New challenge: Conquest victories

[blizzrd]

Egypt is actually not that hard to win a conquest victory, as long as you crush everyone before the Persians spawn.

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

But can any other civ win a conquest victory? (without collapsing due to instability while trying)

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Wow, a 4 star war chariot...that's impressive.
I think the reason why Carthage and Greece (probably the only other candidates) are so hard is that they don't have enough settlers like Rome, and you can't squash other civs, like Rome can with Carthage and Greece. Even if you squat Italy, once Rome gets going with founding cities in France and Spain it's too hard to kill them all. Roman roads are also a plus to get your veterans to where the new civs are going to spawn.

 

[Quotey]

Someone do a conquest as America!

 

[bazooka82]

I bet you could just try raging barbarians and just sit there and hope that everyone else dies

 

[Norton II]

Babylon can on monarch, as long as you get your bowmen over to China early enough (e.g, first five or six to China taking Afrosiab en route, next three to Egypt, next three to India). Admittedly, I had to reload quite a bit the last time I tried it--sometimes even 10 bowmen can't take down Jerusalem.

 

[Aleenik]

Someone do a conquest as America!

personally I think the hardest civ to do conquest with would be either Portugal or Netherlands , not America..Why? America gets to be huge and gets nice production going on..while Portugal and Dutch MUST colonize to do so, but the problem is They got a city or 2 in europe, causing tension with other euros and possiblee starting wars...then competition soon after trying to colonize and usually the AI colonizes decently..

 

[KnightoftheStar]

personally I think the hardest civ to do conquest with would be either Portugal or Netherlands , not America..Why? America gets to be huge and gets nice production going on..while Portugal and Dutch MUST colonize to do so, but the problem is They got a city or 2 in europe, causing tension with other euros and possiblee starting wars...then competition soon after trying to colonize and usually the AI colonizes decently..

There would be HUGE stability issues as well as the difficulties in taking down most of the world in likely less than a hundred years give or take, you would have to be VERY free with nukes among other things to pull that off and get lucky.

 

[blizzrd]

First warrior headed for China and earned three city raider promotions along the way by killing animals and barbarians. China only had two warriors when my suped up warrior arrived.

Built worker, barracks, then lots of bowmen in Babylon. Researched Mining, Masonry, Hunting, Archery, Bronze Working. Hooked up the Marble, then Stone, then built a mine on the hill N of Babylon and then hooked up the Copper.

First three bowmen headed for Egypt. Egypt built an archer the turn that I approached their capital. They also had 4 warriors in there. The archer attacked my bowman and won, but the Egyptian archer was left outside the city on 0.5 health and was easily finished off next round by my reinforcements. The remaining warriors didn't stick around for much longer after that.

The next two bowmen headed for India. India only had two warriors, and I actually only would have needed to send one bowman in hindsight.

My suped up Warrior made it back to Babylon from touring China (razing Afrosaib on the way home) just in time to be promoted to an Axeman. The Archers in Jerusalem fell one after the other to my Axeman.

Bowmen have an inherent bonus against all of the Greek starting units. Both Byzantion and Athens fell without loss too.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

I haven't done it yet, but my ongoing Dutch SG (still in Universal Suffrage and no occupation or police state) which I'm trying my best to finish without declaring war gave me some ideas. The problem with conquests is that you cannot win a domination victory prematurely. Thankfully, for our purposes, the more civs you collapse, the higher the land criteria. Another observation is that expansion stability goes up A LOT if you give your new conquests to another civ (and it doesn't have to be your vassals)--if you have a lot of cities (I mean 30+).

So I propose the following:

1. Get NAm and 4 good vassals (1 in each continent preferably), build up 15+ nukes and lots of tanks. Get about 20% and 30% land and population. Switch to Police State/Nationhood and occupation.
2. Start declaring war on the rival with the most vassals (usually it's Turkey or China). Nuke everything that is not in territory you want to keep (obviously you need to have a substantial tech lead so that nobody has ecology). Areas you want are "neutral" (i.e. Africa, Australia, South America)--that cannot respawn a civ.
3. When expansion stability gets to be a problem, liberate cities to your vassals or give them to a friendly civ (being in a defensive pact and on your side in the war helps--in my case it was Russia) or a non friendly civ (Japan). Whoever will take the cities gets them, although you may want to give your next enemy the worst cities to destabilize them. Your tanks then move on to your next targets until your current rival and their vassals collapse. NEVER force your vassals into being unstable from absorbing your cities (because if they collapse you have to conquer all those independent cities again). Having your vassals switch to police state/nationhood before you start the war will help.
4. Razing a city or two when you're superstable with expansion helps: e.g. when you're invading India, raze Delhi and Patna, so that it won't respawn. Or if it's Arabia, raze Mekkah and leave the Arabian peninsula empty. On another front you're doing the conquering/gifting routine so that your stability will always be solid or above.
5. After your current rivals are dead and unable to resurrect (due to the nuclear wasteland that were their homelands), start all over again with the tech leader (usually England, France or Portugal) so that nobody will ever have ecology.
6. At the end you may be down to 1-2 really big civs and there are no more rivals to give cities to. (The fact that they are big will slow down their research.) Here you have to do what blizzrd proposed--have a really large force scatter around the globe so that you can capture everything all at once, but since half the world is now a nuclear wasteland, the number of cities needed to raze/capture is much smaller.

