TSG4 After Action Report

Hi everyone and welcome to the TSG4 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! Please attach your Civ5Save file, saved AFTER the victory ceremony if you were not conquered. Please also state your HoF score, or post a Civ5Replay file so that we can extract it, as it isn't recorded in the Civ5Save.

Players are encouraged to provide feedback on the game. Some players like to replay the game, and although we will not record the results from a replay, you can still post your new experiences (please state if the game is a replay). The game will not be closed as such, but after two weeks, the results will be compiled, and will not necessarily be updated with reports coming in afterwards.

Epic speed is not my favourite - makes the game even more teidous.

Strat was same as the HoF Diplo game recently, 3 or 4 cities running scientists for an early win, maybe take a puppet or 2 - lots of sucess recently running few core cities and the rest puppets then hitting a diplo win once the slowdown is too much.

Lack of maritimes really hit me, even though I quickly went the MC bulb steel route, always expecting a maritime CS just in the fog. Never found one and cost me dear to realign my strategy - good lesson learnt, do not rely on finding a martime.
Warriors were upgraded to swords and the Chinese targeted. I dithered like a schoolgirl, wanting to cancel the steel bulb and head for Astro, Swords don't cut it unless your very quick so i pulled back and took steel. As no one else had any iron my longswords took the continet. Gengis was very generous with his peace offering so he was allowed to live for a bit, Rome was also fair with the GPT so he kept his crappy northern cities.

Once astro was in, carvel out, martimes found. then it was sell, sell, sell resources for GPT, buy happiness and wait for the science to catch up.

Saved my GS and bulbed from Electricity onwards, 2 techs from SP and 3 GS in total. Buy factory, GA with the general. UN in and boatloads of cash, bought every CS just because i could. Built 8 warriors, 2 scouts and a spearman in total.

Could easy finish 50 - 70 turns earlier.

Will update later with Pics and saves - if anyone is interested.

Got the diplo victory in 1841. Took the continent with mohawks and a few horsemen. Other than pretty successful wars, had a pretty slow start, didnt take advantage of almost any wonders, had some pretty big goofs in choosing social policies. AI was suprisingly friendly, giving me defensive pacts and allowing me to not build another military unit once i took the continent.

all in all a fun map! need these more frequently!

First Spoiler is here.

505 AD -> 1000 AD

1000 AD -> 1400 AD

1400 AD -> 1600 AD

Victory in 1600 AD = turn 340. (I'm not sure which final score to quote, but in-game score is 1597, local hall-of-fame says 3548)

Executive summary is I killed off Wu and Genghis early (with warriors mostly), picked up a minimum of social policies up to Free Thought (Rationalism branch), then mass produced settlers to cover my part of the continent. Most of my science came from size 3 or 4 cities running 2 scientist specialists and a trading post or two.

Edit: Added replay file.

My goal was to build a few core cities and then capture as many opponents' cities as possible and puppet them for cash flow that I would later use for gifts to CSs.

I went for Iron Working and grabbed 2 sources of iron to the south west of the capital. Then I started making Mohawks and send them to conquer weak China. Then I conquered Mongolia, which gave me about 5 or 6 cities and with the help of horsemen (and later knights) I was able to take out Rome.

I only built 3 cities of my own (including capital), the rest of them were puppets. My massive crowd of workers was building trade posts and gradually cash started growing. I missed all the early wonders because my own cities were busy building new military units, but after I took the whole continent to myself I started catching up. I allied every single CS on the map that hadn't been conquered well in advance before getting UN. The bonuses they provided were very significant, considering that there were 1 or 2 maritime CSs on another continent.

