6otM 70 AAR

[Knowtalent]

Welcome to the 6otM 68 After Actions Report. In this thread you can post the results of your game. Please state victory 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.
- How many cities did you settle or capture?
- What did you prioritize for research and policies?
- Did you bother with religion?
- How did you pump your Diplomatic Favor??
- Were City-States helpful?
- Any surprises you ran into, how did you deal with it?
- 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.​

 

[mattey]

Cultural Victory, Turn 209, Score 942

Could not stop the culture from winning me the game. Was about to win earlier but Synthethic Technocracy -10% tourism let me think I could spare it for a while, nonetheless the opponents were too far behind to fight my tourism output. Looking forward to see how other people stopped this victory type!

- How many cities did you settle or capture?

Settled 4 core cities, plus two overseas cities for Dessert/Snow civ bonus. Captured one of Tamar cities when she declared a surprise war in the middle ages.

- What did you prioritize for research and policies?
I went for a straight cultural approach building theaters as my first district, which likely spelled my doom from turn 30 onwards. Culture went crazy with the late game policies, tried to get industrial zones with factories up to take advantage of leader bonus but my investigation was lagging way too far behind my culture and thus it barely changed anything. Built a lot of mid game wonders to boost my theater adjacency which coupled with city states bonus and policies skyrocketed quite high.

- Did you bother with religion?
I was afraid religion will earn me way too much tourism and work against my favor.. Then decided to prioritize theaters which was an even worse idea u.u

- How did you pump your Diplomatic Favor??
I ended up suzeraining every city state. Other than that, the sheer ammount of GWAM points earned me enough favor as it is. Never got to any emergency

- Were City-States helpful?
Early game they were probably the backbone of my culture output. Alcazar and Nazca lines were INSANE in Abo once I built Petra, i dont think i have seen such high yields ever before. A shame a couple of them were outside of city working area

- Any surprises you ran into, how did you deal with it?
This was a game to play on the weaknesses of the civ and not its strengths, once queen bibliotheque and open air museums were up the cultural victory was the only way to go. I still did my best to stop it from happening but to no avail.
- Did you enjoy the game?
I havent played Prince for a long while. It was nice not having to go crazy and min/max every single turn. At the same time, if competition was a little bit harsher they would have been able to defend against my tourism​

 

[Palo]

I won a cultural victory in turn 240. I sold art and writings but it was not nearly enough to stop the win. Having fun on Prince and wonder-whoring is definitely no way to play if you're actually trying to get a diplomacy win. I did build two theater squares but I suspect the wonders were probably going to doom my chances even if I hadn't built any TS's.

 

[Thorak]

Diplomatic victory turn 270? (This is the turn count in my hall of fame), score 2901.

My initial plan was to quickly conquer my continent before discovering the other continent. This was easily done. I only built 1 settler early, religious settlement and then captured the rest of my continent.

The reason was mostly to be able to win the diplomatic votes with fewer competitors. Then I realised the vote for extra diplomatic points was not until modern era. So terminated all AIs except Alexander and gifted him a lot of cities to speed up the era age advancement.

It was a long slow game where I was just pressing next turn for the last 100 turns or so, very tedious. I wasn't aware you couldn't trade away opponents previous capitals so I couldn't follow the plan to gift alexander the whole second continent and keep my own and also there seems to be some bug when you have too many cities not all of them are listed as being possible to trade away.

Anyway, I never experienced any risk to win a culture victory, far from it. I think it was because I terminated all AIs but one so my tourism wasn't that high.

I built all the wonders that gave diplomatic victory points, all techs/civics, easily won every diplomatic vote and I didn't miss a single point. Still I couldn't finish quicker than turn 270.

 

[MACKA0ili]

Religious Loss - Turn 270

- How many cities did you settle or capture?
Settled 4 cities at first, 2 on the initial river and 2 forward settling Shaka and Tamar.
Eliminated all other civs from the first continent and left only Russia to combat an early culture win

- What did you prioritize for research and policies?
After political philosophy, I went for theology and civil engineering for the diplo point wonders.

- Did you bother with religion?
Yes for Mahabodi prereqs, but I ignored it afterwards except for quests and the one religious emergency that occurred.

