How to proceed higher difficulty with victory options?

I heavily agree with Chum in that you shouldn't attempt any Wonders if you are going for a domination victory. The more time you spend building buildings and wonders the more of a drag your game will be. Domination in the first let's say ~150 is a breeze, after that the AI will have lots of cities that will all be building units. You'll have to eat through insane amounts of (horribly deployed) units. It's not fun and it's not worth it.

There is however another type of domination victory. You could turtle with a 4 city Tradition empire until you get Artillery and go from there. You can turtle until Bombers (or Great War Bombers, but probably not on Deity) or you can turtle until Atomic Bombs + XCom. But at this point it's not a domination victory anymore, it's a science victory with a few turns of fighting.

If you however must build some Wonders for your domination victory then I'd say the following are the best:

Pyramids (Pillage-Repair strategy is clearly broken and should have been fixed a long time ago. I love abusing it personally)
Macchu Picchu (Can easily yield between 50GPT and 100GPT if you are playing on a standard/huge Pangea because you should have roads to every capital and prebuilt roads)
Alhambra (Hard to get, often times not even worth it, for example when going for an Artillery or Bomber rush)
Brandenburg Gate (At this point you're usually better off building units. If you have a spare Engineer by all means get it)

Every Wonder that gives happiness is decent enough. National Wonders are okay just because every Ideology can get happiness from them.

I definitely agree with Browd - putting Hammers into Statue of Zeus is a complete waste. If not a single AI went Honor you can wait until lategame and build it in three or four turns anyway.



This is completely untrue since we are talking about domination. Liberty is the most-used policy tree and Honor is just as good if not better, but you don't have a peaceful win condition to fall back on if domination fails.

I very rarely see people going for Tradition with domination in mind unless they are turtling towards Artillery, Bombers or XCom.

Rushing artillery then bombers is more efficient than trying to win by early rushing, at deity at least. Liberty/Honor rush can potentially win much faster, but has more cost if said rush stalls.
 
ok guys i am still practicing domination on prince/standard map with 8 civs and i managed to capture 2 capitals by medival era.

But how do you guys chain your attacks?,do you declare war with next civ as soon as you have captured a capital?.

the other 4 civs are friendly with me while 2 are guarded due to capture of their capitals.

should i delcare war on friendly AI civs also?.
 
There are a few scenarios where I'll stall out my war machine;

Happiness. I normally don't take on another civ if I'm still burning cities to the ground and dealing with Riots in Puppets/Annexes. I'll allow myself to drop to 9 Unhappiness (I'm warring, gonna win anyways, who cares) but at 10+ you start to suffer some major drawbacks.

I'm within 10 turns of a major unit upgrade. Say, I just used CBows to take a Capital but I'm 9 turns away from discovering Machinery. I'll wait till I have upgraded my units, then attack. You can't upgrade outside your own territory. The only time I'll not do this is if my enemy isn't at tech parity, as in he's still got Longswords/XBows while I have Musketeers/Cannons.

Money Problems. Maybe I just burned my major trading partner to the ground (It happens, he's closest and in the way of/causing choke points for another AI). Or maybe my trade routes got pillaged. So, I'll wait till I rebuild my trade ships/caravans or build a few more Markets/Banks and then I'll move along with my Domination.

Sometimes it's a combination of 2 or all 3 of those reasons. Sometimes it's that I NEED to upgrade, maybe I warred with my CBows all the way through Machinary (for some reason) and I need to build up the money to upgrade to XBows.
 
There are a few scenarios where I'll stall out my war machine;

Happiness. I normally don't take on another civ if I'm still burning cities to the ground and dealing with Riots in Puppets/Annexes. I'll allow myself to drop to 9 Unhappiness (I'm warring, gonna win anyways, who cares) but at 10+ you start to suffer some major drawbacks.