In the end I was making around 500 gold and 500+ science a turn and was able to simply by utility buildings in my cities concentrating exclusively on wonders. Golden Age was on most of the time thanks to my own Great People and those supplied by CSs (Patronage was the first policy branch I completely explored). The very first UN vote brought me Victory: 15 votes, while only 10 were required. All CSs voted for me: that's the power of the gold

After I discovered the size of the continent I decided to go ICS with puppets. Build 4 Warriors and took Beijeng while beelining construction. Writing and luxury-techs afterwards, followed by iw. I took Genghis after that with mohawks/cats. Luckily Augustus dow'ed Genghis too. After I took out Genghis I went for some more expansion and beelined rifling to conquer Rome. Guess that was not the optimal plan, I think I could have saved a lot of turns if I'd just beelined steampower instead and settle for a defensive war against Augustus. Taking Rome with cannons and rifles upgraded from Mohawks was a walk in the park though. After I took Rome, Napoleon and Elizabeth DoW'ed me and I responded by allying some more CS to keep them busy. Finished Rome, beelined globalization and went on to fix my happiness problems while spamming trading posts in the new territory. Build some wonders at that time cause I had nothing better to do and bulbed about 7 techs from saved GS.
Finished in 1740 (Turn 380) with a diplo victory.

Here's the link to the generated Replay:
http://civ5.flexd.net/replay/4ced2d60b878bc64ff00003c

My Start was: Researched Writing, built GL. Free Tech: Iron Working.
Only 2 Iron nearby- had to be enough. Wu, instead of her usual early wonder-building way, started spreading cities early. One of them too close. I built a second city very close to that city, attacked with my 2 swordsmen and an upgraded scout. After taking her out, same game with Dschinghis, with additionally some horsemen. Then Augustus, and the Continent was mine. I had been also able to build Stonehenge and allied Cultural CS early. So my cultural output was not that bad, and I delayed city spreading a bit until I had several SoPos that gave research bonus. That might not have been necessary, but this way I got even the 2-Free-Tech SoPo. With the addition of 3 Great Scientists, I bulbed my way to Globalization from Electricity on, similar to KingMorgan. When building the UN, I used up my two Great Generals for Golden Ages, then a Great Engineer came right in time to rush the rest of it.
Also bought every CS "just because I could".
It was nice to play, especially because everything fitted in at the right moment for me, but in the long term, games like this might be too easy for a GOTM, imho. But I'm considering to boykott the next patch, so this might not be of my business anymore.

This game ended up provided a bit of a challenge for me, probably in part because I'd never played any speed but standard, and usually start on a smaller continent.

I started with a standard horseman rush, but as I only had 2 horses nearby I needed to settle a second city near horses.

I Attacked Ghengis, and took him down to 2 cities, then sued for peace and got another of his cities in the deal.

Healed my army and attacked Wu

Got wu down to 1 city, made peace and took genghis' capital, since the 10 turns of peace was now up.

This is were things got tricky for me. I basically started to ICS. However Romes army had already gotten too big for me to challenege while I was dealing with Wu and Ghengis. I ended up just fortifying that border. We had a few wars over the years and I managed to slowly expand my territory during them, but I could see Rome's tech outpacing me. By the time I won I was holding off Roman mech infantry with cannons...

Germany was the other big problem for me. they were the undisputed winner on the other landmass and were much bigger than anyone else. Towards the end Germany declared war on me and maintained that war throughout the end of the game. luckily thi amounted to a bunch of ships sitting off my shores, but no invasion force. I did find that Germany would quickly conquer(in 1 to 2 turns) any city state I allied on a continent with a german presence though, which was problematic.

Germany finally beat me to building the UN, so I just waited till 1 turn before the vote, then traded with napolean for as much gold as I could get, and bought my 10 votes.

note: I had one crash around 340AD, and had to reload from autosave.

Turn 308, 5839 points in HOF. Have been posting my game in the in-progress thread. I went ICS. Should've given a bit more thought to policies, could perhaps have got the +2 free techs if I'd have planned it right.

Also needed to do better with getting a great engineer. I imagine that ~260 turns is possible with this challenge if you get everything right with this method. Perhaps it's possible to go faster with 3 cities & saving policies, but I expect the methods to be fairly similar.

Not used to the epic game speed. Things take longer to build and research so it seems like exisiting units have a lot more turns of usefulness. However if so I didn't take advantage of it. Got Stonehenge and then the Pyramids because I can't stand worker rates on even normal speed. Basically slowly conquered the continent. On this map having trireme -> frigate -> destroyer upgrades worked great. With the extra range and multiple shots per turn upgrades I could even take cities with embarked units. And any enemy land unit that came in range was toast.

