TSG7 After Action Report

Pretty easy and straightforward game. Decided to go for a fast domination victory since it was Askia on an Oval map (which seems pretty much the same as pangea).

Started out quickly expanding to get 4 cities just settling next to as many resources as possible and selling the luxuries to the AI for gold. Built stonehenge for the culture so I could get a few social policies to help out the military. Then beelined for Ironworking while building around 8 warriors. Got lucky and had 8 iron in my 4 cities after buying a few tiles. I connected up the iron and upgraded all the warriors to swordmen.

Then conquest began, I attacked and eliminated germany since it was the closest. I beelined to longswordmen and used the free tech wonder to grab it. Upgraded all swordmen to longswordmen and worked my way clockwise around the map eliminating the next several civs.

I finally found the last civ with my scout and realized I really should have split my forces in half and worked both ways around the map instead of just moving clockwise since the final civ was so far away. Finally split my forces and just tried to get to the final civ as fast as possible and ended at turn 123 just a few turns after finally researching chivalry for the unique unit which I didn't get to use.

Overall a pretty good game but I really should have split my forces up earlier and sent them in opposite directions. Probably could have shaved at least 10 turns off the victory. Though playing this reminded me how bad the AI really is especially tactically. It literally put up no fight and it literally came down to how long it took my units to move across the map.

It'll be interesting to see if anyone can do it under 100 turns. That would be really impressive and with the right luck I think it could be possible. Tempted to just play it again to try.

spirit_ said:

Then beelined for Ironworking while building around 8 warriors. Got lucky and had 8 iron in my 4 cities after buying a few tiles. I connected up the iron and upgraded all the warriors to swordmen.

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Impressive game.
Ya...access to early Iron will be the bottleneck @ early domination game

Interesting selling early Lux to AI doesn't make them stronger opponents later on

Airey said:

Impressive game.
Ya...access to early Iron will be the bottleneck @ early domination game

Interesting selling early Lux to AI doesn't make them stronger opponents later on

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menh... they've already cheated the happiness anyways, so what's a few more points?

Thanks. And yes iron is the key to a fast domination thats why settling a bunch of cities quickly to grab lots of territory is important though if you don't get any you can always use gold to either buy a settler to get iron or buy a CS.

Yeah the AI has so much bonus happiness even on emperor that selling luxuries to them doesn't help them at all and gets you the gold that you need to upgrade to swordsmen. And 300 gold for a luxury resource is extremely overpowered early in the game and needs some serious balancing.

Interesting games. Since i didnt know the habits of AIs, i was afraid to go with swordmen. I went NC first too. If i play more singleplayer games i will be more agressive for sure, and will try to be more alert for trades...i really lack in this domain. Same for RAs.

Great score dates guys! It really shows how bad the AI is.

Does the trade then pillage then trade then... luxuries always work? Never did such things so far. Is it needed to do such rapes?

Tabarnak said:

Does the trade then pillage then trade then... luxuries always work? Never did such things so far. Is it needed to do such rapes?

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it works, but I consider it an exploit. Especially considering you can pillage your own improvements.

It should be patched out of the game.

Another very good game.
Conquest was going very well at first. Germany fell easily, following by arabia, turkey, china, greece. Hiawatha was a little tricky because his capitol was well positioned for defense. By the time I got rid of him, Siam had got artillery too and I had lost my tech advantage. It wasn't until I got infantry that I made any headway against him and he fell a few turns later just as he also gained inflantry

Harvie said:

...Siam had got artillery too ...

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ya....Siam is a piece of work @ AI's hand if left late.

By the time I got round to him, Siam had weapons of mass destruction. But once I'd learned to live with that lazy bomber drifting over my Iroquois province, I realised that unless you get a lot of units wiped out, it can actually be quite beneficial to have someone cut down the population in your puppet towns! Can we nuke our own towns I wonder?

I used a three town core: Tombouctu, NE of Gao, on both coast and lake, was founded to fight the Germans for control of the 6-iron. SW of Gao, Jenne was placed to claim the silver and extra iron.

