Conquest Advice

[Ralelen]

Ive been playing a few games at noble ane have yet to win via conquest, usually its culture or space race. Any way I am looking for some advice on how to bet the game via conquest. The AI always seems to be one step ahead of me. Curently I am trying to build on military until for every city upgrade while keeping science heavy but it does not seem to work.

[Drachasor]

You have to specialize your cities.

Focus some cities on generate a high level of production (e.g. only farms, mines, and the like). Use this to pump out military units and don't both to put libraries, markets, banks, etc in that city. Instead they make a barracks and churn out military units. They can also be ideal for wonders, but some wonders are best put in another type of city.

Other cities can be focused on science and money generation. Give them some production, but primarily focus on cottages and other sources of income.

Also, focusing some cities on just having a large population can also be handy. Make a bunch of specialists in such cities to generate Great People.*

Critically, if you find that you have no good place for a production city, then you just have to make one. So if you have hardly any hills in your territory, then you have to go with workshops to increase the production for a city or two.

Once you do this it is all a matter of getting a vast number of troops. Get good attack units of a fair variety (so you can defend yourself against whatever the AI might throw at you, but make sure you have enough guys that can take on cities). Also, when catapults become available make a ton of them. They are very cheap and can damage up to 6 units in a stack in one attack. Their inexpensive nature means it is alright if they die. With them you can make it so you will lose very few of your real troops when taking cities and performing other attacks.

For Conquest you will want to be attacking early on in the game. Your first wave of attacks should ideally happen no later than when you get iron working. On a standard map you can manage a conquest if you wait until Riflemen, but it can be very tricky at that point. In any case, the earlier you start taking enemy cities, the better off you are in the long run. Well, that's true once you have libraries and markets at least, as then you can make an infastructure to support a large empire. Very early maintainance costs can be prohibitive (by the time I have banks I never have a problem with maintainance from a new city however).

-Drachasor

*This is perhaps the hardest type of city to make, because any area that is good for this is also going to be good for a commerce city, hence there is always a desire to make a commerce city instead.

[Ralelen]

Thanks for the advice! I'll give it a try after work tomorrow.