TSG85 After Action thread

[leif erikson]

Welcome to the TSG85 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.).

- How did you use religion or spying to your advantage?
- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
- How did you take advantage of the Iroquois traits to assist in victory.
- What did you learn from your defeat, should you be defeated?

Players are encouraged to provide feedback on the game. Some players like to replay the game, and although we will not record the results from a replay, you can still post your new experiences (please state if the game is a replay). Please refrain from posting videos until the deadline for submission is over.

Would be interested to hear any thoughts on game setup.

 

[kb27787]

Well, I give up...
Catching up to one or two runaways is one thing (could easily do that with my faith once I complete Aesthetics tree)... but three.... around 50k total culture each
And maximum tourism only around 500...

Not gonna cut it esp. since Washington has 3 boosters up... not gonna be in time. IG also was proposed and passed 100 or so turns ago by someone else.

Spoiler :

GG.

Moderator Action: Moved to After Action thread as a screen shot is for turn 315.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

I'm with kb, except worse than him ... quit on turn 310'ish, zero tourism really except for Eiffel and everything I just stole from Brazil -- a war that took WAY too long, damned Prachina or whatever they are ... could have easily had a science victory, but culture? Nope.

I suppose it's still winnable if I throw a ton of nukes around but even then, might be a stretch. It's not like they don't have nukes as well! Maria is next in line, I think she's half done with the spaceship, and I think that even if I beat her/slowed her down, it just means Washington or the Shoshone build it instead.

Went with your standard 4-city tradition. Timed things poorly, should have maybe built the NC before building the 4th city, ended up not getting Education until turn 125 or so. In the end, though, still got the tech lead, still had ~500 science by turn 200 (which I think is decent on this map), but, hey, it's Deity!

 

[glory7]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 85
Date submitted: 2014-05-04 22:08:53
Reference number: 31082
Your name: glory7
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 1660AD
Turns played: 242
Base score: 2460
Final score: 5125
Time played: 16:32:00
Submitted save: glory7_gotm85_242.Civ5Save
Renamed file: glory7_C508501.Civ5Save


When I got 4-5 frigates (upgraded from galleass), I attacked shoshone and took his 2 coastal cities easily. It seemed that he was spending most of his armies on my CS allies and France (bribe DoW worked well). When I upgraded 3-4 artys, I took his 2nd city quick and cap soon - lots of wonders (like 10), including GW, GL, GLight, Sistine, etc. I sold 2 coastal cities for happiness and gpt.

After that, I bribed France to attack America, who was #1 in science. I DoFed with Austria, Brazil, and Maya and ran some RAs. I bribed Austria to attack Brazil and Maya, so I felt safe to put all my units toward America. Naval units had to move all the way NE to get to the US cities (nice map design!). Land units swam "inland sea" and landed on French territory. Thanks to French army, I could get Washington fairly easily with 5-6 artys + 2-3 cavalry + 2 old units.

I reached ideology choice 3rd - America took order and Brazil took freedom. I chose autocracy (which was a bad choice...) since I wanted two free tenets and I thought I needed some boosts for fast conquest. When I clicked next turn...



?????????? b/c my culture was miserable and tourism was basically zero (I had not built any amphitheater by then...and no great works made by myself), -25 (28? cannot even remember) happiness hit. I gave new york away and spend gold to buy expensive lux and CS. I used GW to pop +2 happiness per barracks (and armory, etc), I could get back to the happy state.

I went up and sold/gave all American cities except cap (with like 10 wonders). In the meanwhile, I got backstabbed by Brazil and Austria (warmonger hit, I guess), but they only denounced and did not DoW. I continuously built units and teched toward battleships. I spent saved gold to upgrade range frigates, and Brazil went down fairly easily. At t210, I took 3 Brazil cities including cap at one turn.



I eliminated Brazil, Shoshone, and America, and went on for Austria and Songhai. As I haven't played civ 5 for a while, I made many mistakes - for example, I forgot to use GW and GArists, and forgot to build GM guild, and forgot to choose best tenets eariler - 2nd tier 33% unit maintenance reduction, which was 100+ gpt gain, and 3rd tier 50% more tourism to civs that have common enemy. Everyone was fighting with Austria so that would helped a lot. I had 80% (open border and trade routes) and it would have been 130%.