I'm within 10 turns of a major unit upgrade. Say, I just used CBows to take a Capital but I'm 9 turns away from discovering Machinery. I'll wait till I have upgraded my units, then attack. You can't upgrade outside your own territory. The only time I'll not do this is if my enemy isn't at tech parity, as in he's still got Longswords/XBows while I have Musketeers/Cannons.

Money Problems. Maybe I just burned my major trading partner to the ground (It happens, he's closest and in the way of/causing choke points for another AI). Or maybe my trade routes got pillaged. So, I'll wait till I rebuild my trade ships/caravans or build a few more Markets/Banks and then I'll move along with my Domination.

Sometimes it's a combination of 2 or all 3 of those reasons. Sometimes it's that I NEED to upgrade, maybe I warred with my CBows all the way through Machinary (for some reason) and I need to build up the money to upgrade to XBows.
@ Gamer, the above quote is probably the best advice to your original question so far.

My input, it depends on how you want to win domination. If you want to do it using great UU's like Camels, Impis, or some others, you're probably best with small-ish maps, meaning up to standard size or 7 opponents. Even then, you're probably only going to be able to take out 3 or 4 capitals with those units and use standard, "landmark" units from then on.

But sixty4half has a great point, there's more to timing an attack than acquiring a good unit to do it with. Conquering capitals and often the subsequent multiple conquer/burns is going to drop your happiness, and drop your GPT which often is compounded by getting worse trade deals.

I maintain that the easiest and most effective (though admittedly not the quickest) way of getting a domination victory on Deity is to play peaceful, 4-city tradition (or 6-city liberty if that's your cup of tea) all game, with a focus on infrastructure, specifically getting as strong of a tech lead (multiple RA's) and as high GPT as you possibly can, and then backstab everyone by throwing a spy into each capital, and then drop a bunch of XCOMs around each capital on the same turn you dow them.
 
I maintain that the easiest and most effective (though admittedly not the quickest) way of getting a domination victory on Deity is to play peaceful, 4-city tradition (or 6-city liberty if that's your cup of tea) all game, with a focus on infrastructure, specifically getting as strong of a tech lead (multiple RA's) and as high GPT as you possibly can, and then backstab everyone by throwing a spy into each capital, and then drop a bunch of XCOMs around each capital on the same turn you dow them.

Yeah, I agree. You could also start much earlier with artillery + bombers. Give bombers promotion bonus against land troops and you slowly move through the map capturing cities with impunity.
 
Rushing artillery then bombers is more efficient than trying to win by early rushing, at deity at least. Liberty/Honor rush can potentially win much faster, but has more cost if said rush stalls.

No offense my friend, but that is a completely baseless claim and I would love if you substantiated it with some data.

If you read either the CDG series or the DCL series you will find that almost every single person that attempts to win by domination will do either a Liberty Comp Bow rush or go down the Honor Commerce Autocracy route, usually with a timed push with Crossbows.

Crossbows are widely considered to be the single most important unit in the game and therefore the most important timed push. Only a very small fraction of players will turtle until Artillery because it makes the game immensely harder.

Maybe you come from a multiplayer background, no problem at all, but please don't spread misinformation. Both Liberty and Honor pushes have proven not only efficient, but utmost effective. There are countless hours of video material from players far better than I am. Some of those players manage to clear half the map with Crossbows before a Tradition player will even get to the Artillery tech...

As for your risk/reward argument: It's possible to beat even the hardest of neighbours (Shaka, Attila, Genghis Khan) with promoted Crossbows. The only reason why an "early rush" (Crossbows are usually acquired around T100, not all that early) might stall is because a lot of players like to incorporate Wonders and Buildings into their build order that are completely unnecessary.

I wouldn't even go as far and say that turtling until Arty/Bombers is the easiest way to win Dom, because it isn't. The longer you wait the more opponents you have to fight against, the more cities you have to raze, the more carpets you have to clean. It makes the game much harder for yourself.

