Help with noble annihilation

[AnyKeyz]

Good day,

Now that I have won every possible victory type on Noble several times (ok, I only won diplomatic one time, by accident), my next objective is to wipe out every single civilisation out of the map. But I am facing many problems that keeps me away from my objective.

1. The CPU is kinda wise. It will get together with protection pacts and vassality, so to wipe out, let say, the last 4 civs, I have to fight 4 civs at the time. Even if I am way ahead in tech and have a huge army, I will loose this kind of war. That happened during my last game, Genhis had all the remaining civs as vassals.

2. Late war economy : My main problem. I love tanks. They give me a huge advantage once I reached them. I love Advanced flight, because I can convert my cavalries into helicopter. I never use SAM, jets, paratroopers. Should I ? My point is that a huge stack of tanks will crash my economy and I have the tendancy to keep every city instead of burning it to the ground. My theory is that the CPU will send settler in the empty spot if I don't.

Any hints, strategy to win an annihilation game on Noble ?

Many thanks

 

[Cam_H]

Just by way of quick reply;

1. It's not too bad being at war with all tribes, but try to work some triangle diplomacy with some distant tribes so you can keep some trade route and technology trade opportunities open - it's situation dependant. If you settle with a peace agreement and you didn't start the war, you can work many of these rogue nations back into a tolerable state provided they aren't someone's vassal. I'm not a big one for tweaking the set-up conditions too much, but if vassals concern you, then you can turn them off at the game's start.

2. I can't think of a conquest game of mine that has got past Infantry (I admit though that I rarely win by Conquest). Think about trying to win in the Industrial Age. The AI's tendancy to build mushroom cities only acts to distract it from building up proper military.

 

[Verge]

If you're worried about the AI resettling razed cities, just maintain some patrols in the destroyed regions to prevent new cities from cropping up. It'll be more efficient.

 

[Echo of Celts]

I played a noble game with 13 Civs on a Huge Big and Small map as the Mongols recently.

I was going for a conquest victory, but kept almost every city I conquered.

I think the key is to keep your war machine dominant no matter what. Tech and Numbers wise.

I was at war at one time with 7 Civs at once. How did I manage? I had made sure that I had one land border early on. Two front is more difficult, so any Civs that had a small land border with me were annihalated.

Naval Superiority - I made sure I dominated the seas. A Naval Siege of my Homeland was near impossible.

Air Superiority - Late game, this is key. Dominate the Air. Every Army you attack should be bombed into the ground. Your tanks should take no damage after your air force is through with the enemy.

Keep a few friends - The Greeks and Mayans were my "friends" through the game. I even game to the Greeks defense once. My friends were mainly decided on who could go toe to toe with me (the Greeks in the Medieval era) and who could help me out with Tech, The Mayans.

Through Land Conquests, I basically fought through eras, nearly always at war. I was a Police State, with Nationhood and State Property. I had 113 Cities at the end. 30 Gunships, 60 Tanks, 50 infantry, 20 bombers, 20 Jet Fighters, 10 Carriers, 25 Destroyers, 30 Battleships.

Needless to say, my war Machine was unstoppable, with my most significant conquests in the 1800's.

A true measure of a war machine... how you handle war wierriness. I fought the Aztecs who had the Statue of Zues. My Economy was crippled. I was losing 300 Gold per turn. But the war machine pressed on until that statue belonged to me.

Anyways... won a domination victory before I could finish of the last 4 Civs.

Oh and I will add... the main reason I didn't annihalate my enemies and instead conquered them... Partisans... annoying, stupid Partisans. When you finally take down that city you had been gunning for, your army is exhausted, you do not want to fight 4 more units right away...

And in that game, I founded only 6 cities myself, meaning I captured 107.. 107 x 4 Partisans each... 428 Longbows/Muskets/Rifles/Infantry I would have had to deal with... not fun.

 

[AnyKeyz]

I am not sure of the right translation, but when I mentionned Annihililation, I meant occupy the entire surface of the earth. This is different from conquest I think (occupy 50% of the continents)

Yeah, Statue of Zeus is a must. I always goes for it for my attempts at annihilation victory.

I just don't know how you can achieve an annihilation by 1800. Actually, I never won a game before 1980. Wars last way longer than you seem to mention it, even with a larger stack than the army the previous poster just mentionned.

How can you be so successful so early in the game ?

 

[Echo of Celts]

I am not sure of the right translation, but when I mentionned Annihililation, I meant occupy the entire surface of the earth. This is different from conquest I think (occupy 50% of the continents)

Yeah, Statue of Zeus is a must. I always goes for it for my attempts at annihilation victory.

I just don't know how you can achieve an annihilation by 1800. Actually, I never won a game before 1980. Wars last way longer than you seem to mention it, even with a larger stack than the army the previous poster just mentionned.

How can you be so successful so early in the game ?

If you are capturing enemy cities, you should have a ton of cities. Meaning you should be generating huge beakers. So you should been ahead of everyone tech wise. I had flight by the mid 1800's, before anyone else had it. An Air Force to destroy the enemies defenses and bring all the units to 1/2 health means your tanks can roll through reletively easily.

 

[AnyKeyz]

I never use aircrafts
I will try to integrate them in my game

 

[Echo of Celts]

I never use aircrafts
I will try to integrate them in my game

Thats why it takes so long. Artillery moves slow. Tanks move fast. Gunships move fast. When you finally bomb a city with artillery or just attack it with Tanks/Gunships, you take heavy damage. Meaning you have to sit and regenerate.