After securing the 6-iron, and getting some proper troops signed up, I puppeted my way through Germany (175ad-1080ad), Arabia (1110ad-1350ad), and started on the Ottomans in 1440ad. Obviously, at this point, the AI figured out my plan, as my ex-friends Ramkha and Wu both dowed me. But I wasn't worried, as I had pretty tidy borders, and half of the city states on my side. Also, Alex was getting dogpiled too, so that to kept them a bit distracted. Siam eventually swallowed up the Greeks, but I was mostly free to puppet my way through the Ottoman empire, until giving Suli peace in 1540ad; his last two cities were too large for me assimilate.

I turned my troops west, to claim the Greek province from the Siamese instead, beginning with the liberation of Brussels (1590ad) and ending with the liberation of Argos (1725ad), bringing Alex back into the game - again, mainly because I couldn't afford to keep the town myself, but didn't want to leave it in Siamese hands.

At this point, I became reluctant to cross the straits to invade Siam, and the two huge Iroquois towns were blocking my land route, so I turned east again, just as Ramkha beat me to the modern era (1790ad). Ouch. I liberated Warsaw from China and finished off the Ottomans (1810ad-1822ad), and then considered my options again; it was no use fighting the Chinese if I could never claim their towns. Everything was dependant on happiness, and the Siamese had the FP. Troops west again! At first I tried crossing the straits, but Siam was full of powerful towns and artilleries, who merrily sank my embarked infantry, "river warlord" or no. So I scrimped around for every last smile I could find, and puppeted the Quois (1836ad-1846ad).

With the land route open, I could advance more carefully down the Siamese peninsula, but not before Ramkha started using his nuclear arsenal. The first bomb hit Onondaga in 1848ad, wiping out several units still yellow-lined from the Quois campaign. Four more bombs followed between 1848ad and 1878ad, but it didn't stop my progress. I claimed the FP in 1890ad, the same turn I adopt Planned Economy - a total haul of 59 smiles!

The Siamese campaign was completed in 1902ad, and I now had easily enough smiles to finish up. I headed back to China, at first puppeting everything around Beijing, as this was the last original capital in AI hands. But it was getting annoying tiptoeing around it, so in 1919ad, I gave Athens back to Alex, and finished the Chinese in 1920ad. The Greek campaign was trivial despite Alex having founded four towns on the SW island - stealth bombers red-line a strength 20 town in a single hit.

Athens falls in 1924ad, and I win domination, in game score 4652, HoF score 6723.
I was about to research Future 1, and had 26 policies adopted.

Monthar said:

Have you tried rebooting your computer to see if that clears up the problem?

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MadDjinn said:

This is a soft freeze. You pretty much have to go to a previous autosave to keep playing.

You should also send it in to 2KGreg (email addy somewhere) as they may be able to use it.

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Cheers guys, gave it a rest for a week, in the meantime my machine auto-installed a few things, and it worked just fine. Only problem is I think I'm going to lose now

My opening build was scout/settler/settler. I purchased 2 workers and stole 1 from Edinburgh.

I bought 9 tiles, because I didn't have time for culture buildings.

First tech was Animal Husbandry to find the horses.
Then Trapping to exploit the 6-ivory location.
Then Wheel.
Then beeline for Philosophy, skipping Mining and Calendar to save time.

I discovered Philosophy on turn 53, and signed research agreements to slingshot to Chivalry. I spent the next thirty turns spamming chariot archers and positioning them for backstabs. I plundered a bunch of barbarian camps on the way.

When Chivalry came in, I upgraded inside my rivals' borders and immediately declared war. It was all over 13 turns later.

Might not even win the game.

Siam started running away with CS buying, so I had to attack. He was at war with my good buddy Alex at the time. But I had to go thru Iroqois first (who was also at war with Alex). As soon as I take one Iroqois city, Alex denounces me, and everyone else denounces me, and everyone, including Alex, declares war on me.

OK, I had already puppeted all of Bismark. Iroqois were puppeted as well. Maybe one other civ far east was dead, too.

I think I should have gone for diplo vc since this is quick speed... it made going for dom a lot harder. I might have won this one if I had another 2 weeks to play it. But I'm too slow.

Here's my incomplete game.

View attachment 282880

Really impressive Dave. I laughed a bit when i saw all these chariots waiting on the border until chivalry.

