TSG64 After Action thread

Welcome to the TSG64 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.).

- How many cities did you build and how many did you decide to acquire?
- How did you use religion or spying to your advantage?
- How did diplomacy go with your neighbors? Any problems?
- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
- Were your UA and UU helpful?

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.

~t130: written at the opening actions thread.

t135 secularism and t136 obs done in cap. spt is 283... cap pop is only 13 and 15 10 7 for other 3 cities (last one is annexed jap cap)

Germany took Chinese 2nd city as a peace deal and launched surprise attack on me. I used 2 citadels to def+take some of his land and without loss his 15+ units were gone.

t152: I took Berlin and another city - got chinese 2nd city with peace deal. Berlin had only 3 buildings and pop 5 so won't annex it... chinese 2nd city is better so I will annex it instead.

t159: sci theory. pops in 5 cities are 15 (my cap) 18 12 10 (Jap cap) 11 (China cap). Got 5 puppets.

Rushed Big Ben with Pisa GE. I could not find coal within my border and cannot get it from CS as they improved the tile as mines (it was weird.. if they improved the tile with non-mine ones, say farm, then I can do 'give 200 gold to improve resource' thing. Aztec had 7 coal and it is 3rd ring of Jap cap too. I had well-upgraded (range or logistics/march at least) Xbows so I upgraded them to gattlings and attack.

t186: plastics. Used one GS.

Lost several units while taking Aztec cap as I tried to save turns, not units (they are useless anyway after this war). Sold total 3 Aztec cities (including cap) to my friend Songhai so that I could have enough cash and happiness.

Saved Porc tower till hubble and Russia took it right before I was ready... lost one GS that I expected to come and I need to reevaluate the situation. She already "stole" my Taj mahal. What a .....

Used one GS to start apollo faster. Rushed hubble with faith GE.

Decided to use Sydney Opera house with 2nd faith GE so that I could use rati finisher earlier. Saved like 5 turns.

SP: tradition - pat open - rati open with oracle - rati left 2 - order 1 - rati finish

religion: DF - ceremonial burial+pagoda - 30% further spread+ascetism

Overall, there were so many things that I should have done better. For example, only if I noticed that German settler was coming to my 2nd 'petra' city spot and blocked it so that I could settle there... then I could have saved at least 5 turns.

Turn 303 - Defeat by ONE TURN. I wait for the last part of SS, but Catherine was faster.

All my trubles startes in turn 240, when Aztecs DoW me. It took me a lot of time to defeat them, a lot of work too. And I stopped to be careffull and lost Hubble by two turns - I simply start to build it late. And these two GS was difference between Victory and Defeat.

I had one crash of the game, when I run it again there was new version on steam. I was not able to run last save, tried secveral times. Fortunetely the one before finally worked. Submission system do not work too, I will try to download it later.

Thanbks for nice game, looking forward to BNW.

T309 win. Never really in doubt--I'd killed or crippled everyone on my continent, Alex wiped out Askia and then he and Cat just did the eternal war thing, and I'd been leading on science since Renaissance. They both finished Apollo less than 10 turns before I won.

But obviously my carebear plan didn't work out. First spy reported Wu was plotting against me and I couldn't get a DoF out of her, so when Oda with his one remaining city asked for a DoW against her, I took ten turns. He attacked early, she overcommitted and I was able to take Beijing with almost no resistance (it was actually kind of beautiful--she had Great Wall, so after I capped all her chokonus were toothless and got trapped against her own citadels trying to come back). Monty then swept up for Kyoto, which I snagged from him while it was still in resistance, polished off Wu and took a couple of Monty's crap cities to create a puppet DMZ. Took a good peace deal from him, then with the extra happiness annexed Beijing and Tokyo and sent them tall.

Cat and I stayed friends the whole game, I knocked out 3 RA's with Biz before he denounced me for warmongering (I'd DoW Alex whenever he sent a settler my way because I will not let that guy near me), so after that I took his stuff since he had a couple happiness wonders. Last 40ish turns were uneventful.

I clearly have a lot to learn about fast times when playing wide. Just been playing a couple months, and I moved up to immortal and deity doing a lot of OCC and CV's, so this was a good learning experience. A lot of the habits I developed for those games, like planting GS's until fairly late, are not as efficient if you can't count on RA's later. I've also never had to seriously worry about happiness (and with Alex in and cranking hundreds of gpt I couldn't use CS's to help much--I kept the 3 closest as allies for safety's sake and wrote off the rest).

I don't think I realized how much easier immortal is than deity. Clearly I could have taken my time on a lot of the wonders to time things out better. E.g., the hard-built Petra in my capital was virtually useless, as was the capital itself--stagnated at 14 pop until hospital, so I just farmed beakers there and hard built some non-priority wonders. Everything good happened in the desert city, and I probably should have gambled to put Petra there after seeing the desert empty. I'm not used to dealing with a crap capital, since I would normally reroll on a spot like this.

