Domination Victories? and the value of production

[bazola]

Big and small, Monarch, Standard size, normal speed.

Is anyone getting domination victories? And if so, would it be faster for you to just build the spaceship?

I recently won my second monarch game with those settings. To be more specific, I just started winning in general. In the past I would get a ways in, decide I would probably win space but it would take a lot of real time, and stop playing. Nowadays I know the value of production. In my games I focus on having 3 cities that are all mines, farms, workshops. Then the capital always produces a lot of hammers, and the national park city does pretty good as well with all the engineers you can run.

When this works I expand to 5 or 6 cities, with at least one that is awesome at production. I build an army and usually around the time I have catapults, sometimes a little before, I conquer and vassalize one AI. At this point I have most of his cities cottaged, and attain the 3 super production city setup. Then it's easy to beeline rifling for either protection or a second wave of conquest; usually the latter. I always get oracle, I always win liberalism (granted this is just a handful of games), and by this time I'll be tech leader for the rest of the game and can easily build the spaceship with my production cities.

In my recent game I decided I would rather go for domination because I've never won domination or conquest. Conquest is a little different because I figure you wouldn't care about being tech leader and would just expand the whole game, probably beeline Communism. But my continent was the biggest and I figured if I vassalized my 2 neighbors (Stalin and Charlemagne) I could get domination. Stalin was the vassal of Charlemagne but I went for him first because his land would be easier to control. I took all of his mainland cities but he didn't lose his vassalhood so I had to make peace. Rebuilt a huge army again and declared on Charlemagne. 100 turns left or so.

At this point I had already built Apollo and space elevator just in case. My strategy these days is to beeline superconductors and build labs in production cities, then get the U.N., then get rocketry and Apollo. I had a plenty big enough army to conquer Charlemagne so I went ahead and started building spaceship parts. Part of the reason is that I get sick of moving units around, especially when I've got a real war going on. Anyway I also had a golden age prepared, and I built the rest of the spaceship inside those 8 turns. I then proceeded to take all of Charlemagne's continental holdings. Despite this he wouldn't capitulate. I finished in 2014 with a score of 5300+, and nobody else had built Apollo yet.



I know that was long but here's the summary. I don't know if I could have gotten a domination victory at all, but it definitely wouldn't have been before I could launch a spaceship. I suppose in the 30 or so turns total it took to build everything I needed, I would have had another 60 units, or more. I could have hypothetically invaded someone else and that might have gotten me a domination victory. But I definitely didn't need them to take all of my continent. Another war would have been me vs the rest of the world because Napoleon was going for domination also and everyone else was his vassal. As it was I had 40% of the world pop and land.

So, is anybody winning domination on normal speed, standard, monarch?

 

[router]

I can be wrong but if you build the space elevator you must win using special race, other type of victories are disabled for you. Gonna check this afternoon with the civilopedia.

 

[MrCynical]

So, is anybody winning domination on normal speed, standard, monarch?

It isn't that difficult, indeed domination wins are usually faster than Space race as you don't have to wait for endgame tech. My earliest win in BtS so far was a domination one, in 1602AD on a standard map at emperor level. The trick is to prey on weak neighbours, preferably with assistance from the other AIs, until you're too big fro any of them to stop you. Be cautious of vassals as well. They only count as half land area and population than if you captured them. Since they generally only capitulate if on the brink of being wiped out anyway, this is rarely a good move unless they have a lot of scattered island cities which aren't worth the effort of capturing.

I can be wrong but if you build the space elevator you must win using special race, other type of victories are disabled for you.

I don't think that's true. Once you get that late space race is the obvious choice, but you're not forced into it.

 

[bazola]

Yes MrCynical my goal is always to take all of the mainland cities before making a vassal. Sometimes I have to leave one if it's not in reach as often my first war goes on a while while units are healing, because medic units aren't as available. It's usually my first war that creates them, especially since I've started to use the first GG as an instructor to get to 5 xp.

From what you are saying it seems to me that in your domination victory you had to basically go for all out war all game? If that's true I suppose part of my problem is that I like to have a tech advantage if possible and so generally I only have 2 wars per game, with an occasional third with tanks. A fourth late game war is never fun because I never build enough navy or airforce, and watching the AI bombard everything turn after turn sucks.

 

[MrCynical]

From what you are saying it seems to me that in your domination victory you had to basically go for all out war all game?

For the one I won in 1602, that was basically true. I wiped out one civ early with cats and war elephants, took out a couple more when trebuchets showed up, and then cleaned up to the win once I got rifles (since most of the others were still on longbowmen, this wasn't hard).

You can still take things much more leisurely and get the win though. I had another game where I didn't hit domination until about 1900 (though that was a large map, and had about 12 major landmasses). In that game I had a few breaks from war. Destroyed one civ early. Squabbled with the other on my continent occasionally till I got infantry, and then wiped them out. Then just cruised round crushing civs with very inferior tech (plus one I had to kill to stop a culture victory). That one was on Immortal.

Particularly on map types like hemispheres and big/small, you really can't wage a modern (i.e. post riflemen) war against a civ with remotely comparable technology without a navy and airforce. The airforce in particular is vital for softening up cities before an attack, The navy is more for defence - it's a lot easier to deal with a stack of 12 transports and a few destroyers than a stack of 48 land units.

 

[nullspace]

From what you are saying it seems to me that in your domination victory you had to basically go for all out war all game? If that's true I suppose part of my problem is that I like to have a tech advantage if possible and so generally I only have 2 wars per game, with an occasional third with tanks. A fourth late game war is never fun because I never build enough navy or airforce, and watching the AI bombard everything turn after turn sucks.

Early warring is useful for dominations in order to get enough cities to have a large production base later on to build lots of troops. For even more troops, use universal suffrage, and when you are getting ready for the game-ending war, go to 0% science and use all your income to buy and upgrade your army.

Once you have equipment like bombers, tanks, gunships, transports, and marines, then you can conquer cities quite quickly. Bombers can destroy city defenses and soften up defenders at a distance, and then your two-move tanks can roll in. Or even better, use marines on 5-move transports, or use 4-move gunships and paratroopers or a commando tank. A medium-sized nation can blitz across the world if you go all out.

 

[bazola]

Funny thing is that in my last game I was researching flight after the spaceship launched. Within those turns I got flight, adv flight, and future tech 1. I understand the importance of an air force but it really kills my framerate and such to have a bunch set to intercept, and it gets difficult to manage huge numbers of them. Last I built an air unit I think you had to select them all individually to give orders, is that still the case? Also, I've found that a stack of tanks/modern armor does a pretty good job all by itself, of course not against anyone with tech parity.

 

[futurehermit]

get a tech lead and go for tanks, transports and bombers. i've won some nice domination victories with this approach.

 

[Dan Quale]

Maybe the Ai will let you build a fancy spaceship, but a human never would, Peace is for the weak.

Rape pillage and burn, besides its just more fun and satisfying in my oppinion, diplo/space are simply too easy. Domination also gives you a much higher score most of the time.