TSG3 After Action Report

leif erikson said:

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For this game, please let us know whether you used the sell your cities strategy, or not?

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No, mainly because I didn't know you could do that. Still learning how to use different strategies for Civ V.

Wound up with a Diplomatic Victory because it was taking too long to get all the culture points I needed. I never considered saving up the social policies either, just took them when the became available. Completed Honor (which helped with conquering the Western continent) and Patronage (with help with all the City State alliances) and had most of Piety (4 of 6 IIRC) when I won the UN Vote. Lots of Puppet States and City State allies were the keys to my Victory.


Won the UN Leader with 11 votes (10 required) thanks to all my City State allies. Maybe could have won a Diplomatic Victory earlier if I had bee-lined for Globalization, instead of just researching whatever the Advisers recommended. And possibly could have won earlier by pursuing a military victory of some sort.

Thanks for the enjoyable game. IMO, the Training Series games are a good way to learn how to play Civ V.

First attempt at a cultural victory - decided on the following strategy
- Small empire - 3 cities
- Settle in place
- Take SPs along the way (no deliberate save up for Cristo etc.)
- Isolationist - stay out of wars altogether, thus not selling cities ('the cheese')

For the most part the early and mid game was on cruise control. Built Stonehenge, Oracle, Hanging Gardens, Hagia Sophia, Porcelain Tower, Sistine Chapel etc. etc. through to Cristo.

Hiawatha DOWed on me twice due to proximity. Both times I fought a defensive pattern never leaving my borders. After that he gave up and at the end owned most of the continent and could have owned me with his massive, modern army. But I guess at that stage he had figured I was honourable so I'm going with "my pacifist strategy worked"

Highlights

• Got 30 culture bonus from ruins
• Stayed in touch with science and power for early and mid game
• Stuck to the plan - never left my borders (excl. 1 scout)
• Very much enjoyed the early and mid game

Lowlights

• CTD on turn 30
• Was very vulnerable at the end - I think partially as the last 80 turns was really just going through the motions waiting for stuff to get built
• As chaunceymo points out (who had a similar strategy) - being a peacemonger can be a bit boring - especially once your on the home straight

Didn't got the time to play this TSG3! Two weeks of competition is too short imho. Looking forward to the real GotM and one month of time to play.

Hi,

after my little setback with the GE hammers not carrying over for Utopia I reloaded and just finished my game.

At the beginning I settled in place, beelined accoustics and warrior rushed (later added horses). Around turn 90 only the Iroquis were left and I started to attack Japan. Left 1 city to the Iroq for a RA.

Around turn 150 all civs were basically conquered with China still having its capital and all the civs on the other continent being left with 1 city for RAs.

I started to spam cities around turn 90 and stopped around turn 150. In the end I had about 40 cities and 20 puppets.

Around turn 190 I finished Christo Redentor, rushed the Ironworks with a GE and gave away my cities. I allied the remaining Maritimes for additonal food and research, previously I just had about 5 allied CSs for food, culture and some units in addition to 2 luxuries.

I used "avoid growths" to stay above -10 happiness alot and did some micromanagement of my special persons, but not that much, so it might be possible to shave off a few turns by heavy micromanagement.

IMO the keys here were selling luxuries early on to get up to speed (buying warriors/horsemen), getting a lot of puppets and using a large number of RAs. Maybe I should have kept 1 additional civ around for more RAs.

In addition saving up SPs till Redentor while still getting the +100% culture SP before starting the city spam helped. But the main point has been giving away the cities when I got Redentor and went for the remaining SPs. This basically allowed me to be about 20 turns faster than my first game.

CharonJr

Yes, too late, my own fault since the laptop is too slow and I had too little time to finish the game sooner.
But for your any my reference I still post the game.

I got very sloppy in the end: normally I would have conquered a lot more but it would have taken even more time (but I would have gotten more culture so the finish date would be sooner) and I got anarchy when for some reason I took Piety... major mistake but as the game would finish in 3 turns I just clicked on.

City gifting is something I am not accustomed with and not in the nature of the game as I see it, so I didn't do that.

One thing I noticed is that sometimes when loading a saved game the happiness was about 10 points lower then when I quit... maybe I am seeing ghosts but it seems some kind of bug.
Also this time HoF score and ranking score differ 25 points: HoF being 5495 and rank 5520.

Next weekend I will buy something new so I can finish the next game in time. What a game can make a man do...

MrWhite said:

Next weekend I will buy something new so I can finish the next game in time. What a game can make a man do...

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You tried just playing in the Overhead Hex mode? I notice that runs a lot faster.

Also, I didn't use the City-Selling exploit in my game.

