Help A Builder Become A Warmonger?

[The Almighty dF]

I've played Civ for years, and have been playing Civ4 and Civ4 Warlords since each respectively came out.
But...
I've always been a builder. Science, culture, democracy, and time. I win these all the time. I only win Domination while going for culture.
I long for more, though.
I'm sorry that this required its own post, but I've read all kinds of strategies and stuff but... I still fail at being a warmonger. I keep winding up with not enough units, too far behind, too easily defeated units, and not able to produce units I researched the technologies for.
Tips? Suggestions? Do's/Don'ts? Anything?

I'd prefer Domination over Conquest, simply because conquering the world always sounds fun.

 

[Ultimate_Waffle]

Try the war academy and look under "Military Strategy and Tactics". http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/

I think one of the more helpful guides there is the "Stack O' Doom" guide.

 

[The Almighty dF]

Thank you, hadn't noticed that section (I feel silly for not noticing it now)

I'm curious as to what leaders are best for warmongering as well. Besides the obvious (Shaka, Genghis.) Stalin looks to be pretty awesome, but that may just be because part of me always needs to build the Great Wall, Pyramids, and a few other select wonders. I remember seeing that in a guide once that he had great trait synergy, but haven't seen much else on him.
Domination leaders... I'm not sure what traits are best for that. Finanical would be a biggie, but Aggressive and Industrial would be as well.

 

[Ultimate_Waffle]

Well, This is just me, but I feel that Tokugawa of Japan is a great leader to do warmongering with. His traits are Aggressive and Protective which both give free promotions to newly created units (Aggressive for melee units and gunpowder units, Protective for archery units and gunpowder units). So, when you hit the gunpowder age, both traits will pretty much work together for your gunpowder units ^_^.

 

[Ultimate_Waffle]

I forgot to mention, Tokugawa is Aggressive/Protective in Warlords only... In Vanilla, he's Aggressive/Organized.

 

[The Almighty dF]

I use Warlords, and I'd been curious about Tokugawa. Seemed to be the only good Protective leader.

I'm curious, how is Germany when it comes to warmongering? That Panzer... wow. I took a nation once with those. It was a fractal map and India kept hitting wonders just as I did.. so bam. Wave of panzers, no more India.

Still makes me laugh they have Panzers. Panzers, Stalin, FDR, Gandhi, the Manhattan Project. And the new expansion adds a WW2 scenario. They're really trying hard to avoid everyone's least favorite (and worst) Charlie Chaplin impersonator.

 

[Ultimate_Waffle]

I played Germany once on a pangea map in my earlier years of this game, it was me and 6 other civilizations. When it was just me, Russia, America, and England left, I declared war on America without looking at the diplomacy screen and Russia declared on me as a result. That's where the Panzers came in and I took both out, so now I had the left and middle part of the landmass. Years later, I took out England and won a conquest victory on the year 2048...

 

[Napalm102]

Toku in warlords has to be the best in terms of traits he gives to the units. His drafted riflemen have cobat 1, city garison 1 and drill 1, right from the bat.

But any agressive leader is good for warmongering, because most of their offensive units have free Combat 1, which means your first promotion from barracks will allow you to give the unit a specialized promotion, like shock, cover, medic etc. Formation promotion unfortunatelly requires also Combat 2, so you won't get it easy unless you running theocracy/vassalage or have a military instructor settled.

Beyond that you have to look at unique units for each civ. If you want an unfair advantage play as Rome. Thankfully neither of their leaders is agressive, that would have been an overkill.

 

[Ultimate_Waffle]

Samurais are a pretty good unique unit to have with an Agressive/Protective civlization

 

[The Almighty dF]

Rome seemed to be a good choice until Warlords came along. Now... aside from the UU, they seem laughable. Maybe this is just because Creative and Imperialistic seem like crappy traits to me.

 

[Ultimate_Waffle]

I like the Creative trait. You can conquer cities and not have to worry about losing it culturally to another civilization as much, but that's just me...

 

[cabert]

Rome seemed to be a good choice until Warlords came along. Now... aside from the UU, they seem laughable. Maybe this is just because Creative and Imperialistic seem like crappy traits to me.

you must be joking right?

