6otM167 AAR

[Eyswein]

Welcome to the 6otM167 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 and shuffle map 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.

 

[GeoGeo]

Okay, I'll just come out and admit I got bodied by Gaul in under 30 turns.

I settled between the jade and the sugar and made a point to go scout > warrior > warrior, but when I encountered Gaul I shared capital info out of habit and quickly realized my turns were numbered. It was brutal.

I decided to load the game up again and play close to identically just to see if the capital sharing was really what did me in. Apparently not, because he found me anyway (maybe even sooner?) and my better-prepared troops could only delay the inevitable. Couldn't even beeline masonry in time.

I guess the best play is to either settle with defensibility in mind or happen to avoid meeting Gaul until you're prepared. Geez, this setup was mean!

 

[Darkphoenix]

Same here though for me I was expecting Gaul to try something so I had start making some troops to defend a small city I forward settled against Gaul to bait them into wasting troops against a defensive position.... and then China showed up from nowhere in the north on my border and took my capital.

 

[Chrumo]

Yup, I got stomped too, around turn 75 I am too far behind to consider a good culture game.

I defended the Gauls, and actually was doing quite well, despite being extremely behind all other civs reasearch and culture wise. Then China declared surprise war, instantly killing my two out of position archers. After 20 turns of war, she took the first critical city, despite me spending all my resources defending (6 archers, spearman, two warriors and defensive governor wasn't enough).

The starting position is garbage, the civ is garbage for early game, and the map setup is extremely punishing for the player (pangea, sparse resources). If I went for a second playthrough, I would try to get the capital in the best possible position and go for a domination game, eventually cheesing the culture victory from the last living civ or something.

 

[Birthright]

I made it to turn 150 or so before giving up. I had 8 cities, but was behind in tech and my Samurai we getting mauled by musketmen and then three civs declared war on me as a result of me having captured Shanghai. Miles behind in culture and I had explored enough of the map to find that both Rameses and Eleanor are in the game! Korea also just to set the barbarians off with top tech units!

 

[leif erikson]

I made it to turn 150 or so before giving up. I had 8 cities, but was behind in tech and my Samurai we getting mauled by musketmen and then three civs declared war on me as a result of me having captured Shanghai. Miles behind in culture and I had explored enough of the map to find that both Rameses and Eleanor are in the game! Korea also just to set the barbarians off with top tech units!

Welcome to Game of the Month!

Picked a tough game to start! Thank you for sharing your game.

 

[RocknOats]

OMG Thank you all for sharing your starts! I loaded this the day it came out and quickly failed 6-8 restarts. Not even the crazy Zombie/Krampus games were this tough! LOL I'm glad to know it wasn't just me.

 

[Chrumo]

Second attempt after ~turn60 reload:

CV 266

Spoiler t266 :

Oh. My. God.

This was by far the hardest game I have ever played. I have never experienced such helplessness against the victory condition - sure I could have flown to the outer space and back three times by turn 266, but getting that cultural victory was excruciating. At the end, I think there were maybe 2-3 spots left for any cities on the map. And because I have allied everyone at some point, any war attempt would end in a betrayal emergency.

But first things first, this game was reloaded at the early stage. I have written in my previous post that China declared surprise war and took out my 2 out of position archers. In this reload, I have simply moved them back a turn prior, which completely changed the outcome of the war (i.e. I defended successfuly).

This game was probably winnable by Diplomacy, as I have almost done at turn 265, I think I lacked 1 vote to give myself the points to win. If i had known that the culture condition will be so difficult, I probably would have gone for a diplomatic victory, and won 60 turns earlier, on the first points congress.

The star of the show was Mbande, who accumulated 407 tourist with something like 200-300 tourism per turn. As my swarms of Rock Bands disbanded on the first show, I had to watch how her lvl 3 rock band just takes a tour around my whole empire, generating tens of thousands of tourism each turn, never even looking back. Thanks, RNG.

Spoiler Tourism at the end :

And if you look closely, the game ended with a bang, apparently all the friendships have ended exactly 8 turns ago, and all the AI have sent their agents to sabotage my neighbourhood. And they all succeded...