Technological Victory
2022 AD (turn 444)
HOF 3135 points (Augustus Caesar)

No city selling or exploit abuse that I am aware of.

My first win in a (pre) GoTM

I built three cities. I had in mind to spam some Horsemen but had access to only 2 horses, then two Swordmen for 2 irons, and a couple of Pikemen made my initial army with which I tamed Egypt then Native America. Puppeting of course not annexing. Around Renaissance I had conquered nearly all the West Bank leaving a few useless cities to ailing Egypt. Then I turned to the East but Siam had conquered nearly all of it, bare a few Chinese cities. I invaded a City-State allied with Siam, across the river. My plan was to take and then let Siam throw his armies against mine and hopefully hold in my newly friend territory. Except that, at equal units, Siam was winning more often that not, and also bringing more advanced unit. I disengaged. For some reason it took 20 turns for Siam to realize that it could take (and liberate) the city without much of a fight! I annexed a fourth city, a coastal one so that I could build some naval units and thus help prevent an invasion, which did not come. I attacked another Siam city, isolated by Chinese land, but unfortunately the later had signed a passage agreement with Siam so they could reinforce their defense. In fact I failed to take the city. At that point I gave up military conquest as an option, especially since Siam had just completed the Honor policy tree. Cultural was a long shot. Not enough City-States on my side for a Diplomatic win. I was behind in science but Siam had not build the Apollo project yet. So I annexed a fifth city, boosted my production capacity so that I could build space parts faster, completed the Apollo project and started to build components. Siam barely tried to invade with one or two units, perhaps to test my line of defense. My beaches were practically full of recent units and I had built a long road along the shore for supply lines. At that point Siam had four policies completed, but my Modern Times tech focus paid off. Spaceship launched!

In retrospect it wasn't easy, and Siam did better on the East than I did on the West. I think that his switch from military to cultural cost him victory. On my part I didn't have a well though-out strategy, preferring to build units than a gambit on wonder. Got lucky in the end.

Thanks for the game, looking forward for next.

Edit: I finally found were the deadline is stated. Maybe I should write it down in my agenda next time

I know I have missed the deadline but started v late and am remarkably slow player. Have posted for information and because I enjoyed the game. Final score (culture victory) was 2397 game / 3466 HOF in 1927. Only built 2 cities, stole 3rd coastal city from Askia, built SH and used GS to bulb through Acoustics / Biology etc. Built almost all relevant Wonders and ended up 1st in all demographics.
No ICS, no selling cities.
Gradually took over continent, razing all but capitals. Only set foot on other continent with scouts to discover CS. Major areas I need to improve on are timing of Golden Ages and Social Policy selections:- I completed Patronage / Freedom / Piety / Tradition / Honour. Order above Honor might have been better, but the early Barb alerts were helpful. I probably should have selected Mandate of Heaven earlier than I did to milk early happiness, but overall this was my best CiV game to date. I think culture games are probably the highlight of CiV at present, although the final push through to Utopia can be a bit tedious, especially given the slow end-of-turn machinations on my computer. Thanks for the very interesting set-up; the shortage of cultural CS made for a more rounded (if longer) game.

PS:- Forgot that I had a total End-of Turn crash (needed to restart PC) about 30 turns before victory and resorted to the autosave. My autosave setting is for every turn but the latest one I could find in the savelist was 2 turns prior to crash.

I had an interesting dilemma at the end of my game when I completed an extra policy during completion ofthe Utopia Project. The obvious choice for new policy seemed to be Rationalism (for GA to speed up UP build) but this would have clashed with Piety (one of my completed trees) so I took Order (not much help at that late stage). Do all completed SP trees have to be "active" when building Utopia?

thekinginorange said:

Well, I got a win, though it took a little longer than I had anticipated. Was hoping for a higher score too, but you can't have everything I guess. Cultural victory in 1958.

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I am well past the cutoff, I'll throw in my two cents.

A lot like thekinginorange regarding time and results, as you can see in the title.

Settled in place (or somwhere on the river). Figured I would try running two cites only, but had to go to a third one when neighbors got frisky with their troops. Needed more recruiting stations. So built an army and started puppeting my west half ... I think Hiawatha got it first. Puppeting meant that the policy beeline got detoured a bit for happiness considerations.

As the game rolled on, my income really started going up (maybe the AI had better cities when I took them, on higher diff? or maybe the new gold focus in puppets?). So I had enough cash to keep the maritime CS allied, along with the cultural ones. Eventually, had so much cash that I had all CS allied to me by games end.

The cash also meant research agreements with multiple AI most of the time, at least until I killed them off. By games end, I had every city except the two that Monte was left with when I got to him.

