Are the days of world conquest over?

[Sava]

I'm on the course to win a Conquest victory.

it's on Warlord, although I have edited the handicaps file so the difficulty is basically Noble... I just like playing on Warlord because of the bonuses I get from goody huts

I'll post a screenshot later, it's on Terra, Large map, I am India, Gandhi... the year is... uhhhh 670 AD maybe...

I have defeated 4 AI's and Napoleon is getting a beatdown at the moment... he will be dead soon.

Conquest is possible. But you have to dedicate your entire strategy to it. You cannot try and build towards culture and stuff and do Conquest. You must choose one or the other.

[Bhruic]

it's on Warlord, although I have edited the handicaps file so the difficulty is basically Noble... I just like playing on Warlord because of the bonuses I get from goody huts

Wouldn't it have been easier to edit the goody huts?

Bh

[vee4473]

All I want to say is that as someone who has indeed won cultural after deciding to go for it late (1300's or so), you CAN change to a cultural victory stance and get it.

I played on warlord, so I guess that could be why I got it. ha.

[Dis]

I can do it with relative ease on warlord diff. on small maps.

Normal maps may prove too difficult though.

It was very fun conquering the world.

[Adagio]

I just managed to conquer the world for the first time. I was playing on a pangea map with 7 enemies on Noble... the game ended in 1981
Once I got tanks it all speeded up (being ahead in tech), at the end of the game I wasted 3 Civs within 10 years (the Mongols, who had only one city, filled with cavalry, Spain who had many cities and wasn't that far behind, and Persia, the second largest Civ who had a few tanks and bombers... and had a defensive deal with Spain)

[gdijedi7]

Do Epic games make research take longer? I know that in Civ3 large worlds slow research, do long times in Civ4? If it does not, Epic games sound very fun. Lots of time to conquer

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Cordelayne
Urban Ranger, you suggested I give the name of the thread I was referring to--and the name of the thread I was referring to, as given by me, was in the excerpt you quoted!

No. I meant a hyperlink. One of these

[Dis]

Originally posted by gdijedi7
Do Epic games make research take longer? I know that in Civ3 large worlds slow research, do long times in Civ4? If it does not, Epic games sound very fun. Lots of time to conquer

yes research takes longer on epic. But unit builds also take longers. So it's really a wash.

[Aeson]

It's not quite a wash, because unit movement doesn't take longer. So relatively speaking you have longer to use the units you have.

[BigWilly1974]

I know I'm finding domination/conquest victories to be harder. I find that you really need to be at war most of the game to do this, and it's so hard to stay abreast of the tech race in doing this.

I find in my most recent games on Prince level that I either run out of a ready to war army (attrition or damaged troops), or I fall behind technologically, and am unable to seal the deal despite being well on my way to domination victory before someone wins the space race.

The other problem...the tech leader who starts the space race always seems to have a mutual protection pact with the only other viable AI at that point, so when they start building the spaceship and I attack them, I'm not in a two front war. Bah! Gotta work on that.

[Drachasor]

On higher difficulty levels it is important to make allies if you want to do a conquest. An ally or two means that you can have them declare war on any civ that is working on spaceship parts. This will slow down their space efforts significantly, allowing you time to conquer. It also allows you time to work on the spaceship victory as a fallback position.

-Drachasor

[smithldoo]

I have been playing a lot of Ages of Man, before buying Civ 4 and I am very cranky.

Sorry, I have spent the past 3 days trying to finish ONE game of Civ 4. I have been having all the troubles referred to in the help columns, eventually finishing the game with the partly fogged out map referred to. Trying all sorts of drivers. etc.

Without a doubt, I have had MORE trouble with Civ 4 than EVERY other game I have played PUT TOGETHER.

However, re conquest victory and the AI.

I am well aware that for over 3 decades we have been told that real AI is a decade away. however, I have seen much better AI than this one in older games.e.g. The civ 3 ai was more of a challenge IMHO.

As far as the cheats go, in AOM, once you eventually get on top, you don't have to worry about AI getting all sorts of handouts to boost them. The cheats are much fairer IMHO in AOM.

In the first 2 civ 4 games I played to I had never attacked anyone (except barbarians). Then both games I was targeted by a friendly neighbour. In the second game, I was attacked out of the blue by Bismarck 2 turns after I had given him cow and 20 gold as a gift??? Funnily enough, when I decided to implement IAS (aka Infinite Attack Sleeze (as discussed with stankarp)), it was predictable and booring. Get to 5 -6 cities then attack, target a neighbour with happy resources and go for it. In game one I was half way through my 3rd ai and it was pretty booringly simple, when the game died. Played again and this time managed to get to the win, one turn before I killed my 4 th AI (but I did it anyway). Capturing cities regularly funds deficit research spending.

Get this, while I was super aggressive, NO AI DECLARED WAR ON ME. How realistic, wow Over 2 games I crushed with ease 7.5 AI and no one even sent me a diplomatic note. What BS. In AOM, by the time you kill one medium size AI you are on the threshold of being branded a cross between hitler and attila and one more war and you are on your own buddy. When I was totally peaceful, I was attacked????

It (the out of the blue attack)was only a problem in my first 2 test games because I was lulled into a false sense of security, 5500 years of peace, never attacked anyone, traded with all. The reason it was a problem is proximity, the map is basically full by 500-1000AD. After I became aware of the possibility it was not a problem, in fact it was funny watching ai units immolate themselves on my defences. Then of course, have cavalry to kill those stupid catapults that often travel like sheep in groups by themselves.

Conquest is easy, far too easy. Wait till you are getting a little more gold, build 4 barracks, churn out experienced units and go for it. AI counterattacks are pretty silly and easy to counter.

In AOM the consequences of war are more realistic. Mainly you have to use op to 30 % of production to supply (heal) troops rather than they heal in a few short turns by themselves.

[Drachasor]

One other thing. When warring against an AI, make sure you have multiple forces attacking multiple cities. This makes the AI play more defensively which is to your advantage (catapults/artillery/bombers play havoc with people hiding in cities). Defensive AIs also pillage your territory less (just make sure you have a few units around to hack units moving to pillage to bits before they get into your territory).

-Drachasor

[My PitBull Tank]

Right now I'm on my way to a conquest victory, but I'm not on a standard map (one below it, small maybe?) but i also turned off timer (at 2038 now, have it on epic), and used Panzers to wipe about two civs out (i added a couple) and my suggestion is: INLAND SEA.

Helps to keep your borders limited to two enemies, and you can make good peace with one, and start early at chipping away the other direction and keep going all the way around.

I actually took all but two cities from the civ on one side, then started chipping the other direction, I'm now about 3/4 the way around, have one major civ left, one who is pretty much defeated, and as I said in another thread, I'll probably retire first, it's been the whole game of pretty much the same thing... (noble, epic, small?, conquest only)

Gonna try culture victory next!

[MasterDave]

I am working toward a domination victory on Prince level, although I am also set up to win a cultural victory a few turns before 2050 if I cannot get the domination. I turned off space race in this game to make it more possible to win by domination. The problem is I chose a large/continents map, and with my 30-35 cities or so and tons of units each turn is taking forever to get through. I did find that in the end game, when there are only a few techs left, state property becomes a very nice civic to use when one has a vast empire.

Strangely, I noticed that for some reason I can no longer build stealth bombers (or regular bombers for that matter) nor upgrade some of my remaining old bombers into stealths. Also, for about ten turns or so I no longer had the option of building modern armors, but then suddenly they were back on my build lists. Are there undocumented unit caps that limit these things? In my game I am friendly with the British and they have been modern for as long as I have, so I suspsect that they have built a ton of these units themselves.