I agree that early pushes (for example with UUs like legions or berserkers) often fail and have a very high risk involved, but usually with an Honor push you get your infrastructure and your national college up anyway so even if it fails it doesn't at all mean that the game is lost. The same goes for Liberty by the way. You usually settle two additional cities and finish the national college with an Engineer.
 
Any tips for maintaining happiness even during war?
Raze more cities? Conquer at a slower and steadier rate so to keep your happiness above negative twenty.

Once you hit ideologies, happiness should not be a problem, but I suspect you are trying to win faster than that.

I have been skipping religion but it seems i should concentrate on religion on higher difficulties.
Religion is valued for the faith-purchased happy buildings. But, no, you do not really want to “concentrate” on religion.

I have been following honor,tradition,rationalism mostly but should i take up piety policy?
No. Mixing Honor and Tradition is already spreading your SP thin.
 
My input, it depends on how you want to win domination. If you want to do it using great UU's like Camels, Impis, or some others, you're probably best with small-ish maps, meaning up to standard size or 7 opponents. Even then, you're probably only going to be able to take out 3 or 4 capitals with those units and use standard, "landmark" units from then on.

Camels are maybe a bad example here, they don't really obsolete until planes. They're easily far better than artillery, meaning Arabia has a huge advantage over pretty much anybody else through the industrial and then when planes roll around they've also got double oil.
 
I would love if you substantiated it with some data.

I don't want to hijack this thread so mods, so if you believe my response to much off topic, please break out this into a separate post.

Let me say thank you yung.carl.jung. I accepted your challenge and looked through a few DCL and CDG games and collected data on domination victories. I will definitely be participating in them from here on out.

Crossbows are widely considered to be the single most important unit in the game

I do not consider rushing to machinery or cannons as early or late game rushes. A lot of people in the few games I looked at got to that point after researching education. Some opted to beelined straight for them instead. And so, I broke it out into a separate category as "Mid-Game." I collected data on the amount of reported failures for each approach.

Before I post the results, I just want to say that most of the games with domination as the targeted VC heavily favored an early victory. Point rewards were given the earlier you won. Also, many of them used Civs which had an UU or UA in the early to mid game, as opposed to late. You were also allowed to restart, reload, and look at the results of other players.

An early game rush was any attack that started (but may not necessarily end) pre-universities (CB, archers, swords, etc). Mid game was post-university (cannons, XBs). Late were industrial era units before attack (artillery, bombers).

Spoiler :

CDG #04
Early Rush: 1 (0 failure) --- Mid Attack 0 (0 failure) --- Late Attack: 4 (0 failure)

CDG #10
Early Rush: 3 (1 failure) --- Mid Attack 4 (1 failure) --- Late Attack: 3 (0 failure)

DLC #20
Early Rush: 3 (1 failure) --- Mid Attack 2 (0 failure) --- Late Attack: 1 (0 failure)

CDG #01
Early Rush: 1 (0 failure) --- Mid Attack 3 (0 failure) --- Late Attack: 5 (1 failure)

DLC #41
Early Rush: 9 (4 failure)--- Mid Attack 0 (0 failure) --- Late Attack: 2 (0 failure)

DLC #34
Early Rush: 2 (2 failure) --- Mid Attack 0 (0 failure) --- Late Attack: 1 (0 failure)

DLC #21
Early Rush: 0 (0 failure) --- Mid Attack 0 (0 failure) --- Late Attack: 1 (0 failure)

DLC #03
Early Rush: 0 (0 failure) --- Mid Attack 0 (0 failure) --- Late Attack: 2 (0 failure)

DLC #40
Early Rush: 0 (0 failure) --- Mid Attack 0 (0 failure) --- Late Attack: 2 (0 failure)

DLC #42
Early Rush: 0 (0 failure) --- Mid Attack 0 (0 failure) --- Late Attack: 1 (0 failure)

DLC #19
Early Rush: 0 (0 failure) --- Mid Attack 0 (0 failure) --- Late Attack: 1 (0 failure)

