Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
Discussions Rules and Guidelines
Report this post
I would go with a war like culture like greece, rome, germany or australia. In case you are wondering about greece, it lets you get some culture while allowing you to prioritise war and other matters.
You don't need bonuses for domination when you're ahead on technology. Master your fundamentals for efficient war, practice your timing attacks (a Man-at-Arms rush is usually the simplest to get the hang of), and go to town. Invest in a Great General, swap to Oligarchy if you need it, and have fun stomping down ancient walls with ballistae.
I did, in fact, play with monopolies and corporation mode on, but I never managed to monopolize any commodity
The problem with playing Rome or Persia is that they are both great with tourism and I keep accidentally winning culture victories
Can I ask what difficulty level you are using?
Doesn't really matter even just getting a couple of each luxury and making a manufactory can give a significant boost, since the buff boosts your entire tourism by a %.
You can get the early to mid-game conquest done with any civ, even ones that don't have military uniques. It becomes dicier at higher difficulty, but if you can manage it, getting 2-3 times the land you're entitled to is the surest single way to overcome the yield bonuses the AI gets, even the bonuses at Deity.
That said, military uniques that appear early to mid-game help, even if they are not necessary.
A long review follows, so let me give a TL: DR version.
For conquest before anyone has walls, Sumeria, Nubia, the Aztecs, and perhaps Gaul are good because they have nice unique units available really early.
By the classical era a civ needs both a swordsman replacement unique unit, plus at least some other parts of their unique kit that support conquest, if it is to be outstanding at early conquest. Persia, Macedon, and Rome (especially Julius) have both, with Gaul still holding its own because it has supporting uniques beyond the gaesetae. Chandragupta is good for this strategy as well, through somewhat idiosyncratic mechanics.
Basil, Gran Colombia, the Ottomans under Kunani Suleiman,and the Zulu do well as at least mid-game conquerors, but have really idiosyncratic mechanics.
On archipelagos and other maps with a lot of coastline, King Harald and Phoenicia excel at naval conquest.
Hungary and Varangian Harald can get conquest done by way of levying city states.
If you make your move before your victims have walls you get to use any unit type to advantage, rather than the melee and anti-cav that are favored when you have to depend on rams and towers. In this situation, early unique units other than melee are also helpful.
Sumeria's war carts are nice, because they are available at the start without any tech needed to unlock them,and they don't require strategics.
Nubia's pitati archers have +5 ranged strength, which helps a lot when attacking cities compared to vanilla archers, because of the penalty all ranged units have against cities. They also get an extra mvt point, which helps keep up the tempo of the attack, which helps avoid the loyalty problem that limits conquest, and early conquest most of all.
Uniques that replace warriors and spearmen not only get their bonus effects in the pre-wall era, but can then be upgraded along the melee and anti-cav lines to have continued utility for conquest as the game progresses.
Gaul's gaesetae get +5 strength against cities, plus their bonuses from having other units adjacent to them that they get from their leader, Ambiorix. Gaul is otherwise a setup for early war because it gets its industrial zone replacement, the oppidum, early and for half price, while also getting culture for mines and producing units. The big drawback of conquest, and early conquest most of all, is that prioritizing military units shortchanges everything else, so getting "free" culture from doing what you need to do for war, producing units and building mines, means you don't need theater squares in the early game, and maybe ever. Because the gaesetae has the idiosyncratic feature that it gets a +10 strength bonus in combat with units that have a higher base strength, it remains viable even after your victims get swordsmen, so you can more readily continue your career of conquest.
The Aztec eagle warrior gets +8 strength compared to a warrior, and gets a builder if it destroys an enemy unit. Getting builders "free" helps generally to compensate for prioritizing the production of military units, but specifically, Aztec builders get to use a charge to get 20% of a district's production cost. Add to this the fact that all of the Aztec's units get +1 strength for each luxury type in the their territory, and the Aztec as well are designed for early conquest, especially in the pre-wall era.
Naval conquest in this pre-wall era is a specialty interest, good especially for maps with lots of coast and without big land masses.
The Phoenician bireme has +5 strength compared to the galley and gets an extra mvt point, so is useful for conquest, but only of coastal cities. Taking out an entire enemy civ with naval conquest is only likely to be practical on an archipelago map. On maps with bigger land masses, Phoenicia grants full loyalty to conquered coastal cities, It's harbor replacement, the cothon, is half price, and makes naval units and settlers for half of their prices.
