A change in style

[Huorn]

Guys,

Don't we all stick to what we know best too often?

I, for one, aways seem to race towards a space race or cultural victory. it just suits my game play best to build up some good working cities, get ahead in tech and build up a good "defensive" army.
Of course there is the odd early start wipe out of a weak neighbor, but apart from that it' just building and growing on a keep-everybody(AI)-nice-and-cooperating-strategy.

So after a couple of wins, I thought : time for a change: let's go dominating the world using Mr Wilhem Van Oranje! At this point I am only 3% away on landmass from victory, so I only need a couple of turns more.

The problem that I have here is that I'm such a tech-addict, that I just started to build my nice peace-based empire (with a nice vassal : the Zulu) until I got far enough ahead in tech and power.

This resulted in only going to war for the first time by the early 1900's . On a continental map, this means building tons of ships (transports and battleships) to get my modern armors and stuff across the globe. It is taking me up and above 10 minutes for each turn to do the necessary! (I micromanage quite a bit)

Now the question: How does anyone of you guys deal with a domination strategy? (and how are goals to be achieved quicker...)

[MoonWolf]

Well, dominitation is usually a victory that just comes to me. In fact, I hardly finish a game before I start a new one, so if I decide to win, it's all situational . But, how it usually turns out, is that someone declare war on me. I defend, counterattack and counterinvade. If my empire can afford the cost of war, I will fight untill the enemy has no cities left. I will not vassalize them if I'm force to stop cause of war weariness or just producing units is halting my growth. Then I will have peace for a while and then take out the remaining cities. Again it's situational if I'll vassalize an emeny.

And so it goes on. Normally a new enemy will declare war on me and I will invade him/ her. I might also find an nearby civ to "integrate" and often try to do this by a surprise attack.

Summa summarum, I gain land and will get closer and closer to a domination victory. When it's time for tanks and planes, you should be large enough in land to produce a relative huge invasion force to suprise attack a powerful neighbour even on a separate continent.

[fed1943]

What's wrong about taking 10 or more minutes for each turn? We are
not payed by turn, it just means we take more profit from the money
we spent to buy the game.
About domination... wars must be started much before 1900'.
Just expand, protect yourself and take care of the economy and
resources,then more military to conquer or vassalize (and diplomacy
to trade and not to be ganged on).
Best regards,

[Seedle]

Airports can be useful for inter-continental wars. You still need an initial invasion force, but after that you just buy/whip airports in conquered cities and air-lift/rebase everything. Of course, this works much better if you have a significant tech lead, if they can kill your units quickly you may need to cart over more units than the airports can allow, and you run the risk of your airlifts being shot down (I think)

What I do for domination victory: Make an early war either with axes or an early UU, it's easy to get a large army before the AI (at least on the settings I play). Take out one or two civs, hopefully get 2 great generals. Now, the best value is to settle them, but that's boring, and it means you need to build lots of units, but the point here is to have an elite force that is much quicker to use than a large army. So attach them to your best axes/swordsmen/maces. First priority is leadership, then city raider, then one goes for medic3, the other for woodsman3. After I've cleared out my immediate area, I cool on the warmonger, both because my economy is usually tanking, and because I hate medieval warfare. Use your size lead to your advantage and out-tech the AI. Once you have steel, build some cannons and maces, and try to get to about 10 maces with City Raider3. Upgrade all your city raider3 units to riflemen/infantry. Assuming you are tech leader, it is physically impossible to lose a war at this point. And 10 cityraider infantry (one of which is probably combat6 at this point, and the other has 5-8 first strikes from drill/woodsman) will take any city defended by rifles or less, you might need seige/air support for civs with tech parity. The point being, set your self up to need a 10 man offensive army, easy to transport, easy to use, easy on the budget. Though if you go for domination rather than conquest, you'll still need to build defensive units for the new cities, obviously.

[Blaupanzer]

Ten minutes per turn when managing dozens of units and cities sounds like very little time to me. I play Epic speed and I am averaging 10 minutes a turn by Gunpowder. I spend that time per turn checking cites, examining production queues, and, if at war, evaluating the next five rounds or so of the fight in question.

