TSG102 After Actions

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- How did the map type affect your strategy?
- Being an archipelago map, did you find much use in the African Forest Elephant? If so, how did you use them?
- Did Dido's unique traits play a role? Did you make use of crossing mountains? If so, how?
- In hindsight how would you have played it differently (if at all) for a faster finish?

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.

Bit divided really but the whole point is to get better so I made some mistakes and hopefully I have learned from them.

I built a scout and heavily scouted my starting island, I know the map was Achi~ but it is not unheard of for their to be a civ~ sharing your island with you or at the very least a city state.

Unfortunately their were 2 city states and one was on a separate island. My scout hung around to grab a worker but that wasn't successful till around turn 40.



My research was slow too, I knew I would need Optics to embark and boats to get an early kill so I built some UU, and found Japan hiding a little south-east. Declare war and... He sinks a boat. This is not going well.

By turn 100 I had made peace and taken a break to re-evaluate my life. This round of combat. I decided that while boats are strong, so are elephants and the two combined would be a strong task force. I also wanted to fight on two fronts since the goal is the fastest win time and I figured I could manage 20+ units without going bankrupt. The lack of ruins hurt my start in some ways but the many barbarians willing to give their life to my culture made up for the initial slow start.

At this point I had met most of the civ~s already and eagerly traded embassies. Japan asked me to war with them against the Ottomans and I was only too happy to snipe both capitals in short order. I left the civ~s alive to focus on capital rushing rather than complete elimination.



With turn 150, I had completely reversed my fortune but I fear I will have lost out on fastest win time. If you trimere rush you can scout out and often snipe a capital or two and while I was concerned (rightly so) about the raging barbarians near my capital, chances are they wouldn't have hindered obtaining the VC all that much outside of being annoying.

By turn 190 I had every capital except one and Astronomy under my belt. With all my pillage gold and forcing city states to give me tribute, I upgraded my UU and merrily sacrificed them like lemmings in order take Honolulu.



Final Thoughts
Dido is one of those leaders I hate to fight against (Elephants are a nightmare!) but when I play as, I don't really care much for.
I really could have done just as well if not better by exploiting Liberty. Free harbors means +1 happiness per city, the +1 production would have helped and faster worker speed is always welcomed. I experimented with things such as City State XP farming in order to generate a GG but once again their just wasn't that many mountains for me to care about. I crossed one in the entire match.
I like playing as Dido for peaceful VC but whenever I try to use her as a warmonger it just falls apart.

*All screenshots were taken after the game, not during. Not sure why picture number 2 shows Quicksaving... but I presume I hit the quick save hotkey instead of F12. Never knew you could quick save until now.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 102
Date submitted: 2015-01-15 13:18:58
Reference number: 32183
Your name: vadalaz
Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 200AD
Turns played: 123
Base score: 505
Final score: 2104
Time played: 1:56:00
Submitted save: Dido_0123 AD-0200.Civ5Save
Renamed file: vadalaz_C510201.Civ5Save

Click to expand...

Settled in place. Several forests to chop, 2 wheat tiles, some hills in range, I saw no reason to move. Checking the scorelist after t0 revealed that only two capitals had more than 1 coastal tile, so I figured quinqueremes wouldn't be enough and went for a Galleass rush instead.

Opened it up with a monument, a granary and a worker. Next up was Great Lib (t44) into NC (t54). Finally built some quinqueremes for exploration after that, found everyone's capital by ~t90. After that I started building the Oracle and beelined Compass, with a small detour to Bronze Working for barracks to get the Mobility promotion on Galleasses quicker. Meanwhile I placed a bunch of quinqueremes near the cluster of City-States for tributes, and DoWed the AIs for peace deal trades. Had over 1600 gold saved up by the time I researched Compass, enough for 4 Galleasses. Rush-bought some more during the actual wars as well.

I had 3 armies, 3-4 galleasses and 1-2 quinques each, 1st army took care of Japan and Polynesia, 2nd army was for Theo, William and Liz, 3rd one Suleiman and Askia. I split the second army into two in the end to take Amsterdam and London on the same turn.

Policy-wise: Tradition to 15% wonder bonus, Honor left side, Exploration +3 hammers and Harbor happiness.

Finished turn 131

Played a pretty similar game than vadalaz but inexperience with that kind of map/difficulty combination shows I guess.
-Biggest difference is that I forgot about tribute gold and bullying AIs so my first army probably took a lot longer to be made than vadalaz (like 12turns after compass tech). On the other hand I went Liberty so I probably teched compass faster. After reading his post I was like "Yeah that's true Prince is that stupid "
-Also I'll remember the barracks idea for mobility since most of my game was indeed just about moving units around.

