6otM150 AAR

[Eyswein]

Welcome to the 6otM150 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.

 

[notorious_banjo]

Don't usually get to make any posts, but I have two days left of holidays and this game was put up just in time!

Very fun, got a religious victory at turn 176.

Pretty much ignored science and forced the good word Tried to get shrines and temples up asap and take advantage of my chosen beliefs. Built the Mahabodhi. I feel like I should have built more trade routes. Anyone with suggestions on how I could have sped this up is more than welcome to comment/critique.

- How many cities did you settle or capture?

Settled 4, Captured 6, settled 5 more, Captured 2 for 17 total.​

- What did you prioritize for research and policies?

Research nothing in particular after astrology. Policies, I was heading straight to Theocracy to help spread the good word.​

- What order did you take down your opponents?

Got 3 cities from Gorgo, finished turn 67.​

Got 3 cities from Celts, finished turn 92.​

Went to war with Pericles but after taking two cities he got walls up. Was moving in some siege units but religion ended up being the faster route.​

-What did you build for an Army and how did it change?

WAR CARTS! Went for heroes right away, got Hippolyta and set off with the carts.​

Turn 76 got Hercules to build some Holy Sites and finish off the Celts.​

Brought Hercules back next era to build 3 more holy sites.​

- Did you use diplomacy? How?

None, the world was quite upset.​

- Did religion come into play in your game, please explain.

Other than spreading it to every civ and winning, no hiccups. Nubians and Egyptians were the only civs to have apostles, which helped spread my religion after their demise.​

- Were City-States helpful?

The most helpful. Used Fez to create the majority of my science while spreading my religion.​

- Any surprises you ran into, how did you deal with it?

I was surprised at the amount of barbs. Seemed like the AI had a hard time managing them and I assume they did not settle a lot of cities because of that.​

- Did you enjoy the game?

I did. Golden ages really accelerated the game. Took exodus of the evangelists in every era, but I regret not taking Monumentality in the first.​

 

[Planktonic]

Dom Vic, turn 125

Fast and fun game- I think it's the fastest I ever won a game. No special strategy: the first thing I built was a war cart. Two war carts and a scout (got it from a goody hut) were enough to take out Maya (2 cities) and Egypt (3 cities) before the end of the Ancient. From then on just kept building horsemen and war carts (occasionally a builder) from pretty much every city, and kept marching mostly westward. Horsemen/war carts were enough to take out Babylon, Cree, and Aztecs. Long-riding horsemen and war carts also took out Pericles. Gorgo was tucked in behind mountains, but levied troops from Geneva and Beowulf took her capital. So 7 of the 9 civs taken by turn 104. But here I made a mistake: instead of going east towards Nubia after Gorgo I filed back west to go after Gaul, and never did end up using those troops for that because Aduatuca was way north, and also walled, and also Beowulf expired. So I ended up waiting some turns to get to Coursers and Knights. Declared war on Samarkand to pillage gold, then upgraded cavalry armies to go after the last 2 civs (Gaul and Nubia), both of whom had walled up their capitals. But: captured encampments and pillaged faith gave me 2 great generals; I reached printing to get the intelligence bonus, and I summoned more heroes (the Twins and Hippolyta). I also re-summoned Beowulf at he beginning of the Medieval, and also summoned Oya, although I never even got to use her. By the end of the game I had >1330 military strength, and knights/coursers (abetted by Hippolyta and Beowulf) were able to completely surround and chew away at the walled cities until they died (fairly quickly as it turns out).

Only built 3 districts the whole game: government plaza (for the governor title), one +3 holy site to help get faith for re-summoning heroes, and one commercial hub which finished just as the game ended. None of these made any difference; could easily have finished in the same time without building any districts at all. Stole a few settlers towards the end of the game: one from Nubia, which was nice because then my heroes could teleport close to the battlefront. Only settled 2 cities originally and never built a district in either of them. Shouldn't actually even have bothered with the second city except it did get access to another pasture, which was important.

Great game, the AIs can't stand against war carts at this level, just an overpowered unit from the get-go. I suspect one of the real domination experts could probably run this in < 100 turns despite it being a huge map!

