TSG40 After Action Report

[dominox]

This will be my third submit, but I've been playing GOTM's regulary since Civ3 vanilla.
I'm having serious doubts about G&K - played two games so far, and allthough I belive Emperor was my comfort-zone with vanilla, it seems to me that king has become insanely easy? I finished both my G&K games on king with twice the score of the second player on the list.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 40
Date submitted: 2012-07-18
Reference number: 26616
Your name: dominox
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1959AD
Turns played: 379
Base score: 2365
Final score: 3153
Time played: 8:32:00

 

[Tabarnak]

Nuked Ethiopia 2x with a Carrier and bombs. Took 3 of his cities, including cap which was wasteland. Got 2 more cities in a peace deal, razed them. Brought nukes to Amsterdam and was almost ready to take his 2nd largest city, when he asked for peace. Random great prophet spawned near the end, which I took to Maya and wiped out his religion... ha!

Haha this is a pretty bloody part!

 

[Gamewizard]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 40
Date submitted: 2012-07-18
Reference number: 26618
Your name: Gamewizard
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1915AD
Turns played: 335
Base score: 2013
Final score: 3004
Time played: 8:36:00
Submitted save: GotM40 - BoudiccaT335.Civ5Save
Renamed file: Gamewizard_C504001.Civ5Save

I went wide instead of the 4 city tradition approach, and did something I never do...capture a city-state. After a failed attempt to take Sweden's capital, the whole world DOW me on the same turn, this around turn 180. This war lasted until 250, when one by one civs gave me lots of gold for peace, and then wanted to be friends. So I finally was able to sign a handful of RAs and really push towards the SS. Once Apollo Program was finished I decided to up my score by going on a conquering spree with my 3 battleships and 1 destroyer. A rocket artillery joined in to take Sweden's capital full of Wonders. Once I FINALLY connected horses I was able to upgrade my pikes to choppers and pushed east, taking all of Carthage's territory. I was just about to take Kuala Lumpur when the SS blasted off. Good game.

Notes:
- Spain was large, as they conquered Austria early. According to demographics they had a massive fighting force, mostly ships. Virtual Spanish Armada.
- I had to take that city state as I was angry that the turn I was gonna buy the natural wonder tile, the city state gobbled it up first! "Grrrr...I'll show you what happens when you claim MY territory!"
- Overall I love G+K, love the changes they made...however I think they need to further nerf RAs...it is mind boggling how efficient it is to stay at 4 cities, be lovey dovey, and push out the SS at turn 230. Lame IMO.

 

[Tabarnak]

however I think they need to further nerf RAs...it is mind boggling how efficient it is to stay at 4 cities, be lovey dovey, and push out the SS at turn 230. Lame IMO.

I never seen so much love. That must be because we have our own continent separated by water. Most players got DoWed so i really don't know what happened here. I usually trade a lot, so maybe it counts for a large part of positive diplo modifiers.

I usually get 3-4 RAs per wave.

 

[Sprenk]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 40
Date submitted: 2012-07-18
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1901AD
Turns played: 321
Base score: 875
Final score: 1367
Time played: 7:31:00

Congrats to the first timers!

Why do I always prematurely stop signing RA's?

 

[dthompson32]

Second play through I was able to shave 10 turns off my time. Science victory on turn 287. Better score too, at 1750. Mostly the better score was due to more wonders. I could have shaved a couple more turns if I hadn't lost out on the Great Library.

280s is probably the best I can do on his map and with this strategy. Obviously there are better ways since some can turn in 240ish times. Possibly better city placement to use observatories would help.

This time I took policies in the Patronage tree to get the science benefit from allies. That helped me get up to 800 bpt when I started using my GSs. Made a big difference.

 

[vixafox]

I didn't like the coastal start with no sea resources visible so I settled 1NE on the fur tile. This put me riverside, kept all the visible resources and gave me more usable land tiles. I am happy with that decision. In retrospect, building the Great Library would have been a good idea, but I have been trying to play at Immortal level recently so I have got out of the habit of beelining the early wonders. That probably cost me a much faster finish.

It was nice to be alone on a large island, which allowed me to forego early military, although the lack of unique luxuries meant that I expanded more slowly than I otherwise would have done.

Overall, it was a relatively peaceful game, with only one war following a DoW by Sweden. The initial invasion was with a combination of pikemen and caravels, which was beaten back with two crossbows, one musket and one frigate. Although Gustav quickly sought peace I declined, using his troops and ships as a means of gaining experience. Eventually, my two logistics frigates were upgraded to battleships and with those and one privateer I quickly captured four of his cities (including the capital). Don't you just love naval warfare against coastal cities!

I managed to spread my religion fairly well, although I was hampered by Pacal, who twice converted my holy city to his own religion. Eventually, I got my own back and used a great prophet to convert all three of his cities to the one true faith.

