Ryika
Lazy Wannabe Artista
- Joined
- Aug 30, 2013
- Messages
- 9,395
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-- Introduction
=========================================
I have been playing around with domination lately and I have to say it's quite a lot of fun. This strategy guarantees combat throughout all game and ignores Explorer- and Trade-Route-Spam completely, as well as most of the Empire-Management you'd normally be doing. I can win the game by turn ~110 on Apollo with All-Standard Settings as long as all Capitals can be shot at by water and it's probably possible to win a lot faster with more refined timings and better judgement calls or with all-water starts settings.
It is not optimal if you don't want to conquer your opponents quickly, as you'll run out of steam pretty easily later on if you don't manage to take out all opponents while they're still on t2 units - in that case strategies that Utilize tons of Scouts in the early game (and probably also spy-based strategies) are a lot more efficient, as they allow you to reach Level 7 in 2 Affinities (= t3 Ships) fairly easy while it takes a little longer with this particular strategy.
=========================================
-- Setup
=========================================
Sponsor - NSA. Perks are completely irrelevant throughout this type of game, none of the sponsors grants a real combat bonus. NSA has a water start, that's what's important, because we want to blast out a basic navy fleet very early - and additional City Strength which is a nice bonus in the later part of the game. The "invisible" extra bonus is of course that you won't get the NSA as an opponent spamming their water city strongholds.
If you're okay with using the "All water based starts"-option then I'd actually say PAC is the strongest option here - and that's only because of the Benthic Auger, an extremely strong option if you get it for free.
Loadout - Engineers (Not artists because we won't need much culture during the game, will get enough early game culture from Pods), Reveal Coasts (Tectonic Scanner is an option if you use Strategic Balance), Free Soldier (= Patrol Boat)
Planet - Primordial is a good Planet as it gives a ton of extra Production but all of them are fine. I'm still not decided if Lush is a good one - you get more science from the "Science Per Kill"-Diplomatic Trait but less Science from the Alien-Farm Virtue and will often overkill Aliens. Removes the (already very low) danger of Kraken taking your cities though.
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-- Economic Strategy
=========================================
Tech Path: Pioneering -> Physics -> Whatever gives you Affinity (preferably Purity because of the flat Combat Bonus when Attacking)
Virtues: Free Settler -> Free Worker (probably the only one you'll have until you conquer some from the AI) -> Science from Aliens -> Bonus Affinity
Build Order: Patrol Boat (2x) -> Monument -> Trade Depot + Unit once available -> Gunboats
Diplomacy: Science from Kills (Military, to max) -> Reduced Cost to buy Units (Political)
Overall there's really not much to say here. You don't want to waste your time constructing Buildings, the Relic and the Depot in your capital and a Relic in your Expansion is all you need until the Drydocks are available. Rush-buy the Docks if possible.
You will drop into heavy negative health later on, and you shouldn't care about it. That's why you use generators instead of farms - without an exception (well, maybe one farm in the capital if there's no good growth tile). Energy is not effected by Health, so while it's a very inefficient Resource it's the one that you'll actually be able to use - and quite a lot, too, it's not uncommon to end up in +100 EPT depending on how many useful Cities you conquer. (Of course, if you're playing as PAC you should instead use farms in your capital to get the population up to work as many tiles as possible).
Also, once you have your first 3-4 Ranged Boats on the Field you have time for ~2 Explorers. Focus on Alien Remains and progenitor ruins, what you're looking for is the Effect that gives +100% Ranged Defense for Boats as well as the 30% tech reduction wonder. Both aren't needed (one of the great things about this strategy is the fact that you can ignore the early explorer Spam), but if you can get them - great.
=========================================
-- Military Strategy
=========================================
Now that's the important part. What you'll want to do during the early stages of the game is farm aliens. Hydracoral to be precise. Once you have your Ranged Boats on the Field you should start picking away Health of Hydracorals, but you'll probably not yet have the Alien Farm Virtue. Make sure not to kill them - ideally you'll have like 4-5 big Cores ready to kill once the last virtue kicks in. (Don't forget you can use Culture Focus to speed it up if you were unlucky with Culture from Ruins) The Science you get from these things is insane.
Many people don't know it - I didn't either until a week ago or so - but Aliens will not get Angry if they're bombarded from 2 tiles away. So just stay out of range, don't attack with your Melee Boats and you'll basically get tons of science for free. During all of this you should be filling your fleet (with Melee and Ranged Boats only, Subs are really bad at quick offensive action) and spreading the new Boats to more sources of Hydracoral, then try to clear some nearby nests for a few more shots at getting the +100% Ranged Defense if you haven't already gotten it. If you still don't get it -> Whatever. It's nice but not mandatory.
