On the cusp of dominance - whats your strategy?

[Phosphoraptor]

I have faced this situation a few times in my games:

It is around Industrial Era, you are decently ahead of everyone in tech and culture and only getting further, and you have vassaled a neighbour. Unfortunately this now means that everyone hates you and have formed DP blocs against you. WC will become a bloodbath for you. Ideology is coming very soon but you start to become unsure what VC you can most easily get away with here.

What strategy are you most likely to choose from this point?

Possible options (all I have tried to varying degrees of success) are:

a) Try to conquer you way to domination. If they hate you anyways then warmongering penalty is just a number. One for one you are stronger but here you will have to fight multiple civs at once.

b) Damage control - you cant kill an AI here but you can do everything to gain an edge in the inevitable coalition wars. You found more cities for more supply, conquer rival CS allies, build Firaxite corporation etc. Wait for a good opportunity to break out.

c) Turtle up and tech up. Double down on science and culture and hope the AI cant kill you with their low tech swarm. Race to SV/CV.

Civ and policies are whatever you prefer / currently playing as.

 

[azum4roll]

You have a vassal to tank one side for you (hopefully you didn't beat them down so much they can't defend themselves). Wait for them to declare war and vassalize them one by one.

 

[Diomedes_]

I think it depends on geography, your civ, and the civs closest to you.
- I would go for conquest if you only directly border one neighbor.
- I would go for turtle+boom if you have civ with good booming potential and don't border anyone and/or your vassal lies between you and a strong enemy

There's also the balance between trying to win the game and trying to not lose. In other words, there are two ways you can respond to this situation which involve varying levels of acute risk: 1) you try to go for the win now, making a risky all-or-nothing move to conquer a technologically superior neighbor that at that point has a high likelihood of winning the game. Not only can you increase your own chances for winning if this goes well, you can decrease your biggest rival's chances as well, doubling your own gains. 2) you try to not lose the game now, making a less risky move where you either try to boom while waging a limited war against a weak neighbor, hopefully picking up a few cities, or you wage an all-out war on the neighbor you have the highest chance of beating. This option will hopefully just keep you in the game and put you in a position where you can make your winning move later, implicitly betting that your opponents will underperform compared to you as the game goes on (which is fairly reasonable in the lategame where the ai doesn't really know how to min-max diplomacy or great people generation).

 

[martindo]

Regarding (a), I have noticed that Warmonger penalty and denouncing mean very little at that point.

But I also notice that a lot of CS are still up for grabs in some games, with strong enemies only holding onto 1 or 2 each. So I cultivate the others, build ships that have level 3 promotion Supply ("repair outside friendly territory") and patrol space between my allied CS. Maybe I will be pushed into a war defending a CS.

Otherwise, just keep the tech advantage rolling. Once you build XCOM (remind me of flying monkeys in Wizard of Oz), you can take pretty much any capital in 10 turns or less, despite being late in the game. Only once have I seen an AI defend its capital seriously by keeping tanks, rocket artillery, and similar strong units on every tile adjacent to the city center of their capital.

The XCOM (or Parachutes if you try this earlier) are great for cutting access between AI capital and its nearby cities. Land on a key resource, pillage it AND the road on same turn.

 

[beginner_]

Warmonger or get control of the WC. Depending on the exact situation one or the other might be easier. If for example Siam is a neighbor, crippling him would be beneficial as you can then more easily take control of more city states for WC votes.

Map size also matters as it makes conquest a lot harder the bigger the map gets.

Your current chosen policy trees matter as well. Not sure if tradition + artistry fare well for warmongering while progress and fealty would be workable combination.

In essence warmonger tends to give better results as the AI still isn't great at it and it's the one area you can get the biggest advantage compared to AI.

 

[Laz0r]

Warmonger always if I'm not in a position to win passively through turtling. The AI is so braindead that it's easy enough to set up potent and low maintenance formations on your borders for defense. That, and with careful planning ahead of time you can conquer into mountain borders making defense trivial and massively reducing the need for troops along your border, giving you more for aggression. I also keep in mind that some science civs WILL spike ahead using the handicap bonuses and keep a strong navy/pangaea army ready for them and anyone else who are allied with them.


Turtling never works on higher difficulties unless you're way ahead and damage control is never necessary except for unlocking the most modernized unit types (unless you're really behind.)

 

[harlonreinlu]

With proper conscientiousness and game knowledge you will defeat the AI in every war, given that your army is maxed in numbers and equal in tech. Just full send bro.