Midgame - Which Victory Condition to Contend?

[InovA]

Hey guys! This site has helped me realize good city locations and how to play the early game, and now I'd like to hear your insight on this position I've reached by the year 1775:

MAP:

Spoiler :

- Vanilla Tokugawa [AGG/ORG]
- Prince difficulty (Think I'll move onto the next hardest after this game!!)
- I am (mainly) alone on my continent with 21 cities after killing off 3 other civilizations.
- I am the ONLY civilization with either Taoism or Confucianism and have no other real religious presence.

TECH:

Spoiler :

- I have every tech any of the A.I. have and more, other than Communism, owned by Elizabeth.

POWER CHART:

Spoiler :

- My ground force has grown lazy since "The Great March of the 30,000 Samurai" uniting my continent, but my navy has ~10 frigates, not much but currently unrivaled.
- I am leading in all other charts.

FOREIGN RELATIONS:

Spoiler :

- I have at some time been at war with Cyrus, Mao Zedong, and Gandhi. (Little to no fighting occurred.)

SCORE:

Spoiler :

- The Manhattan Project has been started, but ehhh is it worth it?
- I have gifted excess resources to Elizabeth, Mansa Musa, Hatshepsut, and George Washington for the past ~15 turns.

KEY CITY:

Spoiler :

- Paris, my farm and science city has Oxford University and National Epic.
- It contains 10 scientists (Statue of Liberty finishing soon) and 6 Great Scientists.

CIVICS:

Spoiler :

Current plans:
- I cancelled spending wealth on research (for 3 turns) and heard moving to Universal Suffrage for spending is a cool trick once your specialists produce enough that spending 80+% only causes a ~3-4 turn difference for tech. Agree? Disagree?
- I'm thinking of moving from Pacifism to Free Religion after 2 more .
- I'm thinking of moving from Mercantilism to State Property to remove the $46/t price for distance maintenance. (After Communism)
- I'm thinking of moving to Universal Suffrage to spend that $paper$ on finishing city projects.
- I don't know what to do in a few of my developed cities that can now only construct units, so I moved their to .

I have already won on a Huge map on Prince difficulty with:
- Time
- Cultural
- Space Race
- Domination (Pangaea)

So optimally I want a Diplomatic Victory, silver medal going to Domination involving a navy/air force/nuclear weapons.

I'm worried about committing to Diplomatic while being the only Taoist, but I gain such a boost with Taoism I don't want to change for a while...

So would you try for a Diplomatic victory from here or try another victory, and what course would you take to get there?

Also I'm interested to hear what you think of claiming 21 cities by 1500 AD, is that number too high for maintenance in general or can it be justified to control all the continent to myself?

 

[Mantic0re]

Victory condition thoughts:

You have a lot of Annoyed civs in the Diplo screenie. I"m not skilled in manipulating the modifiers to make friends especially this late. I think traditional UN victory is out of the question now. To get votes you have to do two things simultaneously. 1) Capitulate quite a few of the AI and 2) Make Friendly with at least one guy to get his vote. I think Washington is your best bet for friendly, he's not so unpredictable. Watch who your trading with and avoid his worst enemies. Might have to switch civics into his favorite for points. Tough part is keeping Friendly while capping other AI (which he won't like).


Huge Intercontinental Domination is tedious and ugly. The land mass calculations could mean that Conquest (capitulation of all the others) will be triggered before Domination. Depends on how much land you own directly.


Culture is out of the question.


I think the path of least resistance to victory would probably be Science, You can safely turtle and tech. If you choose this route you're probably better off building wealth and running a higher slider. Double check it thought, if you have more hammer tiles than cottages Building research may be better.


You have to choose now whether you want to get into a war to win or not. If not go science. If yes then get busy building units. I'd probably go with fighters/transports/destroyers/2-move units. You can capture coastal cities very quickly this way and if you can start a capitulation chain things get easier.
If your not able to capitulate (AI has vassals, heavy losses on your assaults, multi-front large threat wars) then you may be better off razing some coastal cities to cripple the AI further. If you drop the AI power/land equation enough they can loose vassals and/or production so each turn of war increases chances to capitulate.

Nukes are always something to be aware of. I personally dislike using them for many reasons but they can dig you out of a hole if your desperate. Be sure to hog all the Uranium and don't be afraid to burn the world in order to be last one standing. If you can manage war and chain-capitulation without nukes (negative AI modifiers) then keep an close eye on your UN votes and friend modifiers as the war can result in situation where UN votes are easier to get than another vassal because of unit movement, etc,.


You have the tech at this point to manage 21 cities, it's more a question of what to do with them. Do you want a bloodbath or not?

 

[Bandobras Took]

If this is Vanilla, capitulation is unavailable.

 

[ikotomi]

Universal Suffrage will hurt you really bad, because your Oxford City is completely specialist driven. The tech rate will be essentially cut in half. I don't know how Kyoto is doing, but Paris is your best science city right now.

I would note that Oxford should usually be built in your capital, because the effect stacks with Bureaucracy, which you are not running. Are you currently drafting units right now?

For production, slavery would normally be sufficient without needing to rush buy, but your economy is currently reliant on Caste so it's hard to make the switch. Do you have any strong cottage cities? Any victory other than Space you will probably want to switch to slavery to pump out units, but without strong cottage cities, your economy might crash when you stop building wealth. If not, you'll probably want to switch to State Property and workshop your tiles to produce things the old fashioned way. My guess is you'll need to build a lot of workers.

 

[Macksideshow]

My vote would be domination. Tech ASAP: Assembly Line, Industrialism, Flight, Railroad, Combustion.
Then stop teching convert economy to hammers and whip/draft/build: Destroyers, Transports, Carriers, Infantry, Marines, Tanks, Fighter and Bombers and go nuts. Rocketry and Nukes if someone else builds the Madhatter project.

Open up a tank war against Alexander using Washington's cities as bases for your bombers. Try get Washington involved against Alexander or Julius then backstab him once you have a solid force built up on that continent and you have located his SOD and key production cities. Keep Julius as happy as you can until you're ready to do the same to him. Once that continent is secured you can pull out your defensive forces and look to do a similar thing on the other continent but I would focus on picking off weaker civs until you hit domination limit

Use a strikeforce of destroyers, carriers/fighters and transports/marines to raze coastal cities (prioritize high production) of anyone who f*cks with you or looks like they're thinking of f*cking with you.