6otM179 AAR

[Eyswein]

Welcome to the 6otM179 After Actions 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 attach your victory save to your post.

- What was your plan for achieving the VC? What are the major steps you planned to take? What events, if any, changed the plan in execution and to what new plan? Any interesting decision points?
- What were your initial 5-10 builds in the capital or other early cities?
- Early order for technology/civics? What did you prioritize for technology/civics?
- How did the leader bonus and civ unique ability impact your plan/play, if at all?
- How many cities did you settle and/or capture? Where did you settle your first few cities?
- What were key production/purchase focuses? Military units / Civilian units / Districts & city development / Wonders / Civ Unique Unit & Infrastructure? Most critical or interesting?
- Pantheon chosen and why? Religious beliefs chosen, and why?
- What governments did you select? What key policy cards did you use? Why?
- Which Governors were most important; when and why?
- Was diplomacy/trading useful? How? Relations with other civs?
- When did you have Dark/Golden ages?
- How did the map affect your gameplay?
- Any surprises/frustration/elations you ran into, how did you deal with it?
- Did you enjoy your game?

Please use spoiler tags for any surprise details you'd like kept hidden. Thanks.

If this is a replay, please indicate 'REPLAY' at the top of your post. If you conduct regular restarts, please indicate 'RELOADS' at the top of your post. More posting helps us all get play better as we understand the methods of others, but want to clearly distinguish between a first run through without reloads and other submissions as it is much harder to recover in game from the mistakes we all make.

 

[Chrumo]

CV 155

Spoiler t156 :

Insane start, although made harder by dramatic ages, which mostly ravage through the AI. I went for huge cities with river pantheon and Choral Music. Holy Site, Aqueduct and then Theatre Square in each city. After realising I will need Cartography, I beelined it to finally meet other civs.

Dramatic ages might make it difficult for players who can't get to Conservation fast enough - the first two Golden Ages are easy, but for the third one my only idea was to get National Parks for their +3 era score. This pretty much solves the Dramatic Ages problems... at least for non-AI players. I believe that if you miss a Golden Age when you have more than one city, it's game over on Deity.

Theodora was consumed by Free Cities, which flipped her entire empire. Well, her entire 3-city empire. Reconquering her land in order to revive her was insanely difficult, as the Free Cities have murdered my entire army multiple times over. It was quite bizzare, they actually kept sniping my low-health units and crucial formations with Horsemen - it's almost like their AI is better at warring than it is for major Civs.

Major slowups:
-A horsemen barb camp spawned on turn 3, 7 tiles from my capital. They killed my scout, killed my warrior. Huge setback to be honest.
-Valetta got razed for no reason at the start of the game. Usually, I don't consider it that crucial, but it was surely annoying as there weren't that many great early/mid game CS available
-After I made a titanic effort to bring Theodora back from the dead, a random Tamara raid came over and... razed her city, eliminating her permanently from the game. Along with my tourists. Thanks, Tamara.

Fun game, I am still not sure if I like Dramatic Ages at all though, I hope we will get some reprieve from it now

Thanks for the game!

 

[CiJay]

CV 291
Wow, what a rough game. I struggled so hard and got pretty close to lose it.

I actually had a really good feeling at the start as I got 2 golden ages, a religion (choral music + gurdwara) and settled out - although not pretty fast.
It slowed me down when I got at war with Theodora. My own fault as I was initiating it. Took some cities and peaced out. Anyhow I lost some pace.
I had a growing empire at the point but had to enter a dark age right afterwards which was the source of all my problems as I lost 5-6 cities including some of the just conquered ones...

On the other side Eleonore was also taking a city of mine as she got a golden age. I reconquered all the cities but in fact lost an entire age which hurt a lot. Theodora was killed by loyality pressure at the end.
At this stage I just have met the civs on my continent. Further on I met the guys on the other continent and Yongle was really popping of. He was so far ahead in science and got had high culture as also Egypt and Mali.