Missionary science spam: so not worth it. At best it may convert faith to beakers 1:1, and they actually make decent scouts with the extra movement and being able to cross closed borders, but that's maybe a turn or two by the end of it. Much better off with GSs or GEs and a more useful belief.

So anyway, glad I won my first GOTM effort, lots of room for improvement. Maybe BNW will level the playing field a bit and I can be competitive going forward as we all learn the new terrain.

golem said:

Submission system do not work too, I will try to download it later

Click to expand...

Please email me your save. The submission system needs modifications for the new patch, and I need test saves to make the changes.

My email address is thealanh<at>me<dot>com

Well, drat. Turn 219 and diplo-blooie! Peace deals that when I accept what was offered the other civ refuses or the peace offering is a blank list. Then Bismark bullied one of my allies and it froze up entirely. I wasn't setting any speed records but I had the game well in hand.

Hard built every science wonders needed. Built Taj, popped a free gs from Pisa. In fact i spawned gs only and only 1 ge from faith(order).

I signed 3 RAs total, 1 round with Askia/Catherine and another round with Catherine only. I picked 50% RA boost instead of opening Order when i had to decide something. I think i played that part wrongly. I missed the possibility to boost my science from the 2nd policy(25% science boost from factories) from Order around the turn 190. My gs would have been a lot more powerful. I did take this policy but it was a bit too late to make it worth.

Science capped at 1400 but i burned almost all my gs from a 1000 bpt point of view. I would have saved 4-5 turns there.

After reading glory7's post, i realized that i'm still too lazy to perform at 100%. Despite having the largest army i kept the Aztecs alive The idea of conquering and selling cities is brilliant. I liked the fact that you built the Sydney Opera house. I always forget about this wonder and this game was the perfect timing to use it because faith generation was great(from another free ge or simply by letting the Hubble Telescope being hard built instead).

That was clearly another potentially 4-5 turns saved there, like you said.

Let's see if pkf or bc1 will break the 220 turn mark!

casualplayer said:

Well, drat. Turn 219 and diplo-blooie! Peace deals that when I accept what was offered the other civ refuses or the peace offering is a blank list. Then Bismark bullied one of my allies and it froze up entirely. I wasn't setting any speed records but I had the game well in hand.

Click to expand...

There's a hot fix that should solve this. Or try this

Meanwhile, the submission system is still not working. I need test files to find the problem. Please email submission files to me at thealanh<at>me<dot>com (replace <at> and <dot> to make a real email address, of course!)

(I e-mailed the save, as the submission page error-ed out on me).

Science victory or how four legions and two ballistas almost captured the whole known world.

Settled on the forest SW to get the mountain and river.
Ruins gave me 65g and +1 pop. I bought second sheep and worked two sheep until wheat became within my cultural borders.

Research Path: Pottery - Writing - AH - Mining - Calendar - (GL Philosophy) - Trapping - Bronze - Iron - Masonry - Education - Acoustics - Astronomy - Metal Casting - Physics - PP - Scientific Theory - Canons - Plastics (oxford) - Fertilizer - Arty - Space (scientist bulb)

Was saving all scientists, not planting them.

Capital: Monument - Scout - Granary - Shrine - Great Library - (bough set) - NC - Settler - warrior - warrior - water mill - warrior - ballista - ballista - HG

Policy: Finished Tradition - Rationalism Left Three - Order Two - Finish Rationalism

Second city settled on incense near oasis: granary - petra - ...

Germany put Munich on my third city spot (iron hill with cotton and two pigs in range), so I had to prioritize army to get it. (That will become my fourth city shortly)

Third city further east on a plain river hill reaching spices, cow and two sheep.

While my two ballistae and four legions were wrecking havoc on Germany and later China and Japan, I beelined to Education (to save a few turns I did not get constructions until after astronomy)

My plan was to get Astronomy after Education, but due to unfortunately completing the quest for cultural CS, I had to get Acoustics and then go to Astronomy.

Monte became afraid of me and offered his friendship. I gladly accepted and signed one RA before hitting Renaissance.

I was short on money all the time. (Probably tithe would have helped, but I got ceremonial burial, since it looked like I will be capturing a lot of cities)
I only had money for one university in Rome, other cities hard-build them.

Similarly, I only have enough money and only bought two public schools, all other cities built them.

