Tsg 139 after actions report

Welcome to the TSG139 After Action Report thread. In this thread you can post the results of your game. Please state victory date and score (preferably in the post title), as recorded in the Hall of Fame, and the most important: your path to glory!

STOP - Please do not continue reading this thread until you have completed and submitted your game.

Please use the Civ5 game submission page to submit your final, first play through, .Civ5Save file, saved AFTER the victory ceremony if you were not conquered (using the "Lemme play one more turn" feature.).

- Did you use your UU?
- How useful was your UA?
- Did you use spying to your advantage?
- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
- Was Faith helpful to achieve victory?
- What Social Policies did you choose and in what order? Which Ideology did you choose?
- What techs did you prioritize ?
- How did you use piety and exploration ?





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Game: Civ5 GOTM 139
Date submitted: 2016-07-15 16:41:51
Reference number: 34610
Your name: x2Madda
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1956AD
Turns played: 376
Base score: 1075
Final score: 1433
Time played: 6:56:00
Submitted save: TSG139_End.Civ5Save
Renamed file: x2Madda_C513901.Civ5Save

- Did you use your UU?
No. The raging barbs were annoying early game and even stole one of my workers but after some fogbusting they were no longer an issue.

- How useful was your UA?
Both very and not really. The Terrance Farms are a wonderful ability, turning hills into food is amazing! I built roads on hills for free maintenance as well.

- Did you use spying to your advantage?
My spies were the least useful spies known to modern man. I lost around 6. To be fair however they did nab me some off the beaten path techs such as longswordsmen and musketmen.

- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
It really helped! If that had been Pangaea, I'd have been dead from warfare! The bottlenecks were much needed. As it turned out I never lost a single unit or city to warfare.

- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
I know how it goes on this difficulty. AI has a large roaming army, are you a bad enough dude to pick liberty and pillage repair a war of attrition? I don't find that fun personally but Pacal was threatening to give me a glasgow smile so I had to bribe everyone to go to war with every.
I thought Korea would be my biggest rival but it turned out to be Assyria of all people.

- Was Faith helpful to achieve victory?
Very. It was a wonderful start that really rewarded scouting and using the Great Barranger Reef, I gathered faith to do a pseudo-tradition start with my faith picks. It worked out really well and I discovered a cool bug/feature too. If you pick Religious Tolerance and no one else has any religious pressure on your additional cities then your main religion will become the 2nd most popular for a few turns until the Pantheon is replaced by it. This doubles your Pantheon effect, so I was getting 8+8 from the GBR tiles for a few turns! I also faith bought science buildings which meant I could focus on building other empire important things.

Other than that, I did what was expected, complete Rationlism and use faith for Great Scientists. Prior to that I used them for Great Prophets in order to gain gold and culture by planting them. Turned out I would need it!

- What Social Policies did you choose and in what order? Which Ideology did you choose?
I opened with Piety. My fear was, in order to get a rapid science victory time AND complete the two policy trees, I would have to either run a lot of culture and risk being invaded due to wonder spamming, or just pick them as soon as possible and work with them. Piety was 'okay', its always a subpar opener but it makes up for it by greatly supporting a wide empire, which I did not go with instead choosing to go small and tall.
I then opened Exploration and it was just, not great. Such an oddly designed social tree but the happiness and +3 hammers were apprechiated.
As soon as Rationalism came on board, I was ready for it but no sooner had I got it than I noticed I was sitting on a few Great Scientists, maybe I should pop some just to make sure I got to Modern Era first. Good thing I did too as the AI were really not far behind and probably would have beaten me too it!

Freedom, because of course I did.

- What techs did you prioritize ?
Terrance Farms. Nothing else, just the usual science victory bee-line with a few diversions here and there for lighthouses, embarking, fishing boats and that was it.

- How did you use piety and exploration ?
Yes, see above.

Game crashed once, this seems to be a Win10 thing for me and only Civ5 seems to do it. I have had Win10 in the past and it didn't do it so not really sure what the deal is on this install but it wasn't even a proper crash, the game had actually finished the turn and saved and just didn't fancy the look of me anymore. I accidently loaded what I thought was the turn it had crashed, only to find out it was the following turn. I didn't have to replay my turn as a result but its still weird.