- How did you pump your Diplomatic Favor??
Suzerain with every single city state on the map

- Were City-States helpful?
For getting favor? Extremely helpful

- Any surprises you ran into, how did you deal with it?
I was expecting the diplomatic victory vote to come up sooner and when it didn't, I filled up my multi-queue and set auto end turn on until the next world congress. I had already eliminated every civ except Russia a while ago so I was pretty confident in myself and didn't pay attention to what was happening on the second continent. 5 turns from the vote, I notice the large amount of Russian apostles roaming the lands. I counted the amount of cities I had and realized I was one city conversion away from losing to Russian Eastern Orthodoxy. Unfortunately, I had no holy sites on the continent at all and tried to surround the final city with a few apostle units I had in the area and get Moksha over there. I was also still in an alliance with Russia so I couldn't just declare war. Long story short, one apostle dies and the city converts. GG

- Did you enjoy the game?
To a point. I enjoyed balancing warmongering and keeping my favor count up, but after everyone but Russia was gone it became a real slog. Losing after all the waiting was pretty frustrating as well, especially since I would have literally won the next turn. I went back to an autosave afterwards and managed prevent my loss, but I really just checked out of this game when it was just waiting for congress to meet.

 

[Novemberjsierra]

Diplomatic Victory - Turn 391 - Score 1447

- How many cities did you settle or capture?
Settled 7 - 5 initially and 2 on smaller islands to control some strategic resources and establish some overseas presence.
Captured 2 - Tamar declared a surprise war in the last few turns of the game, I used the opportunity to capture two of her cities.


- What did you prioritize for research and policies?
In particular, mathematics to get Petra in my southern most city, which became an absolute unit in terms of yield. In general, I prioritized any research or policy that allowed for a boost in diplo points or that allowed a wonder that I could build in Stockholm (see below). I specifically avoided research and policies that boosted Tourism (at least until I had to get them), in order to avoid an accidental culture victory.

- Did you bother with religion?
Not at all. I rushed an early pantheon to get a free settler, but then ignored religion for the remainder of the game.

- How did you pump your Diplomatic Favor??
Main strategy was to Suzerain every city state possible and maintain alliances. My final suzerain count was 14, but I had just lost one. I rushed Apadana early (gives 2 envoys every time a wonder is constructed in that city), then built 11 wonders in that city, for an extra 22 envoys.Then building Orszaghaz was absolutely crucial (provides +%100 diplomatic points if you start the turn as a suzerain.) At the last turn I was gaining 40 diplomatic points per turn.

I attempted to vote whichever resolutions were likely to pass, for the diplo points, even if they didn't benefit me. Then prioritized any aid request or Nobel prize.

- Were City-States helpful?
At least in my game, absolutely essential.

- Any surprises you ran into, how did you deal with it?
The lack of resources hurt my military strength for a while. Which, honestly, was fine because I was only maintaining a force for defense. I was never once denounced and only was only the target of one declaration of war at the very end.

- Did you enjoy the game?
Yep! I have been playing a bunch of Immortal and Emperor games and getting absolutely smashed. It was refreshing to play on a lower difficulty and the map was a very interesting challenge.

 

[Casualty of war]

Drat, I tried so hard. Avoided Computers and Environmentalism until I was forced to complete them. Even avoided meeting Kongo until I was forced to in a meeting of Congress. Sold Great Works until I filled every Capital, Temple and Amphitheater. Cleared my continent shortly after Turn 100. But I'm Wonder-spamming weak.

I thought I could clear up enough tourists by disrupting Alexander but I disrupted too hard. Alex had a Dark Modern Age and his civilization collapsed. Suddenly I'm all culturally dominant. CV Turn 247, which could have been much sooner if that was the goal.

 

[tarafran]

Diplo victory 240
note that i finished the game with the update as my Macpro 2013 kept getting very slow and crashing on the game.
I finally put a fan blowing on the computer and everything got smooth again
I played a peace full game starting with double scouts settler/settler one from faith.
- How many cities did you settle or capture?settled 13 on my continent 2 more on the other land mass and 3 from pressure
- What did you prioritize for research and policies?religion/science and culture beelining to caravels to get to the other player
- Did you bother with religion? yes the culture/faith and papal primacy
- How did you pump your Diplomatic Favor??I sold them for gold as i was Suzerain early game then started to keep them as I ended the game with all the Cs under me
- Were City-States helpful?yes for DFavors
- Any surprises you ran into, how did you deal with it?Yes a good one at the last turn I was looking for loosing 3 DF with the choice to vote against myself but it was not there
- Did you enjoy the game?Yes much better than the last DV one , I had to refrain from building too many GW , built a Theater square in my cap late game to get some CS demands. Sold my great writing to the Zulus as I was starting to be on a CV around turn 140.

