TSG69 After Actions

Welcome to the TSG69 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?
- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
- Did the Diplomacy Victory condition exclusion change how you play a science game?

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.

Reference number: 29698
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1868AD
Turns played: 304
Base score: 1766
Final score: 2943
Time played: 2:50:00

I forgot about Recycling Centers! I spent probably 20 turns waiting for Ragusa to give me aluminum. It had a mine on it, and it was in its borders, but still no aluminum. What's up with that? I guess Ragusa needs to research aluminum before it can give it to me?





After waiting and waiting, I sent a great general I had leftover from fighting Shaka to Singapore, my other CS ally with aluminum close by. I dropped a citadel, captured its aluminum and started to improve it. Then I suddenly remembered I could have built recycling centers like 15 turns ago after getting Ecology.

That error led me to fail the sub 300 finish. Well, that and the fact that I spanked Shaka very early on and had some happiness/growth problems. I also think I should have prioritized fertilizer earlier. Too bad we're counting turns and not "Time played."

Thanks for this game. It was a good setup. The neighbors were warmongers, but they weren't too close, and it looked like the capitol would have lots of food, but really it did not. Warlord has a set of different challenges than immortal, where I usually play. I wasn't worried about getting rolled by any civs, but I struggled to find any trading partners with or resources to trade. There were also few civs who could actually sign research agreements.

This will just be a partial report with things not necessarily in order.

I started off with a fairly passive BO in the Cap: Scout (since we had Ruins I built it first) -> Monument -> Granary -> Warrior. I went Tradition as usual since I rarely ever found more than 2 additional cities. In this game I only ever founded one more: on the "coast" (doh!) to the west of Lisbon.

I probably should have started war with the Iroquois much earlier than I did. I actually stole 2 of their Settlers and later discovered Barbs had grabbed a third (when I captured that Barb camp)! Despite that, the Iroquois still managed to expand 3 times before I got the forces (CBs and Trebs) to take 3 of their cities (burning one of them). I left them their crappy southern most city near the two City-States.

In hindsight, I should have kept going and taken Pacal's Capital and probably Rome as well. I certainly had the military might to do so, and the difficulty level was low enough that happiness wasn't going to be a big deal. Instead, that was the end of my warring although I almost DoW Pacal when he sent a Great Prophet to convert my Iroquois captured cities.

I built a LOT of Wonders this game. In fact most of them except the crappy ones and the late game Culture ones. The only one I missed was Chichen Itza since I had just started my second Golden Age when I was about to start building it -- so wasn't worth it.

In the World Congress, I manage to pass Sciences Funding... and of course Arts Funding passes as well negating it. Why couldn't the AI have decided to ban a Luxury like they normally do??

Decided to go Order rather than Freedom even though Gold didn't seem to be an issue. Curious what people went here since I could argue either way. In the end, the extra beakers from Factories won me over.

Once I discover Electricity, I noticed that my territory did not have any Aluminum. For some reason, this did not seem to bother me at all... until I started trying to build Spaceship Parts... <sigh>

With a turn 265 Apollo Program, I thought for sure I wouldn't achieve a sub 300-turn win, but I had a LOT of Great Scientist hanging around (having only settled my first one).

Um, so yeah... about that Aluminum... I decide to take over Singapore since it not only has Aluminum, but also Coal (which I didn't have access to at all). I go about my merry business only to realize a little while later that I am going to need a lot more Aluminum! Fortunately (unlike kamikazees), I remember that there is a building (the Recycling Center) that can give you some; I quickly look up the tech tree to figure out where the heck it is. I then head towards Ecology next.

I built 2 Spaceship Factories, but that turned out to be useless. I built Hubble in the Capital which only really mattered for the Great Scientist.

And that brings me to another mistake I made. I thought I would have plenty of culture to grab Scholasticism from the Patronage tree before finishing off the Rationalism tree (which I needed to do in order to buy the last couple of Great Scientists). But alas... In the end, I end up burning a GE to build the Sydney Opera House and still needed to wait 5 turns after that to get my last SP. Note that I had built Cristo Renditor earlier, but that wasn't enough.