With that said, if Acken is taking part I am expecting a turn 220-250 victory so I will be interested to see if they opened with Tradition and made up the culture in other ways or if they opened with Piety and stuck it out.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 139
Date submitted: 2016-07-16 01:50:52
Reference number: 34615
Your name: PeruVi3N
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1906AD
Turns played: 326
Base score: 1548
Final score: 2381
Time played: 3:15:00
Submitted save: INCA SV GOTM.Civ5Save
Renamed file: PeruVi3N_C513901.Civ5Save

- Did you use your UU?

Yep, to deal with raging barbars, that's all.

- How useful was your UA?

Not the best terrance farms i ever had but still very strong and useful i believe. Free maintenance was cool too.

- Did you use spying to your advantage?

Yes they helped me catch up because i was a bit behind. I stole like 5 techs and then they killed a lot of ennemy spies hehe.

- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?

Korea and Assyria were really free to extend so i believe Pangaea would have been easier because this two gave me the hardest time.

- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?

I felt free to expand because i knew Gandhi/Pacal were not a threat. I didn't build any army except for barb issues until some civs became angry, because Pacal was my friend, Gandhi was Gandhi and no other civs could attack me from land, except Gengis.

- Was Faith helpful to achieve victory?

Yes because i had a lot of happiness issues so Pagoda + Mosque were really helpful. One with nature granted me a fast religion with GBR and then To the Glory of God helped me to get one GE for Hubble (missed by one turn anyway, i hate assyria), a few GS before finishing rationalism and one great writer to finish exploration.

- What Social Policies did you choose and in what order? Which Ideology did you choose?

I opened tradition followed by piety. I finished it before starting rationalism and then exploration of course. I choose Freedom but it was useless except for food and and great people, obviously couldnt complete it.

- What techs did you prioritize ?

I prioritized philosophy, replaceable parts and ecology for Oracle, Statue of Liberty and Sydney Opera House. I needed some help to finish social policies. Else industrialisation and Satellite, to not get Hubble :'(

- How did you use piety and exploration ?

I used piety to take advantage from my religion as i said above. The gold income was also really great. I didn't use exploration except for +3 hammers on 5 of my 6 cities but this was really late i really wanted to finish rationnalism.

International Games and World's Fair were really easy to win, i don't know what other civs were doing, but it helped me a lot to catch up on culture.

I discovered this forum today and i found the concept of GotM really interesting, i plan on doing more of these. I'm pretty new to Civ5 so I have a lot to learn from you guys.

Welcome to Civfanatics and the GOTM there is a complete list of all the games and there threads in the Compilation thread

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Well I paid the price for just mucking around.... Mistakenly thought that IG,WF, SOH were all needed for the policies, cost me dearly in finishing time.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 139
Date submitted: 2016-07-16 06:03:58
Reference number: 34619
Your name: fimbul
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1730AD
Turns played: 256
Time played: 7:31:00

- Did you use your UU?
Built 1 for raging barbs. They really spawn fast when enraged...

- How useful was your UA?
Some savings on roads? Maybe settlers moved a bit faster

- Did you use spying to your advantage?
On emperor....

- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
Hinder for sure, need to build boats to find CS. Raging Barbs and No ancient ruins, couldn't think of a more anti-human setup.

- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
Emperor AI have no GC, WF and IG take forever... figured liberty mass cities was needed to get the necessary hammers, GC, and Science for lib piety explo ratio freedom victory.

- Was Faith helpful to achieve victory?
Yup Faith bought 2 GW 1 GE 3 GS (completely unneeded, should have gone 2 GE for hubble)

- What Social Policies did you choose and in what order? Which Ideology did you choose?
Full Lib ->piety 2-> expl 1->Rat 3-> Freedom 3 -> Rat 4 -> Full Piety -> Full Explo -> Freedom 6. Turns our rationalism finisher wasn't needed costing me quite some turns...