 

[KyivanRusCivPlease]

Diplomatic Victory - Turn 391 - Score 1447

- How many cities did you settle or capture?
Settled 7 - 5 initially and 2 on smaller islands to control some strategic resources and establish some overseas presence.
Captured 2 - Tamar declared a surprise war in the last few turns of the game, I used the opportunity to capture two of her cities.


- What did you prioritize for research and policies?
In particular, mathematics to get Petra in my southern most city, which became an absolute unit in terms of yield. In general, I prioritized any research or policy that allowed for a boost in diplo points or that allowed a wonder that I could build in Stockholm (see below). I specifically avoided research and policies that boosted Tourism (at least until I had to get them), in order to avoid an accidental culture victory.

- Did you bother with religion?
Not at all. I rushed an early pantheon to get a free settler, but then ignored religion for the remainder of the game.

- How did you pump your Diplomatic Favor??
Main strategy was to Suzerain every city state possible and maintain alliances. My final suzerain count was 14, but I had just lost one. I rushed Apadana early (gives 2 envoys every time a wonder is constructed in that city), then built 11 wonders in that city, for an extra 22 envoys.Then building Orszaghaz was absolutely crucial (provides +%100 diplomatic points if you start the turn as a suzerain.) At the last turn I was gaining 40 diplomatic points per turn.

I attempted to vote whichever resolutions were likely to pass, for the diplo points, even if they didn't benefit me. Then prioritized any aid request or Nobel prize.

- Were City-States helpful?
At least in my game, absolutely essential.

- Any surprises you ran into, how did you deal with it?
The lack of resources hurt my military strength for a while. Which, honestly, was fine because I was only maintaining a force for defense. I was never once denounced and only was only the target of one declaration of war at the very end.

- Did you enjoy the game?
Yep! I have been playing a bunch of Immortal and Emperor games and getting absolutely smashed. It was refreshing to play on a lower difficulty and the map was a very interesting challenge.

How did you cope with the opposition in the Diplomatic Victory Vote?

 

[KyivanRusCivPlease]

- Any surprises you ran into, how did you deal with it?Yes a good one at the last turn I was looking for loosing 3 DF with the choice to vote against myself but it was not there

You mean you won before the first Diplomatic Victory Vote would appear?

 

[tarafran]

You mean you won before the first Diplomatic Victory Vote would appear?

Yes last game GOTM with DV I kept loosing 3 DF on that till I decided to vote against myself to loose only 2 DF.
This time I was ready to wiped a bunch of CIVS if i was not winning on that turn (86,000 gold ready to be well spent).
I delated the last turn of Big Ben as the rest of the civ just started renaissance a few turn before the victory

 

[Minou]

Diplomatic Victory T247

Settled in place and was happy to get first contact envoys from Amargh (T2), Antananarivo (T5), Valetta (T11), Vilinius (T11), Mexico City (T14), and Bologne (T21). I was fairly lucky with quests - when the Era advanced to Medieval seven different city states got a religious conversion quest and I also had Religious Unity as one of my belief. Had 15 envoys by T50 and easily had Suzerain of all City States (including two I liberated from Macedonia) by the end of the game.

I decided to conquer Zulu (eliminated T79) and Georgia (eliminated T103) since I needed more territory, and knocked them both out with no resistance. I noticed the Aztecs were conquering the Netherlands, and I thought this would help me since a stronger AI would make the World Era advance faster. So, I left them alone. They ended up capturing three cities, but hilariously Bologne actually burned the Netherlands capital to eliminate them (T118). I conquered most of the other continent and otherwise played a lazy science game avoiding anything that generated excess tourism. Later in the game I killed off Aztec simply because they had the most DF and I was tired of them voting against me.