Try a game with augustus, any level.
If you don't rule the world with augustus, you're hopeless .

Of course, you need to fund your new aquisitions, but that's true for every leader. So you need a bunch of commerce cities to fund your army.
But creative allows you to simply ignore culture = hands free for granary (growth is a big key for a domination win!) and barracks/troops.
And organized allows to whip those courthouses for cheap.
You can keep all cities that are size 5 or more. start the courthouse while under revolt and whip it as soon as the city comes out of revolt, et voila.

 

[mice]

The Roman UU makes earlish war very powerful. As a warmonger you will want to hit early and hard, and then take advantage of your greater amount of land.

Another great one is the Egyptians. The warchariot can rip up the neighboring civs and leave you a lot of land to develop.

As Cabert said, you have to pay for your aquisitions but with good management domination becomes the easiest victory condition. You just end up overwhelming the AI with units.

Head for Steel and cannons after your first wars.

 

[cabert]

Head for Steel and cannons after your first wars.

not really what I would do.
My way to achieve domination is more like perpetual war.

1) axe war
2) cat/axe war
3) cat/mace war
4) treb/mace war
5) possibly drafted musket/treb war (not my favourite)
6) grenadiers/treb war
7) grenadier canon war.

This way you have 1 war per civ you target (leaving out one of them, usually the N°5).

If you aim for domination you don't need to kill them completely. Just bring them to their knees. Of course, it's better to remove an opponent completely but it's not absolutely needed.

Current game (monarch level, playing egypt) :

• First war for a worker (warriors vs archers ). I got a worker for the price of a warrior, plus all the korean land got pillaged (except the marble that was on a plain just next to seoul. An archer came out of the city and killed my woodsman 2 warrior ).
• Second war for a city. Korea really wanted to get hurt! Wang kong settled right where I wanted to! 4 war chariots gave me 2 cities and pillaged again the korean land. He gave me priesthood to stop the war. I didn't have the troops for a complete kill and research was getting slow without money. Better squeeze out all I can from this guy.
• Third war for another city. Kublai Kahn got greedy. He wanted all the fish. I razed 2 cities, captured 2 others and pillaged a bit of his land with War chariots and axemen. He gave me archery to stop the war. I would have prefered iron working but his swordsmen were going to kill all my troops and I needed the peace more than he did.
• 4th war for a second capital. War chariots and axemen gave me seoul (plus another city) and a few workers (badly needed).
• 5th war to avoid a runaway civ. Tokugawa was first in score. A few catapults, swords, axes and spears + my faithful war chariots gave me some cottaged cities and a third capital. I went out of steam and sued for peace (waiting for the japanese cities to get of revolt, then whipped more catapults).
• 6th war : extermination. Tokugawa needed to die, there was no way I could keep his former cities happy. more catapults, no more toku.
• 7th war : hum, who's left? Kublai, you're up. same units, same results. I sued for peace for monarchy (slow research at this time, too many units, too many cities).
• 8th war : (ongoing) this is my continent, why don't you learn to swim kublai?.
• after that, I need to find the other continent.

This is a marathon game, so it's a bit different, but I wanted to show that the easiest way towards domination is certainly not to stop warring for long periods.

 

[Napalm102]

This is a marathon game, so it's a bit different, but I wanted to show that the easiest way towards domination is certainly not to stop warring for long periods.

Damn, I wish I could be this ruthless. But I just have to much builder genes in me

My last game I had a protective neighbour so I couldn't dislodge him until I had cats.

So first war was axes/cats - got 3 cities for total of 6 - offensive stalled because of econ and other guy got longbows

Second war maces/pikes/trebs - 3 more cities - offensive stalled because opponent capitualted to the most powerfull civ.

Third war rifles/grenades/cannons - bribed another relativelly close neighbour into attacking with me the master + vassal combo - 4 cities from first victim (killed of completelly) - 6 cities from master (made vassal with 5 crappy cities left) - 6 cities from my former ally (made vassal with 3 crappy cities left) - 4 more cities from the weak civ on other side of continent (made vassal with 1 crappy city)

Fourth war inf/arty - 3 cities from the one of the two civs on other continent + 3% in territory gain which brought me to 64.5% total and won the game.