Went Lib + Exploration however and therefore made 2 cities (cap + 1)

Apart from these difference in build order and abusing money my game went pretty much perfectly.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 102
Date submitted: 2015-01-15 18:17:40
Reference number: 32186
Your name: Acken
Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 400AD
Turns played: 131
Base score: 591
Final score: 2273
Time played: 1:21:00
Submitted save: TSG102_Win.Civ5Save
Renamed file: Acken_C510201.Civ5Save

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Won on t139. My first naval domination win!

Not an efficient win. My exploring was awful, I met the last civ on 109! and I discovered a couple of very useful passages very late. Changed my plan from quinquie rush to galleas rush once I started the game, as I was afraid of having caps with only 1 sea tile, and yes there were a couple. It's easy to say you are going to do a Quinquie rush when you have never done one and don't even know how many quinquies you will need. The plan change made me lose a few turns (see Opening Actions thread). And I forgot to start building Great Lighthouse immediately and lost it and also forgot to start asking for tribute from the very beginning of the game.
Anyway, GL, compass while building triremes and accumulating money. Galleasses, kick off the wars and after that it was just a matter of reaching the caps and seeing them fall. I had no idea how many units I would need, so only created 2 armies with like 6-7 units each, by the time I realized you only need 2 quinqueremes and 2 galleases my units were already not well deployed. I split 2 more armies for a total of 4.

Opened tradition, mostly for the border growth, then honor for culture. Did not find any CSs until really late as my warrior first scouted the north and then the west of the island. Did not ally any CSs. Just built units. Seeing Vadalaz write up I should have built the barracks, so obvious. The rest of the policies very similar to Vadalaz's and Acken's, right side honor, wonder help in tradition for GL & NC, open exploration for the extra move. Only land unit I had was an Elephant that I rush bought in Gao as I though Honolulu was going to give me trouble, but it was not necessary.

The game felt...easy. Of course it is Prince. It is incredible how powerful these naval units are, even the quinqueremes, and how they can even survive city counter attacks. And the movement is incredible! You can reach pretty much everywhere very quickly and in the same turn position and attack. But of course everything seems fast and easy after trudging for 15 days on boreal maps with CBs at immortal. And also, is it me or do the raging barbarians rage a little bit less in Prince?

Finally, Vadalaz, I just saw you comment about checking the t0 stats to figure out if there are any caps with 1 tile sea attack, how do you do that? Would have helped me a lot to decide to just go for galleasses from the very beginning instead of spending 20 turns wondering and then changing my plan.

Civ5 GOTM 102
Date submitted: 2015-01-17 10:22:11
Reference number: 32198
Your name: Bleidraner
Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 580AD
Turns played: 139
Base score: 630
Final score: 2333
Time played: 13:32:00
Submitted save: GOTMDomArchiJanDido_0139 AD-0580.Civ5Save
Renamed file: Bleidraner_C510201.Civ5Save

EDIT: just saw the 13 hours duration, of course that's not true more like a couple of hours, I just left the game running as I like to play in 1 session whenever possible, so I started yesterday and finished today.
EDIT2: With screenshot now.

You get 1 point per tile, 0 for water. There's 7 tiles in a new city (6 ring + core).
So if a civ has 6 points from terrain it means 1 water tile.

You can't see the details for unmet civs, but at Prince the only difference on the first turn will be the terrain. On Deity you'd have to account for extra stuff like techs, but all AI are the same so you can still see who has water on turn 0 (the guys with the lowest scores).

Acken said:

You get 1 point per tile, 0 for water. There's 7 tiles in a new city (6 ring + core).
So if a civ has 6 points from terrain it means 1 water tile.

You can't see the details for unmet civs, but at Prince the only difference on the first turn will be the terrain. On Deity you'd have to account for extra stuff like techs, but all AI are the same so you can still see who has water on turn 0 (the guys with the lowest scores).

Click to expand...

Thank you Acken. Very useful.

Too slow... Turn 253. Spent 50 turns slogging it out with Japan and filling Kyoto harbour with my Q-boat timbers and sailors' corpses. Ended up doing most of the work with a couple of chariot archers and catapults using Q-boats to draw their fire.

I wasted some turns getting Kyoto on its feet before marching on Istanbul razing a now-forgotten Japanese city en route. Istanbul (already conquered by Japan) took Japan out of the game and set the world against me with the exception of Istanbul's former owners who were happy to declare friendship until I picked up the pace.

