TSG81 After Actions

Welcome to the TSG81 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 Songhai's unique traits factor into your Domination game plan? 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.

dom victory turn 125..
settled inland on the hill.. didnt figure on researching sailing..

main army of 6 composites and a ruin upgraded spearman (later joined by a horseman) went clockwise - aztecs, morocco, egypt, byzantium.. second army of 6 composites, 2 cats, a spearman, warrior and horse got started later on and took out shoshone and greece.. main army finished off portugal.

razed everything except a byzantium city which had salt and te-moak which had ivory and horses and lots of space..

didnt get to chivalry to use the UU..
tradition opener and all but the closer in honor.
8 pop capital lol

pretty good map for fast domination.

Just submitted my game, domination victory at turn 325... almost managed to kill everyone before 1900, but just barely missed. Domination's not my strong suit... it seems that every time I try a domination game, the other civs get too powerful for me to keep going with my original troops. As it was, I was 8 techs behind Greece by the time I finished taking Moson Kahni, Tenochtitlan, and Marrakech.

I'm not the greatest at diplomacy, but I was glad to have pulled off a small coup... right after I finished taking Te-Moak and Moson Kahni, the Aztecs were coming with multiple catapults, compounds, spears, and jaguars... about twelve to fifteen total units, and I would have been in the fight of my life if they'd attacked. I parlayed with Montezuma... asked them to declare war on Morocco, and the cost was only 30 turns of the ivory I just boosted off of the Shoshone. So, the Aztecs and the Moroccans managed to really neutralize each other... and I had to take Marrakech off of Montezuma to complete the east end of the map.

I held pretty still through the medieval age, not even taking one city via cannon... I probably could have gone after Egypt at that point, but I wanted to consolidate (while I was unhappy). I made a beeline for artillery and found it just in time to surprise Alexander with them, as he went pure culture and had already managed to put up his Broadway and the Eiffel Tower. Unfortunately, he forgot defense. Weirdly enough, Greece picked Autocracy for their government type, and since they had me in a wide culture gap I was more than happy to follow them in... and get the sweet courthouse happiness bonuses a few turns later. My concern though was keeping the other three dwarves off of me while trying to defeat Greece, because without their cooperation (and cash-for-resource trades, and research agreements) I still would have been an age behind everyone.

After taking out Alexander, I put Egypt in a pincer attack, broke off about 40% of my force to clean up Portugal to the northwest and finished the game by withstanding Byzantium's bombers with eight or so artillery arrayed. Pocatello managed to throw an escape pod settler down near Egypt's lands, but it wasn't even worth a cursory attempt to kill it. After bum-rushing both Lisbon and Constantinople, I managed to finish the first GOTM that I've done since... ten years ago, for Civilization III. My game's been submitted just a bit ago, though I'm not sure I'd try to run it through again... domination games typically take me twice the play-time of my usual diplomatic/scientific wins, and I'm not sure I'd catch the lucky breaks (Aztecs v. Moroccans, Greece completely ignoring defense) the right way a second time.

By the end, I was clearing +345 gold per turn and had eleven city-state allies... old diplomatic habits die really hard. For culture, I had full honor track, full commerce track, had patronage popped plus one additional bonus (gold gifts more effective) and six Autocracy bonuses, including the first time I've ever used Clausewitz's Legacy. Definitely had a military that could have taken out three civs at once... 'cause I just absolutely hate losing units. Found out that I'm still a builder at heart, had little stomach for giving up cities with their attendant gold/science... had twenty-two cities at the end and finished with +5 happiness after taking out Lisbon/Constantinople three turns apart.

Strongest units at the end were great war bomber/triplane, infantry, frigates, artillery, cavalry.

At the very least, this was the first time that I won a game on Domination on Emperor, having only made the jump to level 6 a couple months back. I know I didn't win fastest, but I played a better game than I ever have before.

As far as the Songhai bonuses go, the triple gold for barbarians/city capture was the deciding factor here. I did absolutely zero religion, and I think the majority of the game I spent in negative GPT... but because of the constant city-taking bonuses, I managed to keep ahead of negative total treasury. The Mandikalu Cavalry was not useful, everyone was practically an age in front of me before I got them. Barbarians were everywhere on the map, so I received plenty of culture for killing and gold for both the Honor-path bonus and the Songhai triple gold for dispersing camps.

Went all Honor which was probably a mistake. Probably should have opened Tradition then switched to Honor.

I didn't have a strong enough focus early on and was torn between pumping out mass Archers and doing a little teching since the UU is very good (and would prove great later in the game... since my game went pretty long by Dom VC standards).

BO was: Scout, Scout, Archer, ..., Library at some point. I eventually tech'ed to Optics for a Lighthouse since I had settled next to Ocean (probably a mistake) -- the Whales were nice though since the Happiness helped and I sold the extra one to Portugal for 240g (hard to believe I had an Ally early game).