Diplo Victory, turn 292, 1360 AD, score 6397

Hiawatha is a great ICS Civ, so that was my plan from the get-go. Using tips from Pagh80's ICS breakdown in the HoF forum, I planned to do the following:

1) Conquer my continent ASAP.
2) Get the social policies I would need to run ICS before adding any cities
3) ICS for the win.

Also, I had decided before starting that I would try and play according to the patch rules as best I could, so I didn't save Social Policies or Promotions, and I didn't use Horsemen at all.

I started by settling in place and exploring with the warrior. I built Scout-Warrior-Worker to start with, and planned to beeline to Acoustics so I could get Rationalism. My goodie huts were pop, map, tech (AH), upgrade for scout. Once my second warrior finished, I sent both warriors and the archer against China which I knew was north somewhere. Took out China, then sent the army over to the Mongols before Genghis could destroy the city-states. After taking his three cities, I kept exploring till I found Rome, which after a protracted siege I finally captured in 825BC, leaving me in sole possession of my continent. It also gave me a decent base of 7 Puppet cities to work with.

After building a worker, I started on the Great Library, for the Education Slingshot. Finished GL around turn 90, got Education, and started on the Oracle. I ended up getting Geneva and Bucharest as Allies after killing some barb camps for them, which gave me the culture to get my first social Policies (Took the Liberty tree down to Meritocracy). GS popped right before I got another policy, allowing me to unlock Rationalism and get a 6 turn GA going, which helped finish Oracle and get me Secularism. I was humming along nicely but my plan hit a snag, the same one I'm sure you all hit: No Maritime CSes.

I pushed for Optics rather than Horseback Riding when it became clear that there weren't any nearby Maritimes. I bought a warrior earlier, and sent him looking for other landmasses; he found Ragusa, but no other AI players were within coastal range. I was getting around 40 culture a turn at this point, so my SPs were coming quickly and I was almost ready to start ICS, but I really needed to get Astronomy. I ended up pushing towards the +2 free techs, and used them to grab Compass and Astronomy, soon after Rome fell, so I sent out my archer and warrior across the oceans. I eventually found the other continent and the other 3 Maritimes, which gave me time to finish getting Freedom. It took so long that by the time I got the ICS underway around turn 170, I had picked up two Sps in Patronage as well.

After that it was basically autopilot. I kept happiness up by not working any citizens at all, just keeping them unemployed, which still gave +2 science. Each city I built would work Research or Wealth till size three, and then I switched them to Settlers. It starts slow, but eventually I had covered nearly the entire landmass. Every city was nothing but Unemployed workers, until I could afford a library for the city and then I'd shift them to working the Library.

Since Diplo is just a tech race to Globalization, I didn't bother trying to manage my Golden Ages or to build Chichen Izta. I *did* want a GE, so I annexed Beijing (since it had marble and plenty of hills) to help build wonders, and to make my GE for me, since the puppet had already built a Longhouse. I had to throttle my science specialists in my capitol, but I managed to get a GE with about 6 turns to spare. I ended up with 4xGS (one from Porcelin Tower) and 1xGE.

Not using Horsemen didn't hurt me at all in the long run. It took longer to take out cities, but the basic strat was to position an archer and the warriors near the city, fortify the warriors (they both had medic promo eventually, making it even better), and use the archer to wear down the city. I got a GG during the war with the mongols, and used it to take out Rome.

Not sure how I feel about Epic speed, it makes conquest and ICS a bit too powerful. I think Standard is just right for game speed.

Hi,

I havent been sure which way to play that one from the beginning, since I was torn between establishing 2-3 cities max, then puppet till I got all the SPs I want, or pretty much ICS from the beginning.

In the end I did a bit of both which is most likely the worst way to play that one

I took out China via warrior rush by turn 87, gaining me 2 puppets in addition to the 1 city I have build. Then I razed the 2nd Chinese city to build my own due to happiness concerns. And I build a 4th city right on the horses to the east in order to get a little bit better punch here vs. the Mongols.

