TSG 143 after action report

[Knowtalent]

Welcome to the TSG143 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?
- How useful was your UA?
- 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?
- What Social Policies did you choose and in what order? Which Ideology did you choose?
- What techs did you prioritize ?
- What did you think of the map?

 

[vadalaz]

Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 1280AD
Turns played: 124
Base score: 1457
Final score: 3937
Time played: 3:47:00

- Did you use your UU?
No, didn't build a single one. Killed Mongolia with just archers, rest with CBs and later XBs
- How useful was your UA?
Made the early game a bit more painful than it should've been, but it wasn't too bad. In the end I guess I was getting some happiness out of it
- Did you use spying to your advantage?
No, only got a spy very late in the game
- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
The map type is good
- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
My decision was to archer rush a neighbour, send those archers to the SE quadrant, clear the other two with elephants. Plans changed around T25
- Was Faith helpful to achieve victory?
It didn't hurt. I got a pantheon from meeting the two religious CSs, picked production from 3 pop cities because I thought the game would be over quickly. If I were to replay this I'd pick Gem faith. Religious beliefs were +100 (67 on quick speed) gold conversion, happiness from shrines and gardens
- What Social Policies did you choose and in what order? Which Ideology did you choose?
Liberty worker -> Honor -> that's when I found out Honor was a bad idea -> rest of Liberty -> Commerce. No ideology, Great Merchant from Liberty finisher for some influence and gold for unit upgrades
- What techs did you prioritize ?
Archery, Mining, Wheel was the plan... Then lux techs, Engineering and Optics, Philo, Machinery, Gunpowder. In retrospect I guess I didn't really need early engineering and could've passed units through Ur instead of Ife, but whatever
- What did you think of the map?
I thought it was pretty funny, I didn't adapt to it fast enough though

 

[fishbackpack]

Lazy recap:

Got done with GK pretty quickly, noticed how incredibly boxed in I was ...

I took a CS to escape the box, and had some pretty cool elephants. Sent them up to Atilla, and spent about 80 turns up there getting both atilla's and china's capital. Made buddies with Korea, and took Siam's capital and another in a peace treaty. DoW'd Korea, but great wall slowed movement and a conveniently placed forest made my siege fruitless and slow. By then it was already T187 and I was dominating tech, so I didn't really feel like finishing out a slow victory.

Cool map, but even on a replay I would have no clue how to make that into a fast victory.

 

[zxcvbob]

Your name: zxcvbob
Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 1983AD
Turns played: 263
Base score: 4889
Final score: 6188

Number of turns is pathetic, but my score ought to be pretty good. I captured almost every AI city, not just that capitals. I liberated a couple, but I kept most of them. I think the only city I razed was one of Attila's that was settled one tile off the coast. I kept it as a puppet for a while, but I needed a coastal city for the city connections to Beijing and Attila's Court, so I razed Shoguan and settled New Shoguan in almost the same place and bought a harbor. It was a little irritating that I had all those great cities in the eastern half of the map, and they were connected to each other with roads, but no gold from city connections. I would have to kill another CS or two to get that; wasn't worth it.

I saved Indonesia for last. He had the Great Wall, and great war bombers and GW infantry but had not researched dynamite (so the Great Wall still worked) I killed all his units with bombers first, then took his cities with paratroopers and slowly advancing tanks, Rocket Artillery, and SAM's.

- Did you use your UU?
I took out Mongolia right away using 3 elephants, a scout-archer, scout, and a warrior. I never really used them after that except to patrol for barbs. I probably could have attacked Attila sooner if I'd used the elephants, but I was confused by the mountain range and the deep water in the channel; I just built up my core cities (and scouted) until Astronomy.

- How useful was your UA?
Happiness was never a problem, although part of that was from CS alliances. I grew all of my cities large instead of just the capital, with food trade routes to whichever needed it at the time.

- Did you use spying to your advantage?
My first spy was permanently parked in a hostile mercantile CS. Second spy stayed on defense in Delhi. Later spies moved around, sometimes as spies and sometimes diplomats, providing intel on my next victims.

- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
The map *type* helped, but all the mountains really slowed things down.

