TSG44 After Action Report

Hi everyone and welcome to the TSG44 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.

Just finished this, too tired to submit, maybe tomorrow. Pretty much build only wonders and purchased buildings with gold. And "next turn" to victory.

Policies:
Tradition-Piety-Commerce-Freedom-Liberty

Did a Great library start, which was probably a mistake. Would have been better just building a granary and then getting a super early Hanging gardens and grow much quicker.

I will probably replay the game with a war strategy since the map is pangea and you can murder all the AIs and city states on the map quite fast, just for the fun of it.

Here is a final pic with terrible quality:

Your name: Moriarte
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1816AD
Turns played: 278
Base score: 513
Final score: 932

My first OCC culture game .

Policy Path:

Tradition until Oligarchy -- Piety (Mandate of Heaven) -- Finished Tradition -- Piety (until -10% policy) -- Full Patronage -- Full Freedom -- Full Liberty (GE for Manufactory) -- Finished Piety.

Tech:

Tech was lackluster and i had no idea how to push it through to get to Cristo Redentor in time. The OCC specifics.. I still have no idea, to be honest, but i like Drakar's idea about early HG. 6 RA's i signed were really not worth the money .

Artists & Scientists:

Two artists from faith, two gifted by city states, two from the Louvre. The rest of the bunch were produced. A total of 10 artists were settled, 3 burned for golden ages. Three natural golden ages occurred. One natural GS + Oxford were burned to get to Archaeology on turn 177. One more GS was settled.

Wonders:

Great Library (Free Amphitheater) -- Chichen Itza -- The Oracle -- Alhambra -- Sistine Chapel -- Tower of Pisa -- The Louvre.

Religion:

Pantheon - Goddess of the Hunt

Cathedrals, +2 faith per wonder, world church (never again), +33% religion spread.

Peak culture -- 800 cpt
Peak science -- 200 bpt

Special thanks to GOTM crew for setting this up for us .

Your name: lymond
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1836AD
Turns played: 288
Base score: 876
Final score: 1536

Well, probably the most interesting thing about my game is a grew a pretty darn big city. Topped out at 39 citizens, but would easily have hit 40 if not pushing production at the end for the Project (i.e., lots of plain citizen specialists)

I ended up settling on the hill one south. Not sure it made a huge difference other than the extra early hammers. SIP probably had a couple more land squares and workable aluminum, but the food was about the same.

Opened with Tradition and then kinda picked off various policies here and there among Tradition, Honor and Piety. Honor seems like a big mistake. Raging Barbs on Warlord seemed no worse than normal barbs on a higher difficulty. I did some barb milking, including sending some xbows to some island. I probably got a few hundred culture from barbs overall, but barbs did not pop out of camps very often like normal raging. I literally sat outside some camps for many turns with no barbs showing up. The other thing is the rest of Honor does you little good in this game unless you plan to war. However, I don't see warring of value at all in OCC culture unless you have to...no point to it other than gold.

I also picked off a few from Liberty to get the SP reduction, but again Liberty is otherwise not that strong. I topped off Honor and Liberty last. (On the other hand, maybe Liberty is best to start earlier than I did. Open Tradition, Open Liberty, get free worker and policy reduction, back to Tradition. This would allow holding off of the free culture building until later)

Built just about every wonder under the sun, but was surprisingly beat by Ram to Terra Cotta, which was disappointing. I underestimated the AIs there. Temple of Artemis is quite nice - never usually build it.

I may be missing something, but Piety does not seem all that strong for culture anymore. The policy cost reduction is good of course, but the religion stuff just doesn't do much. In fact, other than a couple of the beliefs like boosted Hermitage, religion did not account for much in my game. My gawd, it spreads so sloooowly even with the enhancers. That's my one big complaint with religion. Yeah, some of the beliefs/pantheons are nice boosts given the situation, but overall religion takes to long spread. I did get one free artist after Freedom.

