Paths to Domination

[readercolin]

I figured that it might be fun to hear what people's ideas of very powerful strategies to win with are. So please, list some of the best ways that you've found to win (single player), whether it be civ specific, or religion specific, or just a neat strategy that you found that works well for you. So I'll start.

This particular method is somewhat civ specific (as in, the Khazid are the best civ, but other civ's may be able to pull it off as well, though possibly not as well). Typically when one play's the Khazid, they tend towards fewer, more powerful cities. However, due to the ingenious trait, and the Khazid's tendancy towards the metal line, that a more effective strategy is actually to spam cities. The idea here is to get a few powerhouse cities (generally, the capital, and about 1 powerhouse to 3-4 minor city ratio), and many minor cities. The first thing is to try to get RoK in your capital, to take advantage of the godking effect (alternatively, move your capital to your second city). Once this is achieved, run godking for the rest of the game, and spam cities. These minor cities should only focus on working the first ring of tiles around them, not the BFC. It isn't necessary to stack them perfectly, but stack them as tight as you can handle. This should leave you with 3 city types - The capital, the Major City, and the Minor city.

The minor city should build a monument for culture (just because), a market (+3 gold, 1 GM slot), and a Temple of Kilmorph in the early game. As the game progresses, they will also build a courthouse and a gambling house. In addition to all of this, they will also run a merchant (if possible, more than 1). Once they have the few necessary buildings, they will proceed to spam warriors throughout the entire game (no training yards/etc will be built in these cities).

The Major city will build a training yard, the same buildings as the minor cities, and any other buildings deemed necessary. However, the primary purpose of these cities is to form a central location that all warriors are sent to, and to provide a base to send out settling/war parties.

Lastly, there is the Capital, which should run godking for the entire game, as well as have the holy city, and later the Bazaar of Mammon, a tax office, etc. In addition, you should try to run as many merchant specialists as possible here, and settle all great merchants here. The reason is that for every city with RoK then, this city will produce 3 gold, and every regular merchant will produce 9, and every great merchant 18 gold. This makes it possible for the civ to be run at 100% research while still making massive amounts of cash

So what makes this so powerful? Ingenuity. A warrior can be upgraded to an axman (on normal) for the meager price of 38 gold. A warrior can be upgraded to a champion for the price of ~98 gold (upgrade cost is 2.5 + (hammer cost up unit upgraded to - hammer cost of current unit)). Due to this evil little trick, it is entirely possible to outproduce even deity level AI's. Basically, every minor city will spam warriors, the major cities will upgrade them and produce support units (catapults, priests, etc.), and the capital will overflow with so much money that even a greedy dwarf will be happy (and of course, productive ).

As for the total amount of money that is brought in using this method, I'll use an example. Lets say that you have 10 cities, and only your capital has the gold bonuses. Your 9 minor/major cities have a market, a ToK, a gambling house, and is running 1 merchant, (while following RoK), which means that they each produce +12 , for a total of +108 gold. Your capital will have +10 gold from the shrine, +3 gold from RoK (RoK holy city gets 3 gold, 2 culture), a market, a ToK, a gambling house, is running 3 merchants, and has 3 great merchants. This means that before any modifiers, your capital is bringing in 48 . After the 200% modifier, that becomes +144 . So your entire empire is pulling in +252 per turn. That is the price of upgrading 6 warriors to axmen every turn, with a few change. Once champions come around, it is only enough to upgrade 2 warriors every turn, but lowering the research rate and grabbing a few other sources in your minor cities generally makes up for this (in addition of course to getting more cities).

A few other notes:

Generally, when I run this strategy I prioritize 1 enchantment node (for enchanted blade), and then spam law mana on every remaining node. In addition, after about 10-12 cities, I usually switch to order and build basilica's for the reduced cost. This means that with the standard city setup, and the law mana from my palace/Code of Junil, my cities are at -80% maintenance (remember that gambling houses increase maintenance by 10%), and a few mana nodes can drastically change things. In addition, the +30% from enchanted blade/shield of faith (after all, you will have built a few priests of kilmorph), and +1 strength from confessors before any promotions that the unit takes, my army becomes not only the largest, but also stronger on a unit by unit basis than any of my opponents (especially when playing as Kandros Fir - new units start at +50% strength). In addition, it is all easily replaceable, meaning that if you want to move fast and not bother with catapults, you can always use the meat shield approach, and just throw waves of units at cities until they crack.

So what are your OP strategies?

