6otM105 AAR

[Eyswein]

Welcome to the 6otM105 After Actions 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 attached your victory save to your post.

- What was your plan for achieving a Domination VC? What are the major steps you planned to take? What events, if any, changed the plan in execution and to what new plan? Any interesting decision points?
- How did the leader bonus and civ unique ability impact your plan/play, if at all?
- How many cities did you settle and/or capture? Where did you settle your first few cities?
- What did you prioritize for technology/civics?
- What were key production/purchase focuses? Military units / Civilian units / Districts & city development / Wonders / Civ Unique Unit & Infrastructure? Most critical or interesting?
- Pantheon chosen and why? Religious beliefs chosen, and why?
- What governments did you select? What key policy cards did you use? Why?
- Which Governors were most important; when and why?
- Was diplomacy/trading useful? How? Relations with other civs?
- Were City-States helpful? Any competition with other civs for key city states?
- When did you have Dark/Golden ages?
- How did the game mode affect or impact your play?
- How were the Barbarians?
- Any surprises/frustration/elations you ran into, how did you deal with it?
- Did you enjoy your 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.

 

[Chrumo]

DV 154 Score 1413

Spoiler Turn 154 :

The starting location was so strong that it felt like playing on Prince difficulty . I rushed all possible industries in the nearby area (whales, ivory, cocoa, tea, tobacco, turtles), which got me about 130 gpt from monopolies at turn 70 or so. Also had to avoid any tourism and burn cities with wonders just to not risk winning with culture due to monopoly tourism modifiers.

- What was your plan for achieving a Domination VC? What are the major steps you planned to take? What events, if any, changed the plan in execution and to what new plan? Any interesting decision points?
Getting Kabul suz. bonus and just rolling over opponents. It is in my opinion the strongest DV city state.
- How did the leader bonus and civ unique ability impact your plan/play, if at all?
Getting encampments everywhere allowed me to get a dozen of great generals, which obviously suits DV.
- How many cities did you settle and/or capture? Where did you settle your first few cities?
Settled about 7 cities, all but one for a resource industry that was in its area.
- What did you prioritize for technology/civics?
Currency, and then straight to Vietnam UU.
- What were key production/purchase focuses? Military units / Civilian units / Districts & city development / Wonders / Civ Unique Unit & Infrastructure? Most critical or interesting?
Getting a couple archers, and then just autoclicking whatever in my cities. I never bothered to upgrade my land.
- Pantheon chosen and why? Religious beliefs chosen, and why?
+2 faith on breathtaking tiles yeilded some pretty nice faith income in the end. Didn't manage to get a religion.
- Were City-States helpful? Any competition with other civs for key city states?
Kabul is insane. At the end I think I had 5 lvl7 units.
- When did you have Dark/Golden ages?
All golden.
- How did the game mode affect or impact your play?
The income was very nice, the boost to military production as well. Had to avoid CV though.
- How were the Barbarians?
Everywhere. I think they caused more issues to the AI though.
- Did you enjoy your game?
Yes! However the game felt extremelly easy, and I got a little bit bored after 50-60 turns, when I realised that it will take 100 turns more to get to all other capitals. Definitely could have finished faster, but I just didn't feel like accelerating my victory since it was already won from the get go.

Thanks for the game!

 

[tarafran]

DV134
settled in place, built 3 scouts and 3 settlers.
I found the khmer first(victim)rushed 2 campus and the Unique district ,
beelined the UU while building archer .
Small detour to Currency to get as many trade route as I could.
Picked earth Goddess .
No religion,3 golden age.
After The Khmer I built a second army to go north on India.
Rejoined in China where I figured out that Indonesia was water based.
Korea was next ,then Japan,Indonesia and Gengis.
Fun game the UU is very powerful ,did not realized at first that it can shoot and still move, and upgrade , very nice
I was a little short on niter but I had a good steady GPT with monopolies
Thanks

 

[Casualty of war]

I lost Slingers to forest fires, I lost my fleet to a blizzard while rounding Point Barbarian and Korea got Walls up while I was besieging their capitol. This was not the happy, joyful game I was hoping for. Ragequit turn 107 with only 3 caps taken. Just wacky luck.