Milestones:

102: Education
112: Secularism (via Oracle)
139: Bpt 300
150: Public Schools (then Industrialization + Canons + beeline to Plastics)
186: Plastics (via Oxford) bought 5 labs bpt: 1013)
204: bulb scientist to get to Appolo (Appolo in 7 turns)
211: all space technologies are known, starting building

Capital and Petra: 4-3, 4-3
Munich, Cumae: 8,6 (later bought factories and solar plants to speed them up) so all parts arrived to my capital at T218.

To get the factories and plants, I sold all the units, as many building as I could

To delay Rationalism finisher I was annexing cities to slow down the culture.
Launched a war with Monte to get his capital but misplaced one unit and wasn't able to capture his capital in time to delay the policy.

Got a peace deal with some random city with it, and annexed that one instead.

(Delaying Policy is an annoying game feature, I wonder if it is resolved in BNW)

Religion: DF - +1 happy - 15% hammer +food temple/shrines - cheaper missionaries

Bought: Missionaries (many), inquisitor (one to clear Bejing), Prophet (to remove religion from monte cities), 2 scientists and 1 engineer (only accumulated 3500)

Army: built three warriors, scout and two ballistae, the rest was donated by Military CS

Thank you for the great map.

Thank you for fixing submission system for prepatch saves. I was able to submit it today.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 64
Date submitted: 2013-07-06
Reference number: 29291
Your name: Attaturk
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1540AD
Turns played: 218
Base score: 1723
Final score: 4006
Time played: 5:18:00
Renamed file: Attaturk_C506401.Civ5Save

Click to expand...

Thank you for emailing the save.

Attaturk said:

(I e-mailed the save, as the submission page error-ed out on me).

Click to expand...

Thanks for the emailed save. I've fixed the problem. Your save was made before the patch was applied, and my fix broke support for the old version You should be able to submit now.

Slower finish then i thought, made a few errors:
- should have invested more in maritime CS to stimulate growth
- due to lacking growth hard to work all science spots
- tradition would have been a better choice then liberty
- when i made my pre emptive strike on bismarck, should have killed him off
- no cash the whole game, a lot to be hard build
- edu too late
- NC way too late, was not able to get missed turns there back

Overall, interesting map, even though a few to many warmonger civs on the start continent for my taste.
Romans are really nice as a civ, will have to play them more.

Thx for the game, will submit when i get home.

Screenshot:

Damn it, lost again and I thought I had a handle on Immortal. I retired around T260. Just had to go for that freaking Petra. Even with it the growth wasn't crazy though. After I done it around T80 I settled 2 cities on the coast, to the south and east, to the southeast Bismarck planted his city. Soon after He DOWed and for quite a while I was defending, but he had Landsknecht and I didn't have any iron, lost those two cities. At that point I maybe could have tried OCC. But I built up my army, retook one of my cities and then got smashed again, left with one city. I decided to stick around OCC style from then, but it was already obvious there was no chance, 3 civs wiped out, Catherine out of control, Bismarck slightly behind her. I have no idea how I could have gotten Petra here and stopped Bismarck... Definitely doing this again ICS style, cause getting DF here wasn't hard and it's gonna be crazy
PS Was this continents? From what I explored I saw two smaller islands inbetween two continent like.

Wtg Attaturk

Did you go Liberty or Tradition?

Tradition. First down to get +Food, then faster Wonders (just in time for NC), finish Tradition.

After education I had to go to Acoustics to get rationalism opened faster. Timed the oracle to finish at the same time.

I was using glory7's TSG57 milestones to keep pace.

First 100 turns I was slightly ahead, then started to get behind. (I only built three cities and had to capture fourth, which was not as productive as the rest of them).

glory7 (Attaturk)

GL: 44 (41)
NC + first city: 52(50)
Secularism: 108 (112) 4 turns behind
Plastics: 168 spt 1149 (186 spt 1013) 18 turns behind
All Tech: 194 (211) 17 turns
Vic: 199 (218) 19 turns behind

I did use Pisa engineer to make Big Ben for discount buying, but I did not get to use it for public schools due to being low on funds.

Probably hardbuilding Uni's and schools in all but the capital was what slowed me down.

I used oxford for Plastics, not sure if glory7 used it for Astronomy. I did not have money to buy unis everywhere, so Oxfording Astro was out of the question.

I used one Scientist to help to get to Appolo, the rest were saved for later

Attaturk said:

Tradition. First down to get +Food, then faster Wonders (just in time for NC), finish Tradition.

After education I had to go to Acoustics to get rationalism opened faster. Timed the oracle to finish at the same time.

I was using glory7's TSG57 milestones to keep pace.

