New challenge: domination victories for civs

[kbk]

Okay, I lied. I tried a few RAND games and got horrible starts, so I went back to try another domination game on emperor. So here we have Rome on emperor.

Early on, I took out the Greeks, and built the Great wall, and a legion of praetorians. I took out each European civilization as they spawned, except for Russia (who willingly vassalized to me) and the Vikings, who collapsed under the deflected barbarian horde from the great Wall. I also forced England into capitulation after taking London and Iverness, and razing Plymouth. They eventually collapsed in the late game after the Americans spawned and removed their only colony.

Later I occupied Aztecs to take N. America, and vassalized the Inca and Mali. Around 1750, I decided to just stop my research, and focus on expanding. So I slid my culture bar all the way up and started 3 golden ages from my great people. I never got to Nationalism, Fascism, or Radio, but that's okay, my Russian vassals made this game a walk in the park.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

The "Empty Europe lemma" does have its uses in proving other theorems. Well done, Hammurabi.

 

[blizzrd]

I never got to Nationalism, Fascism, or Radio, but that's okay, my Russian vassals made this game a walk in the park.

Is that because they traded their researched techs to you, or because you stole techs from them?

 

[kbk]

The "Empty Europe lemma" does have its uses in proving other theorems. Well done, Hammurabi.

Indeed, it has a lot of open territory, once you get rid of the natives and get some space to yourself.

Is that because they traded their researched techs to you, or because you stole techs from them?

No, because they were huge, and probably accounted for a quarter of my land area or more. I stole techs from Turkey before they started spending points on espionage. Then I just focused on building Settlers and my culture bar. Without Russia it would have taken me a long time to get the land area I needed, and it may have been impossible to hold the empire together long enough.

Interestingly, I had such a massive lead in points (2 to 1) with the next competitors (Turkey, until Babylon came back), that almost no one would trade me techs, even my vassals.

 

[wolfigor]

I wanted to try a domination with America and ... it worked.

the start of the game was kind of positive with very little european colonization in north america: the portughese got first there, so more aggressive/interested nations (i.e. Spanish) didn't have the boost to conquer lands.

Aztechs were still alive, France had several towns in Quebec (but very badly garrisoned), England had Savannha (that flipped to me) and an other town in Canada, the Dutch had New Amsterdam (flipped into new York).
All the continent was free for my colonization.

After the flips I didn't have any war against any european country, and I established a very strong collaboration with England (the most advanced of all): Mutual defence and target for my spies to steal techs in their lonely town in Canada.

Portugal gets mutual defence with France (that is expanding like a cancer into Europe).
The dutch are at war with other european countries including the French.

America (me) expands in North america unchallenged and build-up military until a congress (to which I'm not invited) gives Athen to the Mali (leader in North Africa) and a town in south mexico to Portugal: War starts between Aztecs and the French-Portughese alliance!
After a few turns Aztech offers me to become Vassal... I accept.
I declare war on Portugal, France declare on me, and England declare against Fance and Portugal.

The royal navy keeps the europeans from bringing suppllies to their colonies in america.
Americans just roll in and conquer all the french colonies and liberates that town in mexico.

I'm satified and grow in power behind the english protection.
Europe is involved in a continous war between varous factions.

I skip all details, but both England and France did wear-out themselves into full collapse.
Spain conquers a couple of (now independent towns) in england and the dutch conquers all of France and Italy.

Germany collapses and come back a couple of times (latest as vassal of the dutch).

Spain becomes a a power in south america (everything south of Quito) and gets to war against portugal (that controlled all Brazil)... at the end Portugal conquers all European and African towns of Spain!
America, friends of the Portughese (defence agreement) clean up the american colonies of spain, mostly giving them to the aztecs.
Incas respawn and become vassal of portugal.

Effectively it was a match with a very active and aggressive AI.
just for example Turkey, even if maimed by lost wars against portughese and americans (including arabs, Greeks, and babilonians respawns):

America expands, gets Khmer as vassals and conquers a few towns in Arabia in a short war against the Turks (conquring one of the UHV targets).
The towns in Arabia are later liberated to the Khmer.

