TSG80 After Actions

Welcome to the TSG80 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 did you use religion or spying to your advantage?
- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
- Did OCC traits contribute to your game plan or victory/loss? If so, how?

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). Please refrain from posting videos until the deadline for submission is over.

Would be interested to hear any thoughts on game setup.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 80
Date submitted: 2014-02-15 22:03:02
Reference number: 30642
Your name: Mac1961
Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 1921AD
Turns played: 342
Base score: 1008
Final score: 1482
Time played: 3:46:00
Submitted save: Ramkhamhaeng_0342 AD-1922.Civ5Save

Timed my GS badly...had to wait 27 turns for World Leader vote.
Exploring was painful...had like 12 land units out running around looking for CS
USed religion for Swords into Plowshares, and the [productivity one, forgot the name
Sukothai was size 45 at the end
Most fun was a Great War infantry that found two upgrades from ancient ruins while out searching....Mech Infantry running around in 1850, hehe

I got also t330 smthing as well... not gonna submit it
By a VERY stupid mistake I delayed my win by 20 turns...


But gonna show you some pictures...

My plan was if half the world gonna enter Atomic, then might as well make half the world two civs; this way we enter Atomic when I enter atomic...


And so my plan went (mistimed bulbing going into atomic with the vote cost me 20 turns here) and really should've had a victory on t314 but instead...)


stupid mistake by me should've really checked my allies one last time... having one ally drop to friend the turn of the world vote was so painful... even if you give them money that turn the vote was already counted... forgetting 250 gold cost me 20+ turns... of course had this been before the fall patch I would've won easily; when there are only 2 civs left you have to take all the CS and then have some modifiers...


Finally... had to spam "next turn"... if it's like this I might as well had aimed for going into information myself and saved myself hundreds of clicks conquering... I was well into info by this time... stupid mistake to end a frustrating game. t337 is beyond pathetic.


btw, I had to have my mountain, so move my settler I did... this was where I settled. Arabia took desert folklore but I got my own religion up and took religious tolerance so my faith was through the roof.

By the way, GotM staff did you purposely made it such that the CS near us were all mercantile (and hence useless)? and that there were minimal amounts of food CS and all of them were across the ocean...

My game will end on t267 plus 29. I am disappointed.

I needed another round of RAs, but I dropped the ball. Curses. My last RA was signed on 185 and I had full rationalism and PT. That was pretty lazy.

Religion: I built fully loaded Interfaith missionaries and used them to speed me up to PP, Banking, etc. I even rescued an enemy prophet, spread to Rome, and then hit it with a missionary. LOL

Spy: Tried to spy up the sailing line on Willem, but he was too slow to research. Used most spies on CS.

Map: The starting location offered safety, of course the CS were hard to find, but on monarch the human has the whole new world to himself. I found 5 pop ruins.

Because it was King, I knew the AI would not get aggressive vs my UUs.

I dropped T157. I settled on a coastal desert tiles near a mountain, west from start location. I had Petra T90, NC T100, Education T125, Oxford for Navigation cause I was really low on science.
Despite Petra, food was low.
The point is ToA miss a lot. I start the game for it, and when I reach archery, I discovered ToA was not include.
I start war and wiped Pedro and Gandhi. To keep gold, I left Arabia alive for my caravans.
When I start to warry Morroco and after Rome, I had discover only 6 CS, scouts where killed by barbarians.

My coastal city (my priority over mountain) went to a dead end. I had no motivation to push units 2 or 3 tiles a turn to discover CS on the other continent, and have to manage barbarians camps to secure my caravans or worked tiles.
I think, I would win around T350 or later.

No early food CS and so many mercantile CS, no ToA, no access to ocean put my strategy down.

Thank you, you made a great GOTM. I really like this sort of challenge.

It is now turn 259 and I got a notification that the election for World Leader will be in 24 turns. I will certainly win the election, being allied to all city states and being friends with all other civs (except the Dutch, who were wiped out by the Romans). All I have to do now is press 'next turn' 24 times, not something to look forward too.

I tried to get to the information age sooner. I built five academies and I used a lot of scientists to discover technologies. I am not sure if I timed the switch from academies to bulbing right. Also I just read that the bulbing strength of a scientist depends on the science per turn at the time the scientist is born (or bought with faith). So for more powerful scientists, temporarily switching production to science should help a bit. But this realization came too late in this game.

Its strength is based on science per turn last 8 turns, not when is born. You can stock them.

Memoryjar said:

No early food CS and so many mercantile CS, no ToA, no access to ocean put my strategy down.

Click to expand...