- What techs did you prioritize ?
lux, phil (GE NC), PP, then all sci

- How did you use piety and exploration ?
Very reluctantly.... Garbage policies trees which meant we had to find a way to get culture and science. Stayed in the medieval until like T150 for cheaper pagodas.

Your name: vadalaz
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1675AD
Turns played: 245
Base score: 1572
Final score: 3208

Odd game. I had no idea how much culture I'd need, so I chose the safe option and adopted Order just in case I wouldn't get enough for a lvl 3 tenet, plus I didn't know if gold would be an issue for Freedom without Big Ben and Mercantilism. But in the end I had tons of gold and enough culture to get Liberty 6 - Piety 6 - Explo 6 - Rati 4 - Order 6. I also put 1500 hammers into IG, but stopped building it when I saw it wasn't necessary. I didn't build Hubble and GE'd Sydney Opera instead. Pretty sure Freedom would've been faster, because the SS parts took 11 or 12 turns even with 3 engineers. I also lost one turn because a stupid hammer trade route ended on T244 and I was 10 hammers short of winning on that turn.

Had a pretty nice World's Fair with 7 GWs, 3 natural + Globe + Pisa + 2 faith. Again, it'd have been better to just take the usual GS with Pisa.

It's been a long time since my last science game on Emperor, so I didn't know the wonder timings. Ended up losing Chichen Itza, Notre Dame and PT, each by 1 or 2 turns.

thanks for the game. not going to play it out to the end but appreciate the setup.

the social policy restrictions mattered a great deal. this was really a very nice starting location but everything was just slower without the benefits of tradition and patronage. Also, I was heavy handed with religion and ended up getting attacked just before the modern era.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 139
Date submitted: 2016-07-16 20:42:57
Reference number: 34622
Your name: zxcvbob
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1941AD
Turns played: 361
Base score: 2171
Final score: 3015
Time played: 6:11:00

I settled 3 cities, and took 6 more in a war with Mongolia; never annexed them, just left them puppets. Just before I won, everybody except me declared war on Korea (the last holdout Order civ) They wanted me to join them, but I was busy. Also I didn't want all my trade routes pillaged. Interestingly, the only uranium on the continent was in Calcutta (which I took from Genghis.) Gandhi *always* manages to have uranium. I wonder if that's programmed in the map setup, like how Venice always spawns on the coast.

- Did you use your UU?
I built one slinger, but it was no better or worse than a regular archer. By the time I was ready to build another, I had Construction so I built composite bows instead.

- How useful was your UA?
Terrace farms were great. The cheap roads were kind of useful, but I had so much gold that really didn't matter so much.

- Did you use spying to your advantage?
Yes, but it wasn't all that important. I stole one or two techs, then brought my spy home for defense. I needed counterspies in both Cusco and Machu because Machu was considerably larger. At the end, I had one diplomat in Seoul and a few spies in city states, but I was allied to all the CS's anyway (Treaty Organization) so the spies didn't have to do much.

- Was Faith helpful to achieve victory?
Very helpful. I took To the Glory of God for my reformation belief, and I bought several scientists, 3 writers, and an engineer. And I had lots of faith leftover. I used all my great prophets after the first 2 for holy sites, which really helped with culture and gold. I bought 3 space ship parts with gold; paid full price for them. I had enough gold I could have bought all of them and finished a couple of turns sooner. I also should have started faith-buying scientists sooner and bought 2 or 3 more.

- What Social Policies did you choose and in what order? Which Ideology did you choose?
I mixed Tradition and Piety until I had both filled. Then Exploration and Rationalism. I put too many policies in Exploration before I started Rationalism and that probably cost me about 20 turns. I ended up with full Tradition, Piety, and Exploration, Rationalism(3), and Freedom(8). Had another policy coming up next turn, and I might have opened Patronage with it just to unlock Forbidden Palace because nobody had built it yet.

- What techs did you prioritize?
Construction, Civil Service, Astronomy, Plastics, Satellites.

