TSG1 After Action Report

Having played a domination game before I knew that the AI is quite bad at defending itself so I conquered Bismark early, then went for Japan, Monty, the Chinese and left Persia for last. At that point I captured the last 3 cities in a few turns.

It was a bit tedious to move the units to the front. At the end I had a road from Rome to about 20 tiles from the Persian border.

All in all, a whole lot of walking, not a whole lot of fighting In retrospect I should have beelined for navigation as soon as I discovered how far out the other civs were.

Interesting game though, against human opponents the choke points would have been a nightmare

I went ahead and settled in place. 2 early luxuries is nothing to sneeze at Built a scout, then a worker. As it was a coastal city with seafood and luxury resources, decided to research Sailing and Calendar before going towards Iron Working
Founded Antium to the NW of Rome, on the other coast, near cows and fish. Pity that the game doesn't show the year when a city was founded, so can't say when exactly it happened, but definitely before I discovered IW. Could be a mistake; as it turned out, I had to found the 3rd city to connect iron when I could see it. Cumae was founded soon after the discovery of Iron Working, a little further north, on the eastern coast of my peninsula, NE of the iron deposit
I managed to build Stonehenge in Rome to go through social policies faster. The choice was obvious: since I was going for a military victory, I went down the Honour tree first. However, China beat me to both The Great Library and The Oracle. They were wonder-mongering, I got a lot of notifications about wonders they built, but they never expanded beyond two cities. That made them an easy opponent later on - but I'm getting ahead of myself
Budapest, the city state near Rome, asked to get rid of a barbarian encampment early on; after doing it, I gave them some money to make them my allies. First, they had another luxury resource, and a lot of happiness means more golden ages and easier life later on. Second, they claimed another iron deposit, and I really needed it. My peninsula only had small deposits, and the idea of being able to build just 2 iron-dependent units had no attraction whatsoever. Of course, there was another iron deposit in the southern ices, and I really thought about founding a crappy iron city there, but allying with Budapest and getting their iron seemed so much easier There also was the third reason: their personality is Friendly, so they rarely make requests to eliminate other city states, and maintaining influence over them is relatively easy. Finally, free units they provided were not necessary, but I wasn't going to say no
Once my I had my 4 iron resources (2 from the deposit near Cumae, 2 from Budapest), I built 3 Legions and 1 Ballista, and sent them to kill Bismarck. Apparently, he was quite unlucky with barbs, I found his captured settlers in encampments at least twice. Obviously, I didn't return them, there was no need to let him use them and found more cities Just before I declared on him, he managed to found the second city at the northern end of our side of the map. A nice location he chose, claiming marble, horses, cows and two fishes. Thanks Bismarck for founding such a good city for me, much appreciated
Well, with my 3 Legions and a Ballista, he had no chance of resisting. German civilisation was destroyed in early ADs. I puppeted Hamburg, but annexed Berlin: it looked like a nice production city, and I also wanted to be able to purchase the tiles for it if I felt it was necessary. I was right: it only took 12 turns or so to build a Courthouse there, that's really fast for Civ5
My scouts meanwhile revealed that the whole middle of the map was empty, and the next nearest opponent, Japan, was quite far away. Also the landscape around them was quite difficult to manage. I decided to wait a bit, and tech towards Knights. Meanwhile, the Legionnaires built roads to connect Berlin and Hamburg - a very nice feature, by the way! My attack plan was to capture Japan, while teching towards Astronomy, then bring reinforcements over the ocean to finish the campaign. I actually got a great scientists while researching Compass, so I kept him until it was discovered, and used him to lightbulb Astronomy
My wandering warriors also managed to disperse quite a few barbarian encampments. Crucially, this gave me the friendship of a maritime city state, Singapore. I like to be allies with a maritime city state, solves most of food problems Oh, and they had dyes, a nice bonus
Anyway, around 900AD, Roman Legions crossed the Bay of Monaco (at least I think it was called so ) and landed near Tokyo. Interestingly enough, they had to pass a few tile within the territory of Monaco, but I didn't get shouted at for trespassing. Of course, embarked units are not considered combat units, and if you enter a city state territory with a civilian unit, they don't consider it trespassing. Not sure if it works as intended, though