In my view, Freedom is the big one in this game. The issue is getting to IND fast and I really did not plan that out well at all. Hit Freedom far to late. Doesn't matter how large your one little city is if you don't plan out your techs, SPs and timing right, which is something I've yet to master in a game I play very little...just GOTMs.

Not sure about RAs here. I think maybe I ignored this one too much. Instead I waited until Porc was built and then only made a couple of RAs here and there. I wanted to focus gold more in buying CSs and infrastructure. However, I few earlier RAs may have helped push me into IND era faster.

Odds and ends:

Game: Civ5 GOTM 44
Date submitted: 2012-09-16
Reference number: 27227
Your name: Schalke 04
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1780AD
Turns played: 266
Base score: 728
Final score: 1373

Finished the game in one session. It was my first OCC ever (in any Civ franchise!), however very doable since it was just warlord. I was a little bit sloppy with my gameplay. Just to click "next turn" hectically was way too attempting with just one city and no wars during the game... Therefore I completely forgot to build/buy an amphitheatre when possibe...

I am not sure if I went for the right beliefs. My pantheon belief was "one with nature". I just wanted to convince myself to always use that natural wonder tile... Founder was tithe and as follower beliefs I decided for "divine inspiration (for even more faith. I even built Stonehenge first... don't know why... ) and religious community (+15% production for all the precious wonders...). However, there were a lot of other intersting options to choose... I guess I could have done better... It was still very nice with all this faith though. I could convert the complete world to my religion (with some minor setbacks when the other civs founded their religions), planted two holy sites and was able to purchase great artists up to the 2500 faith price.

SP were the obvious:
Tradition (full)
Piety (full)
Patronage (3 of 6)
Commerce (opener)
Freedom (full)
Patronage (full)
Commerce (full)

Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1790AD
Turns played: 268
Base score: 628
Final score: 1184

Please, no more warlord games, unless it is domination and everyone competes for sub-100 finishes or something As it is, I expect the top 10 fastest times to be all within 10 turns of each other.

I went Tradition -> Piety -> Patronage -> Freedom -> Liberty. Built every single culture wonder, but not as fast as I could have since I opted for Swords into Plowshares instead of Religious Community. I also missed the Hanging Gardens. And that's about it.

Next culture OCC should be with the Ethiopians, in Deity, with legendary start settings and Montezuma, Alexander and Attila as neighbors

Hammer Rabbi said:

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!

Click to expand...

Is this after action page for TSG 44 or 42? Maybe need to correct.

It´s nice if put the link for the submiton page too.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 44
Date submitted: 2012-09-16
Reference number: 27230
Your name: Derfel_82
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1765AD
Turns played: 263
Base score: 742
Final score: 1426

Settled in place to be next to the river.

Ranging barbs = Open Honor for culture only need to huntting
Tradition / Piety / Patronage (some SPs) / Freedom / Finish Patronage / Finish Honor

10% more food (i don´t remember the name)
World Church
Cathedrals
Pagodas
Religious Texts

GL / HG / Oracle / Stonehenge / Sistine / Alhambra / PT / LTP / Chitchen Itza / Colossus / missed Terracota for 1 turn / ND / maybe i forgot some

For the great players is possible a sub 225 win i think

Game: Civ5 GOTM 44
Date submitted: 2012-09-16
Your name: arieltal
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1925AD
Turns played: 345
Base score: 530
Final score: 768
Time played: 4:22:00

well, quite boring i would say.. made a mistake initially by taking the shine +1 culture pantheon,
in retrospect i should've got +1 production from water resources, oh well.
from the look of the area i decided it would take too long to find a better spot to settle,
so i settled in place, got about 5 landmarks and 1 academy,
got beaten to the taj mahal by 2 turns.. never fought any war, farmed barbs like it's gold.
by the end of the game i was down to 3rd place science wise, guess i could've been better at
that.. ethiopia was the only civ who expanded in the early game, attila eventually killed the chinese,
which had OCCied, haile killed siam close to the end, got a lot of techs stolen from my capital,
although i caught a lot as well.
i went tradition -> piety -> patronage -> freedom -> commerce.
and the honor opener.
found bucharest way in the late game, thanks to a free great admiral..
at the end i was getting a new policy every 10 turns, but i had a slow start.
this was the game where i got a lot of golden ages.. i think more then 10..
EDIT: i got the world church as the founder belief, got 20 culture at the early game for it, got to 30 at the end.. so i guess it was worth
it.

