TSG117 After Action

Welcome to the TSG117 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.).

- Did you use your UU?
- Was your UB helpful?
- Did you use spying to your advantage?
- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
- Was Faith helpful to achieve victory? How?
- What Social Policies did you choose and in what order?
- Did enjoy Carnival?

Did you use your UU?
Nope - I was so far behind in tech, by the time I had it there was no point in going to war - I'd have been defeated in minutes.

Was your UB helpful?
The camp certainly helped with some culture, but was nowhere near enough on Deity (at one point I think one of the AI had over 1500 culture per turn when I was around 200)

Did you use spying to your advantage?
I stole quite a few techs, and used diplomats to try and increase tourism against those of a different ideology. But even with a carnival I was producing around 200 tourism per turn. Maria had nearly 1000...

Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
Probably helped, because on Deity I'd normally be swamped, but I was left alone pretty much the entire game (no wars that I recall - although I bribed the AI to fight a few)

How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
Deity is, for me, mostly about luck of the AI hurting each other and me winning by luck. This time they were just too strong.

Was Faith helpful to achieve victory? How?
I tried and failed with faith. Got a couple of great people from it, but not enough to make any difference.

What Social Policies did you choose and in what order?
Started liberty. Switch to Aesthetics asap and got to the end of that to increase tourism. But even by then I was behind in the tourism race (and way behind in every other way).

Did enjoy Carnival?
Yes, without it I would never have got anyone past "Rising slowly"! Think I need to learn from what other people did in this game.


I definitely should have gone to war at some point. Also I should have expanded more to begin with to at least encompass my island. Somehow I needed to get more artifacts too, but they were almost all gone by the time I had my first Archaelogist.

Gave up at turn 255. Without a long fight it was over. Failed at too many wonders lost TWO engineers by Civs that got wonder same turn I tried to buy mine (Globe and Statue of Liberty).

Portugal took louvre before global said she had exploration (lie). My user interface wouldn't allow me to destroy unneeded workers and I had to pay huge gold costs that stopped me from buying beaker buildings. Had huge upkeep costs whole game because of this.

Lost needed wonders barely time after time. Not easy winning a culture victory isolated on deity.

Best move was having Mayans attack Indonesia.

Diety was way too hard for me. I retired pretty soon and did not even upload. (Played a random brazilian culture game on immortal instead )

Game status: Culture Loss
Game date: 1902AD
Turns played: 322
Base score: 1494
Final score: 1494
Time played: 3:18:00


- Did you use your UU? Nope.

- Was your UB helpful? It gave a nice boost to culture, but it wasn't nearly enough.

- Did you use spying to your advantage? Yes. Stole plenty of technologies.

- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how? The isolation allowed me room to expand. It also kept me away from Montezuma and
Oda, but it also hindered slowing down anyone.

- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions? It meant that Research Agreements were crucial. It also meant I didn't see
conquest as a viable option.

- Was Faith helpful to achieve victory? How? Well, I was able to buy lots of Great People, just not enough.

- Did enjoy Carnival? Not as much as I thought I would
__________________

Well...Indonesia won by cultural just as the Iroquois, Persians and Portuguese put the finishing touches to their spaceships. The Aztecs, Japanese and Mayans had been destroyed leaving just the five of us battling for victory.

I genuinely think I could have won a Science Victory had that been my focus. As it was I just couldn't produce enough Great Musicians. No doubt I shouldn't have burnt any of them until the final passage of the game...though I'm not convinced that it would have been enough.

I settled next to the mountain and river and then tortured barbarians for a while. I got a religion pretty early due to the religious city state giving plenty of missions and I managed to build the Pyramids after sending out two settlers. I got optics early and settled on the Indonesian continent next to the Great Barrier Reef. Once I got my 6 cities up I also built Machu Picchu.

I had a number of wars against the Mayans, but was able to get some other Civs to join in on my side. As the Mayans faded I could take them on myself. Eventually the Indonesians and Portuguese finished them off.

I managed to tech well due to many research agreements and the bonus of having the Porcelain Tower. I cannot stress enough how important that wonder, spying and cargo boats was for my technology. I was able to get both Sydney Opera House and the CN Tower as a result, but even that wasn't enough. Indeed, much was going well and my production meant I was second in all the projects.

I completed the Tradition tree, one out of Honor (to milk barbarians), one in Liberty (for Pyramids and +1 culture per city) one in Rationalism (for the wonder and bonus), all of Aesthetics and as I had to join the Order crowd and had around 6 policies in that.

