TSG53 After Action Thread

[glory7]

t250 as well. managed to save my golden age fail for utopia by chopping 3 forests - i hadnt thought of the liberty GE increasing costs for my next GA by just 1 turn too many.

tradition 4 city into piety until reduced sp costs - timed GA from policy with chichen itza. freedom ~t156, radio way too late (~205). i should have bought schools sooner, rather than workshops. didnt have enough science to get to CR in a timely manner, as i had no puppets whatsoever.

biggest mistake was probably to build SH instead of petra as my first wonder in the desert city. petra would have paid off later on and the gold i spent on the amphitheater there came back to haunt me later when all AIs were broke.

prebuilt a little sloppily too, brought it down to 7 turns but should have been 6 or 5. used 2 GEs for manufactories (GE from pisa was a waste too, should have definitly taken GS or GA there).

Your two screenshots show lots of important stuff.. I really need to learn how to post screenshots so that I could share my play and ask for improvements. I think leif replied me how to do it, so I should go back to gotm47 aar and learn.

The most important lesson I learnt from your screenshot is landmark position. I can't believe that I did not even consider building landmarks on top of those incenses. It seems that it is much better than building landmarks along the river food tiles.

my sinai city was one tile right to yours. I think I wanted to have gold in the 3rd ring and SW cow tile in the 3rd ring too. I didn't consider building petra there, but that might have been better. I am not sure somebody else did built petra when I got GE from pisa - but I just rushed taj there.

East city position is great. It's definetly better than mine. I built it much closer to the cap (hill next to cow, stone, horse). While it had cotton in the 3rd ring, your city position has more resources within 3 rings.

I considered west city position too, but I went for north. I don't know why, but whatever the victory condition is, it is too tempting to kill AIs. north city was a good post city against america. I ended up killing india, america, and sweden. ottoman and greece were insignificant - they offered me cities several times for peace.

For sp, it seems that after tradition, either liberty or piety has similar effects, as we almost entered freedom at the same time.

I only had one GE manufactory which was built at the last moment when I finished liberty and ready to go for utopia.

 

[BWS]

The most important lesson I learnt from your screenshot is landmark position. I can't believe that I did not even consider building landmarks on top of those incenses. It seems that it is much better than building landmarks along the river food tiles.

Do landmarks connect luxury resources? The last time I checked, great improvements only connected strategic resources. I'm also unsure about moai.

 

[glory7]

Yeah, could you shed some light on pre-building please. I read the hammer overflow article, which says i have to get some buildings/wonders within 1 hammer of completion & que them in some peculiar order just before Utopia, yet i can't figure out which exact buildings are needed (and in which order). Thanks in advance.

Solid result, well done, glory!

I think pkf explained this in detail and as I am not an expert on this too (this is my 3rd or 4th try for pre-building), so it would be enough to write down what I have done. I realized that I needed something like this around 10 turns before the utopia starts, so mine is really rough:

my hpt was around 140 before statue of liberty and liberty finisher manufactory. so I put some hammers on constabulary (h160), bank (h200), infantry (h340?), and statue of liberty. At t239 when I was 4 turns away from utopia start, I finshed them in that order. At t243, my hpt was 166.6 and utopia was 7 turns away. So I guess I saved around 350-400 hammers, which was 2-3 turns.

I am pretty sure that there are much better ways than this one.. I should have been more careful and planned this in advance. Instead, I was just busy killing AIs for fun

Thank you for your compliments!

 

[glory7]

Do landmarks connect luxury resources? The last time I checked, great improvements only connected strategic resources. I'm also unsure about moai.

I think they don't. But here you have like 5-6 incenses anyway.. I didn't play peaceful game so I couldn't get a good price for my lux, so I think I should have planted GA on top of incense so that I could utilize civil serviced river farm tiles.

 

[BWS]

Aha! Good idea! I was trading most of mine, but otherwise the landmark would make sense. I was already working the tiles because of Goddess of Festivals and Monasteries.

 

[glory7]

@ glory7 Impressive result! How many cities did you settle and how did you manage to open Freedom (Industrial era) on T159? This was almost 50 turns (!!) before I was able to do this in my game. Your science rate must have been very high (or did you use RA's?).

I used tradition 4 city opening. I am pretty sure that this is the best technique in most cases, except early domination ones. For science and diplo vics, it's just about spt. Experts like tommynt and tabarnak showed that tradition 4 city opening and GL-NC, tech beeline to edu and open rationalism asap with acoustics, beeline to printing press for pisa, beeline to sci theory and plastics works best.