From Istanbul I upgraded to frigates and swam a catapult to Gao which, a few turns after arriving, became mine.

A brief stopover in Honolulu where I also picked up another city (and gifted it to Silly-man). That was en route to Constantinople and she gifted me two cities - one of which went to Silly-man. The other one (Nicea) was near a mountain of gold but the citizens were too lazy to go get it preferring instead to tend sheep and work an over-fished patch of ocean.

Didn't bother sending workers to Constantinople, there was still one vineyard intact and nobody (a) had any money to make it worth my while to sell excess luxuries and (b) wouldn't have paid me a fair and reasonable price even if they had the money and (c) I really didn't need the money at that stage anyway.

So off we sailed to London where we put a Ship of the Line below the waterline and pillaged the Crown Jewels.

Next and last stop: Amsterdam. Nice that they were so close together. Whichever army of navy Will was sneaking to England was nowhere to be seen and probably wouldn't have made a difference in the end. My boys hit the town, visited a couple coffee houses and that was that.

Aside from wasting time on rebuilding Japan, I burned hammers on needless wonders. Thought I was going to be unhappy so wanted a religion and therefore built Stonehenge to get it. I only ended up buying 2 pagodas and could manage the rest with coliseums (or is it colisea?). Socially, I went Liberty, opened patronage and wasted a bunch of hammers on the Forbidden Palace and, for good measure, built the Sistine Chapel - burning a Great Engineer for it just because Amsterdam looked like falling before I'd be done with it.

Next time, I'll wait for the Galleas rather than suicide a fleet - even if I could pop a boat every 3 turns!

Bleidraner said:

But of course everything seems fast and easy after trudging for 15 days on boreal maps with CBs at immortal.

Click to expand...

Agree with that! (Didn't manage to do the trudging successfully in the end so this one felt good).

Decent start, captured Kyoto on T99 (+ GL, ToA wonders) with 2 char arch, 2 arch, quin. Eliminated Japan on T110.
Captured Istanbul on T125 (+ Parth and Stat of Zeus) with 2CA/2A/2 elephants. Ottos completely eliminated by T131.
Found Songhai, England, Netherlands around the same time.
Founded Pantheon Goddess of Love on T135 to help with Happiness.

This where the things went awry a bit. It took forever to get anything resembling an attack force over to the England/Netherlands island. I moved the army I had + a couple boats from the Ottoman takeover across, though the way there was quite convoluted and took 20+ turns to set up. Meanwhile I built a few ships back home and sent them the other way around to meet in the middle.

Took out the Netherlands on T168 with that main army. Thankfully, I got the Great Lighthouse with Amsterdam. That was a god send. I can't believe I didn't realize how important that extra movement would be. Not building Grt Lighthouse was the biggest mistake.

The secondary mini-navy coming from the back way picked off an unprotected Gao on T172. I knocked off one of their other little cities, though I never bothered to take Tombucktu.

London fell to the Carthaginian combined First Army/Navy on T177, bringing with it 5 wonders. I also took out a second city on the way to Honolulu, but left the last city to flounder on its own.

Somewhere during the Netherlands/England wars I finally found the Byzantines. Talk about being inefficient, yikes. I really wanted a sub-200 finish, so I sent a measly band of elephants over to try to take Constantinople while the main army/navy took Polynesia. Unfortunately, the city defense was like 28 and the elephants made little progress and I was forced to wait for the main forces.

Honolulu fell on T198. I actually got Navigation around this time, but didn't have any iron (D'oh!). I quickly built a mine and upgraded a couple frigates. Constantinople was no match and fell on turn 208.

I ended up using land troops a lot more than I expected. That probably wasn't a good thing for speed. Though since many of the capitals had only one coastal tile, it was probably necessary. Main siege force was 2 chariot archers and 2 archer/longbows with various naval forces.

Social Policies: I took most of liberty and finished honor right at the end. I guess that was fine. Maybe could have used exploration as others have noted.
Mtn Crossings: I made a couple, one to get to Kyoto, another to surround London better. Overall limited impact.
Elephants: I used these as bombardment fodder, seemed like when I put one next to a city, they'd shoot at that instead of the siege archers. That helped a lot as those archers upgraded all the way to range and logistics.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 102
Date submitted: 2015-01-24 03:17:59
Your name: stridecolossus
Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 1490AD
Turns played: 209
Base score: 1052
Final score: 2565

Was hoping for a pre-200 result but made a few mistakes during the game.

- How did the map type affect your strategy?

Click to expand...