If I replayed, I would not burnt any musicians until the very end of game and I'd have built more archaeologists earlier. Even still, I don't see how that could have overcome the massive disadvantage I was at. Worse still I couldn't even nuke anyone as they had nuclear non-proliferation up and running before I got nukes. No nukes were fired in the game...which was a disappointment as I needed something to slow down the opposition. In the end I was building paratroopers to upgrade to XCOM to try and take down some capitals. I didn't have much confidence that this approach would succeed, but I had to try something. As it was, I didn't have enough time.

Well, I think I played well and it should be a decent score. I can't wait to find out how the more talented players won this game.

Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1884AD
Turns played: 312
Base score: 1377
Final score: 2220
Time played: 11:22:00

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- Did you use your UU?
No, comes too late and pretty negligible impact on GA.

- Was your UB helpful?
Yes, lots of gold and culture that generates tourism via hotel/airports, my northern expo with 2 lucky landmarks had almost half the tourism of my capital.

- Did you use spying to your advantage? Stole a few tech but lost a spy to Maria which was a bit of a set back. End game, used spies as diplomat for boost to tourism to civs of different ideology.

- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
It would be a lot easier if my continent had another AI on it, enabling worker steals and early trade routes.

- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
Deity meant no early wonders. In my game the AI tech was quick enough that all the theming wonders before modern era wasn't even possible for me to build.

- Was Faith helpful to achieve victory? How?
Required to buy 2 GM, and some faith was used for 2 cathedrals which gave early tourism due to another AI's religion having Sacred Sites.

- What Social Policies did you choose and in what order?
Full tradition, Rationalism until Secularism + Free thought, Aesthetic opener, Freedom until Universal Suffrage, then it's just about timing policies between freedom/aesthetics, once finished tier 3 freedom and aesthetic, went into Liberty - Representation to extend golden age.

- Did enjoy Carnival?
Extremely OP, I had at least 50 turns of continuous Carnival at the end after getting Internet and was required or else Indonesia would've be impossible to catch.

Game was one of the tougher (slower) CV ones I've ever played on deity. Game was completely peaceful, I didn't even worker steal since there was only 1 CS on my continent and they took forever to pop out a worker, combined with bad terrain.

Settled cap on non coastal area with mountain/river access. I believe it was superior to the coastal to the south. Built 4 expo before having a late T110 NC because I don't have enough gold to rush the last 2 libraries. Grabbed a religion from the Earth mother pantheon. Religion has +growth and +production. Mayans converted 2 of my cities and I built cathedrals in them which gave +4 tourism total with his Sacred Sites. I used a great Prophet to reconvert back all my cities once I have enough other source of tourism.

Oracle was gone T57, so pretty sure it was gonna be a wonder-less game at least until Industrial. Education 136, Scientific Theory 177, pretty slow by deity standards possibly due to slower start.

The ONLY wonders that were completed was SoL (no AI went freedom, so it's free), Big Ben, Sydney Opera House, Neuschwanstein, CN Tower, Great Firewall (to deny AI building it). None of the theming wonders were built, except for the default oxford+hermitage combo.

Reached internet on T260. Usually on other games, I win soon after internet but this game took another 50 turns.
Used the Aesthetics: Flourishing of the Arts to begin the chain carnival, popped 3 more GA to extend, and finally Liberty: representation to extend again. This was long enough because of the 12 turn GA from freedom Universal suffrage. This is basically a 60 turn Carnival at the end.

Indonesia was the only real cultural runaway in my game.
Indonesia had 69k, Mayans 43k, Portugal 32k culture at the end. Mayans and Portugal had some culture but GM bombing only Indonesia would be enough to bring all other civs over influential.

Built Musician guild around the time I reached internet, spawned 2 GM before teching to airport. Spawned 2 more GM after airport. Finally had bought enough CS to pass World Religion near the end, and used my faith to buy 2 more GM. For a total of 6 GM bombs on Indonesia. That is the most GM I've ever used against a single AI.

Peak (with airport+WR+carnival) tourism was 655. For a time, Indonesia actually had almost 670 culture per turn, before I repealed the + culture to world wonder. Without repealing that, it would've taken a lot longer. Indonesia had Sistine, Louvre, Uffizi, and 9 other wonders.

I didn't fight a single war due to constantly bribing Oda or the other AI, also to slow down the science since Persia was trying for SV. Eventually Arts funding passed and it pretty much ensured no AI launches. In fact no AI has built a single part by the time I won.

