TSG77 After Action thread

Welcome to the TSG77 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? How many did you end up with?
- How did you use religion or spying to your advantage given BNW? Are these elements more of a factor, or less?
- What Social Policies and Ideologies did you select and how did they support your goals?
- How did diplomacy go with your neighbors?
- Were your UA and UU helpful in achieving your goals?
- Were any AI runaway's in your game?

Please do not post link to videos of your game until the submission date has passed in order to prevent spoilers for other players. Thanks.

Well that was painful. I'm not sure what happened in the middle but things got a little weird. If I didn't know better, I'd swear things were rigged to go bad

First off, after Japan was dispatched, nothing but barbs kept coming down from the frozen north along that skinny peninsula. Japan went Honor and would have made tons of honor kills if they hadn't killed the camp. I had kind of a mini Stalingrad going there for a bit.

Then, I got driven out of Order and into Freedom by 2 city Spain who just happened to have a faith wonder next to one city

I had to bail on Order and then I was down to -9 happiness for about 10 turns and 2 waves of guerilla INFANTRY rose up at Berlin.

Finally I got things back together and finished up by buying 5/6 parts and launched in 1939!

Game: Civ5 GOTM 77
Date submitted: 2014-01-01 15:28:00
Reference number: 30371
Your name: budweiser
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1939AD
Turns played: 359
Base score: 1456
Final score: 2050
Time played: 5:12:00

I built 3 cities plus Berlin, all along the coast. I also had two cities from Japan. I did something I have always wanted to do and that is use Jesuits for my science buildings. I got Jesuits from Boudicca. It didn't work well, it slowed me down - wont do it again. Diplo was mostly fine, I had a few denouncements but no wars except the first Japanese war. The UU was not used, the UA was a little bit helpful for getting mass on Japan. The UB was good for hammers in Berlin only. Honestly the rest of my cities sucked.

I agree about tht being painful. If you take Japan out early, no one else is close enough to run routes for science for a while. Ideology was a problem for me too..made happiness an issue the whole game..I took freedom. Only other one was Genghis. Songhai ran wild on the big portion of the continent. I actually had to war with hiim to slow him down a bit, take a couple cities. Turn 381 for me. Learning slowly

Surprisingly peaceful for me. On discovering Japan and getting locked between them and the mountains I didn't have a lot of space to expand so made the best of what I had with 3 cities. I didn't scout for the others as I wanted every soldier close to home as Japan kept building units.

I did a merry dance with their workers who insisted on building roads between Kyoto and Osaka through unowned land so I kept breaking that connection until their borders overgrew the road.

Only got about 4 from barb camps until they were all cleared. Had DoF with Japan all game and a few others along the way for RAs. Was told Japan was plotting against me every now and then so pointed him at Songhai for what seemed like 200 turns of war.

Genghis and Songhai kept taking and retaking Japanese liberated city states so were the local but heavily armed pariahs.

I used mostly internal trade routes. Wish in hindsight I'd put Munich on the same coast as Berlin to run sea routes to it so was stuck with caravans.

Siam owned the WC and I was in second so enough to get my way. I built the first and only nuke and then got non-proliferation passed so everyone was afraid of me. Bulbed 5 GSs then built Hubble for 2 more but had to mostly "hard-learn" particle physics with one more GS along the way from international space station but didn't get first place for that one. Realised too late that I hadn't built enough boosters so wasted 13 turns on Neuschwanstein before realising my error.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 77
Date submitted: 2014-01-03 04:15:18
Reference number: 30381
Your name: RaidandTrade
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1970AD
Turns played: 390
Base score: 959
Final score: 1229
Time played: 7:25:00

Ideology was easy this time around as everyone was going Order so I went that way too. Soon enough Mongolia converted but Songhai managed to stick it out with Freedom. Didn't get a religion and didn't prioritise one so didn't even get a Pantheon. Ended up getting Shinto from Japan but that seemed to have no faith based follower beliefs so my FPT was stuck at 9 from my eventual Shrines and Temples - enough to buy one GS late game. Didn't get far with policies. Rationalism, Commerce + Landsknects and then 3 in order (none free). Had a GE sitting around in the hope I could rush build a part and ended up planting him for the extra production when I saw I'd not get near the policy for doing that.

