Domination policy choice

[KlHannibal2]

What are your choices for policy trees when going domination? The standard would obviously be authority fealty imperialism autocracy. But is that always the best?

I also like to start with progress if there are few barbs and no good way to have an early war. Reasons can be a long distance to neighbors, defensive terrain or playing as a civ who does not benefit from early war.

If I go progress first, I will still always go authority second. At least to get the left part of the tree and heal on kill. That can allow picking up the fealty opener if I have lots of religious buildings available.

One of the tough choices is what to take after going authority first. Both fealty and progress are viable IMO. Yield-wise, I feel faith is the main difference. Fealty has some situational bonuses like having internal trade routes, pastures and timing of castles and armories. It also depends much on being able to keep your religion everywhere. The big plus in progress is faith buying writers. If you time buying 2 writers during world's fair plus golden age and get a natural writer as well, your culture explodes.

Another choice is the third policy tree. At this point I usually have a lot of faith from orders. Production is also good due to many factories in a wide empire. Imperialism has stuff directly related to war. But rationalsim gives the most science and allows buying scientists. The main bonuses in imperialism are upgrade and unit production discounts, yields from forts and monopoly bonuses IMO. Based on these factors, I will decide between these two.

For ideology, autocracy is my clear favorite for domination. It allows building level 5 inits (if you have orders and brandenburg gate) like blitz tanks and destroyers. It has lots of other fighting and mobility bonuses and also good science from MI complex. Order is also viable for the science boost though.

Final question: which setup would you choose in a huge map domintaion game (assuming having tons of faith from orders):

Authority progress rationalism autocracy and have crusare spirit

Or

Authority fealty imperialism autocracy and have glory of god?

 

[stii]

I generally go tradition, authority, rationalism, autocracy.

You need authority in time but you don't need to get conquering right away. imperialism is pretty good for discounts as you will spend a huge amount upgrading units, but I feel rationalism is just a bit too powerful to skip. I don't like any of the second tier polices much so just taking authority then is fine.


I'd prefer crusader spirit over glory of god, both are good but I'd rather stack even more buffs

 

[KlHannibal2]

I generally go tradition, authority, rationalism, autocracy.

You need authority in time but you don't need to get conquering right away. imperialism is pretty good for discounts as you will spend a huge amount upgrading units, but I feel rationalism is just a bit too powerful to skip. I don't like any of the second tier polices much so just taking authority then is fine.


I'd prefer crusader spirit over glory of god, both are good but I'd rather stack even more buffs

Interesting stuff going tradition first. Never tried that. I mostly play on huge maps and I guess it does not scale well when you have many cities.

 

[Rosete]

I always go authority - > statecraft - > rationalism

I find the most important power spike in domination is when you first get imperium. This policy gives you a free settler + / bonus for new cities. This policy allows me to be hyper aggressive military wise while at the same time remain competitive on tech with tradition/progress civs.

Statecraft gives me the money I need to fuel my war engine. The first statecraft policy gives you a free spy, much much earlier than it is possible otherwise. This is huge because you can get injections of 2-3k every 20-30 turns from spies. With so much , I can spend all my on infastructure and while buying myself an army.

The last tree doesn't really matter that much. Personally, I like rationalism because statecraft already give me all the I can possibly need. And imperialism is kina underwhelming in its bonuses imo.

I think mixing trees are not worth it because the finisher bonus is so damn strong and it would delay imperium.

 

[andersw]

What are your choices for policy trees when going domination? The standard would obviously be authority fealty imperialism autocracy. But is that always the best?

For ideology, autocracy is my clear favorite for domination. It allows building level 5 inits (if you have orders and brandenburg gate) like blitz tanks and destroyers. It has lots of other fighting and mobility bonuses and also good science from MI complex. Order is also viable for the science boost though.

Final question: which setup would you choose in a huge map domintaion game (assuming having tons of faith from orders):

Authority progress rationalism autocracy and have crusare spirit

Or

Authority fealty imperialism autocracy and have glory of god?

