TSG43 After Action Report

Hi everyone and welcome to the TSG43 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 fourth GOTM game in G&K;
How did you use your early UU's to greatest advantage?
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.

Your name: Moriarte
Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 1888AD
Turns played: 314
Base score: 2589
Final score: 4175
Time played: 7:56:00

By far the most difficult game i ever had in CiV. I never played domination before, though. Thanks, guys, for posting this challenge. I really enjoyed it.

If i was a writer, i would write a book about what happened with Attila's people during last 8 hours. But i am no writer. I'll just say one word.

Bombers.

EDIT: Having said that, i might write a small follow up when i wake up tomorrow afternoon

1. The age of battering rams.

After beelining Bronze Working i have built one battering ram and rushed another with cash. With archer and a warrior as a support i took Palenque, York, London and Valetta before turn 50. This is where i decided to stop temporarily (mistake). Alexander and Haile were unhapppy, and Alex took Palenque from me for a couple of turns. In an ongoing war with both him and Haile i lost most of my Horse Archers (upgraded to knights). They died easily to Alexander's Companions and pikemen. I managed to save Rams.

2. The age of Cannons.

Having secured the tech lead through early NC i reached Cannons before everyone else in the world, so, from there, i upgraded Rams (Trebuchets) fortified my army with musketmen and finally gained control of my own island. t.180. Funny thing: after destroying 4 civilizations completely no one thought of me as 'warmongering menace', even though i started wars. Cannons got upgraded to Artillery, musketmen to riflemen and i set sails to an Island, where Napoleon controls 80% of territory.

3. Humanism and Stealth Bombers.

Amhibious invasion was a relative success. Only lost 2 artilleries, while capturing four cities. Problems began when i was captuing 5th one. Napoleon discovered flight. I had to retreat, since i was losing Artilleries every 2 turns. Suddenly realized: I need a AA gun! This is where the game turned around from what seemed like a losing battle with an army 3 times the size of mine. AA killed every airplane France had. I, on the other hand, rushed g.w. bomber every 2 turns. In 10 turns i had a complete control over the skies, and conquered the island, slowly, but consistently.

Lessons:

Kill Alexander before he gets too many cavalries.
Flight before Research Labs
Stealth Bombers before Atomic weapons.
Navy helps a lot.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 43
Date submitted: 2012-09-01
Reference number: 27128
Your name: qyll
Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 1660AD
Turns played: 242
Base score: 2417
Final score: 5035
Time played: 3:58:00

Immortal is a breath of fresh air after having lost a ton of games on deity . Honestly, I'm expecting to see some sub 200 turn victories. After all, battering rams are the cheesiest units in the game.

How did you use your early UU's to greatest advantage?

Click to expand...

Straight to bronze working and spamming battering rams and then horse archers. Was able to conquer my continent by turn 150.

How have the changes affected your strategy and game planning?

Click to expand...

How did you use religion or spying to your advantage?

Click to expand...

Had ceremonial burial and asceticism for happiness. During the late game, I was ahead in tech but hurting for happiness, so I just started buying lots of great prophets and missionaries to spread my religion for happiness. Spying wasn't very useful. Was able to steal one tech (economics).

How did your opponents affect your strategy?

Click to expand...

Geography was the most important. Elizabeth went down easy, then Pacal, then Alexander, then Haile Selassie. After that, I established a beachhead on the other continent and through some creative citadel bombing, was able to take the rest of the capitals.

Lessons I learned:
-Great generals are a lot more useful now because of their citadel bombing ability. You can gain land during peacetime, set up all your siege units outside of a city, declare war, and then take the city in one turn.
-Don't be afraid to fight defensive wars. I declared war vs. Alexander and later Napoleon with no intention of an offensive, only defending and killing their units. Once they ran out of gas, I found I could move in for the kill.
-Read the instructions. I didn't realize promotion saving was enable. Arrrrrrggghhhh.
-I really should've invested more into coastal cities, maybe annexed London.

