Sid Meier's Civilization Series (Main Titles)

Edit: Darn, page topper. A punchline without it's setup.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Feb 3rd 2021 at 12:57:26 PM

Each leader has a preferred government that they will stick to beyond reason in many cases. That said, there have been several patches to AI weighting to fix the apparent undervaluation of higher tier governments, causing them not to switch when they have the chance. I don't know if that's still going on.

Civ VI was shipped with really wonky AI. Even now it's still pretty bad.

At least they're not doing the whole "I'll declare war on you from half the map in the Ancient Era, then surrender with tons of tribute before my units even reach you" thing any more.

Okay so I declared a War of Liberation on a Civ to free an ally's(Gilgamesh) City and then that ally declared war on me cause I had troops close to his border to attack that Civ and converted all his cities's religion beforehand but that's not that important, then the game kinda bugged out and stayed loading cause another Civ declared war on me in the same turn. Kinda annoying.

So, what’s a good strategy for getting a good start on a domination victory? I feel like I’m always hitting a wall when I try one.

Scout aggressively and elminate the war mongering civs early on

Alright, but how should I actually fight the wars? Like, how many units do I need? When should I declare war? How do I effectively close the distance with my closest neighbors? How far should I take it?

Apologies for all the questions - this type of victory has always been a bit frustrating for me, and I’d like to do it right for once.

To fight war effectively you need a tech advantage. Early in the game, you won't have one, so you need to be defensive. It's virtually guaranteed that if you start near at least one other civ, they'll attack you before the Classical Era. Turtle up and use their units to farm XP.

When fighting in this manner, you'll want to form a wall of Warriors fortified in strong positions (hills, woods, across rivers), backed up by Archers. Get your Slingers upgraded as soon as possible. If you need the Eureka for Archery, arrange for a Slinger to kill a Barbarian.

I don't usually go for cavalry units (Horsemen, War Chariots) unless I hit the jackpot on Horses; they're expensive and vulnerable to Spearmen. Neither do I use Spearmen myself unless the opponent has a ton of cavalry.

If you can gain an advantage in the war you can get some nice deals at the peace table. Then take your core, veteran units and upgrade them at every opportunity. Going on the counteroffensive is only feasible if you have enough archers to break city defenses. I've never found that throwing melee units at them works very well. Otherwise you need to wait for Catapults.

Ideally you will conquer one nearby opponent and then have a strong base of cities with which to build. Technology is key to winning Domination, so push it. Meanwhile, you'll want one city that focuses on military. Get an Encampment, Barracks/Stables, get your military Governor (Victor) in there and aim for his third promotion that gives all units built in the city a free promotion. Pop in the Statue of Zeus and the Terracotta Army. This will give you a massive pile of veteran units.

Then wait for your neighbors to either attack you or give you casus belli opportunities. The best way is to wait for them to attack a city-state. If you are the Suzerain, you can declare a Protectorate War instantly with no Grievances penalty. The other way to do it is to wait for them to capture the city-state, then get the World Congress to declare a liberation Emergency. This isn't as reliable because you can only call one every so often and you probably won't have a ton of Favor since you're conquering everybody.

Besides science and military production, work on Amenities at home, since all these extra cities will put a lot of strain on happiness. By this point you should be ahead in cities, so it becomes a cycle of build up, conquer, build up, conquer, and so on. You reach an unstable equilibrium.

As for unit composition, I always go for a cadre of maximum promotion archer units with a front line of melee units. Cavalry units are expensive but can be very effective, especially against enemy archers. I don't use more than one or two artillery units because they're really difficult to maneuver. Anti-cavalry is of variable utility. I usually pick up some by accident as I go along, and they can be excellent for holding a line. Just don't attack into melee units with anti-cav.

Tactically, try to get the AI to attack into your units while you take advantage of terrain bonuses for defense. Position melee units to screen your ranged units, which should be on hills if possible. You can demolish whole waves of attackers with a setup like this. Be prepared to rotate wounded units out if they can't heal through incoming damage.

If at all possible, do not attack with your melee units out of this fortification. They take extra damage, lose their fortification bonus, and if they get a kill, they can move into a vulnerable position. If you must attack with them, attack into units that they won't kill so they don't move. Then kill off the wounded units with your ranged attacks.

Mobile units like light and heavy cavalry should pick off weaker units as long as they don't put themselves at risk of being dogpiled. Heavy cavalry can break melee lines, since melee units get no bonuses against them. Cavalry units can also pillage tiles and take out civilian units with ease.

Remember that promoting a unit heals it for 50 hit points. This is a great way to sustain an offensive. Pillaging farms also heals for 50. In fact, pillage whatever you can if you don't intend to immediately make use of your opponent's cities. You get a lot of resources and it can cripple them.

By the way, if you want to keep the other civs from constantly being furious with you even as you're wrecking their shit, make sure not to directly capture an opponent's final city. You will have a lot of Grievances with them, but it's better than having a burst of Grievances with everyone else. To get away with a war more or less scot-free, do one of the following:

• Don't declare peace. This doubles the capture Grievances for your opponent's cities (unless you give them back). Just let them stew in rage.
• Leave a single city with low population alive in the middle of yours. Your Loyalty pressure will cause it to revolt. At that point you can capture it without ramifications.
• Make sure that the final city you capture is a city that was previously captured from another civ or a city-state. You can liberate it for a large Diplomatic Favor bonus and reduction in any Grievances inflicted on other civs.
  • If you liberate a major civ's city, it will be immune to your Loyalty pressure. Bear this in mind if you plan to capture it later.
  • If you capture a city that previously belonged to a defeated civ and keep it for yourself, you get penalized as if you had captured that civ's last city. It's nasty, so beware.

