6otM 108 AAR

[Knowtalent]

Welcome to the 6otM 108 After Actions Report. In this thread you can post the results of your game. Please state victory type, date, and score and the save choice (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 attached your victory save to your post.

- What did you prioritize for research and policies?
- Did you bother with Religion ?
- How did you pump your Tourism?
- Were City-States helpful?
- Any surprises you ran into, how did you deal with it?
- How was the dealing with all the game mode?
- Did you enjoy the game?
Please use spoiler tags for any surprise details you'd like kept hidden. Thanks.
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.

 

[Ceydezed]

Culture Victory turn 200

- What did you prioritize for research and policies? I found a relic relatively quickly so decided to go for a religion to get reliquaries, which works also with heroes relic, so this gave me a decent amount of tourism early game. I tried (but not too much) to play with corporations and industries, but I don't think I did a great job at this, as I could have settled more cities if I had been less lazy. I tried to have a couple of trade routes quickly to start trading with as many AI as possible. Because of dramatic ages, I also tried to build some wonders that were not very useful for me in order to get era score (Chichen Itza, Torre de Belen, Colossus, Lighthouse, etc.). I obviously also went for Kilwa, the Mausoleum and Cristo Redentor.

- Did you bother with Religion ? I did, having a good faith output is important for parks and rock bands, plus reliquaries was also very useful for tourism. I took religious settlement as a pantheon soI didn't have any other strong faith generation.

- How did you pump your Tourism? Reliquaries, heroes relics, great works of art, music and artifacts, and probably a bit from industries and monopolies but hard to really know how much. Was not a very fast victory so probably this didn't have such a big impact.

- Were City-States helpful? Yes, especially the ones that appeared with the barbarian clans mode, mainly antananativo and nan madol.

- Any surprises you ran into, how did you deal with it? With so many modes and variables it was quite an original game - maybe the biggest "surprise" was when Genghis Khan decided to go out of his way to declare war on Nan Madol who was the most southern city of all, completely useless, and I had to quickly dispatch some forces there to protect it from both him and hords of zombies that were being raised from the dead every single turn.

- How was the dealing with all the game mode? It was fun. Apocalypse was not very relevant, and I didn't have any disaster occuring to me - no hurricane, no tornado, nothing. Very lucky. Zombies were the biggest threat, spawning all the time everywhere and almost razing a couple of cities, forcing me to invest in more armies. I built a couple of barricades but i don't think they were useful. I took voidsingers for the faith and the additional relics slots, and it happened that zombies do kill cultists, so that was quite nice in the end game. I got Hercules, Maui and Himiko which were also quite helpful. I built a couple of industries (amber, turtles) and I think I had one monopoly at the end.

- Did you enjoy the game? Yes, Maori in Terra is obviously kinda cheating but seeing the world fall apart (Cleopatra, Mvemba and Maya all disappeared, Suleiman was struggling all game long to survive) from a safe distance, while almost being assured to get permanent golden ages (others players dying means more wonders for you...), well it's fun for sure.

Quick edit: i was wondering how come I got all these flood barriers as I didn't build any, but I think it was probably the completion of the Torre de Belem. Apparently this also affect buildings in the city center? Only the cities that are not on my capital continents seem to be affected.

Spoiler Screenshots :

 

[MACKA0ili]

I've been having fun with this gotm, I don't usually post my results here but I thought I'd bring up a bug I ran into during the late game and I didn't want to post it anywhere else just in case of spoilers.
Anyway, things were proceeding normally when suddenly all specialty districts had 999+ turns left on their timers. This happens for building new districts as well as repairing old ones, which is gonna be a major pain going forward due to the apocalypse game mode. My production hasn't been affected, I can still build everything else including non specialty districts normally as you can see in the attached image.

I've looked it up a bit, apparently it has something to do with the dramatic ages game mode and using the cultural industry policy card, but I can't verify. Luckily I'm pretty much attained victory at this point, but I thought I'd let anyone else playing the gotm know just in case they run into it.