Thoughts:
-Win times will be determined by how fast you managed to tech to Astronomy. I'll bet a few people started to mobilize for intercontinental invasions by turn ~100-125?
-I'm getting more and more inured to losing units. I used to reload a lot if I lost my star soldier, but now I just shrug and play on.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 43
Date submitted: 2012-09-02
Your name: arieltal
Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 1915AD
Turns played: 335
Base score: 2585
Final score: 3858
Time played: 5:24:00

well i can say i have learned the significance of alhambra! got to producing march units
right of the mark.. good lesson..

EDIT : talk about game progress.

initialy i was attacked by elizabeth and pacal at turn 40 or so, managed to beat them off, used several horse archers and two ram's,
finished england fairly easily, left pacal with one city, which turned to be a mistake, after i finished alex with the help of the mercantile
city state who was my ally, i took big losses against haile with the terrain made it hard to take him, but soon enough he was eliminated.
then i decided to take out pacal as well, which turned out to be a 100 or so turns of war..
my thoughts about Ram's is that they are excellent for early rush, but when the city's defence is high enough then the die easily..
horse archers are great, if only because of the free promotion start, got to logistics pretty fast
i got religion second to haile, i chose faith healers as a pantheon, which turned out to be useless, i was dominating very easily and only
seldom has used that.. took religios texts as enhancer, just to be on the safe side..
my spies did a good job, i was #2 literacy most of the game, moved to #1 around modern era.
had the highest score ever since i started the slaughter
by the time i got to the second island, i met japan,france,rome,carthage and songhai, japan was the biggest land wise, france was the
tech leader.
i made an early mistake of lying about moving my troops from pacal's border, EVERYONE had a negative diplo modifier thanks to that..
made friends with napoleon after hitting atomic era, thanks to sharing a lot of intrigues with him ( i think that was the reason he finally
liked me).
made 2 RA's in total, one with france, and second with monty, who i ressurected just for fun. (RA wasn't finished by the time the game
was over, and monty also had the negative modifier for my lying past).
all in all, was pretty easy thanks to early domination and AI's fighting each other..

So I just finished the game with turn 290 win, but I am not sending a submission cos I had to do it in 2 attempts.

Attempt one:

I moved my settler one tile southeast and settled there. Then proceeded to get all the war techs - first horse archers then battering rams then composite archers. Went full honor policy and started pumping only units, pretty much not getting a single building in my cap.

After that it was time for war. Killed Elizabeth, Pacal, Alexander in about 80 turns. But the war with Ethiopia took far longer than needed, cos they somehow got 4 cities and tons of units combined with their 20% attack bonus and ridiculous terrain in their lands. Anyway they fell in turn 130.

Problem was after the war I was left with 15 totally useless units, completely out of gold, at -15 happiness and very behind in tech. For some reason I decided keeping all cities for a pupet empire would be beneficial. Well... it wasn't. Also I had gone way too horse archer heavy and not build enough rams, which turned out to be the biggest mistake I made.

Now if I was playing a random map and not specifically for domination, I would have razed everything but the caps and went for one-city culture win, which I estimate would come at about turn 350-370. With a continent to myself it would have been very easy. But as is, I didn't feel there would be any point in continuing that game.

Attempt two:

I decided to do a completely different approach. The only thing I kept was my settling location and scouting paths from the first game for consistency. I went only battering ram tech and then normal science focused research order, and also tradition policy. Turns out battering rams are even more disgustingly overpowered than I first thought. I killed Elizabeth on turn 15 with the initial warrior upgraded from a hut. I then killed Pacal on turn 35 with 3 rams, (+one build + one bought). At turn 65 Alexander died to 4 rams. I had finally teched to Wheel without rushing it and built 3 horse archers and killed Ethiopia with 3 horses and 4 rams at turn 92.

The thing is if you position your rams at the AIs borders and declare war, their capital will fall within the next two turns and they can do absolutely nothing about it even if they have 7-8 units. They simply cant get them in position to defend, cos 3 rams pretty much one-shot a capital this early in the game. The only down side to this tactic is that you will have to get the diplomatic penalty for lying that your units are "just passing by", when you have to position them around the borders.