Kill order was: Aztech, Morocco, Shoshone, Greece, Portugal, Byzantium, then Egypt. Conquering Egypt sucked since they had the most tech and the most cities. I actually had to circle around back to the east since attacking from the west (after taking Constantinople) would have meant going through 3 other Egyptian cities first and that likely would have taken 30+ turns.

Would have been much better off killing Egypt after Morocco, but there were a ton of hills in the way and hadn't scouted the middle of the map well enough to know that it was nothing but Mountains and Jungle with some choke points to boot.

As usual, I forgot to demand tribute from City-States as my armies marched past them. Could have gotten a lot of extra gold that way, but I simply forgot until late game when my Unhappiness jumped to 15 after my only City-State Ally (Mercantile) went to Friendly (and I had to bribe him back to get under the 10 Unhappiness).

Tactical blunder starting this game after a bad day in the office and looking for quick bloodshed...

Tried to go really early with archers and two promoted warriors in a blitz on Shoeshone. Didn't realise he'd already settled a second city west so imagine my surprise when archers started appearing. Was at a point of no return so pushed it but got slaughtered.

Never tried an archer suicide rush before and probably won't again!

Quit in a strop without saving. Bring on GOTM82...


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Novalia said:

dom victory turn 125..

Click to expand...

snap.

i went the other way - first army took out shoshone turn 63.
roughly 5 archers and a couple of HA and a spearman.
upgraded to CB, took out greece, (78)
split half to portugal then byzantium. HA got stuck in the jungle.
and the other half down to egypt.

other one was mainly CB with a couple of HA went monty, morocco, then helped egypt (who had great wall). I had one UU from upgrade of HA.

byzantium and egypt held me up - shouldnt have split. got too greedy for a quick time.
could have maybe saved 10 turns.

Done on turn 218, having gone clockwise through the entire continent. In retrospect, I could have done it way faster as I had a huge army that could easily have been two separate task forces. I expected Alexander to be way more of a hassle than he was though, he was pushed over really quickly. It was a bit of a chore to trudge through Pocatello's Great Wall territory at the end, but I think I made for a reasonable time.

Askia's bonuses really helped - you can pretty much completely ignore everything else if you're making that much money from capturing cities (and Ramses's Burial Tombs combined with that, woah) because you won't run out anyway. As long as you keep up the momentum, you're fine. Never was really able to use the War Canoe. Mandeleku Cavalry are very nice to send with an army of ranged units to cap the cities and move on, too.

Tinker, sorry off topic, how do you get those extra icons?

pontias said:

Tinker, sorry off topic, how do you get those extra icons?

Click to expand...

(I'm assuming I know what you are referring to, haha.) Look at his screeshot and see that little tile honeycomb at the bottom right by the mini map? Click on that and it lets you adjust the map view. One of the options is to turn on tile icons. That lets you see those icons for lux/strat resourses.

Might be the mod he is referring too

the city state request and WLKD ones are game changing. mainly because i'm too lazy to go checking and often forget to do so.

oh aye.


turn 277 Dom. I win.

i just dont like playing the game super fast.



the dude above posted about not going for sailing, I just dont think that way. i like a nice capital. each to their own.

Thanks for the game again, Hammer. I always play but post little.

(sorry for three posts)
Moderator Action: And then they were one!

how can you use a mod in GotM?

pontias said:

Tinker, sorry off topic, how do you get those extra icons?

Click to expand...

It's bc1's Enhanced User Interface, which is really nice:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=512263

It's not a mod, it's a DLC, so it works.

just loaded it.. pretty sweet.

Hammer Rabbi said:

- 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 Songhai's unique traits factor into your Domination game plan? If so, how?

Click to expand...

- ignored religion and spying. got some religion from captured cities and allied CSs though, so I bought a few faith buildings late in the game when I had Portugal's religion.
-map was pretty friendly for composite bow conquering. I thought I might need more tech to conquer the monster Alex at the end (who also built Great Wall - so he was tough). But Comp Bows with Pikemen turned out to be enough. just swarmed Athens with all my 20 or so units at the end.
-the game difficulty setting led me down the path of Comp Bows, but I think the Aztec capital might have been possible to take with just Archers.
-the UU was never a factor since I didn't get to Chivalry, but the unique traits for the extra money sure came in handy!

Settled on riverside hill between sheep and cows.
Didn't build a second city. mostly just built units. Had two armies:
Army#1 went counter clockwise Aztecs, Marakesh, Thebes, Constantinople, Lisbon.
Army#2, should have started earlier, but went Shoshone, then softened up the Greek empire.
Then merged both armies on Athens.
Fun game, thanks HR!

Retired after turn 180. I started strong, had Aztec, Morocco and Egypt down by turn 93, but then suffered a crash that forced me to reload from the last autosave (which felt like cheating) and then it started going downhill. I had focused exclusively on the military and neglected science, which was fine until the AI civs started to out-gun me. Pocatello also seemed to have a city on a hill with walls and castle, all of my CBs were killed before I could get his city to 50%. Once the Greek musketmen showed up and I was still 11 turns from Chivalry I decided I needed more practice on domination.

