Civilization – In newer Civ games, how do you truly make up for the overhead of expansion

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I know about things like building happiness improvements, choosing civ upgrades (traits or technologies or whatever), razing cities, puppeting cities, etc. The problem is that, as someone who has liked the franchise for a really long time, it just seems like newer games, such as Civs IV, V, and BE, have all gone so far overboard in nerfing war as a means of victory that, no matter what, it is almost never worth it to take even one enemy city, given the overhead. It's not that I don't understand Civ games or don't understand the concept of fostering happiness through different mean; it's just that no amount of producing happiness, health, or whatever seems to make it truly profitable to capture regular enemy cities.

But a lot of people still seem to like to use war in their play styles. So maybe there's a common formula so that your efforts to offset the overhead to expansion will be much more streamlined and effective, and not simply piecemeal. Maybe there is a way to make the numbers add up. So my question here would not be for the specific examples of what you can do, but how can you combine and orchestrate your offsetting efforts in such a way that they are truly effective for, let's say, capturing every city on the planet by game end, for instance?

Best Answer

My experience is with Civilization V.

Domination is very much a viable option, and certainly is a lot of fun. Now, just blindly conquering every city you can get your hands will inevitably make your happiness plunge to oblivion - so you have to be smart about it. In my experience it is absolutely possible to keep your happiness high (20+) even when waging an offensive war and conquering territory.

On to specific tips, some obvious, some might be slightly less obvious.

Before the war:

  1. When choosing city locations, prioritize based on luxury resources. Also remember that with the proper buildings, the presence of stone/marble will provide +1 happiness and the presence of horses/ivory will provide +2.
  2. Build the proper happiness buildings while you're still happy, don't wait until things go south.
  3. Pick up the proper social policies (and later on, ideologies) and the proper religious beliefs. These can make a huge difference. If you're planning on domination you should have these choices in mind from very early in the game.
  4. Make sure you trade your spare luxury resources for other luxury resources, don't be temped by money.
  5. Ally yourself with city-states - all city states with luxury resources you don't have will do, but the mercantile city-states are especially useful since they generate happiness beyond that (and even if you're just their friend and not their ally).

During war:

  1. Try not to fight too many civilizations at once, so you can keep up trade (and trade routes) with someone.
  2. Raze bad cities. Conquered cities lose half their population (usually) and many of their buildings, plus they are inherently less happy, so unless keeping the city is really justified (large population / great location / vast territory / wonders etc.), I raze. In practice I end up razing all smallish cities (population 5-6 and below after the conquest). Just keep in mind razing is a warmongering activity.
  3. Even if you want to keep a city, avoid annexing it. It's okay to occasionally annex, but in general the production control is rarely worth it. The exception is if you're sitting on a huge pile of cash, or if the city is extremely developed and also already contains many happiness buildings.
  4. Even if you want to annex a city, avoid annexing it immediately.

  5. Finally, and this is a big one: I never just conquer all enemy cities, I usually focus on their capital and whatever is on the way to that capital, plus any high-quality city I can get my hands on. But I do very much try to keep the civilization alive - and not only that, I try to keep it not too weak, if possible. Why? Because:

    1. I don't need it - for domination victory, I just need their capital.
    2. By sparing them I can obtain surrender deals from them, and those are always very yummy.
    3. I can later on trade with them (and establish trade routes).
    4. These civilizations usually remain too crippled for the remainder of the game to be of any real threat.
    5. If I leave them too weak, later on other civilizations are likely to prey on them, which nullifies advantage 3 above.
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