This time I razed all the extra cities. Annexed the caps and used the gold accumulated from the war to rush buy court-houses. Then it was a five-city science game rush to stealth bombers. Got bomber tech at turn 235 but had to wait about 15 more turns to do the following:
Get barracks, armory, academy, brandenburg gate and heroic epic, get the autocracy policy that gives 33% reduced prices. This resulted in rush buying 8 stealth bombers directly with logistics and 2 modern armors with 3 upgrades.

After that I invaded the other continent. Japan and Carthage had already fallen so my job was easier having to take only the last 3 capitals.

I enjoyed the game quite a bit, not so much for the actual map but for the learning experience it provided. Being stuck on a small continent with some of the most psychotic AIs in the game is really not a "standard" spawning location. I was denounced both games by Alexander at turn 16. And the others kept sending some of those random threat message pop-ups.

I really cant wait to read if some people did the renaissance water invasion and how they managed to pull it off.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 43
Date submitted: 2012-09-03
Your name: daniellwu
Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 1962AD
Turns played: 382
Base score: 3278
Final score: 4313
Time played: 18:40:00 (left the game running overnight)

Wow, this was a long one!

For my religion, I chose the one that gives you faith for killing near your own city, $ for spreading religion, and being able to buy pagoda/cathedral.

Like many others have mentioned, I built up Horse Archers and Battling Rams early on and took out my immediate neighbors. However, taking down Pascal proved to be very challenging because the slow terrain and their Great Wall. By that time, my Horse Archers and Battling Rams were obsolete. Upgrading the Horse Archers to Knights sucked, because the shooting bonuses did not carry over. Wish I had knew that! In any case, I wasn't able to take down Pascal (Mayans) until I got artillery.

Now that I have the whole continent to myself, I assembled a massive floatilla and worked my way through the other island. Like someone mentioned earlier, I used Bombers. Lots and lots of Bombers and Stealth Bombers. It came down to just the French and Romans. I bribed the Romans to DoW on the French, since France was working on the spaceship already. However, I am not sure if this was working as intended, but when I nuked France, it caused me to go to war with Romans immediately. No warnings?!? Is it because there were Roman units within the blast radius? Anyway, it was difficult to take on two foes at once.
(Edit...found this post: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=11727200&postcount=27 . Apparently I hit the Roman units in the Fog of War with the nuke)

I also came across another possible bug. The Japanese were wiped out before I even met them. When I captured the Japanese Capital (Kyoto), I liberated it. But now in the victory progress dialog, it said there were still two civs that had their capital, me and Japan. I had to take back Kyoto, again. Weird, huh? I think it's because I didn't meet them before they were first wiped out.

It was a very close game; France had built the UN and it was a few turns before voting (which could've caused me to lose, or win with the wrong victory condition). And France half way through the space race.

Lesson learned:
Go for military rush early on; waiting too long weakens battling ram and horse archer significantly.

you liberated japan's capital, that's why you had to take it back, if you lose your capital and take
it back then you are again eligible for domination victory.
agree on the upgrading horse archers to knights being kinda "sucky".

Game: Civ5 GOTM 43
Date submitted: 2012-09-03
Reference number: 27146
Your name: Monthar
Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 1858AD
Turns played: 299
Base score: 2839
Final score: 4811
Time played: 10:21:00
Submitted save: TSG43_Won_Domination.Civ5Save
Renamed file: Monthar_C504301.Civ5Save

Click to expand...

I see ya'll took the e-mail address out of the upload report.

I barely pulled off a sub 300 win so I doubt I'm in the running for fastest time. However, that 4811 score should put me in the running for top score.

I royally screwed up my first war with the English and lost my ram and a couple horse archers. The following wars didn't go much better. I took over 200 turns to finish off my continent. The final wars on the other continent went very fast with my bombers, battleships, etc. I even liberated Dido, but that was more to avoid the happiness hit.

Since the upgrade from Horse Archer to Knight kind of sucks, I only promoted them enough to get March. If they could have gone to logistics as well I instead gave them medic. In the end I had a few tanks with march and medic 2.

Here are some screenshots.