With a Airforce, and 2-3 Point to attack from, you can shatter the defense in 2 turns, and have the army down to near half health before your tanks hit it. Your tanks take minimal damage, your airforce moves into the city you just conquered on attacks the next one. By the time your tanks make it to the next city, your air force has it shelled to oblivion and your tanks roll over it. Rinse and Repeat.

 

[pigswill]

I'm not sure how you would manage to get 100% land as you'll trip domination limit before then. You could for instance get 60% of land while annihilating every civ; never accept vassals and raze lots of cities.

 

[Fjortisbarn]

I keep telling people about it, but sure..

Try a Quecha-rush, its the Incas UU. You should be able to conquer 1 capital and therefore eliminate 1 civ. And you may then be able to axe-rush 1 more civ. Thus, you should be able to completely dominate your continent in the early ADs.

(I play on Prince, so this "should" work on Noble)

 

[AnyKeyz]

I'm not sure how you would manage to get 100% land as you'll trip domination limit before then. You could for instance get 60% of land while annihilating every civ; never accept vassals and raze lots of cities.

I don't really care if I trip on domination before reaching 100%. I will continue the game past the victory, just to feel like the king of the world one time in my life (geek talk here).

 

[Winth]

-keep some cities devoted only to military units. They should need only Barracks, a Forge, and eventually Factory or an Aqueduct. But as a rule of thumb, they should be an assembly line for your units. If you get ruined economically, then turn off this "spamming mode" for a moment.
-in every conquered city get a Courthouse.
-if you fear that AI will vassal to someone, let them capitulate to you before this happens.
-have some really strong friend that is not a vile backstabber (Alexander, Caesar [while he isn't that much of a backstabber, he is willing to kill anybody for a price], Catherine). He won't vassal, because it would mean war between you.


BTW, if you want to do this "annihilation" thing, just turn off Domination. Conquest occurs when you remain alone on the battlefield. Domination is the control of about 66% of population and land on the Earth. That means if you want 100% everything, you need to dominate and then destroy the last AI city, hemmed in your culture to have that 100%.

 

[AnyKeyz]

Thanks for the hints
Great ideas. The only problem is with making the CPU my vassal. I just can't broke the pact and enter war against them once they are my vassal.
I read in the Civopedia that only the civilisation that was made vassal can break the pact, unless you ask for a tech and they refuse to give it to you, but I tried several times, and I was still not able to declare war on them.

 

[futurehermit]

If you're going for conquest you want to RAZE cities. The money from razing is what keeps your economy afloat (as well as having a good economic foundation in your core empire).

You want a couple big, bad stacks of tanks/bombers to go through and raze the opponent to bits. Ideally, for conquest wins you want to be more advanced than your opponent when you DoW on them so that you don't get bogged down.

If you have to take on multiple opponents at the same time because of DPs and vassals then just focus on one at a time as much as possible--don't get strung out. If you need to fight on two fronts, try to contain as much as possible on one of them while advancing on the other. Trying to advance on two fronts while reinforcing both can be quite challenging.

Basically, if you are playing a continents type map, you'll want to clear out your continent, keeping all the land. Then you'll want to raze everything to the ground on the other continent. This should net you a nice conquest victory.

I would invade the other continent with tanks/bombers and transports/destroyers.

p.s., don't take vassals (you want to annihilate, not dominate) and don't keep overseas cities as it will hurt your economy and also increase your chances of hitting domination first.

 

[Jtownsend]

Also a helpful reference:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Oo9buo9Mtos&feature=related

 

[AnyKeyz]

Not sure if you will be able to have a look at my games, it was played with a french BTS version.

In the first game (realdomination), I was pretty sure I was in good position to wipe out Cesar and his buddy. I methodically conquered USA, Japan, this green fellow that I don't remember the civ and Mali.

In the next attachment (nodom), you can see that the war is getting nowhere. I am ahead in tech, I think I am ahead in military units (forgot to check lol) and it seemed it was my moment of glory.

Anybody knows what went wrong and what is wrong with my strategy ?

*I know I don't have any naval units, but the game was so straightforward and I was on a roll...

 

[Gooblah]

Ok, guys:
I think we're not being clear on what each Victory Type is.

Domination: Control an overwhelming percentage of both total land and population (Half of a Vassal's land and population count towards the Master's)

Conquest (Annihilation in Civ3): Conquer every other Civ but yours (Vassals count as conquered Civs).

AnyKeyz wants a Conquest Victory. This means having multiple heavy-production sites, while maintaining a tech lead using wonders like the University of Sankore, The Great Library, and the Oxford University, while spamming Cottages and building Universities, Libraries, Observatories, etc. Early rush a few opponents to knock em out of the game. Raze every city you find unless they are in a good position to become a research or production city. Have a base of 6-10 cities, and have em producing troops non-stop. Attack every enemy, especially the one with the Statue of Zeus. RAZE RAZE RAZE!


^^
And there you have Gooblah's horrible guide to a Conquest Victory.

PS-I'll check out the save. J'ai la classe Francais Deux.

 

[AnyKeyz]

That's exactly it

However, I am trying to accomplish a conquest victory, without razing a single city. Is it an impossible task ? In my game, I was able to maintain my economy up with maybe, 60 cities. But my economy is about to crash, each tank now costs me something like 40 gpt

 

[kcmarkwell]

Keep one or two civs in your pocket as "allies" until you need to kill them as well. Pick off nearest neighbors and raze and repeat until you reach allies then raze them as well. Go pangea and use mongols. Build about 100 keshiks and kill everyone.