TSG42 After Action Report

Hi everyone and welcome to the TSG42 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!

STOP - Please do not continue reading this thread until you have completed and submitted your game.

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.).

With our third GOTM game in G&K;
How have the changes affected your strategy and game planning?
How did you use religion or spying to your advantage?
How did your opponents affect your strategy?

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).

Would be interested to hear any thoughts on game setup.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 42
Date submitted: 2012-08-15
Your name: drakar8888
Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 1590AD
Turns played: 228
Base score: 957
Final score: 2126
Time played: 1:42:00

Very quick game, basically just pressing the next turn button for 2 hours. The AI just doesn't play at this difficulty - all except the Celts were in medieval era by the end. Never bothered to explore, never met the 5th AI, signed 0 RAs.
I am looking forward to see some sub-t200 submissions on this one and hope to see a domination game in 2 weeks.

Here are some pics:

Game: Civ5 GOTM 42
Date submitted: 2012-08-15
Reference number: 26947
Your name: Moriarte
Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 1715AD
Turns played: 253
Base score: 758
Final score: 1516
Time played: 2:29:00


An easy game, indeed, got to go with Drakar on this. Settled 4 cities around turn 40, built few atlatlists, then 4 pyramids. Capital produced a GL, and later NC, all before turn 90. Turn 77 got DoW ed by Boudicca, Maria and Gustav. All three came back in 10-20 turns (without even showing up on my lands) carrying quite a bit of gold to end a conflict. I went on to build universities, and later banks, couple operas, public schools and stock exchanges. Signed 7-8 RAs

Policies: Tradition --> Rationalism (left side) --> Patronage (Philanthropy)

Religion: Had 15 cities under Judaism (+1 Happiness from each city, religious texts, production bonus, pagodas).

Wonders: Great library, Leaning Tower (GE from long count), missed Oracle by few turns.

Was 18 techs ahead on the turn UN was finished, so the game didn't feel particularly challenging, but fun, nevertheless.

Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 1854AD
Turns played: 297
Base score: 1580
Final score: 2677
Time played: 6:43:00

Fastest non-domination win I've had. Only one RA, and that was after it was too late to be of any use, and I had to pay both sides. Not having an engineer standing by to build the UN cost me 5 turns, ended up taking Order so I could buy one with faith.

Beelined for Theology, got a Great Person for Long Count 6. Anyone get 5? I did miss great library, so it may be possible.

Ended up taking a Great Prophet first, and a great engineer 2nd, to build Hagia Sophia and get the second prophet. This probably wasn't goal-oriented activity, come to think of it, but I had fun getting the whole world paying tithes.

Ended up with full liberty, 4 from honor, full rationalism and 1 from order.

Sweden decided to conquer all the neighboring city states, I intervened to save Yerevan: I was worried if I didn't, between him and Austria I might not have anyone left to vote for me. This started me down a mildly warmongering path. Stopped after Edinborough. But thus, no friends, and so no RA.

Maybe before the next game I'll actually go poke around the forums and see what on earth people are doing to shave 100 turns off natural muddling around. I did things like annexing cities to manipulate the timing on the free techs from rationalism, but that's all small stuff. There must be something major I'm missing.

Civ5 GOTM 42
Date submitted: 2012-08-16
Reference number: 26954
Your name: Hammer Rabbi
Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 1830AD
Turns played: 285
Base score: 1100
Final score: 1929
Time played: 6:20:00
Submitted save: Pacal_0285 AD-1830.Civ5Save
Renamed file: Hammer_Rabbi_C504201.Civ5Save

Dont know where to begin here. i knew it would be easy-ish and was glad it finished before t300 but several "bugs" occurred during my game, including the RA bug where you get nothing from it. my last RA on t256 finished for nothing. I had 2 turns left then Globalization and it not only got me nothing but the next turn it still said 2 turns left before Globalization. In all it only would have meant finishing 8 turn earlier but still it was quite frustrating to see for real in a game.

Oh well, here's the way it played. did this with 3 cities. settled in place, put a second city east (by the mountain south of Rio and the little land "bridge" to Celts) after Gustav took the spot i wanted 2 turns before my settler go there (in the desert stuff). Put a 3rd city a little north closer to the CSs to get the copper and wine. by then a 4th city was unlikely with little terrain left with any actual luxes or resources (Boudicca settled that land bridge where the silver and truffles were before i could). decided to hole up for the rest of the game.

i founded a religion pretty quickly. my pantheon was a fun gamble. i took the "build ancient/classical wonders quicker" then built The Pyramids in like 15 turns and followed up the Great Library after that. Those workers and the one from liberty powered through all the tiles so quickly it helped me get some really fast growth. (finished that game with 32, 19, 16 pop cities). Then i took Papal Primacy which leads to my next complaint. It says the resting point gets +15 if they follow your religion and combined with the Patronage 20 starting point they should rest at 35 all the time as long as they follow your religion (i renamed Buddhism to Bronyism, haha). Well those 4 that I converted very early? none of them rested above 20. It's like Papal Primacy wasnt actually working. Oh well, i just rolled with it since I didnt want to reload or anything since these are GotM's.

