6otM121 AAR

Eyswein · Oct 14, 2021

Welcome to the 6otM121 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 attach your victory save to your post.

- What was your plan for achieving the 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 modes 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.

Monthar · Oct 17, 2021

Science Victory turn 309, score 1432.
I had the game lock up on turn rollover fairly early on and had to reload, save included. It was a nice peaceful game. I built a few wonders, claimed Sinbad, and 2 other heroes. I got Rayna promoted to be able to buy the two space ports I went with. I managed to flip a few cities from loyalty pressure.

isopaha · Oct 18, 2021

SV T301. Peaceful game for me as well. Germany settled a satellite city quite near me and my early plan was to loyalty flip it by surrounding it with 3 cities. However, that happened only like 25 turns before my victory. Expected the map to have much less production than it did, quite an easy game in the end. Sumeria was great for the endless tribal village rewards and the UI is not bad either.

Planktonic · Oct 19, 2021

SV, turn 282

Had planned to stay peaceful, but got Hercules as first hero and was able to use him to capture Aachen, the German capital, and then roll the rest of Germany. Planned to stay peaceful again thereafter but had three Emergencies declared on me: for taking Aachen, and then Antananarivo, and then Paris. (France had wiped out the city state garrison with 5 catapults but had no melee unit to capture it, so my war cart waltzed in unmolested. For that I was rewarded with an Emergency.) The Emergencies were really distracting me from building up the empire so eventually I just resolved to clear the continent- Hercules, the Twins, one Line Infantry and a Siege Tower were all it took to wipe out Mali. Ended up with about 2 dozen cities, but that included a few late cities placed just for access to coal and aluminum.

Overall I retreated to my usual strategy of getting a religion (Jesuit Education/World Church) and then using high faith output to drive the Empire, especially using Moksha to faith-purchase districts. The natural disasters and especially the Emergencies put me back a bit- another setback was that Hungary kept pouring envoys into Taruga, so I had to place Amani + some 20 envoys just into that one city state to get suzerainty for the boost from Kilwa. For the first time ever I used a spy successfully to delete three envoys from the competing civs. Was also chagrined that no Wonder-building engineer appeared until Shah Jahan, and only got Korolev at the very end to boost two laser stations (with Mausoleum). Was just starting to see the Information Age Great Scientists when the game ended.

It seemed like a weird map from the get-go; I mean, a wetlands map but then hot and dry? But it was pretty fun regardless- lots of places to place ziggurats! I really like playing Sumeria, and the war cart is a great unit- it stayed relevant for a very long time.

Thanks for the game!

Eyswein · Oct 21, 2021

Planktonic said:
It seemed like a weird map from the get-go; I mean, a wetlands map but then hot and dry? But it was pretty fun regardless- lots of places to place ziggurats! I really like playing Sumeria, and the war cart is a great unit- it stayed relevant for a very long time.

Thanks for the game!

Glad it was fun...and weird - tried to do something unique I hadn't thought of previously.

Not sure if it works out exactly this way (probably not exactly), but I thought of Wetlands + Arid as
+ rivers, marsh, woods, flood plains, rainforests (wetlands)
- woods, rainforest, marsh (arid)

= + rivers, impacting Ziggurat, +1 Culture if placed adjacent to a River for some extra civilization synergy
= + flood plains, impacted by Disaster Intensity 4 for flooding bonus and danger
Heroes & Legends for Legacy of Enkidu uniqueness that we hadn’t done in a game yet

Planktonic · Oct 22, 2021

Eyswein said:
Not sure if it works out exactly this way (probably not exactly), but I thought of Wetlands + Arid as
+ rivers, marsh, woods, flood plains, rainforests (wetlands)
- woods, rainforest, marsh (arid)

= + rivers, impacting Ziggurat, +1 Culture if placed adjacent to a River for some extra civilization synergy
= + flood plains, impacted by Disaster Intensity 4 for flooding bonus and danger
Heroes & Legends for Legacy of Enkidu uniqueness that we hadn’t done in a game yet

Thanks for sharing this- very interesting to see your thought process. I haven't been playing GOTM for very long but I have been pleased to see some more interesting map setups (eg. TSL Earth, Wetlands, the custom Mediterranean for Caesar has Fallen). There are still quite a few map types we haven't seen recently (Tilted Axis? Inland Sea? Fractal?) so I hope you guys will continue to be creative in that regard. Especially for the lower difficulty games having a challenging map platform can make it quite interesting. Thanks again for your efforts.

