Playing a war game

[AppleTheMan]

What is the best strategy for playing a domination game?

I find it incredibly hard, as the production of soldiers and war weariness really seems to get to my cities. I find myself building so much military that my science and commerce start to go down the tubes. The strange thing though, is that I look at the powergraph and Hannibal has twice my power, but less production than I do. This is just at Prince. I usually have no problem playing Prince if I play more peacefully. I've gone for a Farms + Caste System + whips strategy.

Thanks!

[Unimatrix11]

My advice on this would be: You dont really play for domination until you have the blackpowder guys with the bonus against horses (I dont know what they are called in english). Until then, you play the same as if you were going for space-race. Focus on economy, trying to get a tech-lead. Then build-up and start making war. Then comes another pause, where you build you factories. The AI does this very late. You will end up with a tech-lead and a production capacity of two AI-Civs combined. And Infantry when noone else has them yet. Only then you start pushing for domination. Once you started conquering, you will notice that your economic build-up phase was not only needed for acquiring the tech-lead, but also for maintaining your gains.

I dont do domination often at all, so others may well have a more solid and different opinion on this. Last SP-game, i actually did make it for dominiation and it was a close call, not because anyone posed a threat to me, but because i had to invade another continent in order to get the needed percentages and maintainance-cost almost killed me. I had my science at 0% and still lost a couple of hundreds each turn. The turn the borders expanded, making me win, was exactly the turn my army started to desintegrate (1963, large hemispheres, prince, epic).

[ybrevo]

I have not played for domination win very much - usually I end up in a space race since I go for economics and tech advantage - but if war weariness is a big problem, maybe you should go for the Pyramids Wonder, so you can swift to Police State early on in the game.

Well, that´s just a guess that may work

ybrevo

[Jaybe]

Unimatrix11, they are called Riflemen in the game. They have a bonus vs. mounted units because they have those sharp pointy things attached to the end of their rifles to simulate a spear, called bayonets.

[Crossfire]

Build up military while at peace. Attack with ferocity and take as many cities as you can quickly and then make peace. Rebuild your military and do it over again. Never stay at war for very long or the war weariness will kill you. I start warring as soon as I have axes usually. Then I will attack again when I get catapults, again when I get knights, again when I get guns.

[mrp]

I expand peacefully until I start bumping into other civs then I make war. As long as my econ is not going south pretty much regardless of my technology but in advance game usually end up producing most of my units in the modern or industrial eras. usually go after the weaker civs first

[snoopy369]

In a game of adequate difficulty (ie, a game you could win or lose), you certainly need to start attacking well before gunpowder

You should take over at least one civ with catapults, if not two... and certainly at least one with trebs (in a 7 civ Pangaea game). (Map type and size of course matters for this, and can affect things significantly, so all suggestions are for this setup.)

[Unimatrix11]

Yeah, well, granted Snoopy. By saying ´playing economically´ i didnt exactly mean not to do any war at all, if opportunity grants it. What i rather meant was, that You shouldnt try conquering the world with maceman and no banks. What You need is a nice couple of core cities when industrialism arrives, and early conquests can become those - so they are of course helpful. One just shouldnt overdo it early on, even if going for domination, i say.

EDIT: And pangea, yeah, well, thats a different story probably. On a large hemisphere map You usually have to go intercontinental in order to hit the percentages. Makes economy all the more important. Here again, of course it wont really hurt You, if You completely conquer your own continent, if its not too big, rather sooner than later.

[snoopy369]

I don't consider continent games to be true domination (war) games, simply because they're builder focused games by default - you have a large degree of protection from opponents. For most non-aggressive players, they're very easy games compared to Pangaea, because you don't have six other civs (or whatever) bearing down on you at any one time.

My point was that you must play a different game from somewhat earlier on to play domination if you are on an adequate difficulty level, because you should not be getting a huge technology lead at any point prior to having conquered the major tech leading civs. The way you win a domination game is by superior tactics, not superior tech, simply because the advantage you have over the AI is in tactics and not in technology, where the AI gets bonuses to help it stay competitive there. You stay competitive in tech by having three or four civs worth of cities teching for you (even at 20%) ...

[egavactip]

I think you can take advantage of sweet spots, always depending on the situation.

For example, you may be able to take out an early opponent with a quick axe rush (or UU rush if applicable). You won't conquer the world with axes, so when your sweet spot is no longer sweet, you stop and build.

There will be another sweet spot with macement where if you get it fast enough you can take out an opponent before AI players' defenses get good enough to make maces very slow conquests.

So you don't try to conquer the word, you wait for the next sweet spot.

For me, the next sweet spot is riflemen, but some prefer cavalry, and there are others that can also work.

Riflemen plus a few trebuchet can easily take out an opponent or two unless they are right up with you on the tech race.

The nice thing about getting there is that infantry is close behind. When you get to infantry you can start going on a more or less permanent war economy (again, depending on circumstances; I am very much generalizing here), because you are likely to get to infantry first (I don't understand why the AI seems to put a lower priority on certain military techs than it does other techs), and infantry is a great sweet spot. By itself it can take you the rest of the way through the game, assuming that you have no particularly techy opponents, but if it doesn't, you can beeline from infantry to armor, and armor can definitely take you the rest of the way.

So by the time you are ready to go to perpetual conquest you have already conquered a few opponents (either entirely or made vassals of them) and have a substantial production advantage.