For culture one, it's similar but you don't need really fast tech after you enter industrial with arch. you don't need plastics, for example. But for ~t150, while you have to build culture buildings and artists instead of only scientists and rationalism to maximize spt, even for culture games you do the similar thing. Focus on getting edu early and buy university at the cap asap.

Unless it is immortal or deity level, I believe that RA is a waste. AI's tech rate is too slow and they don't have enough money usually. It's better to extract their gold and use it to rush buy sci buildings and buy CSs. I know that this part is controversial, but I agree with tommynt (what I wrote is from his strategy).

 

[Wargizmo]

Yeah I also put my landmarks on the incense. If you get monasteries and/or god of festivals the bonuses still work but you don't get the incense. I also dropped mine on the horses, sheep and cows. Any tile that has an existing bonus is a pretty good candidate for a great person.

 

[beestar]

OCC win, T302 (1864 AD).

Went wonder-crazy, and built everything I could get my hands on. Completed Tradition, Piety, Freedom, Patronage, and Commerce (and overshot by 1 Honor SP).

Could have been quicker with 4 cities but I was lazy this time and didn't want to manage more than one city ...

I was up to 123 by the end of the game. That was pretty sweet. Does the Golden Age happiness bucket fill up during the turns you're actually in a Golden Age? I thought not, so I deliberately didn't trigger my artist for 10 turns while I naturally accumulated enough happiness for the GA.

[edit: Forgot to add that signing a defensive pact with Sweden seemed like a good idea at the time, as it would protect me from Catherine. (Intrigue from another AI suggested she was about to attack me, and the massed xbowmen on my border were another helpful clue). But then America attacked Sweden and I was forced to declare on my friend Washington, which really poisoned the well diplomatically ... and cancelled the defensive pact for when Catherine eventually did backstab me]

 

[beestar]

glory7, 100 turns of Perpetual Golden Age?! I'm clearly doing something wrong ...

 

[kenthebest]

Reference number: 28131
Your name: kenthebest
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1850AD
Turns played: 295
Base score: 1633
Final score: 2767
Time played: 4:55:00

Cities
Settled south east of stone like everyone did.
Settled 2nd north west on desert flood plain and built Petra there
Settled 3rd north east toward India
Settled 4th a bit north of 2nd to fill the gap

Tech
GL pop philosophy, Rush to NC, tech lead till the end...

Wonder
GL, Oracle, Petra, Great Mosque of Djenne and Alhambra are early wonders I grabbed, I got almost every wonder after medieval.

Religion
Founded Goddess of the Festivals on turn 6, found religion with tithe at turn 50ish, enhance with Itinerant Preachers later. In the end I got 130gpt from tithe and all cities except one had my religion.

Wars
Hiawatha dowed me with swords and archers while I had crossbow. Took one city and make peace. Gandhi trolled my religion, so I wiped him out. No many big wars in this game.

Mistake
I tech to Radio and planned to rush buy broadcasting tower, then I realized I couldn't build it without museum! I spent another 10 turns to research it. I could have saved 3~5 turns there.

Overall, my peak culture per turn is on 1200. This is improvement from my last culture game which finished at turn 367. Oh well, last game was on emperor and this game I got every single wonder I want.

 

[WaveOfDoom]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 53
Date submitted: 2013-01-19
Reference number: 28139
Your name: WaveOfDoom
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1850AD
Turns played: 295
Base score: 1343
Final score: 2276
Time played: 16:22:00
Submitted save: WaveOfDoom_TSG53.Civ5Save
Renamed file: WaveOfDoom_C505301.Civ5Save

First GOTM submission! What what!? Alright, now that that is out of the way...

I should have shaved an easy 30 turns off of this. Had I beelined into the industrial age, I could have gotten the freedom tree completed much sooner. Too many GP's popped as a result as I couldn't use my faith for anything, and my religion was so strong it took over the continent for the most part.

This start was meant for a cultural/religious game. No DoW's on me the whole game. I had an issue at one point with Catherine over-expanding, but Sweden took care of her for me.

I also had 3 wonders sniped away from me 1-2 turns away from completion, which delayed the full use of Reformation. (Chitzen Itza, Notre Dame and the GMofD).