Spoiler Surprise party! :

Thanks for the game, I think this cannot be topped. If there was ever a game which beat me, and I have no earthly idea how I could have won it without reloading, it was this one.
Good luck to other players!

 

[RocknOats]

Second attempt after ~turn60 reload:

CV 266

Spoiler t266 :

View attachment 673077

Oh. My. God.

This was by far the hardest game I have ever played. I have never experienced such helplessness against the victory condition - sure I could have flown to the outer space and back three times by turn 266, but getting that cultural victory was excruciating. At the end, I think there were maybe 2-3 spots left for any cities on the map. And because I have allied everyone at some point, any war attempt would end in a betrayal emergency.

But first things first, this game was reloaded at the early stage. I have written in my previous post that China declared surprise war and took out my 2 out of position archers. In this reload, I have simply moved them back a turn prior, which completely changed the outcome of the war (i.e. I defended successfuly).

This game was probably winnable by Diplomacy, as I have almost done at turn 265, I think I lacked 1 vote to give myself the points to win. If i had known that the culture condition will be so difficult, I probably would have gone for a diplomatic victory, and won 60 turns earlier, on the first points congress.

The star of the show was Mbande, who accumulated 407 tourist with something like 200-300 tourism per turn. As my swarms of Rock Bands disbanded on the first show, I had to watch how her lvl 3 rock band just takes a tour around my whole empire, generating tens of thousands of tourism each turn, never even looking back. Thanks, RNG.

Spoiler Tourism at the end :

View attachment 673078

And if you look closely, the game ended with a bang, apparently all the friendships have ended exactly 8 turns ago, and all the AI have sent their agents to sabotage my neighbourhood. And they all succeded...

Spoiler Surprise party! :

View attachment 673080

Thanks for the game, I think this cannot be topped. If there was ever a game which beat me, and I have no earthly idea how I could have won it without reloading, it was this one.
Good luck to other players!

But but... How did you manage to survive Gaul? I kept him off me at most 6 turns before he swept in. I still haven't even reached Archery... I tried different cap locations, unit rush with my Pantheon, bribes, whatever I could do...

 

[CiJay]

I made it to turn 150 or so before giving up. I had 8 cities, but was behind in tech and my Samurai we getting mauled by musketmen and then three civs declared war on me as a result of me having captured Shanghai. Miles behind in culture and I had explored enough of the map to find that both Rameses and Eleanor are in the game! Korea also just to set the barbarians off with top tech units!

Same here.... anyway good to read that others were bullied too^^

I was able to survive but keep fighting for about 50 turns with gauls for cities. I give up my first try...

 

[Chrumo]

But but... How did you manage to survive Gaul? I kept him off me at most 6 turns before he swept in. I still haven't even reached Archery... I tried different cap locations, unit rush with my Pantheon, bribes, whatever I could do...

It will sound funny, but I actually declared on him - I noticed him moving his 3 warriors towards me (but still about 2-3 turns before my borders), and I just robbed him of his money and declared surprise war.

At home, I think I managed to scramble 2 slingers and a warrior. With some micromanagement, that should be enough to fend him off, as long as you don't get surrounded immedietely. Meanwhile, two scouts and a chariot from a meteor were running over his empire, pillaging mines for money, and even managing to snatch a worker and a free settler (which sounds better than it was, before I managed to make use of that settler it was very very late).

So yeah, I also got pretty lucky with my findings, as the first tribal village gave me a second scout, and the meteor game me a chariot, which all in all was very useful to distract Gaul and prevent him from sending more than a couple warriors towards my cap. After that get archery and forward settle China - you WILL need that land. Once you are past the early stage and have friendships with them, (remember to send delegations and open their borders asap), don't be discouraged just because you are two orders of magnitude behind in science in culture, you can easily overtake everyone on 8-9 cities eventually. Winning culture though... is another story

 

[Eyswein]

Oh. My. God.

This was by far the hardest game I have ever played.

