6otM109 AAR

[mad-bax]

Turn 126 RV

Hi all. Decided to give this a whirl. I imagined that I had played a decent game until I posted here. You lot are great!

I should have added more culture. I got temples too late. I built a wonder in the capital just for a giggle, but should have built more boats and explored more. Also Gitjara settled a city about turn 115 which was miles from anywhere (woulda, shoulda, coulda etc.)
Anyways in answer to the creator's questions...

What was your plan for achieving the VC? Errmmm... Build missionaries and convert cities...
What are the major steps you planned to take? No plan really. Just get some cities down with good HS adjacency. Lots of trade routes for cash - but turned out to be overkill. Generally tried not to build stuff I didn't need. Failed of course.
What events, if any, changed the plan in execution and to what new plan? Any interesting decision points? Obviously the fountain of youth was very helpful so I only ran a couple of holy site prayers or whatever they are called. Otherwise the plan was the plan
- How did the leader bonus and civ unique ability impact your plan/play, if at all? Clearly cities could concentrate on districts and everything else could be bought. Builders were easy to buy so I could chop everything out reasonably quickly.
- How many cities did you settle and/or capture? Where did you settle your first few cities? Settled 4 cities. Didn't settle them in the right order though due to barb and zombie activity. Slightly annoying. So city 1 was on the hill north. I guess everyone did that. City 2 and 3 took advantage of the temple of youth and 4 was way out to the north east - this went down third but should have been forth - it wasn't on the coast.
- What did you prioritize for technology/civics? I went mining - astro - sailing and for civics I went for a government before temples. I think that was correct play - but I shoulda built some monuments. Big mistake.
- What were key production/purchase focuses? Military units / Civilian units / Districts & city development / Wonders / Civ Unique Unit & Infrastructure? Most critical or interesting? Didn't build military at all. The boats kept my perceived strength high enough. So I prioritised holy sites, builders, harbours as builds - and tried to buy everything else. I ran the task to control zombies a couple of times and sent them to England. They weren't welcome.
- Pantheon chosen and why? Religious beliefs chosen, and why? The pantheon was the one for faith for breathtaking tiles - the lens showed quite a few good tiles near city sites so I thought it would give high faith return - I think I was over 250 fpt at the end IIRC. I think there was one with mines on resources that might have worked but I assumed it was going to be a 300 turn game at the beginning. I got the cheaper missionaries too (Holy orders?). All good I think.
- What governments did you select? What key policy cards did you use? Why? I beelined republic. I don't think there was any sane alternative.
- Which Governors were most important; when and why? I was good with Magnus and moved him diligently for the chops. I used Pingala for culture and I used Amani to make one of the city states safely mine.
- Was diplomacy/trading useful? How? Relations with other civs? I made some gold from the other civs. They all hated me because I was spamming missionaries all over their place - so it didn't take that long before it got difficult to negotiate open borders and sell diplo favour. By then I had more gold than I could spend. I ended up buying workers to make farms in case anyone opens the save file to make me look better.
- Were City-States helpful? Any competition with other civs for key city states? The city states were critical to my game. The extra shots and other bonuses made a huge difference. Yerevan was attacked at one point but I managed to stand a scout on the choke and block access. Very proud of myself for that.
- When did you have Dark/Golden ages? Golden ages only. The first one was pretty close to the limit I think. I remember searching for ways of getting the last couple of era score. Can't really remember sorry.
- How did the game modes affect or impact your play? I built 3 corporations but they had no measurable impact. The Zombies were fun, and not too scary. I like the way they get slowly stronger. Don't attack builders apparently. Who knew?
- How were the Barbarians? I think they were fine. I didn't ask.
- Any surprises/frustration/elations you ran into, how did you deal with it? Well, Gitjara settling that final city in the middle of the map sucked badly. My culture sucked similarly.
- Did you enjoy your game? Yes of course. I expect these games to be constructed to a high standard and this one was. My only point would be that there was no jeopardy. I never felt in danger.