World Ideology: Order was passed. 5 AI went order, the other 2 autocracy. So I built zoos and eventually stadiums to stay happy until my tourism kicks in. At one point, I was down to -14 and in revolutionary wave. The other major WC proposal passed was +culture to landmarks which helped significantly to speed up the win when I have 5 landmarks in my territory.
WF was proposed on first WC and I won it easily to deny the AI from winning it. IG was proposed on 3rd but I lost it to Indonesia because they had many cities and I only had 5. They were in a war with 2 other AI and still didn't slow them that much.
I used only 2 GW for great works and only 4 GA for great works, and only got 2 artifacts. All GM were used only for concert tours. It wouldn't be possible to win unless I'm playing Brazil when I need to catch up to that huge chunk of culture.

If I was allowed to replay, would've conquered some Mayan cities to steal their great works to speed it up. It takes too long to conquer Indonesia completely and I lose the diplomat/OB/TR bonus if I do. The world was also in constant state of wars after Ideologies kick in, you can see form the screenshots that there were only 8 CS left on the map, rest were all conquered. In general, I would rate this map as medium-hard difficulty for deity, so newer players might have problem winning.

I tried three times.

First time through, I abandoned around turn 220 when my opponents had like 50 tourism and I had around 10.

Second time through, got DOWed by Indonesia because I got caught stealing tech from them twice. Even though they didn't do a full scale invasion, they killed all my trade routes and I was wallowing in poverty.

Third time, did a bit better and actually got a bit of tourism running with lots of stolen artefacts and perpetual golden age after turn 246. Still the AI launched their space ship in the early 300s and I was still at least 100 turns from dominating Indonesia's culture (the culture runaway in all of my games).

I reloaded an old game and tried to go military after excavating all the artefacts, but even after building up some military I didn't see how I was going to capture the AI's size-30 cities with my next-to-zero happiness. Would have taken forever to raze/starve them to a manageable size, and that's supposing that I could get my military up to par with the AIs, which it wasn't.

Anyone manage to win this yet, on first or subsequent playthrough? I'd love to see if / how it can be done. Hey tommynt didn't you call for a higher difficult level? This one might be for you...

Hahaha this was my first Game of the Month. I may try again but so far I was doing fine until Indonesia forward settled me to the southeast before I was able to settle there. So I went in for war which was also going good until Indonesia brought their insane navy to quickly capture my western city. So basically there is no hope against Indonesia.
How do you manage Indonesia? Sheez lol.

Welcome to CivFanatics and Game of the Month.

You picked a heck of a game to start with.

Let's see who wins it and let's us in on their secret.

sebtanic said:

Third time, did a bit better and actually got a bit of tourism running with lots of stolen artifacts and perpetual golden age after turn 246. Still the AI launched their space ship in the early 300s and I was still at least 100 turns from dominating Indonesia's culture (the culture runaway in all of my games).

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You will have to either pass Arts Funding to slow down the AI's that were going SV route, and/or to bribe another AI close to them to conquer their capital, which will pretty much shut down their SV progress. In my game, nobody even constructed a single part by turn 310.

I reloaded an old game and tried to go military after excavating all the artefacts, but even after building up some military I didn't see how I was going to capture the AI's size-30 cities with my next-to-zero happiness. Would have taken forever to raze/starve them to a manageable size, and that's supposing that I could get my military up to par with the AIs, which it wasn't.

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You can't expect to wipe out a civ (Indonesia) entirely on deity in due time without heavily investing in military early, and that would backfire and cripple your own CV progress anyway. If you do it late, you wont be able to manage the happiness hit from razing huge ai cities. So the thing to do here would be to only attack the civ that was an enemy of Indonesia, possibly Mayans and only steal from them to boost up your tourism with stolen artifacts. You don't need to wipe out the Mayans.

Anyone manage to win this yet, on first or subsequent playthrough? I'd love to see if / how it can be done. Hey tommynt didn't you call for a higher difficult level? This one might be for you...

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I won this one on first playthrough following HoF rules. It's definitely medium-hard difficulty when you compare to other DCL deity games. I also did it without any wars.

btg said:

Hahaha this was my first Game of the Month. I may try again but so far I was doing fine until Indonesia forward settled me to the southeast before I was able to settle there. So I went in for war which was also going good until Indonesia brought their insane navy to quickly capture my western city. So basically there is no hope against Indonesia.
How do you manage Indonesia? Sheez lol.

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So on deity, if you settle cities after ai had optics (assuming it's not Polynesia), it's probably already too late. You need get 2-3 settlers out as soon as it's feasible to do so. The problem is worst on pangea type maps where AI will sometimes forward settle you with their extra starting settler and DoW is the only way to solve it in that case.