Thanks for the game!

 

[hitretz]

DV 69

Played this one extremely fast. Lost 2 HS and 2 Carts carelessly to barbs.
Settle on hill, 3 farms in range to harvest for gold. Scout, Monument, Hero (Beowulf), Settler. Hero took 2 caps initially. Building/buying/chopping carts (cart army group of 2-3, occasionally hs from clan, some units exploring). Relied heavily on GPT trading to get units out faster and find civs. Tried to float 2 lux before meeting civs (where possible). Summoned Hercules to get 3 encampments. Not sure if GG was the right play, didn't rely on levy much expect for the Aztecs... even then he prioritized religion and I took his cap almost with a single cart. Maybe hero 3/4 would've been better (whatever would give speed bonus - maybe Arthur's knights?). Declared on CS if I could pillage a trade route. Rotated Amani to get extra vision. Had to overthrow Nubia's SZ to gain a few warriors. Accidently teched Celestial Navigation instead of Shipbuilding. Would've helped some carts regroup after taking out Gorgo. DoF with Pericles for some trading constant and funnily enough lost 2t's because he was last to fall and army from Egypt/Babylon couldn't reach because of a lake in the way. Barb clusters and Mountain ranges were a pain.

Main take-aways:
Made the mistake of setting a 2nd city, should've used the settler as an outpost. On that note, should've captured settlers where possible for more outposts.
To gain even more momentum, not sure if it's an exploit or not, but you can let 2nd/3rd city rebel and resurrect a civ for massive DP and future gold.
Use first GG for scouting instead of pairing with hero and converting barbs once a target civ is found.
Forgot to test how well bait fishing CS would've worked here. If you don't yet have enough envoys for SZ you can declare and bait their warriors in a direction of choice.

 

[Rutseg]

Domination Victory, T122, Score 834, 13 h

I had a problem with the save for this one. It required the recent two leader mods and the Linux version (Aspyr) still has not implemented them, so it did not allow me to load the save. I had to play this one with the Proton 6.8 emulator from Steam. As a result of this I could not switch back and forth from the game to my notes app, and I could not take detailed notes of the play. Later I found there was no new leader in the game, thus I think the recent mods were not needed. Would it be possible to avoid this problem in the future by creating the saves without those mods?

Plan
The half price levy armies bonus from Gilgamesh is very succulent, and thus my plan was to max envoys, doing all the missions possible, recruiting Amani early on, and slotting the double envoy card as possible to gain many City States and launch their armies over my far rivals.

Early game
Build two scouts then a settler for a second city. While exploring the map, I claimed Hercules and built two encampments and a government plaza with him. Slotted Apoge and started to rush build warriors and archers to conquer Sparta. Meanwhile levied Geneva's army to go for the Gauls and forward settled Lady Six and suzerained Granada with Amani to prepare the war to the west.

Once I had the Maneuvers card and Horseback Ridding, I started to create horsemen and carts.

The war with the gauls got complicated when he built walls on the capital, but to the west Lady Six and Cleopatra quickly fell. By the time, I levied Samarkand and Vilnus and ran over the far Aztec lands.


Diplomacy
Pericles was a good friend for most of the game and traded with him. For the other leaders, I sometimes managed to give away a lot of luxuries on exchange of some coin even when they were denouncing me.

Had to upgrade to swordsmen and bring a ram to beat the gauls. Then moved those troops to the west after Pericles. Meanwhile, the troops that got Sparta crossed the lakes and took Meroe from Amanitore.

My levied armies barely managed to take Technoticlan from the Aztecs, but once it fell all his units disappeared!


Arthur, a horseman and a man-at-arms took Poundmaker's capital with relative ease after a surrounding maneuver.

Pericles also fell easily once my armies reached there, and the only one that gave me trouble was Hammurabi, with walls and encampments in the way. It required a trebuchet a couple of heroes and multiple other units to bring it down.


Technology and Civics
Went after Iron Working, then Horseback Riding. Then Shipbuilding to cross the lakes (specially important to move my units out of Sparta's lands).

For Civics, Political Philosophy, then Mercenaries then Theocracy without an strict focus.

