6otM135 AAR

Eyswein · May 14, 2022

Welcome to the 6otM135 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?
- What were your initial 5-10 builds in the capital or other early cities?
- Early order for technology/civics? What did you prioritize for technology/civics?
- 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 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?
- When did you have Dark/Golden ages?
- How did the game modes affect or impact your play?
- 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.

Chrumo · May 16, 2022

DomV 152

I got a little bit too scared in the beggining and probably started to conquer the other continent too late, but otherwise a pretty good game

Thanks for the save!

Spoiler t152 :

Lexad · May 17, 2022

Domination Turn 158

Got carried away with wonder and district builidng, then rolled my continent with Cuirassiers and continued to roll the other while upgrading them to tanks. Forgot about Civ specifics, lost few turns waiting to declare after denouncing. Took Hic Sunt to get to other continent faster. Tricksy Zulu killed Kumasi while I was busy in the North, delaying me Nationalism quite a bit.

Early wonders: Artemis, Machu for strong Theatres, Oracle. Late wonders: Terracota at the start of assault on home continent, Alhambra, Forbidden, Colosseum. Made almost no use of navy.

Goddess of the Hunt pantheon for the win here.

Planktonic · May 19, 2022

Dom Vic turn 184

Played it safe, went for a religion: Work Ethic c Dance of the Aurora as the pantheon, also took Crusade which was very helpful versus Zulu. Spent too much time building up before starting the wars- ended up founding I think 7 cities- the tundra was too alluring. Then later founded one city on the other continent and used Grandmaster's Chapel to faith-buy cuirassiers, artillery and tanks. Also took some time to eliminate Zulus and Australia just for the Era score- had a normal Classical but was intent on staying Golden thereafter. Usually on higher level Dom games I end up having to resort to bombers so glad I was able to avoid that this time.

Thanks for the game!

Rutseg · May 28, 2022

Domination Victory T198, Score 1917, Time 29 h

Achievements through this play:

Peacekeeper: As Wilfrid Laurier, successfully complete an Emergency
The Sunny Way: Win a game as Wilfrid Laurier

Plan
Seen tundra spots available with mountains, I went after Dance of the Aurora + Work Ethic for an early production boost. My early exploration only found Shaka and John Curtin and decided to take Shaka first just because of proximity. As things became tough with Shaka, I opted to ally with John while I explored the rest of the map for the rest of the capitals. Given John and Victoria resulted the most friendlier AIs, I left them for the last and took the rest by order of proximity.

Early game
I expanded to the west desert first despite not being the best spot, just to stop Shaka's expansion and get a closer attack city. The river spot there was good enough to support my second city which I focused on building an encampment (looking for a Great General) and units while the capital focused on expansion to the east and getting a religion and science while building some units too. My science output was bad, and every time I got an edge over Shaka, he suddenly appeared with something now that would bog me down.

At T100, I still had not conquered any capital, I had only settled 6 cities and had razed one of Shaka's ones that I could not retain because of loyalty.

Cities
Only settled 8 cities, got 5 to loyalty pressure, 1 through diplomacy (Roosevelt peace), and 21 conquered. By the end of the game I controlled 35 cities all through the continents.

Two cities were settled at the coast, one at the northern sea and the other at the southern one, providing navy to support my maneuvers.

One city served as a launcher at the eastern continent, many missionaries were bought there to profit the Crusade belief on conquering the enemy cities.

War
The war with Shaka took half my game, and only once I managed to upgrade to crossbows, I turned the tide, bringing Ulundi down thanks to a battering ram (T111). Seeing the rest of Shaka's cities going down to loyalty, I struck a peace and the rest of the game was easy and mostly about improving my units logistics and optimizing my cities at home. By when Shaka was conquered, I had already discovered every other Civ except Brazil. My next were Wilhelmina and Roosevelt.

While half of the army stood at Shaka's territory conquering a city that was to switch otherwise to John, the other half plus a horseman and a new archer went north with a few missionaries to conquer Wilhelmina with the Crusader Belief. Amsterdam conquered in T138.

Meanwhile the army obtained with the Statue of Zeus crossed the sea to the east, settling Guelph in the shores of the other continent as an attack platform. With the help of a missionary the Zeus crusade took Philadelphia on T143 and Washington was defeated at T159.

From there, the north army crossed the seas to the east as well, boosted by Hic Sunt Dracones and the Great Lighthouse (thanks Wilhelmina for building that). They were occupied to take Pedro of Brazil, taking Rio on T172.

The Zeus crusade continued to the east, defeating Ghandi, taking Delhi on T169. This was done with the help of a quadrireme upgraded to a frigate, and a caravel. There were some mounted units helping too, their raids helped me to keep up with Victoria's science.