Rutseg · Oct 23, 2021

Science victory T255, score 1388, time 35 h

Achievements obtained through this play:

Epic of Gilgamesh: As Sumeria, have the first Great Work of Writing
The Dream Team: Claim 5 Heroes in a single game.
First to Civilize: Win a regular game as Gilgamesh.

I was very careful in my moves, specially on the early stage of the game, but still it seems I am stuck in the ~250 turn for Science victories.

The cheaper heroes bonus allowed me to claim: Hunahpu & Xbalanque, Hercules, Maui, Sinbad and Himiko.
Hercules and Sinbad were the most useful ones. Hercules got me early campuses and my three spaceports. Sinbad helped me discover the civilizations I was missing and get circumnavigation era score, but specially he allowed me to earn a tone of gold while cleaning up the seas from very bothering barbarians. Sinbad was recalled 3 times, and Hercules 2. I hold a bit from recalling Hercules through the middle game, but I should have, I think I had faith enough to use him for extra campuses. Himiko was useful too to retain the science City States and I used her moving Amani around. Maui got me a few bonus resources but I think his impact was not high. My first call was H&X and I hoped to gather barbarians to take Germany early on, but I lost most of them fighting other barbarians and suffering sudden floods, still they saved me a lot of production building up an early defensive army.

I built only a few ziggurats, with the floods destroying them I did not want to go hard on this. The war-cart was good mainly for faster exploration, they are sturdier than a scout, but Germany favored a lot of spearmen, making them less useful for conquer.

Germany had great locations for campuses, the idea to conquer their territory was on my head early on, but my attempts to build an army with H&X were not fruitful, so I befriended Frederick for trade. Still, I planted a city at the other side of the eastern mountain range and built my encampment there. Later on, I realized he still had no walls, thus, I did not renew friendship, and by turn 141 I had a few man-at-arms and some musketmen coming so I declared (I was also angry he had taken Antananarivo and Mohenjo-Daro). I brought Catherine and Mansa to the war. Peace came at T156 after conquering Aachen, Cologne and Antananarivo, while Mansa took Berlin and Mohenjo-Daro. I was a bit worried the grievances had a huge impact in the other civs, but luckily I was already allied with all other civs except Jadwiga. Fortunately, Ulm and Mainz, his last cities, turned to me before my alliances expired and the grievances grudge disappeared.

I made a war against Jadwiga during the Industrial era, as I had levied the city states armies in that continent and I hoped to pillage science with them. But she had Arthur and created a lot of cavalries that destroyed the city state army. Still I managed to pillage a campus a couple times, and conquered a small city in an island (Legnica) before striking peace.

Catherine and Mathias had huge problems in my game. Catherine only had Paris for most part of the game, she moved her second settler around all the time without settling until ~T200, she was probably looking for a spot but finding barbarians all the time. Still, she was bothering me with her missionaries and apostles and had to defend my own religion (which was bringing some science and amenities).

When I found Mathias he had 4 cities, but the barbarian in the continent reduced him to the capital, and he later founded Pecs in an island. I even saw Buda at the verge of falling a couple of times. I think he suffered hard barbarian spawning with 3 camps in his continent and probably some floods triggering at bad times for him. The charts show he was fighting hard the whole game until I cleared the camps. I could have taken Buda, but I had made a cultural alliance with him to settle my colony Kirsh in his continent. Actually I had my own amount of problems cleaning an encampment there. I only cleaned that continent once I upgraded my knight to a tank.

Peter was nice enough to have a large culture so I was not worried about hitting an early Cultural Victory, and Mansa Musa had a lot of coin to trade. Eleanor was not meaningful in my game.