Re: ToA. Are there any plans to include ToA in future games?

Memoryjar said:

Its strength is based on science per turn last 8 turns, not when is born. You can stock them.

Click to expand...

Thank you! Both these facts are very good to know. So for optimal effect you can save a couple of great scientists and then produce science for eight turns before you intent to use them. That would have been a nice thing to do after having reached research labs.

budweiser said:

Re: ToA. Are there any plans to include ToA in future games?

Click to expand...

No exact plans but since it is a part of a DLC we'll only be using it when we make games with that DLC. Now that all expansions have been out for a while we may start working the DLCs in as a regular setting. As always, each GotM will have those details in the announcement.

Alphons Rodulfo said:

Thank you! Both these facts are very good to know. So for optimal effect you can save a couple of great scientists and then produce science for eight turns before you intent to use them. That would have been a nice thing to do after having reached research labs.

Click to expand...

You can test this by looking at the GS each turn. Just hover the mouse over the GSs beaker icon and it will say how many beakers it will provide if you expend him. Each turn it should increase. As you mentioned, it is best after all of your Science buildings (Labs) have been built.

HR

So here are the submission data:

Game: Civ5 GOTM 80
Date submitted: 2014-02-18 13:31:48
Reference number: 30664
Your name: Alphons Rodulfo
Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 1830AD
Turns played: 286
Base score: 1064
Final score: 1866
Time played: 9:27:00
Submitted save: Ramkhamhaeng_0286 AD-1832.Civ5Save
Renamed file: Alphons_Rodulfo_C508001.Civ5Save

I tried to get a unanimous election, but none of the civs I befriended wanted to trade votes. With just the city states backing me I got 48 votes, with 40 needed.

Although I did not have any war with other players (I even did not steal any workers) it was an enjoyable game. The heavy exploring that was needed kept things kind of interesting in the first part. But mostly this game was about optimizing science, and I hope I learned something about that.

I liked the game setup because it provided a challenge that was out of the ordinary. I hope next Games Of The (half) Months will continue to provide uncommon challenges, making players try out things they have not done before.

A question about the World Leader election: The game explained that the elections take place on alternating turns. What does that mean exactly? Is it every even (second, fourth, etc.) meeting of the United Nations? Or is it possible to have an election for World Leader on the very first meeting of the United Nations?

Thanks again to the GOTM staff!

T286, pretty good.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 80
Date submitted: 2014-02-18 14:48:03
Reference number: 30665
Your name: kigur
Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 1745AD
Turns played: 260
Base score: 876
Final score: 1717
Time played: 8:43:00
Submitted save: KigurGotm80T260.Civ5Save
Renamed file: kigur_C508001.Civ5Save

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

my religion was : DF Tithe Sword to plowshare, religious community, religious text.

get 1st religion t82 enhance T110 with HS prophet.
with borobudur + 2 prophet from faith before industrial era, i was able to spread pretty well, tithe become a big portion of my economy (30 to 50% of my gpt during medieval and renaissance era).

spying was useless. can't steal a tech from the game, all cs was ally, so i just use them as diplo for world congress vote.

- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?

CS make me crazy ! tons of mercantil and few maritim. find panama late (T90) and le cap too late (T245).

- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?

difficulty and my "heavy production settling" make me build lot of wonder early.

- Did OCC traits contribute to your game plan or victory/loss? If so, how?

First time i play a OCC game. occ traits don't really contribute to my gameplan, i was just a bit confuse because i was late on my usual mark of a "classic game".

Game: Civ5 GOTM 80
Date submitted: 2014-02-19 00:05:15
Reference number: 30668
Your name: Browd
Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 1818AD
Turns played: 280
Base score: 1019
Final score: 1852

Click to expand...

Settled 2 tiles due south of the starting location -- didn't want trash tundra tiles in my first 3 rings, but still wanted the dyes. Multiple local barb huts, map type and the difficulty level (barbs unlikely to be cleared ... ever), led me to take the Honor opener, and still finished Tradition around turn 80! No wars, etc., workers only stolen from cleared barb huts. Was lucky to find the maritime above Marrakesh fairly early, so that helped the food situation a bit, but given the crappy food environment, religion was Fertility Rites and Swords into Plowshares for +25% growth, Divine Inspiration for faith, and since AI cities were unlikely to get very big, Church Property (2 gold/city) and Holy Order (cheaper missionaries). Spies were used exclusively to rig CS elections. Offshore exploring was done by a couple of UUs, each of whom popped upgrade ruins, to cavalry -- very durable.

