[NFP] Trying to improve domination skills

Hey all! Long time lurker, first time poster.

I'm about 350 hours into Civ 6 and trying to improve. I'm primarily playing on Immortal difficulty. The biggest area of weakness for me is in domination victories. Specifically, I'm struggling with how much science to mix in. With the AI's extreme bias towards science I'm finding it difficult to keep up when I go for domination victories. I find myself getting locked into either producing too many units and falling drastically behind in science, or, spending too much production on science and then I end up not having enough units for when I hit key power spikes.

For example, most recent play was as Hungary. Looking at my replay - I spent WAY too much time building campuses and science buildings and just flat out wasn't ready for my power spike when Black Army got unlocked - didn't produce any horsemen so didn't have any on hand to upgrade so I had to hard build my black armies after they were unlocked - I also barely had enough enough gold to do one levy let alone multiples. Thus, I wasn't able to go to war before the AI got to gunpowder and lost my potential to really shine.

I'm wondering if anyone has a metric for how much production (or how many cites) they devote to science versus how much they put toward producing units? Any ideas for me?

 

Just have one city dedicated to building military and civilian units. Not every city needs a campus

 

Maybe playing Alexander could help you with that? Conquering a city will give you science as a reward.

 

The flip side to the AI's bias toward science is that if you go to war on the earliesh side (classical/medieval), you will often be able to capture cities that already have campuses and will help spike your science. Before your conquering, you really only need enough to tread water and generally keep up with AI troops - in most games, a couple of campuses with decent adjacency and a library, plus Pingala in your largest city and a city state or some other random sources will usually give enough science while your other cities bang out troops.

 

You really need one or two encampments. You shouldn't go all bonkers on units. It's super snwobally to launch a succesful early attack. Best suited imo is a sword rush with a RAM and a GG. If you play grad colombia you can do anything you want. With oligarchy and a comandante General you can even shoot ancient walls to pieces with archers. Built one or two encampments, for GG's Promotions and eurekas. Have a handful of melee, maybe Vampire, heroes, heavy cav and siege on your hand. After an early war these should be highly promoted. Maybe 3-4. Throw in Terrakotta army to beef them up. Have good campuses and play the chopping game. Chop them out everywhere, along with a fewi industrial zones and commercial Hubs. Upgrade and learn to handle your siege weapons alongside your melee meat shield and heavy cav. Pillage everything! If you csnt take a City, pillage , pillage and pillage more. Even go to war just for the pillageing. Slot the raid card and enjoy. Promote campus building production in World congress and chop universities. You can beat renessaince walls with bombard Corps and a GG. Practise not to lose your units. Did I mention pillage? Employ spies for the Extra diplo visibility. Buy heroes and units to upgrade to corps and armes, don't merge your elite squads. Either proceed twoards artillery or the game over tech for every AI civ: advanced flight. Get bombers and kill the Rest of the pack. Work out your timing pushes. Don't wait, hit your timing and fortifie, range attack your way through their carped of trash units, pillage, Co quer, hit the next with the next timing. You should be snowballing into a tech advantage. Pillage, bombers, bye bye.

E: suze two science cs's and chop out kilwa, connecring with your universites and natural philosophy and you really should be fine. Make one or two theatre squares and suze two cultural cs's you'll hit mobilization in nö time.

 

THIS. If you capture cities early in the game, they will probably have some campuses that you can use to catch up with science. That's usually how you win domination on deity.