Should anyone get to the end of their game and the game will not let them finish it, please post the save here. We would like the save prior to the turn the game stops working, just in case we need to test and replicate the problem.

Derfel_82 said:

Is this after action page for TSG 44 or 42? Maybe need to correct.

It´s nice if put the link for the submiton page too.

Click to expand...

Thanks for catching that. I somehow missed it when I copied that stuff.

Replay:

Turn 260
1750 AD

No clue how to determine score without submitting. I guess the Base was 795.

I went straight for TGL and Drama this time. Seems like such a stronger play getting that Amphitheater up so quick with first artist. Then the free Cathedral pops up soon after. Goddess of Hunt with ToA and Hanging Gardens provides plenty of food to run artists and grow large.

Used maybe 3 or 4 RAs at most. Ended culture techs with Broadcast Towers. Going for later stuff seems tough and unnecessary. Not sure though.

I got to Freedom much earlier but still feel that time period of getting to Industrialism is the part of the game that bogs down a bit. I'm sure the pros will do this much better and time it well to a new SP. I timed Oracle to finish at end of Archi or free Acoustics to jump into IND.

I have a bit more respect for religion now in this scenario. The "Peace Loving" belief seems really strong if you focus on getting some spread. Once you infect other cities it kinda of keeps growing and spreading, getting you more and more happiness and thus more and more culture. 153 happiness if ridiculous and it may have been more at some point. I went for cheap mishes enhancer.

Funny and surprising things happened quite late. Ram completely floored me by sneaking a prophet across the sea there and converting my Shinto Holy city to the infidel Islam religion. I was so flargin' po'd. The prophet still had life and was heading to CS like Budapest to convert those to Islam, which would have lowered the pressure of Shinto back on Seoul to reconvert later. I sent some units by water and land to box in the prophet outside Budapest and then DOW'd Rams and captured/deleted the prophet (actually capturing the prophet fulfilled a couple of GP quests with some CSs ...never knew that one) Meanwhile, as there was nothing important to build while waiting for the last Policy to finish, I built/bought a few Turtles and went over and capture/razed Memphis (I would not want to fight against that UU).

Despite something like a 30 to 12 Islam ration, Seoul eventually flipped back to Shinto near the end after several turns and I cleansed it with an Inquisitor. All that was totally unnecessary..

Seoul at the end:



Religion:

Game:Civ5 GOTM 44
Date submitted:2012-09-16
Reference number:27235
Your name: osner
Game status:Culture Victory
Game date:1760AD
Turns played:262
Base score:928
Final score:1784
Time played:4:16:00
Submitted save: Sejong_0262 AD-1760.Civ5Save
Renamed file: osner_C504401.Civ5Save

i like the basic archer, warrior and catapult sticking around for the victory, lymond. nice.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 44
Date submitted: 2012-09-16
Reference number: 27236
Your name: Attaturk
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1695AD
Turns played: 249
Base score: 918
Final score: 1873
Time played: 1:35:00
------
Settle in place
Monument - Worker - Granary - (Skipped shrine, due to World Wonder) - Temple of Artemis - GL - NC - Oracle - HG - workshop - University - Alhambra - ...