-Colin

Edit:
After running this strategy in my last game, my army really began building around turn 150 (normal speed). By turn 300, my army consisted of about 200 champions, not counting supporting units. I stopped producing more units on turn 250 in the majority of my cities, and was able to make about 100 gold per turn at 100% research - 400 at 50% research.

 

[Emptiness]

.....

 

[DerWille]

Interesting strat, do you think it would be good for Mahala as well? Do a classic Doveillo rush so you have two capital sites then the raiders trait will let you have armies that zip around enemies' territory.

 

[readercolin]

The problem with Mahala is that she can't build warriors once you've researched bronze working - they are automatically outdated by Sons of Asena. Instead, you are forced to join the undercouncil and pass the slave trade resolution. In that case, you can just buy slaves (lots and lots of slaves), and then proceed to stomp the world with them. But that still leaves a rather large period where you're forced to build Sons of Asena and cannot build beastmen. The economic aspects of the strategy do work quite well however.

-Colin

 

[Ekolite]

That's a very powerful strategy. I use a similar one myselfm except focusing primarilly on the Council of Esus. It can work well with any civ, but those with special synergies with Esus or vast quantities of gold are obviously at an advantage.

I found Runes of Kilmorph early and spread it about a bit, getting the Holy Shrine and so on. This lubricates things in the early game a little. However the main target is Deception for Esus, at this point, build Nox Noctis with a saved great merchant, move the capital to the city and run God King, build the Bazzar of Mammon and all other buildings with a gold modifier. Esus can be spread extremely easilly as the units used to spread it are not consumed in doing so. This means that the Shrine city can quickly start to make hundreds of gold per turn. There's no need to adopt Esus if it doesn't suit, but if you do you get visibility in all the cities you spread the religion too. Regardless, you get the bonus invisbility feature of Nox Noctis which is always useful.

 

[readercolin]

Since no one else seems to have anything that they wish to share, I'll post another one that I have run across.

Hemah and water elementals (+keyleen for extra fun). As we all know, hemah, being the evil critter that he is, can get twincast. A water elemental has the fun ability of if it looses a round of combat, it will split into two seperate water elementals with the weak promotion, and slightly reduced strength. If, however, you have the tower of elements, a water elemental will start off with the strong promotion. This means that if the strong water elemental looses, it becomes two damaged water elementals (usually about 75% strength), and each of them can become 2 damaged weak water elementals (again, usually around 75% strength). This means that an archmage with summon water elemental can summon 1 strong water elemental, and get 2 normal, and 4 weak. Hemah (or any unit with twincast), gets 2 strong, 4 normal, and 8 weak, for a total of 14 (double that if he also has enchant 3 - spellstaff). Now, add the summoner trait, and space it out over two turns - summon 1 water elemental the first turn, then 2 the second, attack, and you get 3/6/12 (6/12/24 with hemah).

However, the ultimate is Hemah under keyleen (key notes, summoner, and balsferas). Here, the best use for him is to summon 2 puppets, then use his spellstaff to summon 2 more. Each puppet summons 2 water elementals, for a total of 8. Next turn, Hemah summons 2 more puppets, and all 6 puppets summon 2 water elementals - add the ones from the previous turn, and you have 20 water elementals with the strong promotion. Upon dying, they become 40 water elementals, which upon dying turn into 80 weak water elementals. If you need slightly more power, you can summon 2 puppets, each of which does nothing the first turn. The second turn, hemah summons 4 puppets, and now all of them summon 2 water elementals. The third turn, the first two puppets disappear, but the water elementals they summoned stay - now hemah summons 2 more puppets, and they all summon water elementals. This gives you a start of 24 water elementals instead of 20, which of course means 48 and 96 normal and weak elementals. This leads to a total of 168 possible water elementals with which to attack.

Realistically, you will never get 168 water elementals - eventually, some will start winning (or I really don't want to know what you were going against). But that many attempts at victory can never be a bad thing, right?

-Colin

 

[Emptiness]

There's a thread that discusses a very effective strategy, proposed by Worm4life: Tech freeze strategy?

Basically, you get to the Guild of the Nine as quickly as possible and then stop researching. All your goes to , which is used to hire Mercenaries, with which you quickly overwhelm the other civs for either a Domination or Conquest victory.