I got to HBR via the GL, which looked fairly wasteful to me, but I was concerned about speed of conquest here.

Around turn 160 my continent is secured and I have entered RAs with the Mongols and Rome (each have 1 city left, Rome still has space to settle more cities).

I razed/rebuild 2 additional cities while building new settlers to connect my new conquests.

I scouted to the east of Tyre for the elusive Maritimes, and finally found Ragusa, but to my dismay I couldnt get any further without Astronomy. Then I bulbed Astronomy and bought 2 Caravels, soon finding the 2md continent and the other civs.

By that time I actually didnt want to ally any more Maritimes since my happiness was getting fairly low and I planed to attack the other continent instead fof just using ICS on my own continent.

I decided to take out my 2 leading contenders (France and Germany). Paris fell around turn 190 (France around turn 205) and Berlin around turn 250.

After having build the Taj I finally got my 4th GS and bulbed to Globalisation. At first the UN took 24 turns to build (used Rome for it due to the marble, should have thought about this earlier, this way I had to waste a couple of turns to get Rome up to speed and fully focused on construction, even had to replaec the TPs around it with lumbermills).

In the end I connected Rome to the rail network I have started up mainly to speed up building the UN since otherwise essentially it was just clicking "end turn" over and over again. I just bought close to all CS and won with 17 votes.

It could have ended about 15-20 turns earlier I think, but besides the blunder with making up my mind about Rome too late I also could not be bothered to DOW/conquer Greece and England or take out my former RA partner when they were no longer useful to me nor to continue to ICS. With a more focused strategy it might be possible to shave off a couple of turns, too.

Overall epic is a bit too slow for my taste, but it has been fun anyway and if I saw correctly I even got 3 achievements from that game

CharonJr

Well, conquered China and Mongols (left Ghengis with one city) early, but failed to defeat Augustus, 'cause he had a lot of spearmens when i came with my knights. So, in the end i had my own 3 cities and around 7-8 puppets. It was just a training run, i could do better then that. I'm still learning things - this time i discovered, that voting don't happen immediately after construction of the UN, had to nervously press 'Enter' about ten? times, i think . Anyway that was a lot of fun playing this particular save, thanks to Orgs a lot!

I'm attaching replay and the save itself.

Morcar_civ5 said:

this time i discovered, that voting don't happen immediately after construction of the UN, had to nervously press 'Enter' about ten? times, i think

Click to expand...

The countdown to the next vote is displayed on top of the "Earth-globe" diplomacy icon in the top right corner of the screen.

Meeting the neighbours
I founded 3 cities (one in the mountain pass half way to Mongolia in 2375bc, one on the coast to the east in 1875bc) and started teching towards Ironwork, to start pushing out mohicans, but as usual I distracted myself with beaker micro, i.e. choosing techs off the beeline because they wasted less. When I finally had a couple of mohicans ready (1100bc), I marched on China. I took 3 cities and left Wu with her capital and instructions to settle the northeast peninsula for me. By this point, Mongolia had enough cities to make it worth bringing them into the empire; I dowed in 395bc, and killed him outright in 155bc, as he didn't have much space left to expand into.

War machine keeps rolling
By now Rome had grown pretty large, so my troops headed directly north to engage the Roman army. In this war, the game's most notable event happened: on one particular turn I completely overextended myself skirmishing on the Roman border, leaving crippled archers and mohicans, and my general, standing helplessly in front of several legions and ballistae. I was about to lose my entire military in a single interturn, and Julius knew it - despite asking for peace several turns earlier, he wouldn't deal any more. So eventually, I reluctantly hit end turn, only to watch the entire Roman force trip over itself, shuffle in the wrong direction, and generally move backwards, without acheiving a single attack on any of my sitting ducks. Quo vadis Julius? This AI really needs work.

