TSG141 After Action Report

[mc_norris]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 141
Date submitted: 2016-08-16 01:26:55
Reference number: 34732
Your name: mc_norris
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1834AD
Turns played: 287
Base score: 1070
Final score: 1877
Time played: 2:03:00
Submitted save: Pocatello_0287 AD-1834.Civ5Save
Renamed file: mc_norris_C514101.Civ5Save

Played a second time with OCC and tried Futurism (which I'd never done before), and shaved about 20 turns off....

 

[Knap]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 141
Date submitted: 2016-08-21 09:55:25
Reference number: 34764
Your name: Knap
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1735AD
Turns played: 257
Base score: 1083
Final score: 2123
Time played: 4:25:00
Submitted save: Pocatello_0257 AD-1735.Civ5Save
Renamed file: Knap_C514101.Civ5Save

2 City Tradition Freedom
No wars except for worker steals. I thought I had found everyone until I came across France and they were cultural leaders. Sent army but won with GMs with my army on border.

Pathfinders are really good but raging barbarians are a nightmare and more of problem than AI.
Religion used for GEs and GMs

 

[blind1985]

First time submitting one of these games and don't know how to really optimize culture victories, so pretty much went about how I typically play. 5 main cities and rolled Portugal to access coast and her wonders.

- Did you use your UU? yep, great for quick start with religion for desert folklore. Lead to early religion.
- How useful was your UA? good for land grab, though seems like isn't all that usefully if people were going OCC
- Did you use spying to your advantage? Tried to influence city states, but mostly counterspy as i have very much ahead in tech lead.
- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how? neither, though england blocked me off early on so could scout passed her. Didn't get to a lot of city states til late because of mainly land locked.
- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions? i think i might have took it easier and screwed around more.
- Was Faith helpful to achieve victory? Yep, was able to maintain happiness through pagodas and mosques and then pump out great people at the end.
- What Social Policies did you choose and in what order? Went tradition then started in aethestics to cut down on build times of culture buildings until science police was available.
- Which Ideology did you choose? Freedom
- What techs did you prioritize ? hanging gardens and petra early, then went back to universities. Probably went too production in this game then I needed. Should have went more religion and tech heavy.

 

[zxcvbob]

Anybody try using Piety instead of Rationalism? Do Piety-finisher holy sites give tourism with a hotel? I got so many prophets I didn't know what to do with them, and I was trying *not* to get prophets after the first 2 or 3 because all the faith they use up. They just kept sneaking up on me.

I'm playing this again, (Tradition+Aesthetics again) but trying to remember that my pathfinders are for scouting, not fighting. (even if they're good in a fight.) They kept moving, sometimes slowing down to take potshots at barbs but not stopping unless they needed to heal. I built archers and a pike for defense. Was able to get west of England this time before she blocked it off (barely made it back because he couldn't embark) and found Monty, Napoleon, and Hiawatha. The Inca and Maya are still the culture contenders and I can't get them to war with each other. I will still be at Familiar or the low side of Popular with them when Influential w/ everyone else. The quickest victory will probably be to musician-bomb the Inca, then DoW the Maya and wipe them out for the win.

 

[beetle]

Based on the good ideas here, I tried a second time with (1) Missionary spamming, and (2) saving saving GWAM for Futurism. My finish time was about the same. :-(

But I screwed the early game with OWN and late NC, so I am going to try again.

Converting AIs that founded did not work at all, and I even had my own inquisitors stationed next to their cities. I really expected that to help, at least until they closed borders, it had no effect at all. Do inquisitors (next to cities) only prevent conversion of your own cities?

I did have an AI propose my religion as World Religion -- so that was cool. But it failed by a wide margin, and I even had Forbidden Palace.

I was first to Ideologies by wide margin -- but not wide enough -- and WI failed by the time it came up. I need to get everything sooner, but my slow NC might have accounted for that.

Why is Parthenon so important?

Why do people build the Writers Guild early, but not the Artist Guild?

Thanks for the help!

 

[zxcvbob]

Inquisitors only work for your own cities; they don't even work for allied CS's.

Parthenon is good because it gives you 2 tourism *really* early if you beeline it, (kind of early if you don't) and it gives you culture to plow through the social policies. I can't tell if it's worth the hammers vs something like an earlier national college or Oracle.