Policies:
Full Tradition
All but 1 piety
Full Patronage
Two liberty (waiting until Freedom)
Full Freedom
Finish Liberty
Finish Piety

Religion:
Seafood +1 hammer
Cathedral
missed on +8 Hermitage, so took +15% hammers

Everything hard researched. No RAs. All money went to buying CS

got a 291 turn victory.
I could have done a lot of things better (managed not to get teracotta and chichen itza)
Anyway, the map would have been awesome if it was immortal-ish instead of warlord.
The start position was very easy to defend, and we could have seen the two UU's in action. On higher difficulty you could probably trade coal with someone to get that damn factory (very frustrating without a factory)
On warlord it was quite boring...

Perhaps you could put out same start with 2 or more difficulty options, so all the skill spectrum could play at their level.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 44
Date submitted: 2012-09-17
Reference number: 27239
Your name: Monthar
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1785AD
Turns played: 267
Base score: 932
Final score: 1758
Time played: 5:50:00
Submitted save: TSG44_Won_Cultural.Civ5Save
Renamed file: Monthar_C504401.Civ5Save

Click to expand...

I would have finished a few turns sooner, but I mistimed my overflow stacking.

I had 1 war with Egypt, mainly because they asked if my troops where there to attack, so I said yes. They were actually there to go take out some barb camps, but I figured what the heck. I lost a few swords and a knight or two, but took out one of his cities and got a nice peace deal out of it. I also managed to get open borders from him after the war so I was able to give him my religion and get the missionaries and troops past him to go help the CS's deal with barbs and complete religion quests.

I maintained alliances with almost all the CS's for most of the game. That helps power my tech rate up a bit more as well as providing me with most of my troops.

Policy Path
Tradition - completed
Patronage opener
Aesthetics for the pledge to protect combo to get all the CS's to friend status.
Piety - all except the temple gold bonus.
Scholasticism for the science bonus
Commerce - Left side for the production bonuses
Freedom - Opener 1 turn after hitting industrial.
The +2 culture per world wonder policy.
Piety completion to get the culture from the 1 prophet I settled.
Completed Freedom
Last policy on left side of Patronage so the added happiness could boost my culture.
Completed Commerce, again for the added happiness
Completed Patronage as the 5th tree completed.

Near the end I timed popping a GE, GM and GS together which completed a few quests. Managed to buy 2 artists with faith and popped 1 final artist on the turn before Utopia finished.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 44
Date submitted: 2012-09-17
Reference number: 27241
Your name: Foamfollower
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1755AD
Turns played: 261
Base score: 717
Final score: 1378
Time played: 5:18:00
Submitted save: Sejong_0261 AD-1755.Civ5Save
Renamed file: Foamfollower_C504401.Civ5Save

very peaceful, no wars at all. Mainly building wonders, buying buildings and some units. Last 2 Great Artists used for Golden Ages. Having almost 200 happiness is insane.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 44
Date submitted: 2012-09-17
Reference number: 27240
Your name: Aaronius
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1820AD
Turns played: 280
Base score: 1022
Final score: 1825
Time played: 4:11:00


I decided to tackle this game yesterday since I knew it would play quickly. The city start location was epic. The position was so easy to defend (not that it mattered as it turns out) and it was perfectly situated between the east and west empires, so everybody wanted/needed open borders. The river, the luxes the sea resources, plenty of hills for production and the camps provided plenty of food with Goddess of the Hunt.

Last but not least, Mt. Sainai was a godsend (literally?). I didn't build Stonehenge or even a shrine until maybe turn 150 or so. Instead, I waited until I had sold my first ivory and reached population 5, then I bought the Sainai tile and worked it for the rest of the game. The result was 8 faith / turn. I got the second pantheon, the first religion (Buddhism), and when I upgraded my religion, only one other civ had founded one (Ethiopia - Christianity).

As I mentioned, Goddess of the Hunt gave me good food from all those camps. I took Cathedrals and later Pagodas. I also took the option where the religion did something good with friendly CS, and I believe I took the option that made it spread faster. The end result was fantastic. I got a Cathedral up before I even enhanced, to get my great artist rolling. I sent a missionary to convert those three bundled CS to the South.