In the end, I don't think I lost more than a dozen turns since I had to juggle Great Engineers and Great Scientists anyway. I think by far the bigger mistake was not taking over the continent and cruising from there.

all was good till plastics. but then, i should have probably stayed away from warring. i think 2 annexed caps were not nearly worth it - i could raise beakers quite a bit, but tech costs became so high. peaked at 1,6k.

in the end i was missing sci quite a bit. one extra scientist came in too late because i mistakenly used PT too early to avoid a GE pop. anyways took me way too long to get to apollo and be ready for all in science, should have just hammered wonders (pisa/pt/taj) i needed and locked all to science right away, cash for buildings was no problem.

its really hard to get good amounts of sci in for late techs without RAs.. had something like 10-12 GS and still one or two short..

for another delay i waited one turn to bulb for last tech and could not get next turn because of the one tech per turn constraint

Game: Civ5 GOTM 69
Date submitted: 2013-09-17
Reference number: 29705
Your name: casualplayer
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1874AD
Turns played: 308
Base score: 2475
Final score: 4057
Time played: 6:56:00
Submitted save: Maria I_0308 AD-1876.Civ5Save
Renamed file: casualplayer_C506901.Civ5Save


So bad. Like I mentioned (in the wrong spot) I slightly delayed building Great Library and lost it to Pacal on Turn 50 with 2 Turns left. I got sloppy in the end game because I'm not used to growing this tall (41 pop cap) so I had about 7 unassigned citizens producing squat and not assigned to specialist spots for who knows how long. Sigh.

I had a really good pace going up through Sci Theory (even with blowing the GL slingshot to Philosophy) but without the benefit of decent RAs it took me forever to get to Plastics, like post-200. I tried a few RAs but an RA was worth only about 2 Turns of beakers. I was growing like a fiend but my BPT was barely 500 by Turn 200; 25 Turns later it was over 1000. I finished cranking 1900 BPT, nearly 2000, but could never make up for that 50 Turns it took me to get from Sci Theory to Plastics.

I settled in place, put Porto at the headwaters of the river to the west and put Braga on the desert peninsula for a Petra city. Porto turned into my best production city with 4 Salts, Stone, Iron, and more besides. Beautiful spot for an OCC with lots of food and four different luxes. I eventually settled Coimbra up by the mountain to the north to hook up the Coal. Took Shaka and Pacal's caps and 2 other cities from them that I probably should have refused, burned or sold. Worker steal against Rome early gutted him and Worker steal early against Shaka seriously impaired him. Pacal was my friend until I noticed he had Aluminum in his cap. Friendly as can be with the other continent. Enough Salt to go around, only 240!

Another stall out were the projects like World's Fair and such. I would throw my hammers in, produce about 40-50% of it on my own and then go work on something else. The other AI would put like 2 hammers a turn in until I would finally get impatient and go finish it off. I built the International Games and Space Station almost entirely myself just to get them done.

Warlord is weird. Nothing happens! Each AI, except city-spamming Hiawatha and myself, had only 2-3 mediocre cities but there was still good dirt left at the end of the game. The Ivory peninsula was still unsettled by Rome as was south of Tikal, with a nice river and two Wheat. Wacky.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 69
Date submitted: 2013-09-17
Reference number: 29707
Your name: Tabarnak
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1595AD
Turns played: 229
Base score: 1526
Final score: 3391
Time played: 5:45:00
Submitted save: Maria I_0229 AD-1595.Civ5Save
Renamed file: Tabarnak_C506901.Civ5Save

BO : Scout-scout-granary-settler-settler-caravanx2-(stuff)-GL-NC

I bullied 3 cs and rush bought a worker asap. DoWed Zulus and captured a settler. Stayed at war without killing or capturing any other units. He blocked the way to to the south and i wanted access in case of barb camps notifications. Made peace a bit later and never warred again.

3 cities food Trad strategy. Planted 3 more cities after the NC.



My cities didn't build a single public school/RLabs. All rush bought excepted Petra city for a hard built RLab. So all cities built temples/banks/stock exhanges/windmills(maximizing secularism policy) and the Grand Temple in capital to get 1 ge and 2 gs from faith. Got 3 rounds of 4-5 RAs. The 2 first rounds were crappy but the last one was pretty good.