Spoiler :

 

[Eyswein]

I lost Slingers to forest fires, I lost my fleet to a blizzard while rounding Point Barbarian and Korea got Walls up while I was besieging their capitol.

Ugh!!

 

[Casualty of war]

CivVI has not been my friend lately. I just had another flood-right-after-capture that cleaned up all my wounded units. Oh well, keeps things interesting.

 

[cas]

DV T181. Not 100% clean...I tend to move units wrong directions by accident with the horrible Civ unit cycling. The more units, the more accidents.

No lengthy write-up. Just wanted to say I enjoyed this game. I rarely finish a dom game.

Very generous start position, especially with a grove SW of capital next to all the deer.

Used corporation $$ to leverage CS units throughout the game. Lots of sword / musket. Some UU, curs, field cannons. Lack of niter on the western half of the map was an annoying surprise...I had to settle two cities for it (one N by Gandhi, one in the middle between China / Korea. I'm sure horse/knight would have been faster...Domination VC is not my thing.

I like the unique movement bonus in woods/rainforest. It took a while to get used to it.

Thanks for the fun map.

cas

 

[Thorak]

DV T126 (according to Hall of fame, T127 ingame), Score 859

- What was your plan for achieving a Domination VC? What are the major steps you planned to take? What events, if any, changed the plan in execution and to what new plan? Any interesting decision points?
My plan was to build 2-3 strong core cities, rush to machinery and pump up archers right before it hit and upgrade it with gold. And also get some generals from the special district.

- How did the leader bonus and civ unique ability impact your plan/play, if at all?
This civ feels broken. The special unit combined with the special district + the extra move from certain terrain types makes this civ a powerhouse once machinery enters the stage.

- How many cities did you settle and/or capture? Where did you settle your first few cities?
I settled 3 core cities. I focused on fresh water + good production tiles.

- What did you prioritize for technology/civics?
Normal growth techs/civics, machinery, printing press.

- What were key production/purchase focuses? Military units / Civilian units / Districts & city development / Wonders / Civ Unique Unit & Infrastructure? Most critical or interesting?
My massive army of Voi Chien steamrolled everything. It almost felt a bit boring, like pressing a "I win" button". The ability to have 3 movement (up to 5 if general+terrain) is just ridicolous. The ability to shoot and pillage in the same turn or shoot and upgrade is just insane.

- Pantheon chosen and why? Religious beliefs chosen, and why?
Didn't have much impact, don't even remember what I picked.

- What governments did you select? What key policy cards did you use? Why?
Key policy cards was conscription (+1 gold/unit), +production vs military units.

- Which Governors were most important; when and why?
Pingala. His +science/culture in the beginning is very strong. Later on Victor to keep loyalty.

- Was diplomacy/trading useful? How? Relations with other civs?
I don't deal with lesser life forms!

- Were City-States helpful? Any competition with other civs for key city states?
I used city states quite a bit. Levied a few of them, but most helpful was kabul with double experience. There were surprisingly almost no competition for the city states.

- When did you have Dark/Golden ages?
Golden all.

- How did the game mode affect or impact your play?
The +gold from monopoly helped quite a bit. Gold was one of the more limiting factors and this surely helped.

- How were the Barbarians?
Voi Chien steamrolled them as well.

- Any surprises/frustration/elations you ran into, how did you deal with it?
No surprises. Felt like I was playing on Prince difficulty.

- Did you enjoy your game?
It was a fun game, although it was a bit too easy.

 

[Planktonic]

Dom V, Turn 291

Greetings. First time GOTM player. Just happy to get a win, not anywhere close to the times posted above.