 

[MiniMe]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 40
Date submitted: 2012-07-19
Your name: Minime
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1820AD
Turns played: 280
Base score: 1020
Final score: 1821
Time played: 7:14:00

First game on G&K played till the end
Enjoyed the map, and the game, but had some unfortunate choices towards the end. TO sum it up, the end came too quickly...had 3-4 RAs and 2 GS too many and didnt even get to use Oxford. So maybe I could shave off a few turns there.

Did full tradition, then patronage just to get science from allied states, then full rationalism. Think I ended up with around 600 science from cities, 90 from city states and 90 from surplus happiness. Peaked at 800 science.

Lessons / comments:
- Went all in on happiness. Took the happiness belief (cant remember name) and had a strong focus on spreading my religion. So ended up with about 66 happiness from Religion. Needless to say I didnt build any happiness buildings, and I sold off all my lux. I addition to that the mercantile states seemed to adore me (at least they came up with all the right quests). Had from 70-80 surplus happiness for a looong time (saved the end-game with 97 I think).

- Money was more of an issue, none of my first 3 cities had a lot of river tiles. Should have gone Tithe on religion maybe, that would have worked with my mercantile friends. Got most of the cash from selling all my lux. In addition I got extra cash during a number of Golden Ages from the ridiculous amount of religion happiness. I should definitely have gotten the golden age prolonging wonder, that would have paid off big time.

- I have lots of stuff to learn about handling the new RA. I started now as soon as I got to Education, and signed with all and everyone. Sometimes the result were ok enough, other times not at all. At least everyone was happy with me most of the game, except for that pain in the nuts Pacal. The later RAs are worth it, but I will hopefully get a better understanding of when and with whom it pays off to sign RAs. I also jumped ages a little too soon I think, without really thinking about the consequences. RAs can be very expensive when the other civs are 2 ages behind. I didnt really think through it and just aimed for the techs that I wanted.

- Pacal, what a pain. I was nearly sending my generals at him after he in one go converted my 3 main cities to his useless religion. But figured in the end that I wouldnt destabilize the "happy go lucky" feel with all the other civs. So I sent a great prophet to convert his 3 cities. Lets just say he didnt like it too much, suddenly I was demonized and he stayed hostile the rest of the game. My fault I guess. So to avoid this I guess the only way is to build enough units to surround your city. The AI got diplomatic options to express their discontent about these type of actions, but we dont. Fair?

- Next time maybe slightly less focus on missionaries, I could have gotten 1 or 2 extra GS instead.

- Missionary killed by "Attrition". I was hanging around Attilas capital to get a chance to convert it to the way of the light (yup, my way;-). However, after a couple of turns I got the message that my missionary was killed by attrition. What is that?

- Saving great generals for a Golden Age at the end just does not cut it any more

- Balance between academies for upping the science output for RAs and keeping GS for bulbing at the end. I guess I put out 4 or 5 academies. Any thoughts?


Totally enjoy G&K so far, think it really adds to the core game. Only hoping that my performance will pick up over the coming months.

 

[dthompson32]

- Missionary killed by "Attrition". I was hanging around Attilas capital to get a chance to convert it to the way of the light (yup, my way;-). However, after a couple of turns I got the message that my missionary was killed by attrition. What is that?

When missionaries or prophets are in enemy territory, where you don't have an open borders agreement, they take damage. After a few turns, they run out of health and are "killed by attrition"

Easiest is to just buy open borders from the civ prior to going into their territory. Note that you will take a diplomatic hit for proselytizing their cities if you keep converting them. I usually just convert the CSs, they never complain and often ask to be converted. The other civs don't mind that you convert CSs that they converted earlier.

 

[mike678]

When missionaries or prophets are in enemy territory, where you don't have an open borders agreement, they take damage. After a few turns, they run out of health and are "killed by attrition"

I'm almost positive great profits are not affected by the attrition. I've sent many great profits into enemy territory where it didn't hurt it.

 

[Morcar_civ5]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 40
Date submitted: 2012-07-19
Reference number: 26629
Your name: Morcar
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1795AD
Turns played: 269
Base score: 1052
Final score: 1984
Time played: 8:13:00

That was a fun to play with all new civs, should have been focused more on initial stage of the game though. Thanks to the orgs for this GOTM!

Missed a GL just by one turn (at 65 turn) and stonehendge by 2.

 

[Dreadnough]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 40
Date submitted: 2012-07-19
Reference number: 26628
Your name: Dreadnough
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1838AD
Turns played: 289
Base score: 1095
Final score: 1921
Time played: 12:10:00
Submitted save: TSG40.Civ5Save
Renamed file: Dreadnough_C504001.Civ5Save

I am not really happy with this finish to be honest. For some reason I thought the Rationalism finisher will grant me two GS. Therefore I didn't plan my techpath correctly and had to take a 2 turn Railroad and a 7/12 turn already finished Particle Physics tech. That is 7 turns in total, when I could have gotten 23. Basically this is 16 turns that I could had been faster. Thats quite annoying for me and ruined it a bit.

