6otM168 AAR

[Eyswein]

Welcome to the 6otM168 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 true start map affect your gameplay?
- 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.

 

[cas]

slow T246 DV win.

This game was a bit of a slog. Partly due to map, partly due to my self imposed restrictions. I decided not to settle more than one city and raze all captured cities except capitals. Not a good strategy for fast dom VC, but I don't like micro managing 20+ cities. Also have not played this map in over a year - capital areas are lacking in strategic resources. Hoorah for Hattusa!

Settled inland 1W 1NW. Squeezed between Alexander and Preslav, I decided (hoped) for warrior monks and got it with the 2nd founded religion. Made liberal use of warrior monks and crusade +10 str.

Conquered AI with:
Greece: warrior monks -> took longer than I hoped due to Preslav units getting in my way and terrain.
Poland: warrior monks + battering ram + one leveraged pike for walls + leveraged archer/crossbow.
Tamar: leveraged trebuchets + knights + warrior monks
Arabia: Privateers + warrior monks + leveraged melee units
Sumeria: Tanks + warrior monks. Sumeria was down to 2 cities by the time I finished Tamar.
Portugal: Privateers + leveraged melee units. And eventually battleships + ironclads. Amazing how little walls or units Portugal builds even if it is ahead in tech.
Germany: bombers + warrior monks (armies) + tanks
France: bombers + tanks. Only razed 3(?) cities and took capital a couple turns before defeating England.
England: Battleships + privateers + ironclads + tanks

The unique civ feature +3 per holy city converted to your religion came in handy. The unique building Hippodrome was also very useful for free knights and no-oil tanks.

Warrior monks were awesome for breaking out of the early box with Alexander/Preslav and also for quick response to barbs in distant conquered capitals.

Kinda fun, but DV is not my thing.

cas

 

[Planktonic]

Dom Vic, turn 172

Gadzooks, this civ is unstoppable. Every single thing in her toolkit is just powerful; the ability to get free culture with holy sites is way, way overpowered. Even better, she's actually incentivized to chop everything adjacent (so that farms can be placed) and won't even be penalized in downstream production as long as she takes the Work Ethic belief. The mini-frigate is a great unique unit- the 2 tile range came in very handy for taking Pella. And she can print an army for free just by building districts, and never has to worry about happiness. Plus her combat bonus starts out equal to Catherine de Medici's or Montezuma's, but has the capacity to go much higher much easier. And converting cities by combat just adds to your stats depending on which belief you took. I only tried her once very briefly before, but I'm convinced more than ever that she's the most powerful civ in the game. I don't think anyone else even comes close, actually.

I have never played this map but gambled that Pammukkale would be one of the wonders and got the astrology boost, so founded an early religion. My warrior somehow blundered into Macedon trying to forward settle me and blocked him for a while before he finally diverted a little. I tried to take his settler and Pella with an early war with galleys and warriors only, but failed. Luckily I was able to secure the single horse tile in the area with my 3rd city- then took Magnus with Black Marketeer to raise a faster horse army which took out Alexander. Horses and Knights then took out Jadwiga, while a 2nd army of Knights with catapults went towards Georgia. Georgia proved the toughest nut to crack, both by dint of walls and by dint of location. The army that conquered Poland kept going west to take on Germany, while troops levied from Brussels took Paris and much of the rest of France, before crossing the channel for England. A 3rd army was built to go after Sumeria, and Arabia. Finally troops levied from Granada (along with cavalry coming down from France) took out Portugal. Grandmaster's chapel proved invaluable in this game as a way to very quickly bring massive firepower to the front line.

I only built one campus rather late, mostly for lack of anything else to do in central cities far from the action. All capitals were walled except for Pella and London, but I only used siege units to capture 3: Krakow needed trebuchets and Paris and Tbilisi were taken with bombards. Munich was taken by Cuirassier corps alone, while Arabia, Portugal and Sumeria were so underdeveloped that single cavalry and cuirassier units were able to chew through their walls without difficulty.

It was a clever map in that placing so many capitals at extreme edges made things a bit more challenging, but the lack of resources and lack of space at the edge made those civs very, very weak and just pushovers when you finally got around to them.

Thanks for the game, domination isn't really my thing either but this was pretty fun!

 

[GeoGeo]

Domination, Turn 190, Score: 1795

Settled to the Southeast for a nice harbor city in Western Thrace. Then Alexander forward settled and blocked off the coastal path West, so I put together a navy while also expanding into Anatolia around Pammukkale. Pursued the standard Byzantine gameplan with a Work Ethic + Crusade religion (plus Cross-Cultural Dialogue and Gurdwaras later) and cavalry rushing with Warlord's Throne and Grandmaster's Chapel. Also was very happy to discover Valletta. Used Scripture most of the game for tons of Faith alongside Monumentality for three straight Golden Ages. Maintaining two armies was not at all difficult, especially with the free Hippodrome cavalry.

