Need tips on Domination / Conquest

[Sandman2012]

I'm an average level player at Civ 4; I play on Noble level and have gotten to the point where I can do pretty well, winning at least half the time or more. Usually, I win the Space Race, though I've done a Diplomatic victory once and came close to a Cultural victory a few times as well (lost to a Space Race winner - need to plant spies next time).

I'm interested in trying for a Conquest or Domination victory, but find it difficult given my style of play and wanted some tips. I'm generally pretty good at short wars, building up mixed troops and then taking a neighbor's city or two and trashing his infrastructure, then suing for peace. I find if I go any longer, war weariness becomes too much, as well as paying for troops' supply. Usually I leave two defenders in each city, and a few mobile troops (ie. mounted) scattered by my borders to protect against opportunistic AIs, while the bulk of my force is in the enemy's territory, tearin' some sh*t up.

The problem I'm having is that it's slow going, and by the time I've wiped out a few AIs, the others have a huge tech lead making war against them very difficult. What am I doing wrong? Any tips? I've read a lot of the guides here already and have a good understanding of the game mechanics and such.

Other apsects of my play style: I micromanage workers and for cities, I check in on them each time something is built in one, sometimes manging citizens and other times tweaking the governer to certain tasks (ie. shields, GP, etc).

 

[jafink]

I have the same problem as you. usually i am a peaceful player, especially in the early game. I want to try to win by domination, but i can't seem to win any wars before i get catapults. I just won my first game on prince though by spacerace victory.

 

[jameson]

I just won my first game by domination on prince level (moving up to monarch now ) and basically two thirds of my conquests came in the modern era with Modern Armour; the rest was done with cavalry and tanks. So as long as you do well enough in the landgrab and keep up or keep a little ahead in tech there's no reason to start conquering until you can afford it.

One thing to keep in mind if you go for domination is that the cities of which you trash the infrastructure will be your cities momentarily, so I often find it more useful to keep it intact as much as possible ( though I will disconnect strategic resources). What works best imho is exactly what the thread starter does; grab a city or two, sue for peace, build those cities up to become productive parts of your empire, then grab a few more cities. Once you've got all the modern military techs, turn off research, rushbuy anything you need with suffrage. Playing an Organized civ will help maintain a larger empire, aggressive will help your troops where they need it but financial might be even more useful to keep up in tech (I played as Japan though).

 

[cleverhandle]

Hmm... I've found just the opposite of jameson - that domination wins require consistent warring throughout the game with only minimal breaks for infrastructure, not quite Always War but not far from it. Kill a civ with chariots, breathe, kill a civ with knights/maces, breathe, kill a civ with cavalry/infantry, etc. You just don't have time to build up into an ideal position and then launch a perfectly coordinated and supplied assault.

It may depend a lot on map type. I'm speaking from playing Standard Continents, on Prince at the moment. Pang and/or small maps are going to play quite differently.

 

[Sandman2012]

That reminds me, I should have mentioned that I play on a Standard size map with continents, all the default settings the game comes with.

 

[FenrysWulf]

Conquest is usually my goal. First of all, if you really want to win by conquest you might want to disable space race as a victory condition, and you also have to disable domination because it will kick in first. You may have to disable cultural victory too. One important thing is to fight wars when you have certain advantages. When you have cavalry and your enemy doesn't yet have riflemen is a great time to fight. Build up a large force and take their cities fast before they can upgrade their units. Another is when you get tanks as long as they don't have mech infantry. Conquest gets very hard when they get mech infantry. Otherwise, a lot of my wars started when someone else attacked me, but once I got the upper hand I didn't let them get away. I think the war weariness is less when you are the one attacked, so it's a good time to take advantage of it. When they declare war on you, let them send in their troops against you and destroy them. Once you've done that, you've eliminated a good part of their forces and there are fewer to defend their cities. It also helps to be on a large continent because it takes so long to get troops across the ocean. If you are a small continent invading a large one it will be a lot harder.