Depends a bit who I play as but in general:
Authority -> Fealty -> 2rationalism (free tech+happy uni) + 2 imperialism (happy courthouse + vision) + 2 Industry (+2 trade routes + less poverty)
I dont find any of the third policy trees good enough for taking full but I could be wrong.

There are probably several Ideologys which are good.
Autocracy have lebensraum and air supremacy which both are ridiculously good, there are a lot of other good picks in there too but those two are something extra.
Some would maybe choose order because of great leap forward.

Crusader Spirit is nice, I usually prefer that over glory of god.

 

[Rustonreddit]

Crusader Spirit is nice, I usually prefer that over glory of god.

Dont you feel you dont have much to do with your excese faith going Crusader Spirit?

 

[andersw]

Dont you feel you dont have much to do with your excese faith going Crusader Spirit?

Depends a bit on how late the game goes but I first spam some artists to get longer GAs and when they are expensive generals for citadels.
I often pick up zelotry if available as faith dump also.
I've tried Glory and ... maybe my games dont go long enough for it to be that good and I like the combat boost of crusader spirit.
On the other hand I play standard sized maps, I saw you mentioned huge, and possible that makes glory better.

On a side note in my current game as Byzantium I DID go Glory but that was because I could tailor the religion exactly and wanted to test it:
Yes disgusting outputs with ceremonial burial, hero worship (bonus pick), order, veneration, zelotry and glory of god.

There are also times when you play sweden or zulu and just want everything -> great generals.

 

[KlHannibal2]

Crusader Spirit and Glory of God are both very strong for domination IMO.

First of all, crusader usually goes early so I can't pick it every time. But if I can conquer early and it's not a water heavy map, I prefer it. And with crusader, you can go authority into progress to still have an excellent faith sink.

Glory of god is very good if you go with mixed policy trees (e.g. as Germany I like to take only 2 policies from statecraft for the influence from trade routes and then 4 from fealty).

 

[Laz0r]

honestly the trees you pick don't matter as long as you pick authority first, assuming you want to snowball as soon as possible. I'd personally never take rationalism though as the two other industrial trees are just so much better in the yields they provide. However usually for fun I use other, worse non-warmongering trees first just for fun and a challenge, as you can still begin the snowball later in the game and with a handicap in not picking authority.

 

[Fluffball]

I can never understand why so many people take rationalism for a domination game.i.e. a game where your seeking to win by a domination victory and thus fighting and conquering throughtout the whole game. While science is never a bad choice imperialism in particular provides so much for a warmonger. At this point the battlefield changes from a land dominated battlefield to naval and aircraft being much more important and imperialism both buffs these units and and allows you to build them quickly as you will want to be building them now to both get the juicy promotions they can actually start with and because you may either be expanding them greatly or having to simply build them for the first time as aircraft were unavilable before and naval units often aren't that useful until industrial era.

There is a huge amount of inherant science available from imperialism, with most of it being from simply what you are already doing anyway or from sources you should already have in abundance. The additional science from puppets alone often being a massive increase although science shouldn't be an issue at this point with the massive amounts of science you get from killing units and conquering cities from authority with the buffs to combat from imperialism making this easier and thus by proxy increasing the science you get from the tree.

Considering the hardest part of actually winning a domination game is actually going through the motions of finishing it and dealing with the unhappiness imperialism help much more with those issues than rationalism with the buffs to units making combat much easier (which by proxy gives you much more science from authority) and then the huge influxes of gold from conquering cities and the production bunuses available to newly conquered cities makes dealing with unhappiness (lack of infrastructure in cities) much easier and quicker to overcome and then the large numbers of great admirals available from both the increased spawn rate and the ability to buy them can be used to provide happiness bumps to get over partiularly tricky happiness humps when conquering.

I find rationalism gives me science which i am getting in abundance anyway, a little bit of happiness, a bit less unhappiness which is is often barely noticiable in a large empire and lots of food buffs which i don't want as a wide playing warmonger as this just creates more happiness issues, especially for puppets which it can be very hard to shut down their growth and therefore i find myself having to annex more cities that i would like just to shut down the growth in those cities.