China becomes super aggressive, destroys the Mongolians, and becomes hostlile to Japan... that supersurprisingly become a volunteer vassal of America.

War never stops and fascism+nationalism+occupation are the best way to keep a good stability (with some short pauses in resettlement to use the trick of funding and liberating towns to vassals).
America expands against the independents in Norway and british islands.
and fill London with paratroops.

Portugal starts a neverending war against Turkey and India.

The dutch starts a war against the Russsian-Chinese alliance.
Both start a war against America!

I neter easily into Europe, dutch territory falls in my hands very quickly.
Germany, gangbanged between Russia and America capitulates to me.

War stops... and many turns later restarts.
Now Russia has only riflemen and cossacs against america's tanks: all from the german border to siberia is conquered.
China has better troops but they got completely conquered by a mix of americans, Japanese and Khmer (I made sure my vassals had the tech and resources necessary to be military strong).


At the end I was running fine for domination... I had to build some extra towns in the middle of nowhere to get the missing territory (India, Greece, Russia, and China disappeared and raised the bar for victory)

 

[AnotherPacifist]

That's a really big American empire, almost as big as my British one.

Too bad you didn't have the Incans to absorb South America. China is never stable as a vassal in my experience since their economy doesn't expand (AI likes workshops). Khmer is good once you give them cities in Africa or Australia. Did the Aztecs want any cities in South America?

logorated--huh?

 

[wolfigor]

That's a really big American empire, almost as big as my British one.

Too bad you didn't have the Incans to absorb South America.

Yes, it went 3/4 of it to the portughese and their Incas vassals.
Honestly the Incas would be better vassals than the Aztecs.

The Aztecs accepted towns in south America but they were really "shy" about it.
They didn't accept them immediately, I had to keep them for a while before they wanted them.

In north america they accepted only one.

It would be interesting to see somebody re-playing that game and get somebody like portugal as vassal (instead of Aztec or Japan)
Portugal got all hiberic peninsula, brasil, and india.
It also accepts a lot of land everywhere.

Khmer is a good vassal as well, it can "absorb" a very large territory in asia (I was surprised they accepted my conquests in Arabia).
They are also rather stable
Japan, is ok, but very shy in accepting territories on the mainland (apart north-east siberia).

logorated--huh?

Yes... it took me ages to get the necessary territory.
Aztecs were simply useless in this game.
In war Khmer created some distraction to chinese troops, and later on started an active aggression of independent towns in Asia.
They are a must-to-have vassal in a domination game .

Settling with America into occupation+nationalism+police state was critical for my stability (I had free religion, and some other stuff for happyness): with so many towns to conquer and so many enemies I could have a decent stream of conquered towns to keep me afloat (and I had to gift the gained towns regularly to don't have penalties as well).
It was a constant struggle to equilibrate territories in-out and big numbers of units.

I have to thank you for the many suggestions you posted (like the trick with founding+gifting towns)


After the victory I played a couple of turns nuking a bit everywhere to release tension.

 

[blizzrd]

I skip all details, but both England and France logorated themselves into full collapse.

What on earth do you mean by logorated? That is not a word in English.

 

[wolfigor]

What on earth do you mean by logorated? That is not a word in English.

wear out... sorry I invented a word

 

[jessiecat]

I guess it's prob. been asked before. But when you achieve the required % of population or of land you should get a domination victory, right? So why, in my present game as the English on Monarch haven't I won? It's now 1960 and I've had 30% of pop. for about 10 turns. It says I only need 29%.
I don't get it.

 

[Metal Alloy Man]

You have to have the required amount of land and population not just one, so your really only halfway there Jessiecat.

 

[jessiecat]

You have to have the required amount of land and population not just one, so your really only halfway there Jessiecat.

It's supposed to be both? I didn't know that. It's not stated anywhere is it?
Anyway. Thanks for that.