I wonder spammed and rode several golden ages through the game. I won CS favor by leading in faith, culture, and science progression when those challenges came up. I had really good science prioritized and took these Policies: Trad opener > liberty opener > free worker > tradition %wonder bonus > 2 policies for the free settler > patronage opener > rationalism opener and whole left side > bottom 2 patronage policies > liberty GA and finisher for another Great Artist for more GA time and 3 CSs quest bonuses. didnt need a GS or GE by then as it was all timed (if that RA hadnt bugged).

I ended up doing the massive building sell off when i finished globalization and popped the GAs from the Louvre several turns before that to stock up on tons of gold. had over 10k for the final buyouts (needed 7k of it). the bad timing was that the turn the vote comes up was also the turn elections would get rigged so i had to do the whole buy them up early and DoW before the vote to prevent a lot of spy coups and switching. i really dislike that Diplo is won that way but the AI pulls so many coups and rigs that the first vote is never successful otherwise. Plus Prince is the only difficulty that i could actually have more gold than the any of them without pulling more cheesy tactics.

I took a screencap for Gucumatz, since my first Spy was named Gukumatz, haha.



I also learned the hard way that taking my first Mayan great person as an Admiral was a bad idea since it put him in the little lake by the capitol and not by the coast closest to my other city. he got immediately deleted. oh well.

i settled 5 GSs, bulbed the last 2. golden aged 3 great artists, 2 trade missions with GMs to get CS favor/gold in the end to keep two Allies (though one wasnt necessary), settled one citadel early to keep Boudicca less likely to fight by that land bridge and settled a last one in my fight with Gustav in the end. Used 2 GEs to rush wonders (one for PT and forgot the other one). great people were fun. used 4 i think from the Mayan UA.

I spent about 100 turns in a golden age. I had CI and earned 4 through policies/wonders/happ and 3 from artists. the first one though was just 10 turns. every one after either 15 or 12. those GAs sped up so much production on more wonders and sci buildings as well as timing the policies.

i got my 100th achievement (Holy Father - ally 12 CSs with Papal Primacy).

my acceptable goal was met, sub-t300, but my actual goal wasnt which was sub-t250. and the bugs were irritating. would have been sub-t280.

interesting final replay screenshot, drakar8888. Siam was rendered useless in my game, only 1 city left and Autrias cap got taken by Gustav who had the most land with Greece being 2nd, i think. Gustav also took Yerevan in the last 20 turns of my game.

and i settled my cities in pretty much the same spots. and i found the 14th CS, Brussels, on turn 230+. thought id never find it.

im not sure how you guys can play such fast games. i see drakar888's 1 hour and 42 minutes and 228 turns played. thats 102 minutes for 228 turns. that's clicking next turn every 30 seconds or so. isnt this game known for slow load times? and how do you have time to make decisions or plan stuff?

yeesh.

Hammer Rabbi said:

im not sure how you guys can play such fast games. i see drakar888's 1 hour and 42 minutes and 228 turns played. thats 102 minutes for 228 turns. that's clicking next turn every 30 seconds or so. isnt this game known for slow load times? and how do you have time to make decisions or plan stuff?

yeesh.

Click to expand...

Well, I am playing on an ancient laptop so I am playing in a window with every setting on low as you can see from the terrible quality of my screens. Having everything on low + small map size makes loading times quite fast.

As for planing:
The only plan is to prioritize science above everything else. So I beeline Education, Scientific theory and Plastics with the minimum amount of techs required and get the science buildings and fill them with specialists asap. I am not micro-ing any units except my workers so 30 secs per turn sounds about right. A bit longer when I have to renew my trading deals.

Another relevant thing here is that I built only 2 extra cities and the AIs never get mad in the early game(you are building cities too aggressively) and then they get massively outteched so they will never ever consider declaring war. Austria has been with "afraid" status in my game since turn 100 cos I made 3 crossbows.

Also I noticed a lot of people saying the starting location is bad in the other threads, but imo this is like an insane starting location to go science and a diplo win. Fresh water from a lake and 2 rivers + a ton of jungles for 3-science tiles with gold from trading posts. On top of that there is 3 maritime city-states nearby. You don't really need a lot of production here, cos United nations can be built with a great engineer.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 42
Date submitted: 2012-08-16
Reference number: 26961
Your name: Monthar
Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 1755AD
Turns played: 261
Base score: 1979
Final score: 3805
Time played: 10:15:00
Submitted save: TSG42_Diplomatic_Win.Civ5Save
Renamed file: Monthar_C504201.Civ5Save

Click to expand...