Moderator Action: Thank you for posting. Moved to AAR thread as you are at turn 192, beyond the time of the Opening Action thread and there may be spoiler concerns. leif

 

[Brokencar]

CV T139
- What did you prioritize for research and policies?
I didn't bother much with research since I found Caguana very late and there's no useful city-state converted from barbarian. For civics, since I decided go for relic, Divine Right will unlock a very important wonder Mont St Michel and gives you two wildcard slot Monarchy (which will be more important in dramatic ages since you have to use extra one slot for monumentality) and Mass Media will unlock another key wonder Cristo Rendentor. I prioritize these two.
- Did you bother with Religion ?
Yes, reliquaries is powerful.
- How did you pump your Tourism?
Mainly by relics gained from apostles after building St Mont Michel and boost from industries and monopollies. (Though I am still not very clear about how many boost are from industries and monoplies) Also build some Batey at late game.
- Were City-States helpful?
Not that helpful. Ayutthaya and Johannesburg are always strong but there are only one religious city state and one scientific city state Nalanda (Geneva is impossible to control at early game) which makes the boost after Kilwa very limited.
- Any surprises you ran into, how did you deal with it?
Apocalypse is an annoying mode! Storms pillage my districts several time. But forest fires are somehow useful, giving you incredible amount of food and production early.
- How was the dealing with all the game mode?
I only use the food and production brought by forest fires and didn't bother with soothsayers the whole game. I choose voidsingers because it gives more faith and slots to place relics. I claim Anansi and Hercules, though mainly using them to fight with barbarians. Industry and corporation mode is good, especially you can use builder to unlock industry to yield more food/production/gpt. Dramatic ages is not good because it almost reduces one policy slot and ask you to have a precise control over early policy change. Barbarian mode is somehow helpful and do convert the second religious city-state. Zombies mode has little impact, I consider them as barbarian who cannot pillage.
- Did you enjoy the game?
My first CV game and yes it's cheating to use Kupe on Terra but too many modes open makes the whole game complicated and I think I would prefer open one mode per game. (Probably barbarian mode is a wildcard)

 

[Planktonic]

CV turn 222/223.

I already posted on the Opening Actions thread so not a whole lot more to add. Didn't discover Yerevan until very late, and didn't build Mt St Michel until pretty late, so ended up mostly spamming cultists to generate the relics for a Reliquaries-based victory. They're a lot more reliable in the sense that you know you'll get the relic after expending their three charges, instead of hoping an AI apostle kills your apostle. Finished the game with rock bands.

It was a fun game but I felt like I was playing more to keep up with the Era score than trying to gain any real advantage for the victory condition. Built a bunch of wonders I may not have it it weren't for the need for Era score. Summoned a Hero I had no use for (Mulan) just for the Era score.

Wrt the modes- Apocalypse mode seemed largely besides-the-point as far as I could tell; Zombies were occasionally annoying but not overly damaging; Dramatic Ages kept things interesting, especially in the Old World, but I'm not sure I like playing in a world where almost half the civs disappear from contention....

Thanks for the game!

 

[Casualty of war]

I had the 999+ glitch happen, conquered Muscat right after the camp converted but it remained "at war" with me and affected my Grievances for the rest of the game, had to restart multiple times when Envoys earned disappeared. Very choppy, frustrating game. Finding Valetta early and first made for an obvious Voidsinger/Relic game as buying Old God Obelisks with Faith is just so sweet, but I hit too many speedbumps unrelated to game play which delayed me until Egypt could get entrenched.

 

[deckerk]

CV turn 225

Note: I also had the 999+ glitch. I'll have to search for more info, as that probably slowed me for the last 20 turns (I was culturally overtaking all of Suliman's cities in the new world and was trying to up faith districts to build more naturalists and rock bands...)

That said, it's my fastest victory in Civ 6 GS, and my first deity victory (I normally play at immortal). I was a bit surprised how friendly everyone was (I guess distance works wonders and how many wonders I built. In my game everyone stuck around and Egypt and Maya were the big cultures (Egypt was the last to fall).

