TSG52 After Action Report

Welcome to the TSG52 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.).

- What VC did you decide upon and when did you decide to go for it?
- How did you use religion or spying to your advantage?
- How did diplomacy go with your neighbors? Gift any Great People?
- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?

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.

Leif: I submitted my game, but the system says:

1. I submitted this save for TSG49
2. Domination: Wrong VC.

I guess my save went towards Gustavus's Cultural game? (which i never played).
I'd appreciate if you move my save manually to TSG 52. Thanks!

Game: Civ5 GOTM 49
Reference number: 28027
Your name: Moriarte
Game status: Domination Wrong VC
Turns played: 135
Base score: 922
Final score: 3414
Time played: 2:56:00


Anyway: Quite an interesting game. I have been practicing immortal domination games for HoF last few days, but my computer never generated such a nice map! Thanks, Leif .

I opened with Scout -- Worker -- Granary -- Warrior -- Settler -- Rush bought another settler -- Army #1 -- 3 libraries -- Army #2 -- Army #3.

Settled two coastal cities closely: one on Copper, the other one - on the hill near 2x wine. Quickly scouted west with warrior and east with scout to find out it is Pangaea. (Yay!). Lost two workers to barbs ..

Upgraded my Archers on turn 54 and moved on to capture Egypt's two cities and Mecca. Sniped Mecca with trireme, since i was careless and lost a warrior.

Meanwhile, a second army was finished (7 CBs + 1 Spear), which took Moscow with ease. (Since Cathy just lost St. Petersburg to Pacal) This army then moved down south to get me Palenque. Lost 2 CBs there, since Mayan Cap. had 26 defence rating.

Both armies paused for a bit, since Xmen upgrade was 7 turns away.

This is where i started building/rushing 3rd army (7 Xmen and 1 Spear), which was eventually used to fight Liz and capture London.

Everything went pretty smooth and according to the plan. Napoleon did give me a good fight, killing couple of my units and generally harrassing my force with horsemen.

In the end i sync'ed three armies to take Paris, London and Addis Abbaba almost simultaneously.

Ethiopian cap. wasn't easy to approach, but since my Xmen had Cover 2 promotions i could stand there all day

Surprisingly, Gustav's UA was useful. I used two Generals to ally two different cultural city states. So, military tradition arrived earlier than i expected.

Policy Path: Tradition -- Legalism -- Monarchy -- Landed Elite -- 4 in Honor.

Sorry about that, Moriarte.

Yes, the system still uses the human civ/leader name as the main clue to the game ID. Normally, we try to ensure that two games with the same leader are not running concurrently, but this one slipped through the net.

The overlap between TSG 49 and TSG 52 is only a day or so, so I shall keep an eye out for other early submissions that confuse the system, and move them over manually.

[UPDATE]
Here are the revised submission results for your game:

Game: Civ5 GOTM 52
Date submitted: 2013-01-01
Reference number: 28027
Your name: Moriarte
Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 500AD
Turns played: 135
Base score: 922
Final score: 3414
Time played: 2:56:00

I have now changed the submission script so that it uses a map checksum to find the game, so the problem shouldn't arise again.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 52
Date submitted: 2013-01-03
Reference number: 28045
Your name: Wargizmo
Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 1645AD
Turns played: 239
Base score: 2084
Final score: 4434
Time played: 9:24:00
Submitted save: Gustavus Adolphus_0239 AD-1645.Civ5Save
Renamed file: Wargizmo_C505201.Civ5Save


I'm pretty average at domination games so no sub 150 win for me.

Went 4 city tradition. Decided to go straight for composite -> crossbows rather than teching up. I was able to take everyone's capital except France and Ethiopia, who were just too well defended. I realised I wouldn't be able to take them down without flight so I ended up teching up and killing them once I had bombers. Decided to take right side of commerce for my second tree, it ended up working pretty well as I had a lot of gold to rush buy stuff; also the happiness policy is the best in the game and really helped with all the cities I was taking.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 52
Date submitted:2013-01-04
Reference number:28052
Your name:budweiser
Game status: Domination Victory
Game date:1918AD
Turns played:338
Base score:3107
Final score:4637
Time played:10:10:00

That took a while. I needed way more turns than I hoped. I made a mistake by waiting almost 20 turns to attack anyone when I had my 2 UUs plus the cannons. I didnt want to spoil any research or friendship agreements, so I waited while my units went stale.