 

[Crimso]

This is too long so I'll just inbolden the important parts.

For me strategy in CIV is all or nothing, so her goes: choose an aggressive civ, and early on go for bronze working and then iron working. Adopt Vassalage, Hereditary Rule and Theocracy. Start building mostly swords, with a few axes. Give them promotions that improve their natural abilities; City Raider II for swords and Shock for axes, and then use them to kill barbarians for xp. While this is happening, head for construction, and once you get it, spam catapults. Then, make two or three forces of swords/pults/axes/archers (at a ratio of about 3/3/1/1) and go conquer a neighbor that is nice and close.

In an actual war, the single most important factor, after working up a big force, is speed. Make sure you deploy your forces in a manner in which they can take a city and then move on to the next one quickly. Don't wait a long time between wars either. So what if they have longbow men? Your City Raider III 'pults and swords will win in the end (after a few sacrifices).

Now, you can build spears, war elephants, more axes, etc. but on Prince this is really unnecessary. Looking at the stats at the end of my last game, I saw that I killed 100 archers/longbowmen/rilfemen and much, much fewer of anything else.

I've won two games through domination on Prince, one where I heavily pillaged and another where I only pillaged horses, iron etc. I would say that not pillaging faired better until the modern age, where the cities I was taking weren't going to be of any use in the long run.

You say you have a problem with war weariness. Conquering an entire civ gives you all of their luxury resources, which is the single largest factor in making cities happy for the war-monger. Take out one or two resource-rich civs, build markets and forges in all your cities, and happiness is simply not an issue on Prince. It works the same with health luxuries and grocers. Do you see the problem with just taking one or two cities now? You endure all of the hardships of war without the wonderful spoils. You gotta steamroll, it's the only way. With varied resources you can ignore aqueducts, colloseums etc. until late in the game. Also, unlike them, grocers, markets and forges also give huge gold and production bonuses.

With infrastructure, I'm surprised to see that you have a problem even though you don't automate your workers. You need a strong infrastructure for the strategy I'm proposing, because the warmonger civics can be expensive. What works for me is making sure my economy is keeping pace, by giving myself a long time (until construction) to make sure each square I'm working is at full potential. If you're already micromanaging your workers, my suggestion would be to just build more.

Founding a religion early on can be a huge boost. In my strategy I rely a lot on the Theocracy civic. As even if you don't found a religion, adpot one ASAP and build missionaries to get all of your cities that religion.

Finally, relationships can play a HUGE part in warmongering. Falling behind in tech is common, so you need friends to keep up. What are you going to do with the surplus resources? Trade for more. It also really helps to have one or two borders almost completely undefended so you can focus on another. There are two ways to make strong relationships in the early game: get as many civs to adpot your relegion as possible, and sign openborder agreements with everyone the moment you get writing.

Y'know what, I could write pages and pages more detailing every little thing, but no one wants to read that and this post is already to long. If you take one thing away from this bloated message, it should be this: all-or-nothing STEAMROLL, one civ after another.

 

[Shillen]

No one talks about how they fight overseas wars. It leads me to believe that everyone is doing their warmongering on pangaea maps. Overseas wars are extremely difficult compared to steamrolling a pangaea map so I'd love to hear some good strategies for that. How do you wage an overseas war without your units becoming obsolete before they arrive on the other continent? (on monarch+ difficulty, I know you can get an insane tech lead on lower difficulties which negates this problem)

 

[JackTheNarrator]

Well I currently win by domination on continent map at prince, but it's abnsolutly true that taking my own continent is far easier than taking another.