 

[readercolin]

I remember that one. It is a fairly effective strategy, depending upon how large your map was and what point you want to freeze your tech at (you could do it at bronze working on small maps, iron working on large ones), and then mix champions/mages/catapults built in your cities with mercenaries hired from any spare gold you had lying around. The only problem I ever have when trying to do something similar to that is getting the worthless city manager to realize what I was doing and cooperate with me... micromanaging cities can be such a pain. That strategy probably works best with the kuriotates, as it is a fairly easy way to get around the limit of 1 unit per turn per city, or for anyone who is running a builder game and suddenly finds themselves at war. On top of that, IIRC mercs don't cause war weariness.

-Colin

 

[S.K. Ren]

EDIT: I've been trying this on Deity and haven't gotten it to pull off correctly as is. Monarch and down is all good but any higher and you really get beat up by Barbs unless you are sealed by friendly AI which helps. Going for RoK first, grabbing the Mines of Gal-Dur, then switching to FoL seems to help some.
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I'll give my strategy for the Svartlfar. The setup I'm sure everyone who's played the Elf races knows, but I'll put it for those who don't.

The first hurdle is finding a suitable site for your capital. You want to find a full city plot of flat grasslands that are hopefully covered by forests, but they don't have to be. Either way you just need all 20 tiles to be land workable. Plant your capital and don't build any settler or workers till you reach max size then build 5-10 workers. As for research, immediately go for education and plant cottages in every plot, then go straight for Hidden Paths. While you are waiting for this, scout out and make roads your resources. Also during this time you should settle your second city.

The initial part of the expansion strategy is similar to readercolin's for the Khazad (Money Generating home, Troop spamming cities), but during late game the roles will switch so leave room to grow and throw down cottages to fill up anyplace you can't stick a mine, though you won't build mines till later.

Once you have Hidden Paths, head straight for Stirrups. I have found that the best unit in the Svartlfar arsenal is the Nyxkin. All it requires is a stable and Stirrups Tech. That's right, no horses necessary. For 120 , you get a 6 Strength Mounted Unit with immunity to first strikes. In the early game it's great for taking out cities with the combat promos and late game it's great for softening defenses if you take flanking (85% chance to retreat with all three promos). At this point you should have 3-7 cities depending on the ferocity of your neighbors and barbarians.

The next step is to go for Taxation and one step further for Guilds. If you were unlucky enough to not get a well forested area, now is the time to go for Priesthood as well.

Now you have a choice for your endgame.

1)You can either rush for Deception (If you're on Monarch or lower. Anything higher and you probably won't get it first. If that is the case, just get Trade at least.), and proceed to get Poisons and then head off towards Precision.

2)You can power through to Elementalism (For fire mages to bombard cities) and keep going to Pass through the Ether for the Nexus( Probably the most broken thing in the game. As soon as you take a city you can warp in extra defenders and a disciple to end the revolt early. As it is, you'll want this eventually and the sooner you get it, the less likely your enemy will snipe it).

3)You can go straight for Warhorses and grab Ride of the Nine Kings in your capital. If you go this route, once you build the Nine Kings, the Money/Production roles switch. All your Nyxkin should be coming off the assembly line with 3 promos in Flanking.

4)You can go the hippy route and blitz for Commune with nature for Yvain.(Let me tell you, Nothing can stop a Yvain with Combat I-V, Drill I-V, Blitz, and Mobility I-II. And if you ever get some nature nodes, may your enemy's gods protect them.)

Somewhere in all of that, you capital should reach it's health limit. At that point take a small detour and grab Sanitation and Medicine by way of Mining and Bronze Working.

The rest is history. Once the opponents won't fall from Nyxkin alone, start accompanying them with a mix of Assassins/Champions/Rangers. Batter them down with the Nyxkin and pick off the rest.


Extra Stuff

EDIT: Changed the approx turns.

Around Turn 200-250 you should be running about 150-250 a turn. Around turn 350 you should be running about 300-400 a turn. Conversely that's
150-200 and 300-400 when not researching

Suggested Civics are:
God King
Religion (Early game)/Nationhood (Late game)
Apprenticeship (Early game)/Guilds (Late game)
Guardian of Nature
Undercouncil

EDIT:
I as I wrote this I came to an astounding conclusion. Ljosafar (Arendel)+Runes of Kilmorph+Altar of the Luonnotar= VERY OP. I am currently testing it on Immortal.

 

[Senethro]

These are good mid-late game strategies but are you all certain they can jump the hurdle of an Aristograrian Financial civ with early-mid Melee/Support hordes?