The full screenshot showing off my Leif Erickson Great Merchant. Until this game I didn't even notice he had a GM named after him.

Final Map

Final Demographics

Finished turn 270.
Funny game, had an immortal huns game short before and knew that the rams work very well even on this level.
You have to be a little bit careful where to place them, but they have a big advantage: they are quite cheap. And in this game not everybody went for Tradition.
The game annoyed me at the beginning with the "hun-joke": My first warrior was upgraded to a ram by one of the first goody huts, not the best scout...
Played a little bit lazy after killing England and Greece because Pacal and Haile were my friends and I did not expected them as a threat.
But growing Civs on immortal are always a risk because of many many units, and Pacals Capital would also have been a nice town for producing my own units.
My plan with religion as Happiness-supply I played not well, because Haile dispersed his religion everywhere, so it would have been better to solve this problem earlier.
But so I made a very long break between the wars, at the end I was very rich and played Autocracy for the first time and bought a lot of modern stuff to finish the game with a final campaign. I totally abdicated honor, because I built Heroic Epic in my first town. The conflict big town with marmor (wonders) and iron (units) I solved my standard-decadent-domination-game-way: I built to many wonders and not enough units So I never will win these games really fast.
The last route to Dido I did not plan well, when I made peace with Rome some of my ships were locked in his borders, unfortunalety no chance in Civ V to gain open borders by menacing/claiming...
I only used this in one game before: very nice how taking citys with ships works in G&K!

Game: Civ5 GOTM 43
Date submitted: 2012-09-04
Reference number: 27147
Your name: Arilian
Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 1370AD
Turns played: 197
Base score: 1199
Final score: 3074
Time played: 4:36:00
Submitted save: Attila_0197 AD-1370.Civ5Save
Renamed file: Arilian_C504301.Civ5Save


How did you use your early UU's to greatest advantage?
Nothing suprising, used Rams+HAs and killed everyone on my continent

How have the changes affected your strategy and game planning?
I was hoping I do not need astro (quite a few last GOTM looked like a continent but was accessible on shallow water) when I realised I do need astro I decided to go for a naval force

How did you use religion or spying to your advantage?
Religion - just BC for some happiness. Spying - nothing really.

How did your opponents affect your strategy?
I tried to make them attac each other. I successfully persuaded Rome to capture Monty after i got Rome. Saved me a few turn.


Let me tell you here, I find it stupid, the you do not need to HOLD the capitals after capture.
I almost never play conquest because of this.

Reference number: 27148
Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 1620AD
Turns played: 234
Base score: 1681
Final score: 3654

This was a really fun game! I have never played immortal level or as Atilla. The AI on this level grows really fast and produces a ton of units. Strangely enough, I think diplomacy helped me win faster (in addition to the horse archers of course).

I started with horse archers generally, and no one DoW'd me early (maybe because I had an army?). I took out England when she tried to expand toward me. Then pressed west to Pacal, who only had 3 atlases left from fighting Greece. Then I paid Greece to attack Ethiopia (76 gold haha!). That was a good diplo move, as he went to town with his cavalry, leaving Ethiopa wide open for me to take those 2 cities.

By turn 100 or so, Greece was fielding lots of pikes, so horse archers were not so great, even though most had logistics by then. Still, I attacked Greece. He was hard because he had two very well placed CS allies. I took Athens and forced a sweet peace deal around T128. He was down only to Sparta, and still spamming pikes, so I DoW'd him again and finished him off with Swords, Comps and Horse Archers.

Not much love for the ram from me. At least on this level, they get chewed up so easily.

(Un)Happiness was a major issue. I got the last religion because I built the Hagia Sophia (didn't even have a pantheon at that time). I chose happiness beliefs. Had trouble spreading it initially because Ethiopia and Greece had founded religions. I used inquisitors and another great prophet to silence those for good. A couple more missionaries to spread my religion across most of the continent, but i never even got enough faith to buy any other GPs.

I finally met the other 5 civs around T160 I think. I had a solid tech lead, and they were all dogpiling the Aztecs (Carthage, Japan and France, I believe). I managed to denounce him right before Japan wiped him, which gave me good diplo boosts.

