New challenge: domination victories for civs

[AnotherPacifist]

My recent military endeavors gave me an idea: how about trying to get domination victories for all civs (not just the usual sprawling empires)? I'm going to try a game as Khmer
*means I've done it
+done by others

Easy:
*France
*Germany
*Rome
+Russia
*Arabia
+Turkey
*America
*Spain
*Portugal
*England
*Greece
*Japan
*China
*Persia
+Mongolia
*Netherlands

Medium:
*Khmer
Ethiopia
*Inca
*Aztecs
*Maya
*Vikings

Hard (small historic size or poor starting location and unfavorable stability):
Babylon
Egypt
*India
Mali
*Carthage

 

[blizzrd]

I've done Russia Domination Victory by mistake, I got Domination victory right after I hit "End Turn" at the end of 1945. Very annoying as I was trying for the UHV in 1950.

I'm actually currently trying for a higher level of difficulty but in a similar vein, Conquest Victory. I liked what I read about your recent French game, so I'm trying that approach as a good place to start. I'm hoping that a quick-fire attack with lots of troops built up around the globe can secure a conquest in the Modern era using Modern Armor for the extra mobility.

 

[coko]

I remember an old thread about Babylon Domination so might try looking for it again. Egypt and Mali strike me as almost impossible on the hardest difficult, stability just destroys you...

Carthage might be possible if you can wipe out the Euro-Middle-East nations and strike into Indian, leaving on China and Japan should get it...But of course that requires, holding the African Natives away, Rome's Barbarians and defeating the Babs and/or Persia and getting to India...

 

[Riker]

I'm doing babyland, doing just fine until the Turkish spawn. I tried to put the cities without possible flips. but I made a mistake in the Caucasus and now I'll have to war, I suppose

 

[AnotherPacifist]

I think I have found the secret to getting domination victory for any civ (well, any European civ at least). Namely, Hitler had it right: world domination requires partners (or vassals, in the case of RFC).

Willem was torn between his peaceful tendencies to found colonies and to declare war on everybody. So after Cristo Redentor was built, he alternated between resettlement and occupation.

1. Founding trash cities to give to vassals (in our case, Khmer, Mali, Inca and Portugal). The following combination of vassal/continent will always work for liberating cities:
Khmer: Australia
Mali: Africa
Inca: South America
Aztecs: North America
Portugal: Brazilian cities (as long as your culture isn't too strong)

Of course killing the Aztecs was essential (as you want all the yummy North American cities for yourself). So I essentially maintained stability by founding a city under resettlement, and liberating it (which provides additional stability due to my large empire). You want to wait one turn running some culture first, so that when you gift it, it already encloses the large cross. Of course, if you were at war on another continent and don't want to keep the cities when you are not using the occupation civic, liberate them to Inca as soon as it is possible (usually the same turn or the next, but make sure you give them nationalism so that they can run occupation (otherwise they'll collapse from all the revolting cities).

2. War with the other Europeans: Napoleon stupidly declared war on me after a world conference with his vassal Washington in 1800. So I basically captured all of NAm and waited for France to collapse, which saved me a lot of troops taking out just independent cities. Then Russia joined in the fun but I wasn't too keen on war, so I just captured Warsaw and Lvov. Constantinople was alive until 1938 when I captured it (it had 4 wonders!).

 

[blizzrd]

Progress in my attempt at a French Conquest Victory is going quite well. In the late 1700s we now have the Cristo Redentor and are about to move into total war mode using the aggressive civics. I've had quite a nice time with Resettlement, being Solid in stability for over 250 years. Currently I have 4stars for Cities, 5 stars for Economy and 3 stars for everything else. Let's see how the stability goes with some rapid conquest moves.

Note to self: must be careful not to get a Domination victory by mistake though.

 

[coko]

Spanish progression continues with control of England, (with the plan to take France soon!) and the old America's Vassal'd, and Mali. I plan now to move through parts of Europe, take North America and go for Aussie..

 

[Desdinova721]

This is my first post here, but I will say that I'm a little obsessed with this mod.

My attempt at a Babylon domination win is going okay.

I started by found Lagash, then Ninua, then Akkad (Sinope) in Anatolia. I also founded a city 2 north, 3 west of Lagash, can't remember the name.

When the Persians popped up, they eventually invaded me, but I was ready with a stack of spearmen and axemen that I had given experience by razing Hattusas and the independent city north of Jerusalem. It was a hard fight, but they eventually fell without too many casualties. I kept Parsa.

One interesting thing is that the barbarian camel archers took and sacked Jerusalem. Christianity is nonexistent, and Judaism is confined to two Ethiopian cities.

I built the great wall which kept out barbarians and let me focus on getting ready for the Arabs. I did so by building a bunch of war elephants. When the Arabs appeared, they couldn't match my production, so their destruction was inevitable. I kept Mecca and popped the Masjid-al-Haram.

Getting ready for the turks consisted of making Akkad my capital and building wonders there to push my borders out until they encompassed all of Anatolia. This had the added benefit of getting me Byzantion after the Greeks collapsed, and I also conquered Athens. When the Turks spawned, capitals can't flip, so the Ottomans got pushed into Turkmenistan where they never grew beyond 2 awful cities and collapsed within a few centuries.

The next thing I did was beeline optics and head for the new world. My stability was really starting to suffer, so I adopted viceroyalty and invaded and vassalized Inca, Aztec, and Maya. Ethiopia and the Netherlands became my vassals soon afterward, which took me from collapsing back up to stable.

