen, you probably also want to get early gold (from barb camps, goody huts, trading, or luxuries) to pre-build warriors and get them ready to upgrade. Building one encampment might be worthwhile to get the Great General points (though you might be able to get one just using the policy card and/or buying some portion with faith), but you likely don't want to wait on the encampment to build your units.
3. Later classical era/medieval era warfare. In this category, you would probably want to build more infrastructure (particularly campuses) so that you can get to crossbows and ideally knights fairly quickly. Here you likely will run into cities with walls, so would also want to think about how to siege - do you want to build catapults and use them (which scale better as the game goes on) or try something like battering rams with swordsmen once you've wiped out their units. If you can get suzerainty over Akkad that works too. Here you almost certainly want at least one Great General (maybe more depending on how many fronts you're fighting on), so would want to build an encampment or two. You still wouldn't want to wait to build too many units though - the experience bonuses are more helpful to augment your army and help new units catch up to earlier ones, but I wouldn't wait to have the encampments and buildings up before building up troops.

I haven't played as Byzantium so don't really have insight on the strategy with them, but my sense is that the second part of your statement is correct - they're not really suited to early aggression, but get a power spike once they're build up and established.

 

[Bojmir]

1. Pure ancient era rush. Pump out a couple of warriors, get an archer or two, and try to quickly grab a city or a few before the AI can stop you. This starts a snowball that you keep rolling. This works best if you get a great starting position (production and food right off the bat) and spawn close to another civ without unique bonuses to start. I also find this to be useful against civs that you know will want to warmonger with you later with bonuses, such as spawning next to the Ottomans. In this category, you don't really bother with infrastructure at all - maybe one builder to get the bonus for craftmanship, and maybe one monument to help get you to Political Philosophy, but otherwise just pumping out early (and cheap) units until you've seized a few cities.

I appreciate the response. I'm unsure how a couple warriors and an archer or two would be sufficient in early aggression. On Emperor by the time you just have just a warrior, scout and slinger your neighbor can have their 2nd settler out already. They will already have at least 2 warriors so how would you take their cities effectively? Even if you dealt with their small army you would break yourself trying to take the cities (the other 2 of which would be pumping out more warriors/slingers to counter your continuing aggression).

 

[Enfant_Sauvage]

I am not an expert but I can try to share my experience.

I recommend Horsemen or Swordsmen instead of warriors. With Magnus and a couple of builders you can chop the woods and ressources on your land and pump units that way. It is worth to spend a couple turns on a builder and chop your units rather than hard-building your units. Always try to improve your units instead of hard-building stronger units later, except for swordsman.

Deity domination is harder than before because of the walls. An AI with walls + Xbows will be hard to take, even if you have experienced units. If Akkad is on your game you can focus only on either melee or a mix of light & heavy cavalry (heavy chariots & horseman chop with Maneuver card). If Akkad is not on the game you will have to build catapults in this scenario.

I recommend at least 3 cities including your capital, at least one scout to see the lands and Animal Husbandry as your first tech to show horses on the map. If you see horses near your capital settle your cities and improve horses. Get monument first on your 2nd and 3rd cities. Encampments are good for Great General. 1 or 2 encampments projects can be worth on your capital if the project cost is only 3-4 turns. As mentionned above, try to chop your units instead of hard-building them. If you do so you can shave a couple turns for encapments projects and get your Great General. With Magnus lv 3 the cost will only be 4 horses instead of 20. If you have 2 horses on your land you can chop a couple of them. If you have 6-8 horses + a Great General by turn 50 I think you will be really good for your domination game. Levy city-states armies is also a good thing to do.

I am not an expert but this strategy works pretty well. If there is no horses and no iron on your spawn then... restart I guess ?

 

[Vargas1]

I appreciate the response. I'm unsure how a couple warriors and an archer or two would be sufficient in early aggression. On Emperor by the time you just have just a warrior, scout and slinger your neighbor can have their 2nd settler out already. They will already have at least 2 warriors so how would you take their cities effectively? Even if you dealt with their small army you would break yourself trying to take the cities (the other 2 of which would be pumping out more warriors/slingers to counter your continuing aggression).