First I play as Jules Cesar, on a standard continent map, I start Bronze Working > Road > Iron Working to have my powerfull UU. I do the classical chop rush at the beginning to expand my empire. Generally I Have 4 cities when I discover Iron with 2-3 warriors and 2 workers, then I chop Barrack and Praetorians (I research Archery). As soon as I have 4 praetoriens I start a war with my nearest opponent, and I keep creating unit. My research stay at 70-80% as I earn money from each city I have captured. When the AI have only one city I sue for peace and obtain his tech, and I attack another opponent with my upgraded stack of unit.

As soon as possible take vassalage & theocracy

This work till your opponents have long archer & big defense. After you must combined praetorian with catapulte (usally I take a big group of 5 for destroying city defense and one or two for suicide bombing)

If your are fast enough you can conquier your own continent before your praetorian become obsolete. Then you will probably have a researsh rate of 30% but if you trade techs for peace and keep some city producing "research" you will be only two to three tech behind the other continent AI.
Also try to have a lot of money in ordre to upgrade your preatorian massively when you have decent transport to cross the sea...

Then as soon as you have taken one city on the other continent you have to create a constant naval bridge between the two continent to transport your unit...

Also try to have "medic" in your troops to heal them, and protect your veteran from dangerous battles...

Well this is not a reference for "winning as the romans" but It may helps you...

 

[FenrysWulf]

No one talks about how they fight overseas wars. It leads me to believe that everyone is doing their warmongering on pangaea maps. Overseas wars are extremely difficult compared to steamrolling a pangaea map so I'd love to hear some good strategies for that. How do you wage an overseas war without your units becoming obsolete before they arrive on the other continent? (on monarch+ difficulty, I know you can get an insane tech lead on lower difficulties which negates this problem)

I try not to fight overseas until my continent is all mine. I don't play on pangaea, but I do play on continents. The reason I want to conquer my home continent first is that then I don't have to worry about defense and I have all of those cities building units. For this reason, when I attack other continents it tends to be later in the game, so you don't have to worry about units being obsolete because they are already as high as they can get, or are something you can upgrade when you get a new technology. If you find you can't conquer the entire civilization at once, like if you start your attack with cavalry and all of a sudden your opponent gets infantry, you may want to do whatever you have to to capture at least one city, then sign peace and use that time to build up a huge invasion force in your captured city, so you can launch the next war with forces already in place. Oh, that reminds me, try to make the initial invasion force as large as possible. I never wait as long as I should, but I'd start with at least 5 or 6 transports full of units poised outside the enemy civ before I declare war, and try to get a situation where there's another boatload of reinforcements coming every turn. You also need enough naval power to destroy the enemy's navy or else it becomes impossible to send reinforcements. Luckily once you do destroy their ships they tend to be slow building more, and the ones they have they tend to keep inside their cities.

 

[Jass]

To lessen the war weariness problem, be a total diplomatic jerk. The ai will declare war on you. It's a little harder to plan ahead, but the difference in happiness is huge.

I agree with the steam-roller above. It's almost a constant war for me. Almost constant vasselage & theocracy. Keeping one or two distant friends (I usually play with +/-15 opponents) is very important for tech trading. Also, try to fight wars with the weaker opponents that are the closest to your borders. Don't forget to use diplomacy to get other nations involved in your wars. Divide the ennemy's troops by having another AI flank them. I don't worry about the cost of getting others in the war. I've traded quite a lot of expensive techs to get other nations to fight my wars. My filosofy is that they'll get the techs with or without you, so you may as well benefit from it. And you'll end up eliminating them anyway.

About oversea war, yes, it's harder. You have to capture the weakest city on the other continent, and then start using it as a base of opperations. Especially in the later game (with flight), spam airports on your own continent and one on the captured city on the other continent. This will save you huge amounts of turns.

And lastly, gold is more important for the warmonger than it is for the techracer. Act accordingly. Increase your funds, at (almost) any cost. You'll have to upgrade all those units. But it's worth it. Having a level 4-5 army is a big advantage.

I play as Japan when I play a wargame. Organized will save you lots of money without having to worry about decent cities too much. And obviously agressive.