Issues With Domination

[maxcavsm]

Working with Tokugawa on Noble for my first domination game. Huge map, continents, so there are eight other people I'm up against. I'm up 750 points on the closest competitor and am now cranking out modern armor, but only 2-3 of them are viable competitors.

I've got a lot of land to cover, and I'm just crossing into late 1800s.

My strategy was to knock everyone down a few pegs before I start worrying about trying to take over territory to avoid seeing someone complete the Apollo project on me. So I would land a craft, take a coastal town (hopefully a captial), hold it as a base of operations on that continent/upgrade center and rape/pillage from there.

The issue was that any town after that initial would be destroyed under the assumption that the enemy would eventually overtake it either culturally or militarily. So better to leave nothing than give them an opportunity to take it back.l

My issue is after taking out a town or two, my assault would lose steam, my units would be badly damaged. I have one town on the continent fortified for the next assault into enemy turf.

Is it better in these situations to destroy the cities, or attempt to keep towns that are close together in an attempt to make an actual push toward holding 60% of the planet?

[Velociryx]

Domination is all about controlling the land and the people.

To do that, you need cities (specifically, cultural borders and lossa food), so ANY TIME you capture a city that's even marginally useful, I'd hold onto it.

If you burn it down, your borders shrink, and you are that much further from your goal (not to mention, the liklihood that the AI will drop a cheese city in the space you just created increases, and then you've simply delayed the problem, rather than solved it).

If you tell me that your army stalls after 1-2 cities, I would surmise one of the following from that:

* your army is not big enough to effectively accomplish your goals

OR

* your army is not being used in an effective manner.

The solution to item one is simple, if somewhat in-elegant. Build more guys. Then, you can rotate them. Two main battle groups. One heals while the other fights. I frequently sub-out my troops like this if I want a protracted "grind them to dust" fight.

The solution to item two takes a bit more care and feeding. Mostly, it revolves around practice.

It could be the case that you are unnecessarily risking or damaging your troops.

For instance, a full frontal assault may lead to three dead troops and six injured, while a siege with catapult might take three turns longer, but leave you with one dead and two injured catapults, and the rest of your army in good fighting shape.

Then again, there are times when it is to your advantage to do a full frontal assault (say, cavalry vs. macemen, if you have a tech lead)...in that case, who the heck CARES? What you lose in troops you'll make up for in speed of acquisition of the territory, and can demolish 2-3 civs back to back with that one set of units.

Short answer....keep the towns.

Long answer.....as above. Review how your army is structure and how it is used. You will probably discover several ways of saving hammers (fewer troops needing to be replaced), and time (quicker wars/faster payoffs for longer wars).

-=Vel=-

[samspock]

I would imagine that if you are that far in the game and have not yet gotten to 45-50% of the land then you may not have enough time to do it. The only domination I did had me killing off all but one AI in the end. The first I took out using pratorians very early on, the second started with pratorians and finished with mace/catapaults. The third was rifles/cannons and the last was armor and artillery. I think to make a domination work you have to work early on to wittle down the number of opponents or you will face them when they are too strong.

[maxcavsm]

Thanks.
I've been whittling since I took Mansa from even footing to last place on my continent with an early swordman rush. I took all of his towns gladly, because they were connected to my main area.

I forgot why I was having problems after 1-2 towns...it's the war weariness. My people get so bent out of shape that major things are getting stalled and delayed because no one is working. THis is with jails and the culture slider up to %20. I think I'm even using police state as well. They're just some unhappy SOBs.

So I would take 1-2, regroup with my stack, heal, and then send out another fleet to another territory while my one stack was holding in place.

Is there any "respite" from war weariness? Like if I go to war for a few decades, finish up, and then immediately start up again with a different culture, does it immediately go back to where it was before?

Thx.

[Velociryx]

I have not observed any phenomenon like you are describing, but admittedly, I've not been watching for it, either.

I've also not had nearly the war weariness trouble you are reporting. Tell me more about the game....difficulty level, settings, civic choices....there's a reason hiding in there somewhere. We just have to identify it.

