6otM Krampus AAR

Knowtalent

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Welcome to the 6otM Krampus 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 Science ?
- How did you pump your military, religion, culture?
- Were City-States helpful?
- Any surprises you ran into, how did you deal with it?
- Did you enjoy the game?
-What do you think of the new civ and patch?
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.
 
Turn 260 Culture Win.
As soon as I understood the pattern of the map and having Rapa Nui and Granada in the game it was clear to me the easiest path to victory would be a Culture victory.
Went for Earth Goddess Pantheon for faith generation, lots of breathtaking tiles in the Tundra.
Got some early IZ's up being Babylon and all and secured all the wonder production engineers. My main wonder goal was Eiffel Tower. I got beat to so many other wonders though!
I don't think I built a single Holy Site which was a mistake but I was still generating a lot of faith with Earth Goddess + Eiffel Tower.
I spammed Moai and National Parks.
Really enjoyed the challenge of not having any strategic resources - really slowed down progress in the tech tree.
Relying on Mountain Tunnels to get them eventually and settling cities near City State borders to meet them and leving armies to explore and meet new Civs.
Fun moment when I finally built a Mountain Tunnel - Lady Six Sky had about 30 Apostles ready to go crazy in my territory.
The AI had started building spaceports and Lady Six Sky was close to a diplo victory so I made sure to build Statue of Liberty to make sure that didn't happen.
Was not an efficient game but had so much fun. Thank you for the map!
 

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  • HAMMURABI 260 1745 AD w.Civ6Save
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Turn 320 Culture Win

- What did you prioritize for research and policies? I didn't really know what to expect with this map. Wanted to go for a religion but the lack of wonder killed this dream (also so unfair to see all the other capitals with a (great) wonder right on top of it). So I prioritized a couple of early wonders to go the culture way, as religion was out of the equation and I dont really enjoy domination.

- Did you bother with Science ? Not too much, built a campus to get the era score and the oxford university.

- How did you pump your military, religion, culture? Kilwa with the 2 cultural city states helped the culture, and i built a lot of Moai.

- Were City-States helpful? Yes, especially Rapa Nui and Nan Madol.

- Any surprises you ran into, how did you deal with it? Well, the map obviously. As soon as I saw Grenada sieged by mountain i felt there was something fishy. Meeting all the players was really challenging, especially with the 4-tiles range mountains to the south. I never really had enough money to levy city states so I had to wait for military engineers and chemistry to build my way through the south and meet Teddy and Simon. But the the teleport ability of the tunnel helps for some very quick and practical trade routes.

- Did you enjoy the game? It was interesting. A long slug at the end when i was trying to finalize it for the last 100 turns. Sadly I didn*t have enough faith for rock bands or naturalists so i could just passively wait for the outcome. I almost gave up a couple of time when the 100 tourism gap was not filling at all.

-What do you think of the new civ and patch? Hammurabi is quite nice, you can really pinpoint what you want and get there before the other civs. But it can also be frustrating, especially in this case it was impossible to go for a religion as i couldn't even research Holy Sites before all the prophets were gone. Heroes were largelry inconsequential in this game, I just got one once time but didnt use it much. Hercules would have been nice but I sadly didn't meet him on time.

I enjoy these custom maps that add something quite surprising to the challenge!
 

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Space loss to USA t354 (score 1083)
I took too long to realize that culture was the only viable victory path for me. I had thought diplo was an option, but checked again the game parameters where domination and religion were the only other choices in the competitive aspect. So I went full on culture. Teddy took 50 years after launching and I got as close as 42t from culture victory before ultinaltely losing. I learned a lot, though. Mountain tunnels operate more like wormholes in that entering one from the far east is the fastest way to appear in the far west at another tunnel. I also saw that you can make tunnels outside your culture borders... which was news to me. I didn't get an encampment across the mountains until only like 10t before tunnels came... if I had gone for pure culture, I would not have wasted the effort.

So I took it as a challenge to try a dom victory afterwards... but on deity level that's always a little tough for me, and unlike my submitted loss, I failed to get the GSci who gives the eureka for chemistry, and fell too far behind becfore trying to go military, so I gave up. I thought about doing the same challenge for religious vc, but could never found a religion so that was a non-starter.

So I wanted to see if I had played for culture from the start if I could manage a victory, and yup, culture VC t324, but unofficial due to prior map knowledge. Thank you for a challenge that kept me busy for a while and taught me some new tricks - especially the best utility for espionage!

