New challenge: domination victories for civs

[AnotherPacifist]

I've got a promising Incan game going. One of the great things about the Inca, is I have a good 10 cities in S. America, and 6 along the Rockies in N. America, and am still stable/solid. Further, you can make freaking huge cities along major mountain lines with your unique power. I bet I can get a 30+ San Francisco before the game is up.

Now its just a rush to see if I can militarize and take over enough land before time runs completely out. I still need to take out a number of Spanish, French, and Portuguese cities in S. America, probably squish the Aztecs, and then find an other 10% land area somewhere. Maybe I can take Australia and S. Africa from the Dutch.

Love those mountains and the Incan UP; maybe you should go for a city in Tibet!
Once you get NAm you can play it out like any other civ: eventually nobody except Germany, Mongolia and Russia will have your production power, and just make good friends of your axis powers and conquer Africa and Australia. Any vassals (would be ironic to have a European vassal)?

 

[kbk]

Nope, no Vassals unfortunately. I was too far behind for too long. But trading Biology to everyone moved me way up the charts. Germany is also gone so I'm not sure who I'll get to ally with.

 

[kbk]

I've got 40 turns left. Its going to take a while, but I think I can pull this off. I figured you'd appreciate seeing this.

I'm 16.60% of 32% population, and 14.58 of 25% of land area towards the domination victory.

I didn't build Cristo, and America beat me to the internet by 4 turns. I had been switching civics either one at a time, or very carefully with a golden age. Now I've got to decide if I go to war with the USA with my superior airpower vs. their superior technology, or if I try to expand elsewhere.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

If Mali isn't anybody's vassal, he'll capitulate easily after losing a city or 2 (there's another 5% or so of land, more if you gift him 2 cities in the Congo after chopping some forest), plus he'll gladly accept your Dutch conquests. I assume you're going after Australia next also (another 5%)?
As long as you nuke some big cities to drive your population share up, population isn't much of an issue (plus newly conquered cities count towards your pop). It's the land area that might be an issue.

 

[blizzrd]

I've got 40 turns left. Its going to take a while, but I think I can pull this off. I figured you'd appreciate seeing this.

Any reason why the Caribbean islands are empty?

 

[kbk]

Any reason why the Caribbean islands are empty?

They're not, Spain had just collapsed a couple turns ago, leaving those cities as independents. I haven't bothered to scout over them yet.

 

[blizzrd]

Really, are you sure we are talking about the same islands?

I can't see any cities at all in the Caribbean in your screenshot - although I can see independent cities in the Azores (Ponta Delgada), Iceland (can't read it but I think it would be Husarvik) and Ireland (Dublin).

Cuba, Jamaica, Honduras, Granada, they all appear to be empty.

 

[kbk]

Both Havana and St. Domingo are independent cities. The other ones are independents I've scouted out or received info from map trades.

Barbados is indeed empty. I flipped that one a while ago with culture and disbanded it. What I need is land area, and not one tile islands in the Caribbean.

Incedently, the land war in Africa has begun. South and East Africa are mine, now onto Mali (dutch vassal) and Egypt (under Arab control).

 

[AnotherPacifist]

So the trick is not to adapt a state religion, and hope for Christianity to spread to Jayakarta. Also, capturing Guangzhou, Patna, Delhi and Mumbai are good, because these cities will provide land for agriculture which is sorely lacking in SE Asia. For once I even have a good economy and is stable after 1450. I even had Arabia vassalize to me (it was under plague and lost most of its defensive units while barbs are streaming in from the north). Spawned a great spy and stole feudalism, gunpowder, guilds, and soon engineering from China. 1st to liberalism in the mid 1300's, of course got Astronomy as free tech (to transport all my Incan conquistidors to NAm for defence of a Khmer New Orleans!). Aztecs is about to be wiped out and they were obliging enough to build Oaxaca (simplifies my trans Pacific/Atlantic journeys in the future). Only problem is that Mali is now wary of me and won't vassalize.
In the future I'll try to get Buddhism up to 30% for my 2/3 UHV, but for now the race is on for radio/assembly line/fascism.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Suryavarman II was primarily known as the builder of Angkor Wat, but he was also a great warrior and politician. Cozying up to China (and stealing techs) was key to rapid development. Arabia provided lots of room to expand (and they actually have INITIATIVE to conquer independent cities worldwide, even though they were unstable which required giving them assembly line and fascism). Conquering India and keeping it while shaky most of the time limited NAm colonization, but once you get Cristo Redentor and Fascism, it's a smooth ride to world domination. I actually played pacifist (i.e. just mopping up the independent cities up north) instead of declaring war on everybody, which would have been tough since both France and Turkey have oil, although Portugal would have been easy pickings. Founded many cities in the New World for America.
BTW, Egypt can be a great vassal to liberate cities to (since Mali died early as a vassal of Turkey).

I did an experiment and chopped a jungle in Borneo. Sure enough, Japan will found a city there to claim the oil. I guess the AI just doesn't have the foresight to chop a jungle before founding a city.

 

[kbk]

Very nice with Khmer. I've decided I can still do Inca, but that I would have to go back and figure out a way to make sure I build the internet. I need better tanks to pull it off.

So I give you a pretty easy challenge (perhaps the easiest of all of these civs), The Mongol Empire:

This was pretty straight forward. Conquer china, get Optics and get the conquerers events for the Inca and Aztecs. I vassalized Inca, and fed them cities when I had to. I conquered the Aztecs lands, and used them to colonized N. America. Had Mali and Khmer as vassals too, but they were kind of crummy. Khmer wouldn't take any of my Indonesian or Australlian cities, and the Mali collapsed just when I was founding cities in S. Africa to liberate.

Being a massive empire, I was backwards most of the game. I just finished getting Fascism 2 turns before I won. I was still running hereditary rule, nationalism, and mercantilism at the end.