 

[wolfigor]

here you have the start position for my american game in case you'd like to try something similar (possibly doing better) without any need to wait.

 

[kbk]

Before heading to work one day, I decided to load an emperor 3000 bc America start. Turned out the start was almost perfect to try domination.

All the ancient civs had collapsed by the time I spawned, and you had the traditional medieval and later powers, dominating the game, except that Germany, Russia, France, and England were in such a huge war in between each other that they almost completely neglected colonization. Germany collapsed Russia, and then collapsed under the weight of those Russian cities, then France took Germany's cities, and collapsed, and then somehow Portugal outlasted Spain, who collapsed, leaving Portugal the only real colonial power. Germany had taken Amsterdam, but somehow the Dutch avoided collapse and cloistered themselves in Accra. Interestingly, Arabia had apparently spawned both conqueror events on the Aztec and Inca, and then collapsed, leaving them as independent Islamic cities.

I flipped New York and Potsdam from England, which was 100% of their colonial holdings, and just went to town. The Aztecs respawned and immediately offered themselves as vassals. I managed to colonize a large part of S. America, S. Africa, and all of Australia, and then I moved in on the independent Russian cities and started feeding them to a respawned Rome, who became my vassal. Then I had to drop about 25 Nukes on Mongolia, Japan, Portugal and England to get my population percent high enough. I love making 2 ICBMs in 3 turns in Denver! After the nukes, Portugal capitulated, and thrust me over the population threshold.

Stability was only a problem in the very late game thanks to a ridiculously robust economy and peaceful colonization, but I was easily able to use a golden age, switch to police state and liberate a few conquests to Rome to keep afloat.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Very nice, but probably very lucky there weren't infantry in NAm by the time you spawn (used to be almost every time before the AI was handicapped slightly).

I see you haven't loaded the new mod yet that shows you the numbers behind stability. Try it, it's very useful.

 

[blizzrd]

Stability was only a problem in the very late game thanks to a ridiculously robust economy and peaceful colonization, but I was easily able to use a golden age, switch to police state and liberate a few conquests to Rome to keep afloat.

Wow, quite impressive.

 

[kbk]

Very nice, but probably very lucky there weren't infantry in NAm by the time you spawn (used to be almost every time before the AI was handicapped slightly).

I see you haven't loaded the new mod yet that shows you the numbers behind stability. Try it, it's very useful.

I had been looking for that. Is it something outside of the posted regular RFC game? I get numbers in RAND but not in RFC, and I've downloaded the most recent RFC, but I don't seem to have numbers. I even used the optimization fixes that were posted about halfway through (a godsend for a late America game, like this one)

I've done the American UHV on emperor too. This game would have been a very easy one to go for the UHVs. Even so, these days you don't usually see Infantry in N. America until the mid 1800s, thanks to a slower AI tech rate. Your tech-rate just crawls along though. You have to use GP and GA to keep competitive until you get your infrastructure built, and espionage isn't much an option since the AI will already have the espionage points to spend against you.

Mostly, I was lucky because of the near complete lack of colonization, and the Aztec vassalizing to me in the late 1700s.

 

[blizzrd]

Try this post kbk:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6959458&postcount=32

 

[AnotherPacifist]

I had been looking for that. Is it something outside of the posted regular RFC game? I get numbers in RAND but not in RFC, and I've downloaded the most recent RFC, but I don't seem to have numbers. I even used the optimization fixes that were posted about halfway through (a godsend for a late America game, like this one)

I was told that CvFinanceAdvisor.py file from RFC RAND can be ported over to regular RFC and works. I actually like sgrig's better since you can tell the absolute numbers.

 

[kbk]

I was told that CvFinanceAdvisor.py file from RFC RAND can be ported over to regular RFC and works. I actually like sgrig's better since you can tell the absolute numbers.

Great, I'll try that one. I was wondering about porting over a specific python file, and had played with it, but I decided there was a good chance something would go wrong with my limited knowledge of python.