Claiming the continent
So I worked clockwise around his empire, reaching Rome last; it had been working on Chichen according to the building site outside town, so I wanted to wait for this to finish. But when I shut down for the night and reloaded the next day, that graphic was gone. So I finished him off in 970ad. China had settled three more cities by this point, so I headed back east to take them, knocking Wu out in 1305ad. I had earned 21 puppets, and happiness was pretty tight, so that was the limit of my expansion. I found the other continent with an exploring workboat; unlike triremes they can learn to cross oceans, unlike caravels they're cheap as chips, and unlike units (at first) they get to travel 4 tiles per turn, the perfect explorer!

Finishing up
France was down to one town, so I put Bony out of his misery in 1385ad, but had to gift the town away due to happiness constraints. My only other dealings with that continent were to sell them spare resources for pots of cash. One I reached the Industrial era, I started cashing in free techs, to reach Globalization in 1555ad. Onondaga built the UN, taking 14 or 15 turns. I had long since bought up all the principalities, except a couple which had been conquered, so when the vote came around in 1675ad, the result was not in doubt. In game score 1547, HOF score 3291.

Tech and Social milestones
Masonry in 3050bc (notable for being a blunder, I thought I was researching Bronze ), Classical with Riding in 975bc, Ironwork in 850bc, Medieval with Civil Service in 395bc (a Glib slingshot, despite not even thinking about trying for Glib earlier, and I almost got Oracle afterwards), Renaissance with Banking in 900ad, Astronomy in 1100ad, Industrial with Steam in 1480ad (Oxford Uni), Modern with Plastics in 1555ad (by Scientific Revolution), up to Globalization in 1555ad (by 3 G.scientists).
Tradition: Aristocracy (+33% wonder building) in 550bc. Liberty: Meritocracy (+1 smile per trading town) in 520ad. Patronage: Aesthetics (+20 default influence) in 220ad, Scholasticism (city states provide beakers) in 1020ad. Rationalism: Secularism (+2 beakers per specialist) in 1320ad, Free Thought (+1 beaker per trade post) in 1415ad, Scientific Revolution (+2 techs) in 1555ad.

First Emperor game, First Iroquois game, First Fractal game, and First Epic game for me. First _intentional_ Diplo win. (I won diplo unintentionally before. Easy to do if somebody builds the UN and you've been allying a lot of city states.)

Is there really no aluminum on this map? One of the late-game City State missions was to get some aluminum. I explored the entire map and I don't see any.

For some (not all) the City States, I have to click "Pledge to Protect" EACH TURN. What's up with that?

Strategy/Play:
I briefly delayed REXing (is that a DREX?) to get the Meritocracy SP with the help of a Cultural CS ally. I like early Cultural CS allies: helps get useful SPs early without wasting time on building culture buildings. After Meritocracy I expanded (quasi-ICS) as fast as keeping above minus 10 Happiness would allow. Grow the ICS cities to size 3, ally one Maritime, run 2 scientists and turn off growth.

Attacked Khan and Wu Huangdi with Mohawks, or maybe she died first, I forget. Caesar joined me in the battle on the Mongols and we both took a few cities. I left both China and Mongolia with a city or two as I have heard the AI starts hatin' when you engage in a bit o' genocide. Popped a GG early in the Mongol War.

Tech path: Beelined Iron Working for the Mowahks, picked up the worker techs and Writing, and then beelined Globalization but prioritizing a few things like Currency and Engineering which were coming way too late in the beeline tech path for my taste.

Only one Maritime CS most of the game. I don't grow my cities, so I like the Culture/Military bonuses better.

Caesar proposed we go back to war to take the last Mongol city standing. Was he planning an East/West divide a la Berlin? I asked him to wait 10 turns, then went in early and grabbed the city. (Haha Caesar you snooze you lose.) I decided to take the other Mongol cities back from Caesar as I wanted the Pyramids of Beshbalik and once you take one, you've got to have more. IIRC at this point Bucharest my ally had also DOWed permanently on Caesar and looked to need some help. Actually that may have been what triggered the war...I forget.

I went Tradition SP to get Oligarchy for the +33% homeland combat bonus and basically dared Caesar to fight me in my territory. Killed a few Roman Muskets and I think Knights here and there with promoted Longswords and Mohawks. Muskets really are a cruddy unit. Fortunately Caesar did not go the Honor path. I don't think I ever built a ranged or siege unit that I used in war: gifts from military CS were enough. (I did build some of my own siege, but only as city defenders and I don't think any of them saw combat.)

