Are the days of world conquest over?

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by MasterDave
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.

Do you automate your workers? It sounds like the AI was sitting on and/or pillaged all of your sources of oil.

-Drachasor

[siroxo]

Hi all, first post here, although I've played civ since I was 9 (read: since civ 1 was big) (:

I was able to conquer the world in 2000 AD, with all victory conditions turned on, as Kublai Khan, on a standard size map, noble difficulty. It was on pangaea, of course; I have not been able to win by conquest on a continents or archipelago map (Maybe Americans with their Navy SEAL are the best way to try that?).

The way I approach conquest is to take out as many civilizations as possible while I'm still in the classical era overlapping into Medieval if you're still on a roll. Keeping the good cities (capitals, or any that can support itself), but raze most of them. Then sit back and get out of any war weariness problems, build the Heroic Epic in one of the forward capitals you've conquered. Use the entire Rennaissance to build a defendable nation again. Then in Industrial, use cannons and cavalry to get as much of the world as possible. You should have enough power to prevent space-race victories by the time they get near, and you can clean up at leisure in the modern era. I razed almost all of the cities I took in this second wave, keeping only one capital on the opposite side of the world from me, to help heal units. I think razing the cities allowed me to control less than 2/3 of the land, so I avoided domination victory and got conquest.

[MasterDave]

Originally posted by Drachasor


Do you automate your workers? It sounds like the AI was sitting on and/or pillaged all of your sources of oil.

-Drachasor

I thought of that, but I had plently of aluminum and oil on my resource lists. Yes, once the unit count got really high, I had almost every worker set to auto improve and build trade network.

[smithldoo]

Monarch level, great plains, playing as Louisxiv.

Domination victory by just over 1800.

Tactic, attack, attack, attack.

Second game where I played IAS (infinite attack sleeze). Get to 5-6 cities with 2-3 barracks, wait till the barbarians peter out, churn out experienced units, target the nearest ai with good resources. Once you take them over, it is pretty simple and straighforward then.

Louis xiv, half wonder build time and extra culture, get lots of wonders and empire grows. Easily best personality IMHO.

Observations.
1) definitely not enough penalties for going to war.
2) units heal to easily for no cost.
3) city defences not good enough, probably kept low to help ai.
4) bonus for capturing cities too high, I funded many turns of deficit research spending on this gold. Not to mention captured workers. Think I only actually built about 7.

Hardly bothered with diplomacy in the second game, trade as well. Figured why give ai something they need when I do not need the lousy 1-4 gold per turn in return.

" Are the days of world conquest over?"

Easiest path to victory IMHO. Conquest much easier in Civ 4 than Civ 3, was able to exploit unit promotions very easily to take cities. Last war against Bismark, probably killed 3 for 1 or better while taking cities. Ai left defences in cities to try to capture workers and take my cities, weakening their defences badly.