I knew that my spt was not really high and I cannot reach internet on time. I went for airport tech instead and rush bought 3-4 airports. As I had 1 GW, 1 GA, and 1 GM surplus, I could have finished earlier, but well.

I eliminated all other civs and dropped 2 faith GMs to French, and that was game. I did not build a single wonder myself (I did not even have national wonders like hermitage - you can see that it will be built next turn), did not make a single great work with my own great people, and built amphi/opera house/etc very very late. I just used what other civs did built. I would say, "outsourcing". I also "outsourced" city razings by giving/selling cities. You can see that lots of cities were gone. Lastly, no archaeologists were built too - I kidnapped several during the war and used them to get some for myself. Actually, AIs did the job already for the most cases so all I had to was took their cities and get them.



Thank you very much staff, for a great map and game.

 

[Gustavus Rex]

Wow! GG Glory7

When did you decide to kill everybody? Was that plan A or B?


Skickas från min iPhone via Tapatalk

 

[DrakenKin]

Glory, that's one game i would have loved watching a video of.

What turn did you first attack, and what kind of army did you have vs how much city defense?

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

Glory, amazing game! My hat is off to you.

I went with the early cargo ship strat as well, but did not do the two city -->NC-->two more city strat, that seems to be where you really managed to break out of the pack.

Now I'm tempted to try again and see if I can get to your crazy high science prod by turn 150! Very impressive!

 

[RaidandTrade]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 85
Date submitted: 2014-05-05 14:34:03
Reference number: 31084
Your name: raidandtrade
Game status: Science Loss
Game date: 1928AD
Turns played: 349
Base score: 965
Final score: 965
Time played: 4:06:00
Submitted save: Hiawatha_0349 AD-1929.Civ5Save
Renamed file: raidandtrade_C508501.Civ5Save

So I'm now 0 from 2 on Deity... Really underestimated how hard it would be to catch up in science. I was friends with everyone and had RAs going almost constantly but missed every wonder worth having from a cultural perspective AND the Porcelain Tower to boot...

No religion despite hitting a Prophet ruin so my Goddess of the Hunt Pantheon was quickly over-run so my FPT was dismal.

Was third to an ideology so took Freedom. Two turns later and I hit revolutionary wave as Brazil, Austria and France ALL went Autocracy. Tried to ride it a few turns but had to cave in and switch.

Spying picked off a few low hanging techs and I ended up in fifth place by the time Brazil launched.

Next time...

 

[kb27787]

Gah it seems the best way to win on such a bad start is to eliminate those cultural giants... (missing goddess of the hunt didn't help me either... damn Askia!)

I better learn how to war (something I haven't done since my emperor days) if I want to stand a chance on such maps Always amazing to see a master at work though... (t240 maybe AI culture close to 30K at most, or 10K if they are complete culture gimps and only two left... much easier than 3x50k to catch up to) certainly helps he did not have to waste hammers or faith on wonders or hermitage and archaeologists... but of course... this assumes you are able to war and completely conquer almost all the map's AI on deity something that I cannot imagine doing.

 

[leif erikson]

We are all here to learn. Perhaps Glory will be our professor of warfare?

Nice work.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

I am less impressed with the warfare win (not saying it's not awesome, of course) as I am that you managed to get enough of tech parity/lead with the AI to make it possible before rocket artillery. 300 science at turn 150 with this map/civ is freakin' amazing.

I think the lesson here is one I will have to try to apply to future games -- early early cargo ships + a 2-city NC. I kinda guessed at the former on this map, but really screwed up on the latter -- so it would have been enough to win (which, whatever Tommy thinks, I still think is tough), just not a CV.

I'd like to know what your tech tree was, Glory...?

 

[glory7]

Wow! GG Glory7

When did you decide to kill everybody? Was that plan A or B?