If you build the artist guild too early, you only have a space for one great work, so you'll have artists standing around w/ nothing to do. I use the lower-right-side Aesthetics policy to fill the art slot in my palace and I take it before the discount culture buildings to get another +2 tourism sooner. (FWIW, I seldom play culture games and I'm not that good at them, so I could be doing it totally wrong)

Maybe build the artist guild as soon as you have some slack in your build queue, but don't work the specialists right away?

 

[poxpower]

Why is Parthenon so important?

Why do people build the Writers Guild early, but not the Artist Guild?

Thanks for the help!

I'm not sure about parthenon really, it feels like early tourism is great, but it's just 2 and a GM bomb at the end will probably generate far more culture than whatever culture parthenon gave you all game.

It's just one of the earliest ways to get tourism and you might as well. Same for writer's guild, the sooner you set it up, the more tourism and future writers you generate.

They also boost your culture, which is nice. Get through tradition and aesthetics faster.

The goal of a culture game is to generate as much tourism as you can as fast as you can, not to set an empire up that will generate the most culture possible on turn 300.

The faster you generate tourism, the less time the AI will get to generate culture, and on prince that is very important because unlike Deity, the AI starts extremely slowly and doesn't do anything for 100 turns, so the faster you generate tourism that covers their early turns, the faster you win and you never let the game get to the stage where they have 10 cities all with an opera house lol.

My idea was to do OCC because that is the fastest you can set up wonders and early science towards guild/ parthenon.

However as it turns out I think the science generated is just too small and your midgame drags on and you don't get to Leaning Tower or whatever fast enough.

Also one thing I didn't even consider was to go liberty + tradition mix, and get leaning tower, which would let you generate two free great musicians very early on.

That just might be enough to win extremely fast, like turn 150.

 

[poxpower]

Maybe build the artist guild as soon as you have some slack in your build queue, but don't work the specialists right away?

My tech path is usually education, then acoustics, then metal casting, then machinery, THEN guilds.

But that's on Deity, where you can only get sistine and not Leaning Tower or Uffizi ( at least not every game ).

Maybe it is better to make those artists faster, then get leaning tower and pop it for engineer to make sistine.

But now I'm just thinking about my genius idea to use leaning tower for a musician lol I wonder if that would work.

 

[jessie23]

Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1936AD
Turns played: 356
Base score: 2539
Final score: 3576

Everyone else is so fast! Obviously I'm not pro at the culture victory. I decided to go to war. The Iroquois and a crippled Inca were the only ones left standing at the end.

I'm still sad I missed Petra by a turn or two.

- Did you use your UU?
I got desert folklore like everyone else, along with a few other huts.

- How useful was your UA?
It helped with the two cities that I founded.

- Did you use spying to your advantage?
A couple of techs and a diplomat. Nothing exciting.

- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
It was a long way across the map to France, and then there was a bottle neck and they had Great Wall. I knew I should have just built it myself. It took a little bit to slice through.

- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
I figured I could get away with having a bunch of puppet cities without drowning in unhappiness.

- Was Faith helpful to achieve victory?
Lots of money from Tithe and a handful of GM at the end.

- What Social Policies did you choose and in what order? Which Ideology did you choose?
Liberty, Honor, Aesthetics, a little bit of commerce, and Order.

- What techs did you prioritize ?
CB's, XB's and the one that lets you build Notre Dame.

 

[beetle]

I tried playing more conventionally, full Tradition to Aesthetics, pausing for six in Freedom, and opening other trees to unlock wonders. I got WR and WI and never needed IG nor Internet. But I only saved 20 turns, and CV still took me until T328. Only one Mu bomb. All wonders themed, and it felt like much less overkill than the game I submitted (when I ended with 50 turns of GA left). I very much enjoyed the game, but it is frustrating not to be able to get through it faster!

 

[poxpower]

I tried playing more conventionally, full Tradition to Aesthetics, pausing for six in Freedom, and opening other trees to unlock wonders.

That's a waste of culture, you absolutely don't need Louvre for this.
And you don't need freedom. I don't even know what freedom does for tourism lol. Far better to rush aesthetics finisher asap and then start down rationalism. You get far more tourism from techs than you get from freedom policies.

What I do is just finish tradition, finish aesthetics ( maybe take 2 into rationalism ) and by then the game is mostly over.

Delaying aesthetics is bad because it means going through that tree slower ( less culture ) and it delays how soon you can faith buy great musicians. You also get double theming bonus and I believe 30% extra tourism total with open borders + trade route? ( I think it's 15% extra for each ).

 

[beetle]

And you don't need freedom.