It wasn't pretty, but a win's a win.

- How many cities did you build? How many did you end up with?

Built four and ended with four.

- How did you use religion or spying to your advantage given BNW? Are these elements more of a factor, or less?

I had a faith ruin so picked Sun God for my pantheon. I didn't build any shires or temples, until the Songhai converted my cities which had follower belief for happiness from shrines and temples. had just enough faith in the end to get one GE for the spaceship finisher part.

As for spies, I used my first two to lock up the two mercantile CS so I had not only the happiness from friendship, but the two special luxuries. My third sat in my capital, as I was tech leader from renaissance onward. The rest went to cultural CS, as my builds neglected culture buildings until I had research labs installed.

- What Social Policies and Ideologies did you select and how did they support your goals?

I went full tradition and a couple into commerce, mainly to get Landsknechts and cheaper buildings, then rationalism. Was first to modern and picked order. I used my World Fair win and saved up GWs to plow through rationalism. My remaining social policy picks filled out the order to get the spaceship parts with GE tenet.

- How did diplomacy go with your neighbors?

Got along fine with everyone until the others started picking ideologies. I fought one war when I joined them against the Mongols. The Mongols took a CS, which brought a round of denouncements. When the first AI asked me to join them, I agreed to the ten turns. After that everyone asked and I received some nice diplomacy bonuses that pretty much had everyone friendly, save the Mongols.

- Were your UA and UU helpful in achieving your goals?

The UA helped at the start, getting two brutes, two archers and a handaxe, which set me up as #4 in military. The Hanse played into my gold build-up strategy which allowed me to buy many buildings and have a good number of RAs. I had one panzer, an upgrade of a unit I got mid-game from a CS.

- Were any AI runaway's in your game?

Siam had taken out the Songhai and finished off the Mongols after Spain took the capital. Siam was getting ready to take on Spain next. They also were the culture leader and were halfway through their International Games bonus time when I won.


Game: Civ5 GOTM 77
Date submitted: 2014-01-06 19:51:21
Reference number: 30398
Your name: Swissy
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1916AD
Turns played: 336
Base score: 1056
Final score: 1576
Time played: 4:09:00

I sucked
Game: Civ5 GOTM 77
Date submitted: 2014-01-07 18:28:11
Reference number: 30401
Your name: kb27787
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1876AD
Turns played: 308
Base score: 1392
Final score: 2281
Time played: 2:18:00
Submitted save: tsg77_start.Civ5Save
Renamed file: kb27787_C507701.Civ5Save

Not really used to the double build time on those parts... should've gone freedom instead of order as I'm sure the extra 30 or so turns I would've shaved off from buying them is well worth not getting the 25% science boost from factories. Really bad production didn't help. I was also under the impression that a GE could rush a spaceship part in a single turn, turns out not to be the case.

Stupid UA... I only got one archer this way all game... Hanse is only good if you go freedom otherwise, meh (iron curtain demands that you internalize your trade routes) Next time I'll go freedom for SV. What's worse, the tourism giants decided they love freedom instead of the usual order... doh! I felt like I played a civ with no bonuses whatsoever


Only thing I can be proud of is still I managed to grow my cap pretty nicely despite not having civil society (sun god was pretty pretty broken early game though), and of course, my realtime fast finish time 2hr 18 min isn't bad.

Edit: OMG just found out I FORGOT to build Oxford all game! I FAIL SO HARD!

Hello everybody! I think I can't post my game due to the rules - it was my second try. First time everything went horribly wrong (even missclick-founded a city). I had a rather slow start with little luck with ruins and barbarian camps, then Japan took my favourized city spot down to the left at the river-coast. This had to be revenged, so I built up two other cities (north near reef, and the top right next to the mountains). And I had to attack Japan, and somehow decided to wipe them off completely. It was a horrible decision, not only did I take a city too much, which sent me into like 50 turns of unhappiness, but I was also the villain of the world without any trade opportunities.
Interestingly this allowed Khan to conquer city state after city state without penalties and control a lot of the main landmass. He actually was pretty strong. I did try to catch up for some time, but kept being last or second to last on science, so I gave up around turn 200.