Thanks for the game, I think this cannot be topped. If there was ever a game which beat me, and I have no earthly idea how I could have won it without reloading, it was this one.
Good luck to other players!

But but... How did you manage to survive Gaul? I kept him off me at most 6 turns before he swept in. I still haven't even reached Archery... I tried different cap locations, unit rush with my Pantheon, bribes, whatever I could do...

Guess I should have saved this one for Krampus.

Spoiler Some details from a good start test game :

I knew Gaul would be difficult as I had issues in many test starts - when I tried to expand west toward Gaul I got obliterated. Definitely not fair to compare below to any first games as I know things about the start and save periodically to try different branches to see if the start is viable, but hopefully will help someone on deity level fun.

I think I was lulled by my initial standard 'most dangerous' first test start that turned out really well. This is how I like to start Deity games when possible, but can be dangerous due to lack of military. I went back to look at this test in case anyone is interested.

General idea of my favored type of start:
-Scout first, then builder/settler (order based upon value as known), monument
-Start Animal Husbandry for hopes of early horses, Focus Early Empire to be able to sell or just give open borders for +3 relationship
-Military only as needed, ideally slinger and rush archery if needed, and just hope to survive any early attacks (note: tends to work better on higher level starts; need to do more barb clearing on lower difficulty levels)

Some details for the early part of this game with some thoughts on why I did things:

Settle location: T2 on Jade - reason is +1 culture to start, 'free' luxury, and initially work 1F/3P tile for faster scout.

Capital: T7-Scout, T8-Builder (from scout entering TV), Settler, Monument, T-32 Builder
additional Capital notes: T7- start builder, T9 - reach size 2, border expands to sugar, stop builder and start settler
Note: free builder, T15-wheat on turn I expand to it, then 2 cattle after 2d city is built; some very careful scouting when nothing to do; saved the builder for these tiles for the extra production
Second city: T36-Monument
Note: 2d city build on plains hills near cattle to S

Meeting other civilizations:
T8 - meet Gaul (my warrior is E of Barb camp and Gaul shows up on W of Barb camp, sample their hospitality and send delegation
T29 - meet China and send delegation
T36 - meet Egypt and send delegation
Note: T29 - open border to all for better relations; think I got 1g in return from all

T08 - Gaul (+3 delegation; -6 first impressions)
T15 - Gaul (+3 delegation; -6 first impressions, -4 military size) Scourge of Rome starts
T31 - Gaul (+3 delegation, +3 OB, +2 trade routes; -4 first impressions, -8 military size); my military is 1 scout, 1 warrior
T42 - Gaul (+3 delegation, +3 OB, +2 trade routes; -3 first impressions, -4 military size); my military is 1 scout, 2 warriors, 2 slingers
Note: Trade route from Gaul capital to my 2d city appears to have started about T24.
Gaul never dropped below unfriendly in this run through and I'm not sure why. Maybe they didn't find capital, +2 trade route relation bonus just enough, capital start location, etc.

Barbs:
T9- destroy barb camp between me and Gaul
No other major issues in the Ancient Era

Notable city states:
T9 - meet Kumasi with no envoy, T10 - +1 envoy with Kumasi due to FT inspiration
T15- meet Auckland +1 envoy to start
No envoys with other City States through Ancient Era

Tech order: T12- AH, T20- Pottery, T34- Writing (place Campuses, but don't start them), Irrigation
Note: sadly no horses nearby, but I can work the cattle; can see +3 (to start) campus sites for both cities, so focus campus and then irrigation for the sugar
Civics order: T11- CoL (?, UP), T18- FT, T29-EE, T32- Craftsmanship (now time for military buildup)
Note: stop short of a tech/civic if a eureka/inspiration will come in a timely manner

Other notes: Finished Ancient Era with 8/11 era score to enter Classic Dark Age; I find this ideal in Deity games for the Heroic Medieval Era (in lower level games I shoot for all golden ages)