- How did you use piety and exploration?
Most of the Exploration policies were a waste; the opener and Treasure Fleets were okay. Piety was strong, I need to use it more often.

vadalaz said:

Pretty sure Freedom would've been faster, because the SS parts took 11 or 12 turns even with 3 engineers

Click to expand...

My highest production city was building space ship parts in 6 turns w/o any engineers.

I think I'm gonna "just one more turn" and jump into the world war that started a couple of turns ago. It looks like fun. I'm the only one with missile cruisers, mechanized infantry, modern armor, nuclear subs, or nukes. Korea will have nukes soon; nobody else has built the Manhattan Project.

Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1735AD
Turns played: 257
Base score: 1806
Final score: 3541
Time played: 10:43:00

Went Order and struggled a bit with the build times (usually I go Freedom). 3 cities built 3,2,1 pieces - the powerhouse handling builds in 6-7 turns...so not that bad, maybe I built Apollo too late/didn't tech fast enough to Rocketry? (in comparison to vadalaz).

Hmmm, I guess "To the Glory of God" > "Jesuit Education". Took the latter and in hindsight To the Glory of God is more flexible and after labs, I wasn't able to do many useful things with faith anymore.

Finishing the SPs was also a bit tight (t249). I lost Globe Theatre, didn't time winning the World Fair with a GA perfectly, so it'd be possible to shave of some turns here easily. Also I never built amphitheatres, questionable I guess.

Misc:
- Education t124
- Religion enhanced to temples +2c, +30% range (mosques gone )
- founded WC t151
- argh, realizing what I'd done, when settling the GBR city not next to the mountain, after researching Astronomy (I was like "ah save the cash to buy the tile and have more hills for terrace farms )
- fertilizer before plastics
- won WTF
- oxford into plastics t215
- apollo t237
- finished space ship techs t242 (bulbing 10 GS)
- finished SPs t249
- finished parts in t257... meh not used to order and the build times

Wonders (>t105):
- Colossus
- HS
- Petra
- Machu Picchu
- Notre Dame
- LToP
- Great Mosque of Djenne
- Taj Mahal
- PT
- Christo
- Kreml

- Was Faith helpful to achieve victory?
Yes, went Jesuit Education and bought 5 labs/a few schools and Tithe produced a lot of gold.

- What Social Policies did you choose and in what order? Which Ideology did you choose?
Liberty, Piety, 4 Rati, 3 Order, Exploration.
I figured that level 3 tenet in Freedom won't be doable. And it wasn't - at least for me.

zxcvbob said:

My highest production city was building space ship parts in 6 turns w/o any engineers.

Click to expand...

I wasn't clear there, I meant that getting all the parts done and connected took 12-ish turns. My best city was building them at 200-something hammers, so 6-7 turns for an SS part as well, and in the other two cities it took 10-11 turns per part. It's also kind of annoying that an engineer isn't enough to finish a part unless you have very high population.

Also I just realized that at some point I forgot GBR was on the map and ended up never buying the tile. But I think it's kind of a mediocre NW anyway.

Your name: Sclb
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1820AD
Turns played: 280
Base score: 2330
Final score: 4160
Time played: 9:33:00

- Did you use your UU?
Yes, but not for escort, used them to farm camps next to CS

- How useful was your UA?
Mostly generated lots of gold with free roads

- Did you use spying to your advantage?
Stole 2 techs from Korea including Astronomy, then just used to catch enemy spies and help with CS

- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
Not sure, probably would've gone for astronomy anyway with that many mountains.

- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
I got all the ancient/classical wonders I wanted, not sure about Chichen Itza and turns out it wasn't possible so glad I didn't go for it. Lost Sistine which messed up my later plans and ended up short on SP. Got every other wonders I wanted.

- Was Faith helpful to achieve victory?
Went for To the Glory of God reformation, ability to buy any great person is great. I ended up buying GW to make up for the culture deficit. Bought 4 GW in total and also 1 GM for extra gold and quest. I never needed to buy any GS, there were more than enough and I had a few future tech at the end.

- What Social Policies did you choose and in what order? Which Ideology did you choose?
Liberty, Piety, Rationalism 4, Freedom 6, Exploration. Turns out that I would've finish a lot faster with Order since I don't need level 3.