Conquest order went: Macedon > Poland > Arabia > Sumeria > Germany > France > England and Georgia around the same time > Portugal

It was a mistake to not push into Georgia sooner given Tamar's love of walls. It was a bigger mistake to ally with Germany, since that resulted in 11 turns of downtime before I could resume my conquest. They were the clear 2nd place Civ and managed to take Paris before I got there. Having only one source of niter was another bottleneck once the bigger walls went up. Towards the end I beelined Artillery and Tanks, which finally let me take down Tamar's obnoxious mountain captial. Portugal was a quick cleanup job at the very end with my small navy, but I could've done it sooner if I didn't procrastinate getting over there.

Clever concept for a TSL game, with the Byzantines expanding from the crossroads between East and West. Would not mind another TSL domination game sometime down the line.

 

[A. mexicanum]

turn 177, DV

well,that was... different.
I am not a fan of a domination victory, but I did not play for one in a while and did not play theodora before so I gave it a shot. And while this was way easier than I expected, domination always draws out for so long.

I had a look on the map beforehand and decided to settle west of the Kizilimak river for better housing and to immediately work the tobacco. That locked alexander in, but also prevented me from finding Pamukkale, since a barb camp spawned on the small land connection.
I decided to build a few ships for exploring, but accidentally conquered Alexander with only two galleys and two dromones (and 2 warriors for the inland city) as late as turn 86! then the same ships sailed all the way to Portugal and took Lisbon without problem. AI was really bad.
Levied troops from Grenada took over the rest of portugal, and I wasn't even able to convert those cities cause there simply were no units to defeat. At the same time levied troops from Vatican City and Geneva conquered France and my only "built" troops rolled through poland and germany.

South only 4 knights from entertainment complexes conquered arabia and later Georgia with the help of some ships. I let Gilgabro live the longest since he was the only one who wanted to be my friend. But I accidentally renewed the friendship once too often so I had to wait 25 turns longer than I wanted to finish the game.
This way 3 Modern Armor armies rolled over his undefended 58 combat strength capital on the final turn.

There seems to be a giant difference between Emperor and Deity regarding AI strength that I did not expect like that. This felt more like prince difficulty. Or is it the map, that the AI did not handle well?

Anyway, nice game and very aesthetically pleasing.

 

[isopaha]

DV T181. Quite a painless game taken that it was domination in a 'real world' map, which are always way too big for the amount of AIs. There was a very similar GOTM a while ago and I decided to use the same strategy of using Crusade belief, which still worked well. Byzantium could win even a religious victory (which I'm not a fan of) by warring with everybody, I'd say.

Georgia was in a really tight spot, which resembles its strategic position and historical importance IRL. Cannons were a must and I accidentally also got battleships just in time to shorten Tbilisi's capture by a couple of turns, because one BS could reach it from the sea.

The toughest decisions during the game were:

• How many armies to build and what routes to send them
• Whether to capture all cities on said route between two capitals, or just move the army past stubborn walled cities and risk loyalty pressure later
• How to use the ridiculous amount of heavy cavalry you get
• How to finance unit upgrades

Navy was of limited use, but it was good that Portugal was defenseless even after the long sea voyage after capturing Macedon. Also England was captured by navy.

@A. mexicanum - I also have the impression that AI is bad at real world maps. It is unable to make use of the uninhabited lands (e.g. Poland in this game) and of course some starting positions are very challenging (e.g. England).

 

[Airey]

DV 118 on replays with map knowledge
not submitting

【Strategy】
Scout x 3 to steal AI settlers
Lv 3 MA horseman rush (50 horses bought from Catherine)；use Archer lines to deal with city walls
settle Deer + forests city east of Ludwig to chop 2 groups of horsemen (7 to east 7 to west）
delay founding to mass Horsemen army first
Religion: Choral Music (culture bonus to hit upgrade + Lv 2 govt building civics sooner) + Crusade + Stonehenge for Tithe
2nd wave of Chariots - sell 40 irons to defeated AI, buy back and upgrade when needed
use Horsemen + Chariots to take new satellite cities of target AIs, upgrade + buy Archer/Catapult line to take AI cap.