I used a lot of battleships and had some super promo ones; long range, two shots, 3 in bombardment. I could almost 1 shot 2 land units every turn per ship. That brings in good money with Honor filled out.

Failure for me.

My start was good, for a science or diplo win. I just don't have the large map Domination Wins figured out yet. I need to work on it a bit at lower levels. It wasn't until turn 131, as My universities started to finish, that I started producing units to go on the attack.

My units were too low level though, I planned to upgrade them as I teched. I got up to longswords and Trebs and thought it was time, but I attacked too soon. I didn't have enough to take the first city and got involved in a slugfest. I don't know how many turns later, I was still at the same city, fighting off CS's that Russia bought, Up to cannons and Muskets now, but still not getting anywhere.

Lots of small and big problems. First I wasn't ready to fight, but felt I had to pull the trigger. Russia had the Great Wall which hurt. She had a few Galleass's and I only had one Trireme. So that didn't help. There was a lone Egypt scout that was stuck on a hill I wanted to use. It wasn't until I failed a few attacks that I realized I could buy the hex and force him off.

Timing is my problem. Since waiting until Education I should have waited longer, gotten some sea power and possibly the unique units. Actually I guess I should have starting fighting much earlier, but I'm so afraid of falling behind the tech race if I do that.

I was thinking I would get attacked, I would fight off the attack, then turn to the offensive, but no one ever attacked. I had to start it.

Anyway, after fighting forever and going nowhere, it wasn't fun anymore so I called it.

Edit: Thinking further, I now realize that since Russia had the Great wall, I should have waited until I had good sea power. Do one mass invasion at his capital with plenty of sea support, and take his capital first.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 52
Date submitted: 2013-01-05
Reference number: 28055
Your name: Giallorossi90
Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 1854AD
Turns played: 297
Base score: 2568
Final score: 4352
Time played: 22:02:00
Submitted save: Gustavus Adolphus_0297 AD-1854.Civ5Save
Renamed file: Giallorossi90_C505201.Civ5Save

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My first Immortal win, and my fastest finish ever. Not sure if it's because I played more aggressive or whether I just got lucky.

I think the mountains north-west helped keep Russia quiet until I dealt with Egypt and Arabia. Usually in these games I just end up in permanent wars where I'm out teched and outspent.

Could have finished sooner perhaps if I had pushed on instead of taking some GPT peace deals, but felt I needed to replenish and keep up tech wise.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 52
Date submitted: 2013-01-07
Reference number: 28066
Your name: kenthebest
Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 1856AD
Turns played: 298
Base score: 2449
Final score: 4150
Time played: 10:11:00
Submitted save: TSG52_END.Civ5Save
Renamed file: kenthebest_C505201.Civ5Save

My first submission on gotm. Scout, monument, liberty start. I settle on place. Starting tech I picked pottery, mining, writing. I tried to build GL with 4 pop but AI finished it at turn 29. Way earlier than I expected. Built 2nd city on copper by southern coast. buy faith nature wonder tile. With 6 base faith + 4 patheon faith, I managed to get a religion early. Built 3rd with liberty settler on far east desert river near Egypt. I delayed free settler to finish NC first. Use liberty finisher to get GE and rush build petra on 3rd. With lots desert hills and oasis, it turns to be a production monster later.

After NC built , I researched composite bowman and iron working. Knocked out Egypt with sword and comp bowman. I went after Arab with longsword and xbow, but unfortunately Ethiopia dow me while I was deep into Arab's territory. Also Arab bought Bucharest who happened to have crap loads of units. Pillage many tiles of my 2nd and 3rd. Eventually I have temporary peace with Arab, so I have time to cast off Ethiopia who also trolled my religion. Once Ethiopia is handled. I went after Arab's capital with cannon, musketeer, xbow. Had pretty hard time to take Mecca down, got bombard from both city and galleass, should stay off coast or bring some navel force.