The only time i take rationalism as a warmonger is if i have decided to settle into a different victory type for the latter part of the game and thus my empire is going to be settling down and just building on what i already have and then rationalism is a good choice if for no other reason than you will be losing the huge chunks of science from combat which authority provides.

 

[stii]

It depends a lot on settings and play style. On a land map the naval stuff is useless and if you never make puppets outside the late game the puppet buffs are also useless. Take that away and imperialism doesn't do that much at all. Unit buffs are drowned out by the other 100% of buffs you already have and those same buffs make improving your units with tech a much bigger gain.

Great admirals are good but they don't compare very favorably to great scientists. Tanks speed up late game conquering a huge amount so the sooner you get the the faster things will end.

 

[KlHannibal2]

Imperialism vs rationalism is an interesting question. For me, the biggest gains in imperialism are science from forts and military buildings, double monopoly bonuses, discount in unit production / upgrades and naval movement. Maybe pentagon, but I usually go for tanks before planes.

A lot of that is situational. What monopolies you have, how much water is on the map, having orders/zealotry or other gold and production bonuses.

Rationalism is mostly good for science which gives you stronger units. And for growth. Yes, growth in a domination game! The reason why I value it is the food corp, which I go for whenever possible. I plan my early conquests to get one of the necessary monopolies in time. It removes all unhappiness and gives even more food. All this extra pop gives a lot of everything. And you can conquer and annex at will.

I might also take 3 of each of these trees at times, especially if I have glory of god.

I only took full rationalism once for domination. The things I lacked most from not going imperialism were the production and upgrade discounts. And the extra science from rationalism in that game was kind of useless as spies gave more than half of my overall science output.

 

[stii]

Pentagon doesn't require flight. You can have jet fighters super early, which is interesting although you won't be able to repair them for ages.

 

[KlHannibal2]

Pentagon doesn't require flight. You can have jet fighters super early, which is interesting although you won't be able to repair them for ages.

Right, you can get the 2 jet fighters without having flight. What I alsonlike about pentagon is the extra cap for air units in a city. Especially on larger maps.

 

[Fluffball]

It depends a lot on settings and play style. On a land map the naval stuff is useless and if you never make puppets outside the late game the puppet buffs are also useless. Take that away and imperialism doesn't do that much at all. Unit buffs are drowned out by the other 100% of buffs you already have and those same buffs make improving your units with tech a much bigger gain.

Great admirals are good but they don't compare very favorably to great scientists. Tanks speed up late game conquering a huge amount so the sooner you get the the faster things will end.

A land locked map does make imperialism much less attractive, especially if your going to miss pentagon also. Around half of the benefit of the tree is then lost including the usefulness of being able to upgrade units in vassal and friendly city states which i find most useful during far flung campaigns overseas and i have seen a lot of people mention they prefer pangea maps, especially for domination games so that is something i hadn't really thought about as i find pangea maps boring (personal preference).

Tanks do really change the way wars are undertaken, especially as they will either be highly upgraded units or newly built units with the core strong promotions so you can expose them to risk quite a bit but for full speed attack i find they need to be combined with aircraft. At which point i go full blitzkrieg with my aircraft taking out units and softening up the cities for my tanks to steam through and occupy the territory and my traditional land units relegated to defending the flanks and mopping up secondary cities as they can't move fast enough to keep up. With that in mind pentagon is a must for this strategy as the additional aircraft being able to be stationed in a city along with the additional xp they start with getting them extra range and extremely close to multiple attacks per turn means they can decimate the battlefield and for the most part i just need the tanks to actually take the cities with their speed meaning they can keep up with the pace of my aircraft decimating the battlefield.

Interestingly as i think about if this is still attractive for land maps i find it more so for land maps where you will be relying on cities to station your aircraft and are thus much more limited so an extra 2 aircraft per city is a large force multiplier when that is spread over probably 3, maybe 4 cities.

I can understand more why people would see rationalism as attractive and certainly would be a lot more on the fence if i played a land map although i would probably still lean into imperialism if i was still going full scale warmonger especially if i was going to get pentagon.

