Acken
Deity
Futurism CV is still very similar to SV: you aim for a quick, first ideology, then spam GWAMs until you hopefully win. You're no longer spending hammers on tourism wonders and buildings or on archaeologists, you no longer necessarily need any techs after Research Labs (maybe even Radio), and you ideally don't work any guild slots until you have Futurism, but you're still following the exact same pre-Labs strategy as an SV player (even more so because you're no longer diverting to build archaeologists and tourism wonders like a CV player), and you're still using the same method to generate tourism as an SV player would to get most of their techs (patiently and peacefully with specialists and GPs).
Yes exactly and so is an artillery into bomber game. Most of the game is the same but not the last third. Really the real difference domination is warring. Your economic and science development is mostly the same up to that point. It's a pretty big difference for sure but mostly due to war not being useful or very present in the game in general.
XCOM/SB rush is, like you said, almost an SV, though the placement of both XCOMs and SBs in the tech tree lets the player get away with avoiding a fair chunk of the post-Modern tech tree.
Same comment as above but with Internet.
An artillery domination isn't necessarily like an SV though. Sure, you can go for an artillery domination strategy if you've followed the usual SV playstyle up to that point, but you need not follow the usual SV playstyle to execute successful artillery domination games: against opponents who don't get yield bonuses, the turning point of Liberty's hammer advantage is roughly around Modern Era, which means you can definitely turn a 6+ city Liberty game into one of artillery domination (and 6+ city Liberty games do not follow the usual SV path).
It is similar, up to the point you decide to no longer pursue science but make units. I'm not sure what Liberty has to do with it. It's a perfectly valid SV tree.
You also should not forget about Frigate/SotL rushes, Chariot Archer rushes, and Battleship rushes, all of which can be mixed with a variety of other DomV strategies. Battleship rushes can be executed along the way towards an XCOM/SB rush, especially if you can upgrade into them, since you don't have to devote less hammers to bombers and paratroopers that you'd be upgrading. Frigate/SotL rushes can also be executed along the way to XCOM/SB rushes, primarily because they lie in an excellent place on the tech path (unlike artillery) and because their strength is fairly high for their era.
Oh sure I'm not denying domination has more options on how to deal with it. But is a chariot rush for domination followed by economic growth followed by another attack really that different than someone also doing a chariot rush and then following this by a culture game ? Warfare is a tool until you decide to truly commit and get all capitals.
The real issue here is that warfare is not rewarding enough for non domination strategies so it is not viewed as a common tool for other goals. A problem my mod kind of try to fix btw, good luck winning peacefully on 4 cities at levels 7-8
Any game that features offensive warfare before Info Era would tilt the game's dynamic toward the DomV-style strategies that are not redundant. If I'm not mistaken however, this sort of stuff plays out very differently in Deity/Immortal singleplayer where your opponents have a significant hammer advantage from the getgo, to the point where it is often better to stick with 4-city Tradition turtling unless you're looking for a DomV specifically.
I don't get this comment.
The other key thing to note is that DomV is the only victory type where you cannot win by peacefully gathering a certain, global yield type that is produced consistently over time, and where you don't win by constantly spawning and faith-purchasing GPs. Great Scientists will help up to a certain point in Atomic and Info Era, but thanks to the tech tree's layout, they're not as strictly necessary as they would be for SV.
GSs are useful for a DomV. You probably won't faith buy them though yes and also spawn a little less of them. But if we're looking at a industrial/modern win, they'll be used like in most strategies, to get the key techs. Granted these techs are a bit everywhere while the key techs of the other victories are all in the information era.
Between choosing which targets to attack, playing Civ5's combat system, and constantly dealing with the sort of area control problems that are only really present in Civ5 when warring, XCOM/SB rushes have a completely different game experience to them than SV, even if their buildup is very similar. Most importantly, you will be dealing with other players directly, and you cannot win by waiting. Sure, XCOM/SB DomV plays the exact game as SV up until around Radar, but their methods, not just their aims, diverge wildly afterwards. CV and SV's paths barely diverge before continuing parallel to each other: even after the point of divergence, you'll both be patiently gathering global yields through specialists and GPs until you have enough tourism/science+gold to win.
True, warfare is certainly a lot different in gameplay while CV and SV are both centered around economy and buildings. But isn't that a problem with how little of it there is for peaceful plays ? With passive AIs and unrewarding aggression ? After all these playstyles should still participate in warfare as it shouldn't be designed to be a domination exclusivity (something MP players have to learn the hard way).