Pacing of war

[Eigenvector]

This may be an indication of my more passive playing style, but whenever I try to do a domination game it always falls apart into a half-finished space race victory.

The first civilization falls in about 200 years, then the next one takes about 500 years, the third about 1000 years, and I can never get past the 4th without over-extending myself. What's the trick to keeping the pace up? The main problem that I run into is that as time goes by the other civs continue to grow so the number of cities increases with each domination.

 

[dh_epic]

I found this too. But here are a few things I tried that helped me out.

One is starting your first war sooner. Have you mastered combat in the ancient era -- with horses and swords? How about classical combat, with catapults and elephants? Most people only do their first round of combat in the medieval era, once you have crossbows, let alone knights. You can start sooner.

Two is learning to raze cities. At a certain point, those cities will do you more harm than good. Earlier on, you need to be picky and keep only the best cities. In the mid game, you can afford to take on more cities. But for that final end run, it makes sense to raze almost everything just to keep your speed going.

Three is learning to coordinate the preparation of war. You hear a lot of people in Civ 4 saying units go obsolete before they use them. This is because they've failed to coordinate their strategies. If you coordinate your research path with your building strategy and your movement points, you should be able to have the army you want, when and where you want it. It sounds like you have some of this down, if you've faught four wars in a game.

Four is learning to slow your opponents down. A sneaky diplomatic trick can work. But there's something to be said for fighting the biggest, baddest civilization on the block rather than feeding on the weak. They'll be your biggest competition for the space race, so it's best to tear them down. Those weaker civs are no threat.

 

[Smeee]

Lately I've found I enjoy the game much more if you just turn Space Victory off. Was always more fun when you could blow the other guys ship anyways. Now its just instawin

 

[Kilt]

When going for conquest, I usually fight two opponents at a time. A weak and a strong.
The weak opponent is usually the guy I attacked in the stone age because he had a strategic resource that I wanted or was just too damn close . Usually if you hit them early on they never really recover (early being when you get your first archer).
I will usually attack the weak opponent whenever I need to expand. When I have a significant advantage, I will clear him off the map or my continent. This can be time consuming and generally upsets your people so I only do it if I have a significant advantage. I will usually raze the later stage cities and build my own unless it is a capital city or has founded a religion.
As the game progresses I will attack the point leader (assuming he is a neighbor). These attacks are to weaken, not to overtake cities or anything like that. I will usually target the larger cities, basically sacrifice a bunch of troops to cut supply lines and plunder everything in site. Make sure you have a good defense set up for his plunderers or in case he manages to mount any sort of offensive. And it is good to have some sort of advantage, say you have horses and he doesn't, or you have elephants and he doesn't. I usually play Japan, so getting samurai gives me a huge advantage. Once they start talking to you again, do the peace deal. This generally slows his progress and they fall from the top position however, I will still continue quick sneak attacks to keep him down.
Keep in mind you aren't the only warmonger, likely others will wage war on the weaker opponents. So you don't have to wipe out everyone. And try not to make too many enemies.

Kilt.

 

[madmaven]

Most games in my experience seem to bog down during the classical period. I've found that expansion is easiest early and late in the game when particular units can be decisive. Rome in the early game is a machine with pretorians (8 attack rating is nuts!).

The few times I've tried Rome + early war I've expanded and fallen behind tech-wise putting myself in a precarious position during the middle game. Advancing early seems to be a more complicated route, but could have huge rewards obviously.

 

[Joh]

I quite like the english unique unit combined with an early war of exansion strategy for warmonger games.

If you can capture one AI city in the ancient era with archers, you can use that as a slingshot to quickly capture their others once you get swordsmen. Then, with the resources given by this early expansion, capture two other civilisations in the classical age.

Then you just improve your large civilisaiton thorughout the medieval era and make a beeline for redcoats. Once you have redcoats, you can see who the AI leaders are, so you then trade a world map with someone, instigate a golden age and crush the nearest, most powerful AI civ. This gives you quite a nice breather from which you can build your research up to the space race, or simply turn the redcoats on other poor civs.

Often you can also use the redcoats to capture holy cities in this period, which can further make the end game so much easier.

So if you haven't already tried redcoats, give them a go - they are superbly placed in the tech tree and very powerful.

 

[Zilch]

Don't forget diplomacy. It's always good to have another Civ either aid you or have two of your rivals fighting each other.
I think that knowing when to stop is quite key. Rather than spending another few years getting those last few cities to wipe out that annoying civ, getting peace and leaving them crippled while you catch up on infrastructure and tech can be a really good idea. It's not always the case but at times it can be crucial.

 

[madmaven]

What's the earliest technology for an alliance? Communism / Fascism ?

 

[TealVeal]

Don't forget diplomacy. It's always good to have another Civ either aid you or have two of your rivals fighting each other.
I think that knowing when to stop is quite key. Rather than spending another few years getting those last few cities to wipe out that annoying civ, getting peace and leaving them crippled while you catch up on infrastructure and tech can be a really good idea. It's not always the case but at times it can be crucial.

One thing I like about completely wiping out a civ is that the culture in the newly taken over area becomes 100% mine and my new subjects are no longer unhappy about warring with their "motherland".

 

[Mon Mauler]

Don't forget diplomacy.

A very good point, indeed. I am traditionally more of a builder. I play Noble and usually engage in a couple of wars each game in order to acquire resources or expand incrementally. I used this strategy in Civ3, and was well on my way to using it in Civ4, as well (in Civ2 I wasn't as wary of war). In the hundreds of Civ games I've played, I've probably only gotten a conquest or domination victory in 1/20th of my total games.

My games are always Noble, Standard, random everything else, with the exception of the map type, which Civ4 forces me to choose. Anyway, in my current game I chose a Terra map and drew Montezuma as my leader. So I decided that I should try to aim for a conquest/domination victory. I easily wiped out the first two civs I encountered, Tokugawa and Qin. Then I ended up in a war with Genghis, and ended up crippling him. He will most likely fall when I am able to turn my focus back towards him. Those Jaguars were very helpful in my early wars.

The problem I've had has been with diplomacy. All four of the remaining Civs, after the first two, are either pleased or friendly with each other, and none of them are more than Cautious with me. By the middle ages I found myself in a war with all four of them. I just took out Isabella last night, and hope to clean up Genghis after work. I've made peace with Bismark, and even gifted him a technology and some resources (I'm hoping to get him on my side in my eventual invasion of Caesar).

Caesar is the real problem. I am at the beginning of the Industrial Age, with three Civs remaining. I have a feeling Caesar will be a very tough nut to crack. Hopefully I will be able to take him out before he is able to win via Space Race.

In retrospect, I should've focused more on diplomacy. Having help in some of my wars would've gone a long way into speeding up my wars. I probably wouldn't have done as much defending of my own borders as conquesting foreign lands.
MM