Then I tried again and had a good fast three city opening, built a fourth with observatorium south of the mountains and just built up. I was never at war (oh well once with Isabella for fun, but without any fighting), and finished at turn 345. I made the jump from King to Immortal, just thought I'd give this a go, because I find science the easiest path. Easiest is probably not the right word, but the most straightforward for me personally because I roughly know what to do (beakers, population beakers..) I think I'll go to Emperor now, this was actually pretty stressfull, at least until I surpassed the AI tech at some point maybe in Industrial era.

welcome to CivFanatics and GOTM.

Thank you for not submitting. You are only allowed to submit your first try. Glad to hear things went better in your second attempt. You may post you experiences in this thread for both or for your second game if you wish.

Best of luck in future.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 77
Date submitted: 2014-01-10 15:06:34
Reference number: 30414
Your name: mikeocarroll
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1941AD
Turns played: 361
Base score: 1330
Final score: 1847
Time played: 8:19:00
Submitted save: tsg77.Civ5Save
Renamed file: mikeocarroll_C507701.Civ5Save

I'm relieved that I wasn't the only one to struggle on what looked like quite an easy map but perhaps this was deceptive. I messed up early on when, having decided to destroy Japan, this took me much longer than expected. It also caused me to be isolated diplomatically for the entire game, with only Songhai as a friend for RAs and luxury trades. I think I was wrong not to build any more cities (I had 3 plus 1 puppet) as a couple of extra cities, and by the mountains for observatories, would have helped I think.

I went with Order ideology having got to the modern age well ahead of the others, but then faced revolutionary wave after they adopted freedom/autocracy. Fortunately I had so much gold I was able to buy luxuries from hostile civs at up to 75 gold per turn (per luxury). Still the spaceflight pioneers was handy as the GE-rushed spaceship engine saved me 10 turns or so at the end.

UA wasn't that useful nor was the Panzer which I didn't have to use at all. Hanse may have provided a small boost but not strategically significant. I had a religion with tithes which boosted my gold, but gold really wasn't a problem for me so that had limited use. Faith helped me to a couple of GS plus one GE though.

Nevertheless an enjoyable game - thanks mods.

PS: Had a crash on turn 190 (I think). Reloaded from autosave, fortunately I had only made one action since the autosave, which was to select a proposal for the WC, and so I was able to repeat this exactly.

mikecarroll - interesting that we both killed Japan and finished very close to each other in turn numbers yet I think the path we took was different in between.

@those who killed Japan...
How on earth did you manage it with such a horrible hammer-less start???
(In my game Oda went Honor, and then Statue of Zeus... I was scaaaaaaared, but after he plopped a city to my left miraculously he sent a caravan to me and suddenly asked for DOF!!!???

We remained friends the whole game despite selecting different ideologies... (I had to kiss up to him in WC though... let him be host and whatnot)

kb27787 said:

@those who killed Japan...
How on earth did you manage it with such a horrible hammer-less start???
(In my game Oda went Honor, and then Statue of Zeus... I was scaaaaaaared, but after he plopped a city to my left miraculously he sent a caravan to me and suddenly asked for DOF!!!???

We remained friends the whole game despite selecting different ideologies... (I had to kiss up to him in WC though... let him be host and whatnot)

Click to expand...

I had an upgraded scout, a warrior, a spear, 2 cats and I think another archer upgraded. I'm pretty sure I got one unit from a hut and built the others. I had a lot of shooters so I focus fired his units down and move the cats in for the cities, there were 3 cities. he was outnumbered badly the whole fight.

kb27787 said:

@those who killed Japan...
How on earth did you manage it with such a horrible hammer-less start???
(In my game Oda went Honor, and then Statue of Zeus... I was scaaaaaaared, but after he plopped a city to my left miraculously he sent a caravan to me and suddenly asked for DOF!!!???