At this stage I really doubt that I could win it. I just decided to go to war with Eleonore and took her cities quite slowly. At least I pillaged a lot which helped... On the other side of the empire I focused on national parks, Taj Mahal and later on Biosphere. I usually don't like the biosphere strategy but at this point I did not see any other way. So I slowly started to plant trees for the national parks and tried to improve relations for opening the borders and climbed up in techs.
Yongle this *** would never stop to denounce me or trade with me^^

As I was mainly building Holy sites, Theather squares and Entertainment complexes my production and gold was quite low which did not help.
Yongle was doing serious business in the meantime and was finishing the exoplante space project. Fortunately one of my spies pillaged one of the spaceports and France (alliance) was initiating a war with them.
I had placed to tank armies on Yongle's boarders so that I could sneak in and pillage the other space ports. Salute to the tanks for the kamikaze mission.

Yongle was never taking more than 1 light year per turn which gave me enough time to build my improvements for ramping up tourism.
At the end it was very close but I won.

PS: A question - Yongle had around 13 cities when he just ran into a dark age (just before the game ended). But he just lost 2 of his cities and I do not get it why he didn't lose more?
Does anybody know how that works? I was under the impression that you will lose around the half of the cities once a dark age is entered? (or is it based on the citie's population?)

PPS: I remembered why I usually don't play with dramatic ages^^ Thanks for creating I really had a lot of fun although I can't remember the last time when I was that stressed when playing CIV6

 

[Chrumo]

PS: A question - Yongle had around 13 cities when he just ran into a dark age (just before the game ended). But he just lost 2 of his cities and I do not get it why he didn't lose more?
Does anybody know how that works? I was under the impression that you will lose around the half of the cities once a dark age is entered? (or is it based on the citie's population?)

On Deity, the player loses a lot more than the AI. Here is the table taken from civilization wiki

 

[Gghippo]

CV 195 Score 1330

Spoiler :

Fun game.
Got golden age every era.
Tried to build the Oracle at start but failed. Had Magnus and 3 builders all lined up to chop stone/woods, but it was built by Tamar the same turn. So didn't end up chopping.
Didn't end up getting Forbidden City, Big Ben, Alhambra or Potala Palace either... which restricted flexibility with policy cards - especially given we were playing dramatic ages.
Domrey units with a Great General are amazing. Overpowered Valletta, Armagh and a couple of Theodora cities very quickly during world congress emergencies.
Ended up with 14 cities. Probably didn't build enough theatre squares.
Spammed moai and batey improvements where possible. Once flight was unlocked - figured that would be enough coupled with lots of national parks and relics to achieve the victory.
Pantheon was River Goddess. Built Holy Sites on Rivers in all cities - Prasats gave 10 tourism in most cities. Went Reliquaries for my religion. Had a city with Mont St. Michel, St Basil's Cathedral and Giovanni Bank. So those relics were nice! Capital had Cristo to remove -50% enlightenment effect. Think I only built 7 seaside resorts... So could have maximised that better.
Had 6 rock bands that I didn't get to use... They were on their way to China when the game ended.
Thanks for putting together this scenario.

 

[Jovan Kukic]

Turn 187(1260.) culture victory, score 1209. Early barbarian spawn from north was my biggest war. I played peacefully, having open borders with AIs and trade routes to most of them except one. I had many Moai. Dramatic ages helped me to expand by city flipping. It is ironic that Eleanor often complimented me for my nice big cities, but that was the main reason of gradual crumbling of her empire

 

[Thorak]

Turn 143 (or 142?) Culture Victory. What turn is the culture victory calculated? I had enough tourism at turn 142 but the victory screen triggered at the start of turn 143 so which turn do we count as the victory?

This game required me to perform a different build order and strategy than usual. Very heavy culture production, good gold generation and food but lack of production. I skipped many of the early culture eurekas and instead of going pingala culture promotion as second promotion I went with science instead.
There were many decisions points this game that was rather difficult, the first one being where to settle the capital but I build it on luxury one west of starting location and I think this was the right choice.
The second choice was to consider if I wanted to go ancestral hall and chop out settlers in my second city or go for warlords chamber (which is more or less permanent +20% production once the city flipping strategy kicks in). Consider the heavy culture production and a very chopping heavy secondary city I decided to go for ancestral hall.
The third choice was what pantheon to choose. +prod from march+flood plains or +2 amenity housing from temples on rivers. I am still not sure I picked the right one but it's the first time I pickjed the +2 amenity+2 housing thanks to the Khmer civ bonus.