I've played with all the features on before (except the new zombies) so was confident for the most part (only one dark age--classical? when I fell 1 point short, miscalculating a bit). Only used Maui due to the order I discovered heros and the others took them (not much use for the military ones). I probably did not optimally understand Kupe's wild bonuses for forests and such: by the end of the game I was reforesting everything for the huge production Had about 5 national parks but only 3 bands at the win.

moved the settler east found Valetta and moved past, settled in the corner there and second city on the other side of the natural wonder, and settled downwards. Another mistake was not settling close enough to Kongo for trade with him and Maya until very late. Did both industries and one corporation, industries had tourism up 125% or so, and the corp raised that to 250% or so, so another thing to remember in future culture games. As most others, went with voidsingers and relics (eventually belonging for Christo Redentor).

Had lots of money (since I wanted many trade routes for tourism boost) so I actually bought tons of relics, books, and art from others (mostly Egypt!!). I did not found a religion.
I don't think I had used the Valetta suz power before but I really liked buying walls and such with faith So cheap!

Fun game.

 

[Victoria]

CV T173/4
I decided to not use Martyrs or rock bands as it is too easy with Kupe. Got sinbad fairly early so thought I would cruise with him and destroy budding city states which may seem a bit silly but I managed to use all but 1 charge which was pretty good early, also found 2 continents and a wonder, If I had behaved myself it would have been a damn fast game.
I went for a Marathon 1 day game playing fast and fun, which is what it was.I hate cults so did not use em... I hate disasters also but it was kupe terra so who cares.
I did go relics for the heroes but did not push it hard, just cruised and with some great campus adjacencies I aimed for seaside resorts and finished the game 2 turns off Cristo. I should have pushed culture more but meh.
The other thing I could not be bothered doing was helping other civs survive, Brazil went quite early and for about the last 30 turns there was on 4 civs limiting culture.
I may try a more trad Maori game, a bit rusty so trying things like preserves were nice.
Tks GOTM crew... had pretty much stopped playing but I do like Kupe and it was fun. The only real trouble you should have is time if you took it too easy.
Other continent was a mess, would have been so easy to take it but the zombies would come and I like a bit of peace.

 

[Victoria]

CV T103
So I played this again with hero relics but no Religious relics. It can be done sub 100, I realise I should not have agreed to a friends offer with Cleo and she was going crazy on Choral Music, definately could be below T100. On T103 it shows 48/48 below which is the victory condition on that screen and therefore that is when you have won, at the end of turn it calculates and gives you the victory screen is how it works.
Key things to think about....

Spoiler :

1. SInbad.... the main man... I got him as my 9th Hero, it would have been nicer to get him earlier, in fact I got him with a project. Send him to explore and destroy ships ... and barb camps. (400 gold for half a ship vs 300 for a barb camp.... so 2 ships = 1600 gold. I found 2 continents and 3 wonders with him for 2500 gold as well. This was enough gold to buy all my settlers very early which is vital.
2. Settle in the trees and build a monument ASAP, chop in hereoes ASAP with Magnus and sacrifice them ASAP. Get 7 trade routes up to all civs and have open borders with them all and thats it. But the devil of keeping it fast is in the detail.
   
3. No Marae's you could but they are worth nothing but perhaps some chop speed, just get 3-4 holy sites to get relics and fund your income which all comes from Harbours although I'd probably cet more CH on a replay just for Marcus Linius Crassus... he would have sped things up by a turn or 2. I really do not like splaying slowly so just cannot be bothered with things... because I did not need many districts, I did not build them.
   
4. In fact if you look at the below I only needed 3 cities to house relics ... you need at least 6 to get those relics and of course it is about trade routes so setting up cities to get trade reoutes and open boders to all civs asap is very useful.
5. A killer is that the monopolies tourism bonus comes in so early and so get them monopolies in place and the more you have the better, even a 2 turtle monopoly. And it is zombie mode so protect them.
6. When you get a Hero, send it off to get killed ASAP, I used Zanzibar which was a pain as heroes speeds are not increase with mathematics or the great lighthouse. I should have used Valetta... that realy does speed things up. So I got Sinbad built first but I erally should have built him in a low chop city as he is so cheap, instead I used my capital. After that I got Hercules to get 3 harbours up quickly and 2 charges of Anansi to get to Feudalism... but other than that sacrifice against barbs/CS ASAP for the relics... every turn counts.
7. I will also load up a T10 save I made when I found a relic... I did not find a relic on my first game and to be fair this was my 4th attempt... I just wanted to get it right and you do need things to fall into place.