We remained friends the whole game despite selecting different ideologies... (I had to kiss up to him in WC though... let him be host and whatnot)

Click to expand...

For me it helped that Japan had a lot of trouble with barbarians from the north. He had just a few units and was struggling in general. Some of his tiles were burning even before I went in...

budweiser said:

I had an upgraded scout, a warrior, a spear, 2 cats and I think another archer upgraded. I'm pretty sure I got one unit from a hut and built the others. I had a lot of shooters so I focus fired his units down and move the cats in for the cities, there were 3 cities. he was outnumbered badly the whole fight.

Click to expand...

WELL he had a CARPET of units in my game I was so scared and he went honor so I basically didn't see any barbs even get close to me.

(although doesn't that jungle start take like 8 turns for archers and 10 turns for spears/cats?)

Game: Civ5 GOTM 77
Date submitted: 2014-01-12 12:10AM
Reference number: N/A
Your name: Dylan Belmore
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1868 AD
Turns played: 304
Base score: 1429
Final score: 2381
Time played: ESTIMATED 5-6 hours.

I achieved my goals. I was the lead in science, by late Medieval era, and was the first to open Resistance via Acoustics. Managed to stay friendly with my circle (Spain, Japan, Songhai and Siam). Sun god, religion with 15% growth if not at war, tradition and constant WLTKD bonus' growth was solid, for the city sites provided. Order, my ideology was widely adopted by all, and we squashed out freedom and autocracy, no happiness problems. Got my key wonders: Hagia, SC, LToP (75% faster scientists in my river city), pretty well any wonder I wanted after that point. Kept art's funding off of the table, so my GS production wasn't hampered. Genghis Khan took out 7 CS, the world hated him as well as Boudicca who was plowing through Siam, she started early with her Pictish Warriors and never looked back. With the terrain setup the way it was, I denounced both without fear of consequence, and all my friends loved me. I never waged a single war, which was great for growth and my trade routes, all though most were used between my 3 southern coastal cities. Diplomacy with Oda is always so fragile in my opinion. I like to beef up my army, 20 turns before our DoF dies off. Usually get 2-3 more units, and throw 5 gpt his way, and he decides I'm worth it to keep as a friend.

The UA, UU, and UB were actually completely useless to me in this game. We banned city states early on to slow Genghis and Boudicca , then embargoed them as well. I got 1 archer from a camp, and a Pikemen later on. Neither had any affect on the game. I didn't make a single Panzer, although they are an extremely fun unit when well upgraded in a domination game.



The large dark red blob, is a empire made of city states and ICS style garbage cities that Genghis used to wage war on his neighbours. He was getting ready to finish off William, and had started in on Spain with the help of Boudicca. He was strong military wise, but like the rest couldn't touch my science, culture or tourism output. If anyone ran away with anything, it would of been my civilization.



Awesome first time experience, and pretty good map! Thanks mods, will be looking forward to all of the new GOTM's to play in the future!

Game: Civ5 GOTM 77
Date submitted: 2014-01-12 13:07:23
Reference number: 30427
Your name: Memoryjar
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1907AD
Turns played: 327
Base score: 1222
Final score: 1880
Time played: 3:53:00

Peacefull game might be better.

I took Kyoto after Machinery. Plant my 2 nd cities near Sugar just when his settlers came for. Japan lost many turn before plant Tokyo.
I razed Tokyo and made Kyoto my fifth city. I let him alive in Tundra to win some peacefull turn.
This cause being hate by everyone except Holland.
I lost many money due to low lux sell (3 or 5 gpt and no 240 full cash). So hard build 4 public schools and so many research lab.
No research agreement. Except Askia who proposed one when I touched Nanotech.

I lost around 10-20 turns in beginning with incorrect build in my capital (warrior over archer, and just one scout).
UA wasn't wonderful, just one archer for 6 camps razed. I tried Opening Honor, I was late of one social policy all the game. Worker's faculties missed me around 10 to 15 turns. Open Honor seems amazing but not for this map. CS are far and many AI Scout took camps where I farmed barbarians for culture and CS influence. I missed also Oracle for 5 turns. With it, game will be easier.