Got really lucky with two aid requests, but lost four total votes since I was not sure how to predict the AIs behavior. I was at first excited about the Nobel Prize dynamic since I knew this would be a long game, but the first Nobel Prize Competition was Literature, and so was irrelevant to the game. Besides this, it would not have completed until after I won anyway. Since any normal game would end ~100 turns earlier I think they would make the Nobels start earlier - maybe based on Sweden’s progress instead of World Era so at least the player has some chance of seeing them.

Diplomatic Points:

T109: Mahaboudhi Temple (2/20)

T122: Lose both World Congress votes (2/20)
I recall DanQuayle reporting in a past GOTM that the AI usually invested only 1 vote in each issue, with the exception of caring very strongly about the resource ban one and dogpiling the leader on the Victory Point resolution. So, I only invested only a small number of votes and ended up losing one 15 to 13 and the other 6 to 3. I am not sure if this changed with the update, or I just got bad luck and randomly hit two votes that the AI cares a ton about....

T138: Potala Palace (3/20)

T152: Win both World Congress votes (5/20) and win aid request to Hungary by sending 1400g (7/20)
This vote I poured in all my DF for 10+ votes on each issue. The AI only put 1 vote down each though (like I had thought/hoped they would the first time.

T182: Win one World Congress vote, but lose the second (8/20)
I poured all my 2000DF into 14 votes on each issue, and won one but lost the other.

T189: Statue of Liberty (12/20)

T204: Global Warming Mitigation (13/20)

T212: Win both World Congress votes (15/20)
By this stage I had so much more DF than the AIs it did not matter how they voted.

T224: Seasteads (16/20)

T42: Win both World Congress votes (18/20)

T247: Win aid request (gave 10,000 gold, no AI gave more than 900) - (20/20)

The AIs provided no challenge at all on Prince, but I saw that several GOTM players won unintentional Cultural Victories. I actually came very close myself. At one point I had 20/40 tourists and was just about to eliminate Hungary. Suddenly I realized they were probably the leader in culture, and if the next player was far behind I could trip the wire for CV. I declared peace and eventually ended up giving away a bunch of Great Works of Writing and Art, and later even a few cities, just so the AIs would have space to hold the works. I assume gifting cities is OK in non-religious games so I hope this did not break a rule. At the end of the game I was at 32/40 tourism.

Although Diplomatic Victory feels broken to me (you're better off killing most AIs, so it does not feel very "Diplomatic"), I certainly enjoyed playing around with Petra+Nazca lines. This shot was the final turn and the city is slightly below its peak because I bulldozed all my Alcázars to lower tourism and the volcano just happened to erupt on the semi-final turn damaging several mines.

Great People really pile up when you don't want to create any Great Works, are done warring, and have nothing to boost!

 

[Minou]

Questions / Thoughts on Diplomatic Victory:

Is it better to kill (almost) everyone?

My thought going into this game was that the limiting factor would be advancing the World Era - to get the World Congress started and then to get to the Victory Point votes (though the game ended up being over before then). But, I don’t think I understand the formula for the World Era advancing. I know there is a hard minimum of 40 turns and maximum of 60 turns per Era, and that it is somehow tied to the progress of the Civs in the game. But, I don’t understand if World Era 10-turn count down begins:

(A) when half of all total starting Civs have completed a Tech or Civic from the next era.

(B) when half of all REMAINING Civs have completed a Tech or Civic from the next era.

Actually, I am not even certain if it is just based on reaching a Tech / Civic from the next Era or on sum measure of total tech/civic progress.

Since I went into the game assuming that progress would be based on remaining Civ, I intentionally wiped out three AIs on the starting continent and let the Aztecs conquer the Netherlands. This would leave 5 players, and so I figured if the Aztecs and myself moved fast we would advance the era quickly as long as one AI on the other continent moved at a decent pace (making 3 of 5 remaining Civ in the next era). While this resulted in the Aztecs teching quicker, I noticed the icons for the eliminated AIs still showed up on the tech tree progress bar and the era always took the maximum time to advance. I was not clear if the slow Era progress was due to Prince AIs being slow in general or because I sandbagged the global progress by leaving 3 Civs forever in the Classical Era, which would mean myself and 3 of the remaining 4 AIs would need to advance.

