6otM152 AAR

Eyswein · Feb 1, 2023

Welcome to the 6otM152 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.

tarafran · Feb 2, 2023

CV 199
Settled on the Jade.Built 2 Scouts and 2 Settler first and went for a fast religion.
Got the God of open sky pantheon and picked reliquaries and crusaders for my religion.(added sacred place and mosques later in the game)
I started with Amani to move around and unmasked some terrain and level 2 Magnus to chop and get a few more settlers out.
France first declared on me and got wiped with levied units and crusaders
I tried to only get into war thru request.
I use a small navy to meet all the civ
All Golden Ages :monumentality
The GPT was always flowing as I was selling luxuries at every turn
Vietnam was a perfect place suicide my Apostles ,
Spammed wonders and chateaux finishing with 10 rock bands
Great Game but a little confusing with the doubled Civs.
I missed joining some war being uncertain on witch one I was going to fight
Thanks

hitretz · Feb 4, 2023

CV T107

I played this one totally wrong. I was planning on chopping 20+ projects in rapid succession. Accidently, I let one project finish around T100 since the City had nothing to build.. and I realized I would only need 3-4 additional projects to win the game. In other words, I went completely overkill and waited too long to begin completing projects. In the next few turns, I was planning to acquire another 5-8 luxes, also had several pillaged. So without planning, I pivoted my strategy and gathered all gold I could and chopped projects in the next few turns to win.

Early game went well. Early religion, finished as many Holy Sites as I could, delay all other districts and placed discounted TS. Picked Jesuit Education, completely irrelevant, not even sure what I was thinking at the time. Best to go Tithe for tile purchases and workers. Colonization was a good choice. Wasted science by teching towards horseman, instead found 2 camps and purchased them instead. Not a single campus built. Massive chop of settlers from Capital, revealed some amazing water lux spots around T70 with gold purchased galleys - could've avoided the war effort all together. Had just over 40 duplicate resources, no Buenos Aeries found. Only 4 copies were purchased through friendships I managed to secure before taking out my neighbors. 2 northern barb camps were spawning strong UU's, almost lost a city, had to spend a large sum of gold without the upgrade civic to defend.

If I was to play Catherine again, I think delaying projects is the wrong approach. I would attempt to squeeze 2 projects before Magnus rotation in each city and the early culture could be used to rush a tier 3 government (or even rushing the upper tree for quicker army upgrades). Regardless, I think this game should be Sub T90, with T8X possible with careful planning. Not having to meet everyone to win CV is also a huge plus, esp. with 20 Civs like in this game.

A. mexicanum · Feb 4, 2023

CV T159

WTF are these projects. Just like @hitretz I played this totally wrong, just that I did not do an actual project until ~turn 150. and then I noticed how absurdly many tourists you get from one alone. Might play this a second time and try to be as fast as possible.

I settled on the jade, and found a scout in my first hut (t5). got lucky with another scout and a builder, although quite a bit later. I settled two or three citys, before I wanted to declare war on France. But just before I could do that, France and Maya declared war on me, so I took them both out. (wanted to let Maya life, but I did not notice their last city was Hongkong, so when it inevitably flipped, I only got a CS back. (But a nice one).
I normally win my culture victorys by spamming national parks, so for a change I did not build holy sides this game but wanted to try and get culture from great works and wonders. Eventually I did a project and the game was suddenly over.^^

Fun one, thanks.

hitretz · Feb 4, 2023

A. mexicanum said:
CV T159

WTF are these projects. Just like @hitretz I played this totally wrong, just that I did not do an actual project until ~turn 150. and then I noticed how absurdly many tourists you get from one alone. Might play this a second time and try to be as fast as possible.

I settled on the jade, and found a scout in my first hut (t5). got lucky with another scout and a builder, although quite a bit later. I settled two or three citys, before I wanted to declare war on France. But just before I could do that, France and Maya declared war on me, so I took them both out. (wanted to let Maya life, but I did not notice their last city was Hongkong, so when it inevitably flipped, I only got a CS back. (But a nice one).
I normally win my culture victorys by spamming national parks, so for a change I did not build holy sides this game but wanted to try and get culture from great works and wonders. Eventually I did a project and the game was suddenly over.^^

Fun one, thanks.