Sclb said:

You will have to either pass Arts Funding to slow down the AI's that were going SV route, and/or to bribe another AI close to them to conquer their capital, which will pretty much shut down their SV progress. In my game, nobody even constructed a single part by turn 310.

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Did have Arts Funding, didn't help. I believe it was actually Persia who won science, but other civs also had 3 or 4 SS parts completed...

Sclb said:

You can't expect to wipe out a civ (Indonesia) entirely on deity in due time without heavily investing in military early, and that would backfire and cripple your own CV progress anyway. If you do it late, you wont be able to manage the happiness hit from razing huge ai cities. So the thing to do here would be to only attack the civ that was an enemy of Indonesia, possibly Mayans and only steal from them to boost up your tourism with stolen artifacts. You don't need to wipe out the Mayans.

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Thanks for your feedback, I realized this the hard way

Sclb said:

I won this one on first playthrough following HoF rules. It's definitely medium-hard difficulty when you compare to other DCL deity games. I also did it without any wars.

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For some reason I never saw your post until now. Congrats!!!

I found your writeup very interesting. Good job getting 5 cities settled before the AI come to your continent (I only ever settled 4, 5 would have been doable but I never bothered for lack of unique luxes - was struggling with happiness most of the time).

Also, found it interesting that you:
- had almost no army
- settled very few GWs/GAs
- built Musician's Guild very late
- had very few Great Works in general, so no artefacts either (how do you get 655 tourism from only 8 great works?!)

Again, congrats for being the first to win this game!

sebtanic said:

I found your writeup very interesting. Good job getting 5 cities settled before the AI come to your continent (I only ever settled 4, 5 would have been doable but I never bothered for lack of unique luxes - was struggling with happiness most of the time).

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My 5th city wasn't really needed as it didn't add anything to the game and it would be perfectly doable with 4 as long as you put some units there to block the AI from settling that spot. Nobody wanted to trade for the extra salt I got anyway. 5th city sometimes help you win the WF should the AI propose it, but it wasn't needed in my case. I wouldn't have won the IG even if I had 3 more cities anyway.

Also, found it interesting that you:
- had almost no army
- settled very few GWs/GAs
- built Musician's Guild very late
- had very few Great Works in general, so no artefacts either (how do you get 655 tourism from only 8 great works?!)

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When you realize that AI combat is horrible on water maps and you got no neighbors on same continent, you don't really need much of an army. You can always bribe them if you see that a fleet is coming and you can't handle them, but usually it's easy. That's why I put a caravel there to watch over Indonesia. I'm more worried about that Japanese city but I had OB and TR with him, so it's unlikely he'll backstab.

Building Musician's guild late is correct play with Brazil as you need them to be spawned preferably during the final carnival when you have max tourism.

About the great works, I probably could use another 2 of my GW for great works instead of bulbing them as I ended up with too many SP due to miscalculation. I got higher tourism than expected due to having 5 landmarks in my territory and having New Deal from Freedom with the WC +culture to landmark passed. I built only 8 archaeologists, 6th and the 7th one went and dug up artifacts to put in my capital's museum, the final one was still digging up something when I won the game since the last piece was in CS territory and their units refuse to let me get to it.

4 of my great artists were used for great works. (3 in hermitage + 1 in palace) You shouldn't really use more than that for great works since using them for triggering/extending carnival is more efficient.

I abandoned my first game ~t180, after failing to get a religion, spending 30ish turns in unhappiness due to mismanaging my crappy wide empire (6 cities), and just sucking all around in general.

I managed a t291 win on my replay though, where I stuck with the tall empire building I am much more familiar with: standard trad/freedom/aesth with 2 in rati. It helped that apparently no AI built a decent city near mountains, so I snagged both Machu and Neuch. I also got insanely lucky with landmarks as well, with 3 in the jungle expo city, 1 in the cap, and another in a coastal expo, plus all of them were classical or ancient. I was pulling 1179 tourism/turn with all the AI's by the end (after the 171% of bonuses were applied: the usual 100+40+40+25-34), and the 2 faith purchased GM's at the end were worth ~6500 tourism each.

Coilean said:

I managed a t291 win on my replay though, where I stuck with the tall empire building I am much more familiar with: standard trad/freedom/aesth with 2 in rati. It helped that apparently no AI built a decent city near mountains, so I snagged both Machu and Neuch. I also got insanely lucky with landmarks as well, with 3 in the jungle expo city, 1 in the cap, and another in a coastal expo, plus all of them were classical or ancient. I was pulling 1179 tourism/turn with all the AI's by the end (after the 171% of bonuses were applied: the usual 100+40+40+25-34), and the 2 faith purchased GM's at the end were worth ~6500 tourism each.