Anyways I did NOT destroy Rome nor did I capture the continent. I took one city from Caesar in order to form a frontier border, then parked my troops so he could only get at Bucharest from the sea. I really had no interest in a war of acquisition as I still had plenty of open land to settle and by this time I had more than enough puppets already. For the next...1500 years?...or thereabouts (the rest of the game) this was my Western border. Me lined up on one side and Rome lined up on the other. Caesar didn't really do anything the rest of the game except occasionally comment on how much he hated me. He still bought my luxuries for gold though. Got another GG which I never used until burning him on unnecessary golden age at the very end because, why not?

I puppeted every city I captured and, over time, converted all farms and any unimproved tiles to trading posts, to limit puppet growth and production.

Found the other continent with a Caravel and did some B-grade ninja diplo for the rest of the game, Pact of Secrecying one side against another. Until very late game I was in a Pact of Coop with Bismark, who was the #1 military power on the planet and 2nd in score after me. I cheated on a few Pacts of Secrecy for lucrative or happiness-boosting trades. Is there really no way for the AI to discover that you're breaking your promise? Interestingly, Caesar at one point, briefly, was not Hostile and I think this coincided with him temporarily losing his grip on his sole CS ally, Seoul. Mere coincidence?

When most of my cities had their 2 scientists running I was somewhere around 200 beakers per turn (bpt). After I picking up Secularism on the Rationalism tree (hurrah Cultural CS!) this doubled to 400ish bpt. I had way more gold than I needed and was upgrading units / allying CS just for the heck of it. Very lazily played (more later.)

Later I picked up 2 more policies on the Rationalism tree, but they weren't that useful. I got the 2 free policies long after I already had Globalization and spent them on military techs (Flight) I never needed.

I coasted to Globalization, brute-force teching interspersed with beakering some of the more expensive techs. I abused the RA guidance gambit* to get Replaceable Parts so I could upgrade my Longswords/Rifles to Infantry, and this may have contributed to Caesar never attacking me again.

[* For those who don't know: If you put 1 turn of research into all except one of the possible techs you might get from an RA, you are virtually guaranteed to get the tech you haven't researched as the RA tech. I picked this trick up from one of TheMeInTeam's video comments. I use it at least once in every game and thus far it has never failed. I assume this will get nerfed in a patch at some point.]

I pimped out my best production city in preparation for building the UN, and with 2 stacked golden ages and a few chops of unused forests it took about 20 turns to build. I allied a few of the Maritime CS so as to work more tiles.

Anyways I was basically just coasting for most of the game, and the UN win on the first vote came as no surprise. For about 50-100 turns most of what I did was to explore the other continent with a spare Warrior, just for the heck of it. Then I ran out of stuff to explore and other than having workers do work to keep them out of trouble, mostly pressed "next turn".

In the end game, I built the Forbidden Palace without really trying. With a sudden surplus of happiness for the first time in the game I decided I didn't like being in 7th place in population, so I turned off "avoid growth" in all my ICS cities and let them grow until the vote, picking up a few points in the population scale. I also promoted and defensively fortified (including a couple Forts) all my military in expectation of the last-minute AI attack to prevent the UN win...which somewhat predictably never happened. This appears to be a key failing of the AI: it seems it does not understand the concept of going to war to prevent the player from winning. At least it never has in any of my games.

And now some notes.

I tested out the the civ5crazy ui emod (v.2) which again does not list any strategic or tactical changes to the game but is supposed to only improve the user interface (show an in-game clock, stuff like that.) I'm new to using mods and either I didn't properly install it or it doesn't work, because it did not deliver at all. I'm going to benefit-of-the-doubt it and say it was probably my fault, I must not have installed the mod properly. I hope so, because the Civ 5 user interface needs serious help and I'm hoping to find a mod that will do the job.

In order to turn off slow combat and prevent auto-workers from chopping forests, I edited the .ini and the .xml files. Neither of these things provides any gameplay advantage, but just make the game faster/less tedious.