DLC #43
Early Rush: 0 (0 failure) --- Mid Attack 0 (0 failure) --- Late Attack: 2 (0 failure)

DLC #31
Early Rush: 0 (0 failure) --- Mid Attack 0 (0 failure) --- Late Attack: 3 (0 failure)

Total early rush: 19
Total early rush success rate: 70%


Total mid game attack: 10
Total mid game attack success rate: 91%


Total late game attack: 27
Total late game attack success rate: 96%



If you read either the CDG series or the DCL series you will find that almost every single person that attempts to win by domination will do either a Liberty Comp Bow rush or go down the Honor Commerce Autocracy route, usually with a timed push with Crossbows.

Only 34% of domination victories in the sample above attempted an early game rush. And of that, not all went down liberty or honor (unfortunately, I didn't track how many did). The only reason this figure is as high as it is is because one particular game point rewards system heavily incentivized an early rush. 48% of wins came from late game domination and they all went down tradition.

A few notes from what I learned: I believe the success rate of early rushing is inflated; in other words, the failure rate is much higher simply because most people did not report their fails. beetle was by far the most honorable person I saw and reported every fail. Almost (if not all) of his early rushes resulted in failure, in which he would reload/restart and win by a late game push. A noticeable amount of people would post early results from an early rush but never follow up on the final game outcome. Many of these people reported the difficulties they were having. This leads me to believe that they simply failed and never reported it, inflating the success rate.

Acken, surprising, did not favor early domination. All of his Dom victories, except for one, in the few games I looked at, came from late game units. He goes on to say this: "Well for domination like I said I enjoy getting industrialization first then dynamite then schools."

donkeyfish favors an artillery timing push but I believe his games could be better if he added bombers.

You can look through any of the games yourself and find any problem you think may be wrong with what I've collected.
 
Rushing artillery then bombers is more efficient than trying to win by early rushing, at deity at least. Liberty/Honor rush can potentially win much faster, but has more cost if said rush stalls.
I accepted your challenge and looked through a few DCL and CDG games and collected data on domination victories.
Thanks for compiling that!

But what I think you need, in order for your assertion to be convincing, is better players trying for Dom VC all on the same map, all replaying a few times to try the different timings. But most players don’t seem to have much of an appetite for replaying maps, so it will be tricky to set up.

I will definitely be participating in them from here on out.
Cool! For my own selfish reasons, please start with the CDGs and go back to the DCLs as you like.

...I collected data on the amount of reported failures for each approach.

Before I post the results, I just want to say that most of the games with domination as the targeted VC heavily favored an early victory. Point rewards were given the earlier you won. Also, many of them used Civs which had an UU or UA in the early to mid game, as opposed to late. You were also allowed to restart, reload, and look at the results of other players.

How did you decide which DCL games to sample? The CDG maps are good for testing your assertion because they did have a designated VC. One of the complaint with DCL (from the initial CDG host) was that too many people were just turtling to SV.

beetle was by far the most honorable person I saw. Almost (if not all) of his early rushes resulted in failure, in which he would reload/restart and win by a late game push.
You can confirm by the finishing turns spreadsheet that I am one of the weakest DCL/CDG players. So don't let my poor performance skew your results! I have been trying to use those maps to figure out early Dom VC. I am a slow learner...

But I think early rush success is not winning before XB but taking a cap before XB. So I think your “success” metric should be relaxed. If one eliminates even a single AI early, then the rest of the game is smooth and easy -- even if it takes arty or rockets to finish off the last AI.
 
But I think early rush success is not winning before XB but taking a cap before XB. So I think your “success” metric should be relaxed. If one eliminates even a single AI early, then the rest of the game is smooth and easy -- even if it takes arty or rockets to finish off the last AI.

I considered an early rush anything that started with an archer/CB/swords, etc rush, even if they won the game late. So simply rushing to take out one AI, then teching to late units I still counted as early.