I managed golden ages all through the whole game (had to spend a lot of gold and faith to fetch 10 era score in a single turn for the Industrial one). Funded 14 cities, captured 4 and flipped other 2. I got a settler from barbarians at late game, and lost one to Zanzibar who I did not realize had allied with Frederick.

The campus placement bonuses where not super, most all +3 or +2. It was a pity Frederick set his campuses so terribly bad. There was one particularly good spot in Cologne with an easy +7 campus but he went with a +3 one.

My third city went to the inner sea in our continent, there had been forest fires there, and the bonuses proved super useful! Also it was away from the floods and volcanoes, making that city pretty potent, and got there a preserve with the best placement I have managed so far in any other game with a lot of appeal around.

I funded the last religion and went Earth Goddess pantheon for the faith synergy with Monumentality and Heroes claiming. By the end of the game it allowed me to create 7 national parks which solved all my amenity problems, ensuring no penalties on production for the Space career.

This is how I made the space career: 3 spaceports (Hercules), focused all trade routes in the capital with Pingala (oh what!? I see now I forgot to upgrade him to Space Initiative :c5unhappy:

), Royal Society and all other cities either producing builders to hasten the space race or funding Campus Research for the extra Future Tech bonuses.

All in all, an interesting game, it felt slightly different.

Does anyone have suggestions for how to obtain more/faster science?

Spoiler Full log :

Spoiler City build order :

tarafran · Oct 26, 2021

SV 259
I went for a religion first, bought all my spaceport with faith .A bit of waring with Germany, then France for oil , later with Hungary to stop him spamming his religion.
Sinbad was great for earlier gold , Anansi for the early game tech and culture.
3 GA and 1 normal Age
Lot's of disasters, fire, flooding ,one part of my territory was in constant dry weather
thank for the. game

MrRadar · Nov 1, 2021

SV T316

- What was your plan for achieving the 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?
No plan in particular, and it shows on the finish time.

- How did the leader bonus and civ unique ability impact your plan/play, if at all?
Cheaper heroes and lasting longer was nice.

- How many cities did you settle and/or capture? Where did you settle your first few cities?
Eventually I filled the SW part of my landmass.

- What did you prioritize for technology/civics?
Whatever I did, it was not too successful. I did get quite early knights from a barb outpost or so, but then lacked iron and cash to really benefit from it.

- What were key production/purchase focuses? Military units / Civilian units / Districts & city development / Wonders / Civ Unique Unit & Infrastructure? Most critical or interesting?
War carts mostly won my first war, a man-at-arms plus a ram, a few knights and trebs won the second. After seeing a bit of the map I thought Etemenanki, but it went t31 (to Poland). Built Ruhr in the capital. It looks like I seriously underbuilt camps. I haven't really been going for a SV in a long time.

- Pantheon chosen and why? Religious beliefs chosen, and why?
City patron goddess. Not too impressive. I did not get a religion.

- What governments did you select? What key policy cards did you use? Why?
I went through the whole spectrum of the Classical govs, probably for the first time. Classical->Autocracy->Oligarchy. To help my development and later war. Then Mercantilism, Democracy, Digital Democracy.

- Which Governors were most important; when and why?
Magnus for some chops as usual, Reyna for a couple of bought spaceports, Pingala for the oomph across the board and Liang for plus charges and faster districts.

- Was diplomacy/trading useful? How? Relations with other civs?
Made Mansa into an Economic ally and directed virtually all trade routes to him. Frederick kinda forward settled me so I fought two wars against him: first one to take his offending expand, and second one to take him out. Later befriended Poland, England and France. At the end of the game joined in an emergency against Peter.

- Were City-States helpful? Any competition with other civs for key city states?
Yes, but I only achieved suzerainty in almost all of them towards the end. AI envoys were numerous.

- When did you have Dark/Golden ages?
First few Normal, then mid-game onwards all Golden.