Obviously sailing techs are more of a priority mainly to explore and find the other civs. Would usually build a scout but on this map (and no ruins) skipped for an earlier monument.

- Being an archipelago map, did you find much use in the African Forest Elephant? If so, how did you use them?

Click to expand...

Not particularly, built a couple just because I could.

- Did Dido's unique traits play a role? Did you make use of crossing mountains? If so, how?

Click to expand...

The free harbours are always nice for some early cash.
Crossed a few mountains but it was a convenience on this map rather than a game-changer.
Built a lot of the nice, cheap Quinqueremes both for exploration and taking out coastal capitals.

- In hindsight how would you have played it differently (if at all) for a faster finish?

Click to expand...

Overall strategy was explore to find the nearest civs, get a couple of cities up and running, take Honour for culture and unit training vs barbs, research sailing techs and rush with archers, quins and a few melee units, then basically research military to keep units strong. I think this was a sound approach but I made a couple of mistakes:

- Forgot to update units before attacking Byzantium and tried to capture the capital with a suicide squad. Almost got it but not quite and therefore had to build a new army

- Realised I was getting a production penalty because I had so many units! Should have been attacking more even if that meant units dying.

- Didn't build any science buildings but could have done this whilst going to war.

Was a fun game though

- stride

Game: Civ5 GOTM 102
Your name: quizman
Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 900AD
Turns played: 155
Base score: 686
Final score: 2212

A simple enough game if not the quickest. Compass was going to be needed so I went straight to writing for the GL/NC combo and then the techs needed to develop local resources before heading off to sailing and optics. I did eventually reach astronomy, but did not need the caravels.

All wars were fought with galleases and quinqueremes except Constantinople where my lone elephant took the city (just because it could). I don't think either UU contributed more than normal units would do. I did find the great lighthouse and opening Exploration helped with the speed of travel on the high seas. Galleases being able to move 5 squares per turn saved a lot of next turn clicking.

Settled in place. Went with 2 cities, cap plus one other on the left of my island, so ships could go east and west and built one flotilla to go each way. The 2nd city was founded with the settler from Liberty after which I switched to Exploration and Honour.

I was very slow at the end because I failed to find the Dutch before t100 and then stupidly agreed peace with one AI and their cities were blocking the short way to the last 3 AI's through their coastal tiles. It was quicker to go the long way round than wait 10 turns for the peace treaty to expire. Never mind, I was not threatening the fastest finish anyway.

I went GL all the way, but ended up using too little navy for this map size, which resulted in at least 30 turns slowdown. I thought it would be funny to have an army of amphibious elephants, which was funny, but not effective in terms of speed. I would have won much earlier with 5 galleasses and about 3 quinqueremes only. I should have taken out Theo much earlier, when she had little to no navy, which was a small pain/delay in the end. Taking out Kyoto first was a good idea.

I liked this game for all the civs having naval UUs or UAs. The main difficulty was bridging the large gaps between the civs, so next time archipelago means naval armies all the way with minimal strong land unit support (only for those hard-to-reach coastal cities). Dido was a really good choice with her elephants and q-boats, but only with galeass backup.

Domination victory Turn164.

Decided to try the quinque rush. Settled in place, started monument, shrine (for the gold from religion), worker, 4quins. Teched Pottery, sailing, writing (for embasies).

Found Japan qiockly, but realised it had only 1 coastal tile Didnt know the score trick. And on a hill, I wont get it with quins only.
So I realised I need something more - archers or galeases? I decided for archers.

Meanwhile my other exploring quins found netherlands and england. Perfect. First attack there. I took Rotterdam, healed, bought 2 archers and took the rest of the Island. I realised that I can actually take cities with 4 quins and only 1 coastal tile, at least the secondary ones. Quins are so powerfull.

Meanwhile I build some more quins and archers, teched to CBs. With that I took Japan (thanks for the big lighthouse) and Arabia. I build and elephant just for fun in Arabia.

Meanwhile I sailed my army from the english Island West to polynesia (oh how far it was compared to sailing east ). I didnt realise how close askia was from Arabia. That slowed me much. I also found byzantines late, when trying to shorten the route to polynesia from carthage. I was really surprised that there is one more civ. So I had to basically move all the army back there, which took many turns.SHould have taken them first. Finally I used like 15 quins and 3 XBs there. I started by attacking with quins (dealing 5-10 net damage per turn to the city), just because I had so many ships and it took so long for the XBs to come.Finally built some more XBs in capital, which should have been done much earlier.

