Civilization 6 features five different victory types: Score, Religious, Cultural, Science, and Domination. Civ 6 marks the first time the Religious victory makes an appearance, while the other victory types are Civ mainstays. So what do you need to know about the Domination victory in Civ 6? What tips and tricks will get you zooming towards first place?
It’s important to note that the World Rankings screen is easily accessible by clicking the first icon on the top right bar. The World Rankings screen shows everyone’s overall progress, as well as their progress towards a Score, Science, Culture, Domination and Religion victory.
Don’t let another civ sneak up on one victory while you’re working on another! This is where Civilization 6 ’s reworked espionage system is critical. Intelligently deployed spies sabotaging critical districts or stealing their Great Works can really cripple another civ’s victory progress, but it will count as a casus belli (justification for war) if the spy is discovered.
Spies can also perform counterspy operations in your own Civ. This is where tight city-planning will really come in handy, as you can direct your spy to protect X district and any adjacent ones as well. A sprawling city may need more than one Spy assigned in order to be fully protected.
When in doubt what to produce next, using projects like Holy Site Prayers, Campus Research Grants and Theater Square Festival will allow you to generate the appropriate yield, plus Great Person points for that type of district.
Domination Victory
Domination victory is achieved when you’re the last player in possession of your own original capital. You’ll have to capture all other Civ’s capitals and defend your own. It doesn’t matter who captures what: the last player holding onto their original Capital gets the victory.
Losing your original Capital doesn’t rule out other victory types, but you’ll have to recapture your original Capital to have a shot at the Domination victory.
Civ 6 brings back unit stacking, to an extent. Industrial-era civic Nationalism allows you to stack two land units to form a corps and two naval units to form a fleet. Modern-era civic Mobilization allows you to stack three land units for an army and three naval units for an armada. You must place the units next to each other and hit the merge button. The most senior unit will bring all its promotions over to the newly formed stacked unit.
Support units adjacent to the appropriate unit provide boosts to those units’ abilities, but can’t become part of an army or corps with those units.
You’ll want to take advantage of low tech civilizations first. If you get gunpowder before everyone else, it doesn't benefit you to wait until they get it too. Snatch small, weak city states and opponents early. The Colonial War casus belli is great to have for this reason as it lets you declare war on civilizations that are two or more eras behind you with a very low warmonger penalty. War of Territorial Expansion (unlocked by Modern Era civic Mobilization) is also great, allowing you to declare war on a civ bordering your empire as long as 2 of your cities are within 10 tiles of 2 opponents’ cities and reducing your warmonger penalties by 25%.
It’s worth noting that we played on Prince difficulty for the preview and despite heavy warmonger status, other civs largely left us alone unless provoked. Just get ready for a lot of annoying cut scenes where foreign leaders denounce you.
Policy cards can make a huge difference. The enemy of any army ultimately is gold, so you want to keep an eye out for the cards that help keep costs down. Notable improvements include policies that reduce cost per soldier (1 gold then 2 gold per unit) and upgrade costs (50%). You should always keep the cost per soldier card in play if you’re going domination, but you can use the reduce cost card strategically if you keep an eye on when you will do policy upgrades which allow you to assign new cards. Sometimes it only takes three or four turns between policies, so you’ll be able to upgrade soldiers en masse. This is especially useful when fortifying cities and you realize that you’ve still got an archer defending in the modern era.
Other useful cards are those that reduce production costs for unit types. Again, like the upgrade discount, these cards are best played strategically. Think about what you want to specialize in and go for it. Remember that it takes a diverse army. I typically kept my cavalry/infantry/siege/ranged ratio at 2/3/4/2. So build in waves based on the discounts in play instead of producing multiple types simultaneously. Naval units are useful too since most cities are set along a coastline, but the real benefit of a navy is defense.
The Venetian Armory is a must-have wonder in your best coastal city as it automatically doubles the number of naval units produced all game long. And once you can start stacking into fleets you might be tempted to run around the world. But keep a ship-to-ship sightline along your coasts. Invading forces tend to disembark units haphazardly and send them undefended to land on your shores. Some swift patrolling ships can decimate an invasion force singlehandedly.
Another Wonder to look out for is the Terracotta Army, which gives all current units a promotion and allows your Archaeologists to go wherever they please without Open Borders. The Great Lighthouse gives all naval units +1 mobility.
Civs with military bonuses include:
Got any tips for a Domination victory? Feel free to talk about Civ 6 ’s Domination victory in our comments section below.
- Science Victory guide
- Culture Victory guide
- Religious Victory guide