- How did the game modes affect or impact your play?
Heroes helped quite a bit, I got Anansi, Maui, Sinbad and the twins and everybody did their fair part. I also got Steel-Driving Man achievement for recalling a hero after the Industrial era, lol. Also got Jack of All Trades Master of None for 5+ industries but no Corporations. Not enough luxuries

- How were the Barbarians?
They were amazing. I got scouted out during the first turns and their scout did manage to return to the camp to trigger some horse barbs. Now you know what I was doing early game :ar15:

- Any surprises/frustration/elations you ran into, how did you deal with it?
This time probably frustration element was the greatest. Lookin' at you, universal +150 science at Classical:

Spoiler :

And not a single uranium in my territory to let the steam off...

- Did you enjoy your game?
I hope I learned that I need far much more science for a SV

Thanks for the game! :thumbsup:

Tarry · Nov 2, 2021

Science victory. Turn 263, score 1723.

- What was your plan for achieving the 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?
Build science everywhere I could. Aim for every important scientist. Conquer my continent taking out nearby civs to slingshot the size of my empire using my superior ancient unit and then whatever resources for horse/iron to keep the momentum going.
It pretty much worked out as I wanted - Catherine was a major pain to get to because of the terraine and the mountain range splitting the continent.
Turn 200ish, peter annoyed me, so I began a war with him as I was bored and he captured a city state that was mine (production in seas one). I smashed him and razed many cities, then in the end I took a couple, waste of time really, I should have just left him alone.

- How did the leader bonus and civ unique ability impact your plan/play, if at all?
Very good, Early nd powerful unique unit. Lots of Ziggurats to boost science. Barb camps gave loads of extra rewards, I specifically targeted them to get my benefits from them.

- How many cities did you settle and/or capture? Where did you settle your first few cities?
Settled working southwest initially looking for good spots. Was lucky that I didn't meet anyone in that direction, then moved out and conquest began! Founded 15 cities, conquered 16.

- What did you prioritize for technology/civics?
Oligarchy for the +4 combat.

- What were key production/purchase focuses? Military units / Civilian units / Districts & city development / Wonders / Civ Unique Unit & Infrastructure? Most critical or interesting?
Warcarts are awesome I had many, and they upgrade into knights as well. awesome.

- Pantheon chosen and why? Religious beliefs chosen, and why?
I ignored religion then when I went for it I didn't get one. I had catherines which allowed me to build science building with faith, that was OK.
I used my faith to purchase the occasional builder and a lot of settlers (from my magnus city)

- What governments did you select? What key policy cards did you use? Why?
Oligarchy for war. After that, maximised science.

- Which Governors were most important; when and why?
Magnus - for the faith buying of settlers and chopping.

- Was diplomacy/trading useful? How? Relations with other civs?
Ish. I conquered my continent before meeting anyone else so then I didn't start hated. I made friends as best I could.

- Were City-States helpful? Any competition with other civs for key city states?
The science ones obviously. I had the hero who can add envoys, recalled that 3 times I think to take control of city states.

- When did you have Dark/Golden ages?
golden except for modern, I just failed to hi golden in it.

- How did the game modes affect or impact your play?
Quite a lot. I've never played heroes, but now I see that they can be fun!

- How were the Barbarians?
awesome! so many extra rewards from their camps

- Any surprises/frustration/elations you ran into, how did you deal with it?
Floods, floods and more floods, exploding volcanoes. I lived with floods and avoided volcanoes as much as possible. Kept a 1 charge builder in every city for repair. Built a lot more dams than usual due to floods.

- Did you enjoy your game?
Yes.

Victoria · Nov 10, 2021

Rutseg said:
Does anyone have suggestions for how to obtain more/faster science?

