TSG33 After Action Report

Hi everyone and welcome to the TSG33 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!

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Please use the Civ5 game submission page to submit your final, first play through, .Civ5Save file, saved AFTER the victory ceremony if you were not conquered (using the "Lemme play one more turn" feature.).

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Would be interested to hear any thoughts on game setup.

Turn 348. Culture. Augustus Caesar.

Had to go to war with Egypt to deny them a diplo victory (game crashed first time i did this, needed to reload two turns). standard other than that.

Timed free opera houses well, early GL, SH, Oracle, Hagia, Sistine, Hermitage, Lourve.

Culture slowed as i was war blocked from most CS's for most of the game.

Some Tradition, all Liberty, going back for free opera houses, all Piety, all Freedom and all Patronage.

All of Piety before Freedom, before you ask.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 33
Date submitted: 2012-04-01
Reference number: 25996
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1928AD
Turns played: 348
Base score: 790
Final score: 1144
Time played: 1:59:00
Submitted save: GOTM33Save.Civ5Save
Renamed file: trueblue_C503301.Civ5Save

Game: Civ5 GOTM 33
Date submitted: 2012-04-02
Your name: Tabarnak
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1840AD
Turns played: 290
Base score: 1486
Final score: 2562
Time played: 3:12:00
Submitted save: Augustus Caesar_0290 AD-1840.Civ5Save

Settled in place. Went 4 cities right of the bat(all before Representation). I wanted to try a 4 cities set up with lot of puppets too. It worked well, i managed to build the GL in 2nd city pretty late(around turn 70), Stonehenge around turn 50 in capital. I have not built the PT. I built Notre-Dame instead. I only signed 6 RAs and 5 of them matured.

Got iron working around turn 60. Suleiman put his 2nd city right in the wrong place. I captured his city with 4 legions and conquered his capital some turns later. I had, for sure, got a big warmonger penalty for the rest of the game. I didn't stop here. I immediately attacked Hiawatha and captured all his 4 cities. This made 4+2+4= 10 cities in the BCs.

Since a big wall of mountain blocked the path, i decided to turtle from there. Some civs had some longswordmen and i didnt want to burn money on upgrades yet. Amazingly, Japan stayed friendly with Egypt for a long period of time. 3 civs were left for RAs. I signed 1 wave and a second wave later but 1 broken from Japan who stayed at war until the end. Other civs stayed between hostile and friendly until the end.

This time, i waited for free museums from legalism instead of opera houses. And it is, imo, the best move i have done. I will always do this in the future it pays way more than bulbing opera houses. My tech pace was pretty damn slow for many reasons. I didn't build Oracle(litterally forgotten...probably too drunk for the first 80 turns) nor Hanging Gardens. I allied a bunch of cs instead thanks to my huge income. I allied with 2 cultural cs since turn 70. I also allied every cultural and maritime cs before turn 180. Capital had 112 per turn at the end and finished Utopia in 12 turns thanks to some chain production overflow.

If i had signed more RAs(keeping some civs alive), built Oracle and finished Cristo earlier i would have saved a bunch of turns. But i liked what i've seen overall.

Lost this one because i didn't follow my usual strategy - went 2 city + puppets. City was build by the rock of gibraltar, got stonehenge, GL, lost hanging gardens and hagia - hiawatha somehow allied almost all of the CS's from this side of the mountain chain and war with him stalled - abandoned when he got lancers and cannons.


turn 326 - 1908AD cult win - 2-nd try

Tried a 2-nd time, this time following my normal strategy, but build the 2-nd city near the coast and in range of marble - focused on cult Cs's, hanging gardens, got GL, lost oracle, but got almost every other wonder after that. went PT which was a bad decision because i didn't win much...
conquered all the map except Egypt - had to wait for rifleman+artillery to go conquer the other side of the mountains - took a while to build a road there too.
in the end i build Utopia in 10 turns - could have been 9 but i missed that i also had an oil resource at the capital - also tried to rely on luck from the ocasional free great people to bulb either ecology for solar plant or go nuclear - no such luck, i only got great merchants - useless since i already had 15k gold.