Yep. Just replayed this really quick. T89 CV but I got swarmed up north again by barbs and couldn't get 5 additional luxes up.

Eyswein · Feb 5, 2023

A. mexicanum said:
WTF are these projects.

Ain't no party like a Catherine (Magnificence) Party! :eek:

Rutseg · Feb 5, 2023

Cultural Victory, T121, Score 511, 16 h

Great game to play towards the strengths of the Court Festival!

Plan
Court Festival in a map with 20 civs and Wet option for a lot of forests. This sounded like chopping festivals was the way to go. Also, as project cost increases with technology and civics I wanted to limit the amount of research done. My aim was to get to Theater Squares fast, then slow down research as fast as possible. Debated myself between building the Pyramids or the Hanging Gardens for the Drama boost, in the end decided to go with Hanging Gardens for there was no desert at sight, and the Hanging Gardens route requires less science and production, plus I needed plantations anyway. Also calculated the cost of building Theater Squares with discount, and decided the production and research to have other early districts was a loss. Hence, I went straight for Theater Squares and took the City Patron Goddess for 25% discount on 1st district. With Court Festival you really do not need any other districts to be built anyway.

From there on, expand at maximum, focusing production on settlers and builders to get luxuries until it is the time to chop festivals and win. Also, with a huge map, I needed to have scouts and galleys soon enough to explore and discover all the civs for extra tourism.

Early game
Focused on building scouts then tried to get as many settlers as possible while researching my way to Theater Squares. Sent my first settlers to the east and north-east where I saw a good combination of food and forests to chop. Declared a couple of wars on city states to steal builders because they had quests for things I did not want to build.

Boosted Drama on T46 with Hanging Gardens, getting the civic on T57 and building my first two Theater Sqaures on T67 and T69.

Found early on I had not much space for peaceful expansion, but I had tones of horses which were giving me gold aplenty, which I used to buy 4 horsemen. Although I wanted to conquer Ba Trieu, for access to the center of the continent and because she has good culture potential, I decided horse maneuverability could had an easier time on the northern plains. Declared war on Eleanor and left her with just a single city, signing peace on T79.

Got my coastal city in T66 and my first galley in T74 (with the +100% naval production card) found Tamar who had a coastal city with 3 points of attack and 3 luxuries just in front of my territory, so I declared war on her and took that city in T91, signing peace afterwards.

Meanwhile, I went after Lady Six with the horsemen, taking Uxmal in T95. Her Hul'che's ranged attacks and horsemen, with their +5 strength near the capital, made me realize it would be a lose of time and resources to conquer her capital, and so I signed the peace.

I reached T100 with 7 Theater Squares and 12 cities.

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Cities
15 cities, although I returned Tyre in the turn of victory for it had no luxuries and I did not want the penalties of holding another capital. 8 were conquered, and from the 7 settled, 1 was bought with gold, and 4 produced. 1 was stolen from Eleanor and I had 3 more moving to new positions when the end came.

The capital was good, but not as productive as I thought it would be. It lacked food for reaching the growth the Hanging Gardens were enabling. My 2nd and 3rd cities though were great, with a lot of food for early growth, the 2nd one had a lot of woods I chopped for festivals, while the 3rd city was in between my territory and my conquests and was providing all the cities with builders with Liang and Serfdom for most part of the game. Then my coastal city was also tactical in the discovery of new civs to the west through the seas, and to launch conquests on Tamar and Dido, plus with 3 turtles and furs, it was super important city. These 3 cities (along with the capital) were the most important ones and could have probably won the game just with them.

I only really built Theater Squares in the cities, except for my 4th one were I built the government plaza. Also, only two of those theaters had adjacency bonuses (Stonehenge and Government plaza).

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Diplomacy and war
Cultivated good relations with anyone who was not nearby enough for a conquest. Still some for-aways like Qin Shi and Victoria hated me since the moment I started to war. Managed to strike an Alliance with Seondeok, and three more by when the game came to an end.