- What techs did you prioritize ?
Usual science ones but I did have earlier archaeology.

- How did you use piety and exploration ?
Used piety for To the Glory of God reformation, exploration actually helped with the hidden sites, I was able to finish faster and I didn't have enough gold to buy all the parts at once as a result.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 139
Date submitted: 2016-07-17 19:03:59
Reference number: 34630
Your name: tanuki
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1862AD
Turns played: 301
Base score: 1671
Final score: 2785
Time played: 5:44:00
Submitted save: Pachacuti_0301 AD-1862.Civ5Save
Renamed file: tanuki_C513901.Civ5Save

- Did you use your UU?
No
- How useful was your UA?
It saved some gold
- Did you use spying to your advantage?
No
- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
Pretty good start, but barb slowed me down
- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
No trouble from AI
- Was Faith helpful to achieve victory?
No
- What Social Policies did you choose and in what order? Which Ideology did you choose? Tradition 1, piety 2, tradition 6, rati 2, freedom 3, rati 4, piety 6, exploration 6, freedom 4
- What techs did you prioritize ? Construction
- How did you use piety and exploration ? Not useful

Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1795AD
Turns played: 269
Base score: 1698
Final score: 3203
Time played: 6:37:00

- How did you use piety and exploration? Went for Pagodas and Jesuit Education, 6 schools and labs immediately. I used the late game excess faith (around 100 per turn) to buy and sell labs for 125 gold a pop to rush space parts. Exploration was a bust.

- How useful was your UA?
Goldsaver, not too many nice terrace tiles.

- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
I made some wrong scouting decisions and was very late in finding culture CS.

- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
The early game was super painful and slow. Only managed to steal one worker, lost out on Chichen and Mausoleum by 1 or 2 turns, and was unsure how fast the AI would take reformation beliefs so went 3 Liberty 4 Piety.

- What Social Policies did you choose and in what order? Which Ideology did you choose? Tradition 1, liberty 3, piety 4, ratio 4, piety 6, freedom 6, exploration 6 (finished explo on t267...)

Another huge early game mistake was forgetting a granary for a Cargo ship route. Still a fun game though

Game: Civ5 GOTM 139
Date submitted: 2016-07-19 02:12:29
Reference number: 34636
Your name: KingDante
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1810AD
Turns played: 275
Base score: 1687
Final score: 3067
Time played: 6:23:00
Submitted save: TSG_139_Victory.Civ5Save
Renamed file: KingDante_C513901.Civ5Save


- Did you use your UU?
No. Didn't build any.

- How useful was your UA?
Somewhat helpful. Main use was the ability to scout on turn 0 with my warrior across two hills, and to scout with 1 scout and 2 warriors instead of 2 scouts and a warrior. Other than that, didn't use because I never went to war.

- Did you use spying to your advantage?
No. By the time I hit renaissance, I was at least 6 techs ahead of 2nd place. Never had the ability to steal techs, but I had dozens stolen from me.

- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
Helped. Tons of mountains, made science gain easier. Abundant resources sped the game along. I had a fast start.

- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
Emperor meant that I didn't have to worry about winning, just efficient play. I was able to go for wonders which I would normally neglect because victory wasn't tough for me. Finishing ToA on T95, HG T105, and Oracle T112, as an example.

- Was Faith helpful to achieve victory?
Yes. I gained 3 scientists from faith purchase. I also purchased multiple other great people with faith. Faith also helped me build Mosques and Pagodas for culture.

- What Social Policies did you choose and in what order? Which Ideology did you choose?
1. Full Tradition.
2. Piety (3)
3. Rationalism (4)
4. Full Piety
5. Full Exploration
6. Excess policies went into Ideology now.

I chose Freedom, but didn't choose any ideology policies besides the two free ones, until after I had completed exploration. I was worried I wouldn't complete them in time to launch the space ship.