My current suspicion, in light of this new information, is that your civic choices make you especially vulnerable to WW, and that a protracted conflict (say, anything beyond 15 turns) begins to really pinch.

If this turns out to be the case, either change your civics before going to war (police state is a good start, but if you are running stuff like emancipation, it might be counteracting pol...I don't know...another thing I've not looked at), or keep your wars very short. I tend to use this latter approach, structuring a war thusly:

I. Initial Blitz - 1-2 cities captured on the first turn of the war, and as many workers kidnapped as possible

II. Eating the counter-attack. Invariably, the AI will send their "extras" out to get you, so I usually hold my position until I see their "big stack." Once it's gone, the war's pretty much over.

III. Phased Conquest

IIIa) (conditional) - Tech Lead - Spread out and conquer. With a tech lead, it's easy to use fewer NUMBERS to control more territory, and this is what I do...small batches of elite troops assault cities and bring them down (sometimes over the course of several turns).

IIIb) (conditional) - Tech Parity - Rotating battle groups (as above)...one fights, one heals. If you can afford four of these, then so much the better, but that can get expensive....

IV Cleanup - I have a thing with what my wife calls "making my borders pretty." I call it conquering until you've gotten your fill, but either way you look at it, the results are about the same. You seldom want to take a rival civ in one giant bite. Takes time to absorb the cities you conquer, and besides that, too much time spent on one civ gives all the rest time to grow stronger. Fortunately, there are natural "choke points" that will stall or delay your expansion on the map. Look for these and use them. Expanding beyond those natural points can be costly in more ways than one, so better to take a more measured approach.

When you get here, sue for peace for as much as you can get, put the new burgs on a paying basis, rinse, and repeat...

-=Vel=-

[maxcavsm]

I like the "two forward, one back" principle you're describing here. Then when the two have taken your blitz targets, the reserves come forward and push the assault elsewhere. Seeing as I've got such a lead on the rest of the world, the modern armor versus one infantry and a stack of cavalry, catapults, and longbowmen should be fine.

It's now an issue of getting the experienced troops to where they can do the most damage. I like having my most experienced personnel at the spearhead of an invasion, as they take the least damage and can roll faster across the landscape.

But I like what you've outlined. I may have to go back a millenium and give it another go, this time creating different assaulting stacks.

Stats: Noble, huge, continents, Tokugawa, 1875+, current score 2900, closest is at 2200.

I have it on police state, but hadn't thought about switching back to slavery or another way to dispatch a good deal of dissenters quickly. Heh...I'll take a look to see. But I had to put jails, theaters, colluseums and temples in every city, and then keep the slider at at least 10% to keep everyone happy.

Is there any way to track war weariness? How many turns before people start getting bent out shape? 15 turns? Phew...better be moving fast with all pieces in place before the first shot is fired.

[Velociryx]

The only way I know to track it is to watch the modifier in your cities (I use the capitol for these purposes)....you'll see it grow, and when you mouse-hover, you'll see why (the penalty for WW gets bigger). Fifteen turns is a long war for me. Much beyond that, and I feel like I'm spending too much time at war (especially given that it takes a good bit of time to get cities on a paying basis).

Timeframe is typically something like this:

T1 Opening shots fired...1-2 cities taken. Hole up and heal

T2-4 Lure/kill enemy stack of death

T5 Ready to move out again

T8 - Troops in position, second wave of cities falls.

T10 - Kill stragglers and cleanup. Start shopping a peace deal with 3-5 cities in hand.

Not always that clean, but it's a decent guideline.

-=Vel=-

PS: And I typically run slavery until I am alone on the continent...that way, I got an easy answer for all the conquered dissenters...

[Shaka II]

It sounds similar to a game I shelved a few weeks ago. With about 60 turns left, war weariness was so much I'd make peace, wait 10 turns and start it up again. I'm not sure what the recovery period is for WW, but it came back pretty fast. Also, UN resolutions had forced emancipation and universal suffrage, so no police state and I didn't have Mount Rushmore. I would have to accept a victory on points as I was only at about 40% of land area.