It really is a different game and I recon T90 is doable. But as I said, in my first play through it was just a mish mash and have some fun.I'll probably give it another go, just because I want to get under T100. SHould be easy now I know what the hell I am doing.

 

[kcd_swede]

CV t250 score 1647
I also got the 999+ bug. I learned that when an opponent offers Great Works of Writing in trade, you get nothing if you are Kupe. I didn't check to see if it disappeared, or if I just got conned by Cleopatra.

I hate zombies.

 

[A. mexicanum]

CV t142 Score 1025

As I had planned I went west. Not the best spot to settle, since I had to move most settlers east. But I found sindbad relatively early which allowed me to purchase settlers earlier which more than compensated.
I focused flight for obvious reasons, but did not really b-line hard enough for an optimal game. Also I built walls in all of my citys on the eastern continent because I was afraid of zombies. But they were no problem at all and especially with valetta I should have just bought them with faith when I needed them.

I luckily did not encounter any bugs and was able to buy Great Works of Writing. (As you should be)

 

[kcd_swede]

CV t142 Score 1025



I luckily did not encounter any bugs and was able to buy Great Works of Writing. (As you should be)

After checking my final save, the Great Work of Writing I received in trade shows up in the Bolshoi. Note, I did not have the Bolshoi at the time I traded for it. Perhaps it was somewhere else I just didn't see it, like in a Guilded Vault or Super Obelisk or something? That sounds more likely than a disappearance bug. And also... its a shame I didn't see it because other GWofWr were offered and I just declined thinking that I had no place to put them.

 

[Victoria]

CV T87
A few more turns certainly could be shaved, just CBA spending it all each turn.
Just nice to get under T100
The annoying thing is the culture victory scores do not update on T88, they are the same as on T87 so I provide a T87 load so you can see the victory screen... not that it counts coz its a multi replay with a save.

 

[kcd_swede]

CV T87
A few more turns certainly could be shaved, just CBA spending it all each turn.
Just nice to get under T100
The annoying thing is the culture victory scores do not update on T88, they are the same as on T87 so I provide a T87 load so you can see the victory screen... not that it counts coz its a multi replay with a save.
View attachment 593668

What is CBA?

 

[Victoria]

What is CBA?

Cannot be ‘bothered’ but the bothered is replaced by a bottom word. English slang I guess.

 

[Cherenkov]

Victoria, if you are looking for another deity culture game to break T87 checkout the game Zeuxis posted in https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/turn-64-deity-win-with-peter.668243/ He got a T64 CV. I got a T74 CV on my first try, then about a week later and got a T68 CV. If you can get all the stars to align I imagine a Sub T60 victory is possible. It's a very fun one to play. It's a Deity, Standard, Pangea map with Heroes, Secret Societies & Corporations enabled.

 

[Victoria]

Victoria, if you are looking for another deity culture game to break T87

thanks but sub is good enough. I don’t normally play with things enabled.

I imagine a Sub T60 victory is possible

Before these fancy new things the fastest victory anyone got was T58. So sure you can get sub 60, but it is pretty rare and needs the right things aligned. Mainly... China

 

[isopaha]

CV 283. Seems like by learning and utilizing the new game modes you can make great victory times. I am too lazy to do that, the modes don't seem that appealing, especially with all of them enabled at once. Had one dark age and immediately lost 4 cities there. Took a long while to get them back, which was quite frustrating.

I guess Kupe's UB & Flight is not a very strong combo, unless you manage to go super heavy science and have a huge terrain with good features.

 

[DanQuayle]

CV T90

Game felt like a Prince game, for the sole exception that the AIs had gold like a normal Deity game (thus making it easier). In this game, I used Reliquaries with heroic relics.

