New challenge: domination victories for civs

[KnightoftheStar]

I think I'm going to take a run at a Rome domination victory and take a break from UHVs for a bit.

 

[kbk]

I think I'm going to take a run at a Rome domination victory and take a break from UHVs for a bit.

Rome is a lot of fun, especially once you take back the European spawn points. Most European civ areas can be controlled with one massive city for each, and when you do that, they grow an astounding amount.

I recommend razing the french cities, and settling "Paris" one tile SW of the real Parisian tile. That city will become ginormous.

 

[Aleenik]

I play on emperor..

 

[KnightoftheStar]

Rome is a lot of fun, especially once you take back the European spawn points. Most European civ areas can be controlled with one massive city for each, and when you do that, they grow an astounding amount.

I recommend razing the french cities, and settling "Paris" one tile SW of the real Parisian tile. That city will become ginormous.

Right now doing some fun bouncing, I have one with Rome on hold and currently have to be able to beat back the barbs, going to wait on working France and Spain over until they spawn, doing one that started as Greece then saw how many units Turkey picked up from the flips and switched over. Can't argue with something like 8 Catapults on the flip and as many knights, three WE, on top of the bonus units from Persia picking a fight with me, just now have too many people wanting to kill me, namely Greece, Russia, Persia, and Spain all at war with me although Spain probably will be a phony war at best. Ah well, it should be fun if nothing else once I take Greece and all the wonders in Athens and Epidamnos then push into Greek Italy and the city I founded as Greece one south of where Budapest should be.

 

[KnightoftheStar]

Ok here's my Roman Empire, reached Trajan's size and am going to try to push for domination, right now going to have fun stabilizing this massive span considering how many spawn zones I'm sitting on that isn't helping my whole stability situation, right now have four vassals and am running viceroyalty, hereditary rule, bureaucracy, slavery, and free religion:

 

[kbk]

Not bad. Next time around, you should really limit the number of your cities. Raze a few to make room for fewer, larger cities. That is, if your going for domination. The fewer cities you can use to get more land area the better. Remember, water tiles do not count.

 

[The Q-Meister]

AP: I gotta commend you again for your Carthage domination victory. I just played them, and while I wasn't necessarily going for domination but just a good game I found stability very difficult even without a massive empire. I had conquered Rome (don't like squatting) settled N Africa then took Byzantian and settled Athens since it was razed.

Even with this I was Unstable with 3 stars in the Stability category plus 4 on foreign. I took Mali as my vassal and had viceroyalty. Could have had Portugal but decided it wasn't useful from my past experiences, hindsight I suppose it would have helped stability. Later on I was on collapsing with 3 stars in all the categories, didn't think that was possible.

Biggest reason I can think of is that I settled Athens and by settling on another civ's core area that wasn't a part of my historical zone caused my stability to plummet. Mali didn't want it, and I didn't have the heart to make it independent. All my cities were Christian, had 100% Carthaginian in all except Byzantian. I did have my best game as Carthage though; lead the way after taking Rome had the conquistador event with the frustrating Maya (even after taking their capital they refused to capitulate!), so I'd like to try them again with perhaps conquering Athens to see what effect that would have. I know from experience that when playing with a large empire with a civ that was not so historically 1 city can make a huge difference.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

I can't emphasize enough the benefits of a multireligion empire and liberalism/free religion. Happiness is very crucial for maintaining stability, and if you don't have a state religion, your foreign relations will also be better (e.g. you can open more borders and the AI won't hate you as much). In fact, for some turns in my most productive cities (Rome, Carthage, Athens, Mediolanum) I built nothing but missionaries, when normally I would have just used them to build wonders (which also help with stability).

 

[kbk]

I can't emphasize enough the benefits of a multireligion empire and liberalism/free religion. Happiness is very crucial for maintaining stability, and if you don't have a state religion, your foreign relations will also be better (e.g. you can open more borders and the AI won't hate you as much). In fact, for some turns in my most productive cities (Rome, Carthage, Athens, Mediolanum) I built nothing but missionaries, when normally I would have just used them to build wonders (which also help with stability).

Here Here. Usually I don't spend too much time spreading religions that I don't have shrines for, but it each empire is a little different.

The only empire I maintained a religion for was Arabia. Spreading islam, getting a temple, and a cathedral will get you as much happiness as having 4 religions under free religion, never mind the massive cultural boost. And the ability to run Pacifism, organized religion or theocracy is quite nice.

 

[KnightoftheStar]

Here Here. Usually I don't spend too much time spreading religions that I don't have shrines for, but it each empire is a little different.

The only empire I maintained a religion for was Arabia. Spreading islam, getting a temple, and a cathedral will get you as much happiness as having 4 religions under free religion, never mind the massive cultural boost. And the ability to run Pacifism, organized religion or theocracy is quite nice.

