Domination vs Conquest?

[Big Pig]

A question for the warmongers out there!

How do you play differently when going for a domination victory than if you are going for a conquest victory - or vice-versa?

From my experience it seems that Domination is a sort of 'Conquest-Lite' - ie you get your domination victory after taking over 2/3 of the world, whereas for a conquest victory you need to take over the whole of the world. Thus going for conquest (which I have only achieved once!!) you seem to need to be careful to avoid a domination win, but going for a domination win seems relatively straight forward and a lot easier than conquest.

Maybe my warmongering is just so slow, I usually trip the domination limits before getting around to destroying the last 1 or 2 civilisations?

Any thoughts would be most welcome!!

 

[maltz]

For conquest without domination, you can either:

1) Uncheck the Domination victory in a Custom Game
2) Raze more captured cities
3) Play a Terra map

If you are shooting for high scores with a Conquest, then 2) and 3) is not a good idea because you can't get a high "land" score due to largely left-out areas.

 

[Captain Pugwash]

For domination, you have to keep all the cities you capture.
For conquest, you might or might not keep them.

If you keep all the cities, you can't get to conquest because the domination criteria will always be satisfied first.

 

[cv431410]

There are several cases where domination is not possible:

(1) In some map, there is a large ocean and the domination victory is not possible. For example, the three player’s game requires 72% of the map. Even you capture all of areas, it will not meet the domination requirements of 72%.

(2) In the early game, all players together have not occupied 72% of map and you have already killed them all.

 

[Pete2006]

Its % landmass. Water is irrelevant.

Conquest is tougher. I've won several domination games where I wouldn't have been able to take out the last opponent.

 

[ChicagoCubs]

If you keep all the cities, you can't get to conquest because the domination criteria will always be satisfied first.

Not always true because all of the cities may not add up to the required landmass percentage. There may be a large landmass (like Terra Map), that you could keep every city and destroy everyone, but the unoccupied large land mass will prevent you from meeting the landmass percentage.

 

[Draetor24]

I usually achieve Diplomacy even before Domination too, as I usually build the UN and just play with it for fun, sometimes voting myself into a diplomatic victory.

 

[balthamael]

Domination is much harder on larger maps- Conquest is stupidly easy if you play with very few AIs

 

[Crighton]

Conquest - Exterminate them all.
Domination - Exterminate them all, except the ones in the boonies since it takes to long to get there.

 

[cv431410]

Its % landmass. Water is irrelevant.

Conquest is tougher. I've won several domination games where I wouldn't have been able to take out the last opponent.

I played Archiplelago once and all three players together occupy less than 72%. I have to wipe the other two guys out at 2040 AD.

 

[afireinside]

its not worth it in the late game to capture cities if your on a huge campaign.

It slows u down because u leave units in cities and they cities will be hard to maintain and not worth managing.

thats where u want conquest

 

[p4l]

It is also hard to continuously push into the enemies territory without a base of healing/defense.

I find my biggest difficulty with going for conquest is that the AIs continuously build new silly little cities where I razed old ones. I guess that means I should leave some rear guards behind, but I don't neccesarily want to war with everyone who is making colonies. Some games I can afford to take everyone on, but not most.

 

[voek]

When you are aiming for conquest you have to be more aggressive against 'thougher' more powerfull players. When they become to strong you won't be able to conquer them in future. Aiming for domination allows you to kill all 'weaker' civs and leave alone 1 or 2 powerfull ones. You will prop. finish of a civ rightaway, while aiming for conquest you will have to fight many wars against many different opponents to cripple them.

 

[atreas]

Conquest is stupidly easy if you play with very few AIs

That depends also on the map size - try doing it on a huge map and tell me again your opinion.

 

[JesusOnEez]

I find my biggest difficulty with going for conquest is that the AIs continuously build new silly little cities where I razed old ones. I guess that means I should leave some rear guards behind, but I don't neccesarily want to war with everyone who is making colonies.

I had a game similar to this recently, where I wanted a Conquest Victory, had a huge army and took out the two civs bordering mine. I captured as opposed to razed, and then stopped warring for a while to rebuild economy, and my armed forces. After that, I sent my armed forces on a razing campaign, attacking at least three cities at once per civ...I never concentrate on attacking once city at a time unless I have to, it takes to long. Getting a fast(ish) victory means taking cities in quick succession.

So basically I got my Conquest victory by playing "Domination" with two civs until I had the size of Empire I wanted (about 10 cities on a standard map vs 8 AI), then razed everyone else, and it got easier as I went along because my guys were getting upgrades.