- Was Faith helpful to achieve victory?
Pagodas for a little extra happiness and culture, and I spread to all the CS's around me so influence would decay slower.

- What Social Policies did you choose and in what order? Which Ideology did you choose?
Liberty opener and free worker, Honor (left side only), finished Liberty (scientist), Rationalism(3), Commerce, Autocracy(6). And I took Gunboat Diplomacy instead of Clausewitz.

- What techs did you prioritize ?
Wheel, Philosophy, Civil Service, Astronomy, Dynamite (I used Oxford for that), Combustion, Plastics.

When I was ready to attack Siam my best units were highly-promoted cavalry, and I was afraid of his elephants, so I beelined Combustion and upgraded them to landships (and soon after that, tanks) The elephants charged my tanks! And they did more damage than I expected; they would have killed my horses.

- What did you think of the map?
Was that a randomly-generated map, or did Knowtalent edit in some extra mountains?

 

[IronfighterXXX]

Elephants were good enough on king difficulty, only near end on battlefield started to appear pikes, but it was too late

 

[poxpower]

t132 Domination

Game: Civ5 GOTM 143
Date submitted: 2016-09-19 20:15:19
Reference number: 34858
Your name: poxpower
Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 1420AD
Turns played: 132
Base score: 1871
Final score: 4677
Time played: 2:53:00
Submitted save: gotm143_poxpower_t132.Civ5Save
Renamed file: poxpower_C514301.Civ5Save

Haha wow, 94. I don't even know how
My armies sliced through the map like a knife through warm butter, but maybe I should have made 3 armies instead of 2 because boy was it ever long to go around this map and my main starting corner was just out of things to do pretty fast.
Attila built great wall very early for some reason. Didn't even matter. Elephants are sweet, definitely better than composite bows, though a little weak towards then end to I made a bunch of trebuchets.
I made pyramids as well which is just godly on quick speed liberty. 1 turn repairs, 1 turn chops, 1 turn roads. Man.

Spoiler :

 

[zxcvbob]

I might play this one again, now that I know I can pass units thru Ur as well as Ife if I build a road to it from Karakorum. (looks like you just captured both) I had only one army; it was awfully cramped fighting Attila until I took the first city, then once I had some room to move around it went very quickly. Another army could have been working on Indonesia instead of saving him for last (Great Wall). Both armies could converge on Siam to deal with his elephants. I also should have bought more Landsknechts.

 

[poxpower]

Yeah definitely need to take UR and to split your army in 3 I think.
Also went honor which was completely worthless, commerce definitely better. Maybe. Who knows lol it just felt like what I really needed was for my units to all have jetpacks.

 

[poxpower]

Little more detail on what I did:

1- Settled south on gems. Sweet sweet gems. +1 production, +2 gold vs settling on river. Ruin got me gold right away to buy cattle tile. Thanks.

2- Made scout, monument, granary, temple of artemis (so useless) pyramids

3- got free pantheon, picked gem faith. My religion: +100 gold when a city first converts ( this generated like 2000 gold for me ), +1% production per believer. I enhanced it much later once I stopped caring about spamming missionaries and I just let prophets spawn. At that point I had enough of everything didn't need gold. The problem was just getting the units to move.

3-Settled liberty city in desert next to wine. City has 2x gems, wine, truffles. Settled another one up top next to sugar.

4-stole settler from ghengis, then just wittled at his units until pyramids were built.Then I spammed elephants.

5- Took mongol capital really fast. Moved all units to UR and started shooting it. Took forever as it is hill + walls. Then I moved to ife to take it as well.

6- Cap built oracle, NC. All completely useless to build here as the only tech you need is basically optics and wheel.

7- city spawned an engineer thanks to my wonder-spamming. So I saved it for terracota, which was sweet: scout, comp bow, elephant, warrior, horseman, catapult, spearman. NOW THAT'S VALUE.

8- split my army in two, moved them slowly through city-states. took forever. Norther corner Attila just finished taking China's capital when I arrived, so I DoWed him and took it easily. Then I took one more of his city that was blocking his cap, then his cap. All relatively easy but if I had just spammed units instead of building oracle/nc, would have been faster. Could have had a 3rd army to send to the 3rd corner too.

