pacing of Honor domination games

[Dushku]

I've been experimenting lately with Honor 3 city domination. Basically, I get my 3 cities, Libraries and external trade routes for early science, early NC, then rush for Construction, Civil Service, and Machinery. With Pikes and Crossbows, I'm set for a bit and can dominate well enough:

Spoiler :

Every game I play though, it feels as if I'm either going too quickly or too slowly. I complete the Honor tree quickly enough, but can't put policies into Commerce quickly enough. I'm wondering how to keep the culture gain flowing. Also, I'm unclear as to where to go from there. Do you just capture the cities you can with relative ease, then sit back and wait for your science to catch up? In the image, I could easily push north to Athens, the east to Addis Ababa, possibly with the same crew I've been bulldozing with already. But the happiness... I wonder if I should be teching towards Zoos next or wait until Ideologies for more happiness.

I guess what I'm saying is that I think I have a feel for a smooth early game but always feel uncomfortable about transitioning into the mid-game. I've seen the value in a Horseman or two to do some mass pillaging/distracting. However, it's unclear if I should bother with Warriors. I assume they have a significant upgrade path, but they feel inferior to the other melee path. Since I am unexperienced with domination late game play, I'm not sure how I should be preparing early on for this. Also, at what point should I be bringing siege units?

 

[yung.carl.jung]

If I was in your position I would honestly just get a second army up and going and end the game right there. Some experienced players can end the game with Crossbows, I usually fail to do so.

Personally I would not use Catapults or Trebuchets. Using Cannons is completely fine, especially because you want to stack promotions before you upgrade to Artillery.

In your case I would just tech straight for Artillery, no Public Schools, no other detours. Get Muskets, use Oxford University for Artillery tech.

Watch this game for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0Cp3c5369w

Acken clears the entire map with Chu-Ko-Nu. You already did great work, finishing off the other opponents shouldn't be hard.

 

[x2Madda]

Have to agree with Carl, the whole point of military victory is to, well, kill everyone (or more importantly, take the capitals). The detours like focusing on universities means you are not flooding the enemy with even more units.

Keeping happiness up is important so a circus or colly can be intersped with the build orders but outside of that you want to have so many units that the AI just can't possibly kill them all.