TSG11 After Action Report

I settled on the cotton on the inside bend of the river. My warrior ended up finding four different ruins and el dorado, which got me off to a great start. Barbs were no problem in this game either.

I bought a worker with some of that el dorado money and started farming all those flood plains. I worked my one city through all the national wonders but hermitage. I settled two cities to the north to get the whales, cotton, furs, and el dorado. That also gave me coastal access, albeit very late. The rest of my money which was coming fast went to allying CS around me.

Before I began the game I thought about the conflict between a culture victory (vertical game) and a trade network domination/science game (horizontal). I decided to go straight vertical early while simultaneously attempting a warrior archer rush. My logic was that I would have a tiny empire with a lots of puppets to hook up to the trade network. Initially I was only going to settle one more city, and it was going to link my capital to my puppets in a logical way.

This strategy almost worked. Turns out Monty was my near neighbor so I was very greatful for my army. He killed three of my five warriors when he DOWed me, but my archers and remaining warriors gave back twice as much pain. I cranked out a few new warriors and started taking Monty's cities. One city fell, but the next city would be his capital, and my warriors weren't going to cut it. After one city fell he asked for peace and gave me lots of goodies. I used the intervening time to upgrade my army. One of my allied CS gave me iron (thank god) and so I upgraded to swords. Also had my first couple camel archers coming off the line. Monty was up to six cities, and I took four from him, leaving the two crappy cities furthest from me for him to keep. He behaved himself the rest of the game but my fight with him lasted well beyond the birth and death of christ. Monty also never expanded again to fill in our continent, which was what I hoped. As it went, at least he honored our RAs the rest of the way.

I was lucky in that no civ was running away. I didn't find anybody, they all found me, which meant I was quite a way behind everybody but monty during the rennaisance. However, I was cash and resourse rich and everybody else had money, so I cought up and surpassed everybody by the end of the game. If I had gone for a science victory, I would have won somewhere around 320-350.

The reason I couldn't win with culture was b/c of Alex. I had the four CS on my continent locked down, but from the moment I met him, he was rich, had just as many CS, and a tech advantage over me. So I couldn't attack and I knew I was in trouble. Fortunately, Alex was pissing off everybody else and fighting over their CS, so that kept him somewhat in check. I was seeing one CS or the other switching alliances just about every turn in the game. Sully was dominant scorewise early, Napolean was rich as hell, Ramses was building almost every woner in the game, and Caesar was just chilling but doing alright. I never met persia.

I really wanted to win the game with just one or two cities, but my research was not keeping up even with RAs and I needed money to keep my CSs. I also needed coastal access and a city between me and my aztec puppets. Thus I went for a three city approach by settling both cities after I built ironworks in my capital. I think ultimately this is what made my culture progress too slow. I was able to buy or build every culture building in all three cities, but things just took too long all around.

I built the UN, and I thought I had Alex in check. I went to war with him as a favor to essentially every other leader in about 1500ad and was forever beloved by the other leaders for doing so. I fully intended permanent war with Alex so that he couldn't steal my four CS. It worked. I went with a naval blockade and was able to embargo his main island/continent and kill anything that got wet. Napy and Sully were so rich, Alex couldn't get the CS on their continent for more than a turn, so I thought it was all good. However, I was wrong b/c Alex won with exactly 10 votes which is why I lost the game. Not sure how I missed that, I guess I didn't realize how rich he was, b/c he must have stolen three CS from two other filthy rich leaders on that last turn to win it.

I founded my city without moving my settler after spotting that nifty Marble nearby. During exploration I found four goody-huts that included a free SP, plus El Dorado. I spent my free cash on a Water Mill and Library and built both the NC and SH, off to a good start!

Encountered Montezuma and was alarmed at the number of Jaguars he had, so I bit the bullet and placed a settler directly on top of the iron resource to the west. While this was in process he declared war and traded a lot of Jaguars for a dead Scout and a temporarily captured worker. I built a number of swords and counterattacked, puppeting three of his cities and the Cape Town CS. I was very surprised to see Alexander on the continent with a city and a large army, so I chose not to finish off Monty, leaving him as a buffer state.

There were a few rough turns while I consolidated, building a "linking" city near the cotton resources to the east. I had also settled to the north to gain the fur resource, but once the road network was in place the cash started to roll in. I was getting RA offers (and accepting them) from virtually everyone, making money off of excess cotton and generally living the high life.

The fly in the ointment was Alexander, who had double the VP of the next player and was several techs ahead as well. He was expanding like crazy, settling all over the place including the spot to the north near El Dorado. I've seen this before in other games where Alex becomes a juggernaut thanks to his huge gold advantage + CS + patronage. Despite all my cash I could only bribe away one of his CS, and he was leaving everyone in the dust on the tech tree.