I've never really explored the BNW diplo mechanics, and it is clear I don't understand the timings. To avoid triggering WC too early, I teched to Archaeology to enter Industrial (also wanted to stop involuntary faith purchases and preserve faith for Great Person purchases), and then circled back to complete the Printing Press line (hadn't even researched Construction). I thought that already being in Industrial when the WC was established might accelerate the process, but it did not appear to do so, since I still had approx. 26 turns to the first WL vote after entering the Information Era. Or maybe it did, but I still had too many techs to research to get to the Info Era before the second WC process started, and got stuck between votes? Going to have to explore this a bit further.

I gave some thought early on to stomping around the map, eliminating all but one civ, so the WL vote would be triggered when I entered Atomic, but quickly concluded that would be very frustrating. OCC, starting on a corner penunsula (tundra to the North), meant whatever units you sent out to conquer would be obsolete soon after you took out a couple of civs, and the only place to upgrade required a long hike home and then a long hike back again to tackle the next civs. Also, since each city you took would be insta-razed, you wouldn't really be able to prevent other AI civs from settling new cities in the empty space while you were occupied elsewhere. Playing whack-a-mole didn't seem like much fun, and a likely distraction from growing and teching.

Browd said:

OCC, starting on a corner penunsula (tundra to the North), meant whatever units you sent out to conquer would be obsolete soon after you took out a couple of civs, and the only place to upgrade required a long hike home and then a long hike back again to tackle the next civs.

Click to expand...

I don't remenber. You can't upgrade units in allied CSterritory ?

Nope. You could in early vanilla, IIRC.

You could build the world's longest road to speed up the back and forth, but the maintenance cost would be deadly. Might pay for it with pillage gold, but ....

Turn 411 and oh man was that a slog! Won't be picking up any prizes for that one but I took it to the bitter end and a win's a win I suppose.

How did you use religion or spying to your advantage?

Religion for CS quests was good for some early friends/allies. I took papal primacy which also helped.

Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?

Map type, not so much. The map itself on the other hand...

Effectively landlocked and left my scouting too late so I didn't meet Monaco until turn 380 something. Took a while to find a number of the others with embarked cavalry units too. (I settled to the west of the starting position on the coast between the two rivers).

CS's kept asking for wonders I couldn't build (e.g., Machu Pichu, Neuschwanstein). Machu Pichu was out there forever it seemed.

How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?

I spammed wonders with impunity: Stonehenge, Oracle, Borobudur, Porcelain Tower, Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty, Broadway, Sydney Opera House, CN Tower, Big Ben & Hubble...

Did OCC traits contribute to your game plan or victory/loss? If so, how?

I knew this would be about gold and science to everything was about getting science going and staying friendly for RAs. Gold was all about trade routes and selling to friends when I could. Rather than maintain military, I kept everyone busy with each other.

Aside from an early "war" with Arabia (I stole a worker), I didn't fight. I did fund a few wars though. Rome was put to the sword by the Netherlands with the world's blessing (they were eating up CS's) and my financial backing. China fell to an Autocratic (???) Brazil and India was down to one and a half cities at the hands of Brazil and Arabia. I was friends with the Netherlands the entire game (they took Freedom like me) and I was running at 107 happiness at the end. Never played Siam before but think I'll take them again. It's nice to play happy and I'd like to try them for domination.

I only managed a couple of WLTKDs as Arabia took FOREVER to improve sugar and near the end my citizens wanted crab and NOBODY settled near it and CS's didn't have it so I couldn't go get it. Being stuck in the landlocked bay until submarines slowed things a lot.

It was really down to the wire at the end. In the previous vote I was five delegates shy and Morocco offered theirs for 32 GPT and every resource I owned. I was willing to pay but needed another CS to make it worth it. Once I got that CS I went back to Morocco and they then changed their mind so I had to wait 20 turns. Not sure why but I couldn't place a diplomat in India's capital despite having an embassy. If I'd had that, I'd have bought Morocco's vote and been done 20 turns earlier...

I ended up selling a few buildings and military units in the final turns to get enough gold to bribe two remaining CS's. Gifted nuclear subs as well. Ironically, the turn before the vote Brazil launched a sneak attack on me.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 80
Date submitted: 2014-02-19 18:20:20
Reference number: 30673
Your name: raidandtrade
Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 1990AD
Turns played: 411
Base score: 943
Final score: 1150
Time played: 7:50:00
Submitted save: Ramkhamhaeng_0411 AD-1991.Civ5Save
Renamed file: raidandtrade_C508001.Civ5Save

Hello all! Taken part in a few GOTM games in the past, but this is my first submission (and post).