All hail Krampus.;)
 

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  • HAMM SLt354 1933 AD sc1083.Civ6Save
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  • Krampus CV t324 1903 AD sc1337.Civ6Save
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195 CV

The strategy was to get to the flight by building Ruhr and to spam moais/alcazars/colossal heads.

Got lucky, by revealing Hercules before T10. So it was clear what to do: 2xsettler, monument, Hercules (rush ind. zones x 3) + builder (or two). Later turned out that boost requirements have been changed since last patch.
Now it requires only 2 workshops to boost industrialization instead of 3. Kind of wasted 1 Hercules charge.
I guess I should have checked before the game what boosts are needed and what are the requirements.

It was rather difficult to scout the map.
First I tried to scout the "neighborhood sections" by levying. Then I settled next to mountain range and built encampments. When I was ready with the encampments, I already knew that the troops built there will not discover anything new. So the last resort was to dig to every direction with military engineers. I was even researching rocketry just to launch moon landing to reveal the map. Heck, I won culture victory before I had met everybody.

Spoiler :






Thanks for the game!
 

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  • HAMMURABI 196 1350 AD cv.Civ6Save
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Turn 326 Diplomatic Victory

I was trying for Science, but Maya came up from the rear to launch an exoplanet expedition first while mine still had 7 turns to go minus Military Engineer boosts every ~1.5 turns.

I won the +2 diplo victory points every time it came around for the World Congress

Krampus was certainly a mean one with no outside contact, can't trade with city-states, but especially no resources. However he wasn't a total grinch in that there were water tiles to get bonuses and boosts. For example, I built 2 useless privateers to get Electricity. Or galley for era score.

At one point I was building Golden Gate, but he submerged one of the tiles it was on so I had to abandon it and collect back the shields instead.

I didn't get in touch with all of the world until launching the Earth satellite.

- What did you prioritize for research and policies? - Did you bother with Science ?
Spies. I got as many spies as I could, and even traded Ethiopia around 30 gpt to get my Master Spy back to turn on Maya. I also used the card for doubling the boosts. That's insanely powerful as Babylon. At about turn 300 I got three technologies at the same time (1 successful spy op, 1 oil plant for Advanced Weaponry.
- How did you pump your military, religion, culture?
After Chemistry and tunnels, I started gradually increasing faith but ultimately it wasn't a factor. I couldn't get a religion in the early game due to the way the random tree split, combined with no natural wonders available. Had to hard build Astrology.
- Were City-States helpful?
Yes. I levied one of their military's to go exploring and made contact with another AI.
Eventually I got +3 uranium from Granada. which helped, but I had a steam leak the same turn that I won.
- Any surprises you ran into, how did you deal with it?
I wasn't expecting the wall of mountains. I tried to build up within it and use tiles next to the mountain line for at least +2 district adjacency.
- Did you enjoy the game?
Not really, but this is my first GOTM and deity win, so I suppose I shouldn't complain too much. The concept was original and well-done. Having no resources and no wars is tough.
-What do you think of the new civ and patch? Not my first time playing with Babylon but the boosts I was getting this time around were exceptional.
 

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  • HAMMURABI 326 1905 AD.Civ6Save
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Last edited:
CV T190

Start
Finding city-states under siege and the very unusual patterns of the mountain ranges set the table for a very unusual game.

Strategy
Reliquaries for heroic relics
Early Flight through Ruhr Valley
Moai spam

Bad luck / mistakes
No Pyramids: Although there was some desert to the east, there was no choppable resource nearby making it unlikely to get the wonder in time. So not a mistake per se, but since spamming tourism improvements requires a lot of builder charges, it would have been nice to get it.
No Apadana: It took me too long to get the Early Empire inspiration and find the Political Philosophy civic.
No Great Library: Although I didn't originally plan to build it, in retrospect it would have been helpful to considering the difficulty I had to get the Chemistry eureka and how hard the AIs pushed for Great Scientists in this game.
No Leonardo da Vinci: The two other Renaissance GEs showed up before him and he was ultimately skipped (bad luck). I guess I could have pushed more IZ infracstructure up (more GE points) to get him in time.
No strategic resources: It took forever until an AI was willing to sell me some niter (AI with 40+ stockpile). So hard-researching Chemistry was not even an option.
I also misplaced 1-2 districts

Heroes
Hercules (built 2 IZs + Campus)
Himiko (I never realized she needed to be next to the city-state city-center to gain envoys. She was thus useless to gain more envoys, but saved me money for cheap levies.)
Got 2 more heroes for their relics + monument slots for Reliquaires. Got some heroic relics from AIs.
Lost Hippolita to an AI (production costs for heroes ramp up fast).