Now I've been mostly trying to keep my economy afloat and stay ahead technologically; I had to attack my buddies, the Romans, because they were on the edge of collapsing themselves, and had a great depression that was about to take me down with it. I was seriously within a couple turns of civil war because of their depression, so I declared war, blockaded their cities and I guess this pushed them over the edge and they collapsed. Unfortunately this meant also going to war with Germany and Portugal, but I was able to sue for peace. Portugal just became another vassal of mine, which meant going to war with the Vikings, but I'm not too worried about them.

It's the sixteenth century, I'm trying to beeline fascism and nationalism now, and I have Mali, Ethiopia, Portugal, Holland, Aztec, Maya, and Inca as my vassals. China, India, Turkey, and Rome have all collapsed, so when I get my stability under control I'm going to start with India.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Good job. I think you may not be playing the most recent patch though...simply because you got more than 4 vassals, and the fact that you could flip the Turks into Turkmenistan (in my most recent Greek game I had Hattusas as my 2nd capital and built Byzantion, and even though my wonders (which were numerous and a lot of them were in Hattusas), their spawn area was automatically assigned on their 2nd move (1280) to them, and they founded Sogut despite my massive culture.
I'm just finding it's really hard to hold onto non-core areas (Rhye stated that he made the penalty more punishing with the most recent patch) since my ongoing Viking game is starting to suffer due to expansion.

 

[Desdinova721]

I'm running 1.180, so I guess it's the version immediately before the current one.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Started out with a Germany squat and founded Thetford (London) also. From my previous tests, England will declare war, but if you have a few troops sitting just outside the flip zone in ships they will not dare to attack, and eventually I conquered their cities. Netherlands was completely surrounded by my culture. France made the crucial mistake of allying with Russia, and so together with Spain and Netherlands (my allies) I conquered the whole of France. (Spain gave me Marseilles). Then Turkey and Russia were collapsed, and Mekkah captured.

Vikings have a particularly small spawn space (which probably explains their early collapse, with no area to expand their economy). So I had to beeline Fascism to get police state to stabilize my large empire, which meant I never even got to plastics (usually one of my early techs after assembly line, medicine and industrialism). This will probably need to be done by other "small" civs like Ethiopia, Khmer and even China.

Inca wasn't so great in my game, they lost 3 cities due to instability. (Maybe I was too stingy this time in giving them techs). So even after I founded some cities they couldn't accept them. So vassalized America instead, and gave them the West Coast, Canada and Alaska. Gave a couple African cities to Mali, plus conquered Alger and Tunis for them. Didn't have time to go to Australia to give to Khmer, but would have made my job easier. This is probably one of the earliest domination victories I've done (Vikings starting early helps a lot, just like Arabia).

Towards the end I was flip-flopping between Stable and Unstable (gifting cities/conquering cities under occupation). The people must have been really confused (new cities were added and founded and turned into "natives" the same move).

 

[Desdinova721]

Land and population your vassals control continues to your victory conditions, right? Just making sure.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Land and population your vassals control continues to your victory conditions, right? Just making sure.

They count as half of your score I think.

Just a thought: when it says % of land, do sea tiles count also? (I.e. should I go for more land based cities when I found colonies?)

 

[Rhye]

what you achieved is amazing. Congratulations, Pacifist the Great

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Wow, a compliment from God. Thank you very much.
I'm going to try to be true to my name and try an English domination game without declaring war (of course I can still defend myself and even conquer territories if the AI is stupid enough). England has a big enough colonization area to do it.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

There you have it. (Note I founded Utrecht as a substitute for Calais)

No declaration of war, but lots of conquests due to stupid France, Spain, America and Mali declaring war on me. (Aztec was a vassal because they declared war on me when I founded Belize.) I made peace as soon as possible and when the option came up (even though I could have conquered even more).

Egypt was obtained peacefully through a world conference, and Aksum was ceded to me by France before they collapsed. Gave many a city to Portugal, Inca and Aztec, and would have done so with Khmer except that they collapsed. Germany collapsed twice (in medieval and then in modern times) due to my culture and their Great Depression.

I even got the Falklands and St. Helena. My only regret was that India vassalized first to Spain, and then to Mongolia even though I was very friendly to them. I also did the UHV (albeit a little later) but after giving my 3rd (Indian) city to Khmer they collapsed. Then other civs started collapsing and delayed my domination (with each civ lost the area needed to control rises by about 2%).

It would be nice for me to adopt commonwealth if it had something like 25% reduction in maintenance costs, but Karl Marx won over the arguments of Adam Smith.

 

[Úmarth]

Rule Britannia! Best one yet!

 

[senturus]

Very impressive.

However, althorught AnotherPacifist is without a doubt one of the greastest Rhye's player, I think it is not "normal" a player can perform such an amazing domination (especially with a civ like Holland). Maybe the stability malus in other civilization core zone should be renforced, or the effect of occupation civic be lowered.

Anyway, what about America in your english game?

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Anyway, what about America in your english game?

I founded St Johns and Toronto, and together with Chicago and New Orleans, America had nowhere to go. I had a settler premade and founded New Haven after the 4th move (sometime in the mid-1700's).
America became a vassal of France, and after the first world congress (aka WW 1) when the asked for New Haven, they were duly subdued, and Washington renamed to Jamestown. So, no, I was not the aggressor.

The occupation of other civs' territory is punishing as is (one extra city was able to drive my stability from solid to unstable to the point I needed to liberate it right away), so I vote for not increasing the penalty.

 

[kbk]

They count as half of your score I think.

Just a thought: when it says % of land, do sea tiles count also? (I.e. should I go for more land based cities when I found colonies?)

I'm pretty sure sea based tiles do not count, this is why as the Mongols invading Khmer isn't terribly effective. Same thing for Greece as the Persians.

Besides, 66% of the world is ocean anyways, so if you think about it, sea tiiles can't really count.