Did some small mistakes too, like allowing Gustavus to clear a barb camp, instant allying the CS, but that was ok for me, still have to learn a lot about the game.

How was your first experience with G&K in a GOTM?

This was my first GOTM ever and the first game I didn't reload any turns. I have to say it makes the game more difficult. It is not only that you have to life with your mistake like remembering the Rationalism finisher wrong, but also you have to have a way better memory regarding the actions of the AI. Did you ever have the situation when an AI asked you to buy your luxury again and you click yes without thinking and just sold your last luxury and went into unhappiness? It happened to me all the time. Or the AI asks you to declare war and you say, you want to have 10 turns to prepare, but the RA needs 11 turns. Well at least this game I was way more careful, since I just couldn't reload.

I really have to use trading posts more often and get more workers.

How did you use religion or spying to your advantage?

I managed to steal one technology from the AI, which was a huge surprise for me. After that I tried to gather intel about the AIs attacking plans and share those information. After having a DoF with almost everyone I used my spys to get some influence in CS and took eventually 4 over.

I didn't use religion the best possible way I guess. In example a CS wanted my religion and I sent to missionarys there, who couldn't get the job done. Using a GP in first place would had been way better. I used one eventually anyway.
But I got at least some Sience from the Pantheon Messenger of Gods. It also gives sience in your capital and all the city modifiers apply, so thats already 5. In total it provided 35 sience at the end.
Tithe gave me some extra cash (30 gpt at the end), Ascetism some very needed happiness (9), Feed the world some food and Holy Order some extra missionarys, which I didn't use to their best effectivness. In the end I think religion helped me a little bit (the extra happiness was huge, tithe is always good) but I could have done even better there. I wasn't really able to save faith for GS, since I hit Industrial so late and didn't want to get a GP by accident. So I only got one GS per faith. Next time I will get GP on purpose and push their costs, so I can get more GS. My missionarys didn't do a good work anyway.

I didn't care to much about faith, but I left at least one, at most cities even three forests without an improvement. I didn't really need those tiles but for the last twenty turns, when I build the spaceship, just 4 hammers more in my capitcal and I could have been one turn faster. Thats basically those two forests with a lumber mill.

Spoiler :

I didn't like the map to much. Only three different luxurys on my home island was just not enough. I needed some time to find all AIs since I remembered to late that I could just buy open borders from the AI. But I liked that there were 9 AIs so enough tradepartners possible. The difficulty level was a bit to easy.

I am looking forward to play the next G&K GotM.

 

[methinkso]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 40
Date submitted: 2012-07-20
Reference number: 26632
Your name: methinkso
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1890AD
Turns played: 315
Base score: 896
Final score: 1422
Time played: 6:47:00
Submitted save: TSG40_End_315_Science.Civ5Save
Renamed file: methinkso_C504001.Civ5Save

Well, this is my first GotM submission, my second King game, and my second (completed) G&K game. And I have to say, I have a lot to learn.

My opening in particular felt very sloppy. I completely forgot about going for the Great Library, since I wanted to focus on religion, and that focus didn't even get me the first religion anyway so there wasn't much point to it. I intended to go wide with liberty, but with only 3 luxuries on the starting continent, it didn't pan out very well. Mid-game I struggled with happiness a lot for some reason, even though I only had 4 cities at the time. Ended the game with 4 cities on the starting continent, one on Pacal's. Saw a few areas where I could've founded more on other continents, but it was later in the game by that point and I didn't think the effort was worth it.

Diplomatically this game was a joke. No wars, total lovefest, had DoF's with everyone and I didn't even have to try to maintain good relations. Even settled on Pacal's continent right on his borders in an attempt to spice things up and stir up some trouble; didn't even get a diplo hit. Never had a game like this before.

Spread missionaries to all the non-religious civs, to avoid any potential diplo hits. Took Goddess of the Hunt at the start, as well as Tithe, the +growth while not at war belief, and the increased pressure enchancer. All my positive income was from the Tithe belief. Definitely needed more trading posts around, especially once I hit the rationalism policies.

This game kinda bored me. Way too peaceful and I started steamrolling the AI techwise from very early on. Last 100 turns or so I was barely paying attention and was reading a book while hitting end turn while occasionally selecting a new building to construct or whatever. My military and especially navy were very weak and I saw at least a couple civs with a huge number of naval ships while exploring so I was concerned about being threatened at some point, but it never happened. Kinda disappointing.

All told though, this was pretty fun experience, and I'm looking forward to checking out the next GotM.