Lost Oracle turn 102. Missed HG by 3 turns. Built CI-MP(large income boost)-Petra and many more. Education turn 107(Engi detour, 3x5% penalties from new cities). Astro turn 119. Secularism turn 150. Scientific Theory turn 165. Radio turn 173. Plastics turn 192. So everything looked very slow until near the end.

Then it was explosion time. 5 full powered RAs, 12 gs total(11 needed). Cleared end of tech tree with near 1550 bpt starting from turn 213(Apollo barely finished, Hubble turn 225) to turn 226.

Built all stuff with 3 aluminium only. To get the aluminium mine i have spent 600 gold and bought tiles until he naturally popped the mine on 4th ring. A settler was sitting on a 7 alu. mine near Thebes just in case. But this extra city wasn't necessary.

nicely done tabarnak! seems RAs were worth it after all. I had edu t96 and apollo ~t200 but still finished way behind you with about same amount of GS but not cities/RAs..

Game: Civ5 GOTM 69
Date submitted: 2013-09-17
Reference number: 29710
Your name: jshelr
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1971AD
Turns played: 392
Base score: 2951
Final score: 3783
Time played: 12:49:00
Submitted save: Maria I_0392 AD-1972.Civ5Save
Renamed file: jshelr_C506901.Civ5Save

Well, this was a good lesson.

I simply built some archers and wiped out all neighboring civs with spears and upgraded bowmen. Then I focused on allying the city states and building population. Evidently, that was far from enough. Back to the drawing board.

By the way, the comment above that warlord is weird seems correct. There was no military to attack, basically.

The AI built GL very early and before me, so I am out.

Tabarnak said:

BO : Scout-scout-granary-settler-settler-caravanx2-(stuff)-GL-NC

Click to expand...

Did you get a Culture Ruins early? Is that why you skipped Monument?

What turn did you finish the GL on? That BO seems to me like a t60+ GL depending on how much "stuff" you had in there.

Final question, how were you able to bully City States without building a single Warrior? Even on Warlord, I thought all AIs started with a Warrior so you would not have a Military advantage? Note that a Scout being upgraded to an Archer doesn't count as a Military Unit (for some weird reason) when you try to bully a CS.

Thanks for the nice report.

t.248

My first BNW science win.

Went for 3 city GL --> NC start, then expanded to 5 and took one as a gift from Zulu. 6 seems like a good number for this SV (or maybe 7?). Anyway, the problem was: no one wanted to be friends with me for a really long time. And i didn't bother being nice towards them either.. warmonger's habits. As a result i only had 2 RAs. Total. Not that RA's gave much, but i had plenty of cash all the way, so, could have done it 10-20 turns faster, with proper planning.



I particularly enjoyed Continents map. It has a feel of exploration attached to it. Nau's unique abilities only add to that immersion. And Maria's extra gold is quite noticeable. Strong naval civ. Warlord AI doesn't bother hunting barbs though. Lost 5 cargo ships along the way with barb encampments spawning in peculiar locations.



Thanks for the game guys. Powerful starts never get old.

EDIT: Almost forgot. I couldn't drag myself away from wonder whoring and built, like, 12 of them, including GL, Parthenon, Stonehenge, Oracle, Hagia, Chichen, Taj Mahal, Pt, the tower, etc, etc.. lol. Part of the reason i finished late, i am sure.

I don't want to bore you guys with a personal journal, but perhaps someone can comment.

Been playing for several weeks now and have generally downplayed research agreements, preferring to use gold to ally with the city states and get research from them by way of patronage.

I didn't know it, but apparently this has worked at emperor level primarily by slowing AI research and let me win slow games with diplomacy or culture. When stacked up against the science strategies on display here, my way got crushed.

So, if I can improve my game by using RAs, should I sign them with all civs or focus only on the lagging divs? And if gold is scarce, do you prioritize paying off the city states or RAs?

