Domination on Huge Maps

Evie94

Warlord
Joined
Feb 15, 2013
Messages
255
Location
Ireland
Recently, I've been loving playing the Earth map on Scrambled Continents, Huge, 16 Civs. I found that with 12 Civs there was just too many open spaces and 16 Civs filled them out, and engendered War a lot more easily:for instance, in the last game I played (as Portugal), Indonesia, Germany, Rome, Sweden and the Songhai spent the better part of a millenium kicking the crap out of each other in Europe, while Greece took Spain and Babylon in South East Asia, so I heartily recommend that configuration to everyone, ramping it up to 18 Civs makes things a little too cramped I've found.

Usually, I'm a Diplo/Science guy but I've got a game with the Mongols coming up and it always seems a crime to not go Domination with Civs like them.

However, I have never attempted a full on Domination on Huge Maps. Anyone got any experience with that? It seems like it'll be really laborious and drawn out, not to mention difficult to keep the economy and happiness in the black...
 
Raze every city you don't need to stay happy. Ignore cities that are small and pointless to capture, and keep your army contantly growing. Just using 1 super upgraded army will take forever, Having 3 or 4 armies working on 2-4 diff civs at the same time makes quick work when trying to dominate on a huge map. You can dominate a huge map before artillery is even teched for, as long as you can maintain your army size, and keep rolling over civs at a decent pace. Once a civs standing army is defeated, you can pretty much roll over them w/o losing a unit, beating down cities to level units further and keeping the injured healing.
 
You could do a predatory culture victory too. I've found it's a good option if full domination is too tedious (which is often the case on huge maps). Mainly target the cultural competitors, usually the ones spamming wonders or generating a lot of culture. Steal works and wonders as often as possible but otherwise play culturally. Do whatever it takes to pump up tourism and the lack of open borders is hardly noticeable. If you're careful you might even be able to keep a few allies to trade with too.
 
You could do a predatory culture victory too. I've found it's a good option if full domination is too tedious (which is often the case on huge maps). Mainly target the cultural competitors, usually the ones spamming wonders or generating a lot of culture. Steal works and wonders as often as possible but otherwise play culturally. Do whatever it takes to pump up tourism and the lack of open borders is hardly noticeable. If you're careful you might even be able to keep a few allies to trade with too.

I find this is how I do culture victory. It seriously cuts down the length of time it takes for sure if you can hamstring the 1-2 others that build culture wonders and great works. Triple your Tourism and cut down the last competitor? For sure.
 
I'm struggling on Huge/Immortal/Pangaea+/Epic as Spain, pure domination. I DoWed my neighbor during composites, now at crossbows with 2 civs pacified. Happiness is really a pain before the boost from ideologies. Some random thoughts:

1. Sell outlying cities to what little friends you have left. Raze the rest. The tough part is pacing yourself so you wouldn't be -10 with multiple cities razing. Important note: time your national wonders in between, they don't build while a city is razing.
2. If possible, let the AI retake cities that you captured for the pop to drop. No way I could sustain a 13pop Amsterdam this early.
3. Beeline civs with happy wonders, I got lucky with Notre Dame next door.
4. Target mercantile states as priority, then culture ones.
5. Before the warmonger penalty gets too high, bribe other civs to war each other while it's affordable. Every one of them needs to be busy killing each other until you come knocking.
6. I find Culture to be another issue. No idea how to speed this up other than hoping to capture early works.
 
I find this is how I do culture victory. It seriously cuts down the length of time it takes for sure if you can hamstring the 1-2 others that build culture wonders and great works. Triple your Tourism and cut down the last competitor? For sure.

Yeah same here. I often start out with peaceful intentions and get bored and realize I've built this nice "defensive" army which can just as well go pretty offensive too.
 
I'm struggling on Huge/Immortal/Pangaea+/Epic as Spain, pure domination. I DoWed my neighbor during composites, now at crossbows with 2 civs pacified. Happiness is really a pain before the boost from ideologies. Some random thoughts:

1. Sell outlying cities to what little friends you have left. Raze the rest. The tough part is pacing yourself so you wouldn't be -10 with multiple cities razing. Important note: time your national wonders in between, they don't build while a city is razing.
2. If possible, let the AI retake cities that you captured for the pop to drop. No way I could sustain a 13pop Amsterdam this early.
3. Beeline civs with happy wonders, I got lucky with Notre Dame next door.
4. Target mercantile states as priority, then culture ones.
5. Before the warmonger penalty gets too high, bribe other civs to war each other while it's affordable. Every one of them needs to be busy killing each other until you come knocking.
6. I find Culture to be another issue. No idea how to speed this up other than hoping to capture early works.

1. Not a bad idea but remember when going total domination no one stays your friend so don't give up strategic spots
2. You can partially raze cities to lower the population. Start the raze then when it gets down to where you want you can go into the city screen to stop razing.
3. I like to beeline any civ that spams wonders. In my eyes it's just asking me to come and crush you.
4. I do the same thing
5. You can also get them to go to war with you as allies, the warmonger penalty is greatly reduced when you're fighting the same war. The "we fought together against the same foe" modifier is a really good modifier too.
6. I build my guilds in seperate cities so the culture specialist slots can always be worked. Military caste and oligarchy together work really well for maintenance free culture and happiness. Build monuments in every city. I've noticed once I get through about one and a half trees my SoPols slow down too. Until I start getting more works. Religious buildings and beliefs can help. Culture speeds back up for me once the WC is founded and I research archeology.

Another thing to remember is you can often demand whatever gold a civ has in peace treaties when you're done beating on them. It can make up for bad trade with your excess luxuries. Start with all their gold and GPT and work your way down until they agree to something.
 
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