Then I paid everyone to DoW one another. They were very cheap because by the time I found them they all hated each another. I kept renewing DoW payments 10 turns after peace deals, and Rome, Japan and Carthage were swapping lots of cities.

By the time I had a decent invasion army, Rome was at war literally with everyone. So I DoW'd him first. Got another diplo boost. Took 2 cities (including Rome), then DoW'd Askia. Took just his cap.

The AI figured out what was going on, but too late. They had wiped each other's armies out. I DoW'd France, took the cap, which was HUGE. Then I sold Gao and Cumae to France so I could get happy again. Then upgraded cannons to artillery and DoW'd Japan. Razed one city (the only one with oil, I later learned) and took Kyoto.

I was going to take Carthage by sea, and sent 7 frigates and a sea beggar. She had like 15 quinqueremes though, so I had to land artillery and lancers. She had no land resistance, and it was game over.

Thanks for setting up this wonderful GOTM!

Game: Civ5 GOTM 43
Date submitted: 2012-09-04
Reference number: 27149
Your name: CivDecimation
Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 1917AD
Turns played: 337
Base score: 1512
Final score: 2256
Time played: 4:07:00
Submitted save: TSG43_Start.Civ5Save
Renamed file: CivDecimation_C504301.Civ5Save

Click to expand...

I had taken over my continent by turn 120, then I proceeded to conquer Dido, then Rome DOW'd me so I took their cap then Paris and Monty's. Songhai's and Japan's fell without me needing to take them.

What I can add, that the whole thing was really easy, did not really feel like 'immoral' difficulty, more like emparor / prince.

Any Deity challenge in the future? I remember that I lost the last one I have tried in GOTM.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 43
Date submitted: 2012-09-05
Reference number: 27152
Your name: Resonance
Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 1515AD
Turns played: 213
Base score: 2226
Final score: 5300
Time played: 5:03:00

Click to expand...

How did you use your early UU's to greatest advantage?

Well what can I say... Battering Rams are insane. I thought they could not take cities, so I waited too long to be faster since I also built up some infantry and more horse archers for protection. My continent was free of AI turn 132.


How have the changes affected your strategy and game planning?

Obviously, no other civ can go on such a rampage. To be honest promotion saving is a bit overpowered for Atilla. I did not promote the UUs and when I upgraded them, I had several march knights and cover trebs with 2 or 3 promotions.


How did you use religion or spying to your advantage?

I planned to neglect religion, but was able to secure one through the Stonehenge of the Mayans. Spies did not play a role at all. There were no civs left on my side of the world, and I never accepted embassies, so noone could spy on me.


How did your opponents affect your strategy?

When I invaded the other continent with a little over a dozen units, I took out Japan and reached chemistry. I was tech leader by then and had 5 cannons and 5 knights with march. Declared war on Napoleon, killed some units and suddenly he offers a 6.500 gold peace deal. I accepted, then took a break to kill Monty. I had Alhambra, barracks and armory in my capital and from this moment on bought one unit per turn there.

Turn 182 I reached artillery. With over 10 artillery pieces + some other troops, everything was over 31 turns later. Could have been a little faster, but happiness became an issue. Reached -31 at one point from razing

Game: Civ5 GOTM 43
Date submitted: 2012-09-05
Reference number: 27153
Your name: wloff
Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 1846AD
Turns played: 293
Base score: 2054
Final score: 3541
Time played: 11:09:00

Click to expand...