Game: Civ5 GOTM 69
Date submitted: 2013-09-17
Reference number: 29712
Your name: tibbie
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1822AD
Turns played: 281
Base score: 1358
Final score: 2425
Time played: 11:24:00
Submitted save: Maria I_0281 AD-1822.Civ5Save
Renamed file: tibbie_C506901.Civ5Save

Puh, glad to be able to submit this time, guess that would be the first! Really liked the game, although Warlord difficulty was a bit confusing, didn't know what to expect. Perhaps biggest difference was that AI felt somewhat poorer throughout the game and caravans/ships gave no science points for me. This was a good game for wonder-whoring indeed.. and it was very tempting to see all of these wonders never built and turns passing by..

Had 2 cities of my own, capital settled on place and my 2nd city on the luxury next to river that was south-west from starting point. Decided to take Zulu+Rome capitals.. wonder whether this was a subtle hint that these were located next to a mountain?

Main new things for me were growing cities so big and saving several scientists for discovering the late techs. Was also glad to see Science Funding in effect as it's been a bit hard to get it on my latest science games! Hm, the last 30 turns or so were boring, but I just didn't see a way to make it go faster either. Thought initially that popping all these scientists would make a bigger difference, but oh well

My counter-spy killed lots of enemy spies! There should be an achievement for that!!! Hardly any turns went by without slaughtering some spy.

Hm, also have to comment about the city states and their lux. Was it a coincidence that about every single city state had only Gold as their luxury resource..? I would have wanted to use Feitoria more, this ability felt pretty useless in this game.

kamikazees said:

I spent probably 20 turns waiting for Ragusa to give me aluminum. It had a mine on it, and it was in its borders, but still no aluminum. What's up with that? I guess Ragusa needs to research aluminum before it can give it to me?

Click to expand...

I had the same problem, I did not forget about recycling centers but was hoping to get the resource without having to build/buy several centres. I saw they had built a mine on it but the resource just never ever popped up on my list.. even tried several times to pay 200 gold to improve it, which didn't work. There was a second Aluminum next to Singapore but they never expanded to the tile haha! Grr

Muaziz said:

Did you get a Culture Ruins early? Is that why you skipped Monument?

What turn did you finish the GL on? That BO seems to me like a t60+ GL depending on how much "stuff" you had in there.

Final question, how were you able to bully City States without building a single Warrior? Even on Warlord, I thought all AIs started with a Warrior so you would not have a Military advantage? Note that a Scout being upgraded to an Archer doesn't count as a Military Unit (for some weird reason) when you try to bully a CS.

Thanks for the nice report.

Click to expand...

I frankly don't remember about early culture ruin. But first policy goes out faster at warlord so it's less relevant. GL finished around 60 i think. I got an upgrade ruin. A single Spearman and 2 scouts enabled the 1st rank in soldiers for some time. I even bullied the 2 cs to the south with a single scout. I didn't pledge and protect before that to let me more chances. A scout upgraded gives some extra soldier points but not as much as a spearman.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 69
Date submitted: 2013-09-17
Reference number: 29708
Your name: jbos
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1848AD
Turns played: 294
Base score: 1294
Final score: 2231
Time played: 3:46:00
Submitted save: Maria I_0294 AD-1848.Civ5Save
Renamed file: jbos_C506901.Civ5Save

- How many cities did you build and how many did you decide to acquire?

I only built two cities. Capital was settled in place and the expansion in the really good spot to the west. I knew it would be slower than a wider empire, but seems like it was still reasonable. Conquering or growing more certainly would have been a faster time -- while there are some diminishing returns on the number of GS's you will get. But it was an interesting experiment.

I had two caravans dedicated to ship food between my cities all game.

- How did you use religion or spying to your advantage?

I hit an early faith rune, so I took fertility rites for faster growth. Also, I built Hagia Sophia, and took faith from world wonders, science from missionary spam, and when the second prophet popped, I took cheaper missionaries and swords into plowshares.

I missionary-spammed the capitals of other AIs who had created religions for 200+ beakers per missionary. Built Boroburururororurrorur for basically a free tech or more, though opening piety and grabbing the mosque might have been stronger in the long run. There are some diminishing returns as the science from a missionary is "10 * number of followers of the other religion(s)" and you end up converting a few of those followers each time.

Later in the game, I bought great scientists up to the 2500 piety level.