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It looked like you had similar tourism number as mine, but got it 20 turns faster. Is that because the culture leader had only like 40-50k culture?

Sclb said:

It looked like you had similar tourism number as mine, but got it 20 turns faster. Is that because the culture leader had only like 40-50k culture?

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You are pretty much dead on, the Maya had 46k culture on t291. Thanks to the GM bombs though, the Iroquois were the last holdouts; I bombed them on the last turn to finish it. I think the Iroquois would have been hard to deal with had the game gone much longer, they eventually wiped out everyone on their big continent and had 18 cities with 17 wonders.

My main difficulty in this game was dealing with the barbarians during the beginning expansion phase: I was unprepared for how big a problem they are on deity when you have no nearby AI's to help clear them out. I think I wound up restarting twice before I decided I had to invest in an early archer to be able to actually take out the camps and keep them from periodically overrunning my cap, pillaging tiles, threatening my settlers, and generally wreaking havoc.

I had 2 archers and 1 warrior to deal with them. You can also settle a city in range of a camp and use city bombardment on them. Used my scout to block barbs from pillaging my tile.

I lost my mind and the end, could not figure out how I was trying to win. I even switched into Order. Lost by SV to Maria on T364. I forgot the UA double tourism during Golden Ages. I sat on GP too long, basically ending the game with 3 GA, 2 GW, and 2 GE just sitting around.

EDIT: I replayed from about ~T300 when I used rationalism finisher for Internet. This time not letting RA overflow into Globalism and getting Radar for Airports quickly. Lost by SV to Maria at T360. I was still ~25 turns out from CV. I was in a Golden Age the whole time but ended the game with 2 GA on deck and I could have faith purchased another. Next GM was 4000 faith! Obviously I should have started burning GA sooner.

I am going to reply from scratch, going Tradition and Stone Circles. But DCL #41 first!

I don't remember when last time I finished my game >250T, so this map was really hard and if not Brazil UA peacefully CV would be very difficult.

I got tech lead merely in late industrial era, so only one cultural wonder - Eiffel Tower.

Besides nothing special - tech fast (as I could on this isolated start) to internet and 4 GMs bombs for cultural leaders (2 from faith), didn't have luck with landmarks - only three and none in capital.

T270 Culture Victory



- Did you use your UU?
Nope

- Was your UB helpful?
Brazil's unique improvement is very good. But did not get to use it a lot as there were not many jungle tiles.

- Did you use spying to your advantage?
Yes. Stole a couple of techs and then used them to coup cultural CS. Used them as diplomats for the tourism modifier in the end.

- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
Isolated map slowed teching. Also, worker stealing was difficult (was able to steal one from CS).

- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
Difficulty level made wonders difficult to built. Tried and Lost MoH. Was able to build Machu, Eiffel Tower, STOL, PT, Sydney Opera House (at the very end and did not make any difference to the game. Had extra faith and so purchased a GE)


- Was Faith helpful to achieve victory? How?
Did not get a religion. But allying with two religious CS gave enough faith to purchase one GA and two GM in the end.

- What Social Policies did you choose and in what order?
Full Tradition, Aesthetics.opener, Rationalism till secularism, Freedom till Universal Suffrage, Aesthetics till Flourishing of Arts, Rationalism till Freethought, Finished Aesthetics, Finished Freedom, Finished Rationalism.

- Did enjoy Carnival?
Carnival was pretty good, but am not sure if I used it effectively. Created great works from only one GA. Used the rest for carnival.

The inital game was very slow because of the isolated start and tough worker stealing. Also, it was a mistake to attempt MoH before expansion. Lost MoH and slowed expansion. Made another mistake by not going sailing earlier.

I was not able to get any cultural wonders in the mid-game because of slow teching. Was able to win World's fair and with 3 cultural CS allies was able to eat through policies fairly quickly. Japan conquered both Persia and Aztecs. So all the civs directed their hatred towards him, keeping me safe from war.

Late game rushed to key cultural techs. Built Eiffel Tower, STOL, PT. Portugal, Indonesia and Maya were competing for cultural wonders. So, there was no single runway. Picked Freedom Ideology. Everyone except me and Japan picked Order Ideology. Japan later converted to Order. So, there was Ideology pressure from all the civs and had to constantly improve both my culture and tourism to fight it. Won IG by a tiny margin after sponsoring two costly wars. Used 4 GM (2 generated, 2 faith purchased) on portugal to get the culture victory. By the end of the game Portugal had 34940 culture and Indonesia 32812.

Very interesting that some other games the culture lead has only half as much culture. I hate rng like this.