I stole all gold from byzantine and started a war as soon as I met her (turn 12 I think). I did very heavy warring this game. I levied troops early and conquered a city from England very early with 4 warriors and used it as the flipping city gold/faith bank. I didn't realize at first that England was not a good target for this the city does not convert to neutral but directly converts to England due to loyalty. This enforced me to be in a permanent war with England the entire game.

I am still learning culture victory and I think it's the most complex victory condition to maximize. There are several ways to win a culture victory depending on available city states, difficulty, game modes and so on. In this game I think the approach that I picked, which was to play a normal science game and rush flight and then spam the Rapa Nui improvement everywhere is the best together with trying toi get as much land as possible (which on diety usually requires some warring. Also, the warring in a culture game is very difficult as I can't terminate the AI's without losing their tourists and I also need to keep them alive. I am starting toi think that it might be most beneifical to kill the closest AI in some cases to get more room to expand and use their cities. Killing 2 AI is most likely not worth it though and on lower difficulties likely not worth it either.

My biggest surprise this game was Byzantine declaring an emergency and managed to take back one of her cities as my units where misplaced, but afterwards I recaptured the city and left her with only a single city. Another surprise was the speed of which I gathered tourists in the end. I was planning to take out Yongle which had around 25-30 more domestic tourism than everyone else, but I realized I was gaining around 7 tourism a turn or so in the end and with rockbands I could almost stop Yongle from gaining more domestic tourism so I decided to not war them in the end. I even build a aerodrome to build bombers but I realized I would be too slow so the modifiers from trade router+open borders would be a better choice.

I realized this game that when using the city-flipping strategy, the theocracy government is very strong. The -15% cost for buying faith together with grand master'c chapel and monumentality gives a very niec boost to the amount of units/worker I can buy. The war of religion was key as well as the +4 combat strength is what tipped the scale when I was at war with England and Byzantine at the same time around turn 90. I almost lost, but a great general+4 from the policy card helped me overpower them.

After having played this type of game with Dramatic Ages I have to say it's a bit of a different experience but I prefer games without dramatic ages. Especially on Deity it becomes very stressful to reach the threshold or lose more or less. I hardly used anything other than monumentality so it also took up one of my wildcard slots. The only good thing is that the first golden era is a lot easier to get thanks to the extra points from eurekas and research/culture.

 

[timof]

CV turn 236 REPLAY (lots...)

this one was my hardest GOTM so far. Great starting position, but little space to expand and a very aggressive neighbour in the south.

In the first run, I got close to victory, but Cleopatra and Tamar had died which slowed tourism generation, and Yongle won a SV in turn 290.
In two more tries I got rushed by Theodora.early, before I could even build my third unit, and my warrior and my scout were not near the capitol,
so I had no chance do defend.
In the next run I practiced city flipping, with two cities placed close to the Byzantine empire; it kind of worked but felt very tedious and tiring,
so I probably won't use that trick again. (and I finally got attacked and rolled over by a superior Byzantine army backed by Taxis and Crusade,
so this was another defeat)

Today I gave it one more try, and everything went smoothly. This time I could quickly befriend Theodora and had a relaxed game.
Fierce apostle wars, but no military conflict at all. Getting golden ages (all of them) was no problem either. CV in turn 236. Phew.

 

[nufro]

T 217 CV
Went for reliquaries, which may have been a mistake..

 

[Soger]

Turn 133 culture win. Its a insane strong culture civ with a absolute broken start so yeah that is how I won.
Recorded entire game if interested

 

[leif erikson]

This game is closed for submissions as time has run out.
You may continue to post here and attach saves if you wish. Results will include games above this post.

 

[Michael Lindskou]

Am I missing something or shouldnt GOTM 181 have been out around the 15th ?