Later on:
T50 - ask Gaul to join Joint War vs China (Gaul has denounced China while China is unfriendly with me); Gaul gives me 17gpt, ~250 gold, and +10 favorable trade deals; T51 - Gaul switches to neutral relationship and upon me asking is my declared friend!!
I didn't have much or any combat with China, but did this war for 1) money, money, and money and 2) to try to become friends with Gaul
About same time start to have massive barb issue to SE where I'm fighting a retreating battle with warriors and archers after a barb scout got away and 4+ swordsman appeared at the camp just 6 S of my 3rd city

 

[BeAttila]

First attempt - T110 - Desperate struggle for survival

The above screencut shows, in what a trouble I am in. I am after 3 wars with China, had 2 attempts (of which I know) to remove the governor from my capital - by an unknown player, but I know it was China -, had already two wars with Gaul, but after 5 wars, I am still standing.

I already lost an important city on the coast, near Globustan, due to my lack of caution: I have let that barb.camp survive at the bottom and they were two strong. They came against me with catapults and swordsman...

I will restart, and I will try to be more careful with the barbs...

 

[CiJay]

So I gave it a second try... I was able to win a diplo-victory by turn 239 BUT
I had to reload several turns in the beginning to finally push off Gaul... so do not consider this as "win".... ^^
--
The beginning was rough again... Built two cities and 3 warriors and 3 slingers!
Once Gaul attacked I had placed a unit nearly on every hex between my two cities -> 3 archers, 3 warriors, 1 spearman in city center

Well, they came with 7-8 gaesate and 2 archers... and additionally Kumasi came with 4 swordsman...
Somehow I managed to survive this scenario with 0hp on my second city, but all melee units dead on attackers side.

I exlcusively built military at this time and initiated a counter-attack on gaul and took all cities except of two...

Then I started building infrastructure and focused on culture and also diplo as I thought would be good to focus on both. Especially because Eleonore was already getting tourists and a lot of culture.
I built mahabodi, got the diplo-points from the culture tree and got 3 points from the congress. 1 turn after I finished statue of liberty to "win".
--

Very difficult game but I really enjoy the deity-challenges Thanks for creating <3

 

[Michael Lindskou]

CV turn 155

My initial plan was magnus internal Traderoute to try and maximize district capacaty since Toku gets +1 tourism from districts, my plan was mass expansion and going complete ham on traderoutes

this plan changed quickly upon realizing i was boxes in, inbetween Gaul and China. when i met Gaul i sold my Jade asap and send delegatop to get the best possible relation, the plan worked and I was able to befriend every civ i met from here on I ofc made sure to send delegation and trrade as much as possible with them. only problem now was I only had room for a few cities, I decided to stay on 4 cities until the end of classical, during the classical im ade sure to max growth via traderoutes and chops. I should mention it was a dark age Clkassical era luckly the bakuhan trait gives 100% loyalty to all cities within 6 tiles so did have to battle loyalty, all most the full era I had the dark card Isoalism in (2+f+2p) to traderoutes + surplus magnus in my cap.

my classical traderoutes

I Had real good scouting this game and found everybody early, I just didnt have any tourism output , I chose not to go religion i didnt want a negative modifier to me tourism when i knew i couldnt get traderoute modifier, from my scoutiing i realized that most of the civs in this game was cultural powerhouses, so i prepped for war i manges to chop and buy 4 warrior in the classical era and timed it with feudaslim to have 4 samurais rdy to attack Gaul. the rest of the game I jogled war and freindship between the AI.. always making sure iwas rdy to attack the cultural leader when our friendship ended

and that was my strat combined with a tsunami of Moais

[

 

[Planktonic]

CV, turn 262/263. But on my second playthrough.

The first time, after reading Soger's comments in the Nzinga game, I very insouciantly opened with 2 scouts and sent them on their merry way. Gaul stomped me by turn 25 with 4 Gaesatae and 2 archers.