In retrospect I shouldn't have been so vassal happy, should have just taken their cities and thats it, then I wouldn't have had to build up the navy and tech to arty + infantry just to get those last 3% of territory.

 

[cabert]

Protective neighbours doesn't mean you need to wait for catapults.
In the game I described above, Korean is protective and japan is protective.
I waited for catapults before hitting japan, but korea was on my way earlier. It just takes a bit more units, that's all.

 

[carl corey]

I use Warlords, and I'd been curious about Tokugawa. Seemed to be the only good Protective leader.

I disagree with that, there are several good protective leaders out there. Though I haven't played a game until the end Korea can make good use of the Protective trait to help "protect" its Hwacha with archers. Churchill's Protective Redcoats are some really cool unique units! Plus he's Charismatic, which makes them even better. Saladin (Protective & Spiritual) is a good candidate for a cultural win if that's what you're looking for. Both Chinese leaders give Protective Cho-Ko-Nu's, though my favorite is Qin (Industrious), since I regularly manage to do a Machinery slingshot with him.

So you can say Mao & Saladin are 2nd rate Protective leaders, but Toku, Churchill, Qin & Wang Kon can all make very good use of the Protective Trait.

---

By the way, you might want to try a "no wonders" game with any good early warring civilization: Rome (veeery good, just go Bronze Working-Wheel-Iron Working!), Japan, Egypt (Hatty, not Ramses), the Celts, Zulu, Cyrus, etc. Remember that with Alphabet you can directly build research and with Currency you can directly build gold. So you can keep most cities (especially big ones anyway) and just build research or gold instead of units when there's nothing else to build and units start to cost too much.

 

[KMadCandy]

Damn, I wish I could be this ruthless. But I just have to much builder genes in me

My last game I had a protective neighbour so I couldn't dislodge him until I had cats.

Protective neighbours doesn't mean you need to wait for catapults.
In the game I described above, Korean is protective and japan is protective.
I waited for catapults before hitting japan, but korea was on my way earlier. It just takes a bit more units, that's all.

he's more ruthless, but it's not just the builder part. he also throws away suicides convinces his units to bravely enter battles that they often face exceedingly low odds in. and i know for a fact he whips (and sometimes drafts) like a son of a gun.

i've seen some of his save games in the middle of war time. every day is "we hate the leader day". i mean he fights wars really well! but what i get to see is the after effects on our empire and i sit there going OMG what happened to my pretty cities??? *giggle* ruthless works. but i'm not that ruthless either, Napalm, i have a ton to learn myself.

 

[cabert]

I'm not one of the most ruthless out there.
Just check the GotM's results or any of the immortal SGs...

But one thing must be clear : either you go to war or you don't.

You should set yourself goals before declaring, and do what it takes to achieve those goals.
I'm used to run 60% culture to fight WW in the late game, that's true .

If you want to see mass drafting/whipping I suggest reading some of mutineer's SGs.
He commonly has 9 or 12 unhappiness before the war even starts .

 

[KMadCandy]

it was one of muti's SGs that finally got me off my candybutt to try the drafting/globe theatre thing for the first time actually! i forget which one tho. i've learned a ton and a half from reading SGs, some while they were happening and some that i found only after they were done but read all the way through since they were fascinating to me. but i can't think of any off the top of my head to direct the original poster to in particular, darn it.

i really really like being a fly on the wall and watching other people play their games in public. and SGs are doubleplusgood since teams of good players think out loud together, and help each other come up with even better ideas! then again i have more free time than most people; lots of folks can't sit here and waste invest the time in valuable research like that *giggle*. for me, a combination of reading the war academy, trying stuff out myself, reading SGs, and trying stuff out myself again, helps me learn. and then keep trying stuff out myself again. and again. and again. until civ2050 and maybe then i'll be ruthless? probably not tho, probably even then i'll play most of my games peaceful.

i do go bloodthirsty once in a while tho. and sometimes i even win those games! and i've still never tried rome. at first it was just because they'd never come up as random. now i don't play rome simply because it makes me giggle to be one of the few that can say that! and i kinda like having gus as an opponent. not sure why, i might have a bit of a crush, don't tell him tho.