How did you decide which DCL games to sample? The CDG maps are good for testing your assertion because they did have a designated VC. One of the complaint with DCL (from the initial CDG host) was that too many people were just turtling to SV.

I should have mentioned that. I simply worked backwards and selected the last 10 games that didn't have a VC other than domination. In other words, I didn't count the Brazil game where you had to win by culture. I counted any game where you could win by any means.

EDIT: I also didn't count any games where no one won by domination. DCL #19, for example, had only 1 Dom victory, but I decided not to count it because it was posted weeks after the game was over. (although he won late and it would increase the late games won count)

double EDIT: I just added a few more games then stopped once I realized that when no early game points rewards were given, almost no one attempted a early rush.
 
Hmm I wasn't aware of these domination forums either. Thanks for the links guys, looks fun!

I'll add my quick bit but freely admit I rarely play full-blown domination games. However, I am a fan of early rushing and love the art of war.

Here's why I would always recommend rushing early:

1. gives you best times
2. doesn't give AI tons of turns to take advantage of their bonuses on Deity
3. allows you to expand your empire a bit earlier. For dom many smaller cities actually is great for pumping out/replacing units.

If you take out even 1-2 AI early the resulting larger empire size and less AI makes your game much easier. Sure it's a risky play and I bet sometimes it fails. Usually anything with the earliest finish times other then SV has inherent risks. Not being ahead on science hardly matters, but you should be able to keep up. Why? Because all you need is tech-parity and promotions to beeline new military and have the edge in each new war.

You don't need to wait for artillery. This is myth perpetuated by players that don't war enough. Civ V has the most OP promotions of any civ iteration. It does not take long with honor to level to logistics/blitz and then get range on your siege and bowmen. The only real advantage artillery has for taking cities is indirect fire, you can still level up your initial army and get a core of elite troops with double attacking speed and range promotions and be whittling down cities in relative safety. You just have to build enough melee to wall would be attackers from getting to your highly promoted range.

Players that can't pull this off are not fighting wars early enough to get the first levels of experience or aren't building enough troops. You need to drop your ideas of minimizing troop numbers and just be constantly producing troops during battle, especially on Deity, to replace losses. It's a skill most players learn in multiplayer. Forget about all your optimal science habits because they are less efficient for domination. Commit to your early rush and win it.

If you really struggle to get the early promos and find it difficult to push through without range, take the easy route and perma-war a CS. Level all your CB on it early game and then rush with them with they get logistics and range. It's a really safe strategy and surefire way to get the promos you need. With honor xp bonuses and all focus-firing a city you gather xp very quickly. I consider it an abuse but it's highly effective.
 
I considered an early rush anything that started with an archer/CB/swords, etc rush, even if they won the game late. So simply rushing to take out one AI, then teching to late units I still counted as early.
Good! Sorry that I missed that! I do think you start a new thread on this topic!

The other metric to track would be early rushing that sets up some other VC. I think that might be the main reason why people are so fond of early rushes. It is not necessarily because they are interested in Dom VC -- but because they value fast games.
 
I don't want to hijack this thread so mods, so if you believe my response to much off topic, please break out this into a separate post.

Let me say thank you yung.carl.jung. I accepted your challenge and looked through a few DCL and CDG games and collected data on domination victories. I will definitely be participating in them from here on out.



I do not consider rushing to machinery or cannons as early or late game rushes. A lot of people in the few games I looked at got to that point after researching education. Some opted to beelined straight for them instead. And so, I broke it out into a separate category as "Mid-Game." I collected data on the amount of reported failures for each approach.

Before I post the results, I just want to say that most of the games with domination as the targeted VC heavily favored an early victory. Point rewards were given the earlier you won. Also, many of them used Civs which had an UU or UA in the early to mid game, as opposed to late. You were also allowed to restart, reload, and look at the results of other players.

An early game rush was any attack that started (but may not necessarily end) pre-universities (CB, archers, swords, etc). Mid game was post-university (cannons, XBs). Late were industrial era units before attack (artillery, bombers).