Overall this suggests Deity Diplomatic Victory can be much faster since the World Era tends to advance 10-20 turns quicker, though perhaps also harder due to competition for point-awarding Wonders and Suzerain status.

Doe anyone know how to predict how the AI will vote?

It seemed pretty much random to me what they voted for and how much they invested. In almost all of the votes, all of the AIs voted for either "A" or "B" but scattered on which of the targets they voted for (e.g. all would vote to ban a Great Person type but would differ on which one. Sometimes they each put in one vote despite some having lots of DF and other times they went all in on seemingly meaningless issues. Knowing they had a preference for one option or another would provide a huge advantage.

If the votes are truly random, it seems like the best way to speed up victory would be to eliminate as many AIs as possible before the World Congress starts meeting. Because the cost of votes scales rapidly, killing off an AI with 200DF is potentially more useful than gaining anoher 1000DF yourself. You will lose some DF per turn from grievances, but potentially gain some of that back because eliminating AIs may let you gain Suzerain of more city states by removing their envoys.

The other big benefit of killing off AIs, at least on lower difficulties, is that each one eliminated lowers incoming tourism by 1/7th.

Related to the question above, a further benefit would be speeding up the World Era if it is determined by the progress of the remaining Civs, so long as you wipe out targets who are below average in progress.

But the sad thing about this is it means that Diplomatic Victory is a more boring form of Domination Victory. There should probably be a greater penalty to warmongering to prevent this. Maybe -2 Diplomatic Victory Points for declaring War on another Civ?

 

[KyivanRusCivPlease]

T212: Win both World Congress votes (15/20)
By this stage I had so much more DF than the AIs it did not matter how they voted.

As I understood, you had killed off the Aztecs by this time?

 

[Minou]

Yes - they had about 200DF so I figured they needed to be wiped out to avoid chance of losing a vote.

 

[kcd_swede]

Diplo Victory t271, score 2070 (1802AD)

Wow! this was a tedious finish. Took over my whole continent by t100. Had EVERY CS on my continent as a vassal by t120- I did not get my first DipV points until like t140. I got all the DipV wonders, but quite late. Still, waiting 30 turns for aid requests and nobel prizes and world congress votes to take place was tedious. Every vote I could dominate, as I was getting about 35dip points per turn because of Orzgaz wonder and suvereignity... eventually got ALL CS, including those on other continent. At every vote I had at least 10x as much DP to spend as everyone else COMBINED. Just hitting "end-turn" enough to win. I did at one point sell/gift a bunch of great works to help avoid culture victory, and made a religion alliance with Peter who had converted all but my Sweden to his religion, so victory was never in doubt, no suspense, just counting turns. I would usually just wipe everyone to kill the game by t150, but since I never did a DipV by the new rules, I stuck it out. Still sucks... I hope the latest patch improves things, or I will just go Apocolypse.

 

[kcd_swede]

Questions / Thoughts on Diplomatic Victory:

Is it better to kill (almost) everyone?

Yes. And that applies to almost all VC's.

 

[isopaha]

DV 282. Had to avoid CV a few times by gifting as many GW as possible. Totally forgot that wonders give tourism too and built a few unnecessary ones. I played a totally peaceful game. Had about 70k gold in the end. Suzerained all CS, AIs at this level did not capture many, though at least one was razed. Quite an uneventful game, but probably my first DV since the reworks made to it.

 

[FeiLing]

Culture Victory T289 (Score 3594).

Well... built too many wonders and spread religion at the end (because I thought if I can't avoid CV, I'd make it a Religious Victory instead; but that plan also failed).

Interestingly the game thought at some point that Wilhelmina was close to winning a CV (see pic)

Kongo was left alive by Hungary with one city and they only lost it due to loyalty very late in the game.
I took their city and revived them 3 or 4 times burning 3 of the 5 great works their palace can hold in the process every time (gifted them 3
to fill up, and I guess the coding there doesn't respect their special ability and thus 3 great works just get deleted when you revive them)

I only had 11/20 DV-points at the end (+4 banked in the not yet finished Statue of Liberty). Not a single vote for diplo victory points has occurred yet.

I don't think I will participate in future Diplo games again ... maybe it would be better if they just
made you win diplo if you accumulated 5k diplomatic favor (was at 15k at the end in this game).

 

[leif erikson]

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