 

[blizzrd]

Apart from my current techincal difficulties, I've been trying to achieve a late-game conquest victory with France for a while now. I've got to 1800 or so and I have such a tech lead on everyone else (Bombers and Artillery, not nukes yet though, as opposed to Rifles at best) that I'm planning on just declaring war on the world simultaneously, more or less.

I'll let you know how it goes eventually, because I intend to replace my PC and finish the French conquest game - but I've got a couple of little things to look after first.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Try at least having 2-3 allies in your initial wars to absorb your conquests and then backstab them.

(little things or little people?)

 

[AnotherPacifist]

If you're playing France, assuming you have America, Khmer, Mali and Spain as vassals, and you occupied Germany and Netherlands while your vassal Spain killed Portugal, these are the key cities to raze:
1. Aztec and Incan cities (once razed they won't ever respawn) and Chichen Itza
2. Delhi and Mumbai but not Patna (due to shrines)
3. the 2 Egyptian cities
4. Babylon and the Black Sea city just north of it (to ensure Babylonia doesn't respawn)
5. Arabian cities (3-4)
6. Any north African cities unless owned by Spain (Carthage)

That's 3 (squat)+ 4(vassals) + 8 civs (including Mayans)= 13 of the possible 26 opponents out. Rome and Athens should be kept but no other cities built in their spawn area.

That leaves Mongolia, Russia, Britain, Turkey, China, and Japan to conquer. (Persia may spawn but isn't an issue). Russia will absorb anything in Asia, so Britain and Turkey should be the first to go (due to their science and culture, respectively), and give nuked cities to China/Japan. Then go after Russia (before they get infantry), then Japan and finally China.
Independent cities should be razed to avoid winning by domination. Do not found cities in South Africa or Australia.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Sorry blizzrd, beat you to it.

The hard part wasn't stability (in fact up till the very end I was flip-flopping between unstable and very solid, depending on how many cities I could liberate). The really hard part was to NOT get domination victory. I basically used the Indians and then the Vikings (with whom I had a long standing defensive pact) to absorb some really trashy cities up in northern Russia and to get good stability. I had to give away most of North America to the Aztecs.

I had to raze very selectively (usually the nuked cities). You'll notice that I razed most of the cities in the middle so that Babylonia, Turkey and Persia can't respawn. I thought about razing Mekkah, but Mali was willing to accept it, so I gave it to them. Almost lived to regret it since Mali was the first to become collapsing (I would have lost if the Arabian respawned since my land area was 47.5%, and a respawn would have driven the domination requirement from 48% to 46%).

So Germany can probably do the same, except that it'll need to get to America first.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

So because of the number of civs you have to squash, here's probably the difficulty of conquest victory:

Easy:
--*Rome (see thread on killing all European and late civs)
--*France (Dutch/German squat, large American endowment)
--*Germany (Dutch kill, able to absorb most of Europe and some of America)
--*Russia (bide your time and kill Germany soon, and any civ that knows industrialism)
--*Spain (Lisboa squat, get France as vassal and Dutch kill, no need to worry about lots of indy cities in South America if you don't found them)
--*England (lots of area without penalty, but may have to work hard to kill other continental Europeans)
--*Vikings (just squat Germany and England)
--*Portugal (just grovel in front of Isabella, steal all her techs with a great spy, then b*()& slap her later)
--*Turkey/*Arabia/*Persia (I lump them together because the tough part is to keep Middle Eastern civs and India/Egypt from respawning from time to time, and as long as you get to the Americas first you should do fine) See the succession game AP-2 for step-by-step procedure.
--*Mongolia (large area, but have to raze lots of other cities, and have to deal with America)
--*Netherlands (just need to expand rapidly)

Moderate (simply because there's a lot more to raze; the only advantage is NAm):
--America
--*China
--*Japan
--*Khmer
--*Greece
--*Carthage