 

[mad-bax]

I'm still staff? Wow - I'm putting that on my CV.

 

[leif erikson]

Welcome back, it is GREAT to see you.

 

[Planktonic]

So I re-played this game but with a twist: used the same game and map seed and specified the same opponents and game modes etc, but put the difficulty at Deity level. Portugal felt so strong at Emperor, I wanted to see how Deity would compare plus I wanted to see if I could improve my strategy for RV, given the much faster times others can achieve. I did try this once before with a previous 6otM and found it instructive, so thought I'd give it another go.

Once again, I did not spawn at the same location, but did spawn in the vicinity of a natural wonder (this time the Delicate Arch). The home positions of the other civs was different, as were the city states. I don't have a very granular memory for map features so it basically felt like playing a whole new game, but within the same general parameters of the first. One big difference: many fewer religious city states, and especially no Chinguetti and no Yerevan. So I was not able to generate the same fpt as last game despite founding more cities.

But I was still able to get to RV at turn 231 (compared to 215 for the first run-through). I guess since it was a higher difficulty with less congenial city-states I can consider that a sort of modest improvement. I was still pretty cautious in retrospect, and did not try to seriously convert until I had built up a (modest) fpt superiority. And I made a big mistake in that after I converted Phoenicia I left the scene and some wayward Phoenician apostles converted some of the holy site cities back, which probably cost me a good 20 turns to go back and fix.

So overall still a pretty fun game and a good learning tool. But I still never felt threatened (as others pointed out above)- Portugal on a water map still feels incredibly strong even at Deity level.

But in this game I was seeing a lot of missionary activity from the AI well before turn 100, and long before I was in any position to go proselytizing myself. So a question to the more accomplished players: do you still plan to achieve religious victories by turn 100 - 120 at Deity level ? Or what would an efficient RV at Deity look like ? How much difference does the map type make ? Thanks in advance !

 

[Victoria]

do you still plan to achieve religious victories by turn 100 - 120 at Deity level ? Or what would an efficient RV at Deity look like ? How much difference does the map type make ? Thanks in advance !

For an RV at deity level the main issue can be getting a religion to start with. Also it is not as easy to spread your religion early, get suzerain, they do get to Theocracy earlier and golden ages are harder and shorter.
On the plus side, the AI sends out lots of lovely religious units and killing these gets rid of their religion. The AI is so bad at RV combat that it is pitiable.
On deity there is more requirement to being able to choose your promotions and having more promotions but speed wise I feel they are similar but that is probably incorrect by others. The reason for this is on emperor I can just sit down and play, no planning required while I do plan on deity, so while times are similar I play more effectively on deity, emperor is a walk in the park for RV.

firstly you have to get a fair amount of faith each turn but this is not hard and holy orders helps a lot.
The amount of chop in your cities helps speed things up, cutting down those woods is not to be underestimated.
Getting that golden age for the speed and extra charges also speeds things up
Getting a group or 2 of combat apostles with spreading apostles behind them is useful, remember a 50% damaged apostle only spreads 50% of their religion.
It cannot be stressed enough that understanding where civs are and how to get to them as early as possible helps, it was in one of the posts above where they said they targeted the further civs first.

a key thing about RV is it is like a CV in that the faster you can do it, the easier it becomes, the opposition is weaker and has less ‘pressure’ earlier. You only need 50% of a civ so there is efficiencies there.

try playing this game again, astrology/sailing, build a builder first, improve 2 tiles then sail them off the explore. This gets you all those powerful trade routes much earlier than a scout and you work out where the opposition is.

 

[mad-bax]

Welcome back, it is GREAT to see you.

I missed you all too Leif - it's been too long.

Thank you for the warm welcome

 

[mad-bax]

... build a builder first, improve 2 tiles then sail them off the explore. This gets you all those powerful trade routes much earlier than a scout and you work out where the opposition is.