I would have finished this at least 12 turns sooner except for a few mistakes at the end. I bought 2 GS's and ended up not needing either one. Buying the GS's meant I didn't have the faith to buy the GE for the UN. In fact I completely forgot about buying a GE for the UN until after I bought the 2nd GS. I should have started the bulbing a few turns sooner.

My ICS plan kind of fell by the wayside when I got distracted with building wonders and non-science buildings. I think if I'd built a few more cities and focused only on building the science buildings for them I probably could have shaved a lot more turns off.

I joined Alex in a war against Elizabeth. I would have taken London and all those wonders she built if I hadn't screwed up the combat and gotten all my melee units killed. I have a privateer, caravel, several Gatling guns and a few muskets slogging thru her land and ended up with just 2 Gatling guns when she offered peace. All she has was 2 longbows and bought 2 trireme (I captured both) and a galleass. Of course she did have the Great Wall along with many other wonders.

Final Map
Edit: In this screenshot my BPT is a bit low, because when I started the UN I shifted all the cities except the capital to pure gold focus, reset the tiles and turned off manual specialist.

Also, the only reason Cahokia is not an ally is because Siam couped them away on the last AI turn before the vote. Hence the spy notification on the screen.


The Vote

drakar8888 said:

Well, I am playing on an ancient laptop so I am playing in a window with every setting on low as you can see from the terrible quality of my screens. Having everything on low + small map size makes loading times quite fast.

As for planing:
The only plan is to prioritize science above everything else. So I beeline Education, Scientific theory and Plastics with the minimum amount of techs required and get the science buildings and fill them with specialists asap. I am not micro-ing any units except my workers so 30 secs per turn sounds about right. A bit longer when I have to renew my trading deals.

Another relevant thing here is that I built only 2 extra cities and the AIs never get mad in the early game(you are building cities too aggressively) and then they get massively outteched so they will never ever consider declaring war. Austria has been with "afraid" status in my game since turn 100 cos I made 3 crossbows.

Also I noticed a lot of people saying the starting location is bad in the other threads, but imo this is like an insane starting location to go science and a diplo win. Fresh water from a lake and 2 rivers + a ton of jungles for 3-science tiles with gold from trading posts. On top of that there is 3 maritime city-states nearby. You don't really need a lot of production here, cos United nations can be built with a great engineer.

Click to expand...

i guess it just takes me longer to make decisions. seeing where i am with CS relations, moving scouts and workers around, trade deals that take 2 or 3 tries because 'friendly' sometimes means not full price on lux, etc. i also only made 3 cities and only 5 mil. units the whole game. boudicca was the only one to DoW me early and that was only about 6 turns before offering big to end it. and Austria was afraid of me since composite bows. i dont have it on minimal graphics settings but late game my load times are mostly what the large AI civs are doing and not what my empire is doing.

and yeah i loved the jungle start. i also didnt know you could GE rush the UN. that would have saved me 14 turns on my time. combined with my failed RA i could have finished pre-260. i might replay from 30 or 40 turns back to see if that was possible. not sure how far back the autosaves go.

edit: Nice screenie, Monthar. 1200 is low BPT? haha i only had 850 at max with my 3 cities (but usually over 1k in sci vic games).

When I started bulbing my bpt was at 1486 and could have been higher if I added artist, engineer and merchant specialists as well. I loaded the game at this point to double check the numbers. If I had shifted all cities to science focus, reset the tiles and turned off manual specialist, it capped out at 1714 bpt. So yes, 1200 was low.

I forgot to mention my policy path. After finishing liberty, I went patronage to the science bonus, then order to the factory science, followed by rationalism opener, the extra happiness from patronage, rationalism +beakers per specialist and finally I finished off patronage. The last policy was shortly after I finished the UN.

I also forgot to mention that I annexed all the cities I captured so I could control what they worked and built.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 42
Date submitted: 2012-08-16
Reference number: 26962
Your name: CivDecimation
Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 1925AD
Turns played: 345
Base score: 1565
Final score: 2268
Time played: 1:59:00
Submitted save: TSG42_Start.Civ5Save
Renamed file: CivDecimation_C504201.Civ5Save

Ugly turn time.. meh. Only built three cities and chichen Itza got conquered by the Swedish so I took it back then I took Stockholm, Vienna and Edinnburgh

nice, and still managed some happiness from a lot of annexes. i forgot about the order-factories science bonus. 1700 is just insane, haha. im gonna reload mine with some new knowledge to see if i can finish 20+ turns earlier.

is there a counter to let you know when the Mayan UA kicks in? i always forgot to try to predict when they appeared. this version only had the turn number and the patch version rather than turn and year counter displayed.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 42
Date submitted: 2012-08-16
Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 1872AD
Turns played: 306
Base score: 2434
Final score: 3990
Time played: 3:50:00

That was a fun game. Tight quarters at first, so I built the GL then worked on a small army. Used the first great person to spawn a merchant, allied a CS with iron, then used the gold to make two swordsmen to buttress my catapults. Austria fell with two cities, then I turned toward Sweden with four (!). I only built two cities until I wiped out Austria and Sweden. Then I built a third on the coast with silver.

