Civilization 5 Domination Victory
Winning by Capturing all Capital Cities in the Brave New World DLC
The Domination Victory requirements of Civ 5's Brave New World have received a much-needed upgrade since the initial release of Civilization V. Once upon a time, you only needed to be the last player controling your original Capital. This led to some cheap victories that could even happen on accident if opposing Civs have been at war. Now you must control all original Capital cities to earn the victory, and it's a much better system overall. This Guide will offer tips and strategies to help you win the world through war and capturing Capital cities while keeping your own Civ happy and productive.
At present, the Civilopedia is incorrect in stating the victory requirement and lists the original. This Guide's description of the condition is accurate and the Civilopedia will be eventually updated with a patch. The original requirement stands for people without DLC, but with Brave New World you will need to control all original Capital Cites. This notice will be removed when the Civilopedia is updated.
Domination Victory Details
To win, you must control all original Capital Cities. Only the original counts, meaning that if any other player has lost their Capital, you must take it back from its new owner through War or Diplomacy. The replacement Capital of the victim Civ gets the bonuses of a Capital, but can be razed unlike a normal Capital City. This new Capital won't matter to your victory, you need to conquer the original. To see who controls each of the Capitals you must control to win the game, press F8 to see the Victory Screen.
The Importance of Production and a Science City
This is a simple tip for most standard games. Players starting out with wider empires won't have this problem so much, but those starting small will. Domination Victories on even mid-size maps take quite some time now, so it is wise to have at least one high-population city and another dedicated to production of your units and your military wonders that has a modest population itself. With a granary built, you can use up a Trade Route and build a caravan to send your Production city food to keep it growing. You need Science to keep your Military current and Workers to improve your cities to keep happiness up as your cities grow. Research Agreements can help with that, but those gold can also be spent to purchase or upgrade existing units as you advance. A city that can produce military units quickly that has a Barracks, Armory, and Military Academy along with some of the great Military Wonders can singlehandedly produce a powerful military for you in just a couple dozen turns, while the other advances your society and sciences.
Social Policies and Ideological Tenets
If you plan to wage War early, Honor is the obvious choice - adopting it, at least. You'll earn Culture for killing Barbarians (particularly potent with Montezuma), as well as getting your units valuable promotions. You can then choose to move on to Tradition or Liberty to take those. I, myself, prefer Tradition so that the Capital will grow, provide Gold, and reduce unhappiness - but Liberty could be good for situations where there is a lot of great land available to you. Filling out Honor is a good idea for a deliberate attempt at a Domination win, for the reduced unit upgrade costs and bonus Experience from combat.
I've enjoyed maxing Honor with Montezuma, creating a large force while playing a high population Civ with a lower number of cities (aka Tall). Barbarian kills drive my culture up quickly, and prepare for real war with other Civs by later upgrading the Jaguars. Jaguars keep their movement and combat bonus when upgraded, making for some awesome Spearmen or Swordsmen a little later in the game. When ready to take over the world, Annex good cities and puppet the rest. I don't Raze unless a city is totally useless - it pisses off other Civs too much and I don't like multi-faceted wars.
As for Ideological Tenets, assuming you have not won before they're in play, Autocracy is a very solid choice. You can score some great bonuses with +25% Military Unit Production and +15 experience, reduced unit maintenance costs, doubled strategic resources to support an advanced army, and a level 3 Tenet called Clausewitz's Legacy, a +25% attack bonus for 50 turns after taking it. That massive bonus should send you on your way to grabbing the last Capitals in the game if you time it well. If you want to reduce the effect, try to
World and National Wonders
The following Wonders can help a lot with a Dominaton victory by directly boosting your Military. There are many others that can be applied to this type, but these are my favorites to build when trying to conquer the world. The timing of these are pretty spread out, so you should be able to stack them all in one city, providing for a massive bonus to newly created units!
- Alhambra Requires Chivalry - All units built in the city get the Drill I Promotion. My favorite for mid-game domination. With Barracks and Armory, you can get Drill II then Siege on any unit with melee range (including Riflemen) to get +25% Combat Strength vs Cities on a freshly created unit. Doing this greatly reduces the need to set up early Artillery.
- Statue of Zeus Requires Bronze Working, Adopt Honor Social Policy - You need only adopt Honor, not take all of it to unlock building this. It helps tons when attacking cities and the bonus will stay with you throughout your game.
- Temple of Artemis Requires Archery - +15% production when building ranged units and 10% Growth in all cities. Helps you build ranged units to protect your cities or go on the offensive.