【Districts】
First 3 cities：Grooves，Holysites，Encampments

New/Capture cities：Entertainment Centers + fix AI districts (Holysites/Campuses/CHubs)

【Tech】
Mining-HBR-Astro-Construction-Castles-Ballistics（t108）- Military Science - Rifling
Mysticism-Phil-Military Training-Devine Right-Mercenaries-Reform Church-Exploration-Civil Engineering-Colonialism-Natural History

 

[Airey]

【Reflect】

• overshot culture + military, 4k military strength by end game t118.
• work ethic should yield better results, start hammering out GG projects + chariots instead of working on shrine/temple.
• spend too much cash on unit maintenance cost, upgrades and rush buys, only upgrade when units arrive at target AI's doorsteps, or delete units after making sure the captured cap would not rebel.
• would be more efficient with CS levies and re-levies.

【Amani CS Levies】
after levy Amani CS, CS will start making more military, move Amani in-and-out on the same turn, and re-levy,
even better synergy with Matthias (Hungary) and Harald (Varangian).

I suspect the CS tech is the same as the Suzerian, not too sure about the mechanics.
In this game, I did not prioritize melee techs, thus with lack of resources CS spits lots of cheap range and cavalry units.
In theory, one can place Amani on the other side of the world (Jerusalem).
ie. 1st Jerusalem levies can move towards Gilgamesh + Tamar, 2nd re-levy army can move towards Saladin.
mass range units + melee/heavy cavalry are excellent match with Theodora's UA

 

[Birthright]

My second time doing one of these games of the months
Turn 239 Victory
I think I need to learn to be a lot more efficient. I should have leaned into those Hippodromes much more heavily from much earlier. Great fun map though.

 

[BeAttila]

Turn 359 - Culture victory (sorry)

Well, I wanted to achieve the domination, and I was quite close to it, but it seems I was too cultured, compared to the other half barbarians

All started pretty hard for me. I did not like the mountains, Macedon was too close to my taste, and declared a surprise war quite soon. And also, I had to start all over again 5 times...
But I learned. And I realised that for me the key is to control the resources, and for the ancient wars the key element was Iron. Thus, I settled very forward and captured a very nice spot close to Georgia, with two iron ore spots. Then, It went fine. I secured my spot in Asia, Gilgabro was nice as usual, Tamar tried to make my life hard, but I had Iron, already.
Macedon was defeated quite early, and then I started to build my world empire.
Also, I love the modern ages and I also like to micromanage 50+ cuties, thus I was not in a hurry.
Close to the end, I had huge armies, with minimum 4+ promotion, I had my stacked aircraft carriers marching for London and Paris (still breaking Lisbon), my rocket launchers were not far to start the march to Munich with some modern armor supports and I was just about to start the building up my nuclear arsenal - but I wanted to finish some carbon recapture cycles, as the environment is also very important for me.

But then, suddenly, culture vic happened... so, here is how it looked at the end.

I had everything, basically all the oil of the world was controlled by me - some had a few barrels (like Ludwig), but in this world I was the superpower. In that sense, I think I achieved total supremacy around T240-T250, but I love this game to be complete, and I wanted to have the the total map to show in purple , well, with some reservations for the formal owners.

Religion was a great weapon for Theodora, In fact, religion spread like a virus... with Tithe switch on, all converted cities, started to pay me.

Also I was able to buy land units with faith (thanks to the Grand Masters Chapel), so it was never a problem to pacify or hold a freshly captured city or territory.

After all, it was a good but tiring game for me, I liked Theo, but I don't think I will have "just one more turn" with this save, after the CultVic.

But thanks a lot for creating, and sorry for the different win.

BTW, I had already my spaceship out in the wild, so maybe in a few turns I would have achieved SciVic

 

[Soger]

Turn 91 I believe. Will post screen and save when I get home. Didn’t record as I am currently recording a Caesar domination game and Pericles science game so didn’t really feel like trying to talk through another 15+ minute per turn game.

Strategy: 3 cities with holy sites. Work ethic+ crusade. Autocracy rush Apadana for envoys to levy and conquer. Switch to oligarchy once capital ran out of chops.

Lower level means city states are much cheaper to levy early for exploration.
Was unfamiliar with the map although I have played the huge tsl map about 5 times so I knew the general idea.

Culture to plantations for pantheon.
Focused on early friendships close, as they would be easy to conquer later and would give me the ability to focus 100%on economy building.

Used boats to break into Georgia, still a mess. Didn’t use the entertainment center enough. Although I chopped one out when I captured the first Georgia city so that was huge.

Governor: diplomat >Magnus >Victor

Off memory I conquered in this order:
1. Arabia, France, Alexander, England, Sumerian, Germany, Georgia, Portugal, Poland.

Completely removed France, Arabia, England and Sumerian. The rest just seemed dragged on and I captured the capital before I could get through their territory.

With oligarchy, crusades and the UA I honestly was conquering early cities with my scout and a warrior

 

[Soger]

Save and victory screen to go with above.

 

[leif erikson]

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