Dave: Hi Mr. AI.
AI: Hi Dave.
Dave: Can we be friend?
AI: Ok, i'm friendly right now.
Some turns later...
AI: Why all these units?
Dave: To make sure you will be nicely protected.
AI: Alright thanks a lot. You are really a nice friend. You have nice units.
Dave: Thanks. Want to do a RA?
AI: Sure. But for what?
Dave: To make sure you will gain a free tech later.
AI: Yeah ok.
Some turns later...Dave got Chivalry. He upgrades his chariots and attack.
AI: What are you doing? WTF???
Dave:

Remember me the fable of the little red riding hood. Dave is the wolf apparently... but this time the wolf has won.

I can't remember my score but it wasn't high. Siam were winning to my west with Germany in 2nd to my east. I only built 1 city and took 4 from the Ottoman Empire (2 as puppets) otherwise stayed out of war

DaveMcW said:

When Chivalry came in, I upgraded inside my rivals' borders and immediately declared war. It was all over 13 turns later.

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I did not know you could do this.... just to make sure I understand, you were able to upgrade your chariots to knights while inside another Civs territory? You did not have to go back to your own territory?

Did you just have Open Borders or do you have to have a "friendship" declaration ?

thanks !

ImperialGuard said:

I did not know you could do this.... just to make sure I understand, you were able to upgrade your chariots to knights while inside another Civs territory? You did not have to go back to your own territory?

Did you just have Open Borders or do you have to have a "friendship" declaration ?

thanks !

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It's a side effect of open borders. you can still upgrade. You would be kicked out of the territory if you attack though.

MadDjinn said:

It's a side effect of open borders. you can still upgrade. You would be kicked out of the territory if you attack though.

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Excellent !! that radically changes my strategy for HOF 9 OCC (was thinking I would have to go back to my territory each time I needed to upgrade)

Most enjoyable CiV game to date with very interesting map and setup. Started quite well but made some key mid-game mistakes and messed-up RAs as per my previous game. At 1000AD I had conquered Germany, Arabia and Ottoman and was manoeuvring on China border. I foolishly didn’t DOW when challenged (units were not ideally placed) and this had dire consequences on my diplomatic status. Siam, the runaway game leader went from friendly to hostile to war within 2 turns and we slugged it out almost continuously for the rest of the game. My attempts to slingshot Rifling and Artillery with RA failed dismally (when Technologies with 3-turns remaining popped!!) but I gradually forced my way to Siamese homeland and completed with an amphibious assault. This game helped me improved combat skills by providing a strong opponent:- Oligarchy + Himejl castle make for tough offense (I lost 3 Mand Cav / 3 Rifles in a single turn when Siam upgraded Elephants to Cavalry), but I captured Great Wall from Hiawatha which slowed down the enemy counter-attacks. My other failure was with exploration:- I lost my scout early on and didn’t discover the Siamese capital until 5 turns before the end of the game! I also initially assumed that the map-type was flat so didn’t explore / utilise the Eastern sea until lategame.

PS:- I had 3 crashes (1 blue screen, 2 freeze) during this game but not had serious problems before:- hopefully the new patch (which looks good) will sort things out.

Sorry, forgot to post saves earlier.

Used the three city, puppet the rest, ally with city states approach. Thought I would try for domination at first, but Siam expanded rapidly and got too big to invade by game's end. Killed of Bismarck first, then took most of Arabia, then most of Turkey. That gave me the east half of the oval.

Siam ended up with the west half. Alexander and Turkey took out China early, but Siam took out Alex later. Hiawatha was stuck with three cities most of the game, but he had 3 policy tracks done when Siam took him out in the 1940's. I took Beijing late game from Turkey and liberated it as a buffer between me and Siam.

Buy the 20th century it was clear that diplo was the way to finish this game, I had half of the CS as allies (the free units were very nice indeed) at that time. I hoarded cash to buy them all in the late game, had 18 of 22 votes for me on the election.

Was 2nd to Siam in all metrics but one, I think.

Funny, no one built Apollo. I was 9 turns from UN when Siam built it !!! Pretty bad programming, as I had the most votes at the time. Siam's 10,000 gold in the bank might have wrested some of those CS away from me, if the AI was programed to think that way.

AI did a lot of research agreements, I need to be more aggressive about doing that myself, and stripping away their money to slow that down.

dV