UB was wonderful as usual. + 30 % production when I build spaceship was a good help for saving some turns.

I didn't use UU.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 77
Date submitted: 2014-01-12 17:09:07
Your name: seelx
Game status: Science Loss
Game date: 2008AD
Turns played: 429
Base score: 1128
Final score: 1128
Time played: 6:36:00

I built 6 cities and retained them to the end of the game.

I didn't use religion at all. All the faith I got was from city states.

Social Policies:
I started with Liberty. Once I found Japan and scouted the local geography, I wanted to expand quickly to keep from getting cut-off if Japan expanded.

I started Commerce, but only because I wasn't able to choose Rationalism. At the end of the game I improved it so that I could get science from the economic buildings.

As soon as I was able, I picked Rationalism. Necessary for the science victory path.

Finally, I went with Order. Useful for science, but I was also slow to it and several AI had already chosen it. I didn't want to rock the boat.

Diplomacy:
I managed to make friends with Japan early on. So we never had a war. In fact, I never had any wars the entire game.

Trade was limited to Japan early in the game. Later, the Dutch were my primary trade partner.

I was able to make a handful of research agreements, which helped a lot.

I traded steadily with all the AI for luxury resources. I used these to keep my happiness relatively high and with Rationalism use this to boost my research.

Unique Abilities:
These were not useful. I didn't build a single Panzer the entire game, and since I never traded with a city state, the Hanse wasn't that useful. Though the slight extra gold for trade routes to the AI countries never hurts.

I did get 3 or 4 archers from Furor Teutonicus. It's possible that these extra units helped deter Japan early in the game.

AI:
The Dutch and Siam both did well in the game, each carving out a large chunk of the continent. I was worried that the Dutch would attack me in the later years. We were never that friendly, and after they destroyed Songhai, I was sure we would be next. Siam eventually won the Science Victory.

Notes:
Well I lost. I feel good that I was only 9 turns from the victory though. I had 2 engineers ready to finish the engines, as soon as they were researched.

I usually play on marathon speed on huge maps. I forgot how quickly things happen on the standard speed.

The first big decision was what to do about Japan. I wanted those Dyes, and seriously considered an early war against them. Then I got my first 3 cities, Japan became friendly and decided just to leave Japan be.

I'm not sure if expanding to the later cities helped that much. Sure I needed the coal, but other than that they didn't contribute much.

I was not very good on wonders. I missed out on the Great Library, but I did manage to get the Hubble Space Telescope.

My mistake was probably not keeping more specialists working science.

seelx said:

Notes:
Well I lost. I feel good that I was only 9 turns from the victory though. I had 2 engineers ready to finish the engines, as soon as they were researched.

Click to expand...

Welcome to CivFanatics and GOTM.

Glad you joined us. Nice try and hope to see you improve over the next several months. Keep up the good work.

kb27787 said:

@those who killed Japan...
How on earth did you manage it with such a horrible hammer-less start???
(In my game Oda went Honor, and then Statue of Zeus... I was scaaaaaaared, but after he plopped a city to my left miraculously he sent a caravan to me and suddenly asked for DOF!!!???

We remained friends the whole game despite selecting different ideologies... (I had to kiss up to him in WC though... let him be host and whatnot)

Click to expand...

For the record: I retired near a nea certain late game victory - major comp issues caused my game save to give issues, so when I was unable to use my 5k faith to buy several scientists, after having 3 policies in Rationalism...I said forget it.

As for Oda....Zeus nor Honor is a direct threat to you early. The issue is the UA. At no time in any Japanese war do I use anything but ranged fire for offense. As for how I beat Oda...used my UA far and wide to gather some brutish cannon fodder, then built 4 comp bows, 2 spears and a cat, and played rope a dope.

Capture - or offer up a worker - back up in firing range and smile as they come out to take the worker as you pounce. Oda's troops dead, you close.

vra379971 said:

Capture - or offer up a worker - back up in firing range and smile as they come out to take the worker as you pounce. Oda's troops dead, you close.

Click to expand...

Nice trick.