Spoiler :

CDG #04
Early Rush: 1 (0 failure) --- Mid Attack 0 (0 failure) --- Late Attack: 4 (0 failure)

CDG #10
Early Rush: 3 (1 failure) --- Mid Attack 4 (1 failure) --- Late Attack: 3 (0 failure)

DLC #20
Early Rush: 3 (1 failure) --- Mid Attack 2 (0 failure) --- Late Attack: 1 (0 failure)

CDG #01
Early Rush: 1 (0 failure) --- Mid Attack 3 (0 failure) --- Late Attack: 5 (1 failure)

DLC #41
Early Rush: 9 (4 failure)--- Mid Attack 0 (0 failure) --- Late Attack: 2 (0 failure)

DLC #34
Early Rush: 2 (2 failure) --- Mid Attack 0 (0 failure) --- Late Attack: 1 (0 failure)

DLC #21
Early Rush: 0 (0 failure) --- Mid Attack 0 (0 failure) --- Late Attack: 1 (0 failure)

DLC #03
Early Rush: 0 (0 failure) --- Mid Attack 0 (0 failure) --- Late Attack: 2 (0 failure)

DLC #40
Early Rush: 0 (0 failure) --- Mid Attack 0 (0 failure) --- Late Attack: 2 (0 failure)

DLC #42
Early Rush: 0 (0 failure) --- Mid Attack 0 (0 failure) --- Late Attack: 1 (0 failure)

DLC #19
Early Rush: 0 (0 failure) --- Mid Attack 0 (0 failure) --- Late Attack: 1 (0 failure)

DLC #43
Early Rush: 0 (0 failure) --- Mid Attack 0 (0 failure) --- Late Attack: 2 (0 failure)

DLC #31
Early Rush: 0 (0 failure) --- Mid Attack 0 (0 failure) --- Late Attack: 3 (0 failure)

Total early rush: 19
Total early rush success rate: 70%


Total mid game attack: 10
Total mid game attack success rate: 91%


Total late game attack: 27
Total late game attack success rate: 96%





Only 34% of domination victories in the sample above attempted an early game rush. And of that, not all went down liberty or honor (unfortunately, I didn't track how many did). The only reason this figure is as high as it is is because one particular game point rewards system heavily incentivized an early rush. 48% of wins came from late game domination and they all went down tradition.

A few notes from what I learned: I believe the success rate of early rushing is inflated; in other words, the failure rate is much higher simply because most people did not report their fails. beetle was by far the most honorable person I saw and reported every fail. Almost (if not all) of his early rushes resulted in failure, in which he would reload/restart and win by a late game push. A noticeable amount of people would post early results from an early rush but never follow up on the final game outcome. Many of these people reported the difficulties they were having. This leads me to believe that they simply failed and never reported it, inflating the success rate.

I think we both agree that heavy investment into military early game is a terrible idea, because without Libraries, NC and Universities up you will fall behind in tech, even if you annex one or two capitals. Infrastructure is key, which is why most people get their NC up even if they are rushing Crossbows.

Acken, surprising, did not favor early domination. All of his Dom victories, except for one, in the few games I looked at, came from late game units. He goes on to say this: "Well for domination like I said I enjoy getting industrialization first then dynamite then schools."

donkeyfish favors an artillery timing push but I believe his games could be better if he added bombers.

You can look through any of the games yourself and find any problem you think may be wrong with what I've collected.

That is a really great post and I'm honestly baffled by the amount of time you put into working out the spoilered statistic. Very nice work, colour me impressed.

I just want to make one more point if that's okay. I don't know why you keep referring to "early rushes". I never advocated early rushes. I personally never do a timed push before Crossbows, which you defined as a "midgame rush". So the only thing that would qualify as "early rush" under your conditions would be a Liberty Composite Bow rush, though for me that is not really "early", as they usually happen around T70 if I recall correctly. An early push would be a melee push with swords, a chariot push or something of that sort. Even though those can work, I'm sure we both agree that they are not all that great of a strategy.

