Mid to Late Game Warmongering

[Davetripd]

From lurking around these forums I have quickly moved up to reliable prince player, the final tweak I needed to my strategy was in my initial rexing I was trying to place perfect cities with no overlap so I would end up with about 4 initial cities instead of 6-8.

Anyways, Im confident in my early game play, especially aggression. I usually end up with a dominating military and tech lead. My real problem is I always seem to win via space or diplo, I enjoy warring and want to start winning via conquest or domination.

On a standard sized map, usually fractal, big/small, or pangea I typically have an early rush, followed by a medieval war or a riflemen/cannon war leading into infantry. Ill have a crushing lead usually but get overwhelmed with the number of units I have once modern hits, especially when having to cross oceans after my landmass is taken over, so Ill just tech and get an easy space win.

Is this typical for domination wins? Moving around tons of units and managing 25+ cities is tedious even on a standard map. I enjoy warring but my games are lasting up to 10 hours or sometimes longer, seems like im doing something wrong.

 

[Wulf38]

Sorry if you already know about these things, but you may need to learn how to use queueing and waypoints. These make late game warring quite easy.

Go into your military production cities and set them to loop whatever units you want. Hold alt and click the unit to make the city produce it over and over again. You might have for example half your hammer cities looping infantry and the other half looping artillery. Then have a couple coastal production cities, one looping transports and another looping escorts (battleships/destroyers).

Set waypoints: for each of your land unit producing cities, click on the bar under the city and then hold shift and right-click some tile next to the coast. All units will go there automatically. For your naval cities, set a waypoint to a coast tile next to where your land units are accumulating.

Once these things are done, just hit end-turn until enough units and transports pile up. Then shove all your units onto the transports and invade.

 

[Druin]

Well, while it is definitely possible to win domination before the onset of "too many cities... must construct additional pylons," it isn't easy and only gets harder the further up in difficulty you go.

Most domination games will end at LEAST in the tanks era and at most well into the "nuke the guy who is going for culture victory!" era.

I prefer domination wins (or diplomination) myself and ran across this very problem. Here is how I solved it (in no particular order of importance).

First: As soon as you know there will be another continent to take over, start relegating some cities to ship creation in your mind. A good navy, while mostly useless through cannons, is 100% vital when it comes to tanks, fighters and battleships.

Second: Do not underestimate the power of the airforce. If one single factor changed my late game domination gameplay the most, it was tripling the importance of planes in my mind. Getting to flight first, building 100 fighters and 10-15 carriers can essentially win the game for you all on its own. I have mixed feelings about bombers, as I find enough fighters >> bombers and stacking planes on carriers >> stacking bombers in towns. But perhaps other people feel differently.

Third: While good worker and city micro are essential in the beginning of the game, once you are firmly set on the warpath, it becomes less important. Do things like group workers, auto-trade-route workers, set rally points for all buildings at once and build generic buildings with MUCH less discrimination. None of these things should cost you enough utility to hurt your game much and they greatly decrease the amount you have to think about each turn. Telling a group of 6 workers to insta build a cottage is SO much easier than telling one at a time because you only actually need 4

Fourth: Vassalize often. Taking the cities you need for your empire (the shiny ones!) and then vassalizing that nation allows you to keep military tech leads much more easily than outright destruction. I usually completely eliminate my first target to immediately get ALL their land with no extra unhappiness, but after that I just chain vassal my conquests so that I can move onto the next before they get too many military techs. It is much simpler to wage a cross-ocean war when your fighters and tanks are against their rifles. And your stack of 4 battleships can defend your carriers indefinitely against their unpromoted destroyers.

Fifth (and last I promise!): Produce more units. You might think that your stack of 40 tanks is enough to conquer the world, but you KNOW a stack of 120 is. Once you are well enough into the "snowball" effect that is domination victory, there should be nothing stopping your empire from out-producing opponents. Some cities should just never stop making units. As soon as you get airports, put them in those cities and then the units go right to the front every turn. If your new units can't reach your massive stack that is deep in enemy territory then just use them to make a new stack ... you really can never have too many units.

This does lead to micro problems, but honestly, once you have enough production, combat efficiency stops mattering so much. Instead of deciding which unit should attack first, just select the whole stack and right click the target over and over until you win. I know this sounds "bad" but it will save you a headache every time. ... oh and turn off combat animations if you haven't already ... it will cut off 2 hours from your games I promise.

Best of luck!

 

[UWHabs]

Especially late-game when I have a tech lead, I stop micromanaging. So, stack attack is my friend. Ctrl-click your artillery, bombard. ctrl-click your tanks, attack. Sure, I probably don't get optimal matchups, but whatever. Most of my games I get ahead enough in, I can just take a couple cities from someone and they'll cap to me.

 

[Druin]

Especially late-game when I have a tech lead, I stop micromanaging. So, stack attack is my friend. Ctrl-click your artillery, bombard. ctrl-click your tanks, attack. Sure, I probably don't get optimal matchups, but whatever. Most of my games I get ahead enough in, I can just take a couple cities from someone and they'll cap to me.

truth

 

[DMOC]

Is this typical for domination wins? Moving around tons of units and managing 25+ cities is tedious even on a standard map. I enjoy warring but my games are lasting up to 10 hours or sometimes longer, seems like im doing something wrong.

I am pressed for time at the moment but wanted to say that my latest space race win lasted 30 hours.

PS: The comments about waypoints/queuing is interesting ... I've never done that in a game yet.

 

[Druin]

I am pressed for time at the moment but wanted to say that my latest space race win lasted 30 hours.

PS: The comments about waypoints/queuing is interesting ... I've never done that in a game yet.

If my Civ games lasted 30 hours my gf would break up with me

You are too cool for school in my book DMOC

 

[Davetripd]

Thanks for the tips, just finished my best domination game, scored 105k on a small pangea with rifles and cannons.