Skickas från min iPhone via Tapatalk

um, after looking at the map (around t10-20), I knew that to win fast (and to win surely) I had to kill other civs. And when I saw that two civs were getting wonders crazy, I had to go for them. When shoshone built sistine and uffizi, I thanked him for building them (and other 7 wonders) for me.

Given that I have to war, rest is to plan kill whom at which timing. Usually it goes like this:

1. you plan to attack civ A. Get open border if possible (usually easy). Scout what units he got.
2. Bribe 5-10 turns before that A and B fight each other. If you can, let your neighbors fight against each other all the time. It has another big benefit - since they are at war, they will send caravans and cargo ships to me!
3. Surprise attack. Since in many cases deity AI can pump one unit per turn (or more than that), you don't really want to take the war long time.
4. Sell/give not-important cities. If you can, sell multiple cities so that you can get lots of gpt for 2nd (and 3rd) city that you sell. AIs pay a lot for neighboring cities - so let's say you take city 1 and 2 (neighboring cities) from Brazil, selling city 1 to France gives you like 3 gpt, but selling city 2 (after selling city 1) will give you 50+ gpt.
5. Keep going. During the war, make sure you consider step 1-2 all the time. Speed is the essence. If you do frigate rush, you don't want to see submarines. If you do arty rush, you don't want to see planes.

For usual deity games, you can take 4-5 civs with frigates and/or artys. And you clean up rest with battleships and/or rocket artys/planes.

 

[glory7]

Glory, that's one game i would have loved watching a video of.

What turn did you first attack, and what kind of army did you have vs how much city defense?

I think I could attack him earlier with frigates, but I wanted to make sure that shoshone sends all units to defend France. I oxforded dynamite at t161 and you can see that 3 cannons are swimming at the front city, with other units. 4 frigates + one melee is enough to kill 30-40 def coastal cities in 2-3 turns.

 

[glory7]

I am less impressed with the warfare win (not saying it's not awesome, of course) as I am that you managed to get enough of tech parity/lead with the AI to make it possible before rocket artillery. 300 science at turn 150 with this map/civ is freakin' amazing.

I think the lesson here is one I will have to try to apply to future games -- early early cargo ships + a 2-city NC. I kinda guessed at the former on this map, but really screwed up on the latter -- so it would have been enough to win (which, whatever Tommy thinks, I still think is tough), just not a CV.

I'd like to know what your tech tree was, Glory...?

I just finished your DC poly peaceful CV map - I tried 4 city NC tradition there, and it seems that 2 city NC + 2 later is better.

For tech tree, I think pottery - sailing - animal - trapping - archery - mining - writing - beeline to philo (didn't get early optics, as didn't really need lighthouse. Didn't go for early IW as I was not going to get UU) - optics - longhouse tech - currency - something - stole education (!!@#@!!@) - astronomy (t124) to pop rationalism - beeline dynamite, get navigation 10 turns before the attack so that I could build one privateer.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

I just finished your DC poly peaceful CV map - I tried 4 city NC tradition there, and it seems that 2 city NC + 2 later is better.

It's funny you mention that -- I was excited to try out this new strat and so booted up a new poly map, went three-city NC (only two connected by early cargo ships, but I couldn't pass up settling next to a fantastic Fuji about 15 spaces away), it worked great:

1) Cut down on early scouts (only 4)
2) Bought the granary in City #2
3) Early ship to the cap

AND ... turn 80 NC, Astronomy on turn 135 or so, 288 science by turn 150, ~500 science on turn 200. Pretty good given only 3 cities and the other two cities not being great, resource-wise. Wu has virtually *ALL* the wonders, will be interesting to see whether the boost is enough to seriously cut down on the win time, but ... yeah, early cargo ships + 2-city (or 3-city in a pinch and if you have lots of $$) NC seems the way to go.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

It's funny you mention that -- I was excited to try out this new strat and so booted up a new poly map, went three-city NC (only two connected by early cargo ships, but I couldn't pass up settling next to a fantastic Fuji about 15 spaces away), it worked great:

1) Cut down on early scouts (only 4)
2) Bought the granary in City #2
3) Early ship to the cap

AND ... turn 80 NC, Astronomy on turn 135 or so, 288 science by turn 150, ~500 science on turn 200. Pretty good given only 3 cities and the other two cities not being great, resource-wise. Wu has virtually *ALL* the wonders, will be interesting to see whether the boost is enough to seriously cut down on the win time, but ... yeah, early cargo ships + 2-city (or 3-city in a pinch and if you have lots of $$) NC seems the way to go.