If we accept Composite Bow rushes as midgame rushes then it would seem that late- and midgame rushes (so pretty much Comp&XBow compared to Artillery or Info-era wars) are almost exactly as popular. Really surprising and I think my own bias really shows there. I consider Xbow the better strategy (probably because it's a little faster) so I just read the threads so that they confirmed my own opinion.

As for Acken, I'm only really familiar with his YouTube channels since I only read the DCL/CDG that I also participated in. If you are curious feel free to check out his China or America videos, they're pretty famous, at least on here:

https://www.youtube.com/user/RezoAcken

Also be sure to check out Marbozir who popularized the Liberty CB Rush on these forums. This is a strategy that does not see nearly as much use anymore (hence why you don't see it at all in the recent DCL games, as you have noticed, more in the older ones).

https://www.youtube.com/user/Moriarte1982

Finally, for a good representation of the Honor Commerce Autocracy strategy I'd like to refer you to peddroelm. For a long time people on this forum thought Tradition and Liberty were clearly superior, even for warfare, but that slowly changed, definitely also thanks to this player:

https://www.youtube.com/user/peddroelm
 
That is a really great post and I'm honestly baffled by the amount of time you put into working out the spoilered statistic. Very nice work, colour me impressed.

There's another issue here.

Tradition is always going to be the safe bet doing anything in this game. It's really hard to mess it up, honestly. People all over this forum advocate doing everything with Tradition because it's almost impossible to fail. I personally have never, not once done a tradition turtle to XCom domination. Nor have I ever built a stealth bomber for anything other than novelty. And yet, if you look around the internet you will find that exact strategy being touted as a "domination victory."

I completely disagree. While it's technically a domination victory and gets you the pop up at the end of the game that says so, it's anything but. It's like calling the same thing a culture victory, while true, it's disingenuous to speak about the victory in those terms. You're not doing anything different than a normal science/diplo game except altering the tech path slightly and finishing around the same time.

Furthermore, if we accept the claim that many people make, if you're any good at the game at all it's impossible to lose even on deity, then we must then make the claim that a tradition win, no matter the method or timeframe is pointless. You could win it with your eyes closed just by spamming Xcoms and stealth bombers right? Right, so then it becomes nothing more than a fallback for bad play, and a safe bet.

For a lot of people with many, many hours into the game (such as myself, and Carl up here), this is an unacceptable way to play the game anymore. I know I'm going to win every game I start, the only question is how much effort I'm going to put into it. The trouble is that people like us are underrepresented on the board, and you can see why historically. The people that are bored with the game and switch to fast domination tended to master that and then quit posting. tommynt posted some unbelievable domination finish times, Ironfighter was around in the early days just kicking over tables and having his way with the game. Cromagnus posited you could clear a deity map in 100 turns with Attila and very nearly did it. Some other people, inspired by his words got pretty close as well. And just off the top of my head, Consentient turned into a pretty pro player who did a great service for everyone reading this thread and put together a ranking of civs to use if you plan on NOT turtling your way to a boring victory. Peddroelm proved HCA is not only viable, but extremely effective.

What's the common theme of the above? None of them post here frequently anymore. By and large, people thinking outside of the box and forcing new strategies are done posting here. Thankfully, their posts still exist so that people can learn from it, but the echo chamber that is the "tradition turtle your way to victory" is just loud and obnoxious. If you've been posting here for any amount of time you can see that there are many better ways to do things that have cropped up over the years, they just don't have vocal proponents anymore. And I don't have a dog in the fight, since I wasn't part of the crew leading the charge on innovative strategies that challenged the established tradition > all crew, I just came in at the right time to learn from it.