[rah]

Used to MP so 10 minutes a turn is not possible.
STACK ATTACKS (at least by catagory), and not giving commands to workers during wars. (unless they're just connecting auto)
Only look at cities when something is finished building and use queues. Thinking about overall strat only while waiting for other cives to finish their turns.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

I'll do a bit more city Maint during SP, but I keep it moving.

[Blaupanzer]

How much time do you MPers get per turn? How is that enforced, i.e., what mechanism stops your clock and starts the next guy's, or do you all move simultaneously (seems very unlikely)?

[Jaybe]

Ten minutes per turn when managing dozens of units and cities sounds like very little time to me

I'm with Blaupanzer.
Ten minutes for a turn even when NOT in a war happens sometimes, and when marshaling forces for a war is quite understandable.
And I play marathon!

[snoopy369]

MP time limit starts at a bit under 1 minute per turn on Normal timer speed, faster for Blazing slower for Slow. It goes up with certain things - I think it's like 1 second per unit or something odd like that, and some time per city, etc. By the Ren. era it's maybe 2 minutes a turn.

You can manage all of your workers with no trouble, you do need to do stack attack and not manage every city every single turn, but that shouldn't be necessary anyway.

[Blaupanzer]

Another world entirely! Sometimes I just like to admire/evaluate for a couple of minutes. I look through the graphs, check the F1, rearrange my tech study order, check out the Demographicsm and Top 5/Wonders screens, look over the resource and tech trade option screens, and study the map a bit. None of this would be possible in one to two minutes.

Does the stack attack process work well? I would think you would end up assaulting before your seige weapons had worn down the defenses in cities.

[Garth Vader]

Warmongering is very map dependent, so this is a generalization. I play standard map with 7 AI civs, and I tend to take out one with axes/cats. One with maces/trebs. Then the finishing push with rifles/cannon, I get infantry during this stage but it's not usually essential. Basically keep expanding as your economy can support it.

[rah]

I use catagories while stack attacking.
Point at a trib holding the ctrl key will select all tribs. Take down city defenses. Any tribs still green (extras that weren't used in takeing down the walls) point holding ctrl and all attack. Next double click on whole stack and the rest of units left attack with. If you wanted to give priority to mounted first select mounted holding ctrl all selected attack. Using these simple methods you can do a city attack in under 10 seconds. (and speed is always a consideration since it is simul move and moving faster may allow you to destroy defending siege units before they move) A person selecting one unit at a time to attack will usually be crushed quickly.

You usually have plenty of time to stratagize but sometimes during wars you have to do it on the fly since time can be short if you're attacking or defending in a lot of places.

And then there's the old rushing out for a smoke during play (pauses are rare) to come back and find some one declared war on you and took a city out without your getting a chance to use all those cannons.

Smoking can be dangerous to civ playing.

[snoopy369]

You're still sore about that aren't you.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Blaupanzer
Another world entirely! Sometimes I just like to admire/evaluate for a couple of minutes. I look through the graphs, check the F1, rearrange my tech study order, check out the Demographicsm and Top 5/Wonders screens, look over the resource and tech trade option screens, and study the map a bit. None of this would be possible in one to two minutes.

Does the stack attack process work well? I would think you would end up assaulting before your seige weapons had worn down the defenses in cities.

Stack attack works fine. You just have to be intelligent about it I'd use it for SP just as much as for MP.

You use the control-click feature to select all of your siege, then attack, then select all of your macemen, then attack, etc. You also use ctrl-H to select hurt units, 'fortify' them, then select the rest of the units to get only Healed units.

[Diadem]

In MP most people in fact play blazing turn timer, which is even faster (starts at 30 sec a turn, and may go up to 1 min later in the game, if you're lucky). And they manage to chat while playing too!

Of course in MP your style is very different, and in fact much more suitable for faster play. You'll have fewer cities, fewer workers, and more units. But those units will usually be in huge stacks. In team games religions and wonders usually play barely any role.

Personally I'm still a great fan of this classical setup: 5 vs. 5 teamgame Renaissance start, Inland Sea map script. Pick civs, but each civ at most once per team.

It's awesome.