This is elite play. But for an inexperienced player like me - the first builder had 2 salt and a woods tile to clear and you can sell the salt. It's difficult to convince yourself to put a builder in the water when you are a few turns from researching sailing and barb galleys... So I didn't have the confidence to do that. I will give it a go.

 

[Victoria]

I will give it a go.

I did the salt, Just move the builder at sea 1 tile at a time to lower risk, still risky but great rewards, you will notice the difference.

 

[DanQuayle]

I did the salt, Just move the builder at sea 1 tile at a time to lower risk, still risky but great rewards, you will notice the difference.

But is it really necessary with Portugal with the +1 LOS?
I would argue moving 2 tiles per turn with Portugal is as risky as moving 1 tile per turn with any other civ (for a non-monumentality builder). Since barbarian quadriremes (and now galleys) have 3 movement points and 2-tile LOS, if you move your builder a 2nd tile with Portugal you will spot a barbarian ship 3 tiles out on your last turn (but it cannot see you yet unless it moves in your direction). This is the same as moving your builder 1 tile out (with any other civilization with 2-tile LOS), spotting a barbarian ship 2 tiles out and backtracking 1 tile out with your 2nd movement point: the barbarian ship will be 3 tiles out and will only see you if it moves in your direction.

 

[Victoria]

moving 2 tiles per turn with Portugal is as risky as moving 1 tile per turn with any other civ

Yes but moving 1 tile is less risky than another civ moving 1 tile so why not? It is a very vital unit after all.

 

[Arnold_T]

- How were the Barbarians? I think they were fine. I didn't ask.

that's funny. I didn't ask either. They are always grouchy.

 

[DanQuayle]

Yes but moving 1 tile is less risky than another civ moving 1 tile so why not? It is a very vital unit after all.

Yes, moving 1 tile with Portugal is virtually risk free (which is obviously less risky than moving 1 tile with any other civ).
However, if you are willing to assume this level of risk with another civ, why wouldn't you be comfortable assuming the exact same level of risk with Portugal? The difference in reward is huge: double exploration speed (1 tile vs 2 tiles per turn).
Unless you are extremely risk-averse, I find it hard to justify only moving 1 tile per turn with Portugal. Don't forget that the whole purpose of a swimming builder is to explore...
Once you unlock and produce galleys, the value of the swimming builder diminishes, especially if it moves at a pace of only 1 tile per turn. Ask yourself this question: how long would it take before a 3-mp galley catches up to to your 1-mp builder if it is built X turns later? If you builder moves at 2 tiles per turn, the answer to that question changes significantly...
I could however see a case in a monumentality golden age where 3 tiles per turn risk free would be a better option than 4 tiles per turn with a low level of risk. The difference here is that the exploration speed is only 33% higher and not 100%. In both cases, a galley produced later cannot catch up to the builder (before unlocking Mathematics).

 

[Victoria]

moving 1 tile per turn

Aaah , I was wondering what the fuss was about...

1 tile at a time

There is a subtle difference, nice to see I am not the only one that misunderstands things from time to time

on a side note... it’s the 1st of May, no-one can be unhappy on such a day.

 

[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.

 

[arthur486]

RV @Turn 111 (finally managed to wrap this game up!)

Basically did exactly what @Victoria reported, and got a very similar result to show for

Just a few bullet points I picked up while playing this game:

• Portuguese settlers with +1 sight are like having radar, seriously
• Portuguese trade routes are also very good, can't wait to try them out come 6otM112
• Completed Mahabodhi Temple - it seems that you can select the promotion for the two granted Apostles, so you can do 2 x Debater.
• T093 I already had 166 faith per turn, with only 3 cities; honestly it was a little hard to believe
• Managed to get GA throughout and used Exodus of the Evangelists
• Key thing in these victories is religious unit movement; you want to send out the earliest units further, and plan to convert everyone at the same time; for some reason, I don't have the guts to do it as well as it would be required, and probably that's why I take quite more time than would otherwise be needed .

As always, thank you for the game!