Continents - are there enough turns to adequately look to conquer other continents?

[Jaybe]

Look, if you've got financial problems with a large empire and you don't want to go the State Property route, just put more cities into producing wealth. Or lower your research and have cities producing research.

I haven't gotten to the colony situation yet, but will soon. I have played warlords/BtS domination & UN* wins w/o State Property: while it isn't as comfortable, it's still easy (especially if you don't raze shrine cities).

The problem I see with PERMITTING only domination/conquer-type victories is you don't give the AI a chance. It should be your risk to permit space, UN, culture victories by the AI.

*with enough population between me and my vassals to assure victory.

[marvinkosh]

Conquest games are a good way to learn how to wage war though. You can take the hardest of those lessons with you when you play with a wider set of victory conditions that the AI has a chance of meeting.

[Unimatrix11]

i only read the first few posts - but i need to say: You and Your maintanance problems ! What You do when You go conquering another continent is this (as i just did in my first BTS game): Conquer, devide and rule. I had the coreans on one bigger continent (standard random # continents, epic, prince) conquered half of them, had them become my vassals and created another one from the conquered cities... et voilà: continent conquered - maintance cost: 0...

[MikeH]

Re: Opening Post

Are you playing a normal speed game? If you want to go for conquest/domination on I think Epic gives you a better chance. Marathon even more so.

That said, invading across the ocean is very tough especially before you get to modern transports, aircraft etc. It's the one time I'll go for the weakest rather than the strongest target. It's always nice to see someone like Monty on another continent, teching slowly with no friends. Hit him when he's at war with someone else.

[BigWilly1974]

Yes, I should have mentioned, I always play normal speed.

My current Continents game is another example. This time, I have a large lead, and I've nearly conquered my continent. it's 1806, and if I had to guess, by 1830, I'll own my continent. Considering the 4 Ais on the other continent are behind in tech, I think I'm a lock to win.

Until now, I've not crossed the ocean to try and get a foothold in the other continent. The continents are about 12-15 tiles apart, and I'd need to build up a large naval force with transports to make the crossing safely, leaving a "relatively" undefended home continent in order to have a shot at securing a foothold that I could keep. Plus, my philosophy is always to own my own continent first rather than try and have cities on two continents (city maintenance advantages).

But now with my home continent all but owned, I have the opportunity to strike out at the other continent with little fear from the remnants of the Malinese on my home continent. But to do so, I still need to build up a convoy and transports, and then take several turns to make the ocean crossing. Or, I could go heavy into infrastructure/technology and go full speed ahead for a space victory. I'll need to take a look at the tech tree when I reload saved game next to see how far away I am from a space victory and then weigh my options.

[famousguy]

ive conquered continents a lot of times in the past and it isnt that hard you just have to make sure that there navy doesent get through your defenses and keep producing units and transports until you finnaly conquer one and then you move on to the next. its not that hard if you havge enough time it just takes patience and you cant get frustrated when a transprot with men on it gets sunk u just move on and build another one but make sure to kill that enemy boat or it will keep stopping your supply lines and youl have to give up and leave due to lack of troops. so this was a nice lesson reply if you would like to know more

[vilemerchant]

First thing to do is use bribes to try and start a war between powers on the other continent. If you can get something started the AIs will begin whiping out each others stacks and you can then attack someone while their units are off at the front.

[Tattila the Hun]

Originally posted by Bhruic


Actually, Versailles becomes much less important with BTS. The "another continent" city maintainance is not affected by Versailles or the Forbidden Palace. So if you get more than 4-5 cities on another continent, you will cripple your economy. At that point, the only realistic option is to form a colony - which is fine, but then if you built Versailles, the new colony would get it.

Bh

So here's a question for anyone in the know. If I manage to build Versailles and FP on my home continent, and then take another continent by settling or by force, and start to bleed money... If I build a Palace on my new continent, will my original continent become "another continent", without the full benefit of V and FP, and will I start to get the make-a-colony promt for my original cities every few turns?

Hum, another kind of challenge, that...

[rah]

Yeah, always keep track of that other continent once you have made contact. If they never go to war with each other, they're going to have some bad ass SODs. But if there is on and off fighting, then their SODs won't be so bad.
BRING LOT"S of escorts for your troop carriers.

[One_more_turn]

The larger the map, the more important the diplomacy becomes. You MUST involve other AIs in their own wars. Only then do you have a chance to conquer them all. Sometimes it's even necessary to adopt your ally's civis and religion.

If you have a tech lead, which it's often true on continent maps, you will have lots of leverage of those Aggressive civs who usually lag behind. Then you set them lose on the likes of Mansa Musa and Peter....