Overall
Scouting the map was obviously harder than usual.
No natural wonder in the northern part of the map, difficulty to scout AIs and no strategic resources in your "sandbox" all made it harder to get era score in time and chain golden ages.
I only met 5/7 AIs.
Catherine was the cultural leader early on, but Ambiorix skyrocketed later.

Clever trick
Toward the end of the game, I thought of a clever trick to find the two missing civilizations that was however too late to apply. Since the map is apparently symmetrical, I should have DoW'd France & Gaul asap in the hope that they were suzerains of the 2 city-states between them and the 2 missing civilizations. 1-2 envoys + Amani with Puppeteer would then have given me suzerainty of one of these city-states which I could then levy. Each of these 2 city-states had a near 50% probability of being the vassal of either Gaul/France (versus the 2 missing civilizations). Thus, it could reasonably be expected that at least one of them was the suzerain of one of these city-states. By levying the units of one city-state, you have then the ability to meet at least one other city-state or hopefully 2 (depending if the city-state has units only on 1 side versus 2 sides of the mountain range). You can repeat the process by moving Amani around. In conclusion, by gaining vision of a vassal city-state through a DoW, you can meet all civilizations to the South.
 

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This game is closed for submissions as time has run out.

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I've played a handful of older GOTM games that seemed of interest, mostly for civs with which I have little experience. I haven't posted about them, since it isn't so interesting for others when it isn't timely. But I am posting this result because this was such an extraordinary game, and after reading the AARs it seems I arrived at an unusual result:

Domination Victory, turn 354

Like others, I realized that culture was probably the intended path to victory with alcazars and moai available, but it seemed to me that some of the other players were so far ahead of me in that regard that I would never catch up, especially Catherine. So I felt I had no choice but to pivot to domination, since I was not able to establish a religion and was lagging in the Great Works wars. At that point the focus was to hit every possible Eureka, and also maximize my hard science capability, since I expected to have to hard research Chemistry, which turned out to be the case.

But once I got through the tunnels fortune turned my way- I had pre-built settlers and was immediately able to plant cities in Maya territory that gained access to coal, oil and especially aluminum. I was soon able to upgrade and build up my military, and once I got to bombers the wars began, while simultaneously looking for ways to explore the rest of the map. I got one big break: was able to snag Sergei Korolev after building Mausoleum, so he had two charges. I realized the easiest way to scout the map would be to launch a satellite, and another Great Scientist had already given me the Eureka for Rocketry. So I hard built a spaceport and used Korolev to launch the satellite, and then the moon landing which gave me another huge boost. I could probably have won faster going for SV at that point, but I had already built a War Department (not Royal Society) plus that wasn't one of the targeted win conditions. So on I slogged.

Bombers were enough to take out Ethiopia, and get started on Maya. But after that I was basically chasing whoever was building an Exoplanet Expedition. So I had to first go after Catherine (by that time I had jet bombers) and then had to go after Teddy, although by that time I had GDRs. From that point on even jet bombers seemed feeble, as many cities had well over 100 CS and other civs had multiple GDRs of their own. But mine were quadruply promoted, and were irresistible. I have come to discover that it is very, very hard to kill a fully promoted GDR. They polished off Sun Wu Kong, Arthur, Oya and Mulan without missing a beat. As Thanos said in the old Marvel comics, matter and energy have no care for mythologies....

From Teddy I went after Simon, and from Maya I springboarded to Basil. I used nukes where needed, or the game would have gone on even longer. Finally just captured Aduatica (the only Gaul city taken) and occupied Constantinople to put an end to it.

Really remarkable game- my congratulations to the GOTM staff. I don't know how you're going to top this....
 

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  • KRAMPUS DOM VICTORY 354.Civ6Save
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Here's an interesting screenshot from the game: in order to field as many GDRs as possible I was trying to collect every possible source of uranium. There were only three uranium sites apart from the city state locations, one of which was in France. While I was warring with France, I also made a settler to settle the uranium tile at literally the end of the map. I got there just one turn ahead of a settler from Gran Colombia- who had apparently crossed across all of America's territory and all of France to try to settle on this one snow-bound tile. I take it to mean that the AIs will also go to extraordinary lengths to collect strategic resources, which I had not appreciated before:

Spoiler :


Settler Looking for Uranium.png


 
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