After conquering Eleanor and Lady Six, and stealing one city from Tamar, I moved my horsemen and galleys to strike together on Dido. I levied Hong Kong armies for the war as well. My wars ended there, with horsemen upgraded to coursers.

Declared a joint war with Seondeok on Qin Shi, in an attempt to stagger Seondeok's culture building, which seamed to work as her culture hold during the last turns.

Because I coveted luxuries for the court festival bonuses, I did not made luxes trade (except a few very early on), and focuses instead on selling horses for gold. I discovered selling them in packs of 40 render much more gold when the AI has no horses. With so many AIs, this gave me as much gold as when trading luxuries until the King AI gets depleted of gold.

Found 15 civilizations (in that order): Eleanor, Ba Trieu, Lady Six Sky (Purple), Victoria, Seondeok (Green), Chandragupta, Gorgo, Qin Shi, Lady Six Sky (Grey), Tamar, Dido, Kristina, Wilhelmina, Cleopatra and Seondeok (Brown).

I wonder who were the other 5.

Technology and Civics
This was a weird game for the Court Festival makes you to want avoid research once you have Theater Squares. I avoided campuses and Pingala, focused research on Techs and Civics I did not have the boost for. Went after techs that would boost my exploring efforts (Sailing/Shipbuilding) and my war efforts (Castles to upgrade horsemen). Went after Printing afterwards, but the game ended before that.

Avoided completely a lot of techs, specially district ones like Astrology or Coinage. At some point I realized I needed Bronze Working to chop jungles, and went for it although I had no plans.

Religion
Pantheon: City Patron Goddess for 25% discount on 1st district (I think this one was great for this game)
Religion: None. I noticed this would be a short game and religion would only delay my efforts in other fronts.

Wonders
Hanging Gardens was key for the boost to Drama and Poetry. The extra housing and city growth was helpful to increase production. Also built the Apadana, mostly for the extra envoys, but I thought the tourism and extra slots would be of use.

For Natural Wonders, I only found the Matterhorn super late on T88, but it could have been a great bonus and nice boost for anyone going for a religion.

Leader and Civ bonuses
The Court Festival completely changes this game more than any other leader bonus, in that you do not want to research fast, and you want to get Theater Squares very soon very fast. I like to see Court Festival games every now and then.

The +2 culture adjacency the Theater Square gives, is nice, although you do not want to research Civics, I used this for faster border expansion, in order to gain production and woods to chop.

The Grand Tour double tourism is nice, but with the Court Festival, it is only a minor bonus.

The rest of the bonuses were not relevant as they came too late in game.
Double leaders
It was nice for a change, although a bit confusing in some situations.

Barbarians
Were well taken care. Their outposts razing served me for Era Score.
Final state
It was a very interesting setting, for with the announcement you could see this was an exceptional good game for Court Festival chopping. I wonder if building builders instead of Amphitheaters before going to Court Festival would had given a better result, maybe without the need for conquest. I would like to retry this one, but the huge map was giving too long within-turns for my taste.

Thanks a lot for keeping new interesting scenarios for us. It was fun!

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Spoiler Full log :

Spoiler City build order :

Rutseg · Feb 5, 2023

hitretz said:
Yep. Just replayed this really quick. T89 CV but I got swarmed up north again by barbs and couldn't get 5 additional luxes up.

That's an impressive victory, congrats!

@hitretz Could we have a save game? I would love to know more about empire development and placements.

Brian Bloxam · Feb 5, 2023

What do you mean when you say you spam a wonder?

Planktonic · Feb 5, 2023

CV, turn 152/153

I was thinking that I should wait to get 1 round of Court Festival Projects done together, so delayed getting any out. Then 1 round of 7 or 8 projects gave me 34/46 tourists, so not enough for a win. So i had to engineer a second round of projects; but in the meantime the massive culture boost from the first round kept increasing the cost of the project, as I was completing a civic every turn . But I still should have chopped out a few projects earlier- as it was I waited for 7 to reach a choppable stage and got 90/52 at the end, which was obviously overkill.