He declared on Monty and started rolling him over. By this time I had built what I thought was a decent military and decided that my only chance to stop him was now. I could get no traction with any other powers, none were interested in tangling with him. So I went in confident that I could take out the northern city he founded while he was taking out Monty (Tenochtitlan was especially tough) and then move my army south.

Imagine my dismay to see wall-to-wall units outnumbering me by 5:1 - PLUS the CS units and PLUS having artillery vs. my cannons. Worse still, Monty signed a peace deal almost immediately which included Open Borders. I lost all my southern cities but kept fighting on, despite the sudden appearance of Tank units. But when he completed the Manhattan Project while I was still building Riflemen I threw in the towel.

In the beginning, i found El dorado...but after Monty discovered it. Damned map ruins showed nothing interesting north of me except that little cloud(which have been El Dorado ). I found a culture ruins tho, built monument after scout and i picked early Meritocracy for a GE that i immediately settled. But i sold 2 lux to get back the 600 gold from Monty. So that wasn't that bad after all.

Oh Monty. I signed a RA with him to discover later that he went at war with me on turn 70 with warriors and archers. He did that 4 times in all the game. 2 RAs busted. But city location was perfect for easy defense.

I founded a second city north of capital with many other cottons that i sold to other civs when i discovered astro. A bit later i signed another 2 RAs but screwed it again with bad timing. Got 2 techs already blocked. 500 gold to garbage.

When i got archeology and acoustics i struggled to get critical buildings fast enough. After the mad part, i finally got some RAs giving me the good techs until Cristo and Broadcast Tower. Again, had to hard build them.

I got Stonehenge and missed the GL by 3 turns. I've got the other nice wonders from Ren era we all need for a cultural victory for later turns.

Monty was really pathetic at war and i easily repulsed him with an archer and a couple of warriors and spears/pikes in all 4 wars.

Bad timing of gold needed to rush buy buildings and really bad timing of RAs made me lose a lot of turns and gold. I even forgot to use Oxford to pop a late tech. But i won the game, and i'm happy for that.

It was my very first experience with AI since last patch.

At the end, Ramses II was sitting on a 32k treasury and making ~500 gpt, so there was nothing I could do about his Diplo victory.
At mid game I did fine with a (second) attack by Montezuma, destroyed his invading forces and striked back by razing one of his cities, puppeting another and liberating a CS. After that he offered pretty good terms. I didn't see the third wave coming though.. I was going to lose back the city so I decided to evacuate (to save a cat, an infantry and a general) and sold the city to Ramses II.

I decided on establishing my capital between the mountain and river, for early access to some 2/2/1 river mountain tiles with farm. Explored in a circle around my capital, first south then westwards and up along the coast before heading down on the east side and locating the Aztecs. This netted me Animal Husbandry and a Spearman upgrade from ruins, and a map of the ocean SW, located the four CS and El Dorado for the cash price too.
Managed to build SH, NC and NE before starting off on Angkor Wat. Placed a second city beside El Dorado and fur, the third beside the whales. The Aztecs started a war I was really unprepared for breaking an RA a few turns before completion, throwing my CS-slingshot off. This war lasted for ~240 turns, and cost me a lot of turns in unit production and researching military techs to keep up. Managed to take 4 Aztec cities, but two were recaptured when they got Artillery, but then they lost their capital to Greece and asked for an equal peace treaty, which I was fast to sign. Only war I was in the entire game.
Was lagging behind until modern era in tech, but came out 3rd in the tech race. A lot because of CS and RA.
Persia seemed hellbent on a domination victory and was really easy to sway into wars with other civs, which I used to keep Egypt and Greece in check. I spent a lot on inciting wars which I think is what allowed me this fairly late cultural win.
Greece was as usual going for a diplo win, where the rest of my gold went after the UN was built to keep the game alive in my favour, had to buy a work boat to go exploring for more CSes to befriend, had to pay 3k gold for some of them to loose allegiance to Greece. But by this time I was swimming in gold, 250gpt(loooong Golden age) and getting a lot of extras from trade constantly.
Egypt was going strong for a culture win, I had 15sp's to go when he closed his 20th, but seems to have captured a few to many cities towards the end and I managed to finish my 25th by the time he was on his 22nd. I did manage to get the opera house, and built solar plants in my capital together with a hydro dam. 8 turns for the Utopia Project to finish.

I replayed from a point in 550AD when I was just on the verge of killing Monte, and I was also about to build two additional cities, for a total of three. This time, I never built a second city, and I was also wary of the threat of Alex.