What was your plan for achieving a Domination VC? What are the major steps you planned to take? What events, if any, changed the plan in execution and to what new plan? Any interesting decision points?
Didn't have much of a plan beyond trying to expand as quickly as possible and hopefully stay even or ahead in tech.

- How did the leader bonus and civ unique ability impact your plan/play, if at all?
Actually got confused at one point, when I had conquered a city and it wouldn't let me build any districts until I remembered that Viernam needs woods/rainforest/marsh to do so and I had to plant some.

- How many cities did you settle and/or capture? Where did you settle your first few cities?
5 core cities around the various luxury goods.

- What did you prioritize for technology/civics?
I went for a religion, which in retrospect was a mistake, so Astrology first, then towards Machinery.

- What were key production/purchase focuses? Military units / Civilian units / Districts & city development / Wonders / Civ Unique Unit & Infrastructure? Most critical or interesting?
No specific focuses; did not really focus on military until a bit late, it seems.

- Pantheon chosen and why? Religious beliefs chosen, and why?
With a natural wonder in my backyard from turn 1, I opted for a religion, which was probably a mistake, as I spent a fair amount of hammers first getting it and then defending it (another holy site and shrine) against Indian missionary spam. I did get Choral Music for the first time ever, which did help with culture.

- Which Governors were most important; when and why?
Magnus with Provision to expand, a bit later Moksha with Divine Architect to rapidly build up cities.

- Was diplomacy/trading useful? How? Relations with other civs?
Did not engage in any real diplomacy.

- Were City-States helpful? Any competition with other civs for key city states?
For me they were extremely helpful. Because I got started late to warmongering, even India and Khmer already had walls up. With no niter, I had to levy musketmen from Singapore, Hong Kong and Ngazargamu to sustain any kind of midgame offensive. Ultimately being able to suzerain Geneva and Taruga after building Kilwa gave me a massive science lead that finally put the game away.

- When did you have Dark/Golden ages?
Golden classical, dark Industrial, Heroic Modern, then Golden Atomic.

- How did the game mode affect or impact your play?
Obviously helped a lot with gpt.

- How were the Barbarians?
Not much of a factor.

- Any surprises/frustration/elations you ran into, how did you deal with it?
Lack of niter (and aluminum in late game) completely changed the normal course of events for me....

- Did you enjoy your game?
First time playing Vietnam, only second chance to even look at Corporations mode, so a lot of fun.

Forgot to save the turn at victory, so attached a screenshot from game details from the HoF.

Thanks for a fun game, hope I can take part in some more.

 

[Email10]

DV Turn 176 - Score 1472

See my post in Opening Actions for detailed first 100 Turns. My Courses/Knight Army was supported by some Unique Elephants that were extremely strong when upgraded and helped me bring down city walls so that I didn't need Bombards. They could move into shooting range, shoot off two times and then move out of range again. I had 2 Corps and one Single unit.

Khmer took some time to take down as they had Ancient Walls in all cities. Korea was next and went down fast, as did China as well. At this time I had my first Corps. Mongols was the most difficult enemy due to Renaissance Walls and Encampments in most cities. Japan was also quite easy and the Indonesian capital went down the turn after I had declared war on them with 2 Elephant shots and 2 Tank attacks (Army + Corps).

I definitely didn't play a perfect game and can probably optmimize by building less infrastructure (Stables and Military Academy is probably not speeding up the game..) and I see the fastest finishes only built 3 cities whereas I went for 4.

I had masses of Barbs in my game. Camps were popping up everywhere and when I destroyed one, another popped up. In the end there were still 6 Barb Camps alive, and two of them were harrassing some cities of mine since all my troops were focused on the wars.

Fun game and very nice starting location for Vietnam. Their Unique Unit was fun to play but quite Overpowered. I didn't see any need to upgrade it to Cannons because it was so strong and fast. With a General and moving in Woods/Rainforest it had 5 movement.

