Domination victory - I don't get it!

Aqualung71 · April 24, 2003, 00:36

A couple of comments on my recently purchased PTW, which I am still trying to figure out.

1. I have ticked the mass regicide box, which means I start out with 7 kings. It seems however, that despite the "little" manual that tells me I must capture all a civilisation's Kings in order to destroy it under the rules of mass regicide, as soon as I capture an AI city with a king in it, the whole civilisation is destroyed! This takes the fun out of the game, especially when you have planned a co-ordinated assault aimed at the exposed or perceived weak points of an empire, only to leave your attacking soldiers primed and ready to go with no civilisation left to attack, and a whole lot of unclaimed space that only settlers can fill!

2. The 2 games I have played to completion have both ended in domination. Firstly I lost, the next Iwon. The strange thing is, civlopaedia tells me that 70% of the earth's surface or population must be held in order to achieve a domination victory. In the first case, I was starting to assert myself inthe middle ages when the AI suddenly announced I had suffered an embarrassing defeat - there was no way anyone dominated the game. My victory was even more bizarre - I was clearly ahead (having started raping and pillaging the known world with my Sihapi before anyone had replaceable parts!), however the F11 screen told my I was 2nd in size and 3rd in population, and there were still about 14 civs in the game.....so how could I get a domination victory? Very frustrating....although I guess it takes the boring cleaning up out of the game when you know there's no way the AI can beat you.

3. I guess I don't really understand the King thing yet. I mean, don't you just keep your 7 kings in a central, very well defended city (after using them early on to explore when the risk of being attacked is low)? I've seen the AI send his Kings out all over the world when we're at war, and spread them thin over a number of cities? Isn't that dumb, or am I missing some vital strategy point here?

Would appreciate some comments so I can understand this game a bit more....these new options don't seem to make sense to me at the moment. Perhaps I'm jut a little slow!

Cheers

Kloreep · April 24, 2003, 01:05

Not sure what's up with the one-king defeat... maybe all the other Kings had been killed off by AIs. As far as the AI's king strategy: I don't think either Regicide variant was supposed to be used in SP; so far as I know, the AI has little to no programming in how to handle King units.

Don't know about the Domination victories... sounds odd. Perhaps the final demographics screen isn't updated for after-victory turn stats. Are you sure the defeat was Domination, and not Cultural?

Aqualung71 · April 24, 2003, 03:05

Kloreep....yes, definitely sure. Just as I was about to launch into my own world domination, I got that cold message informing me I had my arse kicked embarassingly!!! Kinda leaves you gasping for air and wondering what life is really all about....lol!

Thanks for your feedback.

badams52 · April 24, 2003, 16:54

Answer to #1: As I reacall others saying before, regicide isn't a good idea with single player mode. It's more for MP.

#2. Domination is supposed to happen when you hold more than 70% (I think) of the land mass within your cultural borders (not including the sea). Can't explain your strange findings without a map. Maybe even then I'd still be baffled.

Jamski · April 24, 2003, 17:01

Sounds like elimination not domination. Lose one city and the whole civ dies. Its a bit DUMB if you ask me. Are you sue its domination and not elimination???

-JAm

kring · April 25, 2003, 00:34

Did you also have Regicide checked as well as Mass Regicide? If you did, then when you kill one king, the civ dies.

On the domination issue, it is 2/3 of the land (coast counts IIRC) and people. As to showing as a Domination victory, the new Victory Conditions don't have their own screens, so it will show as you winning by one of the other conditions.

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...nation+victory

Quote:

Domination depends on two factors: 2/3 of the landmass (including coast but not sea) and 2/3 of the population.

There is a utility program "mapstat" that you can downlaod and use to track how close you are to the domination limit.

You can use the histographic display "Power" and "Score" graphics as a rough approximation of domination levels but this is not very precise when you get down to yourself and just 1 or two ther powerful opponents.

Any time you have a power or score bar that is greater than 50% of the screen, you should probably consult mapstat. The displayed score values are based on teh average of the current score with all your previous per turn scores and these numbers include territory and population factors.

Catt · April 25, 2003, 15:15

As others have pointed out, mis-ticking some of the potential victory conditions might be at the heart of your problems. Specifically:

1. Sure sounds like both Mass Regicide and Regicide are checked. I don't have any other guesses.

2. Could this be a "Victory Points" problem? I've really never played with the new win modes (other than a very small bit of exploration), but (like kring) I also understood that the new victory conditions don't have their own victory pop-ups -- I've seen other posts that describe situations similar to yours and the problem was traced to a "victory points" (holding special locations for a specified period of time, I think) victory that appeared as a "Domination."

3. As badams52 said, the new victory conditions were developed and implemented specifically for multi-player so that there were victory options (and thus full games!) that could be achieved in a reasonable period of time. The AI wasn't optimized to play in the new victory modes, so playing Regicide against an AI is probably something akin to shooting fish in a barrel, and hence unsatisfying.

Catt

Aqualung71 · April 26, 2003, 02:00

Catt...yes, I tend to agree. My next game will be played without the new victory conditions ticked. Perhaps it's because I also dropped down to Monarch level just to see how the game would be without getting punced on from the start.....so it's back to Deity now I guess and trying to earn enough money to buy my techs from the nasty AI at twice the price they're worth.

Yes, it could be a victory points issue....I had captured 2 civ's victory locations and held them for some time, and by chance my victory points tally went over 10,000 just before I was declared the victor.