As far as I'm concerned, those sub T150 wins really amazed me
Didn't think taking 3 or 4 capitals with comp bow was possible because of the time frame. Retrospectivly, I think settling more cities & building infrastructure is my key mistake. I also wanted to try the combo mass faith + faith buying units but I couldn't even get a religion... Now I'm pilling up 2500 useless faith...

I'm about turn 220, only 3 capitols letf. Took long LONG time to take Morocco's & Egypt's (great wall) with ONLY range Xbow... I'm not too far from arty (already got cav & I got Oxford running for bulbing dynamo) and Alex (my bff4ever) is the only runaway left. Should be able to finish in 20 or 30 turns maybe.

Again amazed how fast this could have been done, congrats!

So, I'm on turn 160 and haven't decided if I'm going to continue to the finish. I have captured all but one AI capital (and haven't even bothered with their other cities). In order, I captured

1. Shoshone - with an archer and warrior rush
2. Aztec (turn 90) - upgraded to composite bows and added horsemen
3. Morocco (turn 113) - same forces
4. Egypt - upgraded to Mandekalu Cavalry
5. Byzantium - same forces
6. Portugal (turn 160) - added a couple of pikes and catapults (and a gifted camel archer!)

The only AI that remains is Greece, but he has the Great Wall. Because of the terrain, I will have to hack my way through at least one or two other Greek cities before I can get to Athens. I still don't have crossbows or trebuchets, so it's going to be a long and tedious slog to finish this off.

Research order: pottery, archery, mining, writing, calendar, then beelined to horseback writing and construction, followed by a beeline to chivalry. then (finally) filled in education.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 81
Date submitted: 2014-03-13 02:09:00
Reference number: 30767
Your name: waveofdoom
Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 1812AD
Turns played: 276
Base score: 2467
Final score: 4485
Time played: 14:39:00
Submitted save: TSG81_waveofdoom.Civ5Save
Renamed file: waveofdoom_C508101.Civ5Save

The bottom line - I just don't play aggressive enough on these domination games. Oh well, I still destroyed my competition, and it made me feel better about myself.

I am rather pleased with getting a victory in less than 200 turns. I remember a domination GOTM that I played, I bellieve it was with Ethiopia, that went on for much longer. Perhaps I did learn something in the meantime.

I founded two cities. The capital went up a bit to the south of the starting location. Later on I realized I did need the whales for and , so I built a city to the east, on the coast. It was able to produce work boats to connect the whales, and later on the pearls near the conquered Aztec capital.

I had some trouble with intial research paths. I thought I would try an army of chariot archers, but it turned out I did not have horses and I was given some archers by city states, so I got an archer army instead.

The first mission was to capture the Shoshone capital, but the archers proved to weak to accomplish that. The first attack wave had to be aborted because I ran out of too. I did get the second city of the Shoshone out of the peace negotiations. With the Shoshone crippled, the army went back home, upgraded to composite bows, and captured the Aztec, Moroccan, Egyptian, Byzantine and Portuguese capitals.

I got the bright idea of building the Great Wall myself, just to deny it to the others, but two turns before finishing it Alexander had completed it . I made a note to prioritize the Great Wall next time.

By the time the first army moved to Lissabon, a second army captured Te-Moak. The two armies met in Greece, where all cities had to be captured because of the darn Great Wall. Victory came when Athens was captured.

Social policies: unlocked Tradition, unlocked Honor, completed Tradition.
Wonders: Build the Statue of Zeus, captured many others.
Religion: Was not very important. Took the Gods of the Sea pantheon, got a religion later.


Game: Civ5 GOTM 81
Date submitted: 2014-03-13 05:07:49
Reference number: 30768
Your name: Alphons Rodulfo
Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 1100AD
Turns played: 170
Base score: 1362
Final score: 4005
Time played: 8:33:00
Submitted save: Askia_0170 AD-1100.Civ5Save
Renamed file: Alphons_Rodulfo_C508101.Civ5Save

Game: Civ5 GOTM 81
Date submitted: 2014-03-12 14:57:23
Reference number: 30764
Your name: 4N4C0ND4
Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 1812AD
Turns played: 276
Base score: 2125
Final score: 3863
Time played: 8:39:00
Submitted save: Askia_0276 AD-1812.Civ5Save
Renamed file: 4N4C0ND4_C508101.Civ5Save

Click to expand...

Looking at other posts, I think there is an expected part of luck

I got foward settled by Monty before I could even get my settler from lib. And he had a massive jag army so I couldn't even try to go for the shoshone with the fear of being backstabed and losing just the game. And he couldn't be bribed either.

So I had to build my army and deal with him first, but it took quite some time before I was strong enought.

I didn't managed to get a religion Shame since I really wanted to try the tenet where you can faith buy non indus units. Finished with 3k non used faith...

Policies were opening honor, then full lib (took GS and planted aca since I was lagging in science at this point) then full honor and full commerce. The last commerce policy is just god like, not even mentionning the +1 from trade post is also pretty sweet from the finisher