Leader bonuses
The half price levy helped achieve this victory very fast despite the huge land quantity. Also, set a few units to raze barbarian encampments, the goodie house helped a lot to advance in Technology and Civics. The easier heroes was also nice and I managed 4.

Interesting takes
Found out if you transform a levied unit with Arthur, it remains once the levy time ends and you do not have to pay for it to levy armies again! Of course, it will disappear after a few rounds, but I found this interesting.

Final state
Despite the quite fast win, I still have the feeling I played the game and even had a few cities well developed for the Era.

It was a nice game, thanks! Just a pity I could not use my normal game version and take notes

 

[leif erikson]

It was a nice game, thanks! Just a pity I could not use my normal game version and take notes

It is a pity as I enjoy reading your great reports. Thank you!

 

[canadamufc]

Finished on the same amount of turns as this GOTM number... T150 Domination Victory.

I like Lakes map more for sim citying than domination. Just so many mountain ranges, so much land, it's just too much clicking and moving. I played really bad, but that was mainly because I was on auto pilot for most of the game. Moving over 20 units every turn is exhausting, especially when they all have to clutter around a one tile chokepoint through the mountain. I liked the gimmick of the other civs all having very early unique units like Gilgamesh, though. It was still good fun, but domination victories on a Lakes map is a complete slog (for my skill level, anyway)

Thanks for the game though, also impressed at hitretz T69 victory, seriously impressive

 

[tarafran]

DV92
only settled one city and built War-cart.The last cap had the twin inside and built walls that set me back 10 to 15 turn
Fun game
Thanks

 

[Xtowers]

Console player here, so just participating in spirit. Turn 166 DV, score 1510. Glad to play Gilgamesh. Made strong use of war carts in the beginning and just started snowballing. It was fun to keep getting village bonuses off the responding barb camps, too.

 

[Tarry]

Domination victory, T198, score 1782

- 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?
My overall plan was to build an early warcart army, find someone and conquer them.
Get some science to stay ahead of the others and keep my army upgraded.
East looked almost impassable, so I went west and kept going

- What were your initial 5-10 builds in the capital or other early cities?
Warcart, warrior, settler, warcart, slinger, holy site
secoond city went for a monument early, then I think science in a +5 hex, which felt awesome (hercules got this one)

- Early order for technology/civics? What did you prioritize for technology/civics?
I went for astrology fairly early to get some faith for recalling heroes later and a religion. I think this was a pretty bad idea.
Aimed for Iron working and horse riding, I ignored water based stuff, which slowed me down a lot.

- How did the leader bonus and civ unique ability impact your plan/play, if at all?
It was fun, and wow, I spent ages hunting down barb camps for the extra bonus - and that was a big distraction!
I never felt to have money for levying city states, or the spare envoys for taking them

- How many cities did you settle and/or capture? Where did you settle your first few cities?
Settled in place. 2nd city was on the shores of the lake east, with the ring of mountains north of it for an awesome science site.
Captured 42 cities for a total of 44. This was too large an empire - lots of very unhappy people, I should have razed rubbish cities

- What were key production/purchase focuses? Military units / Civilian units / Districts & city development / Wonders / Civ Unique Unit & Infrastructure? Most critical or interesting?
warcarts are frikkin awesome. Upgrading them to knights, which expensive was awesome. I lost too many though to carelessness

- Pantheon chosen and why? Religious beliefs chosen, and why?
cheep apostles, production boosts, gold from numbers of cities.

- What governments did you select? What key policy cards did you use? Why?
Oligarchy. +1 production in cities. I swapped in 50% boosts for whatever I was building at the time.
I ended up switching to theocracy to faith buy things, but I kept the oligarchy legacy card active throughout the whole game.

- Which Governors were most important; when and why?
Magnus for a few chops, pingala for culture. I ended up with all of them in the end, to help conquer things

- Was diplomacy/trading useful? How? Relations with other civs?
Everyone hated me as a war mongered. There was no diplomacy. The turn I met a civ I tried to trade, after that they denounced me.