Never played a rush culture game before - quite fun! Ignore the played time, I fell asleep last night with this thing on (a couple too many beers), which added a solid 13 hours.

So... what's next?

Spoiler :

 

[leif erikson]

First GOTM submission! What what!? Alright, now that that is out of the way...

Welcome to CivFanatics and GOTM.

Congrats on your first game and best of luck for many more.

 

[Brigg]

It wasn't spectacular, but 312 turns. The Ottomans got a late game lesson in quality vs. quantity. We had similar army scores, but his wave of Jannisarries was broken by my 2 GW Infantry and 2 Gatling guns. That was my only war, other than a couple proxy battles feeding units to CS allies being swamped by America. Antwerp is an ungrateful twerp.

World religion generally gave me 50c a turn from t150 on. Most of the lands would waste faith with Inquisitors, knocking me down a couple culture every few turns.

I really liked that Petra made the mountains into decent tiles. Is that supposed to happen?

 

[pkf]

Your two screenshots show lots of important stuff.. I really need to learn how to post screenshots so that I could share my play and ask for improvements. I think leif replied me how to do it, so I should go back to gotm47 aar and learn.

The most important lesson I learnt from your screenshot is landmark position. I can't believe that I did not even consider building landmarks on top of those incenses. It seems that it is much better than building landmarks along the river food tiles.

my sinai city was one tile right to yours. I think I wanted to have gold in the 3rd ring and SW cow tile in the 3rd ring too. I didn't consider building petra there, but that might have been better. I am not sure somebody else did built petra when I got GE from pisa - but I just rushed taj there.

East city position is great. It's definetly better than mine. I built it much closer to the cap (hill next to cow, stone, horse). While it had cotton in the 3rd ring, your city position has more resources within 3 rings.

I considered west city position too, but I went for north. I don't know why, but whatever the victory condition is, it is too tempting to kill AIs. north city was a good post city against america. I ended up killing india, america, and sweden. ottoman and greece were insignificant - they offered me cities several times for peace.

For sp, it seems that after tradition, either liberty or piety has similar effects, as we almost entered freedom at the same time.

I only had one GE manufactory which was built at the last moment when I finished liberty and ready to go for utopia.

I actually only realised placing landmarks on incense would be great after I had already settled two of them on cattle/horses. those missing 2 hammers hurt me much much more than the loss of another luxury with gold-starved AIs. But yeah, landmarks or any great improvements should be placed on tiles that are already being worked and dont lose too many bonuses, such as cattle, sheep, horses etc.

I'm pretty sure placing that western city slowed me down a lot, dont know what i was thinking, there was just not enough food in there. I should have been a few turns faster than you were (considering east city and by subjective comparison of screens to your progress report) but I misdecided on the importance of science after I had bulbed arch. I think it's really really important to lock your culture production and go all science wherever you can to get radio asap, since you want culture output to peak asap. Also puppeting AIs is very helpful to that cause, which is probably why you had radio earlier.

 

[willardgrant]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 53
Date submitted: 2013-01-20
Your name: willardgrant
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1958AD
Turns played: 378
Base score: 1216
Final score: 1626

Submitted save: Boudicca_0377 AD-1957.Civ5Save
Renamed file: willardgrant_Boudicca_0377 AD-1957.Civ5Save

I settled on the hill and decided to settle only two cities totally. I ignored the Mt. Sinai area which was a mistake.
Despite that, my religion (Christianity) spread to every city of the world with Goddess of Festivals, Papal primacy, Monasteries, Cathedrals and itinerant preachers.
Capital built many wonders including GL, SH, Cristo, Sistine, Oracle, Louvre while Dublin built ND, HG and Pentagon.
Spies were all gone to rig cultural CS. By the end of the game all CS were allies.
Into the game, Greece and America were quickly eliminated by Sweden and Iroquois.
Sweden was my best friend during the game. Ottomans quickly eliminated India and declared me but were held easily and war lasted few turns. But later after they conquered Cape Town they Dowed me with a good army. I was saved by buying Antwerp as ally, They conquered it but the time they wasted allowed me to get cannons and quickly liberated it. After little time cannons were upgraded to artillery so I liberated Cape Town and conquered Delhi and Mubai before signing peace.
Nothing important happened till the end.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

Since you submitted the save through the official channels there is no need to post the save file in your post (unless you have something that you'd like people to check out in the save). It helps save on server space for our gracious web hosts.