 

[Arnold_T]

DV t149 760AD score 1091

I didn't realize how great Vietnam would be in war with the special Encampment, and the awesome UU. tried to max their advantages. At the end of the game I upgraded some of the UUs to Field Cannons, but regretted it. losing the movement bonuses of the UU wasn't worth the upgrade

I settled six cities to get the six lux monopolies available on the starting continent. and then later one by the Jade in India starting continent.

I went for the Earth Goddess pantheon for the early faith, expecting I could use it to buy settlers/builders in the coming golden age. Didn't bother to found a religion.

For Govt I went Oligarchy-Monarchy and then near the end switched to Theocracy once I had the Grand Master's Chapel built. bought some Bombards and Field Guns with faith.

- Was diplomacy/trading useful? How? Relations with other civs?
I was declared friends with Gitarja and Gandhi for a while. Gitarja friendship was Ok, but the Gandhi friendship slowed me down by ten turns probably, waiting for that friendship to expire. that wasn't too smart.

- When did you have Dark/Golden ages?
All Golden

- How did the game mode affect or impact your play?
maxed out the monopolies. makes the game easier for sure

- How were the Barbarians?
pretty tame. I was surprised. maybe they didn't handle the wetter world, or they were hitting the AI civs worse than me? don't know.

- Any surprises/frustrations?
#1 the lack of lux resources on the other continents. Did the evil mapmaker delete some? Plus the AI wasn't very good at exploiting the few resources that were there.
#2 the lack of Niter in general. Did the evil mapmaker delete some of that too?
#3 the surprising location of Gitarja. I've never seen a Pangea map with one of the civs separated by water off the main Pangea land mass. Plus there was ice blocking access to that sea from the starting coast - on both sides! My only conclusion is: Evil mapmaker strikes again!

- Did you enjoy your game?
yes, a fun game, Vietnam is really good for DV, and it was a challenging map. thanks so much!

 

[tarafran]

DV 113(replay)
I wanted to try the game again with building Encampments in all my cities, no campus then spamming the UU.
Very powerful unit indeed

 

[Sero]

DV T160(Hall of Fame) T61(in game)

Finished the game a few days ago, but I haven't had time to do a write up or post yet. Will edit this one with screenshots and more info once I have time.

 

[kcd_swede]

Dom Victory t253 score 2047
I played very conservative due to the high difficulty level, but it seemed unecessary. Just logistics and mopping up the last 80 turns.

 

[DanQuayle]

DomV T118

Interesting events
I settled my 2nd city near the Tea luxuries. There was a barbarian camp nearby and I saw Jayavarman send a small force (4 warriors and 1 slingers) in its direction. I cleared it and not long later he decided to declare a surprise war against me. I then went for Archery and held his forces with only 1 Archer (upgraded slinger) and 1 Warrior.
I had found all AIs on the landmass, but still had one to find. That unknown AI had met Jayavarman, Kublai and Hojo, so I surmised it was located in the middle of all three. I was then able to meet Mohenjo-Daro and with a quest and envoy I became its suzerain which revealed me Gitarja and her capital.
I had already secured 2 (of the visible 4) niters when I revealed the resource. Since Kyoto was coastal, I decided to go for Frigates since it was clear Japan's capital would be the last I would capture. Usually, in a best case scenario, you want to capture the last 2-3 capitals in a small interval, but unfortunately it was not the case in this playthrough.