9- second army took japan's cities in like 5 turns. Just sad flatland cities with no defenses. Indonesia was a little slower as I just took an annoying blocker city and razed it so move faster to his cap. He had time to make a few of his unique unit wich were strong.

10- Now I moved all units north and this is where 3 armies is good. Takes like 15-20 turns longer to move everything up there. Both capitals fell easily, I was just throwing units away to make it faster and so I had room to disembark lol.

So recap

1- Liberty good
2- Pyramids amazing
3- temple of artemis, oracle, nc = crap
4- religion with 100 gold for converting cities = awesome
5- terracota army = awesome
6- elephant spam = awesome
7- only 2 armies = bad

 

[zxcvbob]

When you declare war on the 2nd CS, don't the rest perma-war you? I was allied with most of the CS's. That's where most of my happiness came from, until I captured Notre Dame and Forbidden Palace.

 

[FireFree3]

Your name: FireFree3
Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 1878AD
Turns played: 209
Base score: 3148
Final score: 4996
Time played: 6:22:00

Played extremely poorly this one.
Settled on Gem, that's sweet!
But got Ghenkis' settler sneaked through twice...
A lot of elephants died due to useless, additional city attack.

Captured Ife for getting out, as I don't think I can get the money for allying the city states.

Got good religion (gem, +100 gold (67 actually), +hammer, pagodas, quicker spread)

But, played very poorly on combats. Thus, I can only sweep China and Attilla before elephants become useless.

Need to wait until cannon to kill Seoul, and artillery to kill siam. So, really slow game.

- Did you use your UU?
Yes, but I played poorly and got 3 logistic, ranged elephants killed. Then, need to wait for cannons.

- How useful was your UA?
Tough in beginning and mid-game. However, it gives me happiness with big cities.

- Did you use spying to your advantage?
Somehow, but not necessary.

- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
Difficult to play; I notice that I need to kill Ife to get out of a corner quite late.

- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
I didn't spend much efforts in building city structures, as I know I can kill everyone without difficulty.

- Was Faith helpful to achieve victory?
Very useful. Money, happiness, culture, etc.

- What Social Policies did you choose and in what order? Which Ideology did you choose?

Tradition, Honor (full), Commerce (to reduce cost), Patronage (3), Tradition (3), Autocracy (3)

- What techs did you prioritize ?
I missed Optics until very late. Need to wait for a long time.
focused at bottom part of the tree to get stronger army.

- What did you think of the map?
I want a replay and see if I can finish much quicker.

 

[poxpower]

When you declare war on the 2nd CS, don't the rest perma-war you? I was allied with most of the CS's. That's where most of my happiness came from, until I captured Notre Dame and Forbidden Palace.

Nah you only get like -15 to resting points with city-states. Infinitely worth it to finish faster.

 

[Smirk]

Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 1430AD
Turns played: 133
Base score: 1578
Final score: 3945

Did a standard archer upgrade path with some elephants added in for spice and barb control near the capital.

I opened up both sides of the initial land and attempted to send out two armies with reinforcements when I ran into problem. On the two nearby segments I was able to catch the aggressor's army in the open and wiped them out (i.e. Attila and Japan) so I saw little resistance there but Tokyo (?) was a bear to take, the hills, mountains and they built walls ground my wear effort to a halt in that direction.
I think ultimately using the center area would have been a better strategy. Although since I had units all over the map for most of the game I was able to get a sizable sum extorting the city states.

- Was Faith helpful to achieve victory?
Went with tears of the gods(?) and managed to get an religion and upgrade it. Went with the +20 combat power versus enemy cities but the final island with Korea where I attempted to use missionaries was the only other developed religion and I wasn't able to spread it.

- What did you think of the map?
Hah hah.

 

[TrailblazingScot]

Slow, slow, slow and I missed out on loads of faith purchased great scientists at the end by poor choices. Nearly 5000 culture to burn and a turn off completing rationalism.

Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 1904AD
Turns played: 222
Base score: 4594
Final score: 6856
Time played: 5:10:00

I didn't expect to have to go through city states to get out of the start area. The Mongols took down Ur, which I then took over to get access to the sea. I defeated the Mongols first, then the Indonesians, the Japanese (which caused heavy losses) and then everyone else (who didn't).