Domination games are usually not my favorite and probably for that reason Attila was the only GotK civ I had never tried before... but I had an absolute blast! I totally underestimated the power of battering rams and probably started my rampage some 15-20 turns later than I could have...but when

Then I again wasted way too much time before starting my invasion on the other continent as I wanted to make sure I had a good sized frigate fleet ready, but oh well, rushing for speed domination has never been my thing and I enjoyed playing politics again. Both Dido and Askia were actually my great friends all the way until turn 290 when I finally had to declare on Carthage. I felt bad.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 43
Date submitted: 2012-09-05
Reference number: 27154
Your name: xiziz
Game status: Incomplete Retired
Game date: 1480BC
Turns played: 63
Base score: 78
Final score: 78
Time played: NA
Submitted save: TSG43_Xiz.Civ5Save
Renamed file: xiziz_C504301.Civ5Save

Got my cap conquerd by Pascal after a long war against Lizzy had witherd me down, even if I had just ended that war by taking London. I had a good start with good ruins. But The AI had to much of a numerical advantage, even though I took honour. I just could not get out enough units in time to counter their attacks. Think I'm going to give it another spin later. But for the sake of the competiton, I'm out.

I failed at getting a super early finish date

Turn 130 : Everything is in place. 2 armies of a dozen of HAs and 2 rams are going west and east of main continent.

The west army found Montezuma.



I attacked him immediately and tried to capture his city ASAP before his numerous spearmen and CBs kill too much HAs...but i failed!



So close dammit...1 more unit and it was mine!

Meanwhile, my 2nd army(some units are still behind) arrived near Gao and found no units(1 turn later from this picture) defending his capital...what the f...



Here are my thoughts on this game :

I went full military, letting science, gold and religion appart. My strategy was optimal until i realized that it was a continent game...but still very nice for a sub 170 turns win(my personal goal). Unfortunately, i hit a too huge defence in the name of Monty. It was more suited for a pangea map(i prayed for that type of map but no luck).

I would have succeed if :

-i focused on science a bit more earlier
-i trained my units until they get logistics(no one got that promo in time). Warring a cs would have been enough
-i would have succeed a bit better against Monty if i had kill their units before attacking his capital(but again i took another chance and wanted to hit hard right away to save turns

After getting a city or 2 on the other continent, i would have bought a lot of units to replace dead ones.

Well for very fast finish times you have to take some chances. I took quite a lot of them but it didn't pay off unfortunately.

Waiting for a sub 170 turns win somewhere...i know that it's faisible. It's also doable to kill every AIs with ancient units only if you can get some logistics HAs.

I will not replay it because i hate replaying same maps.

Tabarnak said:

...I attacked him immediately...but i failed!

Click to expand...

So did you go back and try to catch up, or did you retire? I have to give it to you... I read through your "game in progress" thread and was thinking those were some very gutsy moves. I made use of many elements from your tradition opening, which in hindsight were "safe" moves, but not the fastest.

By the way, how do we post pictures like you've done? All mine end up as thumbnails.

kamikazees said:

So did you go back and try to catch up, or did you retire? I have to give it to you... I read through your "game in progress" thread and was thinking those were some very gutsy moves. I made use of many elements from your tradition opening, which in hindsight were "safe" moves, but not the fastest.

Click to expand...

I didn't bother to continue.

Domination games, especially with early nice UUs, can bring some ''unique'' approaches. These games can be finished a lot faster than peaceful ones. But for optimality you need to balance everything in a possible ''unknown'' world(like continents), unlike peaceful games where general approaches ensure you a pretty stable timeframe and a pretty common tech and build path.

kamikazees said:

By the way, how do we post pictures like you've done? All mine end up as thumbnails.

Click to expand...

I use the ''insert image(http: )'' icon(the one with mountains and a sort of little sun in top right of icon). Then i can upload an image from a site(like photobucket) that can stock images.

kamikazees said:

By the way, how do we post pictures like you've done? All mine end up as thumbnails.

Click to expand...

1. Use the "Go Advanced" button.
2. Use the "Manage Attachments" button to upload the screenshots.
3. Once the screenshots are uploaded you'll see their links listed in the "Additional Options" section near the "Manage Attachments" button. Right-click the link (one of the links if uploading multiple screenshots) and select "Copy Link Location".
4. Click the Spoil button at the top.
5. Click the Insert Image button (looks like a mountain).
6. Paste the link location you copied into the pop-up.
7. Repeat 3-6 for any additional screenshots you uploaded.

Now you have a full sized image in a spoiler tag. The spoiler tag is important to keep those large images expanding the width of the forum page.