Those three CS all reinforced the religion amongst each other, completely spread to all of china, all of japan, and all of the other three CS between China and Japan. I think the option I chose where my religion spreads faster really must have helped with this. I didn't have to do another thing, and fulfilled a couple of CS requests without doing another thing.

The far NorthEast coast with the four CS up there required some active spreading. I had two requests for yet another prophet, so I saved up for one after my Pagoda and sent him to convert the four CS in that part of the map.

I was making so much excess religion in the midgame I was making prophets just for fun. Attila already had a city or two with my religion and didn't have a pantheon so I sent a fourth prophet to convert his capital, and the last two CS in that far SouthEast part of the map. I also sent a prophet and a missionary West to spread religion to all the CS and to Darius, who also had no pantheon. My religion (Buddhism) dominated the world.

My only religious competitors were Halle (Christianity) and Ramses (Islam). Towards the end of the game Halle really began fighting to spread Christianity. He undid a couple of the CS nearest him after they had gone Buddhist, and he spread to Siam before I could, and a couple of Attila's cities. Ramses kept his religion to himself for the most part...

@lymond "Funny and surprising things happened quite late. Ram completely floored me by sneaking a prophet across the sea there and converting my Shinto Holy city to the infidel Islam religion. I was so flargin' po'd."

The exact same thing happened to me. I had a prophet down near Ethiopia fighting against Christianity when my capital suddenly converted to Islam. I knew from past experience that if I built a prophet or a missionary at this point that they would simply spread more islam. I tried instead to use an inquisitor, but that just killed the last of my buddhists? I thought that maybe I was doomed to be Islamic from there on out, but then I remembered my prophet on the far side of the world. He had two spread left, so I decided to bring him all the way back home. It took forever, but when he got back to Seoul (pop35 at the time, 20 something Islam), with one spread, he eliminated all Islam and installed 28 Buddhists). I ended up leaving him in the water in front of my capital, and surrounded it with my other units for the rest of the game to keep the Islamic prophets away.

Interestingly, I did notice that my culture actually went up with Islam, and I wish I would have checked to see what the follower beliefs were that made that the case. I went from about 700 cpt, to 800cpt when I was Islamic. When I converted back, I went down again, but eventually reached that height again. By game end I was at 834cpt. Clearly tho, Ramses had some policy I should have taken.

There were other things about this game that were unique as well. I spent almost the entire game building wonders and I purchased a great number of regular buildings (watermill, granary, windmill, factory, harbor, amphitheater, opera house). I got the ToA, the GLib, and the HG early, even tho a couple CS wanted SH. I was also dismayed to see that every CS on the map wanted the one wonder I could not build, CI. I built all the World Wonders but 7, and I didn't complete CR before I won. I think I could have been a bit faster if I had teched less but smarter. I always get so wonder hungry I never prioritize as I should. I already had two Renaissance techs before the one that would allow opera houses for example, b/c I wanted the Salt Tower and many CS wanted Forbidden Palace. Also, I simply had more tech than I needed and probably could have bought the culture buildings earlier if I had known that. Still the Statue of Liberty I think helped me build the Utopia wonder a little bit faster, as my 39pop city had maybe 20 specialists in it.

With regards to spying: Right when I entered the renaissance, Wu began spying on me. I had my own spy out rigging elections, and I had not yet built a constabulary. At first she was stealing techs at a pretty fast rate, every five turns or so. However, at some point it got really fast. There were three turns in about five where she got a technology. How is it possible to steal this fast? I thought once you moved, you needed three turns to set up, then 15 to steal a technology. Is this not right? It seemed way too fast, so I had to build the constabulary and bring back my spy to catch her and ask her to stop. Later in the game, my spies were all out rigging elections but the theft rate was more like what I would expect.