[Garth Vader]

In addition to sweet spots it's really about conquest and consolidation. In the early game you take a city or two, then get peace, consolidate, get your economy going again, then take another city or two.

As you go further down the tech tree the amount you can take in each bite becomes bigger. If you are having problems with war weariness and tech rates then you are taking too big of bites too early.

[Blaupanzer]

War weariness is worse when you are the aggressor. It is correspondingly less if you are the one upon whom war is declared. If you make peace to take a break from war weariness, be aware you need to stay in peace long enough to break the cycle, at least 10 turns in my experience. As to the economy, when stretched tight, burst on opponent's cities to keep your troops out of enemy territory as much as possible. Even at standard speed (most of the folks here play at Epic or Marathon), time is not your enemy in domination as long as you take down at least one opponent per era. I usually wait for cats before taking on major conquering. Cannons, rifles, infantry, and tanks are each good times to push one over. Planes come along about the same time as artillery and these tools open up the rest of the world. Good hunting!

[snoopy369]

There is no 'cycle', you just slowly lose war weariness for every turn of peace (1pt + 1%, or something like that). It rather depends on how many 'points' of war weariness you have accumulated, how long you need to stay at peace to entirely eliminate it (or to reduce it to acceptable levels).

[Theben]

Is there a screen which shows my war weariness? I've seen the "hell no,..." it my cities, and enemy weariness, but never my own number.

[snoopy369]

You can't see the actual number, no.

[Solomwi]

Theben:

Hover over the enemy leader's name in the score table above the minimap. Underneath the diplomacy modifiers it gives you your WW points with that leader (which may be what you're calling the enemy's weariness). I just opened up a game and deliberately lost a unit on enemy ground to make sure the number went up (and was therefore my number, not the enemy's). It did.

[The Priest]

A few thoughts/tips from me.

1. The main reason why late game domination works far better than early is not the troops (infanty only travel the same speed as archers) but the war wariness reducing items - jail (25%), rushmore (25%) and police state (50%). These all come along at nearly the same time (unless you have pyramids) and are the key. With them all you can reduce war wariness to 0. So prioritise getting the necessary techs early and get these items built/civics adopted.

2. State property is well worth contemplating. Otherwise as you expand the maintainance costs get you. You are likely to find trade not as productive anyway (too many wars) and the extra production as well as the bonuses for improvements help too.

3. Produce artists. A strategically deployed great artist can hugely speed up the conquest of a civ, by stabalising the cities you have captured, and by rolling back the ownership of the land which means your troops move far more quickly. Took me a while to realise that culture was a key weapon of war.

4. Exploit open borders. The normal problem is that even if you have defeated a civ's field army and you know you could one by one elimitate the cities, it takes so long because you only move on space a turn in his terrain, and hence war wariness gets you. So use open borders to invade your enemy from more than one side at once (perhaps delaying the second attack, so you know the frist has drawn off his field army). This can hugely speed up the conquest.

5. Similarly think if you can invade ambigiously up the coast rather than just slogging through the one line of attack. If all you do it take one city, it will still save many years. Again, only once his field army is gone.

6. Spies causing city revolts increase speed a great deal too since you are not waiting for artillery to bring down the defenses. But particarly good it teaming them up with fast movers (horses and tanks). They can gobble cities alarmingly.

7. You need great general medics - they have an amazing effect on keeping an advance going.

8. Be careful that your wars dont' have the effect of weakening your real enemies enemy. Five equal civs give you lots less opposition in the long term than 2 big ones and 3 weak ones. Don't just knock off the easy enemies. You need to kill or at least trim teh big ones. Sometimes even prop up the minor ones next to your big enemies (giving rifling to a nation without it, can stop their elimiation at a stroke).

[Nikomakkos]

Oh, jeez, whenever I read stuff like this I get such a huge itch to play, it's not funny.

[Unimatrix11]

But is #3 really that important. I mean in late-game it´s not, right ? Cause the culture bomb is not much against the enemy-culture accumulated in the tiles for millenia, or so i read ?

[Theben]

Originally posted by The Priest

5. Similarly think if you can invade ambigiously...

I'd like to do that. "No, it's not really an invasion, we're just, uh, sightseeing."

[The Priest]

"No, it's not really an invasion, we're just, uh, sightseeing."

Oh dear ... the typist has been sacked.

But is #3 really that important.

I'm still confused by this. You are right that late game it works less, but it still seems to have an important effect - at least in solidifying your new territory.

[wodan11]

Originally posted by The Priest
I'm still confused by this. You are right that late game it works less, but it still seems to have an important effect - at least in solidifying your new territory.

There's two situations for newly conquered cities:
1) They're only on the border for as much time as it takes your troops to heal and move on to conquer the next city
2) They're on the new border, and then you declare peace, or the enemy is able to rally and stop your advance.

For (1) the only value of a Great Artist is in speeding the advance slightly. I'd say that's not worth the use of a great person.

For (2), a GA might be required to be able to expand to the fat cross. On the other hand, that's just in the midgame. In the early game, it should be sufficient to simply whip a theatre, library, and perhaps run a normal artist. And in the late game, even a Great Artist will not be sufficient to push back the borders... literally nothing you do will change the existing civ's culture because so much has accumulated.

[Unimatrix11]

So for a domination game, would you go for GAs or rather for other Great Persons ? Cause i think, i´d still prefer almost any other GP in almost any situation.