- When did you have Dark/Golden ages?
golden all the way

- How did the game modes affect or impact your play?
I never play with heroes, so this was really fun.
Lakes again, I don't normally use that, I ignored water techs for too long,

- Any surprises/frustration/elations you ran into, how did you deal with it?
Mountains and no way past them
I should have captured/razed city states more that blocked me.

- Did you enjoy your game?
Yes, but compared to everyone else I really suck at staying focused.
I get so involved in developing my empire and economy and wonders I forget about beelining the victory conditions
I should have built an army and gone east as well as going west instead of building "stuff". I think I might replay this and try doing that

 

[Danc2Lindy]

Domination Victory; Turn: 457; Score: 6212
- 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?
Plan was to build a solid base of cities while exploring who else was in the game and where they were located; left option open for either a religious or a domination victory.
- What were your initial 5-10 builds in the capital or other early cities?
Capital: Scout, slinger, settler, slinger, settler, slinger, monument, wall, Hanging Gardens; 2nd city: Monument, shrine; 3rd city: monument
- Early order for technology/civics? What did you prioritize for technology/civics?
Tried to balance tech/civics;
- How many cities did you settle and/or capture? Where did you settle your first few cities?
- Pantheon chosen and why? Religious beliefs chosen, and why?
Kept Simon Peter till the Future age, then dumped my religion everywhere at once.
- What governments did you select? What key policy cards did you use? Why?
Autocracy, Merchant Republic, Democracy, Synthetic Technology
- Which Governors were most important; when and why?
Victor to protect cities early, and to help with loyalty late; Amani to help with the city states; Pingala to both boost science/culture and to generate great person points.
- Was diplomacy/trading useful? How? Relations with other civs?
Took Lady Six's cities by 25 BC or so; then settled in and made friends with everyone else till the end of the game.
- When did you have Dark/Golden ages?
No dark ages; if I recall correctly, only one normal age, all the rest were golden.
- How did the game modes affect or impact your play?
Helped as many barbarian cities as possible to turn into city states; build strong relationships with as many city states as possible.
- Did you enjoy your game?
Longest game I've ever played; I tend to stick to 4 person king games, and finish in a day or two. I also seldom get to the information/future era, so it was fun to get the end, and have 9 or so Giant Death Robots and just stomp around taking cities.

 

[Rutseg]

That's some serious blue painting of the map

 

[CornMaster]

T222 Domination Victory, Score 1831
Pop 1060
Sci 106
Culture 99
GPP 135
Religion 0
Wonders 255
Era Score 270

Found the game a bit of a grind. The wheels feel off for everyone when I got to Trebuchets. Took forever to get around the map though. Probably the most impressive achievement was my world wide railroad. Bombards made things a bit simpler, and once I got to advanced flight, the bombers made taking a few cities a turn pretty straight forward.

Spoiler (incomplete) Gameplay log :

Moved one tile south east and settled. Went for scouts to try and boost Astrology.
Purchased a barb horseman to try and scout as well. Tried to go for a religious victory first.

Scouted out the Maya first. Got scouted by barbs early as well. Didn't seem to do much damage. Got Maui as my first hero.

At turn 34, decided to pivot to a domination game. Had some ranged units, war carts, and heroes, and decided to take out the Maya.

On turn 41, got a major drought in Capital.

Turn 43, declared war on the Maya.
Turn 44, took Wak Kab'nal
Turn 45, took a settler from the Maya.
Turn 47, took Yaxchilan and destroyed the Maya.

Turn 50, first improvements in the Capital region. Focus shifts to improving infrastructure.
Turn 53, received pantheon, and selected god of the hunt. Provided significant production and food bonus in the Mayan Province.
Turn 54, established Magnus in Wak Kab'nal to start pumping out settlers.
Turn 97, Greece declared war. Had to pivot a few cities to start building walls. Also trying to get another hero to help out. Upgraded a warrior to swordsman.