Agreed, thanks, Freedom was a mistake. And I went there because I forgot to wait on the Guilds for Futurism. So two large mistakes. I plan to try again, rolling way back, because I also want to try a different enhancer belief.

 

[zxcvbob]

I played it again, doing a better job of scouting this time and found everyone pretty quickly. (it helps when you know where they are, but I tried as best I could to ignore that and scout "normally')

Founded 3 cities instead of 4 (SIP, by Gibraltar, and on the river 3 tiles away from Uluru) I took Holy Warriors for one of my beliefs, so other than one archer and one trireme, I faith bought my entire military so Moson Kahni could devote all it's hammers to wonders, guilds and gold buildings. I bought science buildings with gold.

I was "Familiar" with everybody quick enough, but it still took just over 300 turns to win. I had to musician bomb both Maya and France this time, Even tho' I was about 8 to 10 techs ahead of everybody, maybe I should have scienced faster?

It was fun, but I'm not going to play it a 3rd time. Not soon, anyway, I might come back to it in a few months.

 

[poxpower]

Founded 3 cities instead of 4 (SIP, by Gibraltar, and on the river 3 tiles away from Uluru) I took Holy Warriors for one of my beliefs, so other than one archer and one trireme, I faith bought my entire military so Moson Kahni could devote all it's hammers to wonders, guilds and gold buildings. I bought science buildings with gold.

No need for armies
So that was a wasted belief you took there, could have taken growth / production belief instead which are the best for tall turtling games like this.

Plus you wasted faith on military units instead of missionaries who could convert more cities to your faith and give you a tourism bonus.

Late game you want all your faith to be great musicians and maybe 1 great engineer if you have extra.

The only thing military does is fight barbs on prince, so you don't need that much. Just get out a bunch of early archers ( maybe a horseman or two ) and then run around the map clearing camps for city-state quests. I don't think I've ever been attacked by a Prince AI and when I attack them, they have like 2 warriors, 1 archer and 2 catapults or some hilarious crap army like that, none of them with any promotions ( unlike deity ).

So if they did DoW you it wouldn't be a big deal other than to block tourism from you, which is annoying...

 

[zxcvbob]

Converting other cities was a waste of faith because Pacal just converted them back to his religion... although that forced him to waste his faith. I did buy a lot of missionaries, I was getting over 50 FPT without a single shrine or temple, about 100 FPT once I got the Grand Temple up. (it was ridiculous)

I expected to go to war against Pacal and wipe him out for the win. But since I was having trouble overtaking France too, I didn't really need all that military.

I still think full Piety with lots of holy sites and beeline hotels might be viable. I said I was done with this one, but I might try that.

 

[poxpower]

Converting other cities was a waste of faith because Pacal just converted them back to his religion...

That can happen but they really have to try hard to do it and you still get the benefit of it in all the time it takes them to remove yours.
Definitely worth it to spread it all over the map and see how long it sticks.

Also note that you get the bonus from number of cities, not population, so if they convert their 20 pop capital to their new religion but have 2 crappy expands that follow yours, you still get the bonus.

Also very nice to consider when gifting cities because you can just give them a 1 pop dumpster town and it'll turn to your religion almost right away and it will be so far from their empire that they'll never convert it.

 

[beetle]

…and you still get the benefit of it in all the time it takes them to remove yours.

It was like half a dozen turns. You get hate and they close borders. But there will be three civs that do not found. Having tried it a couple times now in this game, I think it makes more sense to hit those three hard. Passing World Religion is extremely helpful, so certainly worth a good bit of effort.

 

[zxcvbob]

I [almost] never convert the cities of other religious civs. Not with prophets and missionaries, anyway. I'll send them trade routes from my holy city and pressure them that way.

Their CS allies and the irreligious civs are fair game. (this game, I spread my religion to Portugal, and my Desert Folklore is what gave them enough faith to found their own religion.)

 

[Groin_Apologist]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 141
Date submitted: 2016-08-25 03:07:04
Reference number: 34772
Your name: Groin_Apologist
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1939AD
Turns played: 359
Base score: 1368
Final score: 1926
Time played: 6:41:00

 

[poxpower]

It was like half a dozen turns. You get hate and they close borders. But there will be three civs that do not found. Having tried it a couple times now in this game, I think it makes more sense to hit those three hard. Passing World Religion is extremely helpful, so certainly worth a good bit of effort.

They don't hate you if you convert them before they get their religion, which is why it's important to get borobudur out asap.