The second time I opened with another warrior. I thought I had fronted him off, but it just delayed things. He attacked my second city at the end of the Ancient, but by then I had managed to put down 3 cities and 2 holy sites. The second city was on the lake and couldn't be sieged, so I concentrated on holding the tiles next to it against melee units. He had 3 archers but every turn they stupidly emptied into the city center, which had zero hp, but left the warriors standing fortified alone. Even this would likely have failed, except: I got to Poli Phi, which gave me oligarchy for the +4. Also, I had *planned* to go into a Dark Age (didn't have much choice in the end- couldn't really explore much while defending Gaul) to try to take advantage of the Monasticism card, but actually ended up loading the Twilight Valor card for pretty much the entire Age, giving my warriors another +5. After he spent most of his military strength attacking me, I was finally able to build out 3 slingers that got upgraded to archers. I then levied a lot of warriors from Singapore and was able to counterattack. Eventually, with the arrival of Samurai, I was able to eliminate him. I started to try to play catch up in terms of culture infrastructure but decided that would be hopeless. Kongo and Egypt were way, way far ahead and had already accumulated over a dozen Great Works each. I decided the way forward was through them- and basically converted to a domination game at that point. Eventually I eliminated them both, and reduced Mali, Korea and China to rump civs. I left Eleanor alone so rock bands would have a lot of places to play. They brought the game to a close at long last. Kongo had 417 defensive tourists when I eliminated her, Ramses had I think 320 or so. Eleanor had 275 at her max but with the rock bands I was able to win with 251 tourists accumulated versus her 249 defensive.

We haven't had a hyperaggressive Deity start in a very long while so I got careless. The game reminded me of the Brazil game from a while ago- also a culture victory but first you had to survive Vietnam.

Thanks for the game!

 

[Soger]

Completed and recorded my game will post save and pictures when I am back on my pc.

Culture victory I late 140’s maybe turn 149. Don’t remember it was early and I had to get to work.

like many others I had a early war with the Gaul. I noticed Gaul got Oracle so I didn’t renew my friendship in the classical era so I could conquer him and liberate my Oracle from the hands of the undeserving.

Samurai’s cut through him like nothing. Probably should have left him in game as he could have provided tourists for a earlier win. Oh well

I had friendship/alliances with every other civ the length of game. Flipped china entirely to my religion for tourism boost late game.

Golden age ever era.

overall straight forward Culture game with minimal issues.

 

[lakeiron]

CV T273 - not an official submission as restarted once

Well, well, well... finally a game that was actually open until the modern era...
I ended up in a betrayal emergency and having to wipe out everyone but China. After that it took 23 turns to accumulate the tourism enough to beat Wu. I had 17/20 points for diplo vic.
My Gaul strategy was to move away and expand the other way. I got declared by China as a result, but I could fend them off. I levied Auckland as soon as I could so my military score was enough to deter Gaul. They were busy with China and Korea anyway.
Once Gaesatae was not very strong anymore, they started to decline anyway.

 

[TheFlamingPortkchop]

Year 1848 / Turn 295 / Score 1,224 / Diplomatic Victory

Spoiler Victory Screenshot & Discussion :

What a game! Long-time Civ player here, but first time completing a GotM! No reloads!

Planned on a tourism victory, but apparently every other AI was too, and there was so much competing culture and SO MANY rock bands, I pivoted to Diplo victory after the Statue of Liberty got me to 18/20 points. The last two points came from researching a tech (I forgot which one?) and then winning the World Games (“Train Athletes”)

• Tried an early war with Gaul to allow me to expand and get some good pillages to help me catch up in science & culture. That backfired when a world congress emergency was declared and Korea showed up with half a dozen Hwachas (sp?) I took one city from Gaul, but Korea liberated it and I ended up back where I started. Regardless, got some decent pillages in with “Raid” card (+50% on pillaging)
• I went hard on national parks and art/archaeology museums, buying most of the great works from the AI. Sydney Opera House and Eiffel Tower were super helpful in getting late-game tourism.
• Had a ton of fun, looking forward to the next one!

 

[lordofcivs]

My problem is a bit different. I kicked Gaul hard, but when I captured 3 of his cities (not including capital) the entire world denounced me and starts warring me.

Stopped playing at T157, as I know I can't win a Cultural/diplo win in this game.