Mahala can most certainly make use of Ingenuity upgrades. All she has to do is to delay researching Bronze Working so as to retain the ability to produce warriors. Given that you can just sit at 10 beakers from BW with a copper resource hooked up and all your units in cities ready for Bronze and instantly upgrade all units everywhere the turn something nasty appears, theres little cost to holding off on researching BW. What do you research instead? Raiders Horse Archers (which upgrade from Warriors), Adepts, Ritualists, Overlords melee line are all solid options.

 

[DaveGold]

Given that you can just sit at 10 beakers from BW with a copper resource hooked up and all your units in cities ready for Bronze and instantly upgrade all units everywhere the turn something nasty appears, theres little cost to holding off on researching BW

You lose the national epic, heroic epic, and form of the titan. You will also lose out diplomatically in every way if your opponents see you as being weak. I would agree generally though that Mahala can vastly overproduce a lower tier unit and then promote everything up when the new tech is researched.

As for the Svartlfar, you could run with two or three different strategies depending upon your situation. They have natural strategies as a mage nation, an assassin/raider nation, an elven economy, and anything in between. The difficulty is picking out which unit lines you're not researching.

 

[S.K. Ren]

These are good mid-late game strategies but are you all certain they can jump the hurdle of an Aristograrian Financial civ with early-mid Melee/Support hordes?

I've been trying to tackle that with my latest strategy. Playing Ljosafar (Arendel) on a Standard Immortal Small Map, My strategy so far has been to go for RoK, grab Gal-Dur, then Priesthood, and swing back to FoL. I'm also building up the Altar of Luonnotar so once I start cranking out Disciple units, they'll be highly promoted. With a free Potency and Mobility I from the Spiritual trait. The Plan is to use the Iron from Gal-Dur to upgrade my Priests of Leaves to Paladins and continually swap them out for the next when one dies. I'll use a few Stonewardens from when I was RoK to buff them before I send them out. With Theocracy and Apprenticeship I should be rolling out Units with Combat I, Cover I and City Raider I.

I''m currently working my way through turn 202. It's that specific because the Kuriotates are being little pricks and declaring war on me even though we're friends. I've built Gal-Dur and just founded FoL. My neighbors have only just gotten Archers, except for the Kuriotates who have resource free Horse Archers like the Svartlfar. I'm going to go to an earlier save and see if I can prioritize a bigger defense because apparently 2 Heroic Archers,2 Normal Archers, 4 Warriors and 3 Soliders of Kilmorph with Iron weapons aren't enough.

Edit: I hadn't occurred to me to use my world spell. Wow, I just kicked his ***. I'll edit this again In a few hours with the success or failure of my strategy. Destroyed one Settlement, one City, then I sued for peace and got more tech than I knew what to do with and one of his two remaining cities. I am now setting up to switch in FoL and will begin mass producing my army of Priests of Leaves. More to come.

So, Priest spams seem to only be effective early mid game. Is there any way to carry them into late game other than as Druids/Paladins/Eidolons/High Priests?

 

[Breunor]

I think disciple spams are really good IF you concentrate on them, which often means building up a few levels of the Altar. They also can be very good if you are on a map (say Erebus Continents) where there aren't a lot of metal resources. If you can't get metals and you get a few levels of the altar, then paramanders for instance, and even crusaders, can be very tough; indeed, even 'straight' priests can be good. For the Elohim, you can also get monks and I'm sure there are other powers with similar goodies.

Best wishes,

Breunor

P.S. I also usually play on immortal.

 

[S.K. Ren]

Edit: I didn't get it. I seem to have overlooked a few strategies which can greatly speed up your expansion and development. Namely is the use of Farms in an elven economy. A solid Agrarian city is horrible for elves but having 3-5 farms provides a great boost to growth that is more effective than solid Cottaging or Farming

Edit 2: Changes up my recommended research path.

Anyways, here is my Revised Stygian Guard strategy for Ljosafar/Arendel


Your city base will be 2-3 primary cities. You'll have 1 Financial City/Capital (Start with a mix of Cottages & Farms, But later switch to all farms for growth), an Industrial City for Wonders (3 Farms, Cottages and as many Mines as you can fit), and another Financial City (3 Farms + Cottages). For all three you preferably want all the plots to be workable and preferably grasslands.

For the Financial City you want as much flat land as possible for an optimal size of 51 Pop. This City will be your Prophet generator so you will want to avoid wonders in this city that give GP points other than Great Commander, Prophet or Merchant. I suggest National Epic, Bazaar of Mammon, Aquae Sucelleus. Oddly enough you DON'T want to found a religion in this city with the exception of OO, but that's not happening anyways so don't worry.

