TSG3 After Action Report

My only cultural victory in civ-5 before this was an OCC (with india), so it was a welcome change to try out the mass-puppet strategy, as well as trying out France. I got a good start (with a well timed Acoustic slingshot) and despite a few mistakes it went quite well with a culture victory in 1700 AD (turn 250) and a score of 9900.

I did a three city - puppet the rest approach - My first culture victory, though I guess I could have been significantly faster if I had attacked the other civs on my continent earlier...

In the end it was approx. 550 culture per turn; one mistake was not to built one city at the coast - no opera house...I did not sell any cities and I almost never delayed taking the next policy - this might not have been the most effective way of playing, though.

CharonJr said:

As with Syndey in RL the city has to be next to the sea.

CharonJr

Click to expand...

Cheers, would have been nice to know that before I spent half the game bee-lining to Globalization

Did it. Siam never did manage to launch embark enmass to overwhelm my navy of 2 ships. Pick em off one at a time, without breaking a sweat (never landed anything on my shore). Nor did they figure out how to use paratroopers across the divide. Nor would they take anything other than EVERYTHING including the clothes off my back for peace, since 1100AD or so.

Almost won accidentally by diplo (9 votes of 10 needed, each time). Don't understand why Siam didn't use those 30000 gold to outbid my influence (he had 6 votes, and stupidly killed and let Wu kill the rest of the CS's over there).

Nor do I understand why with a substantial tech lead he never bothered to build the Apollo program. Kind of bummed out that I built the Manhatten project and learned fission only to realize that there is no uranium anywhere... nobody has any. OK, may CS's just hadn't revealed theirs yet, but I couldn't see any. Not that it would matter if it was in the East, because everyone there is at (totally laughably ineffectual) war with me. I wanted to nuke them, though.

Weirdly, I'm #3 in power after Siam and China, but even lowly Montezuma and Japan are routinely taunting me, telling me how pathetic I am or how I'm their favorite city state or how I remind them of the barbs they slap down. What a waste of time. Put your army where you mouth is!

Used 3 core cities founded early. About 10 puppets... I never declared war, only fought back and gave better than I got. Should have annexed after the last SP but why bother? OK, I did a worker steal early, but that barely counts, does it?

Anyhow... I had 5 or 6 great artists make their great works in Paris, which had Hermitage. Pretty decent yield, but only gets me to 501 culture per turn by the end. Could have done a lot faster with more puppets, of course, but that wasn't my plan... seems abusive, actually. But the puppets build so many nice culture buildings now, its surely the way to go (if you don't go for ICS and other tricks). I was in copnstant golden age through the entire Utopia build, more luck than planning, though.

I must say I'm not all that impressed. But I did learn a lot about social policies and the value of culture that I can take with me for the next game, regardless of victory condition.

Thanks staff for making an interesting game! Funny map... odd that the AI never settled on their coast even just to build one ship.

View attachment 271284

Game was finally finished... Again - good to try ONCE with a FORCED victory condition, but... this should have been over many different times and in many different ways

Win was Turn 383, in 1963, for 8132 points. I don't know if score will be the decider or date finished... I prefer score for my two cents.

I learned a lot as others have said, and now understand the principles of a lot more of the mechanics, but would prefer my own victory now that we have had our lesson.

I gave away only one city during the game, as a test - but didn't see any score or culture change and assume the patch had something to do with this???

My preliminary goal was to conquer one continent and sit back... but the game was too boring and I couldn't see any advantage in that approach. So, after wiping nearly everyone from the home continent, I went overseas and took a few more cities for fun... which just got addictive.

I eventually became allied with every Nation State, wiped out ALL of the competitors except for one - Montezuma, who I let have one city... and trundled off to a Culture victory way to late in the game. But, I got to play with the big death robot thing and work out how air planes work, etc.... Not crazy about lots of the graphics on some of the units (like air planes) and feel cheated... surely someone is going to animate these??? I couldn't kill Monty so at least I could NUKE HIM... boy - who left out the animation graphics for that too???


YES - this is a no replay first game.

Cheers...

The SP cost will only update on the next turn

Well, I havent had that much time to play my 4th game, but played some quick stints and reached turn 100 now, basically I am trying a REX/ICS strategy here.

Turn 80 played pretty much like my standard REX game, except for the choice of SPs - Tradition->Aristocracy and Patronage as usual, but then I took Liberty->Citizenship->Meritocracy and Freedom->Constitution for the ICS part.

At turn 80 I started to spam settlers in my capital (7 total till turn 100, building Hagia Sophia now).

Around turn 90 I had the most important social policies and started to settle my new cities.

At turn 91 I DoW Japan on the second continent and agree to peace at turn 99, netting me 4 additional puppets and leaving Japan with 1 city.

My own continent is free of AIs civs, giving me 5 additional puppets.

Currently I am researching Compass to place a city on the other continent for a harbor.

Overall I have 7 cities now and 9 puppets with one settler being on its way to the other continent. I gain 71 research (lower than usual since the CS give me no research), 118 gold and 91 culture. Happiness is starting to be an issue (-2 atm) and I had to ally 2 hostile CS just for their luxuries (building colosseums in all my cities except the captial), but since I still have to connect 3 cities to my trade network happiness should stay at decent levels.