Armies
Main army: 6 Archers and 3 Horsemen which took down Jayavarman. I then upgraded the Archers to Voi Chiens and went for Kublai Khan. He didn't build walls initially, but managed to get some later. He had some Crouching Tigers, so the walls had higher bombard strength. Next was Korea which had walls in all its cities with higher bombard strength thanks to the Hwachas. I baited a Crossbowman out of the capital with a GG. This trick never seem to get old.
Second army: 6 Archers upgraded into Voi Chiens and 3 Heavy Chariots upgraded into Knights took care of Gandhi. I then took care of a large swarm of barbarians near a source of niter in the north and swam a portion of the Voi Chiens across the ocean in the direction of Kyoto.
Mohenjo-Daro levy: Mulitple Warriors upgraded into Swordsmen and 1 Archer upgraded into a Voi Chien took down Majapahit. It was tricky to take because it could only be attacked by two melees units at a time and could not be put under siege. With only 1 range unit at my disposal, that attack would have failed if Gitarja had managed to build walls.
Muscat levy: Multiple Archers upgraded into Voi Chiens and multiple Warriors upgraded into Swordsmen took down Mongolia's unwalled capital. I tried to take another Mongolian city, but Genghis had Knigths already by then. It was a close call.
Naval fleet: 2 Caravels and 2 Frigates to take care of the coastal walled city of Kyoto.

Mistakes
I decided to go Reyna-Forestry Management instead of Pingala-Connoisseur since I believed gold would be a bigger bottleneck than culture. Oh boy, was I wrong. To be fair, usually it is much more difficult to secure monopolies than it was on this map. Usually, there are 10+ Whales on a map, not just 5. Securing the 2 Ivories was also a 100% monopoly. The 4 Teas (out of 6) was also a monopoly. All these monopolies added a lot of GPT. I peaked at around 3500 gold (see screenshot) before upgrading my Archers. I lost maybe 5-10 turns from that decision alone.

Bugs
Some old bugs still annoyingly in the game:
1. Ranged units still benefit from the Arrow Storm (+7) promotion against city centers
2. The large standing armies of some AIs magically disappear (get deleted). In this game, Genghis Khan had 600+ military score early on, but it suddenly fell in the 100s later on without him participating in any war.
3. Trade deals: apparently you can now buy 20DF for 1G before the Medieval era.

 

[Cherenkov]

DV T122

This was my first time playing Vietnam and now it is going to be so hard to play any other civ for domination. The Voi Chiens are so OP I can't believe they allow this unit to exist Move, damage then either move/pillage/promo in one turn is a bit silly. I think they could tone it down just a bit. With that said I still made many mistakes along the way especially taking too long to take out Japan.

I settled in place and built 3 scouts then a settler, slinger, settler and 3 more slingers then focused on campus and encampment. Tons of huts to find but no luck getting a builder so I had to buy one to get those horses and ivory. I focused on Jayavarman first since the terrain was open and easy to get to him with archers, horsemen and one warrior. Took his capital at turn 74. Discovered Machinery at 77 and upgraded 3 archers to Voi Chien before mercenaries, the rest after mercenaries. Took Beijing around turn 90 and at 97 I finally met Indonesia and with a scout in the water and had to come up with a strategy for them. So I started on a harbor in Changsha and sent Magnus down there with a 5 charge worker to build that and 3 galleys to upgrade to Caravel later. I did a lot of chopping in all the former Chinese cities for more Voi Chien who would eventually be needed down in Indonesia much later. I stuck with Monumentality the whole way for lots of chopping since my faith regen was so good.

Unfortunately I didn't take Korea's capital till around turn 102 and got a late start on Deli and didn't take that capital till turn 106. With only two niter nodes I had to make a decision and focus on using them on musketmen who I would very much need to take Kyoto and Qaraqorum. I took too long with Japan and finally was able to buy enough Voi Chien with faith and gold to take out the walls of Kyoto and my 4 promo musketman corps one-shotted Kyoto with a double hit after than. Was nice to time that general to make corps right at that point.

Korea, Mongolia, Indonesia all popped up walls on me but I had enough Voi Chien to make it a non issue. Japan had walls in every city and having only 3 Voi Chien to start with before chopping and buying more meant for a long slog to the capital before I finally had enough to take down the walls of Kyoto quickly. I should have sent fewer Voi Chien to Mongolia and more to Japan.

The raid card gave me lots of science, gold and faith. I never even bothered with the campus bonus card. Focused on Monarchy for first 6 slot government.