EDIT: This may be a different story if you can't have an observatory in your cap, I dunno.

EDIT: For those of you not used to archipelago maps, ~500 on turn 200 is pretty strong IMO. There's usually not a lot of good real estate out there for your second+ cities, and even if there is, it takes a little while to get there, they need their own designated workers, etc.

 

[Manpanzee]

I managed to get a 100% peaceful victory on turn 306/307. Not particularly fast and I reloaded a couple turns (the shame, the shame), so it's not official, but I'm pretty satisfied to have been able to pull it off at all. Basically, my whole strategy was built around winning International Games at peak tourism. Notes:

--I started running the guilds pretty early, including the Musician's Guild. My second city had all three guilds running with a Garden and National Epic by ~T155. I felt like I needed the culture for policies, and I figured getting my base tourism up was more important than getting a couple more concert tours at non-peak tourism. Due to needing all these buildings early, my second city was underdeveloped for most of the game. It didn't even have a University until after Scientific Theory, when I cash-bought one in order to enable Oxford-ing Radio.

--My top priority through most of the midgame was allying Maritime city states. In addition to food being generally awesome and enabling me to grow my capital without chopping forests, it also gave me the votes to ensure that International Games didn't happen at an inopportune time. Plus, every single Maritime CS had a different luxury resource, so this took care of my happiness too.

--In order to afford these city states, I limited myself to only two internal trade routes, with the rest going out for gold. I only cash-bought a couple things, and I didn't sign a single Research Agreement all game. I did spend quite a bit of gold on war bribes. I had multiple 30+ GPT bribes going for a lot of the game.

--I controlled the World Congress from the Industrial era onward. The AIs in this game were pretty slow about choosing Ideologies (only one other Civ had an Ideology at T205), so I was able to propose World Ideology: Order at a time when it only angered one AI. This helped a lot with happiness and triggering the third tier Order tourism tenet.

--I didn't get any pre-Industrial wonders. Oracle went before T80, Sistine went before T130, and Uffizi went T140. I even got beat to Porcelain Tower. But I got basically every wonder after that. In order, my capital built: Eiffel Tower, Broadway, Louvre, Cristo Redentor, Sydney Opera House, CN Tower, Neuchwanstein, Hubble, Great Firewall. It was a lot of fun watching Broadway get pumped out in a mere 8 turns.

--Demographics on the turn I started working International Games. I'm first in Manufactured Goods, with a total of 657 hammers across five cities. I saved a Great Artist in order to have a golden age for this, but it wasn't necessary. I was first in hammers even before triggering the GA. Having so much Uranium was nice, as it let me get Nuclear Plants everywhere while still building plenty of Nukes.

Spoiler :

--My empire at the time of victory. There's one more city below Mt Sinai. My GPT is lower than it should be, as a couple turns before the end I gave Washington 125 GPT for a loan of 300-something gold. Math is hard sometimes.

Spoiler :

--I'd say the biggest clear blunder I made was mindlessly auto-clicking Religious Texts as my enhancer. Reliquary would have been way, way better, although I'm not sure if it actually would have made much of a difference on my win time.