King Harald Norway is the other pre-wall era naval conqueror. It's Viking longships get +5 strength, get to heal outside of friendly territory, and get to cross ocean after just shipbuilding, (rather than having to wait until cartography) and they get a +50% bonus to build naval melee units. Most importantly, it gets the ability for all naval melee to do coastal raiding, plus hefty bonus yields from raiding that, at least on maps with lots pf coast, allow it to ignore developing its economy in the early game in favor of just churning out more longships and other military.
Once your intended victims get walls, which are a barrier in themselves to conquest, but also allow safer placement of their defensive ranged units, you generally have to move up to classical era swordsmen, and their unique replacements if you are looking for civs especially suited to early conquest. The swordsman replacements all lower,,if not eliminate, the iron requirement, making them more predictably available for use in conquest. Of course you generally need rams and then towers once walls are in, and that creates a strong limit to melee and anti-cav for unique units that aid conquest, since only they benefit from rams and towers.
Persia's immortal gets to make a ranged attack instead of a melee attack, which is nice at allowing you to keep some of them undamaged and thus able to keep up the tempo of your attack. They also only cost 10 iron instead of 20, which helps more the fewer iron mines you can find and improve. It's paridaiza unique improvement helps offset the lowered development of your gold and culture economy that you have to go with to spam all those immortals you need for conquest. The biggest advantage that Cyrus Persia has, though, is the +2 mvt points it gets in the first 10 turns of a surprise war. This is amazing for keeping up a rapid tempo,and even more amazing for what it does for your siege units. It lets them move into range and fire the same turn, before those walls and enemy ranged units get to shoot at them. Extra mvt also lets your badly injured units escape to heal in safety. Cyrus also gets extra loyalty in captured cities form having a garrison.
Rome's legion gets +5 strength, and only requires 10 iron. It's big contribution to making early conquest not wreck the development of your economy is that it has a builder charge it can use to chop out more legions, so that your cities can go on producing everything else you need. Trajan gets free monuments in every city,and that helps offset the need for early theater squares. Julius gets gold for capturing barb camps and cities, letting you produce warriors on the cheap, then upgrade them with gold, again, to make conquest less of a drain on the production of everything else in your economy.
Macedon's hypaspist gets only +3 strength overall, but also gets another +5 when attacking cities. It only costs 5 iron instead of the standard 20 for swordsmen. Macedon gets the basilikoi paides, replacement for the barracks (and effectively for the stable, at least in the early game), which grants science for producing units in that city, again, an offset for the reduced effort you put into campuses because you're busy making encampments and military units. Since Macedon has the incentive to build encampments and the basilikoi paides anyway, it benefits from easier access to great generals, who provide extra strength, and crucially for tempo and siege artillery, +1 mvt point, to units in range,As another offset to the shortchanged civilian economy, Macedon gets a free eureka and inspiration for each of certain district types present in cities it conquers. Finally Alexander's cities never incur war-weariness, not really that important early, but a factor that allows Macedon to remain at war essentially forever without that downside.
The Maori have the toa, that only gets +3 strength, but it reduces the strength of adjacent enemy units by 5. It requires no iron, but is unlocked later than swordsmen,with construction instead of iron working. Like the legion it gets a builder charge it can use on a chop, but that ability is limited by the dependence of the Maori on unchopped woods. The fact that they get sailing and shipbuilding for free, and can cross ocean from the outset, gives them an advantage to naval conquest, but the Maori don't get anything except the toa that helps with land conquest.
Kongo gets the Ngao Mbeba, which only has +3 overall strength, but gets +10 defending against ranged attacks, which is handy at withstanding all those wall and ranged unit attacks your victim can use to frustrate your conquest. It only costs 5 iron. Kongo doesn't really have anything else that makes early conquest unusually easy or rewarding.
India's Varu gets the same 5 point reduction in the strength of adjacent enemy units as the toa, but it's neither melee nor anti-cav, so is not terribly good against walls. Chandragupta gets +5 strength and +2 mvt for all units for the first ten turns of a war of territorial expansion, so that is a huge advantage, as discussed under Persia for its surprise wars. This casus belli's conditions are easy to meet if you are neighbors, and Chandragupta gets the ability to use it in the classical era, much earlier in the game than other civs.
Both Hungary and Norway's Varangian Harald have an ease of levying city-state armies that they can use for conquest in any era, but which don't tend to be useful until at least the classical era, because you need to be suzerain before you can levy.
Into the medieval and beyond we're getting past early conquest as required for the strategy of "conquer early, win science later". You can certainly do conquest to to get a lot of land later and still have plenty of time to pivot and use that land for science or any other victory, but beyond these civs with earlier uniques that help conquest, the ability to conquer with about the same level of ease broadens out, and all civs are on about an equal footing -- with these standout exceptions whose strength at conquest is based on idiosyncratic mechanics.
