General Conquest Victory Tips

[Gotrilliten]

I have never actually won a conquest Victory on Civ4, and the only time I have ever won outside of Chieftain was a Cultural Victory. The AI always has like 40 times the amount of soldiers I have, any help at all would be appreciated.




*Also could someone tell me what leader is the best for Conquest, was thinking Stalin or Julius Caeser.

 

[Woobi]

Build units, not buildings.

 

[Gotrilliten]

Build units, not buildings.

Yea...but aren't scientific buildings pretty important for Military, or Happiness when the s start?

 

[Scoottr]

Don't hold onto the cities you conquer...just destroy them and keep moving on to the next city. If you try to hold them you drag yourself down in maintenance costs.

Build lots of siege so you can suicde some to quickly take cities and have more being pumped out to re-supply those you lose.

 

[michmbk]

IF I were looking for leaders best suited to win in a war game, I would choose Asoka, Napoleon, either Mongol, Zara, perhaps maybe Boudica.

ORG, SPI and CHM are my favorite war traits. ORG makes it easier for you to pay for a large empire, which is useful for a conquest win. CHM means faster experience for your army. SPI is so versatile because you can use economic civics in peacetime, and vassalage/theocracy when gearing up for war.

If the AI has more units than you, you're probably not appropriately specializing an early city or two. Make your best production city out of your first 3-4 cities solely focused on units. It needs a barracks, stable, and maybe a health/happiness building every now and then. Otherwise, it's building units the whole game. If you do that with a few cities, while having some cities with cottages and 1 for great people, you're going to be able to keep up in tech and support a large army, which allows you to shoot for conquest.

You'll also want to prioritize key military techs - steel is one of my most important techs in war games. Cannons plus anything will devastate the AI pre-rifles, and do ok even through rifling. Artillery is another extremely powerful tech, as is assembly line. Infantry/artillery together can wipe out just about anything the AI throws at you.

 

[mariogreymist]

Yea...but aren't scientific buildings pretty important for Military, or Happiness when the s start?

only in the places where they pay off. Consider it like this: by building a library/uni/observatory you are forgoing building or . In cities that generate little , it will take a long time to recoup the "lost" s you could have had by directly building or and bumping the slider (to increase the value of the libraries/unis and observatories in your cottage/scientist cities which should have those buildings.)

Moreover, if conquest is the goal, units are good to have in case opportunity knocks. If neighbor A ends up in a war with neighbor B, and you've been building libraries in your cities, you won't be able to walk up behind neighbor A with the stack of catapults you could have built. I generally try to mix and cat/troop builds in my production cities when war seems in the distant future. If civ A goes to the far end of the continent and leaves his easy to reach capital with the pyramids gaurded by 3 units, you'll feel a fool for not having the army to take it now once the opportunity passes (as it always does at any reasonably high level.)

And imo, the best leader for conquest in Washington. Charismatic is the best warriors trait, and exp will help you rex early to get the land you need to fight a cat/axe or treb/mace war successfully.

 

[Valivator]

I'm going to give yo one point of advice which, once i understood, bumped me from noble to monarch: specialize your cities. It does not matter if you build the 1.5 workers per city if they just randomly put down improvements. If a city has three fish and a pig and lots of riverside tiles, it would be best as a GP farm (A city that runs lots of specialists to generate great people, which are usually scientists).

If a city has lots of hills, make it a production city. Build only production multipliers and buildings that provide some benefit to units produced here. If you are going for a conquest victory, you will probably want more of these than normal.

The last type of city should probably be the one you will build most often. This is a commerce city and will build only commerce multipliers (That is, buildings that multiply or ) These should work lots and lots of cottages (There is another strategy for research which involves running lots of scientist specialists but i don't know much about it. Maybe someone else could enlighten us both)

One thing you will need in every city is at least one food source. Obviously more in Gp farms but also more in production cities. This is because sources strong in are often weak in .

Now, back on topic. When you are building your Stack Of Doom, be sure to include the following:
Siege
Enough units to take the cities. (Usually city-raider units)
Siege
Enough units to defend the cities you take (Archers or longbows or city garrison rifles, ect.)
Siege
Defensive units to protect your stack (spearmen, shock-promoted axemen, any unit that gets a defesive bonus against a specific unit or type of units. Chariots are no good because they have to attack to get their bonus)
Siege
A medic unit (So that your injured units heal faster. A GG can promote a unit to medic three, so this is usually what you do with your first GG, usually on a chariot)
And finally, MORE SIEGE!

The emphasis on siege is because on their own against a city, even city raider three units have a tough time against defensive units such as archers. And siege units can also bombard a city's defenses down to zero, so it is just unit vs. unit. You need lots of it because you will keep losing it.

Lastly, if your game gets to the modern era, nukes are beautiful. Two or three will completely eliminate ALL units in a tile. Nice way to destroy a much more powerful enemy's Stack Of Doom.

 

[Gotrilliten]

Thank you all, when is the best time to go to war, or does it just depend?

 

[Valivator]

Moreover, if conquest is the goal, units are good to have in case opportunity knocks. If neighbor A ends up in a war with neighbor B, and you've been building libraries in your cities, you won't be able to walk up behind neighbor A with the stack of catapults you could have built. I generally try to mix and cat/troop builds in my production cities when war seems in the distant future. If civ A goes to the far end of the continent and leaves his easy to reach capital with the pyramids gaurded by 3 units, you'll feel a fool for not having the army to take it now once the opportunity passes (as it always does at any reasonably high level.)

When opportunity knocks. For example,the above quote, or when you just got a tech advantage. And a tech advantage is defined, at least by me, as when you get an offensive unit that your opponent doesn't have the counter to, cannons before rifles, artillery before infantry, catapults before horse archers, you get the idea.