First 100 turns I was slightly ahead, then started to get behind. (I only built three cities and had to capture fourth, which was not as productive as the rest of them).

glory7 (Attaturk)

GL: 44 (41)
NC + first city: 52(50)
Secularism: 108 (112) 4 turns behind
Plastics: 168 spt 1149 (186 spt 1013) 18 turns behind
All Tech: 194 (211) 17 turns
Vic: 199 (218) 19 turns behind

I did use Pisa engineer to make Big Ben for discount buying, but I did not get to use it for public schools due to being low on funds.

Probably hardbuilding Uni's and schools in all but the capital was what slowed me down.

I used oxford for Plastics, not sure if glory7 used it for Astronomy. I did not have money to buy unis everywhere, so Oxfording Astro was out of the question.

I used one Scientist to help to get to Appolo, the rest were saved for later

Click to expand...

well done - nice sub220!

for tsg57, that map had a really nice 4 city places (including petra one) so it's impossible to catch up the speed with this map. I think I usually save oxford till the very end and build it at a not-really-good city where I do not make SS parts.

Delaying oxford not a very good habit, but I tend to have other things to build at that time.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 64
Date submitted: 2013-07-07
Reference number: 29293
Your name: Monthar
Game status: Science Loss
Game date: 1814AD
Turns played: 278
Base score: 591
Final score: 591
Time played: 5:35:00
Submitted save: TSG64_Sci_Loss.Civ5Save
Renamed file: Monthar_C506401.Civ5Save

Click to expand...

As I figured, I lost before I could even get to the SS parts. In fact I lost before I even finished Radar. Here's a screenshot of the end. I lost Cumae very early in the war and couldn't get it back. The infantry you see in the screenshot is all the military I have left and the only reason they are fully healed is they just finished healing only because half of them have medic now. The other half were CS gifts.



I wasn't happy about this being another immortal game right after a diety game that was right after the previous immortal game. This was supposed to be emperor, but too many folks voted for immortal. To make matters worse every AI in the game was a an aggressive warmonger type. This could have been a fun last game before BNW, but these two factors sucked all the fun out of it.

I won't be submitting anymore that are above emperor, because I have a hard enough time winning on immortal and deity that even if I manage to pull off a win, it won't be good enough to compete.

I don't think I'll be playing any more of the G&K GotM games either, because once I start BNW my chances having a decent G&K game will drop significantly.

Turn 291 diplomatic victory.
Germany attacked at 102, and drove them back. Razed two cities and anexed Berlin for coastal access.
Then japanese had wiped WZ, and was now massing at my border, so paid aztec to DoW, and then I joined in the fight. He attacked from desert and all my troops on hill with citadels and fort at frontline made it easy to fend him off. Took shanghai, and got another city in a peacedeal to save his cap.
Russa was a runaway, Greeks were dead early, and Songhai went down 280.
I realized around 220 I wasnt gonna make it sience wise. My head became all fussy til 240 deciding what to do. No way to stop cathy, not even all of us combined forcewise, so changed to diplo. strategy. Really messed up the different timeing and social policies, so ended up getting rationalism free techs and having still great scientist x2 after rushing to globalization and building the UN.
I had 11 votes, and failed a last turn coup with 85% probability.
Religion was very powerfull, had the whole continent except 2 of Aztec cities. About 100 faith per turn, as well as alot of culture from the + culture per 5 follower.
Thanks for the game

Science Victory
Game date:1650AD
Turns played:240
Base score:1678
Final score:3495
Time played:19:27:00


Very disappointing finish, i could not get my science high enough soon enough, eventually it peaked at 1268, but when i bulbed most of my GS it was about 1050 and it showed. Plastics t198 with one GS and OXford, t217 Rocketry and five turn AP with three turn prebuild

Then i messed up Hubble, forgot to remove one scientist from a slot in Rome and instead of popping a GE GS combo got a single GS and Ragequitted for the first time
I reloaded the same turn autosave and just played on i did not have to repeat anything.

In the end conquered all of Aztec lands, waited with last city except the one i left him with up north above Kyoto, due to lack of happy.

i think the biggest stumble was actually losing Oracle and not getting extra policy and delaying rationalism open. I planted two GS, used pisa GE to get BB, and had enough for schools and then labs but could not catch up by then.

I think a very strong warlike open would have worked here too, to grab some nice puppets early and let them use Roman UA. I wasted too much time and then when finally going after Monte got cocky and for some reason thought i can attack and move back on same turn with a legion and in two turns lost a open march and rough march legions and took another twenty turns to take a key city i already had at 3-5hp.

GG guys

@ Monthar That is the fastest immortal SV i think i have ever seen, some Deity AIs struggle to finish by that date.

I actually abandoned my game in the end. It was a futile game from very early on


Catherine has a score of 2039, I'm second on 597. I met her about 50 turns ago and she was triple my score at that point. She entered the modern era about 30 turns ago.

Has anyone else had a game with a completely runaway opponent?