- What techs did you prioritize ?
Pretty standard science opening. Pottery (Religion) -> Animal Husbandry (Horses) -> Bronze Working (Iron) -> Writing (Library) -> Philosophy (National College) -> Construction (Terrace Farms) -> Optics (Lighthouse) -> Education (University)

In late game: Standard science rush. I did go up to Sydney Opera House after Hubble in order to get the free culture policy.

- How did you use piety and exploration ?
I did not use Exploration at all.

I did use Piety solely for the To the Glory of God. I knew I wouldn't be able to purchase Scientists or Writers otherwise. Mainly purchased Scientists though.


In the end, although I was ecstatic with my fast start and completion of NC at T86, on a 4 city tradition, I was disappointed with my finish. I realize now that my fast start was likely due in large part to abundant resources. This meant that many people are likely to beat my time. While respectable, I still have a lot of work to do to get under T250. I'm getting better at purchasing buildings and such, but still feel a bit behind.

Man I wish I could see actual playthroughs for some of you guys! I'm new around here and going back to play some of these games to learn and improve and, when I do "win", I'm doing it much slower than you guys are!

kyl383 said:

Man I wish I could see actual playthroughs for some of you guys! I'm new around here and going back to play some of these games to learn and improve and, when I do "win", I'm doing it much slower than you guys are!

Click to expand...

In the results thread you can see the event logs and the replays. Not as informative, but still gives you an idea....

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Knowtalent said:

In the results thread you can see the event logs and the replays. Not as informative, but still gives you an idea....

Click to expand...

I'll check them out! I played through the game, but I'm not submitting; I tried a couple of different ways for the early game since I'm learning. Ended up winning pretty easily, but not until around 1950AD.

Excellent! Welcome to the GOTM forums

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I'm playing it again; see what difference it makes settling 4 cities instead of 3 and opening Rationalism sooner. I had to waste a policy in Honor this time to survive the onslaught of barbs (they weren't really a problem the first time, I don't know why) I should have taken a screen shot of my poor little capital -- no walls, and surrounded by 8 or 9 barbs with just a warrior and a slinger to defend it.

I also walked my first great prophet over to a coastal city (the one with Petra) and founded my religion there instead of Cusco -- because I want a grand temple on the coast to push my religion twice as hard via cargo ships. I only have 1 or 2 cargo ships up but my religion has spread to several city states already.

I've been beaten out of wonders that I got last time (like Colossus), but other than that and the early barb problem it's going well. I just researched Astronomy and bought 3 observatories. Now I have a caravel and a scout out exploring.

I'm friends with everybody and have a few RA's going; I paid Mongolia to kneecap the Maya because Pacal coveted my lands. I'm building up my military so Genghis doesn't get any ideas about backstabbing me since I finally gave him an embassy.

Wonders: ToA, Mausoleum, HG, Petra, Oracle, Chicken Pizza, Machu Picchu. I also plan to get LToP and Porcelain Tower, but Assyria might beat me to those.

It's playing-out much differently for no obvious reason; the random number gods I guess. I should research Navigation and send a frigate out barb-hunting to make use of that Honor opener. I know where there's a bunch of them that nearly killed my trireme.

ETA: I knocked 30-something turns off the game by settling 4 cities instead of 3, but I also didn't take Exploration this time so it's not a fair comparison. It was good practice for me getting 4 cities up quickly. I should have settled a late 5th city to grab some aluminum, but I just built a recycling center instead. Once ideologies kicked in, everybody got belligerent -- all the AI's except Assyria picked Order, and denouncements started flying with no negative modifiers except different ideology and they coveted my land. I was never at war the entire game, but I had to do a hostile takeover of the world congress again and made Freedom the world ideology. I should also have proposed Arts Funding to slow down everyone else's science.

My beakers per turn at the end were a lot higher in the previous game; my core city populations were higher, and then there were the puppet trading posts. Moving my holy city to the coast was a good idea. Denmark was spamming crappy little cities; I sent cargo ships to a couple of 1- and 2-pop cities, and then when they converted I sent them to Copenhagen and a nearby 4-pop city. The 3 little cities plus the trade route quickly converted Copenhagen, and from there it spread to about 20 other cities.