I focused on CS quests, attacked Celts (too many wonders and shared border). Then with my strong navy took out London (too many wonders also). Then I waited around while tech tree advanced. Messed up my Oxford and wasted the free tech. Never finished Rationalism, so missed that too.

One unexpected thing. My religion took over every city in the game. I had taken the papal belief in order to keep my relations with CS high, but it also ended up spreading everywhere. I didn't expect this, didn't work for it, and didn't choose gold for it sad. Siam founded a religion one turn before the game ended, and Alexander never did, so I guess religion was not a priority for this game for whatever reason. I could have done a lot more with religion had I anticipated it.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 42
Date submitted: 2012-08-16
Your name: Tabarnak
Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 1450AD
Turns played: 205
Base score: 1263
Final score: 3080
Time played: 4:09:00
Submitted save: Pacal_0205 AD-1450.Civ5Save

After the turn 160 i got 2 RAs that actually gave me 2 free techs from the modern era. Not bad when you have all RA boosts even at prince(with largest AIs). I resigned a RA at turn 165 but it wasn't necessary. I used a gs to unlock Plastics sooner. I produced a last gs with rationalism finisher and Oxford on the same turn(192) to unlock the UN wonder. My last UA bonus has been a gg and the last gp(gm) was still available. I didn't want the gm because that would have slowed down the last gs to spawn.

Finished the UN 4 turns later, waited 9 turns to get 14 votes for victory. 1 cs was conquered(didn't bother to liberate him even if i could) and didn't ally 1 other. I wanted a game under 200 turns but i knew that it would have been difficult because of the UA. But 205 or below is still very good i think Pretty happy to have merged everything perfectly at the end. I went for 15-20 turns under unhappiness and could not have enough gold to rush buy some important science building from time to time. I accidentally sold a unique lux to Bouticca somewhere too...

Photobucket is under maintenance i can't add pictures for now.

(Edit) Turn 192 and final map overview(weird glitch here i liberated a merc. cs and it shows like it was my city)

Hammer Rabbi said:

nice, and still managed some happiness from a lot of annexes. i forgot about the order-factories science bonus. 1700 is just insane, haha. im gonna reload mine with some new knowledge to see if i can finish 20+ turns earlier.

is there a counter to let you know when the Mayan UA kicks in? i always forgot to try to predict when they appeared. this version only had the turn number and the patch version rather than turn and year counter displayed.

Click to expand...

That's not the patch number that's your long count date. Just hover the mouse over that number and the tooltip will tell you what the year is.

ah, haha, interesting. i thought it was some kind of dlc-disabled patch number or something. that's a nice immersion detail i never thought of.

drakar8888 said:

You don't really need a lot of production here, cos United nations can be built with a great engineer.

Click to expand...

This. Wow. I wish I had known this before building the UN. It would have saved me 20+ turns! In any event, here's my finish:

Reference number: 26970
Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 1765AD
Turns played: 263
Base score: 1815
Final score: 3490

I took the caps of Austria and Sweden very early on (about turn 100). This was a mixed blessing, as I did not have to compete with Austria for city states, but it also ticked off the Celts the rest of the game. As a result, I only had 2 RAs going, Greece and England. Siam would never friend me because he didn't like Greece and England. I might have been able to finish faster had I just accepted peace and not took the cities ie make more friends... hmm.

Other than that, it was basically a click-fest from about turn 150 on. I went with a wide empire, and with the two capitol puppets, I brought in loads of money. Had every CS allied for over 100 turns. Good game, good learning experience. Thanks!

What can I say - I am a devious god ! As long as Huracán doesn't outspy me I am happy

Hopefully I was useful - gotten a couple of random PMs about me appearing in peoples games

Game: Civ5 GOTM 42
Date submitted: 2012-08-16
Reference number: 26972
Your name: Suntechnique
Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 1735AD
Turns played: 257
Base score: 2369
Final score: 4645
Time played: 3:35:00

I got very unlucky start Turn 15 citizen death as AI suddenly allowed starvation with production focus on in the middle of opponents turn (wtf?). And another guy died few turns later with help of well timed barbarian's incoming, they occupied all 2 food tiles. I really should stop building Great Library with 0 food in storage.

I was angry enough to wipe out Austria, Sweden and Celts. So at least final score is big

Strategy was tradition->few patronage-> rationalism beelining science buildings. Capital become about 32 pop at the end