Once Arab capital is taken, I immediately march my main troop to Ethiopia who had tech+ score lead. Despite being vastly out-number, Ethiopia's troop is no match to Swedish mighty Carolean with early cover promotion. After Ethiopia is taking care off, I had lead on both score and tech. Rest of game is slaughter-fest.

I think having a navel force is a advantage on this map. There are many choke points on land and most AI's capitals are on coast.

kenthebest said:

My first submission on gotm.

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Welcome to CivFanatics and GOTM.

Congrats on your victory and best of luck for many more.

Game:Civ5 GOTM 52
Date submitted:2013-01-08
Reference number:28075
Your name:glory7
Game status: Domination Victory
Game date:450AD
Turns played:133
Base score:1385
Final score:5326
Time played:7:00:00
Submitted save:glory7_gotm52_0133 AD-0450.Civ5Save
Renamed file:glory7_C505201.Civ5Save

I wrote what happened during the first 80 turns at the opening actions thread. I went for liberty free settler first and built 2nd city on top of copper south and took faith +6 mountain. Focused on CS quests (lucky that 2 of them had sci ones and I built GL and NC so my tech was fast at the beginning - also, barb quest were not bad too) and had 4 allies and 2 friends.

I started attacking Egypt around t77 with 5 CBs and killed egypt easily. As Arabia built pyramid and I planned to attack ethi later (too far...) I built roads toward arabia during the war with egypt and attacked him right away. Meanwhile, 2nd set of army attacked Russia, who was half dead after maya took 2 cities. I took Moscow easily and during my attack she finished petra there

France attacked maya and took the cap when I was about to capture moscow. Went straight to attack france. all cities built bows/happy buildings, except machu pichu.

As Arab did build great wall right before my attack, it took much longer than I thought to take 2nd city and mecca. After that, my units went for ethi cap via water. On the west side, france and england did not have many armies.. just crushed them.

religion really helped for happiness. I went goddess of festival (helped a lot for early culture and faith) - +1 happy per city - +1 happy per shrine - pagoda - religious texts. Enhanced at t87 with liberty finisher! didn't rush wonder nor rush tech. I thought I needed happy religion and it worked out well.

Thebes t89, memphis t95, medina t103, moscow t105, St.petersburg t108, maya cap t113 (france had it at that moment), mecca t114. took small cities and orleans t122, paris t126. London t127. My east side army took much longer than I expected... partly b/c of the great wall in mecca and partly b/c of narrow path to ethi cap. annexed memphis meanwhile and bought naval units too. t133 ethi cap and dom vic.

I considered CB rush with post cities, like in gotm46, but I thought that for immortal level I needed xbows to finish far away civs. I should not have built one city on the top of iron .. that one was basically a waste.

SP: Libery settler - worker - meritocracy - finish (got GP and enhanced religion) - commerce right side. Had oracle half way done but forgot to use it for commerce right side 2nd one... I bought many naval units and that certainly would have helped.

Very impressive. What turn did you get crossbows? did you bother getting any universities or just rush straight for military techs after the NC?

Wargizmo said:

Very impressive. What turn did you get crossbows? did you bother getting any universities or just rush straight for military techs after the NC?

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I delayed it for 1-2 turns so that I could have 2-3 more CBs to upgrade. t96.

After NC, I just went for military techs. I didn't even build library at any other cities and didn't get education till the end of the game. Once I got Xbows, it was just matter of killing AIs fast.

Was very interesting to read both your opening action and after action reports, glory, to see how liberty works out. Well done . I get an impression there is not much difference between the sp trees, in terms of early domination. I did arrive at Xbows @ turn 99 though, yet my game was NC free, just libraries.