So really it comes down to this - you can do things the safe, and boring way, and that's fine. It's still going to get you a W. I don't really care how you do it, but it's pretty disingenuous to say that nothing else works, or there's not a better way. Like hell there's not - I'd love to see your tradition empire clear a deity pangaea in 113 turns - http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13239792&postcount=75

I really improved my game as a result of reading almost everything on these forums for years, and it really irks me when people try to downplay one strategy that's nearly impossible for a monkey to fail at as being the fastest and best way of doing things when there have been so many people who have proven it wrong, and just aren't around to show you how to do it anymore.
 
Wow thanks for amazing replies guys i got lot of information.

But i am having doubts on my early build orders.

I generally saw people doing scout>shrine>worker>library most of the time but it is delaying my military production and at king+ the AI are settling very near to my capital and declaring war on my for weak military.

For new cities what should be the build order because the production on new cities is very bad like 20 turns,40 turns for any building or units.

What build order should i follow for capital city at start?.

What is the optimal build order for all types of victory?

I really need a good teacher to play with me for a while hahaha.
 
I often have 0% literacy until around turn 50-60 on quick speed. That library is way, way, way, obscenely too fast. Every single city you plan on building should be up before you build libraries; that's a pretty common belief, I think. I play wide, and my personal belief is that you should be building most libraries around the same time, turn 65-70 finishing your NC. You don't even need writing tech until you're either going towards civil service or ready to build every library, and early libraries are 1 maintenance for ~4 beakers. Hardly worth cities working hammers, gold, and making beakers from population.


WIDE: I go scout > monument > shrine > settler spam, sometimes a second scout or sometimes a granary after the shrine, sometimes both but rarely. Picking up only very necessary timing buildings, namely circus and mint/market and occasionally stable until I'm done making settlers, sometimes throwing in a worker. After all the settlers are done, then I start on libraries. After your border cities, settle your internals by ascending order of immediate hammers. This way, properly focusing production, your very last library will be out ~9 (quick speed) turns after your last expand. Usually after 5ish cities I'll go Pyramids in the cap, unless it's implausible.

TALL: I go scout > scout > shrine > 3 settlers > NC stuff > universities
With buildings like granary and water mill in the cap every single time, interspersed along with whimsical wonder selections into the settler phase.

Obviously my tall isn't nearly as developed as my wide.

@Chum, I agree with the Liberty stuff but I know nothing of these phantoms of the forums and their innovations to wide play. I think the overall argument really comes down to effort/reward, IE tradition is safe and easy and simple but Liberty is better, though more complex etc, if you put in the effort. Of course, I don't want to turn this thread into another "TI,LICUWT" thread, so I'll leave it there.
 
Shame I missed these guys and their posts chum! I would've been interested to follow in that debate and contribute to it. I always suspected you could get very fast science and domination victories with alternate strategies to tall/tradition and have argued it recently with some die-hard tradition fans and been running my own experiments. My latest was a religious wide Celts build which I played out a poor land-locked start on huge map and managed via a new religious strat to quickly REX 11 cities and grow them constantly all game. Still SV by T265. I think on games like that the wide science strategy would actually win over tradition since you don't have great terrain or start, but of course none of the tradition proponents would play the start to see though I did throw the challenge. Seems they only play really perfect settings for their fast times and didn't want to play a game without mountains and coast lol. Whereas wide/religious does well on pretty much any map with space. It's true tradition is safer but I'd argue it can also actively be WORSE to choose if you are playing a poorer map. Though that would need to be proven in a GOTM or something. It's just something I suspect. Most of the tradition players I talk too admitted they just reroll the average starts and seek out good ones. It's really a self-reinforcing behavior as a lot of those average start games are perfect for a liberty/REX game and play very well in my experience.

As for Domination there is no comparison--it's obvious which will win faster you just need to learn to be better at early war. I haven't done a lot of domination but even I know with the right promotion track, honor, and well-timed rushes you can take over anyone early. These posts are in the guide section? I'm interested in digging them up as I'm getting more into dom victories recently.
 
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