Governors
I used the early Secret Society governor on Amani and I levied Valetta's units to scout the map and figure out the best locations to settle for monopolies.
Next, I went with Magnus/Provision

Heroes
I discovered a lot heroes early through scouting and meeting city-states.
First, I picked Sinbad which is obviously the best option to open. However, I had already scouted so much of the map that I didn't discover any continent/natural wonder with him. I only got 2500gold from him (7 charges used at 300g per in ancient era & 1 charge used at 400g per in the classical era) which is still not too shabby.
Second, I went with Hercules to insta-build 3 Holy Sites.
Third, I picked Himiko mainly to get envoys in Johannesburg so that they would acquire the luxuries I needed in their 2nd ring.
Next, I picked whatever was left. Unfortunately, Anansi was already taken before I discovered him. I also picked Maui who gave me 2 jades.

Tourism
Bought 1 relic from Genghis Khan
Bought 1 heroic relic from Wilhelmina (Anansi)
Bought 1 heroic relic from Lady Six Sky (Sun Wukong)
Bought 1 GWoW from Pedro
5 heroic relics from my own heroes (Sinbad, Hercules, Himiko, Maui & Oya)
8 religious tourism from holy city
Total: 160T

Monopolies
At first, I thought settling my capital on the Sugar near Valletta was a mistake (as I thought it wouldn't count toward the monopoly, but it ultimately did). However, you do need to improve 2 of them before you can get an industry.
I also sent builders in city-states' territories to improve them, but as I found later, it is a waste as even unimproved luxuries seem to count toward your total even if they are not improved.
Toward the end, I held four 100% monopolies (tea, dyes, gypsum & sugar) each with five nodes for a total monopoly tourism modifier of 420%

Zombies
I didn't play many games with them enabled, but they were slightly annoying in this game (ie doing their job).
There were quite a few in the area of Johannesburg. I had to hire a few units from barbarian camps, but it was not a problem since I was swimming in gold (combined with the extremely generous discount they offer).

Recent patch changes
Recently, tourism from heroic relics was dropped from 10 to 6 and the monopoly percentage per node was reduced from 5% to 3% in an attempt, I presume, to reduce the ridiculously quick culture victories with the Monopolies & Corporations and the Heroes & Legends game modes. However, as this game demonstrates these changes are not nearly enough. The way the monopoly tourism modifier is calculated totally needs to be changed. Even nerfing it further to 1% using the same formula wouldn't even be enough in my opinion.

SInbad.... the main man... I got him as my 9th Hero, it would have been nicer to get him earlier, in fact I got him with a project. Send him to explore and destroy ships ... and barb camps. (400 gold for half a ship vs 300 for a barb camp.... so 2 ships = 1600 gold. I found 2 continents and 3 wonders with him for 2500 gold as well. This was enough gold to buy all my settlers very early which is vital.

If you're doing a replay (and have perfect map knowledge), you can abuse Sinbad more than that:
you can wait to scout any other continent (3) (1500g)
you can wait to scout any natural wonder visible from water (4 on this map) (2000g)
use your charges against barbarian ships/camps (8 * 300 in ancient era) (2400g)
for a total of 5900g

When you get a Hero, send it off to get killed ASAP, I used Zanzibar which was a pain as heroes speeds are not increase with mathematics or the great lighthouse. I should have used Valetta... that realy does speed things up. So I got Sinbad built first but I erally should have built him in a low chop city as he is so cheap, instead I used my capital. After that I got Hercules to get 3 harbours up quickly and 2 charges of Anansi to get to Feudalism... but other than that sacrifice against barbs/CS ASAP for the relics... every turn counts.

At first, I thought the developers had fixed the hero deletion "trick/exploit" since I didn't see that option. So I suicided Hercules against Nalanda's walls and Sinbad against barbarians. However, later when I recruited another hero I found out that the delete option was still available and I remembered that a unit needs to be at full health for that option to be available. So yeah, deleting a hero right after you get it is the fastest way to get their relic obviously.

 

[Victoria]

So yeah, deleting a hero right after you get it is the fastest way to get their relic obviously.

So you can slit their throats and then claim a relic? I guess it would not be the first time.