 

[kb27787]

Well winning IG at the right time will solve most problems actually (esp if you have faith banked up); as it turns your civ into Brazil for 20 turns
I'm going to go for a revenge run sometime this weekend and see what I can do... (now that I know the map, I'm definitely not going to settle anywhere near my starting location) and I'll probably beeline for Sinai and focus on faith like always... (and pray I only deal with at most 2 runaways rather than 3)

btw for religion I find Messiah to be the best. (let your satellites be converted so you can buy their mosques and pagodas (and later on you will get a nice +40% boost from shared religion); Get Swords to Plowshares and Divine Inspiration for your capitol, and plant prophets that spawn; you can also get interfaith dialogue so that you can have some mini-GS bulbs midgame)
I actually got screwed by Maria last game... my cities and Brazil's and America's were sharing the same religion, then that hack popped in around the time of hotels with a prophet and converted all my cities except my capitol which I surrounded with units. Goodbye 40% bonus... and it's not like I can buy a prophet of a different faith either and inquisitors cost almost like a GP that late in the game

 

[Dunkhan]

First of all, congratulations to Glory7 and Manpanzee (although a little less due to the reloads ).

The game appeared to be going alright. I didn't get the early war I probably needed to do that forest terrain is really slow going. I unlocked the first ideology and went for autocracy because at that stage I knew I had to eliminate most AIs to win a culture victory. I had declared war on the Shoshone and had begun capturing their coastal cities using frigates.

Then disaster struck, Brazil chose another ideology instantly handing me a large unhappiness penalty (they had far too much influence on me). This caused my war on the Shoshone to become highly costly due to the reduced combat strength caused by unhappiness. Then Austria and Brazil (both freedom) declared war on me on the same turn. I instantly lost 3 financial trade routes through plunder and so begun the inevitable spiral of debt and unhappiness that led to my defeat around 20 turns later. Units disbanding and science plummeting due to the loss of money. The ending was rather disastrous on the whole.

- How did you use religion or spying to your advantage?
I didn't really I tried to use the science from connected cities pantheon with liberty and using the forests for roads. This seemed like a good idea at the time and I always intended for it to be a short term measure. I ended up with a religion and then felt obliged to try to do something with it. This wasted numerous hammers and some faith.

- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
Initially, I thought that the lack of food would be the main problem on the map, but although this presented a challenge, it was possible to overcome this with food trade routes. The main challenge that this map caused was due to the lack of variety of luxury resources available in the proximity of the starting area.

On the broader subject of the map the opponents selected for this made it very tricky and the annoying positioning of the Shoshone (with their giant borders on a bottle neck in the map resulted in me only meeting everyone when the world congress was founded.

- How did you take advantage of the Iroquois traits to assist in victory?
To be honest, I think this was a hindrance because it encouraged me to keep far too much of my territory forested as well as take a tech path that I am not particularly familiar with. I am sure after a bit of practice I would be able to use their traits and unique unit/improvement more effectively.

- What did you learn from your defeat, should you be defeated?
I learnt that you were feeling particularly mean when you created this map.

The combination of the opposing Civilizations, victory condition (I probably would have been quite happy flowing through freedom to a science victory while maintaining friendships with my neighbours, instead of taking autocracy) and the map made it a very difficult task. Brazil with its crazy tourism, Shoshone clogging up the middle of the map, Austria acquiring city states left, right and centre and another cultural Civ in France. I didn't really have much contact with the other Civilizations.

I think on this kind of map you really need to rush down the nearby Civilizations to put them on the back foot or at least try to pit them against each other. I think that I probably shouldn't have taken liberty, tradition was probably far better suited to the map. Having selected liberty I kept thinking I had too produce more cities. I also ended up with far more workers than I knew what to do with.

I didn't focus sufficiently on gold and as soon as my trade routes were lost I began hemorrhaging gold per turn. Some early chopping for up front hammers and farming to increase food probably would have gone a long way to improving the situation I found myself in.

I really fancy having another go at this map to see what I have really learnt from the experience on this map. Assuming I do better I will probably provide an update on what I learnt.

All in all, I found the map to be different and interesting until the last 20 or so turns when my decline was inevitable. Are you allowed to submit retired games?

 

[Acken]

I've given up around T220. I wanted to see where I could go peacefully but as soon as I started losing wonders by a few turns one after the other I knew it was doomed. I tried to deviate and see if I could sneak an attack but it was really too late. Should have just gone for artillery/frigate directly and stick to a domination like game.

Left at turn 220 it was going nowhere and spending 80 or so more turns wasn't really interesting Would have been better if I could stole Education too hehe