More common is when you have been preparing for war. Then you have been building a stack like the one i mentioned in my previous post to march out and take out their cities at tech parity. Or even tech disadvantage. Catapults + Swords vs. longbows works fine as long as you have enough cats.

And if you were talking about era, if you can be the 1st to nukes by enough to take out the next closest competitor, then that can be worth it but otherwise it just depends.

 

[mariogreymist]

What I was specifically talking about was a common enough (though not altogether common) experience. I'll describe a specific example:

Say you are at one end of a three civ continent, and your immediate neighbor has a quality city (the major shrine city of the continent or a capital with key wonders like mids or glh) on your border. Not that uncommon, right? Now let's assume you don't have a tech advantage, but are at parity or slightly behind. Let's say it's the late classical/early medieval period for all involved. The civ at the far end of the continent DoWs your neighbor, who of course begs you to help out. You decline, and send a spy into the border city. As often as not, your neighbor will strip garrisons for the front. So when the aggressor asks you to join his war effort, you have two possible positions:
1: You've been building libraries rather than cats/swords/axes and can't do anything. Maybe you have one extra tech on situation 2.
2: You've been building wealth in 1-2 cities and units in 1-2 cities, meaning you have a reasonable stack (though not enough to sustain an independent invasion). This means you can take the good city on the border, and raze whatever might be putting cultural pressure on it, while the aggressor faces the brunt of your neighbor's military.

In situation 1, you just let them duke it out, and hope for a long drawn out war with no clear victor. In situation 2 you get at least one good city, and maybe a vassal.

This situation doesn't happen all that often, but when it does you need to be ready for it before it happens to get the benefit from it. If you're planning on conquest anyway, the choice is clear. I've been in both situation 1 and 2. Situation 1 sucks.

Tech advantages are predictable opportunities, and planning for them is more important than just being ready. I actually tend to build fewer units right before getting a tech advantage, unless I have masses of cash for upgrades.

 

[Sydney Posada]

I'm currently nearing a Conquest victory in Monarch, and here are a couple of things I found helpful:

1) Turn off Domination victory. It's very hard to actually get to Conquest without having fulfilled the Domination win condition. It doesn't cheapen your win in the slightest, IMO, since it's delaying your victory, rather than making it easier.

2) Get some war allies! There are various ways to do this, but make sure you have a couple of leaders that are Friendly with you, and bring them into your wars with you. It’s extremely useful to open up a second front against your enemy. This often means being of the same religion as them, bribing them to war (with tech) to get mutual war struggle bonus, giving tribute, etc. Before the war is over, it may be useful to bribe them OUT of the war, so that the conquered civ doesn’t become their vassal.

3) Early wars are often quite useful for a number of reasons. You can use an early war to wipe one of your opponents off the face of the map, and steal their prime capital location. You get more area to expand your empire and consequently have more cities to fund your research and produce your army. If you’re lucky, you can also convince one of the other nations to go to war alongside you, and you’ll build up an early mutual war bonus with them, which can hopefully push faster towards a Friendly relationship.

4) Try to keep other civs in wars as much as possible, whether or not you join in. This delays their tech development and builds lots of bad relationships, which you can exploit later. Bribe friendlier civs into fighting powerful, less friendly ones . Try to do it when the time is right (you can see the friendlier civ amassing an army). Even if you’re in a build-up or tech-race phase, feel free to join in esp. if they’re far away. You can just fight a defensive war and thus suffer little war weariness, and you build up a good relationship with your war ally.

5) Make sure, even in peacetime, to have one or two cities exclusively devoted to building units and unit-helping buildings (Barracks, etc.). You do NOT want to be low on the power chart, as that will encourage other aggressive civs to declare on you. YOU want to be the one choosing the when and where of the wars.

Hope nothing I said was too wrong. I’m still kinda new at this, as well, but I think these things have helped me…

 

[whats a navy]

I love going for conquest with Mongols. Raze all of the cities you take with an exception to the first civ you attack so your maintenancewon't break you but your production will be superior to others.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I have never actually won a conquest Victory on Civ4, and the only time I have ever won outside of Chieftain was a Cultural Victory. The AI always has like 40 times the amount of soldiers I have, any help at all would be appreciated.

Producing more soldiers than the AI is usually straightforward - it requires only (a) prioritizing units, and (b) having more production capacity. That usually means having more land and more cities, though not necessarily.

In addition, the human mind is capable of using its troops more expertly than the AI does.

And finally, although this is a minor point, Conquest and Domination are balanced slightly differently. The former is a more specific style (in my mind, but there are better experts).


It's worth noting that the players who do this well are NOT also chasing after a bunch of shiny intermediate trophies (religions, pyramids, extra buildings).

Thank you all, when is the best time to go to war, or does it just depend?

Lots of many factors, but there are some exercises that will probably be useful to you

(a) Play a few games where you prioritize catapults, and learn how they combine with ancient era units (Swords, Axes, etc). Prioritize means that Construction should be your next tech goal after Writing and maybe Monarchy.

(b) Learn how to stomp on the AI pre-catapult. Sisiutil's Early Rush guide may be a help here.

Choosing an aggressive leader can help, as you get to experiment with interesting promotions sooner.

It can also help to choose a seemingly impossible goal (your 4th city must be an enemy capital; you must eliminate at least two civilizations by 1AD; etc), and focus everything upon it. Often you discover that the impossible really only requires focus.

 

[i_imperator]

Turn off domination in custom game when you start, and build ICBM's, Tatical nukes, and tanks. Nuke the AI's untill they screem for capitulation.... Worked for me!!!

 

[Woobi]

As far as domination being hard to get, you just need to raze a lot of cities.