As with many things, it depends a lot on the map and the position you're in.

The key for an ancient era rush (and beyond, but definitely for ancient) is using the terrain and positioning correctly. On emperor you can definitely take down a non-capital city with 2-3 warriors and 1-2 archers if you can put the city under siege quickly. If the city is on a lake, on a coast, or has several rivers making a siege difficult, you would likely need more units.

With respect to opposing armies, putting yourself in an advantageous position is crucial. If you get an archer on a hill and a warrior cutting off the approach on a wooded hill, you can rack up the corpses with very little damage. Particularly helpful if you can funnel troops to marsh/floodplains so they get a negative defense. Even if invading another civ, I rarely initiate attacks with melee units unless the opponents are on marsh/floodplains - the bonuses for fortifying and from terrain are too helpful to pass up. Use your archers to do the major damage while your warriors screen them in strong locations.

Also important is healing correctly. You likely will get at least one promotion for a warrior while sieging a city (or defending a pathway) - time that for when you need the healing. Same if you get up to a second promotion. You can also position your troops so you can swap in and out of the frontline to get some healing in as needed. It helps too that the AI loves building early farms - pillage away when you need a quick heal, as it's easy enough to fix later.

Finally, in a sad parallel of real life, don't forget that troops are sometimes strategically expendable. If you have a city under siege, instead of adding another warrior to the siege it can sometimes be helpful to stick him in the approach path to block off reinforcements. He may end up dying, but can buy you enough time to keep up the siege and take the city.

 

[_iheartciv_]

With byzantium you must get a religion as soon as possible. Crusade and basil II ability (full damage to walls if they follow your religion) give you 2 options. After you take crusade you can pick : 1 choral music(top choice) and go towards tagma (they are in the civic tree)
2 if choral music is taken then take tithe , attack with horsemen (crusade and + 3 from taxis and full wall damage are more than enough. 49 strenght horseman so 1 more than a medieval knight)
after you take 1 or 2 near civs you should get enough science and culture( because of districts you take and because citizens give 0.5 science and 0.3 culture each ) to upgrade your army and keep going with the attack . That's how I play it. So holy site is priority (and you don't need many hs beacuse you spread religion killing troops) and commercial hubs if you took choral music. I build hippodromes later for advanced cavalry units . Byzantium is almost unstoppable. Just don't let your opponent to convert your hs at the beginning or your religion will disappear and crusade too. Byzantium doesn't have (usually) a good faith production from terrain like russia or mali or brazil so be careful . I hope this will help you.

 

[schondette]

You dont need an early army as Byzantium. There not setup to do that. Unless your purposely hamstringing yourself by doing the "hardcore-win-by-turn-20" nonsense? If that is your goal. Play a small map with Gran Columbia

If you want to play a flavorful, thematic, and powerful game as Byzantium this what I generally recommend.

Focus on sim citiying in the first two eras. only need about 4-5 good cities if you plan on expanding via conquest later.
You want two Holy Sites at least. One being in your capital. This will make sure you hit all the appropriate civic eureka's
Preferably you want a high production/hilly city for your encampment as the primary unit producer
Focus your push in the Medieval era as you beeline for Divine Right. Where you get Monarchy, and the Tagma
Prebuild Hippodromes in a couple cities, but dont finish them until you get Divine Right
The push is based of the Civics tree, NOT technology so early culture is important. Just make sure to not neglect it. Having your own religion can help with that.
I dont find campus spamming useful in diety. The tech disparity wont make a difference either way until much later in the game.
Regardless. I usually find myself with 2-4 Tagma on my enemies border when there most powerful unit is only the Crossbow.
Just complete your Hippodromes when your ready. And switch you civic path to the upper part where you can get 50% discount on cavalry. You can easily churn out Tagma in a couple turns. Thats all you need really
This should go without saying buy you can use faith generation to supplement any victory type. Even if your saving yourself production by going Monumentality for builders etc