Research outran culture (I must be doing something wrong), as I got two rounds of future tech done while utopia was finishing. For fun, I paused Utopia for about 9 turns to do manhattan, so I could drop a nuke to see how that works (and get the achievement). Managed to nuke my own puppet (fixed my borderline happiness real fast! ) ... had selected the missile, went out looking at range, brought cursor back to city thinking I would repark the missile there, but apparently I detonated it there! Fortunately I had an atomic bomb in a nearby city that I could drop on Monte.

Also built a GDR just to see what it looked like and what it could do. I sent it alone at Almaty, and with a mech inf in the city defending, the GDR still had not taken the city after two assaults when Utopia finished. I guess I expected the GDR to be more irresistable than that, given its name.

dV

da_Vinci said:

I am well past the cutoff, I'll throw in my tow cents.

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How lucky are you?

I am just finishing the results table and will include yours.

Hope to have it out in the next day or so...

Well this was my first attempt at a cultural victory and it was bumpy to say the least. I ended up not paying attention and accidentally taking Siam's capital to end the game before I could get my last 4 SP. I never saved them up for Christo Redentor or anything, I built three cities and all the wonders I could.

My basic plan was simple, I would build 2-3 cities then conquer the world and make them my puppets. I executed this for the most part, knocking out Egypt when they had 3 cities and crippling the Iroquis shortly after. I then focused on my economy until low and behold China, Siam, and Songhai all DoWed me. It turned to hammer time and I took over the Western continent as well as half the East. I was in the process of cruising, putting most of my workers to sleep when Siam and China would just alternate DoWing me. I really don't understand why either, I kept my nose clean and save the early Egypt DoW fought nothing but defensive wars.

Overall it was a very sloppy game for me. I didn't really plan things out all too well, didn't micro my cities well, lost a lot of science to overflow etc... The ending was fitting by a simple and careless oversight on my part. I did manage to get a rocket artillery with +3 open upgrade, logistics, range, and city bombard.

Oh and with a little bit of tactical foresight, once a human reaches artillery the game is pretty much over. You seriously need 2-3 artillery with some rifle/infantry protecting them and you are set. Find some nice rough terrain, build a front with a few infantry and rofl at the computer as you pile bodies up.

Edit - I know I'm well past the cut off but I thought I would upload the save anyways. Oh and I named it Gotm1 since it's my first civ 5 gotm, I know that's selfish of me

Hi,

I wanted to put my attempt in here, despite it taking so long for me to finish. Love the game and the GOTM fun, but I rarely find the time to finish a game in time.

Science victory in 2017, score of 4177. I knocked out Egypt first and slowly absorbed the other competitors on the Western continent. Grabbed 1 city from the Japanese on the Eastern continent and turned it into Fortress France. Siam had become the dominant power there, and wasted much time and resources getting his units killed by my artillery over the course of the game.

As this was my first completed Civ 5 game, I didn't really focus on a grand strategy from the beginning, and just did what was necessary to keep from losing and ride the game out to the end for fun. Enjoyed it! Hope to participate with you guys again when the real competition starts.

UTOPIA COMPLETED in 1828ad (turn 284)

No puppetry, no culture point stockpiling, or other ugly shortcuts

Cities 680
Population 2878
Land 1122
Wonders 1000
Technologies 292
Future Tech 140
SCORE 6112 (that's the score shown in-game)


I finally finished this one, more or less. We had been UN leader for ages (there appeared to be no way to decline...) and all the spaceship parts had sat at Paris like forever, where we were not allowed to assemble anything, when policy #30 came in at last. Utopia was then completed in 5 turns in Lyon, which was size 33 and had both a hydroplant and a nuclear plant (yes, their effects are cumulative in Civ5). Got 140 points for Future Techs.

Paris was founded on the cattle (3 food in the city square) for fast early growth. We went Tradition-Liberty-Aristocracy and then founded Orleans at the Wine on the coast, and Lyon slightly up river from the original starting position. This cut off Egypt to the east, which worked very nicely as they now became too worried about Songhai to build any of the early wonders.

Lyon was to become our production powerhouse, with farms and mines rather than trading posts. (Note that Paris, if founded on the same spot, would not get the railroad bonus).



Some funny things happenend.

First, our Scout (first build in Paris) got upgraded to Archer and received various archery promotions. However, it would later get re-educated again to Rifleman, keeping its promotions. Accuracy was of course completely useless, but the ability to attack two times was not. It finally grew into a Mech Infantry, still running through all types of terrain like in its childhood.

Second, we met China very early. It appeared that we could see them standing on a hill on the other side of the water. Or, perhaps, they saw us. This gave some additional friendly trading opportunities. Naturally, like all the AI they would eventually still become angry at us for no reason.