The Industrial City you want about 2/3 hills to balance food production. You don't need to aim for higher growth potential than 20 Pop. Almost all of your wonders will be built in this city. Doesn't matter what they are, but if it doesn't go in the Financial Center, It goes here.

The last city is just to grab land or a resource and provide extra money/production in the early game. You will want to expand as much as possible before you get Hidden Paths because you will be focusing on growth then and Settlers will put a potentially fatal stop to that.


Overview

The main goal is to get The Altar of Luonnotar to level 5 or 6 and access to The Overlords. With Theocracy, Apprenticeship, Conquest and Altar of the Luonnotar level 5 or 6 you will be pumping out Disciples with 16-18 xp each turn (w/ Mobility and Potency from Spiritual as well as a free Promotion if you have Shrine of the Champion. That's a total of 7 Promotions right out of the gate.).


Tech Progression & City Planning

You'll want to start off by going for straight for Mysticism, followed by Education then Hunting. You should let your capital grow to size 5 and then build 2 workers and have them build at least three farms, then cottage up two not forested areas with river access if you have them. After that build a settler and pick a site close by. You'll want the travel distance between the two cities to be as short as possible, but still want each to have all 20 plots workable. Once you build your settler, build both the Pagan Temple and Elder Council. Switch to Pacifism and start generating your first GP. You are aiming for a GProphet. Once hunting is done, Head towards Sanitation by way of Mining. Once you get a Great Prophet, bulb Way of the Leaves. Bulb and finish Hidden Paths when you get a 2nd one. After finishing Sanitation go for Code of Laws.

This next part can be done in any order really. Just research and get OO, and work your way towards Religious Law. After that proceed towards Righteousness. Make sure at some point to grab Archery, Warfare and Military Strategy. I highly suggest trading for them to save time.


Military Strategy

For the first 100 turns or so, you will be defended by Warriors. Once you get FoL, start replacing them with Fawns. They're not much stronger and a little expensive, but it's better than nothing. Finally once you get Priesthood, Replace them all with Priests, not only are they stronger than Fawns, they also get Potency and Mobility I from Spiritual, making them level faster and navigate your wooded areas faster. Having 3 In each City should also allow for a large force of Tigers should you need an emergency defense. Should you trade for archery before you get Priesthood, build those instead of Fawns, but don't waste tech trading for it when you have more pressing needs (Masonry, Fishing, Mining, Bronze Working, Warefare, Message from the Deep, etc.)

Once you get OO, build as many Zealots as your economy can handle. The Altar gives a great boost, but it's mostly late game which means you have to survive in the mean time. After getting Righteousness, switch to 0% Research and build up your funds as FoL. Once you have a sizable bank, and are ready to start fighting, switch to OO and upgrade all of your Zealots to Stygian Guards. Congratulations, your army of highly promoted strength 3 Zealots just became an army of highly promoted strength 9(10) Stygian Guards (5 Base+ 2 Unholy+ 2 Iron Weapons+(1 Holy(Blessed)) )

Oh, and if you're wondering about your Civ Hero. Suicide him... yes I'm serious. At higher difficulties he just isn't that good for very long and if you kill him you get access to Shrine of the Champion, which gives a free promotion to EVERY UNIT. Now I'm not saying to create him just for the sake of suiciding him (unless it's really late game), just off him when he's no longer effective and definitely before you start mass producing Zealots. Also, build Prophecy of Ragnarok in your Zealot Factor for added fun. After all, your main army will be immune to the effects of the Apocalypse.

Extra Notes:
Benchmarks

Turn 150- Should complete Way of the Leaves/ Have 3 Cities/ ~45 /Turn
Turn 200- Should complete Mathematics/ Have 4-5 Cities/ ~100 /Turn
Turn 250- Should complete Arete/ ~200 /Turn

You can abuse your World Spell to intimidate your opponents into submission. Wait until about turn 200, and then if no one has declared war on you (They always do around this turn in my experience), then declare war on whoever is most profitable and wait a few turns and cast your world spell. If you have 4+ Cities and a lot of forests, you will get enough Treants that you can scare him into giving you practically everything without ever actually fighting. If someone has declared war on you, cast it as soon as they enter your lands, defend your cities, and then sue for peace ASAP. I will say that if you pick on an AI that is substantially stronger, they may not be intimidated, so I suggest you save before declaring war.