Extremely fun game and rigged map Vietnam is just amazing with the UU and Tnahn and movement and fighting bonuses.

 

[leif erikson]

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

You may continue to post here and attach saves if you wish. Results will include games above this post.

 

[Saint Joan]

So... what do you call it if you've already won but wanna rage-quit anyway? Cuz I just unintentionally won via CV on turn 198 and that's how I'm feeling right now.

 

[Victoria]

So... what do you call it if you've already won but wanna rage-quit anyway? Cuz I just unintentionally won via CV on turn 198 and that's how I'm feeling right now.

A victorious defeat but that likely is insufficient for your needs. Assassinated by your own culture may be closer but something like aaaaagggghhhhhh! is likely the most apt.
Still, there is worse, I lost a game by replicating some else’s religion through my civ and that feels bad.
.. So, are you Saint Joan, martyr to false victories?

 

[Mazrak]

DV 187

Long after time I know, started this one at the right time and then got busy with work and stuff - probably wouldn't have come back to it, but its the first time I've ever tried an Immortal level game - don't think I've played anything above King before so wanted to complete it. Didn't realise it was Immortal until I took the first city from Khmer and nearly had a heart attack about how quickly it would rebel! Just a little different to Prince/King! Learnt so much and made so many mistakes, didn't realise it would take so many turns to wipe up the 2nd half of the map after defeating Korea and should have paid far more attention to the development of my cities.

Ran out of money as I took on Korea - no-one would trade with me any more as I was a war mongerer and I obviously hadn't done enough to build commercial districts etc to support both the army and the upgrades I needed


What was your plan for achieving a Domination VC? What are the major steps you planned to take? What events, if any, changed the plan in execution and to what new plan? Any interesting decision points?
Made two armies, first sent south to take our Khmer and go around that way, the second to take out India. Sooooooo many mistakes - forgot about selling Elephants to India - plan was to bring them together at Korea (that did work). Got to Korea about turn 115 - my catapults couldn't face down his walls so had to wait a 5-10 turns to research Bombards. Made a huge mistake with Indonesia - didn't realise it was on an island and because of the game update they produced a huge fleet that I wasn't ready to deal with - set me back 20 turns I guess. Had to purchase a navy to deal with Indonesia given the island was "land locked" used my gold to purchase battle ships in the last 10 turns after I took the Indonesian city on the mainland

How did the leader bonus and civ unique ability impact your plan/play, if at all?
Need to do better planning the districts, probably should have had more great generals - the unique unit is amazing, I wonder if its slightly OP - made large numbers of them and had them as the core of my army'

'How many cities did you settle and/or capture? Where did you settle your first few cities?
Made 5 at the start - didn't try and capture all the AI cities but found that most subsequently flipped over to me

'What did you prioritize for technology/civics?
Beelined machinery for the Voi Chien

Pantheon chosen and why? Religious beliefs chosen, and why?
Didn't bother with a religion as I burnt all my points on builders - probably should have given that more thought

Which Governors were most important; when and why?
Main use of governors was to quell rebellions - I didn't realise how different this was on Immortal compared to the levels I usually play at - had to gear my civic choices to counter this too at times

Was diplomacy/trading useful? How? Relations with other civs?
Good until I started on my war march - after that beyond hope'

Were City-States helpful? Any competition with other civs for key city states?
Kabul was amazing - some of my units had almost every promotion

How did the game mode affect or impact your play
The gpt helped - not sure it really impacted my play

- Any surprises/frustration/elations you ran into, how did you deal with it?
Indonesia being on an island - what a nightmare, assumed it was linked near Japan, such a school boy error. The other surprise was realising about turn 60 that I was playing an Immortal game, but by the time I'd got to Korea around turn 100 that became elation as I knew that I was likely to win as I held half the map. Super elated to win on Immortal - notice one of the posts above said it was like playing a Prince game which has deflated that a little

'Did you enjoy your game?
Oh yes - thanks as always -