Thanks,
HR

 

[Tabarnak]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 53
Date submitted: 2013-01-20
Your name: Tabarnak
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1725AD
Turns played: 255
Base score: 1379
Final score: 2703
Time played: 5:18:00
Submitted save: Boudicca_0255 AD-1725.Civ5Save

Tradition 4 cities opening, this map was well suited for a cultural victory like many other said already.

Finished Tradition at turn 72 then Piety until reducing cost. Opened Patronnage then 2 policies left side of Liberty. Opened Freedom at turn 156 finished a turn 188. Some policies from Liberty then Patronnage(yo-yo between them until Cristo).

Education turn 102 which is good for a 4 cities set up, Beelined Acoustics too early since i hadnt finished some important wonders in capital so i started Sistine a bit late. Beelined Archeology at turn 154 before Printing Press. Reached Broadcast Towers at turn 197. Forgot to rush buy last one during 7 turns(204) even if i had gold for it i dunno why got distracted or played too fast like usual. Got difficulties to rush buy museums fast enough at some point.

Golden age started on turn 110 with a little break of 3 turns around the turn 140.

I signed 2 RAs to reach Radio faster(but it wasn't a big deal). Kept 1 gs from PT and Pisa to reach Plastics as soon as possible. Didn't reach that tech when i want, was 2 policies short of Utopia when i finally finished Cristo(you can save 1 turn per policy with that wonder).

Otherwise i did as most players should do around for sub 270 turns games. Built almost all wonders(missed Terracota as 1 important wonder) I found last cultural cs(2) a bit late. Utopia 8 turns left to build from hammer overflow...been 10.5 hammers short to get 7 turns

Without all these little mistakes a sub 250 turns would have been possible. One thing i should do next time is to build temples and the Grand temple for an extra ga. Only settled 6 or 7 of them. Reached 1140 cpt at best. No wars expected Suleiman for some turns without any consequences. India and Russia have been raped letting only 5 of us at the end.

Spoiler :

Great games from glory and pkf

 

[Alphons Rodulfo]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 53
Date submitted: 2013-01-20
Reference number: 28146
Your name: Alphons Rodulfo
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1850AD
Turns played: 295
Base score: 1526
Final score: 2586
Time played: 14:14:00
Submitted save: Boudicca_0295 AD-1850.Civ5Save
Renamed file: Alphons_Rodulfo_C505301.Civ5Save

Here is my try. I did my best to hurry things, but things went just too slow. Probably I made a few mistakes:

1) I started with Liberty instead of Tradition. In the previous messages I see that everybody else started with Tradition. Probably not without reason. I wanted to try something else, but the experiment failed.
2) I had two good cities (Dublin close to mt. Sinai (a pity it does not count as a mountain)) but I decided to annex Delhi. Unfortunately, Delhi produced about 10% of culture on avarage, so it was better if I had left it a puppet, because annexing it increased culture cost by 15%
3) Science was too slow. When I reached Christo Redentor I only had one policy to go before Utopia. Perhaps I should have founded a third city near a mountain (for the observatory).

I conquered India and the Ottomans. Otherwise I did not have any wars. I was allied with all city states pretty soon. For the most part, this game was about waiting and calculating. That is why I liked the previous GOTM (domination) more. I like the game to be about strategy, and not about maths. Also, there is little immersion to be had with trying a cultural victory. It is just numbers, there is no visual or other game element that shows your culture slowly becoming the dominant one. It would have been nice to have the other leaders show developing a gradual preference for wearing chequered cloth, for example.

 

[AE_]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 53
Date submitted: 2013-01-21
Reference number: 28151
Your name: AE_
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1730AD
Turns played: 256
Base score: 1177
Final score: 2307
Time played: 6:41:00
Submitted save: tsg53_Boudicca_0256 AD-1730.Civ5Save
Renamed file: AE__C505301.Civ5Save

I settled 2 SW since I wanted the mountain for observatory. Don't know if this was a good idea in a culture game, but i like to build next to a mountain when i see one.

I tried a different tactics and built only 2 cities. I had a friendly game as always, only DOWed india twice to steal a worker and later to get some aluminium. I also stole a settler from arabia.

My SP order was full tradition, all piety but the 10% gold from temples SP and patronage until Freedom got opened.

Built almost every wonder and bought most buildings.

Spoiler :

 

[pigtim]

Your name: pigtim
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1854AD
Turns played: 297
Base score: 1246
Final score: 2111
Time played: 5:47:00