If i remember, next time i play a domination game i might make a save at the point of choosing rationalism or imperialism and play both out to see what differences i notice.

 

[andersw]

I can never understand why so many people take rationalism for a domination game.i.e. a game where your seeking to win by a domination victory and thus fighting and conquering throughtout the whole game. While science is never a bad choice imperialism in particular provides so much for a warmonger. .

Probably depends on map and difficulty, as I wrote above I usually mix in the third tier.

"Opener"
Is great, vision is vital for wars.

"Martial law"
Good, saves gold and increase happiness.
Puppets ... no thanks.

"Colonialism"
Not bad but I can do without it.
The happiness is +3 (not +3/monopoly)
It contains a small bonus on combat, I havent looked at the code but "10% on Combat Modifiers from Global Monopolies" could mean that strategic monopoly on horse/iron goes from 10% -> 11% or it means 10% -> 20%.
If its 20% its useful, its roughly as one extra promotion (anyone know?), provided you actually have that monopoly...

"Regimental Tradition"
If you have hero worship in your religion you will get enough admirals from taking coastal citys and that makes this policy a bit meh, if you dont, how many admirals do you need?
If you play pangea or any other mostly land based map admirals are expended for lux, nice to have but not vital.
You can faith buy generals from authority finisher and wars will get you more.

"Civilizing Mission"
Feels bad, I raze or annex, I want control.
The gold on city capture isnt much.

"Exploitation"
Again, not that special on a land heavy map, and after it got nerfed not even that spectacular on water heavy maps.

"The general tree"
Production bonus for units is still too slow because of negative modifiers so faith or gold buy is usually the only viable choice, pentagon is too late to matter on emperor and below (for me).
Upgrade reduction is good until you start conquering, then you get enough gold from pillage, caravans and city capture.
So there is one small combat bonus feature in the entire tree locked behind monopolies.

Meanwhile, opener for rationalism has a very nice scaler with wide play, both the science on strategic resources and the needs reduction.
Thats -5% on ALL needs!
The free tech from Enlightenment CAN be crazy good.
Im not sure the full tree is needed, if you can handle the growth it scales nice with public schools, more science means more advanced units.
If you didnt go glory of god you can now faith buy scientists, never a bad option.

Industry opener provide 2 free TR, thats quite a bit of resources, hammers in capital or yields when sent to cs or vassals.
More picks mostly for happiness reasons, not vital.

So no I actually think the opposite, Imperialism doesnt do enough for a warmonger.
On the other hand I dont think any of the full 3rd tier trees are really good for a warmonger.

 

[andersw]

@Recursive Hey lets ask someone who can read code and maybe knows.
What is the actual combat bonus for colonialism and how does it stack?
Does it turn the horse/iron monopoly from 10 -> 11 or from 10 -> 20 ?

 

[andersw]

Double checked ingame (both reading and taking the policy) with wiki and the wiki is outdated.
"+10% to sum of Yields,Golden Age duration modifiers, and Combat Modifiers from Global Monopolies; +3 to flat Yields and Happiness from Global Monopolies.
Barracks, Armories, Military Academies, Forts, and Citadels provide +2 Science and +1 Culture."

The bolded part above does not apply anymore, so this means imperialism provide 0% extra combat bonus.

 

[andersw]

For you who go authority+progress:
Do you fill up those trees?
What other trees do you go for?
At what difficulty?

 

[andersw]

Did a test with a recent version using authority progress mix (one diff lower than Im used to) and happiness was a serious issue.
Started with left side on both trees then filled out authority.
For me Discipline is key to fix happiness issues, this was now a problem for a much longer time.
In the end when I finished both trees the result was good but its easy to go rock bottom in happiness for much longer than I felt comfortable with.
I added 2 fealty, 2 rationalism and 2 imperialism as third tree.
Pros:
Fewer workers needed compared to classic auth -> fealty.
Building rate in cities are crazy.
(probably more culture output but I havent kept track on that sort of lvl)

Anyone else do this mix? do you go full progress or full auth before switching or do you mix?
How do you manage happiness?