Also, note that the capture penalty for cities is reduced if you are participating in an Emergency or declared war using a casus belli. Yes, this does mean you get penalized more if you capture the cities of a civ who declared a Surprise War on you. Life isn't fair.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 8th 2021 at 11:19:37 AM

Hm...alright, I’ll give all that a try. Thanks!

I should really try domination victory sometimes, but I am peeved that I would be limited due to everyone getting angry at me, so no trades and such.

Play a tiny map, two players only. Play as Vergingetorix and use the Gaestae and the adjacent unit combat bonus to blitz the opposing civ before they can build their walls. Acheievement reached.

I know that it's not as big of a problem, but try to keep a strong economy too, cities and troops can start draining your money surprisingly fast and then you get bankrupt and have to deal with possible anarchy barbarian units.

> this type of victory has always been a bit frustrating for me, and I’d like to do it right for once.

In fairness domination victories are always going to be harder,I'd rather win a science victory or cultural

Huh, I encountered a weird bug(?) where the AI is completely unwilling to even let me click on their Great Works to trade. It's kinda annoying.

Next developer update is on Tuesday.

Copy pasted because I'm having power issues at the moment.

Barbarian Clans Gamemode

• Barbarian's have 6 different clans (hills clan near hills, rover clan near horses, etc)
• Clans can build unique units from Civ that are not in the game, such as war carts.
• Clans can become a city state. You can push toward or take away their progress.
• You can disburse clan which is how we cleared before.
• You can raid a clan for gold, and slow down their city state conversion.
• You can pay a "protection fee" (bribe) to stop being attacked.
• You can pay to hire their strongest unit, once every 10 turns.
• You can pay to have the clan attack another civ.
• You can pay a "ransom" to get your stolen civilian units back.

Leader Selection Pool

• You can gurantee which civs show up or don't show up (bye Korea)

Air Combat

• AI will make better use of air units / air defense.

Gameplay tweaks

• Government policy card slots have been moved around.
• Rebalanced natural wonders (Great Barrier Reef gives campus adjacency / Cliffs of Dover 2F/3G/3C.)

Does that mode change Gilgamesh's Epic Quests trait that causes barbarian camps to give tribal village bonuses when cleared?

is Dovers finally going to be good

I'm reminded of Stellaris and the introduction of Marauder clans beyond generic Space Pirates.

This has a lot of potential. One of Civilization's problems is that it's based around civilizations, which means cities, which means some nomadic or tribal peoples don't quite fit into the roster (looking at you, Huns). But something like this, where "barbarians" are more than just always-hostile units that spawn in the fog of war, would let groups like the Goths or Apache or yes, the Huns be included in the game in a way that better represents how they lived. If the game devs want to be really ambitious, they could try to develop this idea further into a viable "uncivilized" gameplay style. I'm thinking something like Total War's horde mechanics, where a horde on the move can act in some ways like a city, or capture a settlement and decide to establish itself a permanent homeland (until something uproots them again).

And if they really want to be like Stellaris, have an uncivilized faction (like reworked Mongols, perhaps) suddenly decide to become an empire, establish a capital, and start behaving like a normal civ (i.e. by aggressively conquering its neighbors).

They already do that empire thing if they spawn near horses and you dont catch them in time.

Edited by alekos23 on Feb 16th 2021 at 12:04:11 PM

People have always tended to like the "Barbarians evolve if left unchecked, create their own societies, etc" concept. Both Civ V and Civ IV had relatively popular mods centered around the idea.

A lot of the alternate game modes for Civ VI feel that way: like canonization of mods from yesteryear.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Feb 16th 2021 at 3:49:05 AM

I recall in Civ IV you could sometimes at least find actual Barbarian cities instead of just outpost camps.

Hell I think one of the new Civ like games that’s coming out soon has similar stuff happen. Civilisations start as basically wandering tribes, but once they hit a certain technology level they settle and become ‘full’ civilisations.

I wonder if a custom Civ option will ever be made.

Here's some info from the developer livestream I stole from Civ Fanatics:

• There are reserved Civ slots for Barbs to become city-states. If those reserves are empty, no barbs can become city-states. This reserve number is equal to the number of city-states on the CS picker.
• Oligarchy and Autocracy have had their number of policy cards swapped.
• Monarchy gives +2 Diplomatic Favor for Renaissance Walls and trades a military card slot for a Wild Card
• EDIT: Merchant Republic trades a Wild Card for a Diplomatic slot.
• Craftsman policy (100% Industrial Zone adjacency) now military (was economic)
• Colonial Offices and Colonial Taxes (15% Growth and +3 Loyalty, and +25% gold and 10% Production, respectively, for cities not on your Capital's continent) is now diplomatic (was economic)
• Dispurse Barb Camp is required for Gilgamesh's ability and Sanquine Pact discovery.
• Giant's Causeway: +1 Culture to adjacent tiles.
• Paititi loses major adjacency bonus to Theater Squares and Commercial Hubs.
• Lysfejord provides +1 Production to adjacent tiles.
• Barbs that have converted to C Ss have a distinct white border.
• Crater Lake gets more faith.
• Barbarian Clans mode wasn't planned at the beginning and was lifted from a forum.

Edited by tclittle on Feb 24th 2021 at 5:21:38 AM