I'm in the same boat Numaru. Hiawatha is pulling gold from his *** and its annoying. I'm at turn 206 and we both have Cannons and I'm seriously thinking about bulbing Riflemen to shut him up. Its that or abandon and do a redo. No submissions but I'll be a lot wiser in my decision making.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 33
Date submitted: 2012-04-02
Reference number: 26014
Your name: Thresian
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1941AD
Turns played: 361
Base score: 678
Final score: 941
Time played: 3:16:00
Submitted save: Augustus Caesar_0361 AD-1941.Civ5Save
Renamed file: Thresian_C503301.Civ5Save

Click to expand...

I built GL and used it to bulb mathematics, then built the HG, followed by the Oracle. Second city near the Rock of Gibraltar. That was it, as it turned out. Suleiman declared fairly early (he didn't like my second city placement). I rush-bought an archer and managed to fend him off pretty well, but then I wasn't paying attention and he killed my archer and also my worker. Suleiman plonked a city between Rome and Antium which was annoying (Hiawatha eventually razed it).

Tech was all over the place - I was chaining RAs with everyone except Suleiman, but I wasn't paying attention to my median. Also, I should probably have engaged rationalism before clearing freedom.

I built Hagia Sophia and the Sistine Chapel, but narrowly missed the Louvre - in retrospect I would have been better off taking a GE from either the HS or the liberty finisher and bulbing the Louvre. The problem was that Rome was working so many monuments, its production was dreadful.

I took Radio with Oxford and Telegraph and Mass Media with Scientific Revolution. I missed the Cristo Redentor by miles, but built Sydney. Culture peaked at 599 cpt. I managed to time a natural golden age so it coincided with the last policy and built Utopia in 13 turns.

Policies were all of Liberty, Piety opener and Organized Religion, all of Freedom, with a detour to take the Tradition opener and Legalism for the free museums, all of Rationalism, finish Piety, finish Tradition.

Incidentally, this game was notable for being the first time I've ever built a windmill.

I failed so hard on this. SO many things went wrong and I was amazed that Nobunaga didn't get a Science Victory. Following my 1-105 write up in the In-Progress thread, I initiated war with Hiawatha and teched straight to Gunpowder. Why? Because when I took Istanbul, Hiawatha had a huge army. Monsterous. And I saw myself as the closest target so I did the only reasonable thing: Abuse the AI's terrible unit management. While this is going on Egypt dies... then I meet England and Japan (Thank gawd, my money was drying up). Then England dies...

Japan? What are you doing Japan? Put down the knife Japan, please put down the AAAAAAGGGHGhggqwhgh....

It pretty much went like that. He squashed all three City States on the south of the mountain line and then moved up to take my captured cities and corner Hiawatha. That was my only saving grace as he spent the rest of the game mindlessly assaulting Hiawatha.

I'm gonna replay this for sure. Things I will do different (Especially since I know the map now lol):

Game: Civ5 GOTM 33
Date submitted: 2012-04-02
Your name: RedRover57
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1912AD
Turns played: 332
Base score: 1237
Final score: 1874
Submitted save: Augustus Caesar_0332 AD-1912.Civ5Save
Renamed file: RedRover57_C503301.Civ5Save

I'm happy with the time, considering. I'd have to say that less than 300 is very good for this map. I guess it required more conquest to achieve that. I only ended up taking 2 of Sully's cities as puppets after he DoWed me early. The rest of the game was peaceful as I decided to leave the Ottoman capital as a buffer between myself and Hiawatha (as he was a bit of a runaway). I had a DoF with Hiawatha the whole game and he ended up taking out everyone but Egypt at the end.

I had a good start and built SH, GL (bulbed Theology), Oracle (city 2), HG (Liberty finisher GE), HS, PT and Sistine (GE from HS). But 2 bad things happened after that which hurt my final time: (1) I did the legalism "trick" to get opera houses but didn't realize that the 4th OH would go to a puppet rather than city 4, so I had to hard build one in a city with low production, and (2) I delayed building the Louvre a few turns to finish my current project and Egypt beat me to it by 2 turns.

I settled my capital one tile NE after seeing how close the ocean was to the south. My second city (free Liberty settler) was over near the marble and city 3 was up on the NW coast (dyes). I settled a later (after NC) 4th city further N by the furs and natural wonder to stop Hiawatha from settling over there. My policies were Liberty (full), Piety (full), couple in Tradition (for the OH's and wonder building policy), Freedom (full), finish Tradition, and Patronage.