I have 7 horsemen and am moving into a position to attack China soon.

At the moment this REX/ICS mix is looking quite strong, it wil be interesting how this one will turn out.

As CS allies I have 2 Maritime, 2 Military and 1 Cultural - will have to see if I can keep them since the hostile once are the most important at the moment due to their luxuries and my influence with them is getting low and all the AIs are out of money due to me selling them my additional luxuries.

CharonJr

Ahhhhhh, I have lost so many turns in the end, because I've traded away my cities too early. I had about 25k Culture points, when I traded away all my cities (without puppets), but I still had to unlock 3 more policies. It took me more than 35 turns...

Also I wasn't able to build Opera House. Are there any more prerequisites other than tech? And it is really hard to finish a good culture victory without completing Oracle...

Maybe my bad game is a proof, that ICS and gifting away cities isn't such a big exploit
All in all I had 21 cities...

You can find more details in the game in progress thread.

End date 1814 (turn 277)
HOF-Score: 3170

Due to crashes I had to reload numerous times fra autosaves, so I'm not going to submit.

Anyway, pretty easy win, never really threatened. I settled three cities pretty fast, before conquering the left half of the map. Puppeted most of the cities, razed a few. Allies/friends with all the CS'es on my half most of the time, and got quite a few useful units from the militaristic ones.

Tried to play 'honorably'; never sold any cities, and always looked after my allies and friends among the City States.

I waited until I had cannons and musketeers before I invaded the eastern landmass. Wiped out Japan first, then Monty. Left China alone the entire game. I could have left Monty aswell, but he attacked two of my allied City States, and I could not let that pass

Can't remember which policies I took in what order, but I saved culture points quite a bit to take advantage of wonders and ages.

I could have had the game wrapped quite a bit earlier I think, because quite late in the game I founded three new cities to check out trade routes and railway bonus via harbors. I totally forgot the added cost of future SP's... I think I needed about ten turns for each policy late in the game.

But overall happy, learned a lot, and looking forward to TGS4

Please... don't have combat turned off EVER again. I need to know where combat is taking place and what occurred at turn completion/start, and that is something that cannot be overcome adequately when combat animations are turned off.

mcmpan - the Opera House has to be built next to water of course.

Cultural Loss to Siam in 2040. First attempt at a cultural game. Needless to say, I learned a lot! Siam ran away from me, the only thing really saving me was the water between us. I kept waiting for him to waste his hordes by sending them to their death against my destroyers, but we were never really at war.

Even if he didn't get the win, I would not have gotten mine - I was still 3 policies away at 2040...

3 cities, 16 puppets, only conquered the left-hand side. Tradition, Honor, Piety, Freedom and Order. Just missed the great library slingshot. Took a break from conquering between Hiawatha and Askia, which was almost certainly a mistake. Didn't use Sydney Opera House: I had all my policies before I got the tech, which I suspect means I did something sub-optimal with science.

A reload game, for the record. I accidentally purchased a worker instead of a settler... some people might have the principles to play it out after that, but I'm not one of 'em.

Isn't there a way to change Advanced settings from in game or after the game has begun? I mean come on...there must be, right? I am currently playing through the TG2 save file and the late-game system lag is such that I would LOVE to turn off enemy moves...anyone know how to do this? Is it really an option that can only be toggled while setting up a game? Seems like there should be a simple hack to turn it on/off...

ChevalierdeJstn said:

Isn't there a way to change Advanced settings from in game or after the game has begun? I mean come on...there must be, right? I am currently playing through the TG2 save file and the late-game system lag is such that I would LOVE to turn off enemy moves...anyone know how to do this? Is it really an option that can only be toggled while setting up a game? Seems like there should be a simple hack to turn it on/off...

Click to expand...

That would be nice... Any sane game design would make this an in-game option so that you could see all the new stuff you want to try out but not get stuck watching the same animations 100 times every turn. But since the AI are obviously insane, why expect anything different from the other aspects of the game?

Maybe the BUG/HOF/BUFFY folks will provide something... but then they ought to get a cut of the proceeds from Firaxis.

JungleIII said:

mcmpan - the Opera House has to be built next to water of course.

Click to expand...

Hmm, makes sense
Haven't found this in the civilopedia.
Thanks!

Hi
Enjoyed the game though Siam nearly ran away with it on the other continent. I declared war on him on about turn 200 when he was clearly leading expecting an attack accross the central river but nothing ever came! I think because he was at war with me he left Japan and China alone so it stopped him expanding.

My basic strategy was fairly standard after learning a lot from the earlier HOF game. I had just two main cities, Paris for culture and Orleans (by the three sugars) for gold and production. I puppeted Hiawatha and Rameses and never got around to going any further. I got all the key wonders except the oracle because I diverted to link up the marble first. Not sure if this was an error or not.

Cheers for the game and looking forward to TSG4.

Hit a fairly nasty bug here. It seems that there is a certain chance that if you get cities from a peace agreement the computer no longer takes the city tile itself into account for calculating food/hammers/gold.