The end was kind of funny, because I was working hard to get the population requirement. But plague hit the rest of the world before it hit me. You can see that the screenshot from the turn after has my plague ravaged population dropping JUST below the critical threshold. Good thing you don't have to stay on top.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

I'm giving up on my Maya game. Thought I did pretty well, colonized the 3 key NAm cities, but made my expansion stability terrible. I was unstable even after the 1740 golden age. Stole some techs from the Americans who vassalized to me. Thought I could weather it but then Japan shows up with a 2/3 UHV and still bright (i.e. they will win in 1852!). And the silly business about free markets and such, commonwealth didn't really help either.

 

[kbk]

Yeah, Maya has to be nuts. The fact that you did that long for so long says a lot already.

I wonder if its possible to still try to vassalize people, but stay small for a long time and then do the militaristic win?

The strategy for small civs may just have to be to stay small but competitive up until you can build cristo, and have the nationhood/police state/communism/occupation combo, and then go steal other civilizations colonies. Of course this gets difficult because you have a powerful America in late game, and a lot of competitors with access to oil.

 

[civhelp121]

how do you know which areas will cause the cities to flip to a civilization that will be created? like how do you know which area will cause cities to flip to America once it starts out?

 

[kbk]

how do you know which areas will cause the cities to flip to a civilization that will be created? like how do you know which area will cause cities to flip to America once it starts out?

I use the atlas:

http://civ4.technologyresourcesgroup.com/

I think that link has an updated atlas, otherwise you can find links to updated ones at the wiki:

http://wikirhye.wikidot.com/

 

[AnotherPacifist]

I've concluded that the Indians are not designed for world domination after all. A shrine based economy cannot support 2, let alone 4 vassals. I never went above a 2 star economy after the 900's. There's also the political penalty which I think stems from too many foreign contacts. The bad economy means that commonwealth is crucial, so using resettlement and occupation even for brief periods is suicide for stability. Founding another city means a big burden to the empire due to no infrastructure (that is probably why even the Khmer can do it while Mayan can't). Gifting just one of my trash cities to Incans even drove them from stable to shaky. I'll have to salvage my game and go back to the point when I first met the Incans and Aztecs, and unvassalize them; a spaceship victory would probably be the best alternative.

No economy/"bad" foreign=no space for expansion instability or vassals.

This is probably true for all the 3000 BC civs (Egypt, Babylon, Maya).

 

[kbk]

This sounds a lot like my failed Babylonian endeavors. I had a tech lead. I fought off the Persians, contained the Arabs, and exiled the Turks to North of the Black Sea, occupied the Greeks, and collapsed the Romans, but even with the Christian, Judaic and Islamic shrines, I just could not get my economy above one star. I even managed to build about 13 wonders in Babylon, and a couple in Sur.

The worst thing was that even after expanding into N. America, and Caracas, my expansion category was still 3 stars, but my economy was just so bad.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

So I salvaged my India game and just managed to get 33% and 25% people and land.

The trick I realized is that India must not have more than 1 vassals until the North American infrastructure is built, and that the Americans must be vassalized. Khmer is nice, but not necessary, and Mali definitely not, since their cities are rather small, even though they do accept African cities. Took me a LOOOONG time just to get my economy in decent shape. France became a superpower got to most of the modern techs before anybody, so I befriended Germany and set them up to kill each other. Eventually all of the French and Spanish holdings were captured, and I conquered the whole of China, Manchuria and Korea. Persia respawned which was great for me, since they vassalized to Germany and became my shield against Turkey. Stole many techs from Khmer (my closest vassal).

Afrosiab is a great city to capture when it's size 2, saves you from building a second city for founding those religions. Of course it needs to be garrisoned with lots of spearmen.

Didn't build too many modern wonders (France did). I did get the crucial ones: Stonehenge, Oracle, AP, Sankore/Spiral Minaret (while I was in pacifism and Islamic, to curry favor with the Persians, even though the AP was Jewish), Taj Mahal, Wat Preah Pisnulok (since I'm so priest oriented as India), Chunnel (which was useless but just built for the principle). Captured the Mausoleum right near the end and got my 12 turn golden age.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Kbk, I think your problem is that you allowed the Americans to spawn and occupy all that great land. So here's my solution (not tested yet, since I'm really behind in tech):
1. Ullantaytanpu whips a galley and sends your 4th settler and 3rd worker up to New Orleans. It then whips a workboat and archer, the workboat is for you know what.
2. New Orleans hires some mercenaries (in my case an expert axeman and later a longbowman after feudalism) and whips settlers towards Chicago and probably Canada and Denver in the future (if the English founds Fort Albany then obviously we need a city west of that to block the Americans).
3. Build lots of culture (terraces are great, plus libraries--I actually got the 7 library event and managed to get +2 )
4. Get lots of experience fighting barbs (I got the native peace settlement but they canceled it soon, although they haven't trespassed on my turf yet).

Portugal also died in my game, which leaves the whole of SAm all to myself. I still need to get my science up to snuff though...

 

[kbk]

Yeah, I think I agree there. The Americans became way too powerful in my game, and off and on I've been trying to start them up again and found at least Denver and New Orleans to deny them oil, but I've been having issues dodging the conquerers event (With a Chinese one, and a French one in 1350). Once I dodge it though I plan to send a couple settlers up through open borders with the Aztecs. No need to whip a galley so early, as it takes a while for the Americans to spawn. Though you do have to watch out for an early French New Orleans.

Peace with the Natives is really lucky though to start N. American settlement.

Edit: I found tech depended on a solid infrastructure and being friendly with a lot of civs. Trading biology to everyone will get you nearly up to speed. After that, I had problems getting the Internet built quickly enough.