I maintained alliances with John and Victoria, but should have avoided the last one, because I had to wait around 10 turns for the alliances to expire, and then 5 more turns to denounce them to start the last fights. At least I used the extra time to bring my faith to their cities, which helped a lot to speed up the last battles thanks to the Crusade Belief (that +10 bonus to combat is impressive!).

London fall on T195 and Canberra on T198. I had accumulated a large quantity of units by then, including tanks, artillery, infantry, battleships and aircrafts and this last treason war took only 5 turns.

Wonders
My priority was the Statue of Zeus, the army it spawned was vital on taking Roosevelt and Ghandi. Also built the Forbidden City to get a slot for the Oligarchy Legacy card and the culture boost. Went for the Terracotta Army, with so many units it was totally worth it. I built more wonders (a total of 8) but they were optional and I could have done without them. From the ones conquered the Great Lighthouse was the most important to reach the other continent faster.

I was surprised to not find any natural wonder close by, but fortunately I got the Astrology boost while razing a barbarian encampment. I made some effort to bath my northern army on the Fountain of Youth waters, and while waiting for the possibility to fight Victoria, my Zeus crusade took the Spear of Fion on the natural wonder there.

Monopolies
They helped me with the great merchant points and the extra gold ~100 was paying for my army at the end game. This was a plain boost as this mode just basically breaks somehow the AI ability to create improvements. There is some serious bug there.

Barbarians
I do not remember they being particularly bothersome at any point, having so many units makes it easy to handle them. None swapped to City State and I only mildly milked a few for gold in the early game, later on I favored razing them.

Civilization bonuses
I was impressed on how well Wilfrid plays on Tundra. I would like to try him out on a mostly tundra map one day. With just a couple of late mounties, I build one National Park, but most of my parks I made through waste faith naturalist, just to boost really needed happiness.

The no surprise wars clause completely played against me and I could have easily reduced the victory time in 5 to 10 turns if not because of this ability.

They hockey ring culture and happiness boosts are very good ones, and I am sure they helped me, but by this time I had my army conquering the world and I am not sure how much they helped speed up victory, probably not too much of a difference, because most of my research was done through theater square and campus raiding.

Policies
Early on, the Apogee was very important to build my initial army to take Shaka. Scripture was on par and I run it through most of the game, for extra production through the Work Ethic belief (I had four holy sites with >7 faith adjacency so >14 extra production on those cities). With so many conquers the Colonial Taxes were driving more than 150 production and gold, being my most useful Diplomatic card. Serfdom/Public Works was switched back and forth to build waves of builders. I felt the need to run with Liberalism most of the game because I had a lot of unhappiness penalties. There was a moment I had to run the card for extra iron and horses.

From mid game on, the most important policy was Raid, I made most of my cultural and science research through raiding, and the amount of gold obtained through raiding was also strong. Combined with Modernization (switched back and forth when needed) I kept my armies updated.

I used other cards but with just smaller impact.

Final state
Looking at the lost units figure, it is very clear this game was about handling Shaka swiftly, then boost the embarked units speed to reach the eastern continent fast. The rest seemed easy.

Thanks a lot for the game! I wonder how it would have ended on a Deity difficulty. I fear Shaka would have took me over, or at the least delayed me greatly.

Spoiler Full log :

Spoiler City build order :

isopaha · May 31, 2022

DV T195.

Contemplated long whether I should even start this, as I'm not a fan of domination and the landscape looked challenging in the opening screenshot. However, this turned out much easier than I thought. Most of the time my army was 70% siege, with trebuchets doing perhaps the most work, while upgraded bombards also participated (with balloons later) quite well and artilleries finished the business. None of the AIs really built units, so the question was about attacking cities and moving units fast enough. Barbarian galleys harrassed my unescorted land units on their way over seas, but my units were so advanced they were not much damaged.

I also went Goddess of the Hunt, but did not bother with religion. Canada was surprisingly good for this, with some strong cities. Just had to remember to denounce leaders early, though the golden age casus belli later helped.

tarafran · Jun 3, 2022

DV turn 131
Settled in place followed by 3 more cities. Focused on science first for catapults and swords and GS then encampments for GG .
Picked Goddess of the Hunt
Early war with the Zulus going up the continent pillaging everything .
Built temple of Zeus in my cap for my 2nd army to swim toward a new city founded on the niter north of the second populated continent.
Built terra-cotta in later game.
3 golden ages: 2 monumentality 1 safe traders
One army went toward Brazil the other toward the US then England.
Got the Indian cap with a Navy.
I lost 2/3 turns with a late denunciation of England.
Easy game , just had to concentrate for the first 2 Golden Ages.
Most of the cities had no wall and small armies
Thanks for another great game

leif erikson · Jun 19, 2022

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6otM135 AAR

Eyswein

King

Chrumo

Chieftain

Lexad

oldfart

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Planktonic

Warlord

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Rutseg

Chieftain

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isopaha

Warlord

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tarafran

Warlord

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leif erikson

Game of the Month Fanatic

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