Anyway, my forces landed near Tokyo, and wandered aimlessly there for a few turns, to find the best positions for the invasion. I also hoped for Oda Nobunaga to come and ask why my forces are at his borders, so that I could honestly tell him "to attack you, and what did you think?" But apparently he was too busy warring with Monaco, and didn't pay attention to me before it was too late. Attacking Tokyo was quite tricky, because there were hills to the south of it, and my Ballista couldn't attack from the distance. However, these hills also provided defensive bonuses for my legions, and when the city bombarded them, it couldn't do more than 1 damage. In the end, I had to bring the Ballista to a tile next to the city. Risky, but what could I do. Strangely enough, the city kept to bombard legions, although the ballista was obviously a greater threat. An obvious mistake by the AI (military AI is very weak in general, as many people in the forums already said... hope they do something about it soon)
After Tokyo was captured, I proceeded to Kyoto. Oda came to me offering everything he had for a peace treaty. Fool, do you really think you have a chance to stop me from capturing your capital?
Kyoto was captured in 1000AD (nice number, so I remembered it ). Both Tokyo and Kyoto were puppeted. Then I found another city in the tundra to the north, not sure what Oda thought about when founding it. I razed it and went to the east, capturing the rest of Japanese cities, keeping 2, razing one. Maybe I should have razed more; I'm quite sure I have quite a few problems in my games because I don't like to raze cities. On the other hand, they were decently located, well-developed, and in a game where population contributes to your research speed, why not keep them? Happiness was beginning to be a concern, but not a major one yet
Oh, and as an additional bonus, Monaco allied with me for helping them in a war against Japan, and provided me extra culture and another luxury, pearls. That extra happiness also contributed to my decision to keep those cities
Oda managed to sneak out a settler and found a city in the south of the middle part of the continent. Well, I didn't mind, he could start anew there, why not Some turns later, he again offered everything he had for peace, and this time I didn't see a reason to refuse
By that time, I discovered Physics and Steel, so at some point during that war I upgraded my legions to longswordsmen and ballista to trebuchet. I also brought in 2 knights to join my glorious army. With that force - 3 longswordsmen, 2 knights, 1 trebuchet - I marched towards the eastern coast to attack China. Attacking from the west was closer, but it meant attacking Beijing across a river.. decided to spend a few extra turns to avoid it
As I mentioned, Wu Zetiang was wonder-mongering, and didn't present much of a challenge militarily. Both her cities were captured and puppeted by 1190AD. Actually, she didn't build that many wonders... what was she doing then? Just loaded the game and annexed her cities to check - she had The Great Library, The Hanging Gardens and Angkok Wat in Beijing, and The Oracle in Shanghai, that was it. Oh, and why did she build the wonders with one-time effect, which I couldn't benefit from? Really inconsiderate of you, Wu
By that time, my reinforcements arrived over the ocean: two Musketmen, one Longswordsman, one Trebuchet (courtesy of Budapest). With this force, I was confident to attack Aztecs. Right before I started the attack, I noticed they were upgrading their Jaguars to Longswordsmen... didn't find their iron source though, probably Darius decided to share some of his iron with them. Anyway, I attacked and took 3 of his cities, including Tenochtitlan. Strangely enough, the land around them was completely undeveloped, even luxury resources were not connected! What was that? Of course we all know that Monty is a bit crazy... but I mean, he had more than 5000 years to connect those luxury resources he had, what was he thinking about? Did anyone see an Aztec worker by the way, maybe it's a bug?
Another strange thing I noticed: in both games I had before this one, once I had two or three wars, everyone started to call me "the bloodthirsty one" and were not glad to see me at all (although it was still possible to trade with some of them). In this game, during the war with Monty, I went to see Darius and ask him if he wants to join the fun. He declined, but he was quite nice, wishing me good luck in my current conflict. How does the AI decide whether I am "the bloodthirsty one" or not? Would be nice to know more... at the moment, the description of game mechanics is very unclear, Civilopedia is so vague... wish they improved it
From Tenochtitlan it was a straight road towards the Persian capital. There were two possible routes towards it, both required to capture another city on the way. But when I declared on Darius, he was raging like crazy, and shouting "you're clearly unfit to be a ruler of a great empire". Yeah, well, whatever; but it's your capital at risk, not mine. Anyway, I took offence and captured both those cities on the way to the capital
Persepolis was captured in 1420AD to get me the victory. Could it be done faster? Definitely
Oh, and I completely forgot to mention that I founded Neapolis at some point along the way, to the east of Berlin, next to the sugar resource, among hills with sheep on them Mainly I founded it for the sugar resource, which a few of my cities demanded
And regarding social policies: once I finished the Honour tree, I unlocked Commerce, mainly for the +3 production in all coastal cities bonus. But I didn't get there before the game ended

I started off by settled one tile west on top of the wine. I beelined calendar so I could start trading the resources for gold. I met Bismark just a couple turns before finishing calendar and was able to trade my wine resource immediately without waiting for my worker to build a plantation.