Gilgamesh can have an awesome start with carts, He can have very fast SV’s. Like others here I messed up my start but not really, it was the disaster intensity, it wiped out all 3 of my warcarts while I was taking Berlin and then Aachen flipped and all was lost. However I am replaying and all is going as expected with no war cart disaster.
I am on T101 with 165 science and 95 culture and have just got exploration. I am now hungry for Hungary but need gold because Sinbad was ambushed. I’ll write it up when I am done and put it here if you are interested, I’ll save my game now so you can see what it’s like at this time.
A violent start allowed me 10 cities by T70 which is great. 4 were settled by me. The key thing is you start by building warcarts and archers, I got 3 carts and 2 slings before a settler. My first city was 1 tile away from the spices as the spice is a 4/2 tile which complements 1/3 tiles overall giving 2 prod more than 3 2/2 tiles

A couple of things of note, I have just found a science CS on another land, not having 2 science CS does slow things down a lots because Kilwa is a powerful SV wonder but only if you have 2 science CS. I have 2 culture CS though and Hercules rush built 2 theaters so I just need to get Kilwa up so I can have enough culture for a fast SV culture route - look at international space station, that gives great science bonus but to get there quick you need to do a moon landing with enough culture already to be able to get to Globalization. The other issue is the start of this game, where you place yourself makes a lot of difference.

Rutseg · Nov 11, 2021

I replayed this trying to go for an early warcart war as suggested by Victoria. Here is my modest improvement.

Replay Science Victory T231, Score 1579, Time 24 h

This time I settled slightly to the north, on a plains hill at the mouth of the mountain range that controls the access to Frederick and Mansa.

War
War started as early as T19, and by T28 Frederick was no more. At T39 war with Mansa who lasted until T77. At that point I had 7 cities, less than Victoria's 10, and only 2 of them were settled. Catherine war started at T95 and ended at T109. Catherine disappeared when her last city turned through loyalty to me at T120. The continent was mine at that turn with 16 cities total.

Science
After the war I focused in building campuses with high placement numbers (a +7 one in Ruen!). Universities arrived at T130 and research labs at T156. Rocketry at T172 and build my first Spaceport that very same turn with Hercules.

I think my limitation this time was production. I only had one city with a considerable production, Nippur, my second city. In the previous game, I had built a lot of Markets and Lighthouse infrastructure, and the associated traders were able to gather a lot of production to my capital. Here it was a bit slower to build projects, even bursting workers.

Again Hercules and Sinbad were great assets.

I levied city state units at the other continent to get pillage science, but only got some success against Eleanor.

Maybe I should have brought full war to the other continents and built Kilwa :hammer2:

Spoiler Full log :

Spoiler Cities build order :

Victoria · Nov 11, 2021

Rutseg said:
At that point I had 7 cities,

I got more because I built 2 slingers after 3 carts and the archers I suspect make a big difference taking out Mansa

Rutseg said:
I think my limitation this time was production

I really do not care about production, I made 2 settlers, 1st to the west where there is a great chopping city for later and the other through the mountain range. That first settler was all the production I need.

Rutseg said:
Hercules and Sinbad were great assets.

Always, especially, Hercules you recall when you want to build your 3 spaceports… no production or gold or faith needed!
What is really needed is the pyramids so you get 7 charge builders so you can use them with the royal society to do your space projects fast…. With no production
… so you see, no production needed apart from chopping in the satellite and moon landing projects with Magnus, hence the chopping city I made (tip, get a theater there so borders expand)
Hercules on his first iteration in my view should be making theaters if short of culture and at least one CH unless you have 2 nearly done.

I think you can get around T200 with this or less if you are keen with eurekas
Love your time:24h
Build Kilwa early in a theater town when you have sized both Culture CS and watch your culture shoot up.

leif erikson · Nov 18, 2021

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.

dzn · Nov 22, 2021

Science Victory T389.
Had a couple of scraps with Germany (their choice) and Russia (their choice) so took a few cities. Think this was my first time playing with heroes, only got a couple earlier then mainly forgot about them since I was trying to play peaceful.

- What governments did you select? What key policy cards did you use? Why?
My usual ones -> rush monarchy -> merchant republic -> democracy -> digital democracy

- Which Governors were most important; when and why?
Magnus - for the faith buying of settlers and chopping.

- Was diplomacy/trading useful? How? Relations with other civs?
yeah generally good relations - lots of trading and alliances

- Were City-States helpful? Any competition with other civs for key city states?
yeah

6otM121 AAR

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