However, auto-workers DO NOT understand the concept of The Great Warpath, so I STILL had to micromanage workers to prevent them from building needless roads through perfectly good forests. Great design element there Firaxis!

I also experienced a "ghost" - a Roman unit in ally CS territory which was not really there. I picked up on this when I was about to attack it and didn't get any combat odds but just a move path. I saved at that point and was going to post it to the bug reports forum, but on reloading the save to check, the ghost is gone.

As mentioned this was my first game ever on Epic (of any Civ incarnation). It was not quite so horrible as I expected, but I still really, really, really, really, really, dislike Epic speed. Now that I've done one Epic game, I think that will be more than enough for the rest of my life. I don't see that it adds anything at all to the game except mindless, boring tedium. Especially with 1UPT, tactical moves are limited less by game speed than by blocking units. Epic, in fact, serves to make even war less interesting, because whereas on normal speed you're looking at a potential tech upgrade on one side or the other mid-war, on Epic speed you get all those extra moves to kill the AI units (and really, it's not like the player needs any extra tactical advantages against the AI.) Lame-with-a-capital-"ame". From a gameplay standpoint, the Epic speed peace treaty deals make no sense, as they still only last 10 turns on Epic speed whereas everything else takes/lasts longer. This seems...dumb. I believe I heard the same was true on Epic speed in Civ 4. So is this intentional? What exactly is the point of having the peace treaty be the only treaty which doesn't adjust for speed? I can sign a 10 turn peace treaty but have the corresponding open borders last 45 turns...hello? If I go to war again after 10 turns the OB will be (now with the patch) cancelled anyways, so where was the point in all this?

Something else I picked up (and now confirmed for myself) from TheMeInTeam's recent Immortal Club (Washington) video: Yes, it really is the case that the AI governor will let a city go into starvation WHEN THERE ARE PERFECTLY GOOD FOOD TILES AVAILABLE if focusing on, say, Production. Dear Firaxis, you BITE.

Lessons Learned:

Well, not learned so much, but I suspect if I had bothered to build a few universities I could have reached Globalization that much sooner. As others have mentioned, diplo victory really is a tech race victory prematurely ending with Globalization. I just look at the 60+ turn University build time and think to myself, "Meh, why bother," but in hindsight it probably would have been worth the effort. I certainly could have bought some later in the game which could have at least saved me a few turns of research.

What exactly is the point of Patronage? Rather than have a social policy which lets me buy allies with less money, I'd rather just have more money. That way I can spend it on whatever I want. Commerce (for gold/production), and some other SP paths seem far more advantageous for allying city states than does the Patronage path, which really locks you into using your gold in only one way. Inflexibility - the mark of bad strategists since before the Battle of Cannae!

Final Thoughts:

And finally, as usual, even with low graphics settings and files edited as mentioned to force quick moves and otherwise improve game speed, the vast majority of my game time was spent waiting through the abysmal lag times, both AI moves between turns and just the lag of cycling through my units. About 2/3 of my time was spent waiting. My one-word description summing up Civ 5 is: S-L-O-W.

@KingMorgan and @Morcar_civ5:

You two must be posting your in-game scores? There's no way you have scores that low with your win dates. The Hall of Fame score is modified based on game settings.

@Neuro:

Did you go Rationalism first or Freedom? Which is more powerful, Secularism/Free Thought or Civil Society/Democracy?

Seems like it might be of benefit to get Democracy first in order to get more Great Scientists earlier, but it sounds like you went the other way around? Was this just because of when you could unlock the paths?

PaperBeetle said:

The countdown to the next vote is displayed on top of the "Earth-globe" diplomacy icon in the top right corner of the screen.

Click to expand...

Thanks, see it now, hovewer it's hard to notice that something changed with that icon after constructing UN, especially when i'm not using that icon at all.

@ChevalierdeJstn:
My HOF score 1958.

Concerning aluminium I am pretty sure that I had 2 sources, but they might have been on the other continent, IIRC I only saw oil on the other continent, too.

CharonJr