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Yaga
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Returning to issues of winning by dominance, I have succeeded in doing so on the lower level of Warlord and again at Regent using the following method, a carry-over from my Civ2 days:
In short, the answer is to bide your time with a small empire with only a few cities, excellent infrastructure, and to be everyone's friend until you're ready to strike quickly and mercilessly. While I don't agree with the current corruption percentages, if you keep a nice, small empire well managed until the Modern era, drafting citizens whenever you're cities have reached the max size, being everyone's friend, getting all your resources and trading like the devil, and never, ever entering into mutual protection pacts, you will eventually have a good amount of gold in the bank, a vast array of artillery, modern armor, and mec inf., and enough of a navy and airforce to fill the gaps.
Domination is all about quickness. Think Mongol Hordes and Panzer Blitzes: Shell the cities to low single digits with arty and battleships constantly, take 3-4 cities a turn with your Modern Armor, build temples and barracks, after resistance has been quelled, leave behind 2 conscripted mech inf made up of your homeland tribe and move on to the next city. Once you begin your attack, keep it up in waves, regardless of your units health. Once you get down to the target civ having one or two cities left, don't destroy them, but make peace, resume trade, let the war weariness abate for a few turns, then attack the next Civ.
If a civ builds a city within the swiss-cheese of borders you leave behind you, don't worry about it too much. Chances are it won't affect your 2/3rds of the world. If, after you've done this, you still don't have dominance, start picking off the remaining cities; chances are they won't have the Oil, Aluminum, or Uranium necessary to put up any sort of fight.
As for corruption in far flung areas, history is rife with upstarts in far off corners of the empire either rebelling against their oppressors, or people who build up thier own army and storm the capital. China, a huge empire, had numerous dynasties of different ruling families before a rag-tag group of Mao's overtook the whole of it. Think, too, about the percentage of your representative democracy that's made up of those not of your tribe. Even after two or three generations, you still have huge rifts in the populace; a real-world no one talks about themselves as 'Great British,' they're Scots, English, and Welsh - the Scots were conqured what, 500 years ago? The Welsh have been conqured for almost a thousand years. But the English still thumb their nose at them.
True, the US has a sizeable empire, but it's only been around since the mid-1700's - that's about 150-200 turns. And about 100 years ago the whole of the Nation was split in two and fought itself; Many in the South still hate the Damn Yankees, and the Yankees make fun of the South. 20-30 years ago the nation was again torn apart by War Weariness from Vietnam, and from mounting racial, gender, and other social tension at home; I don't think there's any need to discuss those tensions still existing today.
While many like to think that we're progressive and unified and we'll last for 10,000 years, and project that image onto Civ, history has shown that every few hundred years the old empires fade away and new ones are born; and more often than not those new empires rise from the 'corruption' of the old; citizens in distant corners of the political core feeling unrepresented, warlords holding cartels on diamonds or drugs challenging the civilized order to overthrow or at least manipulate the political structure - nations are split, ethinic violence errupts, and the whole system just collapses.
Still, it is possible to control the world for a while: Rome conqured from Egypt to the British Isles, the Mongols from China to Istanbul, the British from China to America and around to China again. But each of the Empires contained within them the corruption that brought them back down, and those which hold power now will, one day, similarly be rent from their thrones and greatness.
While this has been a *huge* post already (my apologies) I'll finish by being completely perochial and quoting Shelley's "Ozymandias:"
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
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08-11-2001 14:09
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