Tough to impossible (because of lack of tech, stability or small spawn area):
--*Inca (if you are able to disable domination)
--Aztecs
--India
--Ethiopia
--Mali

Egypt and Babylon are in a separate category simply because you can do them before all the other civs spawn.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that our Dutch SG game taught me about founding island cities in the Pacific under resettlement, and giving them to the Incans or Aztecs. Good for stability and not so large to bring your land area up too much. How I wish Rhye could allow us to turn off domination victory or have unlimited vassals.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

I think I have it down pat with the Europeans. Started out with the Dutch kill and expanded eastward to prevent the Russians from ever getting a seaport. First to liberalism in 1450, vassals are Aztecs, Inca, Mali and Spain (the latter after a world war). Backstabbed Turkey in the 1800's after they helped me kill Russia, then backstabbed England. Then Maya respawned and if you look on the history slideshow, you'll see I gave them all kinds of useless central Asian Mongolian cities as I conquered them. Because they didn't have time to build any troops, when I was done with China, Japan and the indies in SE Asia, I went backwards (i.e. west) and conquered them empty cities one by one. Didn't even have to get to 2/3 UHV.

One neat trick I used when I realized France was about to conquer Rome--I bribed them with paper (it was that or 400g) and asked them to make peace with the independents. I then swooped in and conquered Rome myself.

At the very next to last move, I forgot that Arguim was independent and it was really funny to see my empire disintegrate into independents with the globe view. Giving 3 cities in central Asia to Spain and 2 Chinese cities to Aztec bumped me from collapsing to very solid and I won the next move.

Next up, maybe Spain?

 

[Wessel V1]

Those pictures look like the game Risk http://www.allfacebook.com/images/risk.gif

Keep them coming, please

 

[AnotherPacifist]

I used to play Risk on my Mac obsessively in college...all those solid blocks of land in one color.

I'm actually going to try Russia next, with the goal of getting to optics first. If Germany can do it, so can Russia (both start without sailing or guilds) by founding Abo and Novgorod first. The only problem will be to open borders with Germany/France and be able to contact the Dutch early (makes guilds less expensive). No more tiny Siberia cities to give to the AI but I'm sure one of my vassals will accept those Mongolia desert cities. Then it's conquering from both east and west for the ultimate USSR of the world!

 

[AnotherPacifist]

My Russian game is going really well. I got free Aesthetics AND sailing from the 2 huts in central Asia (although some gold would have been better than sailing since I was 3 turns from it). Founded Talinn and Zhitomyr effectively hemming in the Germans. Was super friendly to everybody (even the Germans are pleased with me), not less helped by the best defense event. Got to America first with my 2 caravels (even having avoided the Incan boat in 1400's) and capitulated both Aztecs and Incans, and founded New Orleans and Chicago. The unfortunate thing was that I was 5 turns from liberalism when England snatched it from me. However, made up for it with a scout (at the hut near Quitu) who got me at the hut near Guiana...wait for it...ASTRONOMY!!! So I'm top in score and well on my way to get Taj Mahal and scientific method first.

 

[Jet]

I know a few people who played Mac Risk obsessively in college.

I worked with a guy for two years before finding out he was the author of that program. I said "Yeah, we used to play that all night!" He said, "All night?" and looked at me strangely.

ding!

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Update on the USSR in the mid 1700's:
We have our 1/3 UHV (3 Siberian cities). We're also first in score and tech having gotten to Physics and Communism first, lots of techs (democracy, chemistry, rifling and soon medicine) were stolen from the Turks (who irritatingly built Kilia right south of Zhitomyr, but I got Kilia from the world conference). We built the Taj Mahal, Statue of Liberty and Kremlin in Ryazan (ironies of ironies). Germany is literally friendly with us and conquering all kinds of small indy cities in collapsed Vikingland.
The Americans were a pain. I gave them a map and they were pleased with me, but they wanted my Chicago (and England did not declare war on them but instead joined them in a war after the first conference with me, Turkey and Germany on the other side). I've captured Washington and the Floridas, and will soon kill America by getting New York. England lost its Caracas (Georgetown) which I liberated to the Incans so they won't need oil in the future) and I will probably get Fort Albany soon.

The only problems I see are:
1. most civs are fairly advanced (England will soon have assembly line which I have already). I really need to capture more German land before they get industrialism.
2. lots of cities in Africa and Australia, with Mali being Spain's vassal.
3. expansion stability is only at 1 star.
4. No great people despite my largish cities (didn't set enough specialists due to 2 plagues) so no golden age civic change.