By turn 101, had repelled their first wave, and began moving troops to the front. However, a number of city states were drawn into the war, and are closing in on the Mayan Province.
Turn 109, Rhodes fell and was incorporated into the Mayan Province.
Turn 128, All of Greece fell.
Turn 129, The bored army turns its attention to Gaul as a new northern province.
Turn 136, the first Gaul city falls.
Turn 143, Durocorteron flips and becomes a free city.
Turn 146, Samarobriva, Alesia, and Durocorteron are occupied, however, Aduatuca builds Gaul's first walls. All govenors are moved to the new Gaul province to help improve loyalty.
Turn 151, Gaul has been defeated.
Turn 158, Declared war on the other Greeks
Turn 160, Petra was completed, and Corinth was conquered.
Turn 182, after conquering 2 city states, and 3 more Greek cities (including the capital), signed a peace treaty. Started preparing for war on Egypt.
...

And now for the questions:

- 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?
Planned to go for a religion, but didn't get a boost for astrology, so eventually decided to pivot to domination.
- What were your initial 5-10 builds in the capital or other early cities?
Can't remember...but usually go for some scouts.
- Early order for technology/civics? What did you prioritize for technology/civics?
Once I went for domination, prioritized military, and then railroad to help get around the map.
- How many cities did you settle and/or capture? Where did you settle your first few cities?
Settled 9 cities I think, captured a ton more.
- Pantheon chosen and why? Religious beliefs chosen, and why?
Can't remember. Don't think it was terribly important to the game in this case
- What governments did you select? What key policy cards did you use? Why?
I focused on policies to give science bonuses and gold bonuses. After I took the second capital, everyone started hating on me, so funding the empire through trading became a non-starter. Sometimes had to use loyalty cards to prevent cities from flipping.
- Which Governors were most important; when and why?
Using for loyalty boost was most important for me.
- Was diplomacy/trading useful? How? Relations with other civs?
Traded resources in the early game, but then relations soured.
- When did you have Dark/Golden ages?
Gold ages for most of the game.
- How did the game modes affect or impact your play?
Heroes was great. Got a good selection of heroes that allowed me to greatly increase the army. Captured many catapults with the Twins from Greece.
- Did you enjoy your game?
Not really, it was a huge grind at the end of the game. Once the war was over with Greece, victory was assured, just took forever....

 

[elmagico]

I played Heroes for the first time. It's something new. Nice feature. Managed to do it in 126 turns. I'm going to speed things up in the second try.

 

[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.

 

[kcd_swede]

Welcome to the 6otM150 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.

 

[kcd_swede]

Umm.. sorry, I have not played to the end or submitted a 6otm game in like 2 years. Real life stuff and whatever. I appreciate greatly that the game was one a difficulty level that made victory pretty likely for me. I did go far too long before deciding if it would be Dom or Rel VC that would be my goal. So even if I did eventually decide on RV, I ended up doing enough that DV would have bee possible faster. But that is always how it is when I just play and have fun and then try to figure out how stuff works. I had a lot of "Oh yeah, I forgot how that works" moments. I had fun, and fun keeps me out of trouble, so the greater societal good is served by having this to occupy my me. Thank you to the guys who keep this friendly measuring stick available. I know it requires some effort and sacrifice, and am grateful. Yeah, only 900 pts (Herbert Hoover) should be embarrassing, but for a first game after 2 years of dealing with other stuff... I am cool with it. Very grateful for the staff who keep this Civ passion alive.

 

[kcd_swede]

Umm.. sorry, I have not played to the end or submitted a 6otm game in like 2 years. Real life stuff and whatever. I appreciate greatly that the game was one a difficulty level that made victory pretty likely for me. I did go far too long before deciding if it would be Dom or Rel VC that would be my goal. So even if I did eventually decide on RV, I ended up doing enough that DV would have bee possible faster. But that is always how it is when I just play and have fun and then try to figure out how stuff works. I had a lot of "Oh yeah, I forgot how that works" moments. I had fun, and fun keeps me out of trouble, so the greater societal good is served by having this to occupy my me. Thank you to the guys who keep this friendly measuring stick available. I know it requires some effort and sacrifice, and am grateful. Yeah, only 900 pts (Herbert Hoover) should be embarrassing, but for a first game after 2 years of dealing with other stuff... I am cool with it. Very grateful for the staff who keep this Civ passion alive.

RV t205, (1440AD) score 912 approximately.