My science rate wasn't great for the early-mid game as I used all my cash to keep my CS allies rather than to buy RA's. Hiawatha and Egypt both kept trying to steal them away. When I finally made it to the techs and built Cristo and Sydney OH it was too late to matter.

Tabarnak said:

This time, i waited for free museums from legalism instead of opera houses. And it is, imo, the best move i have done. I will always do this in the future it pays way more than bulbing opera houses.

Click to expand...

I'm kind of surprised that this worked well on this map. Seems like this would really stunt city growth. My other 3 cities did not grow very fast until I completed Tradition (and allied several more maritime CS later in the game).

RedRover57 said:

I'm kind of surprised that this worked well on this map. Seems like this would really stunt city growth. My other 3 cities did not grow very fast until I completed Tradition (and allied several more maritime CS later in the game).

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I begin to think that i should not wait for Representation anymore to settle more cities for a culture game(unless i'm stuck on a little island). Land is power. I think sub 270 is possible here. Maybe DaveMcW is preparing a such video

Museums demand so much hammers...and it has 2 ga slots. I growed all my cities at least over 7 when i reached legalism. Then i put 4 ga specialists in cities 2,3 and 4 until the end while capital was growing and raising a final ge for Sydney.

I just did a replay and got 321. Compared to 383 thats tons better. Too bad I can't submit THIS one ( ⌐ _&#8976

Another fun game! I seem to have an urge to start off with Tradition lately and that is what I did in this game too. I built two other cities as fast as I could (one to secure Dye and Furs, and another on the marble), and the goal was early temples in all 3 of my cities, and then fill the rest of the Tradition tree for max pop growth.

So I tech beelined to Philosophy while at the same time picking tradition policies until I could not choose other than the free culture buildings policy. I struggled to finish monuments in my two extra cities in time, and realized I had to rush buy in one of them. I spent 12 gpt (all my surplus gold) to get a loan from Sully, and got my last Monument in place the same turn as I could get the free temples. Had of course forgotten that while the hammers are free, the maintenance is not. I spent I-dont-know how many turns with rather important negative cash flow (and hence no or reduced science), and for a moment regretted my whole temple adventure.

I wanted HG after GL but HG got built before I even got started on it (thanks Egypt). That hurt a bit, since I really wanted massive growth in the capital. I finished the Tradition tree and then started on Piety.

Techwise I initiated RAs around turns 90-110 I think. And I didnt stop until I was sure to secure Mass Media and either one of Ecology or Nuclear Fission (ended up with Ecology since I didnt want to gamble on having uranium resource, I am sure you understand what I mean...)

Warwise I waited for a sucker to declare and it was unsurprisingly Sully, breaking the first RA in the process. I took 2 of his cities (incl capital) and left the last one alive so I could continue RAs with him. I completed 2 RAs with Sully (I think) and the last one matured ONE TURN BEFORE he got annihilated by the Mohawks. That was my only war. No other declared on me, and I prioritized RAs.

My capital grew to size 30 and Utopia was squeezed down to 8 turns. I am rather happy with my final date, still curious how I would fare if I started with Liberty.

Question: In my game I chose Representation as the very final tech. Was that stupid? I understand from Representation that I would have no gain from it if I settle all my cities before getting it.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=414366
makes me wonder, though. They are talking about a factor multiplied by the number of cities and that the factor is lowered by Representation. I cannot see any difference made to the number of cities you founded before and after Representation. So does that mean that if I had taken Representation early on, but after settling my cities, I would still get the lower factor applied for my subsequent policies, and therefore it does not in the long rund matter really much if you get Representation before or not too long after settling your cities?

MiniMe said:

Question: In my game I chose Representation as the very final tech. Was that stupid? I understand from Representation that I would have no gain from it if I settle all my cities before getting it.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=414366
makes me wonder, though. They are talking about a factor multiplied by the number of cities and that the factor is lowered by Representation. I cannot see any difference made to the number of cities you founded before and after Representation. So does that mean that if I had taken Representation early on, but after settling my cities, I would still get the lower factor applied for my subsequent policies, and therefore it does not in the long rund matter really much if you get Representation before or not too long after settling your cities?