Turn 354 DV, but not really optimised at all. I'm none too familiar with breakpoints for when the congress allows for Leader votes, so I just went to built a mighty city! The result was a very wonder heavy capital, buying most required buildings with the economy.

Started out on the sheep, seemed a good balance of food/hammers/river, even if no observatory. Early game was spent fending off more barbarians than I expected, losing a scout and early units to some fortified positions a little carelessly, leading me to be a little slow exploring the continent.

Rome was an early aggressor to almost every non-Siamese civ, leading to the deaths of both the Chinese and Dutch, through Brazil eventually reclaimed the Chinese cities for itself.

Bulbed through Industrial real quick to reach my ideology (the only real 'trick' I used), and couldn't decide on much that felt super useful.

Any early shot, turn 174. At this point China was down, and I still hadn't even found all the city states! Printing Press was being learned, with Navigation not far behind to start exploring the New World.


A final shot of Sukhothai on the final turn.


How did you use religion or spying to your advantage?

It felt like a religion gamble was not paying off, as I was very slow to get faith rolling. However, Siamese Buddhism proved to spread far and wide. A super aggressive Rome was quick to adopt the belief and kept Caesar's frienship.

Dance of the Aurora was my opening belief, but ended up taking a backseat until later when the city decided to grow north.
Swords Into Plowshare / Feed the World aided growth.
Itinerant Preachers keeping the faith, even suppressing Beijing's Taoism eventually.
Tithe rounded out the economy.

It played into my strategy though, giving my religion to Rome, India and Brazil who developed no faith of their own and keeping us in good friendships.

Spying was very passive, rarely more than diplomatting the capitals to force my early votes through.

Religion and spiying were just two tolls in the whole diplomatic arsenal that kept the trades with the Siamese profitable, and conflict something done by Rome, and to Rome. No non-Roman wars occurred!

Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?

It was slow to both reach and explore the new world, but it gave plenty of freebies. I suppose it aided more than anything, as the AI seemed to never send any ground units that way, meaning I could reach the goodie huts unmolested.

How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?

I had only recently started playing on King at the end of Gods and Kings, and only started playing BNW this month, so this is my first King game on the new expansion. Honestly didn't notice anything out of the ordinary and never felt threatened. Bought/built next to no units in the early game. My religion spread early to nearest neighbour Arabia which kept us on good terms until he founded his own. Really, everyone was too focused on holding Rome back.

Did OCC traits contribute to your game plan or victory/loss? If so, how?

Having only one city provided me with plenty of security in my options.

I pushed economy far earlier than I might normally, with a view to buying most buildings which worked out well, leaving my natural hammers to focus heavily on early wonders. I wouldn't normally have risked a push at the Great Library, and also Stonehenge to help bolster otherwise low early faith.

It also made me progress through the +trade techs slower than normally, as I was not in reach of many other cities for a long time.

Kevral said:

Hello all! Taken part in a few GOTM games in the past, but this is my first submission (and post).

Click to expand...

Welcome, officially, hehe! There's a wealth of information in these posts for players of all skill levels so thanks for posting your results and game discussion.

HR

I had the same game more or less as KEVRAL...

No screenshots, and I don't have the game details handy, but finished T358 (359 with the one more turn, turn?). I had nearly +100 happiness, was allied with every CS, with the exception of a few turns here and there, since I met them. The quests they offered were well timed and couldn't have been easier to complete!

I opened the WC, probably too early from what I understand. I didn't even get to the world leader vote until the 8th or 9th meeting, so who knows how early I could have won if I had done it "right". I definitely need help on teching after Renaissance. It seems I can more or less keep up with you guys until then, but comparing later turns, I'm way behind in bpt and techs learned.

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

I was late getting faith going (picked the tundra one), so I missed out on a religion by a few turns. Ended up watching Netherlands (Protestants) and Morocco (Islam) spamming missionaries to change my religion. Each religion had benefits I could use.

I tried using spies for tech stealing, but only stole techs I could research in a few turns, anyway. I ended up using them in city-states, just to pad my relationships.

- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?

It may have hindered...I took a long time to cross the ocean, since I settled on the sheep next to the starting spot. Playing peaceful, the only civ I went to war against was Rome, and had to march troops back and forth a couple times, which wasn't fun.

- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?

Having just played a bunch of games higher in difficulty, I forgot how much easier it is to get wonders.

- Did OCC traits contribute to your game plan or victory/loss? If so, how?

Not sure. I was able to keep allied with every CS almost non-stop once I met each. The bonus may have helped.