I messed with policies. Started tradition/honor, then finished tradition for the gold and hapiness. Couldnt start exploration because I ddi not reach medieval for a long time. I had to adopt a policy 1 turn beforereaching medieval

Game: Civ5 GOTM 102
Date submitted: 2015-02-02 23:44:11
Reference number: 32264
Your name: Kendon
Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 1655AD
Turns played: 241
Base score: 1361
Final score: 2835
Time played: 11:09:00
Submitted save: Dido_0241 AD-1655.Civ5Save
Renamed file: Kendon_C510201.Civ5Save

With archipelago I didn't use scouts. The conquest sequence was Suleiman (the fastest way to get iron) on turn 112, Constantinople turn 174, England 200, Kyoto 214, Netherlands 229, Songhai 234 and Hawaii 241.

Three quinqueremes, three longbows, a spearman and my warrior were used against Suleiman. Suleiman's workers had all gone to other cities taken by Oda. Sending a worker from Carthage earlier to mine the iron would have given me a swordsman 10 turns quicker.

At turn 99 Construction was finished so getting the bows from Carthage to take Istanbul in 13 turns wasn't bad; but with Great Lighthouse that job might have been done in 10 turns.

Building an army and getting it to Constantinople ate up 62 turns. Quinqueremes might take capitols but at least one ground unit has to be there to hold them. Oda in particular was watching throughout the game for an opportunity to move on Istanbul.

Two elephants were used primarily for the terror advantage. Dido's extra money from instant harbors might have been as important as the more powerful quinqueremes.

One thing I tried to remember was to stop sending units against barbarians once those units reached 30 experience and stopped gaining promotions. New units were always sent first after barbs until they reached 30.

I finished Philosophy at turn 111. I could have left it for later but I wanted to stay ahead on science. I might have spent too much time on techs to employ the worker instead of keeping my mind on war. It was turn 185 when Compass for the galleasses was done so they were only a factor in the final three attacks.

My opening strategy was to rush Bronze Working. I got it at turn 55 (Pottery, Sailing, Writing, Mining, Calendar, Bronze Working, Optics) which I suspect is a lot slower than the fast finishers.

I'm not sure how to speed up science in the early game. It makes a big difference to everything that follows.

T158 Domination Victory

First time playing archipelago map and first time going for a domination victory.
Went for quinqueremes and composite bowman rush... No clue about the score technique.

Went for honor SP tree and finished it along with commerce opener by the end of the game.

Tech Order : Pottery, Sailing, Archery, Mining, AH, beeline to Construction.

Build Order : Monument, Worker, Granary, followed by quinqueremes and archers

Made Japan DOW ottomans and then conquered Kyoto on T85 with CB and quinqueremes

Took Gao on T99 with quinqueremes only.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 102
Date submitted: 2015-02-04 02:35:38
Reference number: 32268
Your name: vindy
Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 960AD
Turns played: 158
Base score: 630
Final score: 2032
Time played: 6:32:00
Submitted save: Dido_0158 AD-0960.Civ5Save
Renamed file: vindy_C510201.Civ5Save

Click to expand...

- How did the map type affect your strategy?
Went for Sailing earlier and made quinqueremes

- Being an archipelago map, did you find much use in the African Forest Elephant? If so, how did you use them?
Nope, Did not use them.

- Did Dido's unique traits play a role? Did you make use of crossing mountains? If so, how?
Crossing Mountains wasn't that useful.... but a free harbor sure did.

- In hindsight how would you have played it differently (if at all) for a faster finish?
Should have known the score trick.... would have gone for galleass instead of quinqueremes

The GOTM Server is down so you cannot submit your saves at this time. We are working on it and appreciate your patience.

Server is operating again.

Should be able to submit your saves.

haha, cool. that was a well-timed errand running afternoon for me then. ill let you know if i run into anything.

Pretty much as vadalaz did except I went for a second city after a Granary this meant I missed out on the Great Lighthouse. Luckily it was built by Japan which was the first city I took. It also had the SoZ. Lunch money paid for most of my Gallaess and the one lone elephant I built in captured Jenne which was right next to Honolulu. I chose to go for range rather than speed as it allowed for extra Gallaess to shoot which made taking Honolulu probably 3 turns faster. All in all a fun game. The unique units are nice but the unique ability makes carthage work.












Here are the new details we have recorded.


Game: Civ5 GOTM 102
Date submitted: 2015-02-13 00:15:26
Reference number: 32300
Your name: knowtalent
Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 540AD
Turns played: 137
Base score: 649
Final score: 2403
Time played: 4:05:00
Submitted save: Dido_0138 AD-0560.Civ5Save
Renamed file: knowtalent_C510201.Civ5Save