Click to expand...

you understood correctly, every time you build a city the cult limit goes up, by taking representation first, that limit is not that high up (never mind the actual math) - depending on your strategy it could save you a lot of turns actually.

numaru7 said:

you understood correctly, every time you build a city the cult limit goes up, by taking representation first, that limit is not that high up (never mind the actual math) - depending on your strategy it could save you a lot of turns actually.

Click to expand...

What I am looking for is a confirmation of the following statement:
When you adopt the policy, it reduces the cost of future policies for ALL your cities, including ones that are already built by the time you adopt the policy.

Because if that is true I am total jerk for not getting Representation earlier on. I thought it would only have an effect for cities created before Representation

So I guess for a fast time and if cash is tight RA's > CS allies, since RA's get you to museums and late culture wonders (Cristo, Sydney) faster?

Allying an early cultural cs is optimal for a fast finish date. But you don't need to ally 2, 3 or 4 of them after that, at least before turn 150. It's usually better to put gold in RAs.

MiniMe said:

What I am looking for is a confirmation of the following statement:
When you adopt the policy, it reduces the cost of future policies for ALL your cities, including ones that are already built by the time you adopt the policy.

Because if that is true I am total jerk for not getting Representation earlier on. I thought it would only have an effect for cities created before Representation

Click to expand...

It reduces the increase when you place a city, meaning it is not retroactive. For instance, I build a city before representation and now have 115% policy cost. If I build a city after Representation it'll go up to 125% instead of 130%. Had I waited for Representation both cities would result in a 120% cost.

Imo Representation is only a priority to get if you are gonna plant 4 cities. In which case I suggest building you first settler, buy the second and taking the third from collective rule. I say this because if you compare 145%(all 3 planted without Rep) to 130%(all three planted with Rep) you can see its like that 4th city isn't there for culture purposes.

Using the term retroactive with regards to representation has caused a lot of confusion in the past.

The first thing to understand right away is it is totally independent of the policy cost increases based on the number of policies you have acquired. While the cost of a policy does increase the more you acquire through culture, that value is just multiplied by the modifier for number of cities so you can ignore it when determining if representation is worthwhile.

The second thing to understand is that there is nothing in the game that will go back and refund you culture because you paid too much for a policy. Once you've bought a policy the amount you paid for it becomes irrelevant. You simply have the policy and whatever amount of culture was left over in your culture bank after you paid for it.

@MiniMe
That statement is correct. It does not matter if you place the city before or after you acquire representation. It will simply switch the # of cities multiplier for your future policy costs from 1 + (0.15 x (cities - 1) to 1 + (0.1 x (cities - 1).

@S.K. Ren
You are misinformed. In both of the situations you describe your policy costs will be at 120% after founding two cities and adopting representation. The only difference in those cases will be the amount of culture you pay for any policies you pick up between founding the second or third city and picking up representation. Probably the easiest way to test this is to build the oracle and use that free policy (which doesn't count towards policy costs) to get representation. You will see the cost for your next policy will actually go down. Of course you can also see it works this way by doing the actual calculations in game, but the oracle thing is a simple way.

It's not really THAT important to beeline representation or hold off on building cities until you have it. The reason is mostly that the cost of those first few policies is so low that the absolute value of representation is quite small.
Some example numbers: Assuming normal size or smaller, normal speed, prince or higher difficulty. At two cities, the 4th, 5th and 6th policies each cost 5 less culture with representation. That's a grand total of 15 culture difference between picking up representation ASAP and saving it for last in the liberty tree. At three cities its 5+10+10=25 culture and 4 its 10+15+25=50 culture.

Another interesting calculation is the power of representation as a policy cost reducer for small empires. At two cities it's a 4.5% reduction in policy costs, at 3 it's 7.7% and at 4 it's 10.3%. So at as few as 4 cities (probably a popular number for small empires) it is already beating the piety finisher or Cristo Redentor and you can have it for almost the entire game. Obviously as your empire gets larger it gets even stronger.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 33
Date submitted: 2012-04-03
Reference number: 26018
Your name: meth
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1882AD
Turns played: 311
Base score: 1090
Final score: 1758
Time played: 3:32:00
Submitted save: Augustus Caesar_0311 AD-1882.Civ5Save
Renamed file: meth_C503301.Civ5Save