In my last game, I built the Great Pyramid, so Police State came in very handy. The problem I ran into was a love fest between Catherine and Tokugawa. They signed a defensive pact, so I can't achieve domination by wiping out Tokugawa without triggering the awful defensive pact with tech leader Catherine. This is still an early game on marathon ~1400AD with infantry and cannons. I have ~50% of the land area, and just researched communism to allow State Property. I think my only chance for domination, since I can't break up their unholy defensive pact, is to take my beating with Catherine, fighting war on two fronts. Usually a pact only lasts a certain number of turns ~20 turns before peace can be offered. If I can hold her off, then perpetual war with Tok will be necessary, not giving a chance for another defense pact. And it was all going so well. Diplomacy is the big wild card in Civ4. How to make it less wild is the key.

If you're playing for domination, you don't want to raze cities, but keeping them is a challenge, the biggest being pushing back the enemy's cultural borders. To make a city useful, you normally have to capture neighboring cities to remove their cultural influence. It's a continual process, until they're all captured.

You have to gage how far to push before WW gets too bad and your army is getting too weak. Monitor WW steadily. Make peace when more than a few workers stop working. I've gotten used to the fact that one or two cities that I've just conquered may flip back to the enemy or even to another civ, as I have no cultural strength in the captured area. That's OK, there'll be taken a second time.

The game before last as Capac, just before I won on domination, I took a city 4 times from Bismarck, losing it not to culture, but to counter attacks. I was stretched a bit thin. Finally I decided to not take the city, but just kill all but one of the defenders, until there were no more comers. Those darn rails. Finally, my infantry and cannon reserves showed up and pushed back three more cities for the domination win.

But the worst is initiating a war deep into the modern era, after a civ has been building 300 mixed units and lets about a third of them loose on you in the first ten turns of war. Avoid large stacks, no more than 5 mixed units, defend all exposed airspace well to protect improvements and key resources. It's often better not to attack, but declare war and fight a border skirmish before heading deep into enemy territory. Don't give him the home turf advantage when he has 100 units to burn, and about 50 of them artillery. Nothing's more disheartening then to see an entire front line vaporize in enemy territory after the first or second move.

[tetley]

If you're going for domination victory anyway, I'd move up the cultural slider. That means happy faces in your big, WW cities, but also that's the quickest way to get your newly-assimilated cities up to 10, 100 culture. I've also had good luck picking my anarchy to occur during the height of WW. Why not, if they're going to be unhappy anyway....

[PaganPaulwhisky]

I would imagine that if you are that far in the game and have not yet gotten to 45-50% of the land then you may not have enough time to do it.

I have not found this to be the case at all. In my last dom game I had only 25% landmass around 1850 on huge map (prince w/ 18 civs) and I got the dom victory well before time expired, although 4 or 5 civs were well into spaceship construction at one time or another. Once you get modern armor you can speed up conquest tremendously and I can usually take about 3 or 4 cities per turn at this level (assuming you have a very large military which is likely if youre going for domination). It is not really a concern to me if they start on the spaceship. Just stick to your guns and you should be able to achieve it if you target the right civs.

My strategy was to knock everyone down a few pegs before I start worrying about trying to take over territory to avoid seeing someone complete the Apollo project on me. So I would land a craft, take a coastal town (hopefully a captial), hold it as a base of operations on that continent/upgrade center and rape/pillage from there.

You shouldnt really worry about this too much as it takes the comp a very long time to finish a ship if you put any kind of military pressure on them. If you are around 1800s then you probably have the capacity to build tons of marines and tanks. Bring a massive stack to the continent and try to take out multiple cities at one time. If you take a large one, generally you will have around ten turns to take more before you get culturally absorbed. Just make sure you bring enough units to do it! Amphibious attacks work really great in situations like this. Also GA can help secure your new holdings. I like to pop a bunch of GA in these Dom games to maximize my territory gains.

[Calvin Vu]

Since you already have modern armor, you should also have bombers/stealth bombers !!

With enough bombers to take out the cultural defence, half the health of the defensive units as well as the counter-invasion force; your invasion force can roll ahead almost non-stop, leaving only one defensive unit and the seriously damanged units behind. Your units rarely get seriously damanged though.