The Ottomans get siege artillery half price, which is nice for conquest. Conquered cities don't lose population,which is very nice for resisting loyalty pressure and assimilating conquered cities into your economy, and there is +4 loyalty and +1 amenity in conquered cities besides that. The Barbary corsair helps support a pillage economy, but is only available later in the game when competition with non-military production is not so acute, so having an alternate way to get yields is nice but not a game changer. The bank replacement, grand bazaar helps out a war effort in several ways, but also is only available later in the game when such support is less acutely needed. The big deal advantages for the Ottomans come with the Kanuni version of Suleiman. He gets Ibrahim Pasha, whose first title gives +20% production to military units in his city,and whose second title, Serasker, gives +10 strength when attacking cities. He gets janissaries, which have +5 strength compared to musketmen, but also get a free promotion and only cost half as much. All of these features work together to make at least Kanuni Suleiman a monster at conquest, especially after janissaries and bombards are unlocked, but even earlier he's still good.
The Zulu unlock corps at Mercenaries, a late medieval civic, way earlier than anyone else. they also get units upgraded to corps when they capture a city, and from corps to army after they get to Nationalism. Their corps and armies get an extra +5 in addition to the +10 and +7 other civs get from corps and armies. They get a half-price encampment replacement, the Ikanda, whose buildings give small gold and science yields. Because the Zulu will be getting ikanda, they will, like Macedon, get great generals as a byproduct. they get a pikeman replacement, the impi, which is almost half price, and gets more XP per combat, has a lot lower maintenance cost,and gets double the usual flanking bonus, They get a bit more loyalty in cites with a garrison, a lot more for a corps. Anti-cav aren't great compared to melee, but the Zulu are otherwise overall great for a medieval through industrial conquest swarm.
Basil has the unique ability to have heavy and light cav ignore walls when they attack cities of the same religion. His knight replacement, the tagma, gives adjacent units +4 strength. The Byzantines exert religious pressure on cities by defeating nearby enemy units, making it easier to convert victim cities to your religion. They also get +3 strength for all units for each Holy City they have converted. The tagma are a bit more expensive than knights, but that's irrelevant, because you get a unit of the latest model heavy cav for free every time you build an entertainment center and each of its buildings. Put it all together and these are all parts of one machine designed for only one purpose, early to mid-game conquest. The only drawbacks are that you absolutely have to get a religion or none of the parts of this machine work, and entertainment districts aren't something you would normally build so many of, but, hey,maybe you will need them considering all the cites you will be conquering, and the luxuries no one will sell you after you have done all that conquering.
Gran Colombia gets +1 mvt point for all units, which, along with the ability to take a promotion (with healing) without ending the turn, is huge for keeping up conquest momentum. It gets a commandante general at the start of each era, who give +5 strength to all units in range. That bonus stacks with ordinary great general bonuses. These commandantes confer some nice retirement bonuses, and you will be getting more than you can use after a few eras pass, but some of their retirement effects only apply to light cav,not the most generally useful unit line. The llanero is really nice, and gets some retirement effects from commandantes that can have huge effect, but those are pretty situational, and it arrives on the scene a bit late to be ideal for the strategy under discussion, early conquest followed by late science. The extra mvt point from turn #1 is what really helps this strategy.
Several other civs have at least unique units later in the game than classical, but to be especially suited to this strategy a civ really needs more than its unique unit helping out conquest if they are to stand out from the crowd. Rough riders, garde imperiale, redcoats, llaneros, etc, are nice, but by the time you unlock them you usually have the ability to succeed at conquest by bringing to bear the whole array of a balanced military, and you don't need the help of some unique unit nearly so much that they are likely to be the decisive factor in letting you prevail.
I was new enough to the game at that time to not understand how wonderful levying can be for conquest, even for civs that don't get any discount on the cost of levying, or bonuses for doing it. It's situational, because you may or may not luck into a city-state that you already suzerain, or can suzerain readily before the opportunity fades,and that also has a nice army for rent that is within your price range. But, if you can manage it, getting an army without having to divert production to build it can be a big help to counter the major downside to early conquest-- that you have to shortchange developing your economy in order to produce units.
Renting a city-state army can be especially nice because city-states aren't limited by strategic resources in creating units. A city state's swordsmen or men-at-arms may be the only way for you to get those unit types if your empire doesn't (yet!) have any iron, but that is even more situational, a less common opportunity.
At any rate, actually using this ability to levy for early conquest is limited by its price in gold. The bigger the army the higher the price tag. This is why civs with discounts like Hungary, Sumeria, and Varangian Harald are much more likely to find levying to be within their early game price range, and so are much more likely to find themselves in a situation where levying is good strategy.