 

[Morcar_civ5]

When missionaries or prophets are in enemy territory, where you don't have an open borders agreement, they take damage. After a few turns, they run out of health and are "killed by attrition"

Are you sure about that? In my previous game i had Boudica's prophet roaming inside my borders for quite long (she was going to convert my capital, but i had wall of workers as a defence )

 

[kcd_swede]

Game:
Civ5 GOTM 40

Your name:
kcd_swede

Game status:
Science Victory

Game date:
2002AD

Turns played:
422

Base score:
2077

Final score:
2472

Time played:
13:13:00

Played this one like I was going for religious victory at first. Mostly wanted to see what religion was all about, since this is my first G&K gane played to completion (only tried it out one other time before this). More fun, more choices to make, and... well, easier to win.

I really really like that you can build big fat global monster empires now, with happiness no longer being limiting. I think optimum play does not benefit from huge empires... but fun is in allowing more different playstyles to work.

I actually had to eliminate Maya to prevent their culture victory... and that meant I had to play as world's enemy... lots of fights... I pretty much won them all. Took far too much land and too many cities. Made mistake of putting ironworks in my best production city rather than in the capitol. It meant I had to build the last part 2 turns slower in the capitol since travel time would have been 3 turns. Not a big deal when you are up over 400 turns, I know.

Religion I ignored after the midpoint. I think I got twice as many GPersons from faith-buying as from normal GP production. I was only in danger of a possible UN defeat by Ethjiopia (after taking care of Maya); so after my spies got all the Ethiopian tech (and he build the GFirewall) I moved spies to city states. But kept war going to prevent him from diverting to a diplo game, at least until I was less than 10 turns to finish.

I like the espionage. Not sure I get the point of religion spreading and religion... except maybe in the early game. Anyhow, too early to judge with just one game, but I like G&K because it gives a lot more to think about than Vanilla.

This was a great game to meet new leaders and play with new features. Thanks Leif! One of these days when I finish playing around just for fun... I might actually try to be compåetitive here. As long as it stays fun.

I like the nerfing of specialists... that part seemed gimmicky to me. But I have to admit I think research agreements now give an almost unnoticable effect. Perhaps its my playstyle that needs improving if I want to make better use of those. Lots to learn still, so for now I am enjoying CiV G/K a lot. No more griping for me in the rants thread.

Edit to add: Quests seem a little too random, and with over 20 CS's with various quests at the same time, for me it was just random luck if what I did happened to please them or not. Most of the time it came as suprise when it happened. Quests should be fewer and more valuable, imo.

 

[dthompson32]

Are you sure about that? In my previous game i had Boudica's prophet roaming inside my borders for quite long (she were going to convert my capital, but i have wall of workers as a defence )

No I'm not sure about prophets, but I am sure about missionaries.

 

[Sprenk]

I too had troubles with Pacal converting me multiple times--forgot that keeping an Inquisitor in one's capital keeps it safe from Great Prophets and Missionaries. Worst moment was when I was first converted. In a fit of pique, I used up my remaining faith to buy an Inquisitor to eliminate this menace--only to realize that buying the Inquisitor in my contaminated capital, rather than in a non-converted city, made it useless.

 

[Motina]

This will be my third submit, but I've been playing GOTM's regulary since Civ3 vanilla.
I'm having serious doubts about G&K - played two games so far, and allthough I belive Emperor was my comfort-zone with vanilla, it seems to me that king has become insanely easy? I finished both my G&K games on king with twice the score of the second player on the list.

Strange. I completed the space ship sooner, and the only times I have played above Prince, and completed them were with GotM games.

So if Emperor was your comfort level, how could a Prince player out tech and outproduce a spaceship for a win by 22 turns?

I haven't had a science based game for a while now, but this did seem in line with when I usually complete a science game on prince.

I think I will replay this, and hope I get a much earlier finish. Maybe nothing like Attaturk's finishing date. 1690. Nice... must be a deity player.. excuse my ignorance.. If I am wrong.

 

[Zilla]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 40
Date submitted: 2012-07-22
Reference number: 26645
Your name: Zilla
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1974AD
Turns played: 394
Base score: 741
Final score: 950
Time played: 2:53:00
Submitted save: TGS40_Zilla_SciVic_1974.Civ5Save
Renamed file: Zilla_C504001.Civ5Save

Probably the worst game I have played on King ever. Poor decicions early in the game left me starved for food, giving me tiny cities (Capital at 2 pop at T50 ), making my science output abysmal...

It's my first TGS, so I expected to do poorly, but this was a bit worse than I had planned on. Oh well, next time I'll plan it out better.

 

[leif erikson]

It's my first TGS, so I expected to do poorly, but this was a bit worse than I had planned on. Oh well, next time I'll plan it out better.

Welcome to GOTM.

Improvement is what we are all about. I read and replay to learn from others.