That is the only domination game, where i had no issues with happiness. Even without religion, there were so many unique luxes that i managed to end up in positive happiness after capturing every other cap. Yet, in the end i allied two mercs.

Didn't you need free GS from liberty?

This game was rather educational.

I played Liberty, but mainly ran a puppet empire so I don't know if I got full use of it. I conquered Egypt, Russia, and then England, using key military techs (composite bows, xbows, cannons, artillery) to gain an advantage.

Ethiopia and the Maya were wonder whores and were easily conquered. France grew to be a monster, mainly because I had DOFs with Napoleon and we helped each other in wars (but I kept the prize cities, like Palanque with its 10 wonders). In the end he was an era or two ahead of me and had Apollo Program and Manhattan Project while I was still trying to tech Flight. Worrying!

But one thing I learned is that the AI sucks at war. At one point Napoleon tried to capture an Arabian ice city up north, with a 20 unit Atomic Era carpet of doom versus a 2-pop city and two crappy defenders. I saw him slowly move his carpet through my territory, units running 3 steps forward and 2 steps back, like a weird amorphous amoeba. It took 20 turns to get to the city, and in the end he couldn't even capture it!

After seeing his army attritioned away by the Arabian defenders, I felt a bit better. Paris was too far to fight a land war to, even from my Palanque, so I started to accumulate a giant navy of battelships, destroyers, and carriers carrying atomic bombs just offshore of Paris. I wasn't confident I could survive a long war, or even a short war, so it had to be a single-turn decapitation strike. Napoleon kept signing DOFs with me and trading luxuries for 240g as I built up my threatening invasion fleet.

Well ... it turns out I went a little too far. In order to nuke a French navy into oblivion, drop Paris' defenses down to the redline, and waltz in with a destroyer to capture it in one turn, you only need 2 or 3 bombs.

Not the 12 that I built.

In the end, it wasn't a great game: I conquered too slow (I had time to fill out Liberty, Honor, and Order!) and I won mainly from AI incompetence, but I'll take it for my first Civ V Immortal win.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 52
Your name: beestar
Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 1925AD
Turns played: 345
Base score: 3269
Final score: 4737
Time played: 14:12:00

Game: Civ5 GOTM 52
Date submitted: 2013-01-10
Reference number: 28084
Your name: adamah
Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 1802AD
Turns played: 271
Base score: 2422
Final score: 4485
Time played: 9:33:00

Long-time civ-er, first time gotm-er. I usually play immortal domination so I went into this a bit overconfident. I settled a total of 4 cities in the same locations as everyone else, and became BFF's with Russia and the Maya. France was also friendly, but refused to sign a DOF with me the entire game.

I took out Egypt first pretty easily. In the mean time, Maya and Russia teamed up on England (I joined in to stay friends, but didn't send any troops). Russia got the lion's share of the spoils before they all made peace, putting Russia well in the lead. I wasn't too concerned though, since we had a good friendship and were pretty far from each other.

After Egypt, I sent my army toward Arabia in what I thought would be an easy step 2. As I was preparing my army along the border though, Arabia surprisingly decided to attack me with a bigger army than I thought it would have. To make things much, MUCH worse Russia decided that same turn to invade me from the west. I was completely unguarded there, and my westernmost city fell pretty quickly.

With the Russian army moving toward my capital, I raced my army home (leaving a small force to hold off the Arabian hordes). The Russians started their bombardment of my capital, and pillaging the countryside, but fortunately my forces arrived just in time to save it from capture. Another couple turns and I would have been toast. Over time I was able to push the Russians back, recapture my own city, and even invade Russian territory and capture one of their cities. I couldn't hold onto the gain though, and eventually made peace in return for the captured city. The whole debacle probably cost me 50 turns.

With peace finally established on the western front, I returned to finish off Arabia, which ended up being more trouble than I thought. Russia, meanwhile, turned its army on its other ally the Maya (damn those Russian backstabbers), and they fell pretty quickly. Russia was now the leader of the pack, followed by France and then me. As I was finishing up my conquest of Arabia, my spy told me Russia was marching its army toward a civ in preparation for an invasion. I knew that probably meant me, and I panicked quite a bit.