- Heroic Epic National Wonder, Requires Iron Working - Must build Barracks in all cities. Gives units trained here the Morale promotion, which gives +15% Combat Strength that adds all other bonuses.
- Ironworks National Wonder, Requires Machinery - Must build Workshop in all cities. Adds a flat +8 Production that can be amplified by other bonuses in the city.
- Manhattan Project Requires Atomic Theory - Lets you use Nuclear Weapons after Nuclear Fission is researched. If you're determined to win by Domination and it's not looking good, you could always whip out the nukes on that last, big Civ.
Don't Ignore Religion
Going for Domination, it might be easy to overlook the Religious features that are brought to Brave New World from the Gods and Kings DLC. Building just a couple of Faith structures, founding a Pantheon to get an initial bonus, and using your first Great Prophet to found a Religion, you can get some very handy bonuses for warmonger play. Several Pantheons stand out, such a Goddess of Love, which will boost happiness for each city you have with a population of 6+.
It gets better when you actually found the religion with a Great Prophet. Founders can take Tithe to get +1 gold for every four followers, giving support for a larger military and encouraging you to spread belief a little. For Follower beliefs, I like Pagodas. They provide +2 happiness when built in a city (with Faith). Toss one of these in each of your cities and it'll help with size problems as you conquer new territory. If you actually succeed in Enhancing your Religion during a Domination game, you could even grab Just War to get +20% combat strength near enemy cities that follow the religion - send in a missionary and proceed to attack! This is just an example of how you could use Religion to aid your conquest - overall there are many great boosts available, and they'll passively aid all cities following the religion.
Picking Your Targets for War
If you've played intelligently and built a Scout or used your Warriors to explore your Continent, you will often know the location of several nearby Capitals that are potential targets for your hostility; there are some things to consider as opposed to irrational Wars are often waged over territory, and you will generally want to start along your borders to extend your own. When multiple Civs border you and you don't know their exact military numbers, you can get a good idea where you stand vs the rest of the world by selecting Additional Information in the top right and viewing the Demographics Screen. It will rank your Military vs the other Civs in the game.
Select targets that have access to strategic or luxury resources that your Civ needs. This can also affect other Civs, as they will no longer be able to trade them. Sometimes a Capital borders your land and is an easy target. When you bother to go to War, go after high-value cities that are already grown. You can nullify an enemy Civ without fully defeating them by taking their high-pop cities that have great works, good production, and even take control of World Wonders.
Bear in mind any diplomatic agreements between Civs. You can always try to improve relations or even get the Civ with a defensive pact to break ties. You may even get them tangled up in War with another Civ by negotiating, starting a World War of sorts - but you're the puppeteer and have a goal in mind, grabbing that Capital and moving on to the next. Unfortunately, the negative diplomatic effects of being a warmonger last quite some time in Civ 5, so prepare to keep your ill reputation for an Era or two.
Negotiating Peace? Usually.
When you have taken a Civ's Capital City and any other high-value targets you want, consider negotiating peace so that you can move on to the next. It is rare that I actually bother to completely wipe out a Civ. It takes time and often leads to further anger by other Civs and City States, especially if the victim has been pushed to a snowy tundra Capital size 5. Why bother?
Annexing cities will add far more unhappiness to your Civ, as those cities start without buildings and do not contribute happiness, will possibly dropping you to the red. You usually do want to Annex Capitals, as they're usually big or have a load of potential to generate Science to keep your Military modern. Negotiating a peace treaty and scoring some of the warring Civ's remaining luxuries can let you mitigate this until you are up and running. Keep thrashing their Military and putting pressure on them until they cave and give you everything to just.. please.. stop killing them!
Later, buying Courthouses with gold is a good idea to instantly help with this problem. Essentially, taking too much land in one war can slow you down and prevent city growth, which will reduce your Science output over time and that's no good. Keep an eye on your Happiness level and use Prevent City Growth to stop some cities growing and Unhappiness getting worse. Let the City focus Food until it's down to one turn, then stop growth and put Citizens on Science, Production of Buildings, or Wealth.
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38"The Domination Victory requirements of Civ 5's Brave New World have received a much-needed upgrade since the initial release of Civilization V. Once upon a time, you only needed to be the last player controling (sic) your original Capital"This means if civ #1 takes everyone's capital but yours, and then civ #2 takes his capitol, you are the only person left with your original capitol and therefore win. This was fixed with either major DLC, but if you still have vanilla then it still applies.
Wins that were long and stressful, became a lot easier now. A lot of those mechanics are kinda scattered around wikias, reddits, forums as you said, and having all in one place and with your personal experience, is great.
Keep up the good work, and once again, thank you!
-Carl