Mostly I used spying to defend my capital since none of the AIs had techs to steal. In retrospect I should just let the AI steal what they want at this difficulty in hopes they get their own science rates up to boost research agreements a bit. Allying more city-states earlier with the spies would have been stronger I think.

- How did diplomacy go with your neighbors?

I did an early worker steal from Shaka but other than that it was peaceful. I had 4 or 5 friends by the end for research agreements. I got a late start on the agreements thinking they would be poor (and expensive!) on this difficulty but they are still quite useful with the rationalism and wonder boosts even though the AI's contribution is minimal.

- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?

I didn't build any military and was fine with just my starting warrior and a ruin-promoted scout. Later in the game I had a lot of unnecessary military due to militaristic city states which I used to complete some city state barb and tribute quests.

Speaking of ruins, I had bad luck with ruins, popping no tech nor culture ruins. The faith ruin was handy to get the growth pantheon going but other than that it was a lot of maps and barb camps and a scout promotion (ok that archer->composite came in handy to clear out some barbs).

- Did the Diplomacy Victory condition exclusion change how you play a science game?

No. I think I had all the city-states allied at the end so the AI winning diplo wasn't a threat at all. The lack of world leader votes delaying things had the potential to make the international space station possible, though it really was still too late even with a hard satellites beeline. Maybe it could be useful if you hadn't been planting GS's and tech was lagging in the late game?

Tabarnak said:

I frankly don't remember about early culture ruin. But first policy goes out faster at warlord so it's less relevant. GL finished around 60 i think. I got an upgrade ruin. A single Spearman and 2 scouts enabled the 1st rank in soldiers for some time. I even bullied the 2 cs to the south with a single scout. I didn't pledge and protect before that to let me more chances. A scout upgraded gives some extra soldier points but not as much as a spearman.

Click to expand...

I also skipped monument because of the decreased starting culture costs.

1 warrior and 2 scouts can bully on warlord too. Always pledge to protect before you start, if nobody else is protecting it does not increase bully resilience.

For the folks that got very fast finishes (sub t250), I am curious as to what you did with your Social Policies. I know one mistake I made was getting to Renaissance too slowly and thus having to get two Patronage SPs before being able to open up Rationalism.

I assume that you waited to enter Renaissance before completing the Oracle (which I completely forgot about in my game)? On Warlord I assume that this delay wouldn't be a problem.

Also, did you complete either the Freedom or Order ideologies in order to get the extra science and boost with the final Spaceship Part(s)? Going down to tier 3 Ideology requires 4 extra SPs (you get two free tier 1s, then you need a tier 2, another tier 1, another tier 2, and finally a tier 3). Is it better to go grab the tier 3 or to get the Patronage Scholasticism SP for the science boost from Allied City-States?

In my replay today, I managed a much better t241 VC simply by settling 2 extra cities after NC. The rest of the game was virtually unchanged. I even managed to screw up my Social Policies much like my first game, although this time it was the extra cities that me threw off how much Culture I really needed.

On a side note, for my Pantheon belief, in both games I grabbed the +2 Faith from Quarries which seemed really good. Although +15% growth when not at war is never bad. Not sure what Pantheon belief is best for a Science VC.

Finally, did you use any World Congress Resolution to help you in a significant way? Getting an early +33% to GS/GE/GM seemed very good, but it would anger the AIs and I'm not even sure you could pass it (maybe with a bribe?). I ended up choosing the World's Fair since all the buffs are pretty decent.

kamikazees said:

I spent probably 20 turns waiting for Ragusa to give me aluminum. It had a mine on it, and it was in its borders, but still no aluminum. What's up with that? I guess Ragusa needs to research aluminum before it can give it to me?

Click to expand...

Hmm same thing happened to me (and others too having read through the thread), was very strange. The option to pay the CS to improve a resource wasn't there, it looked like there was a mine, the tooltip said it was there, and aluminium was listed as a resource from the CS - but we didn't get it for quite some time, I'd almost forgot about it by the time it showed up.

Like you I used a GG to citadel-bomb the edge of our borders to grab the 3 x aluminium from Singapore, they weren't happy about it