Fortunately, I managed to bribe France into attacking Russia, which kept them both occupied while I focused on tech and built up an army. I used Oxford and a GS to tech-leap to Dynamite and upgraded my cannons. With artillery, I began my invasion of Russia. This met with surprisingly little resistance, and I quickly captured Moscow. At that point the rest was just clean-up (though a rather long and tedious one).

Definitely a fun game. I look forward to the next one!

Adamah said:

Long-time civ-er, first time gotm-er.

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Welcome to GOTM.

Glad you decided to give it a try, congrats on your win and best of luck in future.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 52
Date submitted: 2013-01-15
Reference number: 28105
Your name: tomoliop
Game status: Diplomacy Wrong VC
Game date: 1929AD
Turns played: 349
Base score: 1264
Final score: 1831
Time played: 6:52:00

lulz I actually won. My intention was to play this just to check out Immortal difficulty, only recently I barely managed to win some of my first King games. My first time with Sweden. Basically had no plan, around 200 was thinking about cultural, but realized that would take me way too long and that Ethiopia I think was getting a little more than I. Around 260 I realized I somehow have quite some CS allies, even though I almost completely forgot about Sweden's UA, it came quite useful in the end though. I somehow managed to not get DOW by France, they emerged in the lead quite early on. This is also my first diplo win, I thought this is a more difficult VC. Military wise - I was fighting Russia a lot, I helped destroy Egypt and held Thebes almost to the end. In the end I started a war with Ethiopia as they were attacking my most valued ally Bucharest, that wasn't necessarily a good idea, cause I wasn't really prepared. I completely didn't bother with my religion, that was probably the biggest mistake in this game. I used spies mostly for rigging elections. I won on second voting, first time around AI couped my Allies (I didn't even know I can do that as well till very late in this game...). I'm not sure if this was some crazy luck, or that I just improved so rapidly. Nevertheless, I'm very proud of myself I'm gonna play every GoTM from now on.
PS Is there any way to actually check if someone replayed some parts of his game? Just curious, was tempted to do so numerous times... but obviously didn't

Congrats on your win. Glad you enjoyed it.

Keep up the good work.

Moriarte said:

Was very interesting to read both your opening action and after action reports, glory, to see how liberty works out. Well done . I get an impression there is not much difference between the sp trees, in terms of early domination. I did arrive at Xbows @ turn 99 though, yet my game was NC free, just libraries.

That is the only domination game, where i had no issues with happiness. Even without religion, there were so many unique luxes that i managed to end up in positive happiness after capturing every other cap. Yet, in the end i allied two mercs.

Didn't you need free GS from liberty?

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I agree with you that I did not really need religion. Also, I should have chosen GS as liberty finisher...I did a replay and it was much better. Will write as a separte one below.

Using gotm 46 strategy (thanks to tommynt and Arnold), I tried this one again. After my first play, I felt that I overestimated immortal AI's tech and army sizes and it seemed that xbows were too much. comp bows would have been enough.

instead of GL NC, this time I applied gotm 46 ones. cap BO: scout - monument - archers - 2 settlers - granary sometime - archers/melee units. 2nd city South on top of copper and 3rd city West on top of wine. 4th city East on top of silver (next to cotton and egypt). expos built monument (except 4th one) and archers/units till the end of the game.

tech: beeline for comp bows, except pottery - calendar for lux. math (t61)/bronze next and iron - horse. After that, techs were irrelevant - spent 3 turns for writing so that I could get embassy to find mecca and addis abba. Got comp bows tech at t51.

took thebes at t60 (started attack on t55). with new-produced armies I took russia cap t66 (one catapult rush-bought). memphis at the same turn.

t79, mecca and maya cap.
t94, harar (ethi 2nd city) and paris.
t97, london.
t101, ethi cap and done.

chose pasture culture+1 pantheon and it certainly helped. Also, had 2 culture CS and 1 merc CS ally via quests.