6otM 17 After Actions

[isopaha]

Turn 282 science victory. This was actually my first victory on Deity. Interesting insights on the previous posts! My play style is completely different from those fast times and I try mostly to play peacefully. In this case I captured one city state, because through a turn of events they captured my settler. Otherwise this map was very easy for SV.

 

[cheffster]

Science Victory
Turn: 205
Score: 1,061

(I wanted to keep this post short , bear in mind I did longer write-up answering most formal questions
in my opening actions post here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/6otm-17-opening-actions.617632/#post-14791775)

Final number of cities: 27

Strategy/Report: I went to war early on a mission to conquer the continent asap. By turn 100 I had wiped out Saladin's main city, Medina and also managed to capture all of Japan's cities scoring in at 16 cities by t100. Moving forward I gradually managed to take over Norway but it did take an incredibly long time, loosing large amounts of units, fighting war weariness, brokering peace deals, and also getting DOW'd by England and Greece several times along the way.

My goal was simple; find a good location for a great Zimbabwe city (kyoto, 6 bonus resource tiles) and a spaceport city (Medina where I also build Ruhr Valley), complete big ben with 10k+ gold saved (Kyoto), have all the necessary techs researched ( I failed here) and complete a spaceport asap then GP slingshot.

Saving enough gold was pain since I had no commercial city states until late in the game when I liberated Lisbon from Norway, but for the last 25 turns or so I was able to rake in ~400-500 gpt and managed to build forbidden city as well.

Most valuable unit I would say was Abu al-Qasim I got very early (heals adjacent units hp/turn) since I never got a great general.

Turn 197 I purchased 3 great scientist hoping to slingshot a SV that same turn. Unfortunately for me the first two I recruited two were the ones that gave Eureka moments but I did have enough gold to get Carl Sagan that turn, and then recruited Kwolek the next turn who was the last GS. So once I was finally able to move kwolek onto the spaceport and activate before using Sagan I then rushed all the space projects and it took a few more turns completing them one at a time until I was finished.

Another note is that I waited untill Victoria finished recruiting a GS so I could spend all my gold on the remaining GS after hers.


Comments:

This is by far my fastest SV and I'm happy with my result.
Near the end there were many tweaks I could have made to bring the time down to 190 or even 180. Getting lower still (150ish) I can see is possible but might require near perfect play and/or some luck. (I wasted 10+ turns to finish researching all the required techs after I had already finished the spaceport between turns 170 to 180)

I've been posting on the gotm forums for a while now and was blown away back when Whacker managed an immortal game with Norway getting a SV 169 turns and felt I had a lot to learn then. My first serious attempt at SV i barely beat in under 300 turns. Moving onto gotm 11 with China I felt I played incredibly well early on but only managed t254. I'm happy with my t205 date here and thoroughly enjoyed playing this round.

 

[benjspurs]

Cheers for all the advice, Messiah, Lily Lancer and your notes on looking at Whackers game. Messiah i wouldn't call your advice a noob version at all.

Took what you guys said in and just completed it on turn 299. Wasn't really going for the quickest way just wanted the win on Deity. Layed down more cities than before and captured two from Norway otherwise fairly peaceful game...China came close to science but Spy's sorted them out. Didn't get the good wonders or GP that would of allowed me to win sooner, but all your advice made it a relatively easy victory in the end never under any real pressure. Cheers guys this is only my second GOTM and learnt so much through this forums just over those two games.

Keep up the good work and posts
Cheers

 

[Half Nelson]

Science victory turn 270 (790 points, Chamberlain). I totally messed up the endgame from a fairly promising position at turn 210, with Big Ben 1 turn away, Democracy in place and my spaceport complete in Aachen. This was partly bad luck (none of the useful Info Age GP turned up on the first draw) but mainly bad play:- I totally overlooked the AI science progress into Info Age and found myself a few turns later with loads of cash and no GPs left to buy as the GP windows emptied. AAAARGHH!!!!! I thus had to build all the Space Projects the hard way without any GP support, although I did have the 15% Space Race production bonus for a Military Academy in Aachen. Fortunately I was fairly well in control of the game and managed to plough through to the end. A second spaceport in Mainz knocked a few turns off at the very end.

From turn 100 I expanded with more cities and conquered CS as planned (except Lisbon). I also conquered Jerusalem later on for the Third Crusade achievement. I Dow with Arabia once I had flight and used an air balloon with artillery to work through their cities. I also rejoined war with Norway, taking a couple of cities which gave access to the inland sea. I maintained friendly / allied relations with China for most of the game and achieved 3 RA with them (these knocked off a few turns of research but were not a major contributor to eventual victory). China and Russia both progressed to the moon landing stage of the Science victory, at which point I made a joint DoW with China on Russia and kept this going until I had won the game, on the basis that it might divert them both from spacefaring to warfaring. I also tried to sabotage their spaceports, but both spies were killed despite 70+% chances of success.

Germany played as a strong civilization, feeding into my natural builder mentality. The Hansa proved its worth once I realized it required resources rather than mines!:- this means all cities are likely to benefit from a Hansa, but does reduce the chances of getting a +4 or +5 bonus unless you can work in a good adjacent commercial hub tile. The extra military policy slot was less helpful than I expected, largely due to the isolated start. The CS combat bonus was certainly helpful. I did try out U-boats but they didn’t have many targets until my endgame war with Russia

 

[leif erikson]

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