I got Animal Husbandry after that and settled Antium to the south in order to immediately grab the two horses there. I also built Stonehendge in Antium to try and grab a couple social policies before I started warmongering. Since Bismark was blocking my way to the rest of the continent I went for writing next and got open borders.

I'm a big fan of horsemen and chariot archers so I sent two horsemen, my initial warrior, a chariot archer and the great general I got from the first honor policy to take out Berlin, Bismark's only city. After that I marched my horsemen through the rest of the continent with a scout or two to explore.

I couldn't believe how far away the rest of the Civs were considering this was a pangaea. I probably could have won sooner if I had produced a few more settlers to get my new troops to the front but for some reason I thought I could just take other cities and use them to produce more troops.

I started by massing my troops around Japan's three cities and had trouble getting them into place because my troops refused to walk through his workers. I formed 3 research agreements with Monty, Wu and Oda. In hindsight I didn't need these and since the last one I formed was with Oda, it forced me to change my plans and start by attacking Wu instead. I then split my troops and took out Monty and Oda simultaneously. Again, it would have been better to start with Oda and then sweep my troops clockwise through Wu, Monty and then Cyrus.

I finally realized I needed a settler and by the time only Cyrus was left I had founded Cumae right next to his only city. I used that to by an additional Legion and Ballista and with the two horsemen and chariot archer I was able to get down there in time was able to take out Cyrus in 3 turns.

Area of first war with Persia - hardest part in my game:


Area of final battle when i captured two last capitals:


Only these two cities (Shanghai and Beijing) China got when i meet them

Well, this was my first serious GotM and it was pretty easy compared to the one or two I dabbled in before. I settled in place pretty much and grew my city, focussing on buildings to improve my XP to new units. I settled a city 3 tiles from Budapest where I guessed Iron would be near and because it was close to a supply of fish. Turns out I settled on the future iron deposit. Was a bit bummed about missing the improvement bonus but I got over it quickly, at least I had the iron. I settled a city to the north, next to the supply of fish at the choke point.

Sometime through this I had found Germany and Bismarck and come to the realisation that I had to go through him to find everyone else, something that seemed to repeat itself as I continued through the game.

I took the honour policy tree and started destroying Germany. Berlin was in my possession at 600BC (remember that date well for some reason) and I had razed his two other cities. I sent a settler to the position of a razed city and settled my own and using captured workers I created a trade route.

I immediately headed east and using horsemen scouted out quite a few city states before meeting a Chinese scout (Wu Zetian actually claimed to be an isolationist here so I felt a pang of guilt for knowing I'd conquer her soon) and accidentally finding Osaka in a tiny passage against some mountains. Japan was attacking Monaco by the time I found them and my army arrived just in time to see Japan conquer it. DoW'd on Tokugawa and steam rolled Monaco quickly and liberated it. I started to push to the cramped borders and with only a half-health horseman and a (spearman or pikeman, don't remember) on the border, Tokugawa quickly surrendered to my all of his cities bar Kyoto.

I did some more scouting at this point while waiting for the Peace Treaty to end and found the Aztecs attacking Almaty to the south, bordered by Guangzhou. I sent 2 long swordsman to the borders of Kyoto while the rest of my army headed south-east to pour into China. Kyoto fell within a turn of the treaty ending and in four turns after that (didn't want to be waging two wars at once) China's three cities fell also.

During the short incursion into China I met Darius who asked me to declare on Monty. I asked for 10 turns and quickly lined up my forces around the two Aztec cities and along the borders of Persia, hoping they'd both do a bit of damage to each other (not that it was needed). The Aztecs fell quite quickly after I got bored of waiting and within a turn of me creating a puppet of their capital I entered into Persian lands, battling with my Civ's unhappiness.

Two cities fell within a turn, one was razed, the other kept before four turns later I took Susa and Persepolis. Darius was a massive wonder-whore and I got a nice boost out of it.

The game ended in 1300 AD with a score of 2565. I kept all cities apart from two German cities, a Japanese city which was razed because of a bug and a Persian city of only two pop.

Overall I think the game went well, I certainly could have finished it quicker had I had more knowledge of Civ as well as pushing hard instead of taking my time. I lost two generals to Barbarians (don't even ask) and encountered a bug when Toku gifted me his cities and I puppeted them, I couldn't end my turn. Luckily I found a solution online that worked.