Fun game, but I guess the lesson from my game and from reading the above is to chop out projects ASAP. I'll know better next time.

Thanks for the game!

tarafran · Feb 5, 2023

Brian Bloxam said:
What do you mean when you say you spam a wonder?

built a lots of them, some falling short due to other Civc building it faster

Planktonic · Feb 7, 2023

So here's a question.

The tourist yield of a Court Festival project is supposed to be dependent only on # of excess luxuries improved, and the number of civs known, right?

But in my game the same 7 cities completed 2 rounds of Court Festival projects, each time all on the same turn. The number of improved luxuries (and therefore excess luxuries) was the same in both rounds. But the number of civs known was actually *one less* in the 2nd round, as I eliminated Eleanor in the interim (she was dying from loyalty anyway so I harvested the Era score).

My first round of projects netted me 34 tourists. I knew 17 civs at the time, so 2 tourists per civ. Then Eleanor died, so I was at 32 tourists. ** But my second round of projects, with the same number of luxuries and one less civ, took me to 90 total tourists, a gain of 58. **

So: does the tourist yield of the CF project also depend on your tech level (like the cost does)? Because afaict the only difference between the 2 rounds was that I myself was at a considerably higher tech level the second time around.

Anyone have any insight into this?

A. mexicanum · Feb 7, 2023

Well, tourism is not that easy^^

The tourist yield of a Court Festival project is supposed to be dependent only on # of excess luxuries improved, and the number of civs known, right?

correct.

So: does the tourist yield of the CF project also depend on your tech level (like the cost does)? Because afaict the only difference between the 2 rounds was that I myself was at a considerably higher tech level the second time around.

That is the wrong question. CF doesn't net you tourist, it nets you tourism. And tourism gets you tourists. So what is the difference?
There are several modifiers that are applied to your tourism. (although I dont know if they apply to the CF projects, but I assume so.) I.e. the "computers" technology gives you a flat bonus of 25%.
Some modifiers apply only to different kinds of tourism (i.e. the technology "printing" gives you +100% tourism from great arts of writing) or tourism to different players (i.e. you get +25% tourism towards players you have open borders with.
So your tourism gain the second round might have been bigger, because you had better modifiers.

But thats not all. The tourism you get gets matched against the culture of the individual players. And once you have met a certain threshold, you get one tourist (I don't know the exact formula though).

Which means, i.e. if you need 100tourism for one tourist from a civilization and a project net you 170tourism for that player, you will get one tourist from that player. But when you complete your second project you will have 340 tourism for that player, which gives you 3 tourists, so your second project gave you two tourist, although it netted you the same amount of tourism.
Hope that helped a little (and I hope I didn't tell something wrong ^^)
There is a video that explains it better:

hitretz · Feb 7, 2023

Rutseg said:
That's an impressive victory, congrats!

@hitretz Could we have a save game? I would love to know more about empire development and placements.

Sure. I didn't keep the 89 save, still had the GOTM settings on, but here is Attempt #3 with a T77 CV. Played a little more careful, got 2 additional friends locked-in, and better religion perks.
I did not deviate much from original gameplay, only applied the rushing strategy for projects. Different CS quests, and did not find a 2nd Galley camp as previously, but did find Buenos Aeries - which was irrelevant to the win.

I think on this specific map, T6X is possible, skipping 2 Holy Sites, not taking out neighbors (however, stealing their Settlers) but it would require playing with Map knowledge, whereas this T7X is possible on first playthrough and thus a good benchmark when for HoF in future games. The challenge is only having access to 3 charge builders (not counting Liang's City).

hitretz · Feb 7, 2023

Also, I realized the internal Tourism:Tourist threshold is 4000 in this game, regardless if you eliminate a Civ or not. (20 Civs * 200).
So to achieve T6X, you will need 4 projects completed with 20 lux copies or 3 projects with 27 copies. All you need is one foreign tourist from each Civ, so ensure the # of met Civs is >= the highest domestic tourist Civ before completing the 4 projects. I look forward to someone completing a T6X.

A. mexicanum · Feb 8, 2023

Managed to get a t77 win as well, by completing 4 projects with 20 excess luxuries.