Once you have a sizable fleet of around 3 Melee and ~7 Ranged Boats you gather your units in front of the borders of a Civ and once all your boats are ready you declare war. You kill what's there (careful with Submarines). You take the capital. You leave 1-2 Ships to make sure the city doesn't just get retaken by 1-2 enemy units and continue to the next enemy. If you can snap a few other big cities on your way early on -> Good, that will heavily increase your income. Don't forget to replace their farms with Generators.
Yes, this wasn't much of an in-depth strategy on taking the cities, but there really isn't much to say. The fact that you can gather your army at of their borders and then get the first strike just makes it trivial. The AI wil complain, but there's no "Declare war or get a global diplo hit" anymore, the AI won't declare war to stop you from setting up a perfect concave and it won't even try to reposiition it's units so you can't wipe them out.
Anyway. At this point you shouldn't send the boats that you're producing at home to the front, instead you will want to use them to start farming Hydracoral again. If there is none, then farm nests. (Of course, if you lose units at the front, replacing them has priority) You will want to reach Affinity 6+7 as soon as you can, for t2 boats. If the AI reaches them before you do things can become tricky, but if you don't neglect farming Aliens at this point you should even be able to reach it quite a while before they do. Try not to take non-capital cities at this point as they won't really pay out anymore and will just drag your health down even further.
The AI may try to retake their cities and in case they do send up sizable armies make sure to send back a few additional units to defend. But overall you'll probably roll over 3-4 AIs before you reach t6 and the moment you do you should gather your Alien Farming Boats as a second Army and start attacking at two fronts at once -> don't forget that you'll not have to hold the last capital, you just have to take it and you've won. So while you're taking out AI 5+6 you can be rather reckless and lose some units if it speeds up your progress. Bring your remaining units to the last players capital, roll in, win. GG.
(In case you didn't win at this point and find that you're not making progress you should aim to get level 6 in a second Affinity. If you had 2 explorers running around you might very well already have level 2-3 in an off-affinity, the rest is really easy to gather with cheap techs while - you guessed it - you are farming Aliens. 6/6 gives you t3 units way before the AI should have any of them, which once again allows you to roll over their armies.)
-- Introduction
=========================================
I have been playing around with domination lately and I have to say it's quite a lot of fun. This strategy guarantees combat throughout all game and ignores Explorer- and Trade-Route-Spam completely, as well as most of the Empire-Management you'd normally be doing. I can win the game by turn ~110 on Apollo with All-Standard Settings as long as all Capitals can be shot at by water and it's probably possible to win a lot faster with more refined timings and better judgement calls or with all-water starts settings.
It is not optimal if you don't want to conquer your opponents quickly, as you'll run out of steam pretty easily later on if you don't manage to take out all opponents while they're still on t2 units - in that case strategies that Utilize tons of Scouts in the early game (and probably also spy-based strategies) are a lot more efficient, as they allow you to reach Level 7 in 2 Affinities (= t3 Ships) fairly easy while it takes a little longer with this particular strategy.
=========================================
-- Setup
=========================================
Sponsor - NSA. Perks are completely irrelevant throughout this type of game, none of the sponsors grants a real combat bonus. NSA has a water start, that's what's important, because we want to blast out a basic navy fleet very early - and additional City Strength which is a nice bonus in the later part of the game. The "invisible" extra bonus is of course that you won't get the NSA as an opponent spamming their water city strongholds.
If you're okay with using the "All water based starts"-option then I'd actually say PAC is the strongest option here - and that's only because of the Benthic Auger, an extremely strong option if you get it for free.
Loadout - Engineers (Not artists because we won't need much culture during the game, will get enough early game culture from Pods), Reveal Coasts (Tectonic Scanner is an option if you use Strategic Balance), Free Soldier (= Patrol Boat)
Planet - Primordial is a good Planet as it gives a ton of extra Production but all of them are fine. I'm still not decided if Lush is a good one - you get more science from the "Science Per Kill"-Diplomatic Trait but less Science from the Alien-Farm Virtue and will often overkill Aliens. Removes the (already very low) danger of Kraken taking your cities though.