We used the Great Library for Civil Service (no reason to chance waiting for something bigger as science will pick up very well thanks to the extra river food), and adopted Citizenship, Representation and Meritocracy before expanding further.

Fourth city was Troyes, with pearls and cotton on the other continent. We had no interest in any further expansion there (at least not until the endgame, when the AI would be conquering our maritime partners) but a foothold with two new luxuries was simply too tempting. The removal of Egypt started at the same time, after upgrading our Warriors to Swordsmen. Razed and replaced Memphis, kept Thebes and sighed as we started on that gigantic project called 'courthouse' ...

Songhai followed suit (again, we kept only the capital, Gao - no puppetry, remember?) and we probably should have stopped there. Reducing the Iroquois to some tundra villages gave us the empire of 16 cities that I was aiming for, profiting from all the Wines and even one unclaimed Incense for many Monasteries, but from this game 16 seems too many after all, even while they all ended up with at least one World Wonder for the multiplication bonus.

Acoustics was timed nicely (100bc) with the adoptation of Freedom, and Lyon started immediately on the Sistine Chapel, the first of the big culture boosts. Our first Golden Age was entered shortly after, one turn after the completion of Chichen Itza (no, very inconsistently, the 50% extra duration won't be granted if it's the same turn...).

Three more cities were founded the turn Constitution arrived, and the final three came right after Free Speech.

After that it was looking to be pretty straightforward towards Telegraph and Radio, except of course that we didn't stock up on policy rights. Not stockpiling postponed the end by about 12 turns, is my estimate.

Of course the AI would have none of that and in 1100ad Japan, China and Siam all declared on us, thereby killing our research agreements - for which I had given them free cash to help them over the threshold ...

Once our Musketeers got upgraded to Foreign Legions the going got easy. We took their cities, made peace, and then gave them back. Naturally, we had to conquer the Japanese and Chinese cities all over again later on, when the Aztecs decided to gobble up our maritime allies, and none of the AI would open their borders...

But that happened shortly before victory, so we didn't need to give them back a second time!


Technology


Social policy


Paris


Lyon

Ribannah said:

UTOPIA COMPLETED in 1828ad (turn 284)

No puppetry, no culture point stockpiling, or other ugly shortcuts

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Puppetry is an ugly shortcut? I thought it was a core game mechanic.

However, I think culture point stockpiling (and promotion stockpiling too) are going to be eliminated in the next patch (pretty sure I read that somewhere).

dV

Someone posted in the TSG3 Game In Progress thread recently, bringing it to my attention and curiousity. So I tried it. Twice because the old Vanilla ruleset took some getting used to, and because the latest version of the Enhanced User Interface is not really compatible with very early Vanilla saves and that caused me some problems. (the older EUI works fine.)

The first time thru, I was in the lead culturally, but Siam (of course it was Siam) built the UN while I didn't know it and they won a diplomatic victory. I'm not sure I could have done anything to stop it, but maybe I could have bought enough CS's to prevent him from winning if I'd known what was happening.

The second time was more interesting because I sort of knew what I was doing. It still took me over 400 turns, so I'm intrigued by some of the times posted here. I settled on the marble for a boost in wonder production, and I opened both Tradition and Liberty. I beelined Stonehenge and got it. I settled 2 more cities, one north and one west, and I managed to build Hanging Gardens (because Paris didn't have fresh water) and Oracle. About that time Hiawatha declared war on me, and I fought him off. When he wanted a peace deal I refused and went on the offensive and eliminated him. I got 2 good cities, and one trashy one that I razed. Egypt beat me to a several good wonders. Ramsses asked me to join him in a war against Songhai and I accepted; my plan was to fall back and let Askia capture Thebes, then I would capture it back, advance to Gao, and eventually declare war on Egypt too and get Memphis (Memphis had about half of Egypt's wonders) The war didn't really go as planned but the end result was the same; I controlled the entire western continent.

Meanwhile on the eastern continent, war was waging. They were constantly in conflict, but this time Siam was eliminated early, and the Aztecs eventually were victorious. The last third of the game it was just me and Monty.

This time my policies were Liberty, Tradition, Piety, Patronage, and Order. Monty was about 6 techs ahead of me, and I was way ahead culturally. I managed to close that to about 3 techs behind, and they were all techs that didn't matter. I was also quickly building space ship parts while waiting for the last couple of Order policies to finish, and I could have won a science victory even tho' I was behind in science. I was allied to most of the city states, so I didn't expect Monty to build the UN, but he did. I won a diplo victory with about 5 turns left to build the Utopia Project.