T6X seems possible, but not very likely without exploiting the ai for money or save scumming (Or maybe I am just bad^^). There is just so much luck involved. This time I got 2 population from my first huts on turn 4 and 11 as well as an envoy in my third hut, which I put into a faith city state for a much earlier pantheon. (no first meets sadly). Also a barb camp right next to my border for the archery eureka helped when I prepared for a war on france.
On the other hand: in the first game france declared war on me after wasting it's units on a city state (wolin?) so I could easily take their city without a big fight or many grievances. I also got 2 citys and a setller from them in my first game.This time I did not come with a big army, but hat to fight off several archers and spearman, which slowed me down a lot. I also only got 2 citys and no setller, which means I had to build one settler more myself. Which also got delayed by barbs.
In the same way I dont think a t7X win is realistic on the first playthrough. Knowing where you have to scout to meet AI's and where not makes a big time difference.

Build order:
Scout, scout, builder, builder, settler.

Possible improvements/thoughts:
- I can see a world where one scout is enough (or the second one is built much later). With the free hill movement from Matterhorn and 1 promotion for forests he is really fast and should be enough to find all AI's on your home continent in time.
- The correct first tech is animal husbandry (although it did not make a difference this time.)
- I did not go for a religion, I don't think it is worth it, but maybe I am wrong.
- There are 2 more luxury resources reachable from my citys, so Rennes -the southern most city - is not technically necessary, but I don't see in which other city I could realistically chop a fourth project.
- My bottleneck was getting to the other continent, I only founded rouen on turn 52 (and immediately bought a ship) and you can see where I currently am - again here is luck involved, as my way was blocked by barb ships for a few rounds - with some bad luck I might not have made it.
- For a faster victory getting to the other continent might not be necessary. If all things go right you can let the other france live with nantes, which leaves you with 11 AI's on the home continent and means one tourist more. (again, there is some luck involved on how many tourist you need at any given time).

Monthar · Feb 9, 2023

Culture Victory Turn 181 Score 1367
I had one early war declared on me, so I wiped them off the map. Built a lot of wonders. Remained peaceful for most of the game. There were a few wars declared on me, but very little combat from them. At some point I realized how to do the special project and how to boost it, then started pushing them.

I did have one reload due to the power going out. Save file added.

drsnidely · Feb 11, 2023

Turn 279/Score 1270 CV

Obviously I haven't mastered the intricacies of using Catherine the way some folks have.

Anyway, settled right in the bend of the river, found the Matterhorn pretty early, sacrificed a potential national park spot to put a holy site there. Which didn't ultimately help because I ended up not getting a religion. Took Monument to the Gods and went for Animal Husbandry and Archery to get Temple of Artemis up quickly. Eleanor forward-settled and surprise warred me, so I put my infrastructure development on hold to take her out. That got me a lot of cities without having to build settlers, and from there I mostly built theatre squares and wonders. Ended up settling 6 cities, conquered 4, and loyalty flipped 3.

I know I should, but I hardly ever chop woods unless I want to clear the tile to put a district on it. I don't know why, but from reading the other posts it clearly would have helped. By the end I was running Court Festivals in nearly every city. I found the map frustrating because the closest civ I could find that I could sacrifice apostles to was Poland, and it took forever to march them over there. Likewise my top rival for tourism was Kristina and I couldn't get rock bands to her in time to be much help.

Still a fun game.

Xtowers · Feb 12, 2023

Console player here so just participating in spirit. Turn 239 CV, score 2038. I obviously missed the special project, as well. I just played a casual culture game, which was fun, but then I was like, oh what the heck, I have nothing left to build. Let me do the project, and I won like the next turn. Never even saw the nearing a culture victory notification.

lakeiron · Feb 19, 2023

T198 CV

Good game, usual stuff as far as I can see from others. France attacked me too, I explored everyone, lots of cities and luxuries, lots of Court projects. However too much distraction, as I like to build up my empire up (apparently no need for that) and also I just don't like chopping... Also apparent that chopping almost always yields better results than not chopping.

Thanks for the game!

6otM152 AAR

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