I'll run Free Religion if I'm either in a precarious position ie bordering a strong power of a different religion than what I can take or I'm in a situation where one religion doesn't dominate the Empire well enough or I have enough religions to be able to make free religion work well.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

I use free religion even if I just have Christianity (which is rather rare) once I have exhausted pacifism (i.e. it takes too long to generate a great person and it's too expensive with all the troops I want to build). Organized religion is just too expensive later on when I don't really need production but science, while theocracy conflicts with most of the later good civics (most of which involve emancipation). It also really helps with foreign relationships and sometimes that makes or breaks getting a voluntary vassal. If you want to go to war with a different religion, it gives you more instability than if you had free religion.

 

[kbk]

Again, I agree wholeheartedly, except in the case of Arabia, using a theocracy makes a lot of sense. No one is going to be your religion until you capture them, and once you get into enough wars with members of your defensive pacts, they will love you regardless. Any other time, free religion is the way to go.

On another note, I've got a stable German empire on emperor at 20% land area, with Aztec, Khmer and Indian vassals. Spain has a massive colonial empire, so I might try to force them into capitulation and hope they can stay stable. Wish me luck.

 

[kbk]

Okay, I was hoping to finish this before bed, but the Russians refuse to capitulate, so I'm going to give you a status report.

This is a German domination attempt on Emperor. As I said above, I've got Aztec, Indian, and Khmer vassals, and tried to get Spain to capitulate, but they instead vassalized to Russia and then collapsed. So, I decided I'd try to nuke Russia into submission.

I just wanted to show you this, sixteen nukes, and I occupy most of the European Russian cities, including their capitol, and they will not capitulate. They would easily be the 5% I need to get me to 25% land area!

 

[AnotherPacifist]

RFC is strange in that the AI will not capitulate until the next to last city is down...RAND is so much more reasonable. Maybe you should have expanded a little more in North America and given the Aztecs a chance to get New Orleans.
Also, send a settler towards Western Australia, it's wide open (another 2% of land)

 

[kbk]

And yet Turkey was willing to capitulate to me when they still had more cities. I told them no because I knew they'd collapse, and I wanted a Russian capitulation instead.

Expanding into N. America wasn't really an option, as I was too far behind during the rush to the Americas. By the time I was hitting the seas, the Dutch had wiped out the Incas, and the French had wiped out the Aztecs. I only have so much S. American territory because Spain and Portugal collapsed, and I only got the Aztecs as a vassal after they resurrected and threw out the French occupiers. Incidentally, Montezuma is willing to take every last one of those S. American cities, and I've been slowly ceding them to him to stay afloat (this is masked in that screen shot from a recent Incan resurrection).

I may go back to reload before the nuclear barrage and sue for peace with Russia, then go to war with England and their Mali vassal to try to steal the English colonies, and give their Persian ally's cities to India.

Still, its mind numbing the way Russia has no military, and their land is a radioactive waste zone, but they won't capitulate.

 

[blizzrd]

From my experience, I understand that willingness to vassalize is linked to the number of vassals that you already have. If you didn't currently have 3 vassals Russia probably wouldn't take as much punishment to capitulate. But yes, it is annoying how stubborn civs get in regard to capitulation once you have a few vassals already.

 

[kbk]

Good point blizzrd, I had forgotten about that detail. I'm not really sure why that is, except that Rhye really wants to limit the number of vassals available.

So I reloaded, and declared war on Persia, which triggered war with England (but not Mali, they canceled their vassalage to England), and I got to 22%, and a point where I would easily get 25% after the new conquests from England got out of resistance.

And then India collapsed, putting me back to 20%, and now requiring 26% land area. Ugh.

 

[kbk]

Okay, I've given up on winning with Germany. I think its possible, as I came damn close, but I don't have the stamina or interest anymore. I'm moving my free time to the RAND game I think.

Anyways, here's the screenshots, nearly 30% population, and a shrunken 20% land area after my Indian vassal collapsed on me.

There are a few things that could be done better or luckier, but the fact that on emperor you are at a full stability level lower all the time, means you have to be completely flawless, and get lucky enough with your vassals. By being a pacifist and colonizing Egypt, Ethiopia, and the rest of Eastern Africa I got up to 15% or so land area, which increased as I accumulated vassals out of a respawned India, Aztec and the Khmer.

I actually do think this particular game could be driven to victory, and if anyone is interested, I'll post with a few of my saves.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Clear some forests in Africa and SAm and get another 3 percent of land.
Inca and Mali capitulate more readily when cities are captured.
Yeah, you can get to that point when getting to domination just doesn't seem worth your time any more.

 

[kbk]

Clear some forests in Africa and SAm and get another 3 percent of land.
Inca and Mali capitulate more readily when cities are captured.
Yeah, you can get to that point when getting to domination just doesn't seem worth your time any more.

Yep, like I said, the area is there, but I have to tell you, I just liberated Caracas and triggered a golden age, and still have the collapsing category on my stability.

Also, the US just nuked Mexico and are advancing on their cities. So I bet the Aztec will collapse soon.

So yeah, I'm going to try some RAND games.