Essentially I had one city which barely produced anything and grew by 1 food despite maritime CS providing 8 IIRC and the other did not grew at all and did not even produce anything since the addition tile it worked only produced 2 food and 2 gold.

Oh well, back from turn 150 to 90 for me, the last autosave before peace with the AI.

Seems to be a fairly new/unknown bug as well, at least the mod in the bug section didnt know about it.

So keep looking for cities you got from peace agreements which dont grow as fast or produce as fast as they should. If you see a city coming out of "revolt" and not producing anything it is the best clue, but very high production times are a good clue, too. Just dont waste 60 turns like I did

CharonJr

Finished Turn 308 - HOF score 10375. I stuck to what I feel is fair play and didn't sell off cities for an earlier win... I could have probably manged at least 50 turns quicker if I'd done this!

I've never played a culture game before so wasn't sure of the best approach, i decided at an abritary number of 4 cities expanded quickly (buying settlers while building workers/culture buildings). Research-wise if i remember correctly I went for Quarrying, then Philsophy for the Oracle then beelined Iron Working so I could start upgrading warriors to swordsmen. Once I had my 4 cities settled I went on the attack and took out Egypt very easily, I should have started this much earlier as i reckon in hindsight i could have done this conquest 15 turns earlier if i'd just gone for it.

I puppeted every city captured bar one garbage one surrounded by desert. By about turn 120 I had the whole western continent under my grasp with all the culture/martime states under my wing.

I then made another mistake in that I settled into a building pattern when I should really have carried on with the rampage while I still had the military lead.

It was around turn 250 when I hit Cristo and started churning out some serious culture but I should have kept the SP saved up rather than picking one every time I had the chance.

To finish the game I could easily have just stayed in pasive mode but decided it would be more fun to wipe every city bar the final AI capital. This was a piece of cake as I'd reach mech infantry by this stage and just spammed them via the crazy gold I was brining in per turn, those troops rock!

I learnt quite a lot from this game about what I should do in future for more optimal play although due to the difficulty level I wasn't getting punished for my mistakes, I normally play 1 or 2 notches higher and go for a domination victory.

The main positive for me is that I managed to rack up a hof score more than triple any of my last games, I put this down to the fact I'd puppeted every city bar one for 20 turns before I managed to finish off completing the victory.

Looking forward to the next one - I hope its at the next difficulty up with some creativitiy behind the starting position as this is where things should start to get interesting

Knowing about the cheese (in my opinion) tactics of selling off all your cities before policy catapulting, or running a tiny core of cities and scads of puppets, I decided to try something very different: a small core of big cities, with no exploitive tactics like city selling and (ideally) no puppets. I wanted to play "honorable" style, too, not warmongering at all: I would never declare war on another civ unless they ended up in permanent war against a CS ally.

Setup:


Early game:


Middle game:


End game


Overall, very boring There's very little to do if you're playing a peacemonger towards a culture win. You can do a bit of fiddling with micromanagement to get things done slightly earlier, but that's not very engaging. Build times are incredibly slow until the very end, and build orders are so obvious and linear that there's not much thought involved. Was hoping for a bit of excitement from the AI, but whether it's the relatively low difficulty level or the weird map, they just seemed totally unwilling to tussle with me even though I was never higher than 6th in power until very close to the end. Besides the ridiculous insta-declare from daring to settle four cities, of course

Played this one as a deliberate one city effort ... but I allowed myself to puppet my continent, and 60% of the other continent as well.

It worked really well, and at the end I was bringing in 1000 gpt and every single city state was my ally. It was really nice to be able to build all the National Wonders. I picked up SPs as they came up, and didn't sell any cities (well, one to Monty, but it was a puppet so it didn't reduce SP costs).

I had a scare when Oda and Wu declared on me from overseas. They couldn't touch me but they could kill my citystates, so I landed an assault force at Tyre and fought them with Musketmen and Cannons. I spent lots of money bribing Monty and Siam into declaring on China, which was weird when Siam declared on me later - while we were both fighting China. (Bribing AIs into war is really odd. Sometimes it takes hundreds of golds and many luxuries; sometimes it takes only 130 gold to get Monty to open a third front.)

In the end I owned 80% of the land and was buying a Mech Inf every turn and gifting it to my city state allies in case Monty decided to try me. Very boring.

I learned many things.
P.S. Had one crash late in the game and had to reload - will upload tonight when I have access to my gaming PC.

I got all the way to the end with a cultural win, but when the Utopia completed and it went into the final stats I could not see how to do a final save at that point. If anyone knows how to go get that let me know and I'll post it. The last auto save I had was four turns before the end.

So this is unofficial without the file, but I finished with a Cultural win on turn 411 wirh 3476 HOF points. I made plenty of mistakes along the way. I won't post it here and bore everyone but I kept meticulous notes of the first 100 moves ... everything I did and why, what happened when, etc. Can share if there is any interest.

I did not raze any cities as was discussed as a possible exploit. I never had any conflict with City States (allied with all), and settled in place. I'll save further comments to see if I can get a file to post.