=========================================
-- Economic Strategy
=========================================
Tech Path: Pioneering -> Physics -> Whatever gives you Affinity (preferably Purity because of the flat Combat Bonus when Attacking)
Virtues: Free Settler -> Free Worker (probably the only one you'll have until you conquer some from the AI) -> Science from Aliens -> Bonus Affinity
Build Order: Patrol Boat (2x) -> Monument -> Trade Depot + Unit once available -> Gunboats
Diplomacy: Science from Kills (Military, to max) -> Reduced Cost to buy Units (Political)
Overall there's really not much to say here. You don't want to waste your time constructing Buildings, the Relic and the Depot in your capital and a Relic in your Expansion is all you need until the Drydocks are available. Rush-buy the Docks if possible.
You will drop into heavy negative health later on, and you shouldn't care about it. That's why you use generators instead of farms - without an exception (well, maybe one farm in the capital if there's no good growth tile). Energy is not effected by Health, so while it's a very inefficient Resource it's the one that you'll actually be able to use - and quite a lot, too, it's not uncommon to end up in +100 EPT depending on how many useful Cities you conquer. (Of course, if you're playing as PAC you should instead use farms in your capital to get the population up to work as many tiles as possible).
Also, once you have your first 3-4 Ranged Boats on the Field you have time for ~2 Explorers. Focus on Alien Remains and progenitor ruins, what you're looking for is the Effect that gives +100% Ranged Defense for Boats as well as the 30% tech reduction wonder. Both aren't needed (one of the great things about this strategy is the fact that you can ignore the early explorer Spam), but if you can get them - great.
=========================================
-- Military Strategy
=========================================
Now that's the important part. What you'll want to do during the early stages of the game is farm aliens. Hydracoral to be precise. Once you have your Ranged Boats on the Field you should start picking away Health of Hydracorals, but you'll probably not yet have the Alien Farm Virtue. Make sure not to kill them - ideally you'll have like 4-5 big Cores ready to kill once the last virtue kicks in. (Don't forget you can use Culture Focus to speed it up if you were unlucky with Culture from Ruins) The Science you get from these things is insane.
Many people don't know it - I didn't either until a week ago or so - but Aliens will not get Angry if they're bombarded from 2 tiles away. So just stay out of range, don't attack with your Melee Boats and you'll basically get tons of science for free. During all of this you should be filling your fleet (with Melee and Ranged Boats only, Subs are really bad at quick offensive action) and spreading the new Boats to more sources of Hydracoral, then try to clear some nearby nests for a few more shots at getting the +100% Ranged Defense if you haven't already gotten it. If you still don't get it -> Whatever. It's nice but not mandatory.
Once you have a sizable fleet of around 3 Melee and ~7 Ranged Boats you gather your units in front of the borders of a Civ and once all your boats are ready you declare war. You kill what's there (careful with Submarines). You take the capital. You leave 1-2 Ships to make sure the city doesn't just get retaken by 1-2 enemy units and continue to the next enemy. If you can snap a few other big cities on your way early on -> Good, that will heavily increase your income. Don't forget to replace their farms with Generators.
Yes, this wasn't much of an in-depth strategy on taking the cities, but there really isn't much to say. The fact that you can gather your army at of their borders and then get the first strike just makes it trivial. The AI wil complain, but there's no "Declare war or get a global diplo hit" anymore, the AI won't declare war to stop you from setting up a perfect concave and it won't even try to reposiition it's units so you can't wipe them out.
Anyway. At this point you shouldn't send the boats that you're producing at home to the front, instead you will want to use them to start farming Hydracoral again. If there is none, then farm nests. (Of course, if you lose units at the front, replacing them has priority) You will want to reach Affinity 6+7 as soon as you can, for t2 boats. If the AI reaches them before you do things can become tricky, but if you don't neglect farming Aliens at this point you should even be able to reach it quite a while before they do. Try not to take non-capital cities at this point as they won't really pay out anymore and will just drag your health down even further.
The AI may try to retake their cities and in case they do send up sizable armies make sure to send back a few additional units to defend. But overall you'll probably roll over 3-4 AIs before you reach t6 and the moment you do you should gather your Alien Farming Boats as a second Army and start attacking at two fronts at once -> don't forget that you'll not have to hold the last capital, you just have to take it and you've won. So while you're taking out AI 5+6 you can be rather reckless and lose some units if it speeds up your progress. Bring your remaining units to the last players capital, roll in, win. GG.
(In case you didn't win at this point and find that you're not making progress you should aim to get level 6 in a second Affinity. If you had 2 explorers running around you might very well already have level 2-3 in an off-affinity, the rest is really easy to gather